R E M O U N T - 30th Infantry Division



James D. Newton

R E M O U N T

(compiled by Arno Lasoe)

REMOUNT started as an account of my personal experiences in World War Two. It was to be a brief account, just so that some record might exist. The brevity became lost in telling. As I progressed through the story, I slowly recognized that I was one of the last cavalrymen. No horses, to be sure, but nevertheless cavalry.

Cavalry, in one form or another, had been part of armies of the civilized world since before the year 6 B.C. They rode for the ancient pharaohs, they were the hordes of Genghis Khan. They were the Uhlans, the Light Brigade, the Bengal Lancers and Cossacks. They rode chariots for Egyptians and Romans. They rode elephants across the Alps for Hannibal. They rode camels for Arab chieftans. They fought each other on horseback in the American Civil War. They opened the West for American settlers. They charged up Kettle Hill with Teddy Roosevelt. They were the elite when war was glory.

All Cavalry committed to combat in the second world war was “mechanized.” Jeeps, armored cars, half-tracks, light tanks and assault guns replaced the old, colourful columns of horse-mounted troopers.

Cavalry units continued to use established terms of “Troop” and “Squadron.” Officers commissioned in the Cavalry branch still referred to their men as “Troopers.”

Cavalry appeared in a variety of organizations during the war. Infantry divisions were assigned a troop of about 150 men. Armored divisions were assigned a squadron of about 900 men. Divisions commonly referred to the cavalry compliment as “reconnaissance”, or merely “recon.”

Independent of divisional units, cavalry groups and squadrons served during the war. A group indicated an open-ended organization replacing the former regiment designation and consisted of two cavalry squadrons and a Headquarters Troop. The open-end formation of the groups allowed for an attached units of battalion-strength; usually combat engineers, tanks, tank destroyers or artillery. Selection of the attached unit depended upon the type of mission and what type of unit was available.

WW II Cavalry had the superfluous appendages of “Reconnaissance”, an inherent mission of cavalry, and “Mechanized”, which should have been obvious, tacked on to the unit title. The 125th Cavalry Squadron became 125th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron (Mechanized). Return addresses were shortened to: 125 Cav Rcn Sq (Meczd)

Squadrons consisted of a Headquarters Troop, three Reconnaissance Troops ( A, B and C ), an Assault gun Troop ( E ) and a Tank Company ( F ). The Tank “Company” was not allowed the dignity of a troop title –probably because of per-war animostity between Armor and Cavalry.

Cavalry’s role of long-range reconnaissance was correctly used, for the most part, for those squadrons that started from Normandy or Southern France. After the various Allied Armies came up to the Siegfried Line inside the German border in late September, 1944 the forward advance slowed and finally stopped. Army and corps commanders found themselves with cavalry that was too lightly armed and armored for the frontal attacks needed against heavily fortified positions. At the same time, they needed infantry, or dismounted troops, to form the 400 mile line from Switzerland to Holland. The immediate destiny of cavalry became obvious.

Cavalrymen were not the only soldiers to be used as infantry. Combat engineers found themselves in fox-holes when they weren’t laying mine fields or blowing pillboxes. In the squadron, the tanks and assault guns were used for indirect-fire support so that the job of filling foxholes was left to the troopers of the Reconnaissance Troops.

There is no argument that the need for dismounted troops was a necessary thing, but the role of a “mobile-reserve” would have been more suitable for cavalry.

The use of cavalry as a mobile-reserve was well illustrated during the Ardennes (Battle of the Bulge) Offensive by the German Army. Eight squadrons from First U.S. Army, six squadrons from Third U.S. Army and one squadron, the 125th, from Ninth U.S. Army were committed in one capacity or another to the Bulge. A total of 15 of the 18 squadrons in Europe at the time were sent into that battle zone. Two of these squadrons were on the line in front of the Germans and caught the initial assault.

This briefly describes cavalry and its role. Most Americans back in the didn’t know cavalry was fighting in the war. Headlines in the newspapers proclaimed “Armored Thrust” or “Heavy Infantry Fighting”. Hardly anyone knew there was usually a squadron of cavalry spearheading the armored thrusts or that troopers of the squadron were in foxholes with infantry during the heavy infantry fighting. The flanks of the armored thrusts were screened by cavalry to intercept any attack against the main force. Infantry divisions were often two or three days behind cavalry screening their front on the drives.

In summation; the cavalryman had it no better and no worse than other combat soldiers. As with any good infantryman or tanker or combat engineer, the trooper took pride in his achievements. He followed a proud heritage of troopers before him and maybe added at least a footnote to the final chapter.

The events that follow may, or may not be typical of other World War Two cavalrymen. I have a hunch they are ( a pre-war friend was wounded while wearing a top-hat and driving point in another squadron). As with everything, when it is finished there are only recollections.

My recollections are, for the most part, enjoyable. In my mind, at least, my legs and heart are strong again, part of the young man’s body. My sight and hearing stand the test of survival.

I liked being a soldier – no one is supposed to admit that. I think I did my job well. That doesn’t preclude fear. In whatever way fear is measured, I pit mine against the most fearful, especially of incoming artillery fire.

There were times though when I became strangely calm; the times when we could see the enemy. There were times of exhilaration in the excitement of war. No one is supposed to admit that either, but I think most men committed to combat have felt it.

The spoken words in the story are only words I remember had been spoken. Because I had to write in the first person, “We” could often be substituted for “I”.

With the weaknesses and strength within me once more, my reveries put me in the places of war I came to know so well – maybe too well.

The reveries: I stand again on the deck of a troopship in the North Atlantic and feel the spindrift of mountainous, icy, gray waves blow against my face. I walk through February’s mud in Wales and warming sand of May in southern England.

I bob across the English Channel aboard the tiny Princess Maude to Normandy and wonder why this beautiful pastoral place was selected for war, even while swiping at bees collecting from June’s early apple blossoms.

I watch the newly liberated French and Belgian people crowd their liberators with gifts of wine and flowers. I feel the warm, gentle softness of goose-down mattress and comforter close around me, given up by a family in Holland so we can sleep off the ground one night.

I feel Ganley turn in his sleep as we lay, with just our boots and helmets off, in some dispossessed German family’s bed. I hear him whisper to me, and I to him, in our foxhole in the beet field. There was no one else in the world then; no mothers, fathers, wives or children - just two cold, wet, scared young men waiting to die together.

I feel the pain of cold behind my eyes while we drive through December nights of Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge, as someone later named it. I hear the muffled clinking of tire chains in the snow from the armored car behind us. Gerry and I drive through snowdrifts at night to get a case of beer – and sing Sweet and Lovely, the only song whose words we both know.

I hear the hollow-ringing from the guns of April, mounted on Mark IV German tank, at fifty yards – and smell the black smoke of burning gasoline and rubber from the tires. The heat and burnt powder of a German hand grenade blow against my face once more.

The Browing Automatic Rifle bucks in my hands again, chugging out its authority. I hear the one-of-a kind clang of empty Garand Rifle clips echo from rocks and pavement. I smell the pungency of cattle urine pouring over green-slime cobbles and the musty odor of old dusty wood burning. I hear the ceaseless wind moaning through broken windows in half destroyed ghostlike houses.

I sit behind the steering wheel of my jeep and watch the grotesque skeleton-men stumbling toward us. I feel their cold, slobbering kisses on my cheek – and understand it little than I did then,

I watch, as I have so often watched since then, while they carry back the Trooper whose head is covered by his poncho and pause with the same anguish.

When my reveries are interrupted, for whatever reason, I am no longer that young man. But those I knew through the long nights, or maybe for just a passing moment – the Cavalrymen, the Combat Engineers, the Infantrymen, the Tankers and Tank Destroyers and the enemy too, will always be young men because they have the benefit of being memories.

Time has blurred the faces of the men I write about, but they were the soldiers – the Troopers – who were mostly quiet men. Quiet, young men always teetering between courage and fear who, nevertheless, always, always obeyed the combat soldier’s ultimate and sometimes final command; “MOVE OUT!”

When the story grew beyond the limits I intended, I decided it might as well have a title. REMOUNT is an old cavalry term. The noun describes a ‘fresh horse’. The intransitive verb means. ‘to mount again’. Mount again is what I had to do to recall those days so long ago.

Some of the things included in the story I never spoke of; note because of “the horrors of war”, but because they were private to me or were beyond the comprehension of anyone who hasn’t been there. Fear and happiness can be described and most everyone has felt those things, but how can you describe the enormity of an exploding shell or grenade within a few feet of your face? How can “battle-fatigue” be described to anyone who never had it? It certainly isn’t the raving, screaming maniac portrayed in movies – it’s a very quiet, personal withdrawal from everyone and everything about you. That raving maniac is just plain scared.

REMOUNT is part of the story of the 125th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron (Mczd) and, in particular, the First Platoon of C (Charlie) Troop. It covers the worst and the last.

There are no grand strategies or maneuvers explained because the military never confided such information to the dog-soldiers. If we knew where another platoon was located, it was usually enough. Only where I found pertinent historical record was that information included.

As I groped for words to relate these personal experiences of World War Two, there was a bothersome question that I had conscientiously avoided for all those years from that day I came home; can anyone – any sane person – really ‘miss’ war?

I never met anyone I felt was qualified to answer so I never asked. Then, after the words had already been written, I heard a psychiatrist, speaking about an entirely unrelated subject, explain;

“If you are beaten with a stick twice a day for two weeks and then the beating stop – you miss it.”

You miss it.

R E M O U N T

PART

1

YESTERDAY, 1944

REMOUNT

We are in Germany – just barely. Inside the border is the Siegfried Line, Germany’s attempt to stop any invaders. It has been sitting here waiting for us since 1938. We crossed the border from Holland, not too far north of the Belgian border. The nearest towns in Holland are Sittard, Heerlen and Maastricht.

Coincididental to our arrival at the border is the supply problem. Supplies are still coming from Cherbourg and Normandy. For every mile the armies advanced, supply trucks had to travel two. Thousands of 2 ½ ton trucks are racing day and night one one-way highways called the Red Ball, but gasoline for tanks is measured in gallons per mile; not miles per gallon.

Armies, corps and divisions are coming on line all along the front, from southern Holland to the Swiss border. We are the northernmost troops of First U.S. Army. North of us are the British Second and Canadian First Armies.

XIX (Nineteenth) Corps has ground to a stop for lack of gasoline, but gas has been taken from the 2nd Armored Division to put the 113th, Red Horse, Cavalry Group across the border. XIX Corps will be the first to breach the Siegfried Line and in mid-October will come under control of U.S. Ninth Army.

The Siegfried Line has been constructed along Germany’s borders with Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and France. The Line is an uninterrupted series of reinforced concrete pill-boxes, each with guns covering at least two other pill-boxes. In front of these fortifications are the Dragon’s Teeth; multiple rows of concrete obstacles designed to stop tanks . . . and they do.

The Siegfried Line will be penetrated in the next two months, but only after combat engineers have laid ‘satchel-charges’ against them and foot soldiers have paid a high toll in lives and wounds.

Aachen, once the capitol of the Holy Roman Empire, will fall just to the south of our present positions. It will be encircled by the First, Big Red One, Infantry Division from the south and the Thirtieth, Old hickory, Infantry Division from XIX Corps in the north.

The next two to three months will see the heaviest American fighting in Europe here. Germany wants the Fatherland cleared of the invaders and will fight fiercly. As this battle ends, the Germans will launch their attack to cut off the northern corps of the First Army, all of Ninth Army, British Second and Canadian First Armies. It will become known at the Ardennes Campaign . . . or, the Battle of the Bulge.

Rain has fallen a few times in September and now, in October, it is becoming more frequent. The ground is beginning to soften and will become much worse. Fall is bringing mud. Tanks will slide off roads, wheeled vehicles will belly-out, helpless, in the mud. And then one of Europe’s most severe winters in years will settle in to add snow and ice to the problems.

German soldiers who manned the Siegfried were playing soccer between the bunkers when we first arrived. They didn’t realize we were already here. Nobody disturbed them more than necessary because the main body of the First Army was still three days behind.

We are spread thin along the border, There aren’t enough men to form a continuous line so we form strongpoints with a section at each location. We dug the armored cars into holes so that only the turret and gun are above ground. The army calls this “hull-defilade.”

Our first position is a house where we can sleep inside. The armored car is dug-in next to the house, its gun covering a dirt road. The German family that lived here has disappeared. Someone thought they had gone to stay with people in Holland, whose border is about a hundred yards behind us.

At night we drive a patrol to contact another platoon. We drive through the darkness without lights, hoping no enemy has infiltrated or set mines.

Two men are in the armored car at all times; one to act as gunner, the other to load the little 37mm gun. The Germans are consolidating their defenses and there is little action, but that can give you a false sense of security.

This false security is broken one night when a German combat-patrol comes in to one of our positions. Combat-patrols, unlike patrols sent out to gather information or capture prisoners, had a solitary function; trouble. They do not intend to take ground. They approach as close as possible without being detected and start shooting. After doing as much damage as possible, they withdraw. Defenders against a combat-patrol don’t know whether it’s just a patrol or an attack by a larger unit; it doesn’t matter because your sole function is to fight back the intruders.

The section this patrol hit was dug in next to a house, similar to us. The men being attacked fired back and finally drove the Germans off. After the shooting stopped the section found one man, a new man, under a bed. There is not much to say about a situation like that. None of us knows how he will react until faced with it. There is some initial anger because every man depends on the other. There is the knowledge that when adrenalin pumps you either fight of flee, but you can’t take any more chances and the man is usually transferred to less hazardous duty.

The section involved suffered no casualties and wounded at least one German who laid out in front of the section most of the night calling for his mother (Mutter) until he died.

A few days later a sergeant from another platoon was leading an artillery forward-observer to an observation point when he was struck by a sniper bullet inside his upper arm. The wound, though serious, needn’t have been fatal, but he ran back to get medical aid without first stopping the flow of blood. By the time he reached the medics he had lost too much blood and plasma was of no use.

One day a young boy, about twelve, came to the house we used for our strong-point. He spoke to us, but we naturally couldn’t understand him. We thought at first he was Dutch, but it was unlikely a Dutch boy would cross the German border. Schwarz came up and spoke to the boy in German. He was the son of the Germans whose home we were occupying and his parents were indeed staying with friends across the Dutch border. His talking was incessant and although the rest of us couldn’t understand him, his attitude was friendly.

While he spoke he looked out a rear window and spotted a rabbit. He jumped up and ran into the back yard, picking up a stick on the way. He chased the rabbit around and around the yard, trying to club it. The yard and most of the area around the house had been mined by combat engineers shortly after we moved in and now the kid was running through the mines. We were all shouting at him, but since he didn’t understand us he probably thought we encouraging him to catch the rabbit. He and the rabbit finally disappeared down the road unharmed. We lost some faith in mines.

On the left, or north side of this house ran the small, one-lane road leading directly to the bunkers of the Siegfried Line. Although not a main artery of transportation, it was still a usable road the Germans, or we, could use. We covered it with the puny 37mm gun.

Across the road was an apple orchard with its last crop hanging from the limbs. The orchard was also mined and booby-trapped. Booby-traps in wooded areas are fairly simple to construct. Regular fragmentation hand grenades are tied to the trees at about head-height. Wire, either taut or loose, is tied from another tree to the grenade pin-ring. The pin is squeezed together so that it can slip out easily. An intruder who walks into the taut wire, or snags a loose wire, has almost enough time to make peace with his Maker – if he has led an exemplary life. Because of erratic fragmentation a grenade is not always a sure-kill, but the explosion alerts defenders.

Fall rains came, gently, but steady. At night, in the armored car, we strained to hear any sound that didn’t belong. Raindrops are surprisingly loud at night when you are trying to pick up the sound of a twig breaking or a footstep in a mud puddle. Hearing was the only sense available in the moonless nights.

We all experienced the same nerve-testing wait as we heard foot steps in the dark. The first step started the adrenalin pumping and imagination taking over inadequacies of the senses. The first sound was followed by another and another. The man inside the car’s turret slowly and silently traverses the gun toward the orchard. The man with his head outside the turret holds a grenade with a finger through the pin-ring.

The “footsteps” continue in cadenced rhythm and the urge to shoot or lob the grenade becomes almost unbearable. After four or five “steps” the sound stops. Again the tension builds. Is it someone walking, who had stopped for a moment? After a few minutes you’re satisfied it was just another apple falling from a high limb, hitting one branch after another until it finally hit the earth. When someone can’t wait out the “steps” and shoots, there is panic from sleeping men, fumbling for weapons in the dark and running out of the house in stockinged feet.

Word is passed down that the 30th Infantry Division will attack with a battalion just to our immediate south. We are instructed to shoot harassing-fire at 0600 hours as a diversion. Johnson and I are scheduled in the car at that time.

Johnson, the radio operator in our sections car, has the gunners position. I take place to the right of the 37mm gun to load for him. At 0600 we open up. I throw rounds into the breech and Johnson enjoys traversing and elevating the gun to its highest to send the tine 37’s a couple miles inside Germany.

We trade off for a while; I shoot and Johnson loads. Ammunition is getting low in the ready-racks so I get out of the turret to fire the 50 caliber machine gun mounted over the turret while he loads for himself at a slower pace.

The mechanism of the machine gun is directly over the open turret of the car and links of the metal disintegrating belt fall into the turret. When I let up to cool the barrel, I hear Johnson screaming at me, the hot links of the belt have been falling down the neck of his field jacket.

Now I notice that something is falling one me. Small twigs hit me on the helmet and shoulders. I don’t know where they’re coming from until I finally realize the Germans are shooting back at us an the twigs are from an overhanging tree limb.

When we finish our fire-mission, our stint at guard duty is over so we go into the house for our relief. Everyone inside is flat against the floor. The German counter-fire has broken most of the windows and the walls are punctured from numerous rounds. We must have convinced at least a few Krauts with our diversionary fire. Our living quarters now has cross-draft ventilation, but we won’t be here long enough for that to be a problem.

At this time the Canadian First Army, the Second British Army and northern units of the First U.S. Army are consolidating positions along northern and eastern Holland. Since we are among the northernmost units of the First U.S. Army, we are relieved several times during our advance by British outfits.

The British soldier was as good as any and better than some. However, we noticed they seemed to be noisy and quite often arrived with their headlights on. It became our practice to be packed and ready to leave when we knew they were coming.

On one occasion we waited, all ready to go, except to back the armored cars out of their holes, and stood around an orchard having a smoke. It is a scientific fact that you can’t hear an artillery round before it hits near you because it’s traveling faster than sound. Maybe the first round passed overhead, but they all landed in a compact area. With the first sound, we dove for nearby holes. I jumped head-first into a hole as the shell detonated in the tree overhead. A limb about three of four inches in diameter came in after me. The hole filled with acrid, burnt powder.

We had probably been under observation and the Germans fired only one battery of four guns. The firing had stopped, but I couldn’t get out because of the tree limb. A couple men of the section pulled the limb out not quite expecting to see me in one piece.

On a gray, drizzling afternoon, soon after we had crossed into German territory, a man came walking into the platoon area. He was the usual non-descript G.I. He was a little shorter than I was. A little wider through the shoulders. His only really distinguishing feature was a “lantern-jaw”; not the beligerant-type, it just protruded a little.

The men who had been in the platoon from Normandy greeted him, asking how he was and if he was back in the “First” (platoon).

The Platoon Sergeant introduced him to me, “Newton, this is Ganley. Gerry was wounded in France and is just coming back from the hospital.”

We said, “Hi” to each other. There are no handshakes or smiles in line outfits. We would have to feel each other out before acceptance or rejection. The only thing we had in common at this instant was that we would both be in the same section. The First, or point , Section.

Within a few weeks the “point-driver” would refuse to drive point anymore and I would get the job. Gerry would be the third man in the jeep along with Dwight Zwer, the “Recon Sergeant”. Gerry and I would become partners in and out of combat. It’s just the way things work out.

After more units of XIX Corps came into line our relief’s became more frequent and we went to rest in Sittard, Holland. On our first visit there we parked the vehicles under trees of a city park and prepared to sleep on the grass. Late in the afternoon a Dutch civilian came over and offered some of us the use of his home across the street. The Dutch were genuinely friendly and the cleanest people in Europe.

We accepted his offer and went over to his house early. We brought a few cans of food to try to repay them for their hospitality. The man of the house, who had invited us, spoke perfect English and interpreted during the evening for his wife and elderly mother.

For the first time in my life I slept on a feather bed. The mattress and comforter were filled with feathers. It was a luxurious sensation to sink down with the comforter slowly settling over me. In the morning we awoke to find that three of the people had slept in chairs all night so that we could use their beds. It was acts of kindness like this that brought the Dutch close to American combat soldiers.

We returned to Sittard and latter to Heerlen for our rests and found all the Dutch were as gracious.

They washed our uniforms for us and performed other acts of kindness that were difficult to repay. We brought soap and whatever we could of food to try to show our appreciation.

One of our frequent moves to new positions inside Germany brought us to a town by the name of Isenbruch. Our position was actually in front of the town in what I can only describe as a “ditch”. The ditch, or ravine, was about two hundred yards forward of the ‘line’.

At the top, the ditch was about fifty feet across. There was an old board-and-batton shack we used to sleep. A 30 caliber machine gun was set up and the area in front of us had been mined and set with trip-flares. We brought up a jeep, under cover of darkness. We were going to be stuck here, relying on support from the rear because that was where everybody else was.

We had to make a trip back at night to pick up rations and mail. We used the jeep to save carrying the load. On one of these trips we had just loaded the jeep and were returning. The night was totally dark so I walked in front of the jeep to lead it. At one point we had to pass through a line of concertina barbed-wire. The wire was called concertina because it was coiled with one roll on top of two others. It was common practice to lace the wire with fragmentation hand grenades. The pins had been squeezed closed to slip out easily and a wire tied-off from the ring to another coil of wire. Anyone trying to flatten the wire, pulled the pin.

I walked in front of the jeep trying to silhouette the wire against the sky; only there was no sky.

As we approached the area where the wire should be, I suddenly felt a barb of the concertina catch on my pants. It caught and then let loose with a snap. Reasoning should have told me that the wire had pulled the pin from a grenade. I should have hit the ground and yelled, “grenade” for the sake of the man in the jeep. I did the worst thing possible; I froze. I stood there until the jeep ran into me with its front bumper. The driver was moving slowly and braked immediately. In a loud whisper he asked, “You okay?” Time had elapsed for the grenade to go off so I just told him we were through.

Another interesting experience came to pass while we were in these same positions. Every combat unit from squadron (battalion) to the highest commands has an “intelligence” section. It is known as “S-2” in units up to regiments and “G-2” in units commands by generals ranks. S-2 or G-2, is has the responsibility of collecting and disseminating information about the enemy; his strength, location, support and intent. With our usual opinion of anybody working behind the line we thought they spent their time collecting native artefacts and cultivating the acquaintance of local women. I don’t ever remember seeing them running patrols of their own in front of us.

Once in a while though, they had to justify their existence. Our A Troop had been in this place a few weeks before and had attacked the town ahead – with casualties. S-2, intelligence, probably with the aid of a defective crystal ball, decided that one of A Troops armored cars was still intact.

The captain assembled those of us ‘honored’ by being chosen for the assignment in Troop Headquarters. S-2 briefed us on the situation stating they had determined that an armored car could be salvaged and put back in service. When they were through, the captain told us he knew the car was worth $ 40,000 (1944 prices) , but that it wasn’t worth losing one man to him and not to take unnecessary chances getting it out. We sat around the walls of the room, not in the least enthusiastic and very suspicious of intelligence people.

We applied burnt cork to our faces, checked our weapons and walked outside, we were to carry a heavy chain capable of towing eight tons of armored car. Each man was to loop a circle of chain over his shoulder and the ten, or fifteen, of us thus ladened would walk down the hill and enter the town.

We hadn’t heard much activity from the Germans in the town. We could hear pigs snorting at times, but no firing or movement by the enemy. We felt sure they were still interested in the war though.

We each picked up our share of chain and hung it from a shoulder. We plodded along into the night trying to keep the chain on one shoulder and a rifle hung from the other. The noise of the chain swinging against itself sounded like church bells chiming under the circumstances.

The whole thing was getting ridiculous. Some of us began to laugh, others got mad at us. There was really no reason for the make-up or anything else. There were so many of us, walking upright to carry our share of chain, that we couldn’t use anything taught us in basic-training. There was no stealth or use of terrain features. We were simply walking down a hill with a hundred feet of heavy chain into a town last held by the enemy. My only thought was; could I drop the chain and hit the ground fast enough when the shooting started? If we made it as far as the armored car, I wouldn’t have blamed the man driving the tow truck if he headed for Paris.

As we entered the town itself, the patrol became even more ludicrous. We were walking over shale or slate roofing blown from the houses by artillery. Along with broken glass, we slipped and tried to recover our balance and made more noise.

The German soldiers, wherever they were, were either laughing so much they couldn’t shoot or they thought they were being attacked by some elite night-fighting unit. We didn’t receive one shot.

We found the armored car. It was not quite in tip-top condition. It had received several direct hits. Most of the tires were flat and the turret, with its 37mm gun intact, was laying on its side on the sidewalk. The car was only good for scrap-iron.

We walked back up the hill and found the waiting tow truck and gave him a few messages for S-2.

On a random visit to Troop Headquarters during this time, we saw a group of men gathered around a large cardboard box. We went over to see what had drawn their attention. Inside, the box was filled with condoms; what looked like thousands and thousands of them.

The sight drew a smile and even a few outright laughs from everyone. The last thing in the world we needed were condoms. We stood in awe of the quantity of the things. Someone asked a sergeant of Headquarters Platoon what he was going to do with them. “They’re for you guys. Take all you want.” Then came what would normally be a redundant question; “What are we going to do with them?”

Combat soldiers learn to scrounge and steel anything since almost anything can be put to some unintended use. These were free so we all took a handful.

It didn’t take long to find good use for them. The rubber divices were pulled over muzzles of M-1s, carbines, machine guns and even the 37mm guns on the armored cars. They kept water and dirt out of the bores and you could shoot through them without danger.

By unrolling the things and tying the ends together, they made an elastic ring. The rings were pulled over boots, then trouser cuffs were turned under the rings to ‘blouse’ over boot tops. I think every G.I. in Europe bloused his trousers that way by war’s end.

On one of our many moves during this period we outposted a village where the holes were located in back yards of houses. It was another one of those places where we weren’t quite sure where we were or exactly where the Germans were. Our stay there was quiet for the most part until a moonless night when we heard an airplane engine overhead.

We were familiar with American and British airplane engine sounds and this one was different. The sound came nearer and was obviously low. As it came directly over us, the plane dropped a series of parachute flares. We could only see the tail-section of the plane because the flares ignited behind it.

Military training told us never to look directly at a flare because it temporarily blinds the eyes and it takes a few seconds to recover from the brightness. This was an unusual occurrence though and I think most of us looked up out of curiousity.

While the flares decended, we heard the plane circle tightly and come back. Now we saw it was a two-engined bomber with black crosses painted on its wings. It came in at about three hundred feet, which seemed low for night-flying, and details of the underside were easily visible. Now, over our positions, it dropped hundreds of small “butterfly” bombs, so-called because hinged sides of the cylinders opened up in a wing effect. The tiny bombs exploded in front of our positions without any injuries to us. Some of these bombs were set, not to detonate on impact, but to lay there as anti-personnel mines.

We were now being relieved frequently for rest in Heerlen, Holland. Quarters were set up in a school house for this purpose. We usually spent two or three days in rest area, but this time ‘rest’ continued longer than we knew it should. The inevitable rumors started again – not good rumors. Meanwhile, days became shorter and rain more frequent.

The platoon sergeant came in one morning and, in what was to become habit for him, volunteered me to report to an officer out in the country. Two others had been volunteered with me. We took a jeep and drove to the location he gave us. We reported to the officer conducting a class and learned we were to be trained in use of the “Bazooka.” The bazooka, or more correctly the rocket-launcher, was an anti-tank weapon for use by infantry. As far as I was concerned, it wasn’t a cavalry weapon. We hadn’t even trained with it in my Tank Destroyer basic training.

We watched men from other units get their instructions and they tried their best to hit an iron plate across a ravine. As our turn came, I aimed the bazooka at the plate and then raised it. Over. The officer said, “Good, you’re on line, but a little high.” My next shot went to the left, the third shot, low and the final shot to the right. The officer was disappointed in my failure. Everyone else had hit the plate at least once. He said, “I don’t think you’ve got the hang of it.” If I hadn’t had the “hang of it” I wouldn’t have missed all four times. We drove back to Heerlen after my two companions qualified with the bazooka to report that the sergeant now had two good bazooka-men, but that I had failed. Two out of three isn’t bad.

Whether based on fact or just on our bazooka training, a strong rumor circulated that we were scheduled to flank an attack by the 2nd Armored Division. The worst part of the rumor was that the 125th Cavalry would go in dismounted. Armored divisions have their own armored infantry, but if they were committed somewhere else, or if more dismounted protection was needed for the tanks it sounded entirely plausible that we could be used in that way. Our spirits dropped at the thought of being ‘dismounted’ cavalrymen.

The rumor specifically identified the town of Geilenkirchen. As it turned out we would become involved in the fight for Geilenkirchen, but not with the 2nd Armored Division.

We made several trips onto the line and back out again for rest. Fighting along the Siegfried had not yet reached its full ferocity. Allied units were still coming onto line and the Germans were trying to man the pill-boxes and reassemble units after retreating across France, Belgium and Holland.

On one of the days of rest in Sittard we were walking past Troop Headquarters when I heard someone call, “Hey, Newton, c’mon over here.” We walked over to where several men of Headquarters Platoon were standing and inspecting something. “You had radio training, didn’t you? What’s this thing?” I looked at what was obviously an army radio. “It looks like a regular 610 radio with a battery-pack. But what’s the thing sticking out the bottom?” “That’s what we want to know. It was just issued to us.”

I examined the radio. It was one of the radios O had trained with, except for a spike about three feet long protruding down from the battery-pack. The “spike” wasn’t intended to be stuck in the ground because it was made of hollow sheet metal – and besides, there wouldn’t be any reason for the radio to be held off the ground.

The spike narrowed down to a blunt point. We all stood there speculating on the intended use of this strange apparatus. This model radio was not designed to be hand-carried although it could be used as a unit, using the battery-pack. Normally, it was a vehicle-mounted radio using a vibrator-pack. I tried to think of what kind of vehicle would mount such a radio.

“Mount”, that was it. “I think I know what it is. The spike goes into a saddle-boot. This is a horse-cavalry radio.” The army had done it again. The radio went back to Signal Corps supply.

The attitude of war has changed now. The change was subtle, but as the weeks went by the realization that the war had stopped moving finally sets into your mind. The relative quiet of the first weeks after reaching the German border – and the Siegfried Line – is disappearing. The Germans have reorganized and are making a stand at their West Wall. Allied armies have consolidated the line and have replenished supplies of fuel and ammunition, but the war isn’t moving.

The fall weather has turned everything into mud, even once-paved roads. Fighting is becoming more intense and living conditions worse. Slowly, you begin to wonder how many trips you can make to the line; and back out again. You don’t talk about it. You don’t ask, “Why me?”, because it is you.

You leave the inhabited towns of Heerlen or Maastricht or whatever place was your rest area. You leave the rear-echelon soldiers who are bored with their jobs, but who have made friends in those towns whom they will visit tonight.

You pass a newly-erected sign; a professionally made sign. The sign states something about; WARNING (or DANGER) YOU ARE NOW ENTERING GERMANY. The sign goes on to explain that further travel in this direction is extremely hazardous.

Everyone looks at the new sign on this road we have been using for weeks. Someone asks, “Why did they put that sign up now? Is it more dangerous than it was a couple days ago?” “Aw, they just put it up to scare hell out of the replacements.” “I don’t know about the replacements, but it scares hell out of me.”

As you get closer to the line you may start seeing artillery emplacements. Maybe, way back, you will see the big eight-inch guns; guns so big they have to be put together with cranes when they go into position. Then there are the batteries of the 155’s; the “Long-Toms”. Even closer, you may see the 105’s and after you see the tanks and tank destroyers dug-in for extra fire support, you know you are almost home.

You are nearing the place for which all those factories and millions of workers are going twenty-four hours a day back in the States. The place for which thousands of ships are sailing in over-the-horizan convoys. The place for which each soldier here has about fifteen other soldiers working behind the line to keep him supplied and fed.

This is the place where all that blood donated back home is sent in the form of plasma. This is where all those extra mattress-covers are sent, but not to be used to cover mattresses. This is where they really use your dog-tags to identify you, your blood-type, your religion and your next-of-kin.

When you get close to the line, you usually don’t see anyone because friends and enemies are in their holes. Nobody moves above ground unless one side or the other is attacking. You usually relieve the outfit going into a rest at night.

If, by chance, you see the men you are relieving during daylight, you learn to look at them to see what it is going to be like from the way they walk and look. There’s no talking between you and them. If your eyes happen to meet, there might just be an almost imperceptible nod.

If you are the ones being relieved, you can tell a lot by looking at the relief column. Those who have made the trip before stare at the ground – thinking their own thoughts.

The replacements are obvious. They’re usually clean-shaven and wear clean uniforms. Once in a while you see a kid feigning bravery (Humility, Kid. You learn humility quick up here.) Another may be unable to hide all the doubts he has about himself (Take it easy, Kid. You’ll be surprised at what you’ve got inside you). You look away from the replacement so he won’t think you’re reassuring him and you don’t want to scare him any more than he is already.

The replacements still wear, or carry, all the gear the army issued to them. They haven’t learned to throw most of it away. Carry your M-1 ammunition in bandoleers over your shoulder. Fill the ammo pouches on the web belt with cigarettes. Keep your canteen-cup and spoon; they’re all you need to eat with. Use one of those heavy plastic bags in the K-rations to keep things important to you dry. You can carry enough stuff in your field jacket pockets to keep you alive for a week.

Always keep those little packets of toilet paper you get in the K’s. They’re the best thing in the box; your Cracker Jack prize. And keep a couple of those little humpty-hump can openers too. And throw away those letters from home – the ones from your girl or Mom or your wife. Make the break with civilization.

You’re in the real world now. You don’t have to salute or be polite or laugh at anyone’s jokes. You don’t have to try to impress anyone. The only people up here to impress are the Krauts. If you can impress them, you’re doing okay.

About the only order you’ll hear up here is. “Move out!” When you hear that, it’s too late to worry any more. Everything is real up here. You’re alive – or dead. You’ll never find anything again as real as this.

Routinely, at this time, we spend three or four days on the line and return to Holland for a rest period. On one of our return trips to Holland we are directed to a rest facility that someone says belongs to the 30th Infantry Division. After we parked our vehicles in a large enclosed area an officer in charge of the place tells us we are here to “rest”, that we are not to service our vehicles or weapons or do anything else that might be considered work.

We had arrived before dusk and after a hot meal we wondered around Kerkrade, but there was not much to do or see. When we returned to the rest area, which was a large building with canvas cots to sleep on, we wrote letters or talked. We were to enjoy this respite for two or three days. That’s what we were told.

At Three A.M. the next morning we were awakened and told to mount up. We were going back to the line. Our questions about the promise of a prolonged rest and hot meals went unanswered. Instead, the men of the recon platoons were ordered to mount trucks for the trip.

We mounted the trucks and rode through the night. After an hour or more we arrived at some unfamiliar place. Everything is unfamiliar at night. The questions started; “Where are we?” “We’re filling a gap in the line.” “Where are the Krauts?” “Where’s the line?” No answer.

We set up machine gun positions without digging holes. The Germans must be in the opposite direction from which we arrived. That’s good enough, shoot at anything that moves in that direction.

On this particular night I had the feeling that there was a town in the distance; a town with all its lights on an the light reflected from the clouds. Of course that was impossible since Europe had been in darkness for years, but I felt all was well with the world. The light was only the moon breaking through rain clouds.

I refer here and elsewhere to “the line.” The line is the exclusive property of combat soldiers; ours and theirs. It is the only thing, beside fear, that you share with the enemy. The line is so exclusive that you and he try to kill one another for its possession. As badly as you want it – nobody else does. The “line” is never called anything else by the men who serve there. There is no other line. Only the press and the uninitiated call it the front-line.

Relatively few soldiers, even of infantry divisions, serve on the line. When you take away all the service, supply and support personnel, about three thousand men of a fourteen thousand man division go into the holes.

The line occurred in static warfare, not in mobile situations. The line could be hundreds of miles long, as it was in Europe, 1944, but it was as deep as a Man’s shoe-size, if he was standing, or the length of his body as he hugged the earth.

There were a few soldiers to the rear of the line who could be killed or wounded by an artillery shell or aerial bomb. This was the way of life for the line-soldier, magnified by thousands, but he had the added distinguishable fate of being the target of enemy riflemen and machine gunners. He caught grenade fragments in his body, stepped on mines that jumped out of the ground and exploded at genital-height. He sat in foxholes until his feet swelled and turned black with trench-foot from the cold and dampness. He lived in mud and snow and developed respiratory diseases. He lived too scared, too numb for too long a time and lost himself inside his brain with battle-fatigue.

He ate C and K Rations and only enjoyed a hot meal during rest-periods. Occasionally he got a shower in an outdoor shower unit. Afterward, he was given a clean, hand-me-down uniform. He was, in fact, an essential hobo who had to be cared for or someone would have to replace him – and nobody wanted to be the one who replaced him. If he was lucky to stay alive long enough, he might meet another hobo he could talk to.

His weapon was with him always. It was the one thing left in the world he could count on. It was constantly alongside him. He could reach out and grasp it from a sound sleep. It hung from his shoulder while he relieved himself. It nestled between his knees while he spooned C Rations into his mouth. When the letter expected from home wasn’t there, his weapon was. When the world had abandoned him, his rifle gave him comfort. Its heft reassured him during the long nights. He clung to it with the last of his strength as life ran out. And finally, it kept vigil with him while war for the living moved on.

Although he had been selected to die, and he certainly had been, the combat soldier was not bottom-of-the-barrel cannon fodder. He was intelligent – I served with men of I.Q.’s up to 161. Sometimes well educated. Somewhere there were people he loved. Somewhere there were people who loved him. When you looked at him, those things didn’t come to mind.

He accumulated dirt evenly; layer upon layer. Sometimes his eyelids showed lighter where he had wiped away matter from the corners of his eyes with the knuckle of a forefinger.

The foxhole soldier accepted his own kind and was, in turn, accepted. He did not accept those whose lot in the army left them out of the holes – those were the ‘rear-echelon’. They were tolerated, but not accepted, they performed the necessary jobs to keep the gigantic machine running, but the machine’s sole purpose was to feed, supply, support and bury the men in the holes. If there were no one in the holes – the rest of the army wouldn’t be needed.

The clannish acceptance of one foxhole soldier for another was grudgingly given. And reluctantly received. The bond was never put into words because both the donor and the receiver knew terms of the foxhole-contract.

As more time was spent in the holes, the closer ‘rear-echelon’ applied to those in the rear. It was no longer the men still in Normandy, or hauling supplies, or sorting mail in Paris; it was the men in your own outfit whose jobs kept them a few miles, or a few hundred yards back.

The disdain for those to the rear reached its own almost comedic, climax in our own platoon upon outposting a town in Germany. Our mortar section had always been in the holes with the rest of us because the small 60mm mortar’s range was usually too short for the positions we were in. In this particular town it was decided to take advantage of the weapon.

A man in the platoon noticed the mortar crew pack their weapon and start down the street. He asked, “Where the hell you guys going?” A mortarman replied, “They want us to set up on the other side of the block.” That meant they would be two or three hundred feet behind us. The man who first asked said, “Go ahead, you rear-echelon bastards.”

HISTORICAL NOTE:

In November, 1944, an attack against the Geilenkirchen area of Germany was launched using, for the first and last time of the war, an Anglo-American force of division strengths.

On the southernmost flank of the British Second Army, the 43rd British Infantry Division would attack in concert with the 84th U.S. Infantry Division on the northernmost flank of the United States Ninth Army. The 43rd was a veteran British combat division. The 84th U.S. Division was to see its first combat.

It may be questioned why a green division, just arrived from the States, would be blooded under these circumstances and in an area so fiercely engaged.

Probably nobody under the grade of colonel was aware of the arrangement or of the bitterness of the fighting to take place. It made no significant difference though, to the soldiers in companies, platoons and squads. Always , they fought their own private wars in an area confined to what they could see ahead of them.

For other unknown reasons, the U.S. 84th Infantry Division was reinforced by the 125th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron; if the addition of less than 600 men can be termed “reinforcing” a 14.000 man division. Of the 600, about 250 would be available for the foxholes.

The orders, attaching the squadron to the 84th Division, had to come from no lower headquarters than Ninth U.S. Army since it involved our transfer from XIX Corps to the 84th which was serving with XXX British Corps.

The assault for Geilenkirchen involved, among others, a very small town, or hamlet, by the name of Beeck.

R E M O U N T

PART

2

DIE GRAUE TAGEN UND LANGE NACHTEN

We are in a bunker of the Siegfried Line. There are too many of us for the number of bunks, so I lie on the concrete floor rolled up in my blanket.

There is a refrigerator-room in this bunker, but electricity has been out for weeks and the odor of putrifying meat seeps out from under the door.

In my sleep I inhale the stench of meat and fumes from a wine bottle filled with gasoline that we use for light.

I awaken and run up the stairs to fresh night air, just barely in time before I puke.

Beeck, Germany will probably not show on any map the average person will ever see; it’s too small. There are nearby towns, or villages, like Prummern and Würm. All these are near Geilenkirchen which you may find on a good map. They are northeast of Aachen, Germany.

This battle area, along with the Hurtgen Forest to the southeast of Aachen, has been unofficially called the Fall Campaign by some military historians. The area , about 35 miles in length, reaches from the southern edge of the Hurtgen Forest north past Aachen to a point near Geilenkirchen. The battle developes at the German border and reaches a climax at the Roer River. Those who have taken time to record it describe the battle as the heaviest fighting of the European Theater of war.

The Siegfried Line in this area is actually two lines of fortifications; one several kilometers behind the first.

American lines in this area are the farthermost penetrations into German soil. In the south, VII Corps must get to the Roer dams because of their strategic use in later attacks across the river. In the north, are the plains that lead to Germany’s heartland; the Ruhr. The enemy has to stop advances and would prefer to push us out of the homeland. The Sixth S.S. Panzer Army, organizing for their attack in the Ardennes in December, have strengthened defenses in the north.

This Fall Campaign lacks the dash of the breakout from Normandy and the race across Europe. It will not be reported by the press to any great extent because advancing a few yards at a time is not exciting news and the ‘folks back home’ don’t want to hear bad battle statistics. The “Campaign” will be overshadowed in December by the Battle of the Bulge.

In the meantime, more Americans will be lost here, in the Fall Campaign, than in the “Bulge”. More men, in a similar time period and in a smaller, more compact battle area. The U.S. Army will not recognize it as a separate “battle”, only an appendage to the Rhineland Campaign.

A line, drawn roughly east from Aachen, separates the U.S. Ninth Army in the north from the U.S. First Army south of the line. Ninth Army and VII Corps of First Army have about fourteen divisions. VII Corps is losing men by the division inside the Hurtgen Forest trying to get to the Roer River dams. Ninth Army is ankle-deep in mud going against the pillboxes of the Siegfried Line. Replacements are arriving from the States in numbers of 65 to 80 thousand a month.

The divisions of VII Corps and Ninth Army, supporting combat engineers, tanks, tank destroyers, artillery and cavalry, have about 220.000 men committed to the battle. In little over two months, the time it takes to gain the Roer River, these units will lose 57.000 men killed and wounded. Another 70.000 will fall to fatigue, trench-foot and illnesses brought on by weather.

Less than one of every two line-soldiers who come here, to the Fall Campaign, can expect to come back out unscathed. Men of the 28th Infantry Division will nickname their red, Keystone shoulder insignia the “Bucket of Blood” after losing 6.000 men in the Hurtgen.

This then is the overall setting for that battle without an official title. The fighting takes place along a front of 30 miles. At the end, the line will have advanced 8 to 15 miles to the Roer River.

In the north, near Geilenkirchen, lies the little hamlet of Beeck. Beeck has no military significance of its own … it just happens to be in the way. And its a cold, wet and lonely way to die; dying in the mud.

Although we had been used dismounted since the end of September, 1944, we usually had our vehicles with us , or nearby. The bulk of Cavalry fire-power was on the vehicles. Personal weapons consisted mostly of 30 caliber carbines and a few 45 caliber sub-machine guns; both were intended for close-in protection of the vehicles. The carbine was a replacement weapon for the 45 caliber (semi) Automatic Pistol.

During our last stay in Heerlen, I happened to walk by an Ordnance repair unit. I saw a huge pile of M-1, Garand, Rifles that had been recovered from battle and asked an old Master Sergeant if I could trade for my carbine. He said, “Take all you want, but don’t leave the carbine.” I looked through the stack and eliminated those with obvious damage or blood ( you don’t want one that didn’t do the last guy much good ). I picked one that became part of my personal armory and told the rest of the men in the platoon when I returned so that now we were almost all equipped with the M-1’s and a little more confidence.

The army, in its wisdom, writes everything into manuals. One of these is the Table of Organization. By looking at this reference, a commander of a division, corps or army would logically assume that a Squadron of Cavalry – about 900 men, full-strength – should be able to relieve a battalion of Infantry.

What the T/O fails to explain is that only the Reconnaissance Troops will replace the battalion. The Assault Gun Troop and the Tank Company stay back for fire-support. That still wouldn’t be too bad; except that the 125th Cavalry Squadron didn’t have a B Troop – it had been permanently “attached” to First Army Headquarters and was located somewhere around Spa, Belgium. By the time B Troop, E Troop, F Company and Headquarters Troop are eliminated, only A and C Troops remain; or about 300 men, less Headquarters Platoon. Maybe 225 men will be available.

When we learned that we were to relieve a battalion of the 84th Infantry Division, we asked, “Who are they?” We hadn’t heard of the 84th Division. We would not only be working with a new division, we were leaving XIX Corps for the mission.

The Sage of the Red Horse, a short battle-history of the 113th Cavalry Group, states: “The Red Horse cavalrymen … next moved to Geilenkirchen area, taking over … under the 84th Infantry Division, a sector within the Siegfried Line.”

Hell On Wheels, combat history of the 2nd Armored Division, describes their withdrawal from an attack on November 18th, 1944: “The Germans had two regiments of infantry, along with supporting artillery, reconnaissance and armor near Beeck.”

Here, in front of Beeck, the line was in a valley. It was treeless farm land. There would be no moving about here without being seen. There would be no shelter from buildings, except the few in town occupied by the enemy. German artillery was positioned behind hills to the east; American artillery behind hills to the west.

The sun would not shine the whole time we were to be here. Its dull glow through rain clouds would come up behind the Germans in the morning and set behind us at night. The sixteen-hour nights would be filled with terror of incoming artillery that randomly searched for the holes to dispassionately kill or tear apart the men huddled at the bottom.

This valley looked like good, fertile growing land, but the last crop of sugarbeets lay unharvested. They had grown to maturity and now lay there, dumb and covered with mud for men to trip over and to detonate shells.

We had left Heerlen, Holland and our uniforms were freshly washed and pressed through the kindness of those people who befriended us. As usual, the men of platoons gathered together, and within the platoons men of their own sections gathered in even smaller groups and finally, two men who would share a hole reformed that bond, unspoken and undefinedable, that meant if one goes, we both go. And we’ve chosen each other to do it.

We sat in the driest places we could find behind the crest of high-ground and smoked or ate K-rations. As we sat or stood, waiting for nightfall, an infantry lieutenant came walking along the dirt road by himself.

It must be understood here that combat soldiers don’t like change. When you have been fighting alongside men of certain divisions or units, you get used to them. You may have petty differences between yourselves, but it’s like a family quarrel. Outsiders do not have the same intimacy.

The lieutenant, probably just trying to be friendly, stopped in front of us and said, “You look like a bunch of garrison soldiers.” He was referring to our neat appearance.

“Blow it out your ass!” Having been overseas less than a month, I don’t know if the lieutenant was prepared for the informality between enlisted men and officers; at least officers of less than major’s grade. He was good-natured about the incident though.

One of the men of the platoon, after studying the lieutenant’s shoulder patch; a white axehead stuck in a white log on a red field, asked, “What are you guys, a bunch of lumberjacks or something?” He replied, “No, this is the Railsplitter Division.” Somebody mumbled “Wood choppers.”

We asked him why we heard rifle-fire coming from his outfit when nothing was happening, but artillery fire. There didn’t seem to be any kind of attack taking place. The lieutenant looked a little embarrassed he explained the infantrymen were firing their M-1’s so they wouldn’t have to hear the incoming (German) artillery.

We didn’t say anything further, but we did look at each other. Was the artillery really that bad? Or were we going to be working with an infantry outfit that might break and run? The misgivings we had grew larger.

We didn’t know this division, and after working with the 29th and 30th Infantry Division, who we knew would fight, we weren’t too sure we might end up sitting in this valet all by ourselves. As it turned out, the 84th Division would prove itself here, and in a month, in the Battle of the Bulge.

We had heard the 84th had just recently arrived from the beaches. They couldn’t have been put into a worse place to get their first taste of combat. We would shortly find out why they feared the German artillery. We wouldn’t fire our weapons in the air, but we would cover our ears and cringe in the bottom of holes with the same fear.

We heard that artillery landing down in the valley from our position behind the crest of the hill. Incoming artillery has a psychological effect on top of whatever actual damage it does. The Germans had another weapon that increased the psychological effect beyond imagination. It was a rocket, appropriately nick-named, the Screaming Meemie.

The sound has been described in various ways. Many thought it sounded like a high-speed freight train. To me, it sounded like an eighteen-wheeled tractor-trailer with the brakes locked-up and all the tires screeching. The men of the 84th were getting more than their share of Screaming Meenies down in the valley.

We waited for nightfall and once in a while we watched the war from our position. We had theater seats. We saw a flight of P-47’s, the Air Corps’ heaviest fighter, carry out a dive-bombing mission on German positions about a mile away. A tank company attacked in the same area. The tanks looked like robots moving around in a seemingly impersonal way, as if there were not men inside their steel hides.

November was getting cold and rain fell regularly. We walked down into the valley after dark to relieve the infantrymen. The exchange was silent. It always was. There’s nothing to say, and you don’t want to make the enemy think he has to shell you. As you come up to a foxhole, the men in it get out and you drop into it. You, and the men you relieve are only shadows a little darker than the night.

The holes were well dug. They were deep; about five feet, giving plenty of shelter and you could see over the top when standing. With the added dimensions of six feet in length, and two and a half feet wide, they resemble a grave. Dirt from the hole has been piled at the forward end and the machine gun tripod is buried there with just the gun exposed.

Beside a blanket, rifle, ammunition and various parts of machine guns, which we had dismounted from our vehicles, we carried 5 gallon cans of water and plenty of K-rations. Because we were short-handed, and through habit, we “doubled-up” at night. With three or four men to a hole, we could get more sleep because there were more men to stand guard. Of course it left more gaps between holes. Before daybreak, the extra men would go back to their own holes.

The first night wasn’t too bad. An occasional round of artillery landed just to remind us they were still there. At first light, we found out just how nasty it was going to be. A barrage came in and worked its way back and forth along the line. We crouched in the bottoms of the holes, hoping there would be no direct hits. Between rounds we tried to look out of the hole to see if there was an attack coming. We quickly learned to look fast and otherwise keep our heads down because a sniper fired at anything above ground-level. We tested him frequently by sticking an empty K-ration carton over the muzzle of an M-1 and raising it above the hole. He never hit it, but didn’t miss the chance to take a shot at it.

This would be our lives for the next three weeks. All food – K-Rations only – and water had to be carried down from the rear supply point at night. There would be no water for the luxury of washing or shaving; only drinking.

Body functions had to be performed in empty K-Rations boxes during the day. At night, you could sneak out of the hole and take care of those things a short distance away – a very short distance away so you could jump back into the hole if artillery came in. A standing joke came of the K-Ration boxes; one man in the hole would ask the other if he believed in the ‘Buddy-system’. If the answer was affirmative, you asked him if he would hold the box for you.

Underwear and socks would have the last throughout our stay. I think they brought us each one extra pair of socks while we were there.

German artillery fire was intermittent during the first days, but frequent enough to disturb any sleep or regular rest. Their artillery was well zeroed-in and when they fired, it came in barrages of sixteen or twenty rounds at a time. mortars located within Beeck itself, supplemented the artillery. The mortar shells came in without sound until they detonated.

Shortly after dawn, if the weather allowed, American artillery spotter-planes would come over, looking for the German artillery positions. The German guns quieted down while the planes were in the air, but start up again as soon as they left. The little, single-engined, fabric-covered Piper Cubs were always welcome.

The days and nights spent outside of Beeck were continuous in memory. There were incidents, but not connected to any particular day. A couple remain because, even here in this place, where God seemed to have abandoned hope in mankind, there were subtle attemps at humor.

Soon after we arrived we heard a tank moving in Beeck. A tank attack was a frightening prospect because we had nothing to fight with. Nothing, except the one bazooka for which I had failed to qualify. The only other support we had was to call for artillery fire and we were so close to the town we would have to call for fire on our own positions if a tank moved toward us.

The platoon sergeant, upon hearing the tank, called, “Bazooka!” This was meant to call the bazooka-team to his position, but the team was too familiar with the sniper to get out of their hole. Instead, we saw the canvas bag containing the launcher and ammunition sail in a high arc toward the sergeant’s hole. Ganley said, “Well he’s got his bazooka, that’s what he hollered for.” The tank didn’t come out of town.

Popular songs of the time were paraphrased to meet the hopeless place. “Do Nothing ‘Till You Hear From Me” became, “Do Something ‘Till You Hear From Me.” “I’ll Be Home For Christmas, just you wait and see” became, I’ll Be Home For Christmas, nineteen fifty-three.

The first few days in a foxhole aren’t too bad, except for artillery and mortar fire, but then lethargy, or mindless sets in. That’s why troops should be moved out every few days. You think non-thoughts. The zombie mentality intensifies with every day that follows. Like animals in cages, you can’t think about confinement to the hole.

You stare at the five-foot excavation in the earth wondering if maybe someone else in history had been at this depth before the valley filled in with rich earth. Later, you don’t care. It’s a time of unconnected thoughts and disinterested observance of small things; roots of grass at the top of the hole and a pebble that had lain, buried since some geological change.

The town is straight ahead and you chance a peek at it – at the risk of the sniper who never sleeps. There’s not much to see and you duck your head down quickly.

Rarely you think of home because that was another time. There was nothing before the hole and probably nothing after. (There’s an eight hour time-difference; The people you used to know and love out on the West Coast are up now, eating breakfast going to work. Don’t think about me. I’ll try not to think about you this night).

It’s not too cold at the bottom of the hole. It must be near freezing on top. You’d like to sleep one night with your boots off, but if anything happens you would be barefoot in the mud.

You wonder if the machine gun will work if you need it. The canvas ammo belt’s wet and the lousy 30’s always jam away.

What ever happened to the moon and stars? The Krauts could be all the way up to the hole before you saw them. The wind blows over the top of the hole and rushes through the grass and dirt up there.

You can stare at the sky, but there is only an oblong view and that is obscured by rain clouds. You look at the man in the hole with you. He is dirty and needs a shave. And besides – he is staring too. The “thousand-yard-stare.”

There’s no mail coming down and home, and the people there, don’t exist anymore. This hole is the womb and the grave. There was nothing before and there will be nothing after.

You don’t write because there’s nothing you can put in words. (I’m sitting in a hole in front of a town you can’t find on a map waiting to be killed by some German artillerymen who won’t even know he hit me. I’m wet and cold and scared …)

One of us asks, but not really a question, “do you think we’ll get out of here?” The other replies, “this is it. Nobody’s coming out of here.”

A few more days and there’s no reason to talk to the only other human being in your world. Everything’s been said.

This day biggest decision, like yesterday’s and tomorrow’s is; which end of you body do you want sticking out of the little niche you’ve carved out at the forward end of the hole? Does it make any difference? Sleep head-in to keep the rain off your face. Why do your genitals always seem more vulnerable than the rest of your body?

It is the suppression of hum emotions that brings about the staring, thoughtless condition common to the foxhole. Certainly there is some physical exhaustion from sleepless nights and limited nutrition, but it is the sealing-up of love, hate, jealousy, anger, ambition; all things that give man drive under normal circumstances, that brings about ‘battle-fatigue’ after a prolonged period. The average soldier doesn’t succomb to that phenomenon when he is on his feet in the open.

I studied my hands today. They’re the only part of me I can see. I’m afraid of what I might see if I take my boots off. As light as my beard is, the whiskers have grown long enough to itch. Something itches on my forearms too. I haven’t had my shirt or field jacket off since we came to this hole. I don’t think I could get a comb through my hair. I can feel it twisted and matted under my helmet. My teeth are coated with something thick.

The hands. With their stumpy fingers. They’re the hands I touched and held you with. But that couldn’t be; I’ve never been anywhere, but in this hole. I began here and I’ll probably end here so there is – was – nothing before.

The hands are gray now; gray with mud, gray with cold. I rub them together to clean them. Flakes of mud fall off, but they’re still gray. Like the hands of the corpses. I look across the hole at Gerry’s hands. His are gray too.

We had tried to rig a shelter-half over the top of the hole during one of the first days, but there was no way to hold the sides in place and the weight of rain pulled it down. Most of the water drained into the earth, but the floor of the hole was mushy.

One day Ganley started cutting dirt away from one side of the hole at the bottom. I watched for a while and then gave him a hand. After a while he was digging while I rested. As I watched, a thought came to my mind. I asked, “Where you going?” He simply said, “Over to see the guys in the next hole.” It made sense to me.

We dug some more; only eighteen inches in, so far, and Ganley asked, “What if it caves-in half way through?” We stopped digging.

The day after our aborted tunnel there were three of us in the hole. Wigglesworth had moved in with us during the night. As we sat, cramped in the two-man hole, a German mortar round landed on the top, rear edge. The explosion, within three feet of any of us, was deafening. By reaction we all dove for the little cat at the side waiting, I guess, for the next one to come in with us. Survival instinct drove us all to the same place at the same time. We resumed our sitting positions and stared silently at the new cut in our hole. The German had set his mortar for too much range by six inches.

After being ‘dismounted’ in foxholes for the past two and a half months, we started getting a little touchy about the ten dollars a month extra, infantrymen were paid. On one of those dark, moonless nights, while three of us sat in the rain in the bottom of our hole, I said, “I sure would hate to be in the infantry.” There was momentary silence while the others thought it over and finally a reply came, “Yeah, the ten bucks a month ain’t worth it.”

A night came for Ganley and me and a third man to go back up the hill for rations and water. We walked through the beet field, up the slope to where a headquarters truck brought our supplies. It really was colder on top of the ground than it was in our holes.

The truck had just arrived and we asked the driver if there was any word of when we would be relieved. He said, “Haven’t heard a word, but they say the infantry battalions are coming out every three days. That sounded like the usual routine, but someone forgot about us, Maybe the infantry thought we were providing our own reliefs. A week after we arrived we got word to get ready; we were pullet out.

On thing about combat; it doesn’t take long to get ready. Just grab your rifle and muddy blankets and hope the relief gets there.

For the past month or two, relief had meant someplace like Sittard or Heerlen where we went to a coal mine and hung our clothing on hooks that you pulled to the high ceiling by chains while you went for a hot shower. A hot shower and a shave was going to feel so good; And a change of socks and underwear. When I get these socks and underwear off, I’m going to throw them away. Nothing could ever wash them clean again.

The relief came down to our positions after dark. They may have been infantry or our own A Troop, nobody asked. They were the relief and that was all that mattered.

Out of the holes now and we strung out, heading to the rear. Our legs had to accustom themselves to walking again after all the days being cramped in the holes.

Rain, which had fallen almost steadily since our arrival, now turned to sleet. The tiny ice-particles stung link needles against our faces. It hit our helmets, turned to water and ran down our necks. The driven ice saturated our pants, but it didn’t matter now; we were being relieved! In just a couple hours we would get rid of the constant dead-cold of neck and shoulders.

We stumbled across the mud-lake beet field and up the hill we had come down a week earlier. Trucks would be waiting behind the hill to take us to where we could get our bodies and minds functioning again.

We gained the top of the hill, six or eight hundred yards back of the foxholes we had just left. We were told there were bunkers here and to find them. A voice in the darkness asked, “What is this?” The reply; “This is our rest area.”

We looked, or felt around in the darkness, until we found the opening to a bunker. Six of us climbed down a ladder into the hole. We had no flashlights, so we lighted matches at the bottom to see. There were candles so we lit a couple of those for light.

We found we were in an underground bunker about ten feet square. It was a former German bunker and well constructed; if you had to find anything good about being there. The top of the hole had logs laid across and these were covered with the dirt taken from the hole. It was secure enough, but not really what we had n mind for a rest area.

Continual rains had saturated the dirt on top and was leaking through. We found shelter-halves and stretched them across the top bunks to carry the water away to the floor. There were two sets of bunks, four high. If this was it, we were going to make the best of it. We were just about to settle down for the night when the platoon sergeant stuck his head down through the opening and called my name, and one other. We were detailed to go for rations.

We climbed out of the bunker and found there were two more volunteers. The sleet was still driving down and we were still cold and wet from the walk up the hill. The platoon sergeant told us to follow on down the dirt road to a cross road were the rations would be waiting. His final words were. “Stay on the road. The beet field up here is mined.”

It was about midnight when we started and about One A.M. when we returned. We followed the road which we made out because it was just a little lighter than the rough surface of the beet fields. The supplies were waiting at the cross-road. There was water and C-Rations. The C’s would be a welcome change from the K’s.

Tow men carried the C-Rations in their wood boxes and two of us carried two five-gallon ‘jerry-cans’ of water. Two for balance. I led off on the return trip.

Walking in the reverse direction eliminated any advantage to see the road. The soother surface now looked like the surrounding fields. We sloshed through the mud until my foot slipped on a round, slippery object. A lager sugar beet. “Hold it! I’m in the beets.”

I fought to keep my balance and hold the cans in the air at the same time. Full five-gallon cans can set off a mine as well as a man.

The men behind me stopped where they were until the last man said he was still on the road. One at a time, last-man-first, we made our way back onto the road and carefully back to the bunkers.

We took our own share of C-Rations down into our bunker where we tore up the wood boxes and built a small fire to heat the cans and warm up from the little heat it gave off. Smoke collected inside the bunker because of the low weather-pressure, but we didn’t mind that inconvenience. The C-Rations tasted good after a week of cold K’s.

Artillery came in once or twice during the night. The Germans probably suspected there were interlopers in their old diggin’s. The noise was muffled down there and fear of a round coming through the small entrance was minimal. It was a time for rest.

We awoke early in the morning to more artillery. We heated more C-Rations and filled our stomachs. The C-Rations were still coming in the three standard items; Corned Beef Hash, Beef Stew and Pork and Beans. They weren’t to too bad heated and I could eat them cold, except the stew always had a film of grease across the top so I usually saved that for a meal other than breakfast.

After we ate – and the artillery let up – I ran across to another bunker which was more open than ours. Johnson was in that one so I went to talk to him.

We idled away most the day, but in the late afternoon an infantry outfit started by. We were behind the crest of the hill and it was safe to walk upright, except for the occasional round of artillery.

We sat watching all those infantrymen walking by. That was good news. With all these guys they won’t need a couple little troops of cavalry. We should be back in Holland before morning.

After the last man passed, I heard the platoon sergeant call, “Newton, MacDonall.” Mac and I went to see what he wanted. He said, “Get your rifles and report to the infantry colonel on the double.”

I went down into last night’s hole to get my gear. Most of us were still wearing high-top shoes and leggings. I couldn’t find the leggings so I just grabbed my rifle. Mac and I walked to the front of the infantry column.

We found a Lieutenant colonel. Wow, that’s pretty good. We’ve got a ‘light’ colonel all the way up here. He told us we were to lead his men back down to our old positions. It turned dark in a few minutes and we started down into the valley. When we arrived at the holes we told the colonel , “This is it.” He thanked us and we started to leave, but he stopped us and said, “One more thing. You men are familiar with the area and we have to know where the Germans are and if they’re still in town. Patrol out toward town and see what you can find out.” We knew what we would find, but you don’t argue with colonels – even lieutenant colonels.

We asked the colonel to please tell his men that we would be out in front so they wouldn’t get nervous and shoot us if we didn’t come back to the same place we left from. He gave orders to nearby men to pass the word along as we left. Mac and I crawled about thirty or forty yards out toward Beeck. The night was without any light so we knew the colonel couldn’t see us as we dropped into some kind of hole, or depression in the earth.

One of the concerns with a night patrol is that there is always the possibility that an enemy patrol may be coming in the opposite direction. It was silent and we could only hear our own breathing. Mac said, “We know where the Krauts are, don’t we?” I agreed that there was little possibility that the Germans had changed their minds about defending the town.

We lay in the hole about ten or fifteen minutes, long enough to impress the infantry colonel we were doing a thorough job, and crawled back to report our findings. He said, “Good work.” Mac and I were planning on a quick trip back up the hill, but as we started to leave the colonel told us we might as well stick around because our own outfit was on the way down.

There was one farm house on the edge of Beeck and we had been well to the left of it in our first position. Now we were closer to the house and found that our troop would be in holes just to the right of the house. Mac and I wandered around in the dark until we found our platoon. Everyone else had already ‘buddied-up” with two men to a hole. I couldn’t find Ganley; he was probably asleep already, so Mac and I found a hole for ourselves.

This hole was a little shallower than the one Gerry and I had been in, but it had a piece of wood, or tin covering part of it. We crawled in with the intention of getting some sleep. We decided to have a smoke first and whispered about getting out of here in the morning after the infantry attacked Beeck.

I never learned if it was coincidence, if the Germans planned an attack of their own or if they learned of the impending attack by the 84th Division, but before we could finish our cigarettes the world came apart.

There was no gradual build-up. Every artillery-piece the Germans had fired into our positions in front of town. Hundreds of simultaneous explosions tore up the ground around us. Shrapnel whistled away and toward us through the cold night air. The earth felt sudden noise and concussion battered us in the holes.

A barrage is supposed to stop some time, but this one didn’t. It increased. The various calibers of artillery each made its own explosive roar and its own shock in the earth. Once in a while, during a seconds respite, we could hear a gun firing from somewhere far behind the German’s line. It had to be a railroad gun firing about a twelve-inch shell.

When that one landed, it was a war all of its own. Even an occasional dud from the gun had an earthquake effect.

Any combat soldier knows that even during “routine” shelling the law of average dictates that someone has to get hit. Here at Beeck, the odds were running out fast.

It kept coming and adrenalin output reached maximum. Hearts raced to about two hundred beats a minute. Breathing was more rapid than during the most strenuous physical training.

The night became continuously lighted from flashes around us. We covered our ears to shut out the noise, but it didn’t help. The holes began to collapse from concussion. One of the holes completely collapsed and when the two men in it got out to find shelter they were fired at by an 88mm tank gun in town. We chain-smoked and prayed and threw dirt out of holes to keep from being buried.

Somewhere on a hill behind us, an artillery observer was trying to count the incoming rounds down in our position. The army does this to determine the number of guns the enemy has, and their size in a given sector.

The short combat history of the 113th Cavalry Group states: “For two days that squadron (125th and, in actuality, C Troop) was subjected to intense artillery shelling in this area (Beeck), receiving during one period of 6 or 7 hours, some 1.000 rounds of various calibers.”

The cold, wet misery of living in a hole was gone. Life became too precious and the hole was our refuge.

The shelling continued throughout the night. Outside the hole the darkness changed to a jumble of dancing shadows from the burning house and exploding shells. Living was taken one second at a time.

At 0600 Hours, the infantry attack began an German artillery lifted to adjust. We lay in the hole exhausted and panting from the night’s ordeal. McDonnell looked out of the hole and said, “I’m heading for the house.” It was a brief statement, but precise, because he was gone.

I lay in the hole a while longer and wondered what made him decide so quickly. I also realized that now, being alone in the hole, if more artillery came in and collapsed it, no one would know what happened to me. I got out and ran for the house. When I reached it, Mac was not there.

Mac’s disappearance was a mystery until after the war ended and he returned to the outfit. He knew something was wrong with himself that morning and made his way back for medical assistance. He ended up in a base hospital for treatment of internal hemorrhaging.

The house was no longer a house, but its rubble, collapsed and burning over the cellar. The cellar was now a command post and a major was relaying messages coming in over the radio to his colonel. I crawled past them and found a place against a wall.

There was a cleaning-rod in the cellar so I ran it through the bore of my rifle to knock some of the mud out. As I set the rod against the wall behind me, I looked over toward another wall to my right. An infantry lieutenant sat against that wall staring at me. I watched him for a while and realized he wasn’t staring at me, but through mw. He must have snapped during the night.

I felt embarrassed. Although we had lost most of Stateside “Military Courtesy and Discipline”, as taught in training, I felt as though I were intruding on the lieutenant’s private problem. Maybe officers should have their own place to go when they crack.

I found one of those little Coleman one-burner gasoline stoves in the cellar. I pumped it up and lighted the burner. I poured water from my canteen into my canteen-cup and added a couple packets of Nescafe from my jacket pocket and waited for the water to heat. Maybe a cup of coffee would help the lieutenant feel better too.

I looked back over at him. He still staring. Looked away again, I commiserated with him in my thoughts. Too bad, Lieutenant. You haven’t been in combat a month yet and you’ve gone over the edge. No medals for that. And no Purple Heart. You’re a casualty, but you have to bleed to get the Heart. What you’ve got doesn’t count with the army. But – last night was bad, if that’s any consolation. You were supposed to be a leader of men, but that’s down the drain now. If you were just a dog-soldier like me, you could be sitting here making the coffee. Well, the rest of us aren’t far behind so you maybe can lead us yet; to that place you’re staring at.

Before the Nescafe heated, an artillery shell landed outside the small cellar window. Rags and debris that had been stuffed into the blown-out window blew in and knocked over the stove an cup. I looked back to the lieutenant. He hadn’t moved during the explosion.

I sat, waiting to hear the word that we were relieved. The infantry major chattered away with the company commanders attacking the town. Fighting was heavy.

One of the company C.O.’s came on the radio and said he was being cut off by an enemy unit he described as, of company strength. His voice was near panic and I hoped to hear him say they would be Okay. Instead, he asked for help – and he wanted that help now!

The major told the captain to hold on and then put the colonel on the radio. The colonel told his captain that all his units were committed and he had nothing to send in. Then – and I knew what was coming – he said, “Wait a minute. I’ve got a squadron of cavalry I can send you.”

Under more placid conditions I might have smiled, or even laughed inwardly. The colonel’s cavalry “squadron” amounted to under-strength, tired, ill-equipped trop. A Troop was off with combat engineers blowing pill-boxes, B Troop was a million miles away guarding First Army Headquarters in Belgium and E Troop and F Company are behind the hills firing indirect-fire missions. How about three platoons, Colonel? Maybe 75 men, if you’re lucky. Not nine hundred.

We grouped-up around the house and then took off at a dead-run. Before reaching the town itself, we were caught in an orchard by incoming artillery. We all hit the dirt although trees cause ‘air-brusts’ and shrapnel comes straight down. Ordinarily shells that land in open ground throws its shrapnel up and forward of the impact point.

But, instinct made us dive for the earth, and as I landed, I felt a sharp pain in my chest. I rolled over to find I had landed on a dud with its base sticking out of the ground. Duds rarely explode if the fuse in the nose didn’t work the first time, but it’s not a morale-booster to land on one. When the barrage lifted, we got up and continued running into town.

Beeck seemed to be about a block long with a single street, or road, running through it. As we ran, we kept looking for the next place to dive in another barrage came in. While I ran I noticed a few goats that somehow survived the night’s pounding. They apparently belonged to the town’s farmers. At a time like that, I can’t possibly explain why any thought, but survival, could enter anyone’s head, but when I saw the goats jumping up and down – completely goofy from last night’s concussion – I felt sorry for them. They had been caught up in man’s problems.

It took us only a few seconds to run through town and now we were leaving the other side. I jumped over a hole and while in mid-air, I saw a man sitting in the bottom. He was wearing the same G.I. helmet and field jacket that the rest of us wore. It flashed through my mind that we were running as fast as we could to help some infantry company and one of their own was sitting-out the war in this hole. As I landed on the other side, I turned to reach down and pull him out.

He looked like he was probably an American Indian. I shouted at him over the noise of battle, but he made no move. I grabbed him by the front of his field jacket to yank him out of his hole. The jacket was mud-splattered, but looked so new – it didn’t have the gray of wear and fading that most of ours did. When I pulled, his head rolled back and his jaw fell slack. His rifle slipped from his fingers and he stared from behind half-closed eyelids at rain clouds a thousand yards away. Sorry, Pal. I didn’t know.

We ran beyond any infantry we could see. Either the infantry company handled their own problem without our help or we had the wrong directions. We came into another orchard and were caught in another barrage. A section sergeant caught a piece of shrapnel that took his head off at the shoulders. We waited until the barrage let up and returned into town. We had no radio contact with the infantry or each other. All our radio’s were vehicle-mounted.

The Germans had retreated from town and were now in new positions on a low hill to our front, east of Beeck. Small arms fire was only sporadic now and the artillery had almost stopped. We found the sniper who had made our lives miserable for over a week. We knew it was him because his scoped rifle was nearby. His head had been blown off and impaled on a fence post. At least no one took credit for putting it there.

Since the fighting had been heavy and the Germans yielded first, higher authorities must have decided this would be a good time to talk them into surrendering. So far they had only fallen back to new positions.

First our artillery fired ‘propaganda’ shells at them. These were light-weight shells packed with “Safe Conduct” passes. On impact, they blow the passes out to be gathered by enemy soldiers. The pass insures the bearer one free trip to a prisoner-of-war camp, supposedly without getting shot while he came in. The passes, of course, were intended only for enemy troops. When one of our own men got hold of a pass and tried to surrender with the Germans it was not looked upon with amount of humor by our brass.

Next, a “Hog-caller” came down into Beeck. The hog-caller was a light tank with loudspeakers mounted. A German-speaking lieutenant spoke to the German soldiers on the hill before us and suggested they should all come down and eat C-Rations in a safe, dry place until the war was over. Or words to that effect.

The lieutenant next spoke in English to advise those of us within earshot of what he had offered the enemy and admonished us not to shoot those who came in with their hands raised. There sure are a lot of rules when the fighting stops.

As a final selling point, the lieutenant told the Germans the offer was good for one hour, after which they were going to receive a barrage of White-Phosphorus.

The average German combat soldier who had seen its effects, learned to respect white-phosphorus. For that matter, any American G.I. who had experienced a ‘near miss’ of white-phosphorus learned to respect it. The phosphorus, once ignited by impact, burns until it consumes itself. It burns indiscriminately; wood, metal, arms, legs, bellies and almost anything else it contacts. During daylight, it makes a spectacular display of white streamers following the burning particles. At night, the burning phosphorus erupts in a display of fireworks of high, fountains of white illumination. If Satan had a Fourth-of-July, he would use white-phosphorus to celebrate.

After the bitter fighting, counter-artillery, the anguish of the valley and a promise of the Devil’s firework, many German soldiers decided the war had gone on long enough for them. They gathered the safe conduct passes and started down the hill, a chilling thing happened that we could not at first believe nor understand. Some of them fell and rolled down the hillside. Seconds later we heard rifle an machine gun fire. They were being shot; not by Americans, but by their own troops.

We watched, fascinated by the scene. Some of the soldiers who where now closer to us than their own line ran faster, trying to dodge and weave, which is difficult with your hands behind your head. Others, who had no change of making it to the safety of our line, turned to go back and wait for the phosphorus. A few G.I.’s yelled at those who were still coming, “Hurry up – schnell!”

Rules, again. Somebody over there had some rules that said you don’t surrender. Our rules said if you’ve decided you’ve had enough you don’t get shot on purpose. Leave us alone and we’ll do our best to kill each other, but you don’t shoot your own.

When the first German reached our line we asked them who was shooting at them. They replied, “S.S.” These soldiers were regular army.

The last of that day was relatively quiet. Quiet being only an occasional round of artillery instead of hundreds. After nightfall, the platoon sergeant told me to go back to our ‘rest-area’ of two nights ago to lead A Troop down to our positions.

I started off by myself. The night was black again, but at least it wasn’t raining. I made my way through the single street which was littered with debris. As I stumbled along over bricks and mud, I stepped on something I immediately knew was a human body from the way muscle gave under my foot. I realized it had to be a dead man; nobody else would be lying in the road.

I stopped and stared until the body of a German soldier became clearer to my sight. I watched him for a while without hate or compassion, just curiosity. He was enemy-dead, but he was the only guy around.

I cupped my hands to light a cigarette and leaned against what was left of a picket fence. After a couple puffs, I asked, “Well, how does it feel to be out of it, Landsmann? Was it as bad getting killed as it is waiting to get killed?” I wanted to know, but he didn’t tell me.

What the hell am I doing? I’m talking to dead Krauts now. I’d better go find A Troop and get back down here so I can get some sleep. My butt’s dragging. It’s over forty hours now since I slept.

A Troop was waiting at the top of the hill when I got there and I led them back down to Beeck.

When I found the First Platoon again, everyone had ‘buddied-up’ in a hole., but I finally found Pete Petrone who didn’t have a partner yet. We dug a shallow hole alongside the road using the drainage ditch for added depth. We had only dug about six or eight inches down and I told Pete. “That’s enough. I’m too tired to dig any more.” There was a barn across the road behind us so we tore off a door and laid it over the hole with one side propped against the high mound across the ditch. We threw the small amount of dirt we had dug on top of the door.

Our position was now on the far side of Beeck from which we came in. We no sooner crawled in to our hole than the platoon sergeant called us to relieve on the machine gun. Two hours latter we crawled back into the hole to get some sleep, but German artillery started coming in again. We lay there awake until about 0600 Hours when we had to take another turn at the machine gun. An hour later we returned to the hole.

It was predestined that we were to get no sleep because another barrage came in as soon as we laid down. This time there was a tree-burst in the tree directly over us. Simultaneous with the explosion, I felt something hit my knee. It stung, then burned. “I think I’m hit.” Pete said, “Don’t you know?” “I’m not sure.” “Where?” “In my knee. Wait a minute.”

Pete and I both lying on our right sides because the hole was so small. As I started to reach down to the outside of my left knee I began to think. Is a wound numb at first before intense pain sets in? I don’t know – I’ve never been wounded.

When my hand finally reached the knee, I found a still-hot piece of shrapnel laying where it hit. It was about the size of a dime and about a quarter-inch thick. “It’s shrapnel.” “Are you hurt?” “No. I guess not.”

The fragment had almost expended its velocity going through the barn door and dirt. It hadn’t even broken the skin. A short time later the platoon was relieved and took shelter in the cellar of a concrete building.

We entered the building through a loading dock with an overhang. Our dead, infantry and cavalry, were laid out waiting for a safer time to be removed. There was no way to distinguish infantrymen from cavalrymen unless you recognized a face.

We sat around the walls of the cellar. No one spoke. Some managed to fall off to sleep. I was beyond sleep. We’ve been in this place so long now, you know there will be no relief. This is the place were, one-by-one, every soldier, friend and enemy, will come to be swallowed-up until there are no more combat soldiers. Then the rear-echelon soldiers of all the armies will pack up what’s left and go home. And the beets will grow to cover everything so that no one will ever know. The sugar beets will reclaim the earth.

In the relative safety of the cellar it caught up to me. The artillery, the sleepless nights, the cold, the wet, snapped the invisible tendril that binds body and mind together.

Like riding the high rim of the maelstrom, I felt myself sliding into the vortex and couldn’t help myself. In a matter of minutes I lost the ability to control my own emotions or come back. I made out Johnson across from me, I made my way over to him and whispered, “Something’s wrong with me.” I guess he could pretty-well tell that. The platoon sergeant told me to go back with the supply truck that night.

I walked away from Beeck that night with shame trying to invade the numbness of my brain – but not enough shame to turn me back. My conscience tried to prevail, but couldn’t.

If my mind had been capable of reasoning, I might have made excuses for myself. I had only three or four hours sleep in the last seventy-two. I had wandered into a mine field three nights ago. Last night I went back to lead A Troop down. That artillery barrage two nights ago would have been bad enough by itself.

But you broke, didn’t you? You broke.

The trail out of Beeck and through the beet fields was familiar now. And the hill up to the bunkers that were our rest area for one night. So was the dirt road to the supply-point.

I climbed into the truck when it arrived. The driver, after he unloaded supplies, didn’t ask me where or why I was going. I guess he didn’t have to. Even on the ride back I wanted to tell him to turn around and take me back, but I couldn’t.

It was late at night when we reached Squadron Headquarters in Holland. Most everyone was asleep. I found a couple blankets among the pile of gear that belonged to the men of the line-troops and laid down on the floor of a vacant room. Headquarters was billieted in another schoolhouse.

I lay awake through the night listening to the quiet, civilized sounds of the rear area. I was still awake when I heard the first sounds of men moving about; starting their work day. I went to look for the medics.

I found the medical section, but when I asked to see a doctor, a medic said they weren’t around and asked what he could do for me. He gave me a couple Blue Beetles, guaranteed to put me to sleep. They didn’t.

I wandered into a room where the movie, Song of Bernadette, was being projected onto a blank wall. The move only frustrated me and I went back to the medics. The doctors still weren’t there. Where could doctors of a combat unit be? They weren’t making house-calls in Beeck.

I slung my rifle from a shoulder and walked down the street. My mind wasn’t working too well, but I thought I should get some kind of help. I stood on a street corner of an intersection jammed with military traffic and watched passing vehicles. An Ambulance came toward me and I waited until I could read its bumper-markings; Second Armored Division – friends. They stopped when I flagged them down and gave me a ride to their medical unit.

A doctor came in to where I was sitting inside a hospital tent and asked what he could do for me. I tried to explain how I felt and suggested that what I really needed was some sleep. He said he could take care of that.

The doctor went into an attached tent and returned immediately. He asked, “What’s your outfit?”, expecting to hear one of the division’s units. I told him, “Hundred Twenty Fifth Cavalry.” He asked if we were working with the Second Armored Division right now. I explained we were attached to the 84th Infantry Division. He said he couldn’t help me. I don’t know if he believed me when I told him I couldn’t find our own doctors. I hitched another ride back to Squadron Headquarters.

I did get a hot meal that evening after supper I found one of the drivers starting his truck. I asked where he was going and he replied, “Taking rations up to the line.” I got in and rode back to Beeck.

As I walked back down to hell through the beet fields, I realized my insanity fir into the scheme. No one knew where I was and cared less as long as I didn’t bother them. Maybe I should have hitched a ride back to Liege; to the Hotel D’Angleterre. Or maybe back to the quiet, peaceful Melun, on the Seine. Or maybe all the way back to Normandy and drink Calvados; that would put me to sleep.

It was quiet all the way into town. When I found the First Platoon, someone asked, “How ya doing?” and everything started back to normal. I guess my trip to Holland had been just what I needed. I was so exhausted now, I couldn’t help but sleep. After a couple more days the word came down to, “Pack up, we’re moving out.”

We had been three weeks in this nightmare of a place, but we were actually being relieved. We were not the picture of victory, triumphant in battle. We walked through the darkness, each stumbling along behind the man ahead of him. We probably looked worse than the Germans who had surrendered a few days ago.

We came out encrusted with mud; camouflage netting on helmets, field jackets, boots, blankets, pants. Some men had their pants tucked into boot-tops. Others of us had cuffs hanging loose. The blankets dragged along the wet earth.

We all had three weeks growth of beard. Hair, faces and hands were grimy. Feet and legs would later be found to be filthy up to knees and arms up to the elbows. Ingrown hairs and chafed spots covered our bodies where clothing had confined those parts, along with the accumulated dirt, for all that time.

Our walk back was more of a stumbling procedure and toes dragged every once in a while. Most walked with knees and backs bent to get what seemed the least uncomfortable position. Our eyes stared at the ground, except to look up every so often to make sure you were following the man ahead.

We didn’t go back up through the beet fields, but along a dirt road which had run across the front of our positions when we first arrived. In the foxholes, we didn’t realize it was there although it was only twenty or thirty yards in front of us.

The road ran straight across the flat valley and then curved up the hill. We were strung out, every man making his own speed and keeping his thoughts to himself. As we neared the top of the hill a battery of 105mm howitzers fired in volley from just a few yards away. They had moved up after the capture of Beeck and no one expected the deafening blast. My breath caught, I swallowed hard and continued on. It was probably a fitting salute and anything less would have been an anti-climax.

Historical note:

On the night of November 22, 1944, C Troop, 125th Cavalry Squadron, entered the beet fields just west of Beeck, Germany with 135 Men. On the night of December 16, after the area had been secured, C Troop walked back out with 36 Troopers.

Surprisingly, the killing-in-action numbers were low. Casualties came from wounds, fatigue, trench-foot and respiratory problems. Most of these casualties returned to the Troop during the remainder of December and, along with replacements, brought the Troop back up to near full strength before we went to new positions on the Roer Rivers.

R E M O U N T

PART

3

We were getting away from the hallucination that we lived in for twenty-one days. Away from the wet and cold. Away from the sleepless nights of artillery pounding. Most importantly, we were getting away from the fear of death. We know we would be back, either here or somewhere else, but for the time we were leaving it.

No explaination was ever given for this extended stay on the line, but if we had just had a couple days in a rest area once or twice, a hot shower, a cooked meal, clean underwear, clean socks; maybe the mind-numbness would have eased.

We continued on to where our vehicles were parked. We rode through the artillery positions where guns were lined axle to axle. We rode through the black night and, once at our vehicles, ignition switches turned and the comforting sound of engines warming came as solace to tortured souls. The sweet smell of carbon monoxide helped clear our minds as we warmed our hands near exhaust pipes.

We didn’t know at the time that we were going into Ninth Army reserve. That was unusual for a unit such as ours. Ordinarily we would go into our own group reserve, or the reserve of a division we might be working with or even XIX Corps reserve. It was rumored that this action came about because we were no so far under strength from dead, wounded, battle-fatigue and trench-foot. I never saw that verified.

After we mounted, we started back toward Holland. Those who were not driving slept, awakening now and then to the pleasant jouncing and the opportunity to savor the comfort of safety. Living was a brand new experience.

We drove through the blackness of a cold, winter night and, reaching the higher ground of Holland, found snow, where there had been none before we left.

Returning to the rear under cover of darkness was probably good for morale; not ours, the morale of rear echelon soldiers and replacements who might think we were losing the war if they saw us.

We were not returning to the familiar towns of Heerlen and Sittard, but near the town of Gulpen in that country’s farthermost south-east corner.

Just before arriving at the two-story building that had been taken over for our use, we heard what sounded like a gigantic artillery shell. It was louder than the sound of our engines, We later learned it was one of Germany’s first jet-powered planes. The Battle of the Bulge had just started several miles to the south.

We never heard it called the Bulge or anything else. It was a German attack and the attack would make our new rest short-lived. We would immediately start running patrols into the battle zone.

Our new home not only gave us the exquisite luxury of sleeping indoors, on wood floors to be exact, but our Headquarters Platoon moved in with us which meant we would have hot meals. When we awoke the first morning, we were told there was a quartermaster shower unit set up in Gulpen. We must have smelled rotten to anybody but ourselves.

After a hot breakfast, we all climbed into jeeps and drove down to the shower. The unit consisted of a maze of pipes with shower-heads, surrounded by a canvas fly. The fly provided modesty, but little warmth in the snow. The facility was under the supreme command of a crusty master sergeant.

With a bred tone, the old master sergeant drones out the rules for use of his shower: “One minute to wet-down, one minute to soap-up, one minute to rinse-off,”

Uh, uh. We had a change of socks, no change of underwear and had been performing toilet functions in K-Ration boxes for three weeks. His rules weren’t going to apply to us, today. One man held the sergeant at rifle-point while we used up all the hot water his unit could produce.

Someone asked, “Are you really going to tell your grandchildren you ran a shower unit during the big war?” The sergeant didn’t reply, but as we left he threatened to send the M.P.’s for the whole lot of us. We never heard from the M.P.’s and we never went back to his shower.

We found a substitute bathing facility in a Catholic home, or institution, where the nuns let us use the baths of the inmates. These baths were huge wooden tubs filled with tepid water and large enough for four or five of us to get into at one time. We soaked ourselves for long periods, letting the accumulated dirt work its way out of clogged pores and letting sanity return to clogged minds.

The inmates of this institution appeared strange to us, I don’t know if they were mental patients or just aged, but somebody said they looked like lepers so we found ourselves another place to bath some miles away.

On our return from a bath one day, one of the doctors came in to examine our feet because there had been so much trench-foot in the army, including our own squadron. He told us we should massage each others feet when we were confined to foxhole positions. The advise was probably correct, but I think we were all wondering the same thing; would he massage our feet after three weeks without a bath?

Much has been written to praise doctors and chaplains during World War Two and many of them probably deserved the praise, but I couldn’t find a doctor when I needed one and I didn’t know we had chaplains until Memorial Day after the war. Maybe I didn’t look hard enough.

Our base position in Slenaken was close to the German-Dutch-Belgium borders. At that place, with three steps, you could enter three countries. Our patrols brought us into Aachen, Germany, Maastricht, Holland and south past Eupen, Belgium.

The reason for this patrol activity was to intercept any enemy infiltrators who might have landed by parachute. This infiltration had actually occurred in the opening days of the ‘Bulge’, but on a minor scale. The rumors of German troops dressed in American uniforms, like most rumors, became greatly exaggerated. Civilians and the rear-echelon were getting jumpy. We were just happy to be off the line.

It was cold on patrols. The European winter of 1944-1945 was reported to be the worst in fifty years. Our best piece of clothing was German. An enemy warehouse had been overrun during the last drive to the Siegfried Line and a huge supply of rabbit skin jackets were liberated.

The jackets fit comfortably inside our G.I. field jackets. We had been issued the jackets before we went to Beeck and they probably saved many of us from pneumonia. Fortunately, someone of authority had the good sense to issue them to combat troops. If they had gone through ’channels’ they might have ended up back in the States to have an “M” number designated for issue. The real army has its manuals for everything and every situation. If it isn’t in a manual – it doesn’t exist. Rabbit skin jackets were not in U.S. Army manuals.

The patrols at night were especially cold. We always drove without the canvas top and the windshield always lay over the hood of jeeps. This was a precautionary measure to avoid flying shards if the glass was hit by bullets or shrapnel. Without the windshield in its upright position, the top could not be put up. It was a safety measure, but added the wind chill factor time to the already freezing weather. After a short time of driving, the intense cold brought on a dull, lasting pain behind the eyes that lasted until we got under shelter for a few minutes. Te eye-pain was similar to holding a big bit of ice cream in your mouth that you can’t swallow.

On leaving the building at night, we walked the short distance to our vehicles. New snow, chilled by night air, squeeked under our boots and tires. Older snow that had softened during the day refroze at night and made a crunching sound. We had to brush away newly fallen snow from the canvas seats of the jeeps, Our body heat melted what snow remained and then it froze again. Trousers or overcoats stuck to the seats.

Exposed weapons had to be kept oil-free or the mechanisms would freeze. Engines, even through radiators were filled with anti-freeze, had to be thoroughly warmed to avoid stalling. Before we started it was almost a pleasant feeling to stand in the cold, night air surrounded by great clouds of vapor. We were free of the confinement of a hole in the earth.

We dressed with every bit of clothing we could get on our bodies. For myself, I wore civilian shorts and tee-shirt under the G.I. long-john top and bottom. Then came the issue wool uniform trousers and shirt. “Rain” pants went over the trousers and the field jacket with the “Bunny-jacket” inside it. The heavy overcoat went on everything. A wool-knit cap under the helmet. I wore a muffler and lined, leather gloves inside G.I. mittens. Feet were encased in two pair of heavy socks, combat boots and overshoes. There was no way to protect eyes.

On night patrols, after we all dressed, we rolled Gangley in two blankets and carried him out to the back seat of the jeep. He squirmed around until he was comfortable and then we propped his rifle against him. He stayed that way until we returned or stopped someplace where we unload him.

One of our check-points was a bank in Aachen. A Combat Engineer unit had taken over the bank for their quarters. Unlike the rear-echelon outfits, they always invited us in for coffee. They had set up living in the basement. Coleman lanterns lighted the interior. After living in wrecked buildings and foxholes for so long, we were in awe of the marble floors and walls of the bank. We carried Gerry in for coffee and unrolled him from his blankets to the delight of the engineers.

The rear-echelon outfits we had to check in with were never quite friendly. They never said, “Come on in and have a cup of coffee”, or much of anything. The accepted method of identifying a “real” American was to ask questions to which only Americans would know the answer. One typical such question was; “Who won the World Series last year?” (They played a World Series while all this was going on?) We usually didn’t know the answer so we would point our weapons at them and ask, “Who cares?” I don’t think we ever quite entered into the spirit of the thing.

This scare of paratroopers and infiltraters in the rear areas was as close as most of those soldiers would get to war. In a small town which I never saw in daylight because we always passed through about three or four in the morning, some G.I. would step out of a doorway and hesitatingly call, “Halt.” We were always on the last leg of our patrol and anxious to get back so we just hollored back, “Aw shut up.”

One particular night he didn’t challenge us, probably inside a doorway to keep warm, but after we had passed he fired a shot in the air. It probably scared him more than us, but it made me mad. It’s bad enough to be shot at by Germans, but just too much when somebody on your own side shoots. Before Zwer could stop me, I stopped the jeep and fired a round back down the street toward the sentry. He never challenged us again.

German equipment was falling apart as the war continued, mostly from lack of parts. Our own equipment was in good shape most of the time. However, during the German’s Ardennes Offensive, we did start running short of tires. They weren’t wearing out, they were being ruined in an unusual manner. Entire divisions were on the move to relieve and reinforce the divisions involved in the Ardennes.

These thousands of men were transported in trucks and they were eating K and C Rations enroute. The C Rations were the main problem. The men threw the empty cans out the rear of trucks and the can tops acted in the same manner as cookie-cutter. The sharp edges cut out circular pieces of tire tread down to the cord. Once the rubber tread was off, the cord puntered or blew out.

It became so bad in our squadron that all the drivers of wheeled-vehicles had to report to squadron headquarters for a pep-talk. It was one of the few times I saw headquarters and the first time I saw the Motor Officer. He was a large man of captains grade.

When we were all assembled, he told us, “at ease”. Which meant quiet, and “Smoke if you’ve got ‘em.” We were already ‘at ease’ and anyone who wanted to smoke was already smoking, but it was a nice gesture on his part.

He started his lecture: “Men, I’ve called all you wheeled-vehicle drivers here to let you know we can’t keep on ruining tires.” Did he think we were doing it on purpose? If there were no other reason, I never met anyone who enjoyed changing a wheel; especially in the snow. Driving our patrols at night without lights it was impossible to see the can tops in the snow.

He continued: “Aside from spares carried on jeeps, we have four extra spares. We have on spare for the armored cars.” Armored cars didn’t carry spares on the vehicle so the situation was serious. The captain concluded with standard army procedure – a threat. “So, if you don’t stop ruining tires, you’re going to end up fighting as infantry.”

Now ‘line’ captains commanded respect because they commanded line-troops, but in the combat enlisted man’s manner of sorting things out, a headquarters captain was about equal to a line outfit lieutenant, or below. It was not intentional disrespect, just a matter of values, so the unanimous response from the assembled drivers was, “What the hell you think we’ve been doing for the last three months?”

We had just come off the line at Beeck and we had been in foxholes since the end of September. There isn’t too much difference between a dismounted cavalryman and an infantrymen in the holes.

The captain smiled and said, “I know, I know.”

Somehow, we managed to keep the outfit on the road.

Coincidental to the threat of “ending up as infantry”, we always did have misgivings about going into the line ‘dismounted’. Thinking about it was usually worse than doing it because we felt we were out of our element. We were mounted troops and felt more capable when in our vehicles. Maybe infantrymen would feel the same if they were put in jeeps and armored cars to drive down enemy controlled roads. There’s not too much protection from a jeep.

Sometime between D-Day and this time, some congressman back in Washington introduced legislation, and rightfully so, recognizing infantrymen in combat areas with the Combat Infantryman’s Badge. The award also carried an extra ten dollars per month pay, At that time, ten dollars was a 20% raise. Apparently nobody ever heard of ‘combat cavalrymen’. Or maybe there weren’t enough of our kin back home to swing enough votes for politicians to bother.

Once in a while, when relieving or being relieved, by infantry, we would see a soldier wearing the blue badge on his shirt inside his field jacket and we would ask, “What’s that?” We usually got a strange look in return while he explained. The victim would finally realize he was being set up and say, “What are you guys pulling? You’ve got the dame thing.” We would reply, “Maw. We’re only cavalry.”

Combat soldiers got along well, in spite of organization pride – each knowing he was in the very best outfit. But there were times when an infantry soldier would look at a tanker and think, “That’s pretty soft, sitting there with all that steel around you.” The tanker looked back and thought, “Those guys can dive into a ditch while I sit in this thing while the Krauts punch holes through it.” Neither one would probably trade places with the other.

We were hassled from time to time when relieving infantry. Because our platoons were so much smaller that infantry, we usually carried machine guns as well as personal weapons into foxhole positions. More than once they remarked that we looked like a “heavy weapons platoon.” We got tired of hearing that so we seldom replied, but sometimes one of them would ask, “Where’s the rest of your outfit?” The kidding stopped when we answered, “This is the outfit.”

The rumor-mill at one time created the Combat Cavalry Badge. We could picture the yellow, rectangular badge with crossed-sabers superimposed in relief. Try to top that! It never came to be, but, fortunately, they did keep sending us K-Rations.

Christmas came while we were in Holland. We had no special celebration. No tree, no carols. Somebody was always on patrol and others were sleeping after night patrols. A few packages had arrived and a few more would get us after Christmas. The people I had worked with before the army sent hard candy in a vacuum-packed coffee can. Another package came for me that was crushed. I undid the paper wrapper and inside was a destroyed redwood box of chocolate candy. I studied the mess and called curses on everybody who had handled it. A few men gathered around, somebody asked if there were any that we could eat. We all started at the smashed, ruined mess.

Gerry and I went with a few others down to the Catholic church about a hundred yards down the road. We unloaded our rifles and stacked them outside while we went in to follow the Latin Mass. We sat among the poor Dutch parishioners in their war-poor church. I left about forty dollars in Dutch Guldens when mass was over. Little enough for the kindness of the people.

We were always paid in the currency of the country we happened to be in. There was no place to spend money for combat troops. At one time I carried about $ 400,00 in French and Belgian Francs, Dutch Guldens and German Marks. That was one reason we always went through the wallets of casualties; to make sure their money got home instead of some graves registration ghouls pocket.

There was one other thing that marked Christmas as not just another day. Our troop cooks were set up on the first floor and prepared Christmas dinner of turkey, mashed potatoes and all the trimmings. We had to eat from mess-kits, but the food was hot and delicious. It made up for the Thanksgiving dinner we missed in Beeck.

Not too many miles to the south of us Germans were in the height of their Ardennes Offensive. Another cavalry unit, the 18th Squadron of the 14th cavalry Group, had caught the initial spearhead. The 30th Infantry Division, like us, had been pulled off the line into Ninth Army reserve. They were immediately sent south to help stop the attack. The 2nd Armored Division would also be pulled out of Ninth Army’s line and sent south. We went into mobile reserve, used to patrol into the Ardennes sector down to Eupen, Belgium.

Snow was heavy and we used tire-chains on all wheels; four on jeeps and six on armored cars. Even with chains on all six wheels and driving in six-wheel drive, the eight ton, combat-loaded cars lost control. On one occasion, we heard the siren on the M-8 behind and when we looked back, the car was fish-tailing. I speeded up to level ground to get away from it, while its drive brought it under control.

There was little to do when we weren’t on patrol, so, if we were rested, Gerry and I would go for a case of beer. I would go to him and ask, “You going to go to sleep?” “No. Not yet. It’s too early.” “Want to go for a case of beer?” “What do you want to go for beer for? You don’t even drink it.” “The other guys do – and it’s something to do beside just sit around here.” “Okay.” These were unauthorized trips, but nobody was going to check after dark in the cold.

After the engine was warm enough to drive we got in and started up the unplowed rural road toward the bar a mile and a half away in Belgium. “Skies up above me, never was as blue as here eyes.”

Once we met an oncoming 2 ½ ton truck. There wasn’t enough room to pass each other and I put the jeep into a snowdrift. After the truck got by the came back to help us man-handle the jeep back onto hard packed surface. “And she loves me. Who could want a sweeter surprise.” It was the only song whose words we both knew.

In the bar, we paid for the case of beer. There were usually two or three civilians sitting in the dim light. They didn’t speak. Maybe they thought the Germans going to make it back to this place.

Our patrols brought us into the combat zone, but it also went into the “rear-echelon” areas. On a cold, but sunny day while we were cruising the rear area in Holland, with two jeeps and armored car of our section, we came across a Red Cross truck. For some reason the truck was parked in the middle of a field. Maybe they were expecting some unit or group to arrive for reasons unknown to us.

The guys in back of us hollored that they wanted to stop. They said maybe we could get some doughnuts and coffee. Several of them dismounted and ran over to the truck. Zwer, Gangley and I waited to see if they had anything for us. Suddenly the side of the truck opened and propped in place as they did when serving. The loud-speakers over the cab started playing loudly; full blast, to be exact.

After a few bars of a popular tune, the speakers broadcast the tearing sound of the needle dragging across the record’s grooves. A Red Cross lady screamed and then all three were screaming. Records came sailing out of the truck. More screaming, followed by doughnuts arching after the records.

The poor ladies were now in fear of losing their chastity and screamed as much. Zwer finally had to go over and order all the guys out of the truck. I don’t think the army really had this in mind when they brought these nice young ladies over. We left amid some very unlady-like epithets and threats: Never to return again.

We continued patrolling through December, 1944. New Year’s came; again without festivity. I guess a lot of us wondered if we would see New Year’s, 1946. About half wouldn’t. Replacements arrived for the men we lost at Beeck. They were integrated into the platoon. We continued sleeping in the luxury of wood floors indoors. Once in a while we got over to Maasticht, Holland to look around. There was nothing to do there but look. We made our trips to Belgium at night to get a case of beer, when we weren’t on a patrol. This was the way to fight a war!

After supper one Sunday, I slipped on mashed potatoes someone had spilled on the stairs. I slid the entire length of the steps on my back and landed in a heap at the bottom. I was bruised, but otherwise felt fine.

A day or two later we lost our happy home. We mounted-up and moved to a new area to prepare to go back on the line. The memory of Beeck still haunted us, but we were told we were going to another position. My back was still a little stiff from the fall, but it didn’t seem anything to worry about.

We drove through the snow-covered roads for most of the day. As time passed, I developed a pain in my legs and it was difficult to raise them. Long before we arrived at our destination I had to lift my legs onto the brake and clutch pedals with my hand. When we stopped, I couldn’t get out of the jeep. Sharp pains hit my lower back when I moved. I stayed in the jeep until we were assigned a place to stay. Two men carried me into our new quarters, but we had a problem. If they took me to the medics, I would probably be sent to a hospital for treatment. If I didn’t go to the medics, I might not be able to function. One of the men went to see a medic he knew wouldn’t tell anyone unless I couldn’t make it. He came back wit a good-sized bottle of rubbing alcohol.

I stripped to my shorts and two or three men took turns massaging my back. After an hour or so of massage, I dressed warmly and went to bed. When I awoke the next morning the pain had almost disappeared.

We had not camouflaged our vehicles for winter because they had been out of action while we were in Beeck and there didn’t seem to be a need during the recent period of patrolling. Now we brought them down to a fire hydrant where someone had scrounged a hose and high-pressure nozzle. We stripped the vehicles of equipment and turned the hose on them, inside and out.

We were supplied with some kind of whitewash and soon everything was a nice white color, to blend into the snow-covered terrain. One problem; the whitewash was water-soluble and soon as the jeep engines heated the snow on the hoods melted and the olive-drab color reappeared. The armored cars weren’t quite so bad as the engine compartment was in the rear. Olive-drab was the normal color of vehicles and the armored cars had black camouflage to break the angular outline of the larger vehicles.

We spent a couple days in this town to resupply and get things in order. I spent most of my time resting my back which was healing well. The inevitable order came to “Mount up, we’re moving out.”

We crossed town and, upon leaving the last buildings a Red Cross unit. I don’t think any of us knew it was there. Nobody told us we could get coffee and donuts.

The Red Cross served a useful purpose and its volunteers must be commended, but like U.S.O. shows and movies, they catered to the rear-echelon. These ladies could write home tonight that they waved “goodbye to some kind of combat unit today that had lots of jeeps and funny tanks with wheels instead of tracks.” This probably added to the dram of their assignment. After all, the girls assigned to donut dugouts back in France didn’t get to see heroes like us.

The young ladies smiles and waved at us as we passed. This was probably for our morale. How could we help but be spurred on to victory after this? I don’t know if any of us waved back.

What the hell you so happy about? They’re sending us back to get killed, you idiots. Geez. The last time I saw a donut was in Cardiff, a year ago.

For miles before you reach the line, there is no one. Too far back for combat and too far forward for rear-echelon. Empty snow-scapes are a reminder of what you’re here for. As we got closer, we passed a row of darkened, two-story houses. The road curved down around the houses and behind them. I looked back up at them, they were even taller and more gaunt from the downhill side, reminding me of haunted houses.

The snow covered fields around us were unmarked by footprints or anything else. A lonely fence post stood about twenty yards from the road and held a bit of combat humor.

Atop the post sat an 81mm mortar shell, nose up, resting on its tail-fins. The humor of this was in how to remove it. If it wasn’t armed, there was no problem. But you had to get close to find out.

As we drove carefully by, so we wouldn’t jar it from its precarious perch, I could read some dog-soldier’s mind as he set it there. “Here you go, you rear-echelon bastards. All you have to do is walk up and take it down. But, if it’s armed and falls off while you’re walking up to it ….”

With any luck the shell would remain there until some time when a colonel, or maybe even a general, would ride down the road and see it. The engineer would shoot it off from safety. The general, who couldn’t remember this subject from his days at West Point, would flush and angrily mutter, “What’s wrong with these men, that they’d do something like that?” And the answer was so simple; They’re nuttier than hell, General.

As usual, we took positions by sections of the platoon. We, the point section, took the last house at the end of town. I don’t have the idea what purpose the town served since it wasn’t the usual farm town. At this point of the war, civilians had either left on their own, or had been evacuated. The houses were just dark silhouettes. None of the houses had been heavily damaged by bombing or artillery fire, but there must have been heavy infantry fighting because many of the windows were broken and walls scarred.

We passed whoever it was we were relieving without any talk. Our house, at the end of town, was two stories high with a cellar. We set up for sleeping and cooking in the cellar. We set up the 30 caliber machine gun on an over-stuffed chair on the first floor. We did that by placing the tripod legs on the arms and back of the chair. The gun pointed out a back window toward the river. During daylight hours we kept a man on the second floor for observation.

The road we had come in on ran through town and up the other side of the canyon over a bridge that had been blown and lay with its center dipping into the river. We had no idea where the German positions actually were. Whether they were down low, along the river, or up on the ridge. There were no houses on the other side, but German brass probably had their infantry stuffed in holes down low.

The house had been left completely furnished by its owners when they had left. But now, several windows were broken and curtains blew in the wind that moaned through the rooms. Pictures still hung on the walls, but askew. It looked like it may have been a comfortable home.

To take the strain off my eyes from staring across the back yard and river, I looked around the room where the machine gun was placed. I wondered what kind of people had lived here. Had children grown up here; with sons now off to war? Were they “good” Nazis or just working people who didn’t have much to say about politics? I’ll bet five years ago they never thought their house would become an American strong-point. Would they return some day when this was all over or had they escaped to some town where they were bombed by the air corps? Better your house than mine.

The Germans stayed on their side of the river and didn’t bother us. Their dog-soldiers were probably hoping we wouldn’t come to chase them out of their holes, or have to come over and try to chase us out of ours. Not until Spring, anyway. Let’s just try to keep warm for a couple months.

Other than standing guard on the machine gun. We spent most of our time sleeping, eating, smoking and talking. A field-phone line was strung to all positions.

The field wire connected our outposts to Platoon Headquarters down the street. The connection continued to Troop Headquarters and finally to Squadron Headquarters; wherever they were.

I was on the phone, talking to someone at Platoon Headquarters one night and the man on the other end asked, “How is it up there; pretty quiet, huh?” I thought I’d liven things up a little so I told him about a tank/infantry assault we had repulsed that day. He came back with a hair-raising story of his own. This was all in the form of entertainment for out own amusement, but unknown to us, the connection was hooked-up all the way to Squadron Headquarters. It must have been the communications officer listening in, but whoever he was, he didn’t find any humor in our conversation.

Shortly after we rang-off, the phone came alive. The officer wanted to know what had been going on down at the river. I told him everything was all right – we were just kidding. He said we shouldn’t be giving information like that over the phone in case the Germans had tapped our line. He also told me we were supposed to use codenames. I asked, “O.K., what’s your code-name?” He said he couldn’t tell me over the phone. He asked why I didn’t know the code-names and I told him, “Because nobody told us our codes.” He said, “You’d better find out!” I asked him if he wanted me to come back there to ask him and he replied, “No! Ask one of your officers.” I told him we didn’t have any officers so he got mad again because you’re not supposed to give information like that over the phone.

The first day we were here in this position, the mortar crew was told to set up the 60mm mortar for fire missions. We rarely used the little mortar because of its short range, but here, in this narrow valley, it was adequate. The men of the section selected the back yard of a house behind us and a field phone was strung to our outposts.

I was standing back from a window on the second floor, observing across the river, when I heard another man on the first floor giving directions to adjust their fire. They would select predetermined point which would be numbered so fire could be called by giving the numerical locations.

I watched as the first rounds landed. There didn’t seem to be any pattern. The man directing the crews firing was getting mad because they couldn’t seem to put any two rounds close to each other. Sometimes this can be caused if the base plate of the mortar in not set solidly. But this was not the case here. Strong winds raced through the narrow valley and dispersed the light weight shells beyond any hope of accuracy.

As I continued watching, I heard a sound like a light tinkling of glass pass by the window followed by an explosion in the earth directly beneath the window.

The man directing the mortar crew shouted into the phone, “Cease fire, cease fire! That one almost hit the house. Forget the firing points!” You really could hear a mortar round – if you are high enough.

Platoon Headquarters is somewhat of a misnomer. Platoons are commanded by lieutenants; usually second lieutenants, but sometimes a first lieutenants gets stuck with a platoon. Lieutenants don’t have much administrative responsibility. They have to live with the men of the platoon in combat. Their casualty rate is much higher than that of other officer grades. Platoon headquarters consists of the lieutenant, maybe the platoon sergeant and some dog-soldier for communications. We didn’t have much luck keeping lieutenants in the First Platoon. They rarely said, “Goodbye”, they just disappeared.

Every night or two, each outpost had to send a couple men back to platoon headquarters for supplies; usually just water and C or K-Rations since we weren’t shooting at anybody and didn’t need ammo. We found a child’s sled and I usually pulled Gerry down the snow-covered street and we both pulled it back.

One night, as we started, Gerry asked, “Want a turn ridding?” I answered, “No thanks.” He asked, “Why not?”

“I don’t want to get shot riding on a sled.” “What’s the difference?” “How would it look? ‘Dear Mrs. Newton: We are sorry to inform you your husband was sort of killed-in-action while ridding a sled in Germany.’ Probably wouldn’t even get a Purple Heart.”

He thought about that ‘til we got to platoon H.Q.

Inside the house that was platoon H.Q., we exchanged gruff greetings and I noticed an unfamiliar lump under some blankets in a corner. I couldn’t make out who it might be in the dim light. I casually asked, “Who’s the sad sack of ---- in the corner?

The blankets exploded! Out came a figure that drew itself up to its full five feet six inches. “Lieutenant Strykawliski” (not his real name).

Another new lieutenant. Just what we needed. And this one is fresh from the States – more bad news. I thought for a minute that he was indignant about the way I had referred to him, but he just seemed to stand there. I couldn’t make out his face in the semi-darkness so I figured he couldn’t make me out either. I said, “At ease, Lieutenant. Go back to sleep.” He crawled back into his blankets in the corner and went to sleep.

Since we were back here, I asked what our code names were. Someone said, “Who knows?” I told them I had been chewed out for not using the codes. The man said, “Yeah. I heard it.” From then on, we made up code manes which made no sense, but apparently satisfied those whose job it was to monitor our calls.

After three or four days in this little town, a warm rain fell during the night. Snow, which had covered everything when we first arrived, melted completely away. We found the field between our house and the bridge littered with dead German soldiers. They must have been caught in the open while trying to cross the bridge.

One lay on our doorstep with his brains spilled out.

When things were slow, as they were in this place, someone usually started a rumor. Mostly it was the same one; we were going to Paris as M.P.’s. I think we were all bored with being M.P.’s in Paris and we needed something new. This time we were looking for the frozen, but otherwise beautiful body of a young German lady. Naturally she was nude or, even better, naked.

I don’t think anyone took the rumor seriously, but it was something to do. We did find the body of a young German soldier who must have died when the town was attacked. He was stretched across two kitchen chairs. He was nude, though. Maybe these guys are forgetting the difference!

One night it was announced that Big Six was coming down to our positions. We had been advised by phone. When the colonel arrives everyone tries to look alert and to be taking a personal interest in the war. When he arrived he naturally came to the house we were out-posting. The platoon sergeant assigned me to meet and escort him.

I didn’t challenge him when he arrived. If we hadn’t known he was coming I would have shot him, but I’m not going to stand out in the dark hollering, “Halt!” I did give him a smart West Point Cavalry salute that was probably wasted in the dark and he returned it. He said he wanted to go to the top floor so I led him up the stairs past empty, five-gallon jerry-cans. He asked where the bridge was located and I pointed through the darkness in its general direction.

He couldn’t make out the bridge and said he wanted flares fired over the bridge. I explained we didn’t have grenade adapters, blank ammunition or flares for our rifles, hoping he might get those things for us some time. I immediately realized that wasn’t what he wanted to hear so I added that we had combat engineers attached to us down here and I might be able to find some help from them. He told me to go ahead.

The engineers were across the road from us and I ran down the stairs to solicit their help. In the darkness, I stumbled over the empty gas cans and they came crashing after me.

I found the engineers and talked one of them into returning with me even though they lacked enthusiasm. It was cold outside and firing flares could draw artillery fire. The engineer reluctantly followed me back to the house where I positioned him in a door opening to the cellar. I told him to wait for my signal and ran back up to advise the colonel we were ready.

Big Six only said, “Get on with it.” I ran back down to the cellar door and told the engineer to start shooting flares and keep it up until I came back.

The first flare arched up through the blackness and popped open just about on target, but the strong winds currents in the canyon carried it away too fast to observe the bridge. Following flares were as useless.

Big Six said, “That’s no good. Tell him to stop shooting and have your mortar fire flares.” “Yes, Sir.” I ran back down the two lights of stairs again to the cellar door, thanked the engineer and went into the cellar to call the mortar section. Happily, the mortar was set up and I told them to fire flares over the bridge until I came back on the phone to tell them to stop.

I had started to sweat inside my field jacket with its bunny-jacket insert. I ran back up the two flights again to be with the colonel. The first mortar round opened on the other side of the river, too far away to see the bridge. “What are they doing? Didn’t you tell them to light up the bridge?”

I was explaining about the winds currents in the canyon when the next flare sailed uselessly away. The next flare almost landed on our roof. “Tell them to cease firing and call E Troop; tell them to fire some flares.” I hesitated, but decided just to say, “Yes, Sir.”

Back down two flights of stairs again to the cellar. On the field phone to the mortar section. “Cease fire, cease fire! You guys almost set us on fire with that third round.” “We told you we couldn’t hit anything twice with all the winds.” “Yeah, I know. Now get off line. I have to talk to E Troop.”

The C.O. of E Troop said, “We don’t have flares to shoot out of the 75’s. Ask him if he wants us to fire white phosphorous.” I told him to hang on; I’d be right back.

Now I knew the reason for my tank destroyer training. We had run everywhere we went. It was all in preparation for this night. I ran back up to the second floor. “E Troop doesn’t have flares for the 75’s, Colonel, but they said they could fire white phosphorous if you want.” “Cancel E Troop. I’ll have to see the bridge in daylight.”

Thank God! I guess the colonel was thinking the same thing I was; if the wind carried the light-weight phosphorous shells around anywhere near the way they did the flares, we might have the house burned down around us.

I led the colonel back down to the front door and saluted again. Then I went back to the cellar to tell E Troop C.O. to forget the fire-mission. He said, “That’s what I thought.” I replied, “I hoped so.”

I laid down, panting and sweating. The platoon sergeant asked, “Is the colonel gone?” I said, “Yes.”

“What did he wants?” I replied “He wanted to see the bridge.” The sergeant then asked “What about the bridge?”

Now I knew they were getting nervous about crossing the river so I said “He told me not to say anything to anybody.” He continued and asked “You can tell us. What did he say?” I simply replied “If you want to know what colonels talk about, you take him on the next tour.” I went to sleep.

Of course the colonel hadn’t explained anything to me and I was just as curious as the rest about what he might have in store for us. The bridge wasn’t usable for vehicles and, for that matter, the center of it was submerged so far under ice-cold water it couldn’t be crossed on foot. Aside from the cold, it was rather peaceful here and I, for one, didn’t want to spoil it.

We didn’t cross the river and a few days later we were relieved by some other outfit.

The relief came down before dark and we walked down the street of town up the hill. As we passed platoon headquarters, I glanced over at a jeep that was parked close to the house they used. The front bumper was stenciled: 9A 125C C14. My jeep! A field-wire ran from where a headlight had been removed into the house.

There were some things that were sacrosanct, even in our platoon, and probably in most combat outfits. You don’t touch another man’s mail, you don’t touch another man’s weapon and you don’t touch another man’s vehicle – without permission.

I threw some souvenirs out of the back of the jeep and stormed into platoon headquarters. I cussed out everybody who had anything to do with taking my jeep including the new lieutenant, just because he was there.

The poor guy stood there, not knowing if his rank had been violated or not. He was still trying to make the adjustment from garrison-life in the States, where he had been treated with some amount of respect, to life on the line, where he was little more than another body.

I finished by telling them they were walking out. I grabbed my headlight from where it had been used for indoor lighting and stalked out.

Gerry, Zwer and I rode to the top of the hill to wait for the rest of the outfit. When everyone had mounted, I pulled in at the rear of the column. Zwer rode with someone else on the way back to a rest area.

A ways down the road, the jeep sputtered to a stop. Out of gas! They had run the engine to keep the battery charged and hadn’t refilled it. No matter, except for the inconvenience, I always carried an extra ten gallons in the rear rack. We didn’t even try to tell anyone ahead of us we stopped and they continued down the road.

Gerry went back to the rear of the jeep while I lifted the seat and unscrewed the cap. Ganley said, “You don’t have any gas.” I always had gas and told him so. I went back and checked both cans and they were empty.

I was so mad now I couldn’t even talk. I got my blankets and spread them out alongside the road. Gerry did the same. We were almost asleep when a jeep came back looking for us. The other jeep had extra gas so we put five gallons in mine.

We followed the other jeep on down the road to a building in which we could spend the night. Unusually, this structure, whatever it was, had operating electricity. Light came from a bare bulb in a socket hanging by a wire. As we entered, someone said, “Last man in puts the light out.” I was still angry and wasn’t about to fumble around in the dark getting into my blankets. The light stayed on and finally someone threw a boot at it – and missed. Another boot missed the light. Finally one of the quieter men raised hi M-1 and put a bullet through the offensive light and through the ceiling and roof.

Off the line again for a few days and we got orders to remove all markings from every vehicle. The order applied to every vehicle in Ninth Army and maybe First Army too.

All army vehicles had identifying markings. After learning the abbreviations for various branches, you could tell what unit any vehicle was from. Of course a civilian with Nazi sympathies could learn to read them too and pass the information on to the enemy.

Although we were almost constantly attached to XIX Corps, we served there at the pleasure of Ninth Army. Our bumpers were marked on the right side with 9A 125C indicating we were Ninth Army, 125th Cavalry. On the left side we were, Using my own jeep as example, it read C, for C Troop followed by 14, the “1” indicating first platoon and the “4” was a random number to identify platoon vehicles. If there were no strict adherence to radio codes, the vehicle markings also became identification for radio calls. Mine was Charlie One-Four.

We painted out all the markings, along with our Red Horse emblems on the sides. The purpose of all these obliterations was to hide identity in preparation for the Roer River crossing. All Allied armies in the north were poised on the Roer by this time.

Somehow, in the place where we painted out the markings, we picked up a puppy. I’m not sure where we found him, but we did. He was a short-haired mutt, but otherwise he resembled no particular breed. The morning we started out to take new positions on the Roer we gave him a bath. He rode in my jeep and was friendly with everybody.

As usual, or what seemed to be usual, it had been raining and mud was everywhere, even on road surfaces. We stopped for some reason and bunched all the vehicles close together. This was against all military disciplines for aircraft attack, but we didn’t want the pup to get out and walk through the mud to get to the other vehicles. This way he could jump from one to the next without getting out in the mud. He caught on immediately and frisked his way back and forth along the column. Jeep to jeep, to armored car to jeep, getting the attention he needed.

When he returned, I put him inside my field jacket so he could take a nap. I heard Zwer, my recon sergeant, say, “We have to get rid of him.” That surprised me and I asked, “What?” Zwer said, “We can’t take a dog up on the line.” Of course it made sense. As I thought about it, I realized that beside the danger, he would probably have to stay in a foxhole. That was no life for a dog.

I looked around. We were on high ground of a ridge and there was only one house in sight. The land was cold and bleak. We couldn’t just turn him loose. As I looked, I saw a young German boy standing by the corner of the house watching us and he was curious.

He saw me as I got out of the jeep. I took a few cans of C-Rations out of the wood box tied to the wire-cutter on the front bumper. He continued to watch as I approached. He was apprehensive, but held his ground as I came closer.

I asked, “Want a dog?” Naturally he didn’t understand me so I held the puppy out with extended arms. He looked at the pup and then at me. The boy showed no emotion. I made a motion with my head to indicate he could have the dog. His eyes got large and he reached out and took the skinny little runt. I took the C-Rations out of my pocket and handed him those too. His mother couldn’t complain too much if the pup came with its own food. They probably wouldn’t be able to read the printing on the cans, but once they opened them they’d know it was dog food.

In very clumsy German I said, “Das ist eine gut Hund.” That was the best I could do to explain it was a good dog. He knew a good dog when he saw one and nodded his head. The boy never spoke or smiled, but as we drove on a few minutes later, he was smiling at the puppy. The pup seemed to be happy with the new arrangement.

I looked back at the platoon. No one waved or spoke to the boy, but they all took a last look at the dog as they passed.

We drove on to a small town, still on the high ground overlooking the river. It was still daylight and Headquarters Platoon was in town with us. We were located just south of Julich across the river. Someone, thinking aloud rather than making a statement, said, “This isn’t going to be so bad.” The rest of the conversation with a sergeant from Headquarters Platoon went something like this:

“You guys are going down to the river.”

“Where’s the river?”

“About a mile down the hill.”

“What’s down there?”

“They say it’s just a little town – and the river.”

“How come we always have to go somewhere like that and you guys stay back in a place like this?”

“We’re too valuable to get killed. We’re all technicians. It’s hard to replace good cooks and mechanics.”

“Oh – Okay”

After all the trouble to confuse the German Army one of the radio operators heard the English-speaking “Axis-Sally” on the radio say, “Welcome to the men of the Thirtieth Infantry Division. I hope you like your new positions on the Roer River.” So much for out smarting the Krauts.

After dark we packed up and started down to the new positions. I guess we always looked like a bunch of Gypsies whose horse had died. We didn’t have packs like the infantry so everything was carried in our hands or over our shoulders. As usual everyone carried a machine gun or a tripod or ammunition for it as well as a personal weapon and ammunition for it too.

We walked down the steep, pot-holed road to level ground below. Leaving the road we used a trail to a place where there was running water. We crossed over a log. As I reached the far end I slipped and two men reached for me. I said, “That’s O.K., it’s just a stream.” They told me it was a mill-race, deep and fast, carrying water to a mill a few yards away. We got to the first houses of the little town whose name, I think was either Inden or Winden. The infantry started out and we passed each other without speaking.

They must have sent the same guy who picks out army camps in the States to pick our positions. The “town” was a farming community of ten or twelve houses. It was located in a loop, or horseshoe bend of the Roer.

The army has a name for these positions. They call them “strong-points”. Strong-points are never on the line, or behind the line; they’re always in front of the line. With the whole United States Army a mile behind it becomes necessary to set up a “perimeter” defense. Perimeter defense means you set up guns pointing to the rear as well as front and sides.

We walked into the single street of the town, always a strange feeling because there is no way of knowing what things really look like in the darkness. Being optimistic, we naturally headed for the houses to set up our positions. If you can make it into a house, there’s always the change nobody can find you before morning at which time you explain you wondered where everybody was all night. We didn’t get the chance. We were told there were fox holes already dug by the infantry that we could use. We would be allowed to let four men stay inside houses until it was their turn to man a machine gun position.

We found a hole and upon inspection found it well constructed and large. Timbers had been laid over the hole and dirt piled over it. We decided that if all six of us went into the hole we wouldn’t have to be waking each other up all night. Besides, if we had one man awake we would only have to be on guard one hour during the night. That’s the kind of ingenuity that made America great.

The 30th Infantry Division dug good holes. This one even had a tiny coal-burning stove in it with a chimney that ran underground so the smoke wouldn’t give away the exact location.

In spite of the casual military structure of our fox hole and the reduced time to stand guard over the machine gun, I still had a problem staying awake. One night, while I was supposed to be the man awake on the gun, I awoke to hear whistling coming over the field-telephone. The bells had long been disconnected to avoid the sound. Troop Headquarters had been trying to get us for about twenty minutes and asked if we were all asleep. I asked if they really thought we would be sleeping in combat. They seemed satisfied with my explanation that the phone was buried under something and we couldn’t hear it.

I knew that I should be awake and the next night I devised a fool-proof scheme to stay alert. When my turn came on the gun I dug a hole for my trench knife and buried the handle, point up. I hunched over the point reminding myself what would happen if I dozed. I woke up about a half hour later, still hunched over the blade point.

We, C Troop, were not the only “strong-point” down at the river. A Troop was situated similarly somewhere up-river (south) of us. To keep the enemy from wandering around between strong-points, it is necessary to patrol between the points. On alternate nights, A and C Troops would send a patrol of five or six men to the other troop and then return. The patrol would phone ahead so they would be expected and phone again to their own troop when they were ready to return.

The system worked well for a while and then one night A Troop’s patrol got lost. They couldn’t get their bearings to find our troop so they turned back to A Troop’s position. We had been expecting them, but their own troop was waiting for their phone call to announce their return.

It must be understood that on the line you don’t challenge to find out if it’s friend or foe. There are no friends. You shoot. That’s what one of A Troop’s machine gun positions did, wounding some of their own men of the patrol. It is unfortunate, for lack of a better word, but it happens in war. I don’t know that anyone is at fault. Whoever makes the least mistakes wins.

After we had been in these positions a few days the Germans south of us blew a spillway to the Schwammanauel Dam. The river started to rise and, because we were only a few feet above normal water level, the water started coming up through the bottom of our holes. We had to keep building up the floor and the holes kept getting shallower. It was later estimated that if the dams had let go altogether, it would have flooded the valley a thousand yards across ( and this would not have been written ). We were three or four hundred yards from the normal river channel.

When we went into the holes at night, we carried straw to lay over ammunition boxes to stay above the water. Our floor kept getting higher and the head space lower. We brought in a supply of coal briquets each night for the little stove. I got so I could sleep around the thing without burning myself. We broke the brick-shaped briquets before we burned them because we had been advised the Krauts had been stuffing explosives inside.

We spent the days inside houses in the town. In one, we found a bin with small, dried-up potatoes. We also found some kind of cooking grease, so we sat around for hours peeling and slicing the potatoes and deep-frying them. The end result wasn’t worth the effort and no one would have eaten them under different circumstances. But, it was something to do.

All our supplies had to be hand-carried down from the cliffs above. Nobody liked the walk so we eliminated water. There were pumps in the backyard of the houses so we depended on that. The trouble was that the water we got out of the pumps was dirty. The earth was saturated and we scooped up a can full of the muddy stuff to prime the pumps. I guess it was good the army gave us all those shots at regular intervals.

One night, out in the holes, we heard an explosion from a nearby hole. It was obviously a hand grenade. We all came alert and one man listened in on the telephone for someone to report what they had. After a long silence troop came on to ask who had thrown the grenade and why.

It was two goof-offs that we had gotten rid of from our platoon a few weeks earlier. At that time they had paired-off with each other because nobody wanted either of them for a partner. This night they thought they heard something and couldn’t wait it out. They threw the grenade, which was all right, but they didn’t tell anyone what had happened and we didn’t know if a patrol was coming in or what had occurred.

Out of boredom during the days, two men decided they wanted the little parachutes that let rifle flares descend slowly. By this time we had collected grenade launchers and blank ammunition for the M-1 Rifles to fire grenades and flares.

They fired the flares against the side of a half-timbered barn across the narrow road. The flares kept falling to the road and burned the parachutes. A couple of them though, penetrated the mud wall and set fire to hay stored inside. One more building burned in this war didn’t really make so much difference, but the men went in to see if they could put out the fire.

The fire was going too strong to extinguish and on top of that, they found the infantry before us had left 81mm mortar shells stacked inside. Now we had a problem. If those shells got hot, there would be shrapnel flying all over town. A few men ran in and out of the barn carrying the shells until they were all removed. The barn burned.

By chance, or maybe design, Big Six chose this night to come down to inspect our positions. I was again selected to guard the gate and greet the colonel. Everybody was awake and alert as we always were when Colonel Biddle came to visit to assure him that the two infantry and one armored division behind us were safe from surprise attack. I stood at the gate to our ‘headquarters’ across from the burning barn wondering if we were supposed to know he was coming. If not, I should challenge him as he approached. That would be impressive.

While I pondered this, the colonel came up. I didn’t challenge him, but came to attention and gave him a smart salute. Funny; for the last few months whenever I had to stand at attention, I had the feeling my uniform didn’t. It always seemed to be ‘At ease’. He returned an even smarter salute. Captain Ploehn was with him.

The colonel asked why the barn was burning. I couldn’t tell him it had been set afire by men trying to salvage parachute’s from flares so I told him the Krauts fired a couple rounds of artillery and those started the fire. When he asked what was in the barn, I told him the truth about the mortar shells and the men carrying them out. I hoped he wasn’t going to put them in for medals and my story would come out.

Colonel Biddle, like General Patton, was West Point Cavalry. Like Patton, he was spit-and-polish but unending personal courage.

The colonel and captain disappeared among the houses. Immediately, the platoon sergeant came up and told me to go to another foxhole on the river-side of town. I asked him how long I should stay there and he replied, “Just until the colonel leaves.”

I found the entrance to the hole from the sergeants directions and let myself down into it. I hadn’t been in this hole before. It was a trench, covered with timber and dirt and made a couple turns before the other end where it surfaced again.

As I felt my way through the black tunnel, I came to a sofa which had been put in before the trench was covered over. It had probably been intended for comfort, but now it was sodden from rain that had seeped through.

While I sat at the far end, wondering what I was supposed to be doing, I heard voices coming from behind me and then stopping right in front. The colonel was speaking: “You should have a machine gun position right here, Captain.” The Captain hopefully replied, “There is one right around here somewhere.”

I didn’t have a machine gun and I was planning to get out of the hole as soon as they left, but I spoke up and said, “Right behind your ankles, Sir.”

The captain was relieved to find he did have a position there, Big Six was satisfied his ‘finest’ had things under proper military control and they left.

I never quite understood why we had to make the colonel think he had more men then he really did.

The town on the bluffs behind us became our ‘rest area.’ Headquarters Platoon was there with hot meals. What a difference from Beeck and other line-positions we had since October.

We were relieved regularly by platoons, although the positions down by the river weren’t too bad by themselves. They were almost peaceful. The Germans were apparently saving their ammunition for the impending river-crossing. They hadn’t even shot harassing-fire at us.

The inevitable complaint arose though; “Why do we have to walk up that damned hill to rest?” We would have walked up Mount Everest to get away from Beeck to a rest area, but now the easy-life had caught up to us.

Our rest-time was usually spent loafing, sleeping and letter-writing. The only chore we had was to fire a few rounds from a .50 caliber machine gun a couple times a night to harass the Germans across the river. If it didn’t harass the Germans, it did wake everybody on the hill. At the range we were firing, one .50 caliber bullet probably landed for every fifty square yards in the impact-area, but it was just to let them know we were still here.

While ‘resting’, we spent our time reading or writing letter. On one of these days I was sitting outside, leaning against the house we used. While musing on some insignificant matter, I examined a fragmentation hand-grenade. A couple screw-threads were exposed so I unscrewed the fuse. I poured some of the powder out into my hand to see what it looked like. Then, in an instant I was ashamed of then, and still am, I pored the rest of the powder out and screwed the fuse back in very loosely. With the fuse back in place, I pulled the pin and tossed the grenade through the open window into the house.

I heard the spoon clang on the wooden floor and somebody yelling, “Grenade!” The yelling and subsequent clamor inside startled even me. I jumped to my feet and looked through the window. Men were diving out the rear windows and running down the steps to the cellar. The guys in front, going down the cellar weren’t moving fast enough for those in the rear and they dove head-long over the top of them.

Long after the time the grenade should have exploded, heads started to appear over the floor-level opening to the cellar. They saw me looking in the window and one asked, “Newton, did you do that?” Those who had been in the room formed a spontaneous posse and I ran for my life. I had to find a different place to sleep that night.

The green field jacket was regular issue to us. That’s why no could tell what kind of an outfit we were in when we were dismounted. The only exceptions to the field jacket uniform were the platoon sergeant and one or two others who managed to ‘requisition’ the tan, ‘tanker-jacket’ with knit collar and cuffs.

For some reason, Ganley had borrowed this prized possession from the sergeant, probably to wear while he washed his own.

Ganley came into the house on the hill above the Roer while we were resting and approached the platoon sergeant. It must be understood; we didn’t salute anyone under the rank of full-colonel, and even in garrison-life, non-commissioned officers – corporals and sergeants – are never saluted. We knew something was about to happen when Ganley stopped in front of the sergeant, stood at rigid attention and saluted smartly. The sergeant also became aware of this strange behavior.

Gerry held his salute and stated, “Sergeant, I’d like to report your goddamned tanker-jacket is on fire.”

The platoon sergeant didn’t ask questions but in complete panic, brushed by Gangley and ran out the door, followed by everyone in the room who didn’t want to miss the joyous occasion. The jacket, submerged in five gallons of gasoline in a galvanized wash-tub was in mid-state of cremation.

Everyone had at least a smile on his face watching the sergeant trying to salvage his jacket with a stick. Whenever he raised it out of the tub, roaring flames made him drop it. Gerry looked worried and stood near the rear of the audience. I asked him, “What happened, Ger’?”

“I was going to clean his jacket in gasoline before I gave it back to him. I must have dropped a match, or something. He’s going to be mad.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“What d’ya mean, ‘don’t worry about it? He liked that jacket”

“It was just an accident. What’s he going to do, put you in point? You’re already in point.”

“I don’t know, but he’s going to be mad.”

“He can’t break you to private. You’re a Pfc by an Act of Congress.”

“He’s going to be mad.”

“Forget it. You’re my partner; if he gets too mad we’ll both resign from point.”

“You can’t resign from point.”

“Who can’t? How do you think I got driving? The last guy told him to shove the stripes and quit. That reminds me; I think I’m supposed to be a corporal or something. I’ll have to ask him about that.”

“Well, don’t ask him right now.”

Nothing further came of the cremation.

After a couple days in the rest-area we returned to our small town down the hill to resume our strong-point positions. One morning, after leaving the nighttime fox holes at sunrise, we took refuge from the weather inside the houses. Most everyone went back to sleep, but Ganley and I decided to eat first (old army adage: “Never miss the meal ahead of you”). We found the rations, but the containers were different they were marked, “10 in 1.”

Old-time outhouses were supposedly decorated with a carved crescent moon in the door. The army, for reasons known only to itself, used the same crescent moon printed or stenciled on food containers. We knew from that code that the carton contained food, but it was marked 10 in 1 so we read the rest of the label. The contents would feed ten one meal; five men, two meals or any other combination.

We tore open the box and found a new world of exotic foods. There was canned ham with raisin sauce, dehydrated breakfast food and other equally tempting delicacies. After months of C and K Rations on the line, I became suspicious.

“I think it’s a mistake”, I told Ganley.

“What do you mean, a mistake? Why?

“I think this is the kind of stuff the guys in the rear eat.”

Ganley mused; “I wonder how long the army’s been sending this stuff over?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll net we never see any of it again.”

Ganley solved the dilemma. “Let’s eat it before they find out and make us give it back.”

We gorged ourselves in an orgy of breakfast. The dehydrated breakfast food became a delicious mixture by adding water. It even tasted a little like milk and sugar had been added. We ate cold, thick ham slices dipped in raisin-sauce.

We talked with full mouths about this wonderful food that had somehow found its way to the line. We had just about decided it might turn out to be a pretty good war if food like this kept coming, but we finally agreed that somehow the army must have shipped this over faster than Service of Supply could sell it in France on the Black Market. We must have been right, and demand caught up with supply, because we never saw it again as line-rations.

While back up on the hill for another rest, we were called together in platoon formation. The special occasion was for the issue of Shoe-paks. These were specially designed boots with leather uppers and rubber soles and last. The came with felt inserts for warmth, They were intended to stop “trench-foot” which had disabled thousands of G.I.’s during the winter. Some even their feet amputated in severe cases. However, we needed them in October, November, December and January. It was now February and the snow had melted and the temperatures were rising.

“Men”, the Supply Sergeant said, “I know things are a little late getting here, but we have to issue them. And we only have enough to issue two pairs to a platoon.” At full-strength, it meant that two men out of thirty one would have protection against trench-foot. The expected jeering and cat-calling started at once. After we tired of whistling and hooting, someone said, “I’ll take a pair, What sizes you got?”

“Seven and a half.”

“What else?”

“That’s it. Two pair, size seven and a half.”

The whistling and jeering started again with new vigor. The only man in the platoon with a size 7 ½ foot was Zwer.

“Send them back to those rear-echelon bastards who’ve been selling them to the Frenchmen with a note to shove ‘em.”

We broke the formations and wandered away while the Supply Sergeant was still explaining, he just took what they sent him.

We changed holes from time to time and one night while we were in a hole closest to the river, and facing it, I heard a tank moving around on the German’s side of the Roer. I called E Troop, the assault guns, by phone and spoke to the C.O. I told him I had a target; a tank, but it was so dark I didn’t know how to adjust his fire. He said they would fire one round of white phosphorus at the edge of the river and I could try to adjust from there.

A few seconds later I heard the 75mm shell pass overhead. A couple more seconds and I saw the brilliant explosion. The captain of E Troop asked if I saw the burst. I told him I did and working from sound only, in relation to the shell burst, I thought the tank was moving about three hundred yards up and three hundred yards left. The captain came back and said, “Seranade on the way.” Seranade is a romantic word artillerymen use to describe a battery firing with all guns. The shells passed overhead again and started landing in the area where I heard the tank. E Troop fired about sixteen rounds which was unusual because they were usually short of ammunition.

The E Troop commander came back and asked, “Do you hear anything more of the tank?” I listened and told him everything was quiet over there. He said my adjustment had pin-pointed an intersection in a town across the river. We congratulated each other on knocking out a tank. I asked about all the firing and he said they had all the ammunition they could handle now.

We never knew what any given situation was, and I don’t suppose it was any of our business. All a combat soldier has to know is where he is, where the enemy is and do his job. It might be years later, while reading unit histories, that you find out what happened in the big picture.

The infantry we relieved on the Roer was the 30th Division. They went into reserve behind us and prepared for the river crossing along with the 29th Infantry Division. The 2nd Armored Division was interspersed with the infantry. We had about forty-five thousands combat troops behind us but we didn’t know it and it was still lonely down by the river.

Nobody told us anything about the attack across the Roer because it was secret. That’s why all bumper markings had been removed from vehicles. Somebody could have said something, though, just before the artillery started.

I was in a hole, about half asleep as usual, when they started. We had been under some pretty good artillery barrages before, both German and American, but this was enormous. Apparently all units were tied into a radio net that gave a command to all guns. They all fired at once.

It was combined artillery of the 29th and 30th Infantry Divisions, artillery and tanks of the 2nd Armored Division, 20 battalions of XIX Corps artillery and Anti-aircraft artillery brought forward for support. There were quad (4) .50 caliber machine guns, 37 and 40mm AA guns, 75mm, 76mm, 3 inch, 105mm howitzers, 105mm guns, 155mm howitzers, 155mm guns, 8 inch guns, tank guns, tank destroyer guns. A guess would be a thousand guns of heavier calibers all firing on signal.

The first indication I had that something unusual was taken place, was a sound that must have equaled a cyclone. The air overhead was being moved with a tremendous rushing sound. I think I was on the phone before the first rounds landed on the other side of the river. I was hollering at someone back at troop headquarters asking what was going on. “Their attacking the river.”

The sky lighted up from tracers from the AA guns. Across the river an unbelievable area was exploding with hundreds of rounds landing every minute. I couldn’t feel sympathy for the Germans caught in the tons of steel falling on them, but after Beeck, I sure knew how they felt at this moment.

The infantry of the 29th and 30th Divisions were down to the river waiting for the assault. They were going to cross in different locations. Before them would go the other “Bastard” outfits (besides cavalry) of this war, Combat Engineers.

Nobody can ever say enough in favor of combat engineers. That night, they would put fifteen bridges across the Roer at flood stage. The bridges would be cut by debris and re-built. Machine guns, mortars and artillery pounded the engineers. One bridge would have to be re-built nine times that night. All the time they were being wounded and killed. Meanwhile, corps artillery (20 battalions) fired four hundred tons of shells.

The infantry of both divisions had to cross those bridges with full combat gear and fight when they got to the other side. A lot of them wouldn’t reach the other side that night.

We pulled back from the river after the bridgeheads were established. A couple days latter, when heavy pontoon bridges were secured, we crossed the river behind the 2nd Armored Division. We and the armor were put across to take advantage of the expected breakout.

We were mounted again and it felt good. We passed through Julich which had been reduced to rubble. Only a few walls and chimneys remained standing. Our orders took us to the Hambach Forest where the 30th Infantry Division was located, but as usual we didn’t see anyone but ourselves.

Forests are not looked upon with favor by mounted troops. Trees can hide a lot of enemy and there is no room to maneuver. We drove along fire-breaks in the forest and took up defensive positions. There were supposed to be several thousand German troops in there somewhere.

I had to take one section, with a machine gun, down to another fire-break to set up a position. The location was less than a quarter-mile away. We left just before dark and by the time I dropped them off, it was completely dark. I drove by outlining the dark sky against even darker trees.

We hadn’t heard or seen the Germans in the forest, but it was mighty lonely driving back by myself. I think the hairs on the back of my neck were starting to stiffen when I felt the jeep go airborne. We landed and I put it in low gear and let out the clutch. All for wheels spun with no purchase on any of them. The jeep could pull itself out of anything if it had traction, but now we sat helpless.

I started to get out to see where we were, but as I stuck my left leg out, it hit something alongside. I crawled out and found I had driven into a bomb crater about five feet deep. The jeep was hanging by its bumpers. I grabbed my riffle and walked back to the others to get help. Four men returned with me and we manhandled it out of the hole.

The night was uneventful and the next morning we packed up and moved out. Our destination was a town which gave the prospect of sleeping in a bed. We relieved a unit of the 30th Infantry Division and asked them if there had been any action. They pointed to a hose at the end of town where we were positioning an armored car. It was a brick house and it had holes punched all the way through it. We looked through the holes and they formed a straight line out the far side. This was not artillery fire; it was tank fire from a German 88mm gun. It could go through the armored car as easily as it did the house.

We were out in the open, directing the car into position and hoping the tank, or tanks, the Germans had in the next town had left. That town was about eight hundred yards away and the terrain between was as flat as a table-top.

In situations like this one, you find yourself talking to anyone and no one saying, “Why are we doing this?” You picture an enemy tanker looking through his sight, waiting to see if you’re going to bring up any more targets for him before he starts shooting. If he shoots the 20 pound, 88 millimeter shell – and misses – you can shoot back at him with the 1.6 pound, 37 millimeter round from the “main armament” of the armored car.

We got the car parked and nothing had happened. So far, so good. We found some pieces of fencing and propped them against the car for camouflage. Maybe it wouldn’t be so easy to recognize; no, it still looked like an armored car – with a fence leaning against it.

We all walked away from the car because it seemed to be a hazardous place to be. We got word that we were being reinforced by tank destroyers. Now they might think twice before shooting at us. A tank destroyer’s 76 millimeter gun evened thing up a little.

We stood around the street having a smoke when we saw a truck approaching. They were towing a cannon. We wondered what an artillery outfit was doing so far forward. Then we saw it was Tank Destroyers – ‘towed-mount’ Tank Destroyers. I didn’t know they even had any in Europe.

A crew got into the armored car and the rest of us walked back down the street to look around and find a place to sleep. Ganlry and I were awakened at ten P.M. to take a turn in the armored car. We were to be there until we went to get our relief at midnight.

At midnight, Gerry and I were sound asleep again. About 12.30 A.M. I felt a hand shaking me awake. Someone was asking, “Who’s in there?” I recognized the captains voice and my first thought was that they had caught us asleep while on guard and we would spend the next hundred years in a stockade – if they didn’t shoot us. I replied, “Newton, Captain.”

I was in the car commanders seat and Gerry was below me in the gun-loaders seat. I kicked him with my knee to wake him. Now he was smacking his lips, trying to get the sleep-taste out of his mouth. And mumbling, “What’s the matter, what’s the matter?”

The captain whispered, “Big Six is with me. Who’s in there with you?” Big Six; the colonel. That settled it – we’re going to be shot! I thought of telling the captain I was alone, no use both of us getting shot, but Gerry was making too much noise now. “Ganley’s here Captain.”

Now Ganley was coming to the top of the turret. He was still half asleep so I kept whispering, “Big Six, Big Six”, so he wouldn’t come out grumbling about being woke up in the middle of the night.

The captain whispered, “Gangley?” Gerry was still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He whispered to me, “Who’s that?” I told him it was the captain.

Almost cheerfully Gerry said, “Oh, Hi Captain.”

“Hi, Ganley. Go back and wake up the troop. We’re going to attack the town up ahead.”

This struck Gerry as incredulous. He asked “Tonight?”

I was hoping the colonel couldn’t hear any of this.

“Tell the First Platoon they will go in mounted and the Second and Third will go in dismounted.” Ganley replied, “Okay Captain” as though the captain was making a big mistake.

“Newton, there’s a German half-track on the road. Take the armored car down there and push it off.” Now it was my turn; “Me?” (I had never driven an armored car). I decided no to tell the captain I had never driven one before. I though we were in enough trouble already. Amended my quaestion with, “Okay.”

I climbed out of the turret, opened the hatch to the drivers seat and slid down. I knew there were two buttons on the dash; one was the starter, the other the siren. I lighted a match. I knew the colonel wouldn’t forget to shoot me if I hit the siren. The engine started right up.

The armored cars didn’t have shift patterns like a jeep or truck. The lever moved in a straight line with notches for various gears.

I lit another match, found “1”, which must be low gear and let the clutch out. The car moved forward. Onto the pavement now and down the road toward the German half-track in low gear so I wouldn’t have to shift.

The tank that had drilled holes through the house was on my mind and I wondered if some panzer gunner was tracking the armored car at this moment. I reckoned I would find out when I turned it broadside to push the half-track.

A little past the German vehicle I stopped and lit another match to find reverse gear. I found it and backed the car around to the right until it was aimed at the half-track. Another match and I put the car into first gear again.

As I let the clutch out, I remembered there had been dead German soldiers hanging out of the vehicle. I couldn’t remember on which side though and because I was on the dark side of it, I couldn’t make out details. I pictured the sharp, horizontal nose of the car bisecting a body about two feet in front of my face; yeeeuch!

I eased the car up to the half-track until it rested against its side, then gunned the engine and slipped the clutch. All six wheels were spinning on the pavement, but the half-track wouldn’t budge. The noise was outrageous and I expected enemy fire.

Captain Ploehn and the colonel had walked up to me by then and the colonel said, “Ram it! Knock it off the road.” I backed up and took a running start, the impact jarred my teeth, but I repeated the process until the vehicle was on its side in the far ditch.

The rest of the troop arrived at this time and I gave up the armored car to its driver. I got into my jeep, which had been driven up, and we went into the town. No opposition, the Germans had pulled out. The colonel went back to his headquarters, satisfied that we had taken another town, and the rest of us found suitable quarters to go back a sleep.

The First Platoon took over a three-story house so Gerry and I found a bed on the third floor where we hoped we wouldn’t be disturbed for the rest of the night. Before we fell asleep Gerry asked me if anything had been said about us sleeping in the armored car. I replied, “No.” Like a couple good “Guard-house Lawyers”, we decided that since they had committed us to combat we couldn’t be court-mart1ialed and fell asleep.

We were awakened about Six A.M. by someone shaking us. We irritatedly asked what was going on and the man said, “They’re blowing the roof off the house.” We lay there a few seconds and sure enough another barrage came in destroying part of the roof. We got up and got out of town.

Maybe the war was becoming too casual because the next night, in another town, we parked the armored cars and jeeps at the curb – civilian-style – and posted one man at the door of a house. Something happened to his relief and the next morning we were awakened by the rest of the troop, which was already moving out. One whole platoon was asleep.

This day we attacked two – really three towns. We drove into the first, Niederembt, and met no resistance. While we waited for further orders, a German woman came out and spoke to us in her own language. This was interpreted for us by the one man in the platoon who spoke German. She said her son, a soldier, was home on leave and wanted to surrender. She was frightened for his safety. We told her to bring him out – he wouldn’t be shot.

She returned shortly with her son in his neatly pressed uniform. The boy had obviously never had to shave. We asked her how old he was and she replied “Sixteen.” He didn’t even look fourteen. He reminded me of a high school freshman meeting the varsity football team on his first day at school.

“Tell her to take him home and get rid of the uniform. The war’s all over for him.” She spoke to the kid, but he shook his head negatively. She told us he had to surrender. He kissed her goodbye and we sent him to the rear.

Someone decided the troop should attack the next town with the First and Third Platoons dismounted and the Second Platoon mounted. The next town turned out to be two, side-by-side. We, the First Platoon, took the right sight of the road and the Third took the left with the Second following, mounted. I decided to carry the B.A.R. that I picked up in Beeck last December. The Browning Automatic Rifle and a couple Tommy Guns would be our only automatic weapons.

As we entered the first town, Lippe, the third platoon came under attack from Germans out in a field. We went over to give them a hand and the second platoon came up with the armored cars. There was a small fire-fight and many of the Germans hid behind a hay stack. 50 caliber machine guns, mounted on the armored cars, set the hay on fire and the Krauts had to get into the open. A few of them made a half-hearted attempt to attack, but canister shot from the little 37 mm cannons discouraged them. If the 37’s had anything good to be said for then it was the canister. As the name implies, a thin metal canister held ball bearings, or round shot, packed in resin. The effect was that of a large-bore shotgun.

We continued into town, going house-to-house to make sure we didn’t leave enemy behind us. We came to a large factory which was empty of anyone. There was a ramp leading to a cellar under the work area. The platoon sergeant told me to check it out; because I was carrying the B.A.R., I guess.

I started down the ramp, but before I got more then ten feet it was too dark to see. I lit a match and took a few steps and then repeated the procedure. After a few matches, I realized I was violating a vital rule of survival and gave it up. I thought of rolling a grenade down, but there was a change civilians might be at the bottom.

Continued down the street, we came to a cross-road. The Second Platoon, mounted and the Third Platoon continued into Lippe. We, the First Platoon, turned right and passed under the railroad trestle. As we turned to enter Bedburg, Lieutenant Strykawlski (again, not his real name), who must have thought he was in command of all the dismounted troops, became confused. He stood in the middle of the intersection holloring, “Which way do I go?” Someone in the Third Platoon told him that if he didn’t get his butt out of the street he was going to Graves Registration. He chose to remain with the Third.

Bedburg was only about three blocks long where it fronted the railroad tracks. We had only to worry about houses on the right side of the street. We searched each house as we came to it because we couldn’t chance leaving any enemy behind.

I found the drawback to the B.A.R. while doing this. The rifle had a ‘flash-hider’ an extension about four inches long at the muzzle. Even carrying it at ‘high-port’ it caught in the doorways.

Next to my jeep, the B.A.R. had become my most prized possession. The Browing Automatic Rifle became obsolete after the war, but it was a superb weapon. It fired the same .30 caliber ammunition used in the M-1 Rifle and .30 caliber machine guns. The magazines held twenty rounds fired full-automatic. It had seen service in World War I and continued as a basic infantry weapon.

This one had been picked up in Beeck where its owner had lost it under unknown circumstances. Our Troop Armorer got into a fist-fight with a man at ordnance who didn’t want to issue magazines because cavalry wasn’t ‘authorized’ B.A.R.’s.

Although the armorer had ‘requisitioned’ magazines and ammunition belt for the gun, neither he nor I thought of suspenders for the belt. Web suspenders were universal as army equipment, but I couldn’t find one pair among anyone I asked. Now I had been wearing the belt around my waist with its full weight hanging on my hips. As soreness set in, it started one of the inane arguments Gerry and I got into. I asked him if he would carry the ammunition belt for a while. He answered, “No.”

“B.A.R. men are supposed to have ammunition-bearers.”

“You’re not a B.A.R. man.”

“I’ve got a B.A.R.; that makes me a B.A.R. man.”

“Cavalry isn’t authorized B.A.R.’s.”

“I don’t care, I’ve got one.”

“You haven’t got an ammunition-bearer.”

I continued to carry the belt around my waist.

We came to an empty lot and out behind the houses, we saw someone peeking at us from out of the ground. We told him to come out, in German, and an old civilian man came out of a bunker or air-raid shelter in the earth. He looked like a left-over from the first Great War. He was followed by a procession of men, woman and children.

The little, old man was defiant and feisty. He led his group toward us, carrying a white flag attached to a pole. When he got to within five feet, he pounded the staff to the ground in military-fashion. He then rattled-off a long speech in German which none of us understood. He must have been officially surrendering the town and probably reminding us of our obligations under the Geneva Convention, but it sounded more like he was issuing an ultimatum. This was our first experience with civilians in combat. When it sounded as though he was finished, someone told him what he could do with his flag and pole. He didn’t seem to understand.

In faltering German, I asked the old man if there were any German soldiers in town. He said, “Nein.” I motioned to the bunker out back and asked him if there were any soldiers there. His reply was negative, but his attitude was nasty so I grabbed him by the arm and walked him back. I asked once again if there were German soldiers down there. He defiantly said there weren’t so I pulled the pin from a grenade and tossed it down the hole. I watched him as the grenade exploded and he didn’t flinch so I guess he was telling the truth. He was now, anyway.

We continued house-to-house down the block. Gerry and I passed the last house in the row. Beyond it was a concrete wall about eight feet high. The wall enclosed the yard of some kind of business. The wood gates were wide open and we merely checked the yard with a glance as we passed.

We had both just made it to the continuation of the wall when a machine gun from inside the yard fired through the open gate. We pressed ourselves against the wall. We were safe enough with the concrete to protect us, but we had to get back and knock out the gun.

We stood there looking at each other. Almost accusingly, he said, “We could have been killed.”

The statement was rather obvious, but I didn’t understand why he was holding me responsible. I said, “Ah – right.”

One of the men behind us motioned for us to stay put. We couldn’t go anywhere anyway and all we had to worry about was a German grenade coming over the wall – or more Germans coming around the corner. There was no place to take cover, except possibly in the shallow gutter.

The man who told us to stay where we were went up into the last house we had passed and lobbed a grenade into the yard. It seemed to take care of the machine gun.

The platoon sergeant told us this was as far as we would have to go today. We were to outpost every other house as far back as we had men, two to a house.

Gerry and I took the house next to the wall. The enemy was somewhere between us and the Erft River a couple hundred yards to the east. As usual we were undermanned and under gunned.

We went to the third floor or the house. There were no windows facing the yard from which the machine gun had fired at us so we chose a rear room facing the back yards and the enemy. The room was sparsely furnished with a leather-covered sofa and matching chair. The sofa offered the promise of some sleep.

We checked out the back window from back in the room so we couldn’t be seen. Everything appeared quiet. I dropped the B.A.R. ammunition belt to the floor and loosened my trousers to massage my hips. They were reddened, but hadn’t yet blistered.

We both watched out the window for a while and could see no enemy movement. Then, by whatever system we used, it was decided that I would use the sofa first to relax. We had no idea how long we would be here. Gerry took first watch at the window.

I was just reaching that half-sleep that is so comfortable before unconsciousness closes over when I heard Ganley whisper, “Newt, Newt.”

I tried to maintain my trip into oblivion, but asked, “What d’ya want?”

“There’s a Kraut sneaking up through the back yard.”

“Shoot him.” I was awake now and on my feet.

“You get him with the B.A.R.”

“You saw him first – shoot.”

“No. Use the B.A.R.”

I looked over Gerry’s shoulder and saw the German walking in a low crouch along a fence in our back yard. He was only about twenty yards away and would soon be out of sight below us. He was wearing his helmet and carrying a Schmeiser Machine-Pistol so he wasn’t coming in to surrender. Gerry was kneeling on the seat of the chair as he watched so I told him again to shoot. He repeated, “You get him with the B.A.R.”

I climbed onto the chair with my right foot on top of the back-rest and my left foot on an arm. Ganley continued watching and I had to maneuver the muzzle of the rifle around him.

The army, in its wildest dreams, had never considered the Browing Automatic Rifle fired from this position. From the first round, the recoil started pushing me backward. I did a reverse somersault and landed on the wood floor with my shoulders. Ganley hadn’t moved before I fired and the muzzle-blast was only an inch or two from his ear.

From the floor, I looked up at Ganley who was standing with his hands over his ears. He was deaf from the blast. I hollored, “What happened to the Kraut?”

He couldn’t hear me and seemed to have lost all interest in the enemy soldier or any possible more enemy soldiers. He was mad now and finally shouted, loud enough for himself to hear, “You damn shot my head off.” He was so mad at me I started laughing at him which didn’t help.

I got up from the floor and checked out the window. I guess they only sent one man in. I told Gerry he could have my turn of the sofa in an effort to calm his anger. He accepted my offer, but wasn’t nearly ready to forgive me.

A few seconds later the platoon sergeant came bursting into the room and wanted to know what the shooting had been about. Ganley’s hearing must have returned because his first words were, “Newton almost shot my head off.” “Newton” instead of “Newt” – he must really be mad at me. The sergeant looked at me as though I had indeed tried to shoot his head off.

I tried to explain to the sergeant about the German soldier coming through the yard and that the Dumb Bastard on the couch wouldn’t get out of my way when I fired. The sergeant looked from one to the other of us and left the room shaking his head. I don’t think he wanted to understand what had happened.

I turned my vigil at the window once to look at the man on the sofa. He was asleep already. For a guy who almost had his head “Shot off”, he had sure relaxed in a hurry.

I thought about that now. How come we were in this house together – the last house, as usual? Why were we together? Nobody told us we had to be partners. I knew I didn’t have to look for him when things got rough. Did he feel the same?

I continued to think about it as I kept my vigil at the window, but couldn’t come up with an answer. Maybe we could figure it out after the war was over – if we were still talking to each other.

There was an explosion down the street and a few minutes later the platoon sergeant came in and asked, “Are you guys all right?” I looked at him, wondering why he asked, and replied, “I guess so.”

He told us that soon after I fired the B.A.R. an artillery shell came through the window of a house down the street where two other men were out-positing. Apparently the Germans saw the two men and fired a direct-fire gun at them. They both just happened to have left the room for a second before the shell came in and demolished everything. I guess the sergeant was trying to keep count of how many men he had.

In civilian life, a burning house is cause for alarm. Now it was normal. Houses are supposed to burn. The odor of old, dusty wood and straw burning is part of war. Smoke and manure and wet earth are smells required for war. Nobody tries to put out the fire.

Sounds had changed too. The soft sound of rubber heels wasn’t there. Now it was glass and shale breaking under foot, or mud sucking with each step. The noise of splintering wood. The old men of war no longer breathed as they once had; they wheezed and gave primordial grunts. And at night there was silence. No traffic sounds, no dogs barking, only the ceaseless wind blowing through a crevice in low moans.

Colors had changed from bright reds and blues and greens to gray. Everything was gray; the sky, the earth, the trees, the olive drab uniforms and the bodies inside them.

Gerry and I, like men in other houses, waited through the night. All shooting had stopped and the Germans, like us, were waiting for dawn. While you wait out the night there is little to do except think. Most thoughts are of morning and wondering if we would go after them or if they would come to us.

About Three A.M., the platoon sergeant came in and told us to come down to the street. We went down and joined the others. We lighted cigarettes without shielding match flames because the street was bright from the burning house. We waited for the explaination. No one asked for fear he would be the one to cause an unwanted answer.

Out of the darkness and into the light of the burning building came a column of infantry.

An infantry major, accompanied by a sergeant, came up to us as their column waited. The sergeant was in a bad mood and I didn’t blame him; coming into a strange situation in the middle of the night.

The sergeant sarcastically asked, “What’s the matter; can’t you guys take one little town without calling for help?”

I felt myself flushing with anger. You don’t like to be talked to that way. I was going to tell him to go back to wherever he came from, but was interrupted by the major who turned and asked, “How many men do we have, Sergeant?”

“About three hundred, I guess.”

The major turned to our platoon sergeant and asked, “How many men do you have in this town, Sergeant?”

“We came in with twenty-eight, Major.”

We told the infantry where we had last heard from the German army and they moved into the houses we had occupied. We stayed in town, but it was the infantry who continued the attack at day-break.

They moved down to the corner, just past the wall where Gerry and I had been shot at the day before. Almost immediately we heard the bridge over the nearby river go up with a loud explosion. These were a battalion of the 30th Infantry Division.

Most every soldier had pride in his unit and no outfit had more pride than the 30th Infantry Division. They were tough and knew it – so did the German Army. At one time they were dubbed, “Roosevelt’s S.S.”, but the U.S. Army quieted that down because of the reputation the German “S.S.” had off the battlefield.

Nineteenth Corps, both in the First and Ninth U.S. Armies, had units that were unsurpassed by any others. The 29th, 30th and 83rd Infantry Divisions and the 2nd Armored Division could not be outdone. My particular favorite was the 30th. Divisions could be moved in and out of a corps, but the 30th Infantry and 2nd Armored were almost constantly with XIX Corps. Of course the Red Horse Cavalry was an integral part of the XIXth.

This battalion of the 30th Division turned the corner where we had stopped and ran into fierce rifle and machine gun fire. They moved the Germans out of Bedburg, but left their dead on the streets to do it.

We had not taken part in this fighting, but had returned to the town where we had left our vehicles. We drove back to Bedburg and took up quarters in houses. Ganley and I found a good double bed on the second floor of one.

I woke up just after Noon. Gerry was still asleep so I quietly grabbed my rifle and walked down to the corner where we had stopped and the infantry had started this morning. Infantry-dead were scattered about doorways and sidewalks and on the street. While I stood there looking at them, a jeep pulling a trailer pulled up. It was a Graves Registration unit.

A lieutenant and two or three enlisted men got out. The lieutenant told his men, “Cut off the webbing (belt, canteen, first-aid packet and suspenders) and throw him in the trailer.” He was talking about the first body they came to.

I don’t know if the lieutenant had become hardened to handling dead men of if he was new and just trying to be casual, but his attitude struck me wrong.

I spoke to him; not his men, and said, “They can cut the webbing off, but they’ll pick him up and lay him in the trailer – easy.”

The lieutenant stood there a few seconds, looking at me. His men were looking at him. Nobody was smiling. He told his men to pick up the dead soldier. He didn’t tell them to lay the man in the trailer gently, but they did.

The dead man was just another G.I., another dog-face sojer, another hobo, but he was American-dead. He had come down here in the middle of the night and this morning he ran around that corner with his rifle at ‘high-port’ and caught one or more bullets in his body. He was entitled to some dignity. I stood there until they picked up all the bodies and drove off.

Bedburg-Lippe had Polish workers for the factory. These were part of the peoples from occupied countries brought into German to relieve their manpower shortage. It was forced-labor, but not under the same conditions as those put into concentration camps.

The factory, actually located in Lippe, was the same one we had searched when entering the town. There had been no one in the factory at the time and I never did see any finished products made there.

We had a man of Polish ancestry in the platoon who soon made friends with the workers and invited us all over to meet his friends.

We went over to the factory, where they had living quarters and shook hands all around . That was about as far as we got because the language was impossible for us to understand. We soon did learn the Polish word for “Cigarette” though as they bummed them from us. I think Poles can outsmoke any nationality in the world. They held the cigarettes between their thumb and forefinger, European-style. There was a small bottle of liquor that was passed around, but the happy atmosphere was created by these people who laughed easily and now could look forward to going home.

The laughter had to be interpreted for us, so there was always a gap. At the height of our party, if it could be called that, Lieutenant Strikawlski happened by. I guess he thought we were having such a good time he would join in. Our interpreter was talking fast to the Poles now. They would laugh and look at the lieutenant. This went on for a while until the lieutenant in fluent Polish spoke. We had forgotten the ancestry of the lieutenants name – and he had been the butt of the joking.

We hadn’t understood what our interpreter had been saying after the lieutenant came in, but it turned out he had been telling the Poles about the lieutenant’s short-comings. The lieutenant stood there listening to a detail description of his failings until he could stand it no longer. He exploded in indignation. He to was now threatening us with courts-martial for some infraction I think he made up for the occasion. We all dived for doors and windows while he shouted after us.

We stayed in Bedburg long enough for the rumor-mill to start again. Now we were going to stay in Bedburg as Military Government. The war was over for us again.

The morning after the episode with the Poles, Ganley and I walked down the street to where another underpass crossed the railroad tracks. Things were returning to normal and people were going to work. Only now, there was a check-point.

We stood watching a while. Woman between the ages of twenty to thirty had to produce the most identification. They were being especially questioned about their addresses and how to get there. The ladies giggled good naturedly. Older people had less questioning.

We asked one of the border-guards what they were doing and he replied that everybody knew we were military government, so they were checking everyone out. We asked if they had been told to do this. “Naw.”

The following day Gerry and I walked around town sight-seeing. We came to the city hall and out in front was ‘Frog’. Frog was a nonconformist who seldom passed up a drink and had an impulsive nature that led him into sticky situations. We greeted he; “Hi, Frog. What are you doing here?” He answered, “I’m Lieutenant Strikawlski’s driver.” We both asked, “You?”

Frog volunteered, “He’s Burgermeister now.” We asked who appointed him Burgermeister and Frog replied, “He did. He threw the German mayor out and took over his office.” We asked why and Frog stated, “Everybody knows were going to stay here as Military Government.” The lieutenant was acting on our latest rumor.

We asked Frog what the American mayor of a German town did. Frog said, “Anything he wants to. Right now he’s shipping all the civilians out of town.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where is he sending them?”

“Who knows? They just go down the road in trucks.”

The lieutenant was not around so Frog invited us in to see the office. Inside was a beautifully furnished room, befitting a burgemeister. Or a G.I. Mayor. While we were sitting there, with our feet up on the desk, the lieutenant walked in. He demanded; “What are you men doing here?”

We said, “Hi Lieutenant. We heard what a good job you’re doing so we thought we’d drop by. Do we call you Lieutenant, or Burgemeister?” He liked that and smiled.

The Lieutenant turned to Frog and ordered, “Driver, get my vehicle ready. I have some things to do.” I guess he had important governmental business to attend to.

The ‘driver’ winked at us and motioned for us to follow him outside. He said, “Get a load of this.” The lieutenant came out with a German saber strapped to his web pistol-belt. Shades of General Custer. Frog saluted, the lieutenant returned a snappy, but unorthodox salute. When he came around to our side, we also gave him a salute to complete the charade. We got the same response.

Frog was in the drivers seat and the lieutenant got in the right-front, but he didn’t sit. He grabbed the windshield with his left hand and drew the saber with his right. “Move out”, he ordered. Frog moved the jeep forward and turned to wink at us again. We watched the lieutenant, standing and swinging, but missing, at German civilians with his saber. The conquerer was wielding his authority. Ganley muttered, “Wait ‘til the Colonel catches him with that windshield up.”

We walked back toward our house and bumped into the ‘Bazooka Team’. I thought they had thrown the thing away.

“What are you guys doing?”

“We’re going to blow the safe in the Post Office.”

“Why?”

They looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders.

We followed them into the Post Office. The Post mistress screamed in German so we sent her outside. The gunner took shelter in a doorway. The loader shoved a rocket into the rear of the launcher and patted the gunner on the back to let him know it was loaded. He tapped him again to tell him he forgot to connect the wires.

Finally they got everything in order and the gunner aimed and fired. The rocket swooshed the short distance down the hall and hit the safe. There was an explosion and then silence. We approached the safe. The rocket had hit dead-center and there was molten metal around the small hole. The safe still wouldn’t open and smoke poured out of the hole while the contents burned inside. Gerry and I walked around the corner to our house to take a nap.

Rumor had it that the lieutenant was transferred to Squadron Headquarters to relieve the strain of command, then sent to the Riviera for rest during which time the medics discovered he had some ailment that could only be cured back in the States. Just when we were beginning to like Military Government.

We continued on toward the Rhine River. The German Army had decided to withdraw to its east side and there was little combat for the rest of that drive.

We drove all day on departing Bedburg. It was after dusk when we entered a town. I didn’t like driving after dusk because chance took over and any skill was useless.

Part of what I considered my successful acumen for driving point was not taking any unnecessary chances with things or conditions that struck me as suspicious. I began to wonder if I was being too cautious, then one day later – on the drive to the Elbe, I looked back one time to see what the column was doing behind me. I had been driving in zig-zag to avoid recently repaired road surface. The column was zig-zagging in my tracks.

Now, the day we left Bedburg, we drove all day and it was getting into the dusk of evening. The worst time to see anything. We entered a town and heard shouting from behind. We looked back and saw a fire had broken out on the rear of an armored car. Camouflage netting had fallen down over the exhaust and had been set afire. The crew put out the blaze with CO2 extinguishers.

We got word that we were to stay in this town overnight. After driving continuously for twelve or fourteen hours, all we wanted to do was get some sleep.

We took over one house posted a guard outside. I was the last one in and found all the good places had already been taken, even floor-space. That night I slept on a wood table two feet wide without falling off or even awakening.

R E M O U N T

PART

4

“You guys are being too nice. How come I get the new jeep?”

“That one’s all beat-up. Ya can’t even keep it in second gear.”

“It’s another Ford. Don’t they send any Willys over here?”

“Fer crying out loud, stop griping and tell us what you want stenciled on it.”

“Remount.”

We reached the Rhine in a couple days which, incidentally, concluded the Rhineland ‘Battle’. The army referred to campaigns as battles. They are designated by some special event or geographical area. Already behind from the invasion, were Normandy, Northern France, the Ardennes (Battle of the Bulge) and now, the Rhineland. Ahead lay only the Central Europe campaign. These were five ‘battles’ of Northern Europe. Other battles were designated in Italy and North Africa. And in the Pacific a whole different set of ‘battles’ were designated.

Upon reaching the Rhine on March 10th, 1945, we went to a staging area in a town on high ground, overlooking the Rhine Valley. We were going in dismounted again so we had to leave all the armored cars and most of the jeeps behind. E Troop’s assault guns and F Company’s tanks would remain back on the high ground.

We received a briefing from one of the squadron officers who told us we would have to get down the hill to our new positions under enemy observation. He said to drive down, full speed, to avoid being shelled. I don’t think he had made the trip himself. We loaded as many men as possible into the jeeps that were to make the trip down.

I led off through some kind of an arch leaving town and it looked like the hill to the river went forever. I shifted into second gear and we were making good time through the tall, new grass. Suddenly, I saw a trench or ditch of some kind coming up fast. That officer hadn’t told us about this… I hit the brakes and all four wheels locked up. There was no traction for breaking because the grass was so moist. We skidded into the ditch and stopped abruptly.

From a distance, it probably looked like a Keystone Cops comedy because the extra passengers in the jeep flew through the air. The soft earth and high grass probably saved them from injury and they all scrambled back into the jeep. My helmet, though. flew off my head on impact and sailed out in front of the jeep. We bounced backward and when we rolled forward, the helmet was smashed by a front wheel. Our destination was a large farmhouse three or four hundred yards from the river. We reached it without further mishap.

The farmhouse was an elaborate structure with buildings placed to form a square. The house, itself was on the river side of the square. Stalls and small animal pens formed the north side and more stalls and hay storage barn on the west side, except for an open driveway.

A cobblestone driveway surrounded a square-shaped pit in the center of the complex. The pit was filled with composting manure. If you like the odor of the manure, this was the place to be. Aside from the smell, the buildings were untouched by the war and extremely clean.

We had started running into civilians in the town after crossing the Roer River. We moved so fast between the Roer and the Rhine that civilians had nowhere to go. Unless a fire-fight started in a town there was no need to flee because we just drove on through.

This farmhouse on the Rhine was still occupied by the family that lived there and we didn’t chase them out because there was nowhere for them to go. Among these people was an attractive red-head about twenty-five years old. Naturally some of the guys were trying to make up to her despite the Supreme Headquarters order forbidding fraternizing with Germans.

After our arrival at the farmhouse, we got another lieutenant. He was all business and I think he intended to straighten us out. He immediately threatened any and all who spoke to the German civilians except in line of duty. I had the feeling he was either fresh from the States or at least hadn’t served on the line. He was in command. No one confronted him on any subject; we just went about our business knowing that he would probably soon be transferred, shot or come around to our way. Platoon Commanders get awful lonely when their men don’t speak to them.

The problem with the red-head was solved a few days later when an order came down to move all civilians back a thousand yards from the river. We moved them by jeep.

When we moved the civilians we couldn’t move the livestock, so we inherited cows, a bull, chickens, ducks and a dog. The dog was a beautiful, liver-spotted Dalmation male. He soon learned the joys of ridding in a jeep. Whenever I started the engine he jumped into the back seat and sat there with his ears flapping in the wind on the ride up the hill.

The bull was in his stall, but the cows were grazing out in the pasture. We used the jeeps to round them up. There was an attempt to rope them, cowboy-style, but our cowboys weren’t too adept with lariats. For some reason the Germans across the Rhine didn’t fire at us during the round up although we were in plain view. Fortunately we had a couple men who knew how to milk a cow and we had a steady supply of fresh milk.

Troop Headquarters learned we were in the cattle business and phoned down to make a deal for fresh meat. The 125th Cavalry was Iowa National Guard and several men had worked in the packing plant in Ottumwa. We agreed to let them butcher a cow in exchange for steaks.

They came down and shot a cow. I believe they thought we had steers. The cow was dressed-out in a rear shed and they hauled the carcass off. The best of beef should be aged for several days before eating, but our steaks arrived back down the same night. It was tough, but a treat in spite of that.

Our routine in this place, was to stay in the house during daylight with an observation post up in the attic. At night, we outposted several bomb craters closer to the river. The craters were ‘misses’ of the air corps bombing of Dusseldorf, about ten miles away. Again, we were so thinly spread that there were gaps of fifty to a hundred yards between the outposts.

We strung field-wire out to the holes we used and took phones out with us every night and disconnected them when we came in at daybreak. We ran the wire through our hands while walking out at night to find any possible breaks from mortar or artillery fire during the day.

In the mornings, upon our return from the craters, we went to the hen house and collected fresh eggs for breakfast. Others soon realized what we were doing and tried to get their eggs first by coming in earlier. We overcame this sneaky move by coming in a little earlier than they did. Of course they started in earlier still. We then came in a couple hours earlier and connected our phone right under the lieutenants window in case anyone called. We ended up not even going out to the craters at all. Just plug the phone in next to the house and stay there all night. All for fresh eggs.

In addition to outposting the bomb craters, we had a guard at the front door of the house. I took my turn at this duty. Since the Rhine was a large river, nobody was too worried about the Germans coming across. At least not without a lot of artillery preparation.

Two of us were on guard this particular night and when we thought the lieutenant had gone to bed we came in, out of the cold. We were trying to stay awake when we heard a knock at the door. No one knocks at doors in a combat zone so we naturally thought it was one of our guys playing around. I opened the door and said, “Hello.”

Standing in front of me was a young German soldier. He looked as surprised as I felt. He was about sixteen, clean-shaven and wearing the neatest German uniform I had seen. I said, “Come in.” that’s a phrase that sounds almost the same in German as it does in English. He was dismayed, but came in.

Beside our surprise, we realized we had a problem. Our platoon leader, the lieutenant, spoke German and would interrogate him before sending him to squadron for further interrogation. He would undoubtedly find out the German had to knock on the door to get captured. He wouldn’t be overjoyed with that.

We had no choice so we brought him in to the lieutenant, telling him we found him outside. The lieutenant probably interrogated him for intelligence purposes without asking details of the capture because we heard no more of it.

We learned from the lieutenant later, that the young Kraut had been on leave and returned to where he had left his outfit. The situation had changed drastically before he returned and when he asked the troops in his old position where his outfit was, some comedian told him it was across the river. He found a kayak somewhere and rowed across to our side. That would have been a pretty good endeavor even if it had been daylight without a war.

While the platoon leader was talking to the soldier we went outside to stand guard the way we should. We now realized we had another problem; The German had come across in some kind of boat. We hadn’t yet learned it was a kayak. We walked outside the courtyard a short distance and found the boat. We were familiar enough with the military mind to know that someone would reason that if the German could paddle across the Rhine to our side, there was no reason someone of us couldn’t paddle the kayak. We jumped on the wood and canvas boat until it was splinters and rags.

Somewhere, in stored-away army files, there are probably several memo’s, starting with C Troop, then 125th Cavalry Squadron, 113th Cavalry Group, XIX Corps and Ninth Army stating “they” had captured a German prisoner who gave certain information during interrogation. Nowhere will it be admitted that the poor dummy had to knock at a door to get captured.

We were waiting for the eventual river crossing and the days idled away. The Germans were probably saving their ammunition to repulse the attack and only threw an occasional round or two of mortar to harass us. One of these blew a tire on my jeep while it was parked in the courtyard.

We had to have supplies so we drove back up the hill to get them every day or so. Sometimes we took the ride even if we didn’t need supplies – just to break the monotony. “We”, was Zwer, my recon sergeant, maybe Ganley and my self.

We used roads instead of going cross-country as we had came down. The first road led out of the farmyard to a cemetery. There, we made a hard right and then hard left turn around the cemetery. The road continued on to a small town, where A Troop was located, and another right turn put us on the road back up to the top of the hill to the town of Norf.

We were under enemy observation from the time we left the farm house to the cemetery. Almost every time we went out mortar shells would follow us down the road, exploding a couple hundred yards behind. I never understood why the Germans didn’t zero-in on the cemetery and time their fire to catch us there – but they didn’t.

A Troop, in the town we had to pass through, took the punishment for our excursions. The Germans had a rocket launcher mounted on a tank chassis that fired a missile about fourteen inches in diameter. It could, and did, take the front off of three story buildings.

A few days after our arrival, they fired this weapon into the town occupied by A Troop whenever we drove through. The men of A Troop shouted obscenities at us as we drove by, then dove for cellars because the rocket was on its way.

Every time we went for a ride up the hill, I went out first and thoroughly warmed the engine. I didn’t want the engine to falter after we left the gate. While the engine was warming, the Dalmation came out and jumped into the jeep. The first time he sat in the front seat. Zwer came out and asked, “What’s that dog doing in my seat? Get him out of there.” I said, “I tried, but he’s Kraut. I don’t think he understands.” Zwer made a threatening gesture with his hand which must have been the same in German because the dog jumped in the back seat.

On one of our trips, after reaching high ground at Norf, we heard shouting. It was the young boy who lived in the house we were occupying down at the river. He had spotted the Dalmation so we gave it back to him. I think the dog would just as soon have stayed with us.

Now we lost our new lieutenant. This one disappeared and “Baldy” Bierman came back to the platoon. Baldy had been field-commissioned from the First Platoon. He was welcomed back because he was a good man and a good officer. His nickname, Baldy, did not reflect on his full head of hair.

After he was back a day or so, he came outside to where I was standing and asked if I wanted to be his driver. I asked, “Would that mean I won’t be point-driver?” He told me I could go back to point when we started moving again. He then told me I was the best driver in the platoon. Compliments don’t come too often in the army and I guess I looked at him kind of funny. He said, “I mean it.” I was greatly flattered.

The next day he said, “Let’s go.” I didn’t need much to get me going. It was better than sitting around the house killing time.

I started out the driveway and asked, “Where to?” He told me to just drive up the hill and he would tell me where to go from there. He was reading a map.

Baldy gave me directions as we drove along roads. I finally told him, “Why don’t you tell me where we’re going? I’m going to know after we get there anyway.” He said, “O.K., but this is confidential. I don’t want you telling anybody. I’m going to take a patrol across the Rhine and I’m going up in an artillery-spotting plane to look things over from the air.”

Artillery aircraft of World War II were Piper Cubs. They were top wing monoplanes with room for two; the pilot and an observer. Their function was to spot targets and direct artillery fire. The airplane offered no protection for the men inside, except maneuverability. Pilots and observers were the best. Hearing that little engine, early in the morning, meant that artillery from the Germans would stop or lessen because they could be spotted from the air. It was always reassuring.

I asked Baldy if I could go for a ride when he got back. He said it was alright with him if I could talk the pilot into it.

We arrived at the small air-strip and while Baldy was getting his maps and things together, I asked the pilot, a lieutenant, if he would take me for a ride after he brought my boss back. He said, “Sure, where do you want to go?” I suggested we might go up and buzz the guys back at the house. He said he wasn’t sure he should do that.

Baldy took off in the spotter plane and I waited for him in the jeep. They were up about a half hour and when they landed, Baldy got in the jeep and said, “Let’s go.” I reminded him that he said I could go for a ride in the plane and I had arranged it with the pilot. Baldy said, “I really don’t have time, Newt.” I didn’t speak to him for the rest of the day, but I guess he had more important things on his mind.

The next day Baldy came out to where I was loafing in the courtyard and asked if anyone else could handle the B.A.R. I told him I didn’t think anyone had been trained for it and asked, “Why?” He said he wanted the gun along on the patrol.

You learn early not to volunteer for any patrol, but crossing the Rhine at flood-stage adds another element of chance. However, since he was going and he wanted the gun along, I said, “I can handle it.” He told me he wasn’t taking any married men on patrol. I said, “You’re married.” Her replied, “That’s different, I have to lead the patrol.” That’s the kind of man he was. He named a man and I showed him how to load and fire the B.A.R. There wasn’t much to it except learning to hold the muzzle down when it fired.

On a bright, sunny March morning, I walked to the door leading out to the courtyard. Standing in the doorway was one of the quiet men of the First Platoon; a very quiet man. We had always spoken, but I had not become really close to him. Although he was friendly, he wasn’t close to anyone in the platoon. His gear was stacked just outside the door.

I asked, “What’s going on?” He said he was going home. In answer to my next question, he told me he had been overseas since 1943 and his rotation back to the States had come through.

“I thought you were Cavalry”

“No. I landed in Africa. I was Amphibious Engineers.”

He had either been wounded or had some illness and after hospitalization, he went through the replacement system.

“How did you end up in Cavalry?” He didn’t know. I guess it didn’t matter. I was trained as a Tank Destroyer and was now Cavalry.

“Are you married?”

“I guess so. I’ve had one letter since I’ve been overseas. I don’t know if that makes me married, or not.”

In the ensuing silence we both thought about that.

“What did you do for a living?”

“I’m a cowboy.”

“You mean a real cowboy? You rode a horse and everything?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that what you’re going to do when you get out?”

“It’s all I know.”

“It doesn’t sound too bad. Where you from?” He named one of the Southwestern states.

A jeep and driver pulled up in front of the doorway. He threw his duffle bag into the back seat.

“Take it easy”, I said.

“Yeah.”

“And – good luck.”

“Thanks. I guess I’ll need it. Take care of yourself.”

I watched him ride out of the courtyard and wondered what kind of a homecoming it would be for him. Maybe he had parents who would welcome him home. Of course, there would be other cowboys. There’s always more than one cowboy, isn’t there.

How would an engineer end up in cavalry? I thought about that for several days until it came to me. It was the army again. The pure, organized logic of the army.

You have a replacement you have to assign. You look at his 201 file. Under “Occupation” it says, “Cowboy.” Cowboy; horse. Horse; cavalry. Who says the army doesn’t know what it’s doing?

Baldy continued his preparations for the patrol. It is a big river and there were many considerations. The rest of us continued our routine functions.

One of these duties was to observe the enemy across the Rhine through a B.C. Scope, B.C. standing for Battery Commander’s. It is an artillery telescope with strong magnification. So strong, that it has to be mounted on a tripod because it can’t be held steady with hand only. We had the scope mounted in the attic of the house, on what would be the third floor. We could observe, with detail, the Germans and their equipment across the river. On one occasion, we watched them dig-in a tank for two days. After they got the hole dug, we called for artillery fire and knocked it out.

On a day when I had the detail, I took looks across every once in a while, to see what was going on. It hurt your eyes to look for too long at one time. While I watched, I noticed black smoke going up in the air, in puffs. I called E Troop by phone and told them I had a target. They asked, “What is it?” I told them it was a railroad engine, only I didn’t know how to adjust their fire. They knew we were and I described the town directly across the river from us. E Troop came back and said there was a station located there and they would shoot. A few seconds later, the man on the other end said, “Fire in the hole.” That’s another artillery euphamism meaning they have fired their guns.

We were on almost a direct line between E Troop and the target, so I waited to hear the relatively soft whistle of the little 75’s come over. Instead, I heard a much heavier moan of larger shells sailing past, overhead. I went to the B.C. scope and watched the target area.

I couldn’t understand what E Troop was firing, but the detonations in the town across the Rhine were big. They fired about sixteen rounds and the man from E Troop came back and asked, “How was that?” I told him we hat a hit because I saw a large cloud of steam rise up, which meant the boiler had been hit. I said , “That was great, but what are you guys shooting?” From the other end, the man laughed and said, “I thought you’d like that. We have a battalion of 105 howitzers attached, so they took the target.”

While most of us were idling away time, Baldy was making final preparations for his patrol across the Rhine. A patrol of this magnitude had to be arranged carefully. All things that go into a patrol had to be checked; dog-tags taped, anything else that made noise left behind, no papers to identify the unit, no shiny objects to reflect light. Guns and amounts of ammunition to be carried, radio equipment.

But this was a river crossing. The river was wide and the current, strong. Rubber rafts wouldn’t do, Engineer assault boats would have to be used. The noise of bringing the boats to the river and getting them across would have to be muffled.

The night came for the patrol to cross. Those of us who were staying behind wished the guys who were going, Good Luck. If they were discovered, their chances of any getting back were slim. At dark, we went to our bomb-crater foxholes and waited.

There were searchlights aimed at the clouds somewhere to the north of us. I don’t know if that was intentional or not for the patrol. Behind us, artillery started shelling the opposite shore. Under cover of the artillery, E Troops assault guns came down near our positions, just before the levees along the water, with combat engineer assault boats tied on top.

We watched as the patrol and engineers manhandled the boats to the ground. Once on the ground, they carried them to the river. After they went over the top of the levee, we lost sight of them. The artillery continued to cover the noise of the boats because they used outboard motors. The boats would have to fight the current to arrive at the specified landing site. The engineers would handle the boats and wait on the far shore until the patrol returned.

Combat Engineers were probably the most unglorified outfits in Europe during this war. Next to cavalry, of course. They were my favorite people. When the headlines in the States told a river crossing by infantry, there were combat engineers out putting up the bridges the infantry used. If there was a mine field, the engineers cleared it. If you wanted an area mined – the engineers put them in. If there was nothing else to do, or if they needed infantry, the engineers did that too.

After several hours the patrol returned from across the Rhine. They had made it without incident, but the strain of a mission like that is draining on nerves.

We lost Baldy again. He had been put in charge of the First Platoon just for the patrol. I lost my job as driver for the platoon leader and reverted to Point driver. There wasn’t much driving though, except for our trips up the hill.

Whenever we were without a platoon leader the platoon sergeant was in charge. A platoon gets to know what it’s supposed to do and there is not too much leadership needed; at least in combat. Most functions become routine and platoon members perform on their own. Too much leadership is just bad as too little. If you got a new lieutenant, trying to go by the book, he found himself having to give orders for every detail because the men would not do anything without being told. New officers learned that in a hurry.

We had only one casualty while on the Rhine River. It was our habit to walk out to our bomb-crater foxholes at night through another platoon’s position – except for two men who checked the telephone field-wire starting from our house. The other platoon was alerted to our presence in front of them this way.

On this particular night, while we were checking-in with that platoon, we heard a rifle-shot. One of the men in the other platoon saw our men walking in the field and, unable to recognize them in the darkness fired a round. One of the men was hit.

We brought him into an area where we could see his wound and found he had been shot through the fleshy part inside the thigh of one leg. This particular soldier had a reputation for griping; not that we all didn’t do our share, but he was more consistant. Someone brought a blanket to keep him warm and he was put in a jeep for the ride up the hill for medical help. As the jeep pulled away, we could hear him complaining about the dirty blanket around him and it was no way to treat a wounded man. A voice in the dark said, “The sonofabitch has a million-dollar wound and he’s still complaining.” (A “million-dollar wound” was any wound that would have no permanent crippling effect, but serious enough to be sent to the States.)

The Rhine crossing took place to the north of us. We immediately became operational as cavalry and moved into a staging-area near the bridgehead. This is where the army really shines and restores faith in the commanders who plan and execute the attack.

Ordinarily we could move on a minute’s notice, but crossing the Rhine held a little more significance. It is a wide river and once across those of us on the east bank would be committed. You go to stay.

We performed maintenance on vehicles and weapons with maybe just a bit more care than usual. I checked my jeep.

Fluid levels up to requirements, tires and spare checked. Two full, five-gallon cans of gasoline and one five-gallon can of fresh water in the rear rack that we had welded onto the back of each jeep. Two sand bags on the floor in front and two in the rear. Six boxes of fresh machine gun ammo in the rack over the right-rear wheel well. A fresh belt of ammo in the machine gun mounted behind the right fender. A new case of C-Rations tied to the wire-cutter on the front bumper. A case of .30 caliber M-1 Rifle ammo behind the front seats. Radio in working order, antenna tied down. Extra barrel for the machine gun. Box of grenades, grenade launchers, blank ammo. Personal gear in the rear rack. Blanket-rolls tied on the front fenders.

Headlights had been blacked-out from the beginning, but were checked. Horns, long disconnected, checked again. Everything that was not ‘issue’ had to be abandoned. Well – almost everything.

We would move out over the pontoon bridge in the morning. Now, just before dusk, Colonel Biddle came to inspect his Cavalry Group. It would be the last time the two squadrons were assembled until the war ended.

Big Six came to the First Platoon. He was ramrod straight, as always, while he inspected each vehicle and man. When he came to my jeep I realized that with all my careful preparation, I forgot to remove the bicycle horn with the rubber bulb at one end. We stood at attention, but I managed a glance at the colonel. He reached for the rubber bulb and squeezed slowly, probably hoping one of his finest couldn’t possibly have left such a thing in operating order. The horn emitted a half-hearted “honk”. “Get rid of it.” I did.

The next morning we waited at the assembly area just before the pontoon bridge with engines running. A vehicle that wouldn’t start would be left behind. The bridge had been thrown across the Rhine by engineers of XVI Corps after an assault using Navy landing craft.

The bridge undulated under the weight of our jeeps, M-8 Armored Cars, half-tracks, tanks and assault guns. Combat Engineers stood on the upstream end of occasional pontoons looking for mines the Germans might float down to destroy it.

The 2nd Armored Division had already crossed and turned southward to meet the 3rd Armored form the First Army to encircle a hundred thousand Germans in the “Ruhr Pocket.” We crossed without mishap or delay and fanned out to screen the 30th Infantry Division. The 83rd Infantry Division crossed and our sister squadron, the 113th, screened their front. The “screen” involved about 1400 men of our two squadrons spread over 35 miles.

R E M O U N T

PART

5

“When do you think it will end?”

“What will end?”

“Oh, Not until we’ve finished eating all the K-Rations they’ve sent over.”

“Yeah, I know; ‘Or until they run out of mattress-covers’. Very funny”

Generals, in their memoirs, and military historians write of the movement of large formations – army groups, armies, corps and divisions. Some even have a sprinkling of individual soldiers’ personal anecdotes. The soldier himself has very little idea of what is happening on the grand scale in which generals must think. He does not know that he has been, or will be, in a decisive battle while it takes place.

The role of the 113th Red Horse Cavalry Group in the drive from the Rhine to the Elbe River is considered a classic operation of mechanized cavalry. Because of the high mobility required, the 113th Cavalry has been reinforced by the 801st Tank Destroyer Battalion.

The brevity of military jargon describes the first days after crossing the Rhine:

April 1, 1945: The 113th Cavalry Group, with the 801st Tank Destroyer Battalion attached, is protecting the north flank of XIX Corps, screening between the 2nd Armored Division and the 5th Armored Division of XIII Corps while the 30th and 95th Infantry Divisions are assembling in the rear.

April 2, 1945: The 113th Cavalry Group is attached to the 30th Infantry Division over a 35 mile front.

April 3, 1945: The 125th Cavalry Squadron, with attached tank Destroyers, remains attached to the 30th Infantry Division. The 113th Cavalry Squadron, with attached Tank Destroyers, becomes attached to the 83rd Infantry Division.

The two squadrons of the 113th Cavalry group are now independent of each other. The 125th is still on the north flank of the XIX Corps, between the 2nd and 5th Armored Division. The 113th Squadron has moved to XIX Corps south flank to the right of the 2nd Armored Division and screening in front of the 83rd Infantry Division while it assembles.

April 5, 1945: The 125th Squadron rejoins the 113th Squadron in front of the 83rd Division.

April 7, 1945: The 113th Cavalry group, now reinforced by the 801st Tank Destroyer Battalion, the 2nd battalion, 331st Infantry regiment and the 25th Field Artillery Battalion moves southeast, across the 83rd Infantry Division zone, to screen XIX Corps’ right flank. The “attached” units have twice the manpower and more than twice the firepower of the 113th Cavalry Group itself.

April 9, 1945: The 125th Cavalry Squadron becomes attached to the 30th Infantry Division on the north flank of XIX Corps.

In four days, our 125th Cavalry Squadron crossed through three divisional zones, from the north flank of XIX Corps to the south flank and back to the north flank.

That is how it was written. This is what was happening:

April 1, 1945: Easter Sunday – April Fools’ Day. First Platoon, C Troop, 125th cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, Mezd.

We haven’t seen an enemy soldier since crossing the Rhine two days ago. The First Platoon is ordered to outpost a town named Enniger and wait for Easter breakfast of eggs to be sent up to us.

We move out and before we get more than a few hundred yards, two German soldiers riding a motorcycle come speeding out of a driveway from one of the few houses along the road. The lead jeep catches up to them and a burst from the machine gun turns the face of the motorcycle driver inside-out. The man riding behind him falls to the pavement as the motorcycle crashed. His ankle is broken in the fall.

We question the German and he tells us there are ten of his tanks in Enniger. They were to warn the tanks upon our approach.

The platoon is formed randomly since we are only going up to outpost a town and wait for breakfast. I ask the platoon sergeant if he wants me to take point now. I guess he doesn’t believe the German soldier’s story. He says, “No. We’re just going to outpost the next town.

Zwer, Ganley and I, in the ‘point’ jeep, are about the fourth or fifth vehicle in line. We continue along the road and as we round a curve someone up front sees the first signs of enemy. The column stops and I drive to the front.

The day before this, we had been maneuvering into positions for our screening role and had come behind a column of the 83rd Infantry Division with their infantry mounted in trucks and all the tanks, artillery and other units that go into a combat team. As is natural in combat, the column was riding the crest, or center, of the road. We had orders to pass them so I had to drive with the left side wheels of my jeep in the ditch alongside the road. It must have surprised the infantry to find anyone passing them in hostile territory, but we tried to wave them over to make room for the armored cars and six jeeps following.

I don’t know if sires on armored cars had ever been used before, or after, to try to clear a way. The ride was rough until we passed their leading vehicles and we created an enormous amount of dust. Now, on Eastern Sunday morning, my eyes still had dust in them, mixed with tears that were trying to wash the dust away, and my voice was hoarse from the same dust.

As we came to the front of our column and stopped, I asked someone why we weren’t moving. He said, “Krauts. Can’t you see them?” I couldn’t, so I asked, “Where?” He pointed to a low hill to our left-front. Now I saw the Germans and let off a long burst from the B.A.R..

Then I heard a voice that had the ring of despair say, “Oh God, there are the tanks.”

Again I had to ask, “Where?” and I saw him point to an orchard to our immediate right-front. There, within fifty yards, camouflaged under the trees, were the tanks that the German soldier on the motorcycle had told us about.

Our column was stopped in the middle of the road. The armored cars couldn’t be backed up without a man in front of each one to direct the drivers. The road was too narrow to turn the cars around. The ditches along side the road were too deep to drive the cars through, but too shallow to offer cover. We were trapped.

We should never have gotten into such a tactical blunder; we should have had safe intervals between vehicles and deployed for combat. The point should have been in the point.

The Germans were not manning their tanks when we arrived – probably depending on the two soldiers with the motorcycle for warning. We had the original advantage of surprise, but now we had lost it.

Even bad decision at this time would have been better than none. We could have run right on through and worry about it later. Someone should have called Troop or Squadron Headquarters for help. No decision came. We all knew we were going to pay.

The German tank crews were getting to their tanks. I signaled the armored cars to pull into the ditch on the right side of the road. They pulled in and opened fire on the tanks. It was futile. We could see the hits as the little 37 millimeter rounds bounced off the frontal armor.

Now the first German tank rounds started coming in. It didn’t seem real. The tank guns sounded like they came from a tunnel – a hollow sound followed by a ringing. The armored car crews firing back, but one car took a direct hit and the gas tank exploded. A second car took another hit and exploded. I tried to signal the two remaining cars to go back up as best they could, but they had buttoned-up and couldn’t see.

The last car in line started blindly in reverse just as s third car had its one-inch armor pierced and gasoline flooded into the fighting compartment and exploded.

A couple jeeps went back in reverse gear along with the one armored car. Zwer said, “Let’s get out of here.”

He, Gerry and I got into the jeep and I backed up the road. I had drive around A.J., an armored car commander, who had been blown out of the turret when the gas tank exploded. His right leg was severed at the groin, except for a thin shred of sinew. It stuck out at a 90 degree angle from his body. Blood from the femoral artery had puddle around him before it stopped flowing.

I continued in reverse until we reached a brick house back near the curve in the road. The lone surviving armored car was there waiting. I backed into the driveway next to it.

We wouldn’t even have this one armored car left if it hadn’t been for trading-off our mortar section’s half-track for it to Headquarters Platoon.

The other jeeps that had escaped had continued on around the bend in the road and were out of sight.

Amazingly, there was no attempt at control yet.

There were two radios in the armored car, but no one had called Troop Headquarters. The other two jeeps that got away didn’t have radios and probably hadn’t reached H.Q. yet.

We looked around the corner of the brick house and saw the results of a few minutes work on the platoon by the German tanks. The three armored cars were sitting at crazy angles, with some tires blown away. They were burning, gasoline and tires sending a column of black smoke upward. Four jeeps sat where they had been hit or abandoned.

I couldn’t understand why nobody had done anything. Troop Headquarters – nobody – knew what had happened here. I grabbed the microphone of the radio in my jeep” “Charlie Six (Troop Commander), Charlie Six, this is Charlie One-Four, Over.”

There was an immediate answer: “Charlie One-Four, this is Charlie Two, Over”

This was the Troop Executive Officer, but I wanted the Captain.

“Charlie Two, this is Charlie One-Four. I want Charlie Six. Over.”

“Charlie One-Four, Charlie Six is back at Squadron Headquarters. Go ahead with your message.”

“This is Charlie One-Four. We’re all shot to hell down here.”

“This is Charlie Two. How bad, Charlie One-Four?”

“Charlie One-Four. We’ve lost the platoon. We have one car left.”

“This is Charlie Two. Help is on the way, One-Four. Can you hold out?”

“This is Charlie One-Four. Yeah, We’re Okay.”

I released the mike-button and added, “I guess.”

We waited only a few minutes. I’m not sure how far back Squadron Headquarters was located, but the captain and his jeep driver came around the bend in the road and pulled into the driveway of the brick house with us.

The captain looked around the corner of the house to survey the situation. It didn’t take him long to see the three burning armored cars and the four jeeps out of action and scattered about the road. Ammunition in at least one of the cars was still exploding inside the turret.

Our ‘screen’ in front of the 30th Infantry Division had served its purpose. That’s what we were here for – to intercept the enemy before he could hit the division, but the drive hadn’t even started and already we had lost three-quarters of our platoon fire-power and about half the men.

The captain looked to see what he had left here, behind the brick house. One M-8 armored car and my jeep. He asked Schwartz, the armored car’s driver, if he thought he could get the car out in a hurry. The captain would probably have abandoned the car if it meant the loss of any more men. Schwartz was expert in handling the sometimes awkward M-8 and assured the captain he could do it.

Next the captain asked if there were still anyone alive along the column of burning vehicles. I hadn’t seen anyone, but A.J., but I had been leaning out of the jeep to see where I was going when we backed up. Someone said that some of the men had crawled into the field across the road and they were still there. The captain asked me if I would be willing to drive back up there to get them. I said, “Sure.”

Everyone else got into either the captain’s jeep or hung onto the turret of the armored car. Before Ganley climbed up the armored car, he turned and said, “Don’t get hurt.” I replied, “I won’t get hurt.”

With the jeep safely away, those who were riding the car took strong grips on its turret. Schwartz gunned the big engine and dumped the clutch. The front end of the eight ton car rose like the bow of a motorboat and was picked up speed as it neared the road.

At the end of the driveway, Schwartz pulled the car into a hard right turn that made it lean heavily to the left. The three right0side wheels came off the pavement and it looked as though the car might roll, but Schwartz straightened the car out and it settled down.

The captain and I watched until the M-8 disappeared around the turn in the road. He said, “When you’re ready we can get started.”

More help arrive at this time in the form of an M-24, Light tank from F Company. The Tank Commander was Carlos Blackwell. I hadn’t know Carlos very well up to this time, but he carried a reputation. He also carried a .45 Colt ‘hogleg’ revolver from home and was a cold man in combat.

The captain and I heard the tank coming before we saw it. Carlos was not arriving at cruising-speed but all-out. As the tank came into sight at the turn in the road, it looked like it was going to miss the turn, but Carlos’ driver locked-up the right track and the tank slid into a right turn until it was straight with the new direction. It swung into the driveway and stopped near us.

The captain briefed Carlos on the situation: “The platoon’s been shot up, but we think there are still some men up there. Newton’s going to try to get them. Can you cover us?”

The M-24 was no match for even one German Mark IV but there was no hesitation. Carlos said, “Sure, let’s go.”

I turned the jeep around behind the farmhouse and the captain got in with me. I didn’t know he had planned to go along.

I backed out of the driveway and down the road toward our burning platoon vehicles. Meanwhile, Carlos directed his tank out and across the road to a high mound of dirt piled there. Using the mound for cover, he moved his tank forward to fire a round at the German tanks and then backed off; repeating the maneuver until we were clear. The light armor of the M-24 wouldn’t stop armor-piercing rounds from the German tanks much better than the armored cars if hit.

When we stopped behind the last car, several men began running toward the jeep. The captain shouted at them to hurry. Six men were now in, or hanging on the jeep.

The jeep, already combat over-loaded and now with about an extra thousand pounds of humanity aboard, jumped as I slipped the clutch and gunned the engine. I spoke softly to the jeep; “That’s it – go, go.” As we came to the bend in the road, Carlos’ tank was close behind.

Later the captain said the Germans had been firing at us all the time we were on the road, but I didn’t hear anything but Carlos’ tank gun. Maybe that’s all I wanted to hear.

As we rounded the bend in the road, we passed a platoon of the 5th Armored Division on their way to deal with the German Mark IV’s which had shot us up.

Although we were corps reconnaissance for the XIX Corps, closest armor to us was the 5th Armored Division which was spearheading XIII Corps to our north. After this incident we wouldn’t see anything of the 5th Armored Division again until after the war ended.

As we passed the platoon of tanks we slowed down until we reached troop Headquarters Platoon where the remainder of the men of the First Platoon had assembled. Most were drinking coffee and smoking, still bewildered by the catastrophe that just happened.

Gerry walked over to the jeep without saying anything and got his mess kit. After I got mine, we both walked over to where the cooks had set up their field kitchen stoves. They were still cooking the Easter breakfast we had intended to eat in Enniger.

We stood in the short line and moved slowly forward after the men in front of us. When my turn came I held out my mess kit to the cook who was spooning out the powdered eggs. He looked up and said, “I heard you were killed.” I raised my eyes to his and replied, “Not yet.”

April 2, 1945 – First Platoon, C Troop, 125th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron:

As we got ready to start the day, I asked Zwer what they were going to do with us now that we were no longer a full platoon. “I guess we’ll point for Headquarters Platoon.”

In the recesses of my mind I couldn’t equate Headquarters Platoon with a ‘line’ platoon and I didn’t want to ‘point’ with them. It was sort of silly to think that way in a mobile situation because any element of the squadron could be hit an enemy unit coming behind the point. But, that’s the way I felt.

Instead , our platoon – now a section – was sent on another road. We stopped near some scattered and isolated farm buildings at the top of a rise. We waited, for some reason, and the partner of one of our men came up and said to Zwer, “You’d better take a look at Richard’s arm.” We walked back to the man but we couldn’t pull his shirt up over his forearm because of the swelling. Someone cut the sleeve and it exposed a blackening skin; the tell-tale sign of blood poisoning.

Zwer told the man’s partner to take him back to the medics in my jeep. Ordinarily nobody came near my jeep because of my possessiveness of the vehicle, but this time was different. As we waited, I felt almost naked without the jeep. It had become an inseparable part of me.

After a short time we heard an engine noise from behind us. I asked Zwer, “Does that sound like a tank to you?” He laughed and said, “That’s your jeep. Don’t you recognize the sound?”

I guess I had become so accustomed to the noise I didn’t realize there was a hole in the muffler. Now I began to wonder if a ‘point’ jeep should be making such a racket. Well, it was too late to do anything about it now.

When I got my jeep back we continued on and at the top of another hill we came upon abandoned anti-aircraft positions. The enemy had left the guns with their muzzles pointing skyward. Although abandoned, the guns were still operable. I stood on the seat of the jeep and pulled the pin from a white phosphorus grenade and slid it down the barrel. Smoke poured from the muzzle as the breech mechanism was being welded.

We had a man I the platoon from Kentucky or Arkansas or someplace like that. He was likeable and a good soldier, but sometimes, as now, he did things that livened the day. He hollored down to us and asked what we were doing. We told him, “Wrecking the guns with white phosphorus”

We thought nothing more of this until we heard someone in back of us shout, “GRENADE!” You don’t stop to ask questions when you hear this warning. Since we were in the jeep, I gunned the engine to get as much distance as possible. When we stopped to look back, we saw the arching, white plumes of phosphorus climbing into the air. After the bedlam quieted down, we asked this man what had happened. He said, “I threw a grenade at the gun like you guys were doing.” We explained that you dropped the grenade down the tube, not at it, but we gave up spiking the guns.

An incident like this doesn’t warrant any lasting condemnation of the man, or men, involved. It’s usually a reason for some good-natured ribbing afterward. If a man is otherwise a good soldier, he can be excused for an isolated mistake.

This man, like most in the platoon, were reliable and always there where things were worst. Personally I wouldn’t have traded him for anybody else I could think of. He, like the man we just sent to the rear with a blood-poisoned arm, were the quiet men. The men you might not even notice until you needed him.

Quietness was a trademark of American soldiers. It is said that British soldiers shouted as they charged; Frenchmen supposedly sang. Russians shouted. I never heard German soldiers shouting or singing. I think attempts were made in some army units to shout phrases or words, but the American soldier was quiet. I don’t think it probably matters if a soldier shouts, sings or is quiet. Maybe it’s just a national trait.

The 125th Cavalry Squadron had become involved in heavy fighting in the city of Hamm. Along with other platoons of C Troop, we drove to the outskirts of that city. Drivers of vehicles were told to stay with them and all others entered the town to assist in overcoming the resistance the enemy was fighting to regain the bridgehead over the Lippe River.

This again was part of the versatility of cavalry. Armored car gunners, radio operators, loaders; mortar crews, jeep-mounted riflemen all became riflemen for the fight. Infantry and armored assistance was to far away to help in the time required. Success or failure would mean the difference between having a river crossing bridge, not only for the 125th Cavalry, but for the 30th Infantry Division which would follow.

We drivers didn’t go into the city, but instead stayed with out vehicles without really knowing what was going on in town. The night became cold and most of us didn’t get any sleep. I tried the front seat of an armored car, but it was like trying to sleep in a refrigerator. Early in the morning we stood around the exhausts of the cars trying to get warm from that source.

The efforts of those troopers who did go into Hamm were recognized by a Unit Citation from Lieutenant General William Simpson, commanding the United States Ninth Army.

April 3, 1945. First Platoon, C Troop, 125th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron:

The First Platoon, now reduced to a section of three jeeps and one armored car, but reinforced by Carlos Blackwell’s tank, entered the town of Steinhagen. We had started early. As usual, and drove until noon. Headquarters Platoon was following in our wake. The Second and Third Platoons were following their own routes. Steinhagen is in the vicinity of Bielfeld, north of the town of Ahlen.

We were ordered to stop just as we were leaving Steinhagen. We dismounted to stretch our legs, have a smoke and talk to one another. The platoon sergeant came up to our jeep and said, “Let’s take a ride and see what’s up ahead.” Normally one vehicle at a time isn’t moved in combat, but we didn’t question his suggestion. He climbed into Gerry’s position in the back seat of the jeep, Zwer was next to me in the right front seat.

I had driven about three hundred yards up the road when we heard rifle fire coming at us from close by. Bullets passing close carry the ‘snap’ of the explosion with them, probably they’re traveling faster than sound. Whatever the reason, we knew the bullets were passing between us. By instinct, I started to push on the brakes, thinking the fire was coming from our front.

The platoon sergeant was yelling, “Don’t stop, don’t stop.” I yelled back at him to ask where they were. I had to turn and look back at him to see he was pointing to our left. I looked in that direction and saw a German soldier standing alongside a house we had just passed. As I looked, he squeezed-off another shot. Now I knew what to do. I slammed the jeep into low gear and floor boarded the gas pedal. The German continued firing as fast as he could operate the bolt of his rifle. Each time he fired, I waited to see if I would feel the bullet that would take off the back of my head. He was close, but he kept missing.

I drove up to the first house of the town itself and pulled behind a high hedge where the shooter couldn’t see us easily. Safety was back the way we had come and at least one enemy was between us. I let off a long burst from the B.A.R. I couldn’t see much from behind the hedge so I sprayed the side of the house, where he had been standing, about fifty yards away.

I used the radio to call for help: “Any Charlie unit, this is Charlie One-Four, over.” No reply. I checked the antenna and lead-in wire. The radio looked all right, but there was no answer. We decided to make a run for it – back past the house to our rear.

We were going to turn around and race past the house while Zwer fired the machine gun and the platoon sergeant fired at the other side of the road. I tied to get him to use the B.A.R., but he wanted to use his M-1 rifle.

We thought that if there were any more Germans in that house behind us we could keep them busy ducking long enough to get by once more.

We climbed back into the jeep and I put it in low gear. I planned to drive all the way past the house without wasting time shifting gears.

Before I could let the clutch out, there was a flash of light and a ear-splitting explosion somewhere over the hood of the jeep. I felt the heat and particles of burning powder hit my face. I rolled out the side, somehow grabbing the B.A.R. on my way. The two sergeants got out their own ways and we ran, bent over, for the house nearest us. The front door was unlocked and we jumped inside and closed it behind us.

We quickly tried to take stock of our situation. I had the B.A.R., but with only two rounds left in the magazine. Zwer had his M-1 rifle with eight rounds. The platoon sergeant had no weapon. We couldn’t stand off much of an attack. The jeep had rolled forward into a large tree. We didn’t know if it had been hit.

One of the sergeants asked, “What the hell was it?”, referring to the explosion. We decided it must have been either a tank or anti-tank gun from short range so that we could hear the explosion of impact, but not the gun itself.

From behind curtains, we checked out of the windows to determine the situation outside. What we saw out the rear wasn’t encouraging: Germans were dug in out in the back yard. The closest hole was almost under the window and there were several more beyond. Each hole had at least one soldier inside. We could hear them speaking lowly to each other. They were all wearing their tin hats and were ready for fight.

In spite of our predicament, it was strange and fascinating being so close to the enemy. We had taken a lot of prisoners, but this was different. I had often wondered about him last winter as we sat in holes facing each other. Now I was just a few feet away from him, looking at the expressions on his face and listening to him talk. They were waiting for the attack they were sure would follow us up the road.

We shifted to the front windows and saw ten or twelve more German soldiers across the road. They were in a deep ditch where another road dead-ended into the one we had arrived on.

It became clear now, what had happened. For whatever reason, they had not fired at us as we drove up and stopped directly across from them. Maybe it was respect for the chugging of the B.A.R. when I fired back at the first soldier.

Seeing them there now, we knew the explosions had not come from any gun, but from hand grenades thrown by these men across the road.

German hand grenades were still similar to their World War One ‘potato Mashers’, so-called because of their shape. The explosive charge was contained in a thin metal canister about the configuration of a 16 ounce pork and bean can, attached to a wooden handle.

All German grenades I saw were concussion-type, but had a serrated metal sleeve that could be slipped over the canister for shrapnel effect.

Like our own grenades, they were unpredictable in their behavior. One could be dropped at your feet and you wouldn’t receive a scratch. The next one would take off both ankles and spread fragments throughout the body. It all depended on how they broke apart.

Now, inside the house, it appeared that the soldiers across the road probably thought their comrades in the rear of the house captured us. Those in the rear probably were thinking the grenades took us out. So far – so good.

We moved from window to window, trying to watch all sides. From a second floor window, I could see this was going to be a long day – or, depending upon actions of the enemy, a very short one.

No help was in sight from our platoon or troop. We had all the German soldiers three men could ever need at one time. it was a lonely time.

After a while I walked into the home’s dining room. Zwer was sitting at the table eating preserved cherries he had found in the house. I thought it rather a casual thing to be doing, but on second thought I realized we hadn’t eaten since breakfast and there were no meals in our immediate future, so I joined him.

I suppose we all felt about the same at that time. From the initial excitement – not really fear – of being shot at, to the explosion of the first grenade and the impetus the second grenade gave us, turning at last to fear, seeing we were surrounded. The fear finally turned to resignation after finding we were not even armed well enough to offer resistance.

Now it was a matter of waiting. If we were found, we had little choice but to surrender, but none of us wanted to surrender prematurely. Maybe the platoon would come. Maybe, after dark if necessary, we could try to sneak back along the ditches next to the road.

After an hour we decided there was no help coming from our platoon or troop. Hadn’t they heard the shooting and grenades? Maybe not. If the situation didn’t improve, we might have to hide until some other outfit came this way – but that could be a matter of days.

Since confusion reigns in warfare, we weren’t any more sure of how many German soldiers there were and where they might be, than they were of us. Zwer went down to check out the cellar.

In the cellar, taking refuge from what fighting they had heard from above, were the German owners of the house; an elderly couple and a Frenchman and his wife and child. The French couple were part of the foreign laborers brought into Germany. They told us the old Germans weren’t bad people.

The old German woman was very robust and her husband on the thin side. They sat in chairs and I noticed the woman was shaking – almost uncontrollably. Although she was the enemy, or at least representative, I felt a little sorry for her. Nobody should be as frightened as she appeared. I was now going to calm her down with words of consolation.

I patted her on the shoulder and said, “Nicht schiessen.” This was to indicate she should have no fear of us shooting her. However, I got a little mixed up on pronunciation and used the “I” sound instead of the “E” sound. This slight error had me telling her not to have a bowel movement. The French couple corrected my linguistics and explained she had something like Parkinson’s Disease and it was not necessarily fright. I hoped I hadn’t scared her into permanent constipation.

With German civilians in the house, we now thought of a plan in the event the soldiers in the back yard or across the road decided to check out the house. We tied a white cloth to a broomstick and tried to explain to the old man that if worst came to worst, he was to take our surrender flag, open the back door and tell the soldiers out there we were surrendering. We used a lot of very poor German that we picked up like, Deutcher soldaten, kamerad and sprechen. The old man got the idea, to do it. While we were discussing this possibility, he opened the back door and started out. We reached out and yanked him back inside, hoping the Germans in the backyard hadn’t seen what happened. We sent him back down to the cellar until we might need him.

About a half hour later, as we watched our surrounding enemy, we heard several shots from the same house where we had received out first fire. We ran to a second floor window and saw another jeep sitting on the road about fifty feet away. One man already lay on the pavement behind the jeep. We couldn’t make out who it was because his poncho was wrapped around his head. Another man was in the ditch, crawling on his belly toward us.

The firing continued and we could see dirt being kicked up over the back of the man in the ditch. We recognized him now by his red hair. Corporal Hawsey. We tried to see where the shots were coming from, thinking we might draw the fire from him with our puny supply of ammunition. We thought he might make it to the house because it looked like they couldn’t aim low enough to hit him. They did. When we looked back, he was lying still in the ditch.

By this time we had been cut off for three and a half hours. Shortly after this the guys back in the last town must have realized something was going wrong up ahead. We couldn’t see them, but F Company tanks started firing into town and the mortar crew began lobbing shells in. Now we hoped they wouldn’t open up on the house we were in.

We checked out the window and after a few minutes we noticed the Germans in the back yard weren’t in their holes. Out the front window we saw the others across the road get up and start back into the town. The tank from F Company appeared down the road and fired a few more rounds, then withdrew.

We still waited; for our own troops to stop firing and to make sure all the German soldiers had left. We didn’t know how far back into town they would go. We might still be under observation if we left the house. We formulated a new plan, or rather the platoon sergeant did. I was to go out and try to start the jeep; we didn’t know if it had been hit, or how seriously. I was to turn the jeep around and they would come out and mount up. I also realized it would let us know if the Germans were still watching because I would draw fire it they were. It didn’t matter to me because I just wanted to get out there. I said, “O.K., But I’m not waiting around if the jeep starts.”

I crawled out through the glass shards on the front porch. I slithered on my belly to the walkway out to the road. The jeep was resting against a large tree. If nothing else, I planned to get another rifle and some ammunition so we wouldn’t be quite as helpless as we now were.

Still lying on the ground, I said a quick prayer, reached into the jeep and pulled the gear-shift lever into neutral. The ignition had been on and the radio had been drawing juice from the battery for four hours. I hoped there was still enough power left to turn the engine over.

I reached down and pumped the gas pedal a couple times to prime the carburator. I then brought the same hand over to the foot-operated starter-button and pushed. The engine cranked over a couple times and then caught. My magnificent war-machine didn’t let us down.

The two sergeants came out at a dead run and jumped in as I was turning. I left it in low gear until the engine reached maximum revolutions. I had never treated the jeep like that before.

No Cavalryman had ever been as proud of his mount as I was of that jeep. Even with its combat overload it jumped as though it too didn’t want to be captured.

I had taken special care of my jeep, not because I applied any human characteristics to it, but because it was a machine – a beautiful machine – and our lives depended on its performance. The care was paying off now.

I didn’t even glance at the body lying behind the jeep that had come up looking for us. Whoever it was must have been killed with one shot because there hadn’t been the slightest movement after we first saw him. When he fell, his poncho had blown over his head and now I was too intent on driving to look. Hawsey, we knew had been killed in the ditch.

The wind whipped against our faces as we plummeted toward the platoon and safety. There was a slight bend in the road and as we turned with it, we found ourselves looking into the barrel of Blackwell’s tank gun. Carlos was never hesitant to shoot at a target and now I hoped he would recognize the jeep.

I swerved from side to side to let him see us and also make less of a target if he didn’t. We reached the tank and passed it.

Inside the town, we pulled up with the other vehicles of our abbreviated platoon. Everyone wanted to know what had happened and what we were doing for four hours while surrounded. We talked and ate C-Rations and smoked. Surprisingly, it wasn’t hard to relax. It was just over with. We would be moving out again and what had just happened was already in the past.

It was always like that. When we started this morning, I couldn’t remember staring yesterday. After the first turn in the road, this morning’s start was forgotten. Every turn, every town, every fire-fight was a new beginning and anything before was past. This day, though, wouldn’t be put in the forgotten past.

The captain had come up to our position and asked what the situation looked like in Steinhagen. One of the sergeants who had been with me told him that it looked like all the Krauts had left town. At least they hadn’t fired at us when we left.

“How about the men in the other jeep?”

“They’re both dead. We saw Hawsey crawling up a ditch alongside the road, but there wasn’t anything we could do to help him. He was shot in the back.”

“How about the other man?”

“He’s dead too. Got knocked off the jeep before Hawsey got out of it.”

“Who is the other man?”

“I don’t know. His head was covered by his poncho.”

The captain turned to the other men who had not been involved in Steinhagen. “Who is the man who went with Hawsey?”

There was a pause. Finally someone quietly answered. “Ganley.”

No! No, not now. Not after all this! They had to be wrong. My breath started coming heavy as I searched the faces around me. They’re wrong, I know it. It couldn’t be him.

The captain sent another jeep and a tank up the road to recover the bodies and their jeep. I waited, knowing it had to be someone else. Watch; he’s going to step out of a doorway now and ask, “What the hell you been doing?” I still couldn’t find him.

The jeeps and tank returned and I watched as they stopped at the curb. They carried the first man from the jeep; Hawsey. They carried the second man, whose head was hidden by his poncho, and laid him on the sidewalk in front of me.

“Leave the poncho over his head, Newt.”

I didn’t have to lift the poncho. This is my partner. I didn’t have to see what was under the poncho. I can recognize him by a boot, a hand, or even a stain on his field jacket. – we’ve been together that long.

In what is usually a few short months, we had shared a lifetime. We shared the despair of certain death, as it seemed then, in the foxholes. We knew those gray days and long nights together. We knew each others fears. We always knew that when we were shot at, it was at both of us because we were never far apart.

I suppose those things bring you close together – too close. I don’t think either of us realized it.

I hadn’t felt anguish with the others, but now I tried to bargain with God: “Please, God, please. Take back one hour. One lousy hour God. You could do it and no one could even tell. Send us all back one hour – only don’t let him come up that road again.”

But, you don’t bargain with God. He had given us that hour to use as we would and now it was gone.

I knelt to straighten his legs; they were crossed at the ankles when they laid him on the sidewalk. While I kneeled there I started the Act of Contrition for him: “Oh my God I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee” …. out in the street somebody said, “Mount up.”

I took his wallet from a hip pocket to be sent home to his wife. “Your wife, Ger’, she don’t know this happened. She won’t know for a couple days. She was probably asleep – it was only Four or Five in the morning out on the West Coast – and the baby. What did you do it for, Ger’?

In a whisper, or maybe no whisper at all; “I’m sorry Gerry. I don’t know what to do. I never even thought about just one of us getting it and now I don’t know what to do or I would – you know that, don’t you, Partner?”

The voice from the street repeated, “Mount up.”

“I gotta go, Ger’. I whish I could stay here a while. I wish I could drive you back to Margraten myself, but they’re holloring to get going. I’ll see ya a little later.”

The platoon, or what was left of it, was mounted and waiting. I put Gerry’s duffle bag next to him. I untied his blanket-roll from a front fender and shook it out to make sure nothing personal of his was in it. The blanket was laced with holes from the grenade thrown at us in Steinhagen.

As I removed the blanket-roll, I noticed a five-inch, V-shaped hole in the hood, expecting to see some kind of damage, but there was none.

Ready to move, I looked back at the platoon. Some platoon! A couple jeeps and one lousy armored car. I took one last look back to where Gerry was lying on the sidewalk. The platoon’s going fast, Ger, so don’t get too far ahead of me.

I got behind the wheel of my jeep and Zwer said, “Okay, let’s move out.” We continued on the road that had led us into town five hours earlier. The road that had led to infinity and eternity. Tomorrows are imagination. Yesterdays never were. It is always today.

Gerry wouldn’t see the next turn in the road, or what lay beyond. Maybe it made no difference. Maybe there’s another enemy rifleman up the road, behind a house. Or maybe another Panther waiting in an orchard.

You were sitting up high on the spare tire again so you could see better, weren’t you? How many times have I told you about that?

R E M O U N T

PART

6

It’s another one of those mediaeval towns untouched by war. Everything is quiet – no sounds at all along its cobbled streets.

I watch and see no movement. But I hear a distant music; symphonic music. Nothing I can recognize, but there are strings and low-toned horns. The music is pleasant, but not happy music. There is no place it can be coming from.

When we leave, the music remains. Would it be there still if ever I returned?

In this town, where we left our dead, was a large distillery. In what was apparently the company’s sales room, hung large wall-maps of Europe showing their pre-war distribution. The distillery had been fair-game for looting while we had been cut off in Steinhagen.

Aside from a few fresh farm eggs, our outfit didn’t loot from civilians in the towns we passed through. The distillery, though, became an exception. Cases were piled on the rear deck of the armored car. Ammunition ‘ready-racks’ were loaded with bottles instead of 37mm rounds.

The booze didn’t interest me, but somebody gave me a small bottle of cherry brandy. I took sips from it to soften the chill of a couple early mornings, but then either gave it away or lost it. I only remember it was strong and sweet.

The ‘haul’ from the distillery was so large that on the following day we threw at least one bottle into every vehicle of an 83rd Division regimental combat team. That’s a lot of trucks, tanks and men.

That same day we were sent to another town, whose name I never did learn, to outpost if for the night. We had stopped high on a hill overlooking the town and heard our Second Platoon engaged in a fire-fight at the other end of the town.

Before we could move down off the hill, we received an order from squadron headquarters to try to contact the 2nd Armored Division by radio. They had been unable to reach the division and thought we might be closer. If we had thought about it, we might have been a little disconcerted to realize that we were so far away from the division whose ‘flank’ we were running that we couldn’t raise them on the long-range AM radio.

Now we found that while we had been driving, most of the men had been sampling the products of the distillery. There were only about four of us who were sober.

We had only one code-operator left in the platoon. We got him into the assistant drivers seat of the armored car and clamped the sending-key to his leg. After a feeble attempt to operate the key, we gave it up and called squadron headquarters back by voice-radio to tell them we too were unable to raise the 2nd Armored. This was not a complete falsehood; we couldn’t raise anybody by Morse code.

We finally got down the hill to the town. There were no houses on the side of the road which we approached. The drivers parked their vehicles at the curb and immediately went to look for houses where they could get some sleep.

We could hear the second platoon still engaged in a fire-fight at the other end of town. Zwer and the platoon sergeant went to find the men who had disappeared and told three of us to set up some kind of outpost.

There were two men who had become rather close friends; Heeber and Francus. Heeber was a very large man and Francus on the smaller side. Together with them, I drove my jeep up to an intersection a couple hundred feet from where the other vehicles were parked.

We got out and stretched and stood talking when suddenly a German ‘jeep’, the Volkswagen with the sloped hood, came racing towards us from the other end of town. We were surprised as the vehicle came screeching to a stop directly in front of us. But not for long. Two large S.S. soldiers jumped out of the VW without weapons and started swinging.

Everything became so entangled, so quickly, there was no time to shoot. Heeber and the larger of the two S.S. were throwing punches from the ground. Fancus moved in with his carbine and knocked one out with a blow to the head. He broke the stock of the gun on the head of the second.

These two S.S. men had been transporting a wounded comrade when they came on us. We threw the two unconscious soldiers into the back of my jeep and drove back to the house where we left the rest.

While we were welcoming the S.S., the two sergeants had been rousting men out of beds, including one who had already found a willing bunk-mate in the form of a village lady. He had to get up too, in spite of the lady’s protests to the contrary.

Now, as we entered the house carrying the disabled S.S. men, their presence had a quick, sobering affect. We threw the S.S. on a hall floor, removed their jackets, and put them back on the two unconscious forms backwards to act as a straight-jacket. While we talked, wondering how to dispose of these soldiers, one of them regained consciousness and thrashed out with his feet, trying to kick anyone within range. One of our men waited for an opening and jumped into the German’s crotch with both feet. The S.S. man reentered a comatose state, but added moaning this time.

We sent the two Germans and their previously wounded comrade to the rear in a medic’s half-track that night. In the late stages of the war, some S.S. were being drafted into units, but the majority were volunteers who were as fanatic and tough as any soldier ever in any army. The S.S. was a strange organization. They, in the Waffen S.S., were combat soldiers. Others ran the concentration camps and they had political and administrative branches throughout the Nazi hierarchy.

The term, “screening”, may sound as though we were close, maybe within sight, of the divisions we screened, but, as I mentioned, we were far enough away from the 2nd Armored Division’s left flank that we were beyond the range of our long-range radio’s. While screening the left flank of the 2nd Armored, we were again screening the front of the 30th Infantry Division after returning to that division on April ninth. With about 650 men, less casualties, but even supported by Company C, 801st Tank Destroyer Battalion, we were still not a formidable force if we ran into any sizeable German armor.

I guess if we could have looked down at ourselves from a high perch in space we might felt a little lonely. The armored divisions drove in ‘combat commands’ and the infantry in ‘regimental combat teams’. Both had infantry, tanks, artillery, engineers and cavalry and could muster 12 to 14 thousand men in a short time. We would have to wait for them to arrive if we got into any serious trouble.

I think my obsession with driving ‘point’ lay in the fact that here and now I was the first into this particular place in the homeland of the nation that had defeated all of Europe and a large portion of Russia. No one from outside world had been here for almost six years. Now, for brief seconds and minutes, these were my roads and my towns. It didn’t matter that Zwer was alongside me or that other men in other units might be doing the same as I. They could have their own roads and towns, but these are mine. A million men would follow, but they would never know what it was like that first time.

If things went well, maybe I would see Berlin when the 2nd Armored went in. Berlin was still the objective of Ninth U.S. Army and XIX Corps. And nobody deserved Berlin more than the 2nd Armored Division and the 30th Infantry Divisions.

Most of the time on this drive we didn’t know exactly where we were. That is not to say we were lost. Platoons had their day’s route scheduled, troops had their zones and squadrons had their general directions, but even on the small-scale maps we used, it was difficult to locate yourself to known, large cities, until you get very close to them. It seemed, and rightly so, that we were isolated from the rest of the army. Most of the time I couldn’t explain where another platoon was.

An exception to this isolated feeling occurred one day as we climbed a hill leading in the Teutoburger Wald (forest). As we reached the crest, I looked back down the hill and saw the entire troop following. There were probably not enough roads in the area so that all platoons and attached tank destroyers were in the column.

The reconnaissance troops, A and C, were formed into miniature, light-weight ‘combat commands’. F Company’s tanks, E Troop assault guns with the attached tank destroyers were interspersed with the armored cars and jeeps. It was reassuring to see the column, but after we got through this bottle-neck, each platoon would be on its own again.

The rest of the days in that final drive are obscure. The time sequence was lost the same day. There were eighteen and twenty hour days. Fifty and sixty mile days driven at five and ten miles an hour. The towns changed, the countryside changed and the weather changed. It was an exhausting grind of driving, fire-fights, taking prisoners and eating and sleeping when we could.

Mornings started by packing whatever little gear we might have used during the night. We gassed up, checked ammunition and guns, turned on radios and, if there was time, had a cup of coffee and ate a couple fresh, pilfered eggs.

This turmoil of movement sometimes made us think we had left the enemy somewhere behind us – then, all of a sudden, there he was again. Don’t make plans for tomorrow.

While the engine warmed, I usually said a prayer. I couldn’t ask to be spared because too many good men had died already. I mostly asked for the courage to do what I had to do – and, if it’s O.K., no permanent disabling wound. If it’s a choice, I’d just as soon go to Margraten. I had never found a place I considered a “good” place to die in our travels. While considering the possibility, I developed a fear of being left face-down in a mud puddle. It didn’t make any difference, I guess, but it seemed like you should look as neat as possible when they slid you into a mattress-cover.

There are no hot meals for combat troops on the line or moving, as we were now. C-Rations from the wood box tied to the wire-cutter on the front bumper was our sole issued food. The Beef Stew, Corned Beef Hash and Pork and Beans had lost any excitement they might have had. It didn’t take us long to realize that almost every farm we came to had a hen house with fresh eggs. As conquers, we harvested these spoils-of-war at every opportunity.

Back in the States, readers of our “glorious dash” across Germany would have been dismayed to learn that the spearheading troops were stopping to gather eggs and tenderly carry them back to the vehicles. This was a bonus for being point. The rest of the army that was following probably wondered why German chickens didn’t lay eggs when they looked for them.

At times I had a dozen or more eggs wrapped in a blanket inside the windshield-cover laying over the hood of my jeep. When we reached a town that was quiet, we stopped, raced into the nearest house and ordered the hausfrau to cook a couple eggs “sunny-side-up”. The experience of having enemy soldiers burst into their houses must have unnerved many German women who were undoubtedly expecting a ‘fate more horrible than death’. The “fate” would have to wait for somebody with more time than us. Just cook the lousy eggs. We washed down this breakfast with Nescafe made with hot water that always seemed to be on the stove.

Powdered Nescafe was the army’s substitute for any other form of coffee. I had always been a coffee drinker and the Nescafe, mixed as directed, soon became too tame for me. I doubled the little package which was the recommended amount for one cup. Then I tripled them, the finished product was extremely bitter, but it wasn’t weak.

The diet was monotonous although it was apparently nutritious enough. We were all in good health. Driving in itself isn’t tiring, but the long hours and intermittent tension drained strength.

Replacements for the men and equipment we lost on the first three days after crossing the Rhine would not catch up to us. Men, still waiting in Replacement Depots (Repple-Depo’s) would not see war. They were too far behind now to arrive in time. Replacement vehicles; M-8 armored cars, jeeps, tanks were still back west of the Rhine. Only the addition of Blackwell’s tank and sometimes an assault gun kept what was left of the First Platoon operational.

During this succession of seemingly endless days we ran into fire-fights with die-hard German units. They were being so compressed now that it seemed like they would know their situation was hopeless. We started capturing them by groups and then by hundreds. You still don’t want to get killed by some fanatic who doesn’t know any better.

Prisoners were sent to the rear. We didn’t have the manpower or the transportation to take them back, so we disarmed them, got them into a formation and headed them towards our rear. They were always given a white, makeshift flag so they could be recognized when they ran into units coming up behind us. Most of them realized they were being pushed east and the alternative to surrendering to the Americans, was capture by the Russians.

There were a few interesting captures. One evening in some town where we were to spend the night, one of our men was standing in the middle of the street brushing his teeth when six armed German soldiers came into town and surrendered to him. At first he just stood there, toothpaste dripping from his mouth, thinking he was either captured or dead.

We stopped one night, arriving after dark, in a town that turned out to be medieval, but we weren’t aware of that in the darkness. There had been no resistance as we entered, so I suppose we all went to sleep. I know I did, but I had been exempt from pulling guard duty. I woke up about six in the morning and found someone else also awake. We decided to see what the town looked like and maybe even find an egg, or something. We saw an inn, or bar, across the street and light was coming through the window. It looked to be a good place to start.

The inn was located across the street and a few doors down, so we walked diagonally across, carrying our rifles as was habit. We failed to look through the windows; just tried the door and walked in.

Inside, every booth and chair was filled with German soldiers. There must have been fifty of them. They either wore or carried their tin hats. They all wore a type of canvas camouflage jacket, or jumper, which indicated they were S.S. or some specialized troops. They all had their personal weapons with them so they must have been fighting recently. They sure weren’t rear echelon.

They sat looking at us, but made no move toward their weapons. Neither did we. If anybody made a quick move, the inn would have changed into a shooting gallery. I muttered to the man with me, “What do you think we should do?” He replied, “I think we better order a beer.”

All the while, a barmaid stood watching the scene. We walked up to the bar and said, “Zwei biere.” While she poured two beers, and as an afterthought, I jerked my thumb toward the German soldiers and said, “Biere fur alles.” We could afford to be generous, because, one way, or the other, I knew we weren’t going to have to pay this day. One man from each table came to get beer for his friends.

There were no toasts to fellow soldiers or anything that might bind us in our common plight. We finished our beers, turned to the Germans and said, “Okay, let’s go.” We gestured toward the door and made sure we were first out. The Germans got up and followed us out. We pointed to the roadway and said, “Waffen” (weapons). They filed by and , one by one, laid their rifles on the pavement.

By this time the rest of our outfit was up and so were the rest of the German troops in town. We had spent the night with about 300 of them. They came up and surrendered their weapons. An officer of majors rank also appeared. He was an older man and looked as though he had enough of war. When it looked like they were all assembled, we had them fall into three ranks, placing the major in command of his final duties. We selected on German to carry the makeshift white flag. Our German speaking man gave them the order for “Right Face” and “Forward, March” and they started the long road to internment ( and food, and safety). Behind us, some other outfit would “capture’ them again and add them to their statistics. I think that during that final drive, every German must have been “captured” at least twice. I’ll bet that if they ever added up all the statistics, we captured twice as many men as the German army had.

The best treatment prisoners get is probably by the first combat troops they surrender to. The further back they got, the “tougher” the soldiers.

Up to a point, during the war, I don’t think the average American soldier had much understanding of what it was all about. We knew the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and shortly after, Germany declared war against us. I think most of us felt as the boys in some southern state are reputed to react. They don’t ask “Why is there a war”, but, “Where is it?” We were in Europe and the Germans were trying to shoot us and we were trying to shoot them. The political reasons didn’t matter us. But then one day we came upon the best reason there was to be there.

Everyone in the States had heard of German concentration camps. It was common knowledge that the Germans had these camps and large numbers of people were sent to them, especially Jews. Not much more than that was known. It wouldn’t be known until these camps were overrun.

About a week into the drive, we driving down a road and passed a rock quarry. We may have glanced at it but it drew no particular attention. In Point, I had already passed the front gate of a meshed-wire fence when we heard a sound over engine noises that resembled a roar. Someone in a vehicle behind us yelled at us. We stopped and drove back to the gate. Inside, people dressed in striped pajama-type clothing were coming out of wood frame buildings waving and cheering.

The gate was locked so we had the armored car break it down. I drove in a ways and stopped. The men of the camp came running, or trying to run.

These men are grotesque creatures with skin drawn tightly over fleshless skulls. Their hands and feet are too large for the wrists and ankles they are attached to. Bones and veins show through the skin. They run to us. Those who can, have tears running down their cheeks. They come to us and kiss us with cold, drooling mouths. More men, those who cannot keep up with the first, stumble and fall and get up again to get to us.

None of us are ready for this. I feel revulsion. They’re not humans, but creatures from a cheap horror movie. Humans couldn’t possibly look like this – but they are crying and only humans cry. I don’t want them to kiss or embrace me. When I touch an arm or put my own arm around a chest, there is nothing but bones. They feel like they will break if I hug them in return.

I an the point. I am the first man here. I whish I weren’t. Whatever this place is, I will not claim it as ‘mine’.

Later we will find that this was the Langenstein Camp, a satellite camp of the larger Buchenwald. A ‘small’ camp of about fifteen hundred men to work the quarry on a diet designed for death.

Similar camps were being discovered at this time. many were much larger, the main camps, but most of those had outlying camps, like Langenstein.

We didn’t understand it then. I’m still not sure I understand it now.

Our first impulse was to get these men something to eat, but we realized they couldn’t eat solid foot. Any type of normal food would kill them as sure as starving would. In the days followed, medical units would arrive with doctors who would know better than we what they could have. Even with medical care, some of these men and people in the other camps would die because they were too far gone.

We left the quarry after letting the inmates know that help was coming behind us and would arrive soon. XIX Corps and Ninth Army would send advanced teams forward.

The road ran a couple hundred yards further and made a sharp turn to the left. There was a slight downhill grade and as we drove on we could see objects in the ditch along the right side of the road. When we got closer we could see the same striped clothing the men in the quarry had been wearing. There were men inside these uniforms too.

We stopped the column to investigate. There were fourteen men lying face-down. Each had a small bullet hole in the back of his head. There were no other wounds so they have been executed. This was the work of the S.S. concentration camp guards. These S.S., although belonging to the same overall organization, were different from the “Waffen S.S.” who functioned as combat troops.

There was the camp we would find just ahead. These men in the striped clothes had probably been marching back to the camp and as we approached, they suffered the final indignity. The S.S. couldn’t even give them this last-minute chance to live. After months, maybe years of surviving these conditions, their lives ran out in a few minutes.

A quarter-mile further, and we came upon the camp where the quarry workers lived. Hundreds of the pajama-clad men lay on the ground. Those who could, turned and stared at us with little appreciation of what was happening. They didn’t understand this was the miracle they had lost hope in. they were free. Unlike the millions before them who had been dying for six years, they no longer had to face certain death by the enemy. Many of these would still die, but at least with dignity and someone trying to help. There would be a name, instead of a number.

As they lay there, most too weak to move, one man did manage to get up and come to us. I think he was a Frenchman. A French Jew. He stumbled and made his way over. He was calm, but he was sick. He had his faculties but his eyes showed the physical depredation and the long time of anguish, the worst of all human emotions.

He spoke softly to us because that was all his strength would allow. I don’t know if he was a doctor, but he admonished us not to try to feed any of the men. That took wisdom and self-control from a man who, himself, was in the last stages of starvation.

He spoke English well and we assured him that medical aid would arrive shortly, maybe even today. He had the presence of mind to tell us that if the inmates got into the nearby town, they would kill the civilians. After this experience, it would have been alright with us if they did, but I don’t think he realized there weren’t ten men in the camp capable of any act except to try to survive.

The Frenchman told us we should leave the German guard until help arrived. We had seen this old German sitting with his back against a tree. He probably been pressed into service by the S.S. when they took off. He was “Volksturm”, the last-ditch German attempt to beef-up their military. Most of the conscripts into this make-believe army were over sixty years old. Their “uniform” usually consisted of an armband.

This old man sat there with total despair written on his face. His fear of the S.S. was greater than of us. He knew that he should be shot on the spot for having even this much responsibility for the conditions around him. He knew that just being a German made him responsible.

We went over to him and took the ammunition out of his old bolt-action rifle and gave it back to him. We told the Frenchman to explain to him that he was to stay until the next Americans arrived. He was to pretend to guard the inmates and, if he left or took any action against them, we would come back and shoot him. The Frenchman told him and the old German shook his head in acknowledgement.

This may sound like strange behavior on our part, but we had neither the right foods nor medical supplies to help these men. And we had to keep moving. Only when you have been around war long enough to become a part of the insanity, can you rationalize these decisions.

If the circumstances had been any, but these, I might even have felt sorry for the old German soldier. He could hardly get around himself, he had no ammunition, the prisoners might gang-up on him and the next American outfit to get here might shoot him out of hand. Well, it was all for the glory of the Fatherland.

It seemed so logical at the time, but I’ve often wondered what those men in the striped pajamas thought of us as we drove off. I hope the Frenchman explained to them that we weren’t intentionally abandoning them. It would be terrible to think that any of them who couldn’t survive thought we didn’t care. Langenstein was the only camp we came to.

Another town, another day: We came across a Frenchman who had been taken to Germany to work as on of the “slave-laborers”, those who worked in plants or fields or any of the other jobs vacated by German’s manpower shortage. This was a handsome man with fine masculine features and a strong French accent when he spoke English. He spoke English well. He was in a town where there were so many of these foreign laborers, that it was more of a liberation than a conquest.

Many Frenchmen had a guilt complex borne of having lost so quickly and thoroughly to the Germans when they invaded in 1940. Many hoped to redeem their respectability through underground activities in their homeland. Some, like the man, were trying to find self-respect through some military action. He walked with the aid of a cane because, he said, he had been wounded defending his country. He insisted he was going to accompany us through the rest of the war and jumped into the back seat of my jeep. We tried to explain it might be a little less hazardous if he rode further back in the column. He would have none of it. We knew that if we weren’t defying the Geneva Convention, we must at least be violating an Article of War. We let him ride along anyway.

As we drove along heading for the next town, the Frenchman kept up a constant chatter. Since he was such a good looking man we figured he must be a hit with the women. We asked him which of the European women were the “best’. He was emphatic in his choice of the Polish women.

We entered the next town without any resistance and found a large colony of French women. On our friends list of most desirable women, they placed about sixth. These French women were also slave-laborers who had been displaced by the Germans. This was another “liberation” town. The German civilians were all hiding and the French woman welcomed us with kisses. They told our passenger of the German who lived up the road who was in charge of all foreign laborers. They hadn’t any experiences as the people in concentration camps, but they had still been taken from their homes and forced to live and work in Germany.

Our Frenchman now had to avenge this atrocity, and also prove his manhood to the French ladies, so he asked to be driven up to the house which was surrounded by a chain-link fence. He dismounted and started to climb the fence. We told him we could knock it down but he was already to the top. He dropped to the ground on the other side and asked for a gun. We threw a carbine to him and he approached the house.

We watched as he broke down the front door and he came out in a couple minutes saying the Germans had escaped.

We drove back into the center of town and waited for new orders to move. The orders came quickly and we mounted up. As we moved out, the Frenchman was nowhere in sight. He must have revised his list of European woman, probably on a basis of availability.

I wish I could put the days and even parts of days together in sequence, but as each day passed, it was blurred the next. Some morning’s didn’t seem to have been in the same day as an afternoon because of the distances we traveled and the changing terrain. I can remember seeing road signs announcing an upcoming town (whose name I can’t remember) and it seemed an eternity before we got to it. That’s the way the days passed.

Requisitioning houses was a daily thing for us. Routinely, when stopping for the night, we chose a house, or houses on the edge of town nearest the enemy, or where we thought he was. If there was enough room, the civilians were allowed to remain in the house. If there wasn’t enough room, the civilians had to find somewhere to sleep, probably with neighbors. We always took the beds. We didn’t disturb much. We slept with our clothes on, except for boots and field jackets.

Once in a while though, the house we selected belonged to people of more than average means and they would actually object, thinking we might abuse or take their valuables. In these cases, we merely escorted them out of the house and told them to stay out. When you make war on a whole continent, toy should accept defeat without arrogance.

One day, in midafternoon, we came down a long hill into a town of medium-small size. We received orders to hold up. We never knew if we were to stay or move again, so we always prepared for a stay. We selected a house and told the civilians to take a hike. This house was exceptionally well furnished and the owners were afraid we barbarians would steal or damage their belongings. They argued that we had no right to take over their house. We convinced them we were here to stay, by right of armed might if nothing else. They finally accepted this arrangement but asked if they could remove their furniture. We told them, “Sure, just leave the beds.” They spent about an hour and a half carrying furniture across the street to neighbors as quickly they could, probably thinking we might change our minds. At the end of that time we got new orders to move on. As we drove away from the house and out town, I looked back and they already carrying their furniture back across the street. Served them right.

Another evening, just before sundown, we were in a town located in an area that would have been pretty, if it had not been war-time. It was hilly country with many trees. For combat purpose, it was treacherous. We got the order to hold up for the night, so we found a house at the far end of town and started in.

We were met at the door by a man, in his fifties, who greeted us with enthusiasm. His hospitality was so overwhelming we couldn’t help but laugh at him. We started making demands of him just to watch him jump into action. We gave him our C-Rations and told him we wanted them heated right away. He was stumbling over himself, getting the women in the house started preparing our dinner.

I was standing by the front door when he came out, bowing and scraping. I noticed his mail box had the German eagle and swastika on it. The eagle and swastika had no real significance in this case; it was used like a trademark on almost everything produced after the Nazi’s took power. But, he didn’t know I knew that. I pointed to the emblem and in a gruff voice I asked, “What’s that for?” He didn’t understand English and couldn’t explain, so to show me he wasn’t really a Nazi and certainly never wanted Hitler, he got a screwdriver and pried the swastika off the box and threw it as far as he could.

We washed and shaved and by that time dinner was hot. Those of us who were not on guard in the armored car sat down at the kitchen table to eat. The “host’s” daughter, a girl about sixteen, came in and sat next to me. She told me she studied English at school. She said things like; “I an sprecht, speak good English, no?” I told her “Jawohl” and she thought I spoke German. I told her I couldn’t and while I slopped down my stew or hash or whatever it was, she kept giving me the German words for common items like table, chair, knife, fork. All the while she was trying to play kneesies under the table. As with so many German women, she admired combat troops. She probably admired a lot of them, combat or not, after the rest of the army got that far. The old fool of a father sat across the table pretending he didn’t know what she was doing.

Those of us not on guard went upstairs to bed. For some reason, I came down during the night and found the old grandma of the household sleeping, sitting up in a chair. I went through the bedrooms until I found the host. He was sleeping contentedly in a bed. I rousted him out and brought him down stairs and pointed to old grandma. I said, “What’s this? Grossmutter sleeping down here and you’re in a bed?” He fluttered around as though he was surprised that grandma was in the chair. He put his arm around her and lovingly helped her up to bed. He spent the rest of the night in the chair.

Another night: We set up a roadblock at the edge of a town, using the tank. The tank commander was Carlos, who had come to the rescue of our platoon on April 1st. The tank had to have dismounted protection so we in our platoon took that duty.

Carlos, carrying his Colt .45 ‘hog-leg’ revolver in its holster, had a platoon leader who was cut form similar cloth as Carlos.

I was on guard near the tank when the lieutenant came by. I hadn’t been paying much attention to the comings and goings of the tankers, but when the lieutenant asked where Carlos was, someone said he was upstairs in the house next to the tank. The lieutenant went up to find him. Soon after, Carlos came down cussing the ancestry of the lieutenant. Seems he had been relieving the stress of combat with a new-found female friend and had been interrupted. The lieutenant had broken up the arrangement by threatening court-martial for “fraternizing”. Carlos thought that since Eisenhower, who had issued that order, wasn’t here it might be alright. Carlos disappeared into the night.

He returned an hour later to take his turn in the tank. He casually asked if anyone had seen the lieutenant. One of his men told him he hadn’t come back down. Carlos wasn’t one to spend much time pondering the obvious. He drew his hog-leg .45 and charged up stairs. Within a few seconds the lieutenant came running out faster than Carlos had gone in. As he passed by he shouted, “Stop that son-of-a-bitch, he’s crazy.” These little forays didn’t affect their close relationship though, and by morning everything was forgotten.

One day during the drive to the Elbe River, we were ordered into a own that had been taken over by our headquarters platoon. On our arrival we were ordered to “fall-in”. We formed three ranks, along with the men of headquarters. We were all wondering what we were doing in a parade formation in the middle of a war. Someone from Headquarters platoon told us the Burgermeister’s (Mayor’s) daughter claimed she had been raped the night before and we were included in the “line-up” so there would be complete strangers among those the young lady had to pick from.

Everybody was dressed almost exactly alike; Steel helmets, field jackets, combat boots and wool uniforms. After we all lined up, two guys from headquarters came sneaking out. They squeezed in among the rest of us. They were obvious by the fact of their sneaking into the formation late, but if that weren’t enough, they were the only men wearing overcoats and sunglasses. I don’t know where they could have found sunglasses. The army certainly didn’t issue them. Most of us couldn’t keep from laughing at them. The village idiot could have picked them out and the Burgermeister’s daughter did. I’m not sure what happened to those two, if anything.

In another town whose name held no significance, we made one of those stops for which a purpose was never explained. I don’t remember if we took the break to eat or wait for a change in orders. While we stood around I heard tank fire coming from an edge of town. The report was recognizable as one of our own tanks.

I drove toward the sound by myself to see what was happening; there appeared to be no answering fire. On a road leading out of the small town I came on Blackwell’s M-24 Tank, his head and shoulders protruding from the turret. He was directing his gunner in firing on a cylindrical building off to one side. I watched the high-explosive shells penetrate the building. The tank rocked back on its suspension system with every round. It was a measured, methodical shelling.

A white flag came to a window and waved. Carlos held his fire and German soldiers started coming out of a door at the base. It was built something like a silo, but had windows spiraling to the top. I don’t know what its purpose was; Carlos didn’t know either. While the Germans were surrendering, Carlos leaned out and said, “Hey, Newt. Can you send me 80 gallons of gas? I can’t get through on my radio.” I asked, “Anything else?” “Yeah. I need 15 rounds of H.E. and a box of rations and somebody to fix the radio.”

I said, “Sure” and radioed back to C Troop, asking F company to send the required items. I told Carlos, “On the way.”

I stood watching the Germans coming at us with their hands over their heads and herd Carlos call my name again. “Hey, Newt.” I looked up at him and he asked, “Want to be a tanker?” I studied his face to see if a joke was going to follow the question. He wasn’t smiling.

“Whose tank?”

Carlos’ voice sounded as though my question had been unnecessary. “Mine.”

I knew he had a full crew for his tank and didn’t need a replacement. I looked at him for a while trying to understand his offer. If I was correct, I must have met with his approval somewhere in our passing. Carlos’ standards were simple; kill Germans.

I tried to think of an answer that wouldn’t offend his sense of friendship. Finally I answered with a question of my own, “Who’d lead this parade?”

Carlos smiled his big, white, square-toothed smile set against that swarthy skin and dropped down inside the turret. I guess he knew what the answer would be.

I prided myself on driving point. I knew I had the “feel” for the job. I drove at my own speed and was wary of places where the Germans might have anti-tank guns or other emplacements. All this is lost though when you have to drive at sunset or after dark falls. Several times we drove eighteen hours a day. No matter hoe early you start, it’s dark before your through. Driving in darkness without lights is a fatalists dream. You just try to stay on the road. Whatever acumen you might have for survival goes down the drain. Pure, unadulterated luck dictates whether or not you come across enemy troops or land mines.

On one particular night we pulled into a town at midnight. We stayed on the street by outlining the buildings against the black sky. It must have been another medieval town because the streets were so narrow.

We found a large house or hotel and went to bed immediately, satisfied to get some rest. Eating could wait until morning. I think this town was located in the valley of the Wesser River. At three A.M. we were awakened and told to move out. In the three hours we had been inside, the most dense fog I ever saw had set in.

We had to feel our way along the buildings, remembering where we had parked. We knew which vehicle was our own by feeling the gear and guns. We started the engines and created more fog from the exhausts.

The 125th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron would have been credited with the city of Brunswick (Braunschweig), except for the protocols of war. The German army, even in the final stages of defeat, would not surrender a town, a unit or a piece of equipment to what they considered an inferior force or an officer of lesser rank then the German commander.

Although we were the first American unit to reach the city, we didn’t have the firepower or manpower to force a military win. We also didn’t have an officer high enough rank for the German C.O. to surrender to. Our mission of screening also took priority so the surrender of Braunschweig had to wait for the 30th Infantry Division and its commanding general.

A day or so later, we reached the small town of Hoxter on the Wesser (Weser) River. Later, and to the north of us the 30th Infantry Division would take the town of Hamelin (Hameln), also on the Wesser. This was the same town of fairy tale fame where the Pied Piper lured all the town rats into the river by playing his flute – or pipe.

The 30th Division, in their division history states that they had to level the town because of resistance from the remnants of a German army group. The distance between Hamelin and Hoxter is fairly short and depicts the unexpected element of war. They got involved in a pitched battle while our squadron, just a few miles away, met little resistance.

We entered the town of Hoxter and a column of enemy tanks was escaping east, across a bridge over the Wesser. We heard the loud explosion as they blew the bridge behind them. We could see the tanks climbing a hill through trees across the river.

This was the only time I know of where we got direct air support. It isn’t clear if they were called for, but since we had no means of contact with aircraft, they probably spotted the tanks on their own.

The first indication we had of the airplanes was their engine noise behind us. We all looked up and saw a flight of P-47’s, the air corps’ heaviest fighter of the war, coming directly at us. We recognized the planes, but then we saw them release their bombs before they reached us. From our position, it looked like the bombs were coming down on us.

Armored vehicles are obviously different when seen close up, but from a distance and above, they become remarkably similar. As we watched the bombs fall, we had the chill of wondering if they had mistaken us for an enemy unit.

The pilots knew what they were doing, though and we saw the bombs continue on to explode across the river on, or near the German tanks. They didn’t appear to hit the tanks as we saw no smoke rise.

We had no way to cross the Wesser River to our front after the Germans had blown the bridge so we had to wait to use a bridge some other unit had found intact or find one ourselves. Meanwhile there was not much to do except kill time.

Since Ganley’s death, I guess I kept to myself most of the time. Now, with nothing to do for a few minutes or more, I selected the M-1 rifle because it weighed only half as much as the B.A.R. and walked down the street in the direction from which we had come in.

The M-1 was cradled in the crook of my left arm and my finger was on the trigger. At the corner, I turned to the left. This street went for only a few houses then curved left again.

Everything was silent now. I couldn’t hear the men or engine sounds. At the curve of the street, I stopped to survey the houses. There was no sign of life. The town appeared deserted; but why? Civilians hadn’t been evacuating towns. We were moving too fast. Maybe when the fighters came over to bomb the German tanks the townspeople had gone to their cellars. But, since no civilians showed themselves, it was possible there might be foot soldiers left behind by the tanks.

As I pondered this, I caught movement across the street from me. A window curtain had been pulled back for a second.

I brought the M-1 into hip-firing position and held it at the house. Within a few seconds the door of the same house opened a couple inches. After a pause it opened a little more and a woman’s face appeared. The face had a weak smile. A hand followed the face in a gesture between surrender and a feeble wave. What are you doing Lady? I almost shot ya.

I still didn’t know what to expect so the M-1 remained pointed at her. She finally came all the way out of the house and started toward me in a half-bent, shuffling manner; somewhat like a beaten dog. I continued watching the house behind he as she crossed over to me with that one hand raised. Don’t be afraid of me, lady. Hate me, be mad at me, anything – but don’t be afraid of me. I don’t want anyone to be afraid of me.

As she stopped in front of me, I could see her smile was apprehension, not friendliness. The hand that wasn’t in the air came forward with a jar of homemade preserves. I looked dumbly at the jar, not immediately knowing what to make of it. She said something in German that I didn’t understand and motioned for me to accept it.

I must have smiled a little in my own relief and muttered, “Danke.” She straightened up at my acceptance and replied, “Bitte.” Her walk was almost haughty as she returned to her house. She had breached the chasm between conqueror and conquered. And I let my breath out between pursed lips.

Another man in the platoon had come around the corner just in time to see the last part of this encounter. He asked, “What was that all about?”

“I don’t know. I guess she just likes American soldiers.”

Neither of us thought that was the reason. We had come across too many attitudes in too many towns to think there was any pattern to people behavior. Some townsfolk were belligerent, some sullen, some terrified and there were many towns where we never saw anyone as we passed through.

It may have been determined by rumors spread before we arrived. It may have been fear of retribution for what they knew (better than we) had occurred in Germany since Hitler. It may have been propaganda. There seemed to be no particular attitude in any particular town.

This woman, in this town was probably one of those whose fear of the unknown compelled her to take some kind of action rather than hide. There are people who must confront a fear, real or imagined, instead of waiting it out.

We continued around the bend in the street and another woman appeared from a house and made a similar offering of preserves; and another. They had all probably been peeking out of windows and, seeing the enemy mollified by gifts of food, decided this was the way to avoid rape, pillage and plunder. We had never been the Mongol hordes, but the change in diet was appreciated.

People in many towns thought we arrived as the occupying force. They were surprised when, after we ate or slept, we moved on. They were probably more surprised when they didn’t see any more Americans in the next three to six days when following units arrived.

One of the phrases I learned to quiet the nerves of some terrified inhabitants was, “Nicht angst.” It saved time rather than wait for some people to realize we weren’t going to kill everyone in town. The phrase roughly means not be afraid.

I picked it up after entering a house one day. It was morning and our platoon was ordered to hold up. That order could mean a minute or an hour. I hadn’t eaten breakfast so when we stopped in a small town, I jumped out of the jeep with the M-1 in one hand and two fresh eggs in the other.

The entrances to these houses were at the sidewalk; no yards or steps. I ran into the house and a young hausfrau was huddled against a far wall with her arms in front of her, one hand to her mouth to stifle a scream. I looked at her terror and was reminded of the heroine in a Grade B movie when the villain has her cornered and is about to commit unspeakable deeds. I didn’t have the words then, to calm her, so I just held out two eggs and said, “Spiegel eier.” She fried the eggs sunny-side-up faster than I thought possible.

There was even on town in Germany where we had our first experience of being welcomed. We had driven through the small village without seeing any civilians. As we were leaving the far side of town a large group of men and women were lined up on the left side of the road. As we neared, a roar came from the people. At first I thought they were belligerent, but then I realized they were cheering. I asked Zwer, “What kind of Krauts are these?” Zwer replied, “They’re not German. They’re Poles or Russians or something.”

When we came close they threw flowers at us. The jeep hood soon became covered with the hand-picked garlands. Nothing like this happened for seven months back in France and Belgium. The people, of course, were forced-laborers from occupied countries. We smiled and waved at these happy people even though my face was scratched from thorns.

About midway through the drive to the Elbe River, we came to the Teutoberger Forest. For whatever reason, the reinforced C Troop was using the same road and as we neared the top of a steep hill, I looked back and saw the column behind us. Pete Petrone was driving his jeep behind me and our one remaining armored car followed him. Then came F Company’s tanks, more jeeps, armored cars, assault guns of E Troop, half-tracks and the attached M-18 tank destroyers and trucks of Headquarters Platoon.

It was reassuring to see all those vehicles winding their way up the sharp-curved mountain. For days we had seen only the remnants of our own platoon with a tank to reinforce us, but now we realized the others were still out there.

As impressive as it looked to me, there were no other units to be seen from this high vantage point. I asked Zwer, “Sergeant, – I only called him that when I wanted something to sound official – Where is everybody?”

“They’re right behind us. Don’t you see them?”

“I see C Troop and the tanks and tank destroyers, but where’s the rest of the United States Army?”

“They’re coming.”

I knew the 30th Infantry Division should be behind us. I knew the 2nd Armored Division should be to our right, but with an unobstructed view to the horizon in three directions, nothing moved.

At the top of this hill we came upon several German soldiers. Wooded areas are not good for mounted units so we stopped to see if they might be a gun crew before the entire column arrived. These soldiers were acting strangely, laughing and falling over each other. They were dead-drunk. We passed them by for somebody else to capture. In another half mile we came to what they were apparently supposed to be guarding. It was some of army training camp.

A little past the camp and up a winding, paved road we came to a building that was recognizably military. We dismounted and searched through its rooms and hallways. No one was in the building, but while we searched, a German major arrived. He was commandant of the school and it was obvious that after years of teaching military tactics, he had wandered into captivity without a fight.

He spoke no English, but through interpretation, he asked where all his cadets were. We smiled and told him they had all “raus machen”. Which was very poor grammer to let him know they had all taken off. Dismay came over the old German major and he wept. We didn’t even show him the courtesy of capturing him. We left him there, sitting in one of his class rooms, sobbing. Maybe he would have felt better if we had shot him through the fleshy part of a leg so he could have a scar to prove his valor.

On our way out of the school, I grabbed a life-size plaster-of-paris bust of Adolph Hitler. The workmanship was good even if the material wasn’t. I stuck the bust over the top of the wire-cutter in front of the jeep.

In the next couple towns the bust drew bewildered looks from German civilians. It was funny just to watch them.

Our souvenir had a short life because someone mentioned what might happen if we were captured with it.

With the exception of S.S. troops, most German soldiers and officers had their fill of war by now. They knew better than we, how much they were being squeezed by American, British, Canadian and French armies from the west and Russians from the east. As far as I was concerned, Germany went forever. Those German forces fortunate enough to be in the west, would rather surrender to us than to the Russians.

We took prisoners by small groups and then by the hundreds. Usually we just started them toward the rear and let some other unit worry about taking them. In one town, however, we had so many prisoners that we had no choice but to place a guard over them. We received orders to start transporting them to the rear ourselves.

We used German vehicles with our men driving and guarding the trucks. I stayed in the town and we crowded all the prisoners into a courtyard surrounded by a high fence and using the armored car to cover them.

I took a turn at guard in the car and I realized we had so many prisoners that if they decided against going to a P.O.W. camp, they would have no trouble overpowering us by shear numbers. While I stood inside the turret, I could see the sullenness set in that comes over any one who has to stand around waiting. If they rushed the car, the guns couldn’t be depressed enough to cover them so, while they were all watching, I pulled the pin from a hand grenade. I rested the grenade on top of the turret, holding the spoon against the body of it. This got their attention. They wondered if my hand would get tired and if it did, where they could get to cover. We got them all transported out of town and turned them over to other units.

Headquarters platoon ‘requisitioned’ one of the trucks we had been using. A big German diesel. They painted it olive drab, put a white star on it and mounted all the troop gasoline stoves on it. They were proud of it but a couple days later the truck caught fire and burned to the ground.

‘Requisitioning’ German equipment was more of a pastime since they didn’t have much we wanted. However, form time to time we had a B.M.W., shaft-driven motorcycle, a V.W. ‘jeep’ with spare tire mounted on the sloping hood, a two door Opel sedan ( in our own platoon ), trucks and sundry other things. We got orders to stop it the day we tried to hook on an 88mm anti-aircraft gun.

Bechtel, the mechanic from H.Q. platoon who was attached to our platoon, picked up an air compressor which he hauled around for most of the war. Its capabilities far exceeded our needs. Everything got O.D. paint job.

We reached the Elbe River the same day as the 2nd Armored Division. When we got there, t was just another obstacle to be overcome. Nobody knew it was supposed to be the end of the line, including Generals who were looking forward to being the first into Berlin.

We received orders to spread out along the river and take defensive positions. We moved along until we reached a town south of Magdeburg where we came onto tanks of the 2nd Armored Division. It was the first time we had seen them since the Rhine. The tankers invited us into a bakery where there was a large table set with a white cloth. We sat down to baked goods and coffee. No explanation was given for the food and we asked no questions.

This relaxation was short-lived and we were ordered to move up-river to outpost some small town. We found quarters for the platoon, but I was told to take my jeep and two men up to a crossroad leading to the river further on. It was supposed to be a route of escape from any German troops trying to get to Berlin.

Those of us on the Elbe, we and the 2nd Armored Division, had bypassed so many Germans that they were still wandering around our rear. I don’t know how many enemy three men and a machine gun were supposed to stop, but we decided it was just the old army-game to keep us alert.

I parked the jeep next to a wall with a field-of-fire for the machine gun. There was only a farmhouse here and the crossroad. We decided to keep one man awake and two sleeping, knowing we would all be asleep shortly.

I was leaning against the solid wood gate of the wall having a last cigarette before settling down. One of the other men joined me and we whispered small-talk.

Unexpectedly, the gate was opened behind us, We had to catch our balance and at the same time we both brought our weapons up to firing position. An ancient farmer stood there, more scared than we were. After a few seconds, he mumbled something in German, which we didn’t understand. He had heard us drive up in the middle of the night and probably thought we were some of the Fatherlands finest.

We hurled a few epithets at him in whispers and he kept mumbling. After our embarrassment subsided and he regained his composure, he invited us into the house as though he had known we were Americans and had expected us all the time.

Inside the house, we were introduced to an equally old, but plump wife. Light in the kitchen came from a dismally faint kerosene lantern. We said, “Hi, Grossmutter.” She just shook her head in acknowledgment. She didn’t really want any American grandchildren. Especially with guns.

The old man told grandma something in German and she produced some homemade sausage. We produced the inevitable Nescafe and we sat around the table eating. They invited us to stay the night inside the house but we had to put up some kind of show outside. Somebody might come to check on us.

The next morning we returned to the platoon and, with the troop, moved on to another town on the river. Our platoon outposted one end of it. We couldn’t see any German military, but civilians across the river were looting a barge. We thought of calling for E Troop to throw a few shells around the area to scare them off but then decided that whatever they could get, they were going to need.

We ran patrols from this town into nearby areas, looking for German soldiers who had been by-passed. In one town, we found about forty of them. We had no trucks so we found a rubber tired wagon on a farm, hooked it on to the pintle of the armored car and hauled them back with us.

The second day we were in town, most of us were loafing in the warm sun. this was in the courtyard of some kind of hotel we used for quarters. It was the first day of relaxation we had in weeks. Most of us were dozing. Our reveries were broken with the explosion of an artillery round that landed behind the town. Could this be some Kraut artillery outfit we had by-passed? After a few seconds another round passed overhead and detonated near the river. A third round burst on one end of town and the fourth on the other end. We were being ‘braketed’. This was artillery’s way of sitting their sights for a barrage. We waited. No more shelling, but we were ready to take cover.

From the other end of town we heard a couple shots which we recognized as coming from an M-1 rifle. Then we heard voices. We walked to the street to see what was going on. A long column of infantrymen was walking in to town.

We waved our arms and shouted down the street to them, “Kamerad, kamerad.” This was an advance unit of the 83rd Infantry Division and they didn’t think our ‘surrender’ was very funny. It’s a little embarrassing to capture a town full of Americans.

After our capture by the 83rd, we were relieved of our patrol functions there and moved to another town named Neuhaldensleben. Neuhaldensleben was a fair-sized town with a city park a block square. Through habit, we parked under trees that ringed the park. We found suitable housing across the street from the east side of the park and removed the civilian occupants. We settled in to clean up, eat and sleep. The army probably expected more of us, but first things first.

There were still large numbers of the German army wandering around behind us. We, the 2nd Armored, the 30th and 83rd Infantry Divisions were on the river, but even the big divisions had bypassed many enemy units. XIII Corps with three divisions was coming on line at the Elbe and XVI Corps with one armored, four infantry and one airborne infantry divisions was still cleaning up the “Ruhr Pocket” a hundred miles behind us.

The morning after we arrived at Neuhaldensleben, most of us were out by our vehicles talking and servicing guns and equipment when a field hospital arrived, It was the 5th Auxiliary Surgical Group – whatever that meant. Either the army had expected more casualties enroute, or the hospital moved faster than they should have to be this far forward so early. Usually it was a half day’s drive through friendly territory to find a hospital of this size.

They moved into the park and we let them set up their tents under the trees. They seemed happy enough to find friendly faces, but I didn’t think hospitals with their red crosses painted on top of the tents, were supposed to move in so close to a combat outfit. Maybe combat outfits weren’t supposed to move in close to hospitals. They had their own large pyramidal tents for sleeping quarters so they didn’t try to get our houses, which was good thinking on their part.

Field hospitals are loaded with rank. Doctors all seem to be captains and higher. Nurses are lieutenants and higher. The enlisted men, the technicians, are all high ranks sergeants. Only truck drivers and cooks and such are privates.

We didn’t pay too much attention to rank so maybe the trouble started there. Everybody liked Captain Ploehn and Lieutenant ‘Baldy’ Bierman, but with our platoon, that’s about as far as it went. For some reason, lieutenants didn’t particularly want to serve with the First Platoon. I think maybe we had become anti-social. New lieutenants were always ill-at-ease and showed no regret at leaving after a couple days with us. The only one, besides Baldy, we thought was fun, they shipped back to the States.

While the hospital was setting up its tents and equipment, we went about our business. I had just checked the machine gun and found the ammunition, in its canvas belt, to be loose. This happened after it has been wet from rain, then dries. It never seemed to fit in the loops again and caused jams. We couldn’t afford jams so I fed a new belt into the receiver and was dragging the old belt across the street.

A voice from behind me asked, “Hey, soldier. What are you doing with that ammunition?” I turned around and saw a major with medical insignia. He didn’t count so I said, “Hi. I’m just dumping this old belt, Want it.” I thought maybe he wanted some 30-06 ammunition to take home for his hunting rifle.

I apparently touched a nerve. He began ‘chewing me out’. He told me men had risked their lives bringing this ammunition form the States. I couldn’t help but smile – he was so outraged. Maybe he hadn’t noticed the waste of war before this. All of Europe was littered with waste; rifles, machine guns, mortar shells, artillery pieces, tanks, planes. Not for wastes sake itself, but because these things had become unserviceable and were abandoned. Most of it would be recovered and put in order.

I told the major, “Maybe men had risked their lives bringing it over, but I wasn’t going to risk mine trying to shoot it.” He stomped off muttering something about this being a court-martial offense. I soon forgot the whole incident. He didn’t.

I don’t know if the major was a doctor or an administrator of the hospital, but he didn’t go away and neither did we for a few days. Maybe he didn’t have enough to do at the hospital because he got into our business more than his own. Maybe he didn’t like the blue Luftwaffe pilot’s jacket I had been wearing since we overran a German airfield a few days before. It had a nice fur collar.

That day came and went without further incident. We went on a patrol through neighboring towns without seeing an enemy soldier.

I had been trying to find an army .45 Colt automatic Pistol to carry ever since the two sergeants and I had been cut-off in that house in Steinhagen. Now a man in the platoon told me a medic of the field hospital had one he would trade for. I had a German Luger pistol, a rarity even than, so I went to talk to the medic.

We were in a surgical operating tent concluding the trade when a casualty was brought in on a stretcher. He was a tanker from the 2nd Armored Division with a leg wound. The corporal I had been talking with, cut away the tanker’s right trouser leg, exposing a massive piece of muscle hanging loose from the rear of the man’s thigh. A doctor came in at this time and told me to hold a lantern while he went to work.

I was in the tent only by coincidence and now I though there was something wrong about a cavalryman assisting in surgery; even if I was only holding a lantern. I thought maybe I should have ‘scrubbed-up’ or at least be wearing a gauze mask as they do in the movies.

I was trying to get thoughts across to the corporal by silently forming the words with my lips. I must have moved the lantern beam from the wound because the doctor said, “Hold the light steady. What’s the matter, Haven’t you ever seen a wounded man before?”

I put the light beam back on the wound and replied, “Yeah, a couple.”

Headquarters Platoon had set up across the park from us and we had hot meals for the first time in a month. After breakfast, Captain Ploehn came over to our platoon, a very small platoon to be sure, and we fell-in out in front of our house. ‘Fall-in’ might be the wrong term; we formed a couple lines, more or less straight.

The captain said, “At ease.” His pep talk was casual and he was trying to keep a straight-face. He said he had received a complaint from the C.O. of the field hospital of persons unknown, reaching up under the tent flaps last night to ‘feel’ the nurses’ legs. Since we were so close, and the medics wouldn’t do such a thing, we were suspect. The talk was brief and the captain closed by saying, “Take it easy and we’ll be away from these people in a few days.”

I’m not sure whether the nurses involved had complained or just wanted to know who reached under the tent flaps, but that night the hospital posted armed guards around the nurses tents. That was a mistake. I didn’t pay much attention at the time, but our men argued whether or not medics could carry guns. They decided medics were supposed to be unarmed.

The following morning we had to fall-in again. Someone asked, “What’s wrong now, Captain?” The captain explained that someone had sneaked over, overpowered the guards and felt the nurses legs again. Two guards had been tied up and left there. This news sent a shock-wave though the First Platoon. By this time the medical major was probably wondering why combat troops couldn’t act like soldiers. His opinion of us was to drop even further.

On the afternoon of our second pep-talk, I was giving my jeep a thorough cleaning. I stripped everything out of it and was rearranging it all neatly as I put it back. A medical captain apparently saw me looking through a pair captured German field glasses I took a few days before. He came up to me and asked if he could look through them. He then asked me what I wanted for them. I told him I didn’t know what they were worth, but he could have them. He returned in a couple minutes with an Imperial quart of Haig Scotch Whiskey.

I had never liked the taste of liquor, but now I took small sips from the bottle as I cleaned the jeep. Bechtel, the Headquarters Platoon mechanic attached to the First Platoon on drives, wandered by and asked what I had. I offered him the bottle and told him to help himself, which he did. Between us, the bottle was soon empty. Bechtel went to his jeep and came back with a bottle of cognac. I had never taken more than one drink of liquor in my entire life, but now we proceeded to finish off the cognac.

When the cognac was gone, Bechtel said, “Let’s go over to the winery and get some wine.” There was a wine warehouse in town. I said, “Okay, hop in.” Bechtel told me I was too drunk to drive; that he would. I said “Nobody drives my jeep, but me.” He said, “Okay, we’ll go in mine.”

Bechtel had been towing a German air-compressor, a prize-of-war, behind his jeep for months so he went to uncouple it form his jeep. I paid no attention to him and went about repacking my own jeep. Even in my oncoming stupor, I recognized the hated major’s voice. This sarcastic voice was asking Bechtel, “Did you lose something, Sergeant?”

I looked over my shoulder and saw Bechtel trying to steady himself by holding on to the back of his jeep. He asked, “Where’d my compressor go?” I just unhooked it.” The major, summoning all the disgust he could muster, asked, “Why don’t you look in my tent?”

Bechtel blinked as he started down the slight grade to the center of the park. I followed his gaze and there was the missing compressor – protruding part way out of the rear of the major’s tent. Canvas was torn to shreds and the heavy center-pole had been snapped. The large pyramidal tent was a total loss.

I started laughing and couldn’t stop. I couldn’t catch my breath and I went to my knees from weakness. The last remembrance I have of that day is the major agitatedly assuring us he would court-martial us for making spectacles of ourselves in front of the enemy.

That made me laugh even harder because there wasn’t any enemy – except him. Bechtel was trying to be serious without much luck, hollering at me, “Knock it off, Newt.”

About Six A.M. , the morning following our encounter with the major, I awoke in a bed. My boots were off, but still wore the blue Luftwaffe jacket. Everything I wore was covered with mud. I tried to sit up, but my head felt as though it would burst with the effort. I thought back to yesterday afternoon and it wasn’t funny anymore. Bechtel had been getting mad at me for laughing – but then what happened?

I instinctively felt for the Colt .45 in the inside slash-pocket of the German jacket. It was gone. I lay there and fervently prayed I hadn’t shot Bechtel or the major – but especially Bechtel.

My hands trembled and my head throbbed as I lay there listening to other men in the room sleep. I wanted to know what had happened after I lost my senses yesterday, but I also afraid to find out. Finally another man woke up.

“What happened yesterday?”

“Don’t you remember?”

“No. don’t remember anything after that major got mad at us. Is … ah … Bechtel Okay?”

“Yeah, Bechtel’s fine. You both wrestling in the mud. We had to separate you and put you both to bed.”

I took off the Luftwaffe jacket and put my own on.

Troop Headquarters and the cooks were located across the park on another street. I made a wide circle around the park to avoid any confrontation with the medical major. I hoped I was early enough to get a cup of coffee, and back, before captain got there.

Several minutes later I walked around the side of the house that was troop headquarters and into the back yard. The cooks were preparing breakfast and coffee was already made. I wanted to drink the coffee and maybe have a second cup. I did not want anything solid; my stomach wouldn’t handle anything solid. I set the cup down on the fence and pulled my helmet down as far as possible onto my head. I pulled the field jacket collar up to hide my face and neck as much as possible. Maybe nobody would recognize me.

As I edged my way over to the fence gate, to make a quick exit if necessary, I heard Captain Ploehn’s voice behind me.

“Good morning, Newton”

I didn’t even turn to face him – I couldn’t. If the captain hadn’t already had enough problems with the field hospital, Bechtel and I settled that yesterday’s escapade. “Good morning, Captain.”

“I hear you and Bechtel had a party yesterday.”

“I guess so, Captain. That’s what they tell me.”

It was the first and last we heard of the incident. A rumor went around that Captain Ploehn told the medical major to leave his men alone. It was never confirmed, but there was no more interference from the major.

This was the day I became an armored car commander for a very brief period. It came about when I dropped a letter off with the platoon sergeant. He asked, “Why do you still use ‘Pfc’ on the return address?”

The answer appeared to be obvious, but I replied, “I think it’s because I’m a Private First Class.”

He said, “You’re a corporal.”

“How long have I been a corporal?”

“Over a month.”

“Do I get corporal’s pay?”

“Sure. When payroll catches up to us.”

“Am I still point driver?”

“You should be the armored car commander.”

That afternoon, on next patrol, I climbed into the turret of the car. I was supreme commander of an – the remaining – M-8 Armored car.

I was surprised my head fit through the opening of the turret. It felt too large. My stomach felt as though it was suspended inside my belly by very sore rubber bands. The morning’s coffee kept trying to come up the way it hade gone down.

On paved roads, the eight ton car floated like a boat on smooth water. The sensation soon got to me and within a half hour I relinquished my command to its former commander and got back into my jeep.

The field hospital was still in the park across the street from our platoon and we managed to get through an entire day and night without incident. The hospital wasn’t getting much business, just an occasional wound from the 2nd Armored or the 83rd Division, so they had relatively little to do. The major asked permission of our captain to go out on one of our patrols. Our patrols had found little, if any, problems so permission was granted.

The major, of course, decided to go with our platoon and, of course, in my jeep. Rain had been falling regularly, but not steadily. The major wore a poncho. The poncho was a fair piece of equipment and a decided improvement over the previously issued raincoat which was good for some branches of the army, but not mounted troops. I tried mine once and it wrapped itself around the steering wheel so I only used it to cover the jeep at night. Most of us just wore the field jackets and let it dry out after rain stopped.

The major was waiting when we sent out to mount up. He got into the back seat. I did not speak to him. I had nothing to say and I didn’t want to be put in a situation where he might think he was due an apology, because I wasn’t going to give him one. Zwer had to explain to him why we didn’t raise the windshield and top to keep a driving rain out.

We pulled into a small town where its residents gathered around the jeep and armored car. We spoke to some of the people who were probably wondering if they were to be occupied by Americans or Russians. While we spoke to them, either in broken German or through the one man who spoke German, we became aware of a commotion originating around the major. The conversation, without benefit of a common language, was becoming heated between the major, a boy about seventeen years old and the boys parents. The parents were shaking their heads in a negative motion.

We stopped talking to the people in front of us and went over to see what was causing the disturbance. The boy had a deformed hand, which was probably the reason he was a civilian. The major was trying to explain that the boy’s hand should be surgically removed and a prosthetic device attached. The boy and his parents unable to understand the part about a prosthetic substitute, did comprehend the sawing motion the major made across the boy’s wrist. They knew he was going to cut the boy’s hand off – they didn’t know he was a medicine man.

We had to disengage the major from the terrified civilians. Not knowing who we were, nor what we were, except the U.S. Army, these people may have concluded we were just wandering the countryside performing surgical operations at will. We informed the parents and their son that the major was a doctor and only making a sound medical suggestion for future consideration. The boy’s

Hand would not be amputated today.

Back in the jeep, the major kept trying to explain that he was only given good medical advice. He knew it, and we knew it, but the boy and his parents didn’t and were in a state of hysteria. He kept up the story until our next incident.

We were heading back and our course took us to an autobahn, or freeway. These were predecessors to large, multilane highways with cloverleaf on and off ramps. The ramps to this autobahn had been destroyed though, so we had to find a way on.

The highway was elevated above surrounding countryside at this point, so we decided to climb the bank.

I figured I could make it with the jeep, but getting the eight ton armored car up was another matter. Schwartz pulled up and tried to climb. The six wheels just spun in the wet grass and mud. With the crew still aboard, he backed the car up about fifty yards and took a fast run at it. The front end came off ground and came down on the pavement just as the rear end came up and followed. It was a beautiful job of driving.

I took the embankment straight-on and had enough traction to climb, but the angle at the top was too sharp and the jeep bellied-out. I backed down, and without telling anyone my intention, I took off again, at an angle.

Jeeps were not the greatest vehicles ever designed for cornering. But then, they were not intended to be road racers. And I would not have gone at the steep bank if I didn’t have full confidence that the jeep and I could handle it.

The left front wheel hit the rise and the front end started skyward. The right wheel tilted it back a little, but then the left rear wheel hit and we took another starboard list. Zwer had taken a hand-hold on the dash and was riding it out. I had hold of the steering wheel and was waiting for us to top-out. All this took place in a matter of less than two seconds. The major was certainly capable of quick decisions. Just before gaining the top, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. It seemed some bulky, olive-drab tarp had blown out of the jeep. It was the major who landed in a heap in the soggy field. His departure had been accelerated by the upward movement of the jeep and his trajectory had taken him well clear of the tragedy he knew was about to happen.

Neuhaldensleben had one attraction to troops who had no other entertainment; the wine warehouse. One of the guys suggested we go over and stock up since there wasn’t going to be much more opportunity in this war. We drove over in my jeep.

I kept watch by the entrance while he went in to bring out a few cases. Civilians, who were also taking advantage of the availability of free wine, stood around pretending they had not been looting. The first case came out and was covered in the back seat. He went in for another. I saw another jeep coming so I hollored to my friend to come out and wait. A good move because the other jeep was that of Big-Six, the colonel. The colonel slighted with his professional West Point stone face. The other man came out just in time to see me come to attention and salute. Big-Six returned the salute and asked me what we were doing there. I told him the lousy civilians had been looting whatever it was they had in this building and we were running them off.

Big-Six liked that and said, “Good work, Trooper.” I felt a little bad because I had received the ultimate praise from the colonel. I saluted again, he returned it and walked into the building.

I don’t know if he was there to collect too, but we knew our luck would never be better and we jumped in the jeep and took off.

I don’t know what outfit moved into Neuhaldensleben, but we moved out. The 83rd Infantry Division had gained a bridgehead across the Elbe River. Some of that division and elements of the 2nd Armored Division move across to defend the beachhead, but were then stopped from further gain by the political decision to give capture of Berlin to the Russians. We moved up to the river and took over all the area of the 83rd, west of the river. That is, the squadron took over responsibility.

It was a pleasant sort of place. We were catching up on sleep lost during the drive. It was almost a ‘camping’ atmosphere. We spread traps from the armored car to make ‘tents’. We kept a fire going in the open. We were shielded from observation from across the river by a levee. The days were almost idyllic. Once in a while one of us would walk up to the levee to make sure the Germans were still on their own side of the river. I don’t think any of us had a good knowledge of German geography and, for myself, I had the feeling that this was just another layover and we would be on our way again soon.

At night, as was our practice, everybody went to sleep, except for one man on guard. On one of those nights I pulled the guard duty and was sitting on top of the levee when I heard whistling coming over the field phone. I acknowledged the call which came from C Troop headquarters. The man on the other end said A Troop had observed something floating down the river and it might be demolitions to blow up the 83rd Division’s pontoon bridge. I said, “Okay – We’lll watch for it.”

I knew this had to be the old army game again; just making sure we didn’t get too much sleep. However, I heard rifle-fire coming from A Troop’s positions. Maybe it was just A Troop making sure we didn’t get to sleep.

I lay on top of the levee, wishing it was time to wake up my relief. It was a dark night, but little light reflected off the river. I watched the water flow by, heading north. Funny; all the rivers in the States flowed south. I hadn’t figured that one out before I saw an object about the size of a rowboat floating down stream.

I shouldered the M-1 rifle and tracked the object until it was directly in front of me. It now occurred to me that A Troop had probably pushed something into the river just for a laugh. Oh well it wouldn’t hurt to take a shot at it.

I hadn’t been a particularly good rifle shot in basic training. That’s why I liked they automatic rifle. I took aim with good prone-position form and squeezed off my one and only shot.

Almost simultaneous with my shot, there was a tremendous explosion on the river. I slid down the bank of the levee for protection from debris that was now falling all about me.

I lay there in stunned bewilderment; one, that an explosive charge really had been floated down the river and two, that I had hit it. The rest of the men in the platoon were jumping to their feet, grabbing weapons and trying to find their boots.

They came running up to where I lay asking what had happened. I tried to explain the chain of events about the phone call, the floating object and the explosion. They hollored at me asking why I didn’t tell them. I told them I didn’t want to wake them up for no good reason.

“You didn’t want to wake us? What the hell do you call that?”

Troop headquarters called back to congratulate us for saving the bridge, but there was no kind word from men who had been awakened abruptly.

Word filtered down to us, unofficially of course, that the Russians were approaching the Elbe from the east and the war was almost over. It sounded like another rumor. We knew the war would last forever.

We had been sitting on the west bank of the Elbe since Aril 13, outposting, patrolling and resting. Meanwhile, the 69th Infantry Division of the First Army had met Russian troops on April 25th and moved up to the Elbe for the ‘official’ U.S./Russian link-up.

The 2nd Armored and 83rd Infantry Divisions of the XIX Corps had bridgeheads across the river. The 2nd Armored lost theirs to heavy resistance. The 83rd was still holding theirs at Barby. The stiffest resistance came from fanatical Hitler Youth and officer-cadets which had been thrown into action in defense of Berlin. Losses east of the Elbe had mounted to over 300 men.

XIX Corps had called off an attack by the 30th Infantry Division against Magdeburg and planned to push all three divisions across the bridge at Barby. The corps had been pointed directly at Berlin since the Rhine crossing. It was only about 50 miles away. But the politically controversial order from Eisenhower and Bradley came down to halt any drive over the Elbe.

As usual, the line troops knew nothing of these decisions. There was a river in front of us and if they said, “Go”, we would go. If they said, “Stay”, we would stay.

While we sat around doing little, if nothing at all, we received one armored car to replace the three we lost April first. We looked at it. It had no character. It was the same design, it had the same equipment and puny 37 mm gun, but it just didn’t look right. Of course there was no Red Horse stenciled on the sides and the unit markings; “9A 125C” hadn’t had a chance to be painted on the front slope. The fender-skirts still covered the rear wheels. It was a ‘rear-echelon’ car. It had been sitting in some ordnance dump waiting to be called as a replacement during the fighting.

We accepted it as we did a few replacements who arrived; with reluctance. One of the replacements was assigned to the point section. He was a happy-go-lucky West Virginian whose English we hardly understand. We put up with his eagerness and assigned him to the rear of my jeep.

I guess there were no Cavalry replacements coming from the States – most of the replacements were coming from infantry, combat engineers and tank destroyers – like myself. I asked him where he had taken his basic training. He gave the name of an infantry training center. I asked him his MOS; he replied “rifleman.” At least he brought his own M-1 rifle. When I asked him if he had ever fired a B.A.R. he said, “Oh sure, that’s what I really trained to do.” I said, “Good, you’re an automatic rifleman.”

I handed him a second B.A.R. we had found somewhere during our travels. Actually someone else found it and gave it to me. I explained we didn’t have extra magazines for it and he would have to do with it the way it was. This gift made him even happier. He was sure easy to please.

It wasn’t too bad, arriving as a replacement under our situation. They came in during daylights; there was no active combat and they probably knew how close the end of war was better than we.

It was a lot better than coming into the line in the middle of the night and getting killed before you even saw the faces of the men you were with. At best, a replacement was a lonely soul who had no friends and had to wait until he was accepted or rejected.

Our camp-like rest came to an end. We were told to get ready to move out. We thought the war was over, but now we knew it was just another rumor. We asked, “Where we going?” The answer: “Across the river to meet the Russians.” Nobody thought to ask, “Why?” We packed-up the vehicles, filled gas tanks, checked our weapons and headed toward the town of Barby where the 83rd’s bridgehead was located.

We crossed over the pontoon bridge and passed through the infantrymen. One of them, in a hole alongside the road looked up and said, “Good luck.” He knew they had lost three hundred men – we didn’t.

We moved down the road. Each platoon had its pre-designated route and towns to check. Within a half-mile of leaving the forward infantry positions we came upon the first resistance. German infantry fired on us and we returned their fire. One of F Company’s tanks moved forward to use their heavier gun. A German ran toward the tank and raised his anti-tank ‘panzerfaust’ to fire. I heard the other B.A.R. fire a long burst and the enemy soldier went down.

The new man, to whom I had recently made a present of the B.A.R., had fired. The German lay still.

The enemy had no holes in which to take cover. They ran across the field to our front and into the woods to our left. It was a free-for-all fire fight.

Somewhere in army records, if they still exist, are film footage of this event. In it is a sequence of me firing the .30 caliber machine gun from the side of my jeep. It was shown to troops by the Signal Corps after the war.

The Germans were either killed or disappeared into the woods and the action ended. I walked up to the enemy soldier who had tried to fire at our tank. I counted fifteen holes in the back of his jacket where bullets from the B.A.R. came through. Fifteen! I asked the new man how many rounds he had fired. He said, “I let the whole magazine go.” He scored with every round.

We continued up the road in our assigned route. Every once in a while we could hear small arms fire in the distance from our Second and Third Platoons which had similar encounters.

We approached the next town, Dubin, with Pete Patrone now driving point. The road ran straight into town, made a right turn and then left. Pete stopped before making the left. I drove beside him and he raised a finger to his lips for quiet.

Around the corner and a half a block away, a number of German soldiers were sitting about in doorways. We decided to make a rush, or maybe it could even be described as the last Cavalry charge. Instead of approaching in a column, we brought all vehicles abreast and wheeled around the corner. Big Six should have been there to see us!

Our maneuver, however magnificent, didn’t seem to impress the Germans. They didn’t fight, they didn’t surrender; they continued to lounge in doorways. It was the only time German soldiers reminded me of G.I.’s .

We drove up to them and finally one got to his feet to give us hand-signals to go on through. He appeared bored with the situation. We stopped and asked him, “And just what the hell are you supposed to be doing?” This was interpreted and the reply in German was, “You’re going to fight the Russians, aren’t you?” They really thought we were headed for Stalingrad. We finally convinced them they were prisoners of war and to start down the road we had come in on. These men looked like combat veterans who wondered how long this was going to go on.

These defenses, west of Berlin, had been hurriedly scraped together to stop American advances. The troops were a hodge-podge of tired combat soldiers, rear echelon personnel and whoever their officers could scrape together.

We spotted a couple Germans running through back yards across the street. There was a two-story building with an enclosed courtyard. The concrete walls had large, timbered doors. We called for the tank to knock the doors down. Once inside the yard, we saw the Germans running across a field. They were too far away already to shoot at. We thought there might be some more in the building though so two of us ran up the back stairs. I was carrying my B.A.R. and we kicked the door at the top of the stairs. It splintered in with us on top of it.

As we came crashing in with our weapons leveled-off for the enemy we thought might be there, we found ourselves looking down two rows of hospital beds, each with a young lady in late stages of pregnancy. It was a maternity hospital. We smiled and waved and left.

While we had been inducing premature deliveries in the hospital, the platoon had found more enemy soldiers down a side street. They were positioned behind a log anti-tank barricade. We shouted at them to surrender, but they just peeked over the top of the logs. It was a funny way to fight a war. I think they were kids, maybe Hitler Youth. I guess they were too afraid to shoot and too proud to surrender.

Of the various items I accumulated and kept in my jeep, was a rifle grenade. Rifle grenades, like B.A.R.’s, M-1 rifles, grenade-launchers and blank ammunition were not ‘authorized’ for cavalry. We had to steal or beg these items from other outfits that had plenty. Usually we got them from combat engineers who carried around all sorts of exotic weapons.

I removed the ball ammunition from my M-1, inserted a blank cartridge, screwed the rifle grenade-launcher over the muzzle and pulled the pin from the grenade. I ran across the intersection so I could fire right-handed. I aimed at the log and raised my sights to allow for trajectory and fired.

Several other men and I watched the thing arch down the street and hit the top log. It fell to the street and lay there. After all this time it was a dud! An argument broke out about whether I had pulled the pin or not. The platoon sergeant finally put a stop to it by saying, “Forget the Krauts. Let’s get going.”

The two-lane road we were following led to another small wooded area and as we came out, there was another town about five hundred yards to our front. I didn’t hear any shooting, but the column stopped. The town was Coswig.

F Company’s tank and E Troop’s assault gun left the road and took positions in the open field to the left. Most of the column stayed on the road, but I drove the jeep a ways into the field to the right. We waited.

The squadron has a ‘hog-caller’, possibly from the 2nd Armored, assigned for this mission. Someone had called for it and the light tank with its loud-speakers mounted came up to our position. The German-speaking lieutenant inside told the Germans in the town ahead to surrender. There was a pause and he added something else. I asked what he had told the Krauts in Dubin and learned he gave them five minutes, after which we were going to “level” the town. I laughed and asked, “We are? How we going to do that?” I guess it was the threat that mattered.

The commander of the assault gun said, “Tell them we’ll put a round into the church steeple to start with.” I was thinking we were doing a little too much bragging. The assault gun was not supposed to be a ‘direct-fire’ weapon. The little ‘75’ popped out a round and we waited. A direct hit on the steeple! This was not an act of desecration because steeples are commonly used for observation.

Things were quiet as we waited for the Germans to accept our surrender demand. While we watched, a lone German soldier appeared, ridding a bicycle, from the right. He was heading for town and apparently didn’t know the situation. We had always kidded one of our men because people from his part of the country had a reputation for being dead-shots. Now someone said, “Let’s see if you people can really shoot. Hit the Kraut on the bicycle.”

The quiet, slow-talking man brought his M-1 to his shoulder and followed the German with his sights. We watched as he squeezed-off his shot. We looked as the German fell of the bike and didn’t move. In wonderment someone said, “Geez.” It was about a two hundred yard shot.

There must have been a high-ranking officer in Coswig, probably giving his men a pep-talk, because while we waited, a staff-car drove out of town in a hurry. The tank fired one round at it, but missed.

I didn’t trust the inactivity after our disaster of April 1st. We had seen the Germans in dug-in positions behind the road that ran across our front. I finished off the belt of ammunition loaded into the machine gun. I carried six additional boxes of ammunition over the right-rear wheel-box of the jeep. I continued firing along the line of enemy until I had gone through all six boxes. When I had exhausted my supply, I looked at the bore of the gun. The rifling was completely melted out.

After a reasonable time we opened up with all our weapons; .30 and .50 caliber machine guns, the 37’s on the armored cars, the 75’s on the tank and the assault gun. The town started burning in a couple places. We hadn’t received any return-fire after their staff car left town and soon the white flag appeared.

We drove into Coswig and took about 150 prisoners. We never gave prisoners unduely harsh treatment. If they wanted to surrender, that was good enough. This day though, an unfortunate incident took place. While the prisoners were lined up at one side of the road, the crew of an armored car was relieved by two men. Naturally the guns were loaded and as the exchange took place, one of the new men stepped on the foot-trigger of the turret .30 caliber machine gun. It sprayed the column of prisoners who hit the dirt. Surprisingly, only a few received superficial wounds.

While we were tending to our prisoners, a man in a striped shirt of a concentration camp showed up. He claimed to be a Pole, I believe. He said he needed a horse to get home. There were some fine looking horses pastured nearby so we gave him one. It was another one of those small incidents; nobody knew where he came from or where he went, but he left on a good horse.

The day was April 29th, 1945. it was the day Hitler committed suicide in Berlin, about 35 or 40 miles away. No one was aware of that; not even the German people. We sent our prisoners to the rear and spent the night in town.

The following morning we continued on our mission. Late in the morning we received orders to move over to the Third Platoon’s sector where they had apparently made contact with a Russian unit.

On this mission every lead vehicle had an American flag attached to the angle-iron wire-cutter on the front bumper. I don’t know where they found all the flags because they weren’t common in combat. In addition to the flags, we all wore a white armband to help identify us to the Russians.

The Third Platoon had made contact, but when we arrived their point jeep was upside-down with the wheels and suspension system blown off. Two men in it had been killed.

We learned that as they approached, they waved at the Russians in greeting to be further recognized. The Russians looked on as the lead jeep ran over an aerial bomb planted in the road by them.

An historical note to this incident is that Stalin, Premier of the U.S.S.R. had given orders to mass artillery just in case the U.S. Army was not content to stop at the Elbe. He is quoted as saying, “We will give them a taste of our artillery.”

The Russian soldiers at this junction were Siberians; little guys with Eskimo-faces. We had done fairly well making ourselves understood in French, German and even a little Dutch, but Russian was impossible. After a short time of eyeing each other suspiciously, they finally got the idea that we had been fighting on the same side – or at least the same enemy.

There was some hugging and passing around of vodka but I didn’t take part in much of it. A few men had cameras and some pictures were taken with Russian soldiers. We inspected their T-34 tanks, a good armored vehicle, but inside the turrets – in the fighting compartments, there was so much litter it looked impossible to rotate the gun into any position.

The unit we contacted was the 1st Battalion, 320th Infantry Regiment, 121st Elite Infantry Division. Officers from both armies got together to shake hands and pass the vodka. Luitenant Colonel Kleitz, commanding the 125th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, Colonel Biddle (Big Six), commanding 113th Cavalry Group were there for sure. I presume General Macon, 83rd Infantry Division; General McLain, XIX Corps and Lieutenant General Simpson, commanding Ninth U.S. Army came up to the location too. I don’t recall any of them lining up for chow with though. they probably brought their own C-Rations with them.

Commanding officers never bothered me, but when their underlings arrive – those people you’d need a three-day pass to find ordinarily – with their shoulder holsters worn over officers trench-coats and striking heroic poses for pictures to be sent back home it’s enough to make a man sick. They smile at you with an attitude that says, “We really did it, didn’t we boys?” (We didn’t get shot at or killed though, did we?”)

Our platoon pulled back to a small town named Klieken. The only inhabitants were women and children. All were in a state of panic and happy that we were there. When they found out we would have to pull back across the Elbe, panic set in again. They knew the Russians would be their neighbors soon and word had probably preceded us about the rampant rapes in and around Berlin.

When they learned we would withdraw in a matter of days, the women left for Barby bridgehead we come over on. The same night they returned, pulling their carts and carrying children. They had been turned back by American orders.

We set up guard posts. The Russians came by the thousands to consolidate a line along the Elbe. They didn’t realize we were at the side of the road at night watching them. Most of their transports were four-wheeled wagons drawn by one or two-horse teams. The wagons were raw, unpainted wood. Many of the wagons had a woman sitting next to the driver. I never learned who the women were.

The following morning we got an order to make a patrol behind the Russians to look for American prisoners of war in German P.O.W. camps. We used two jeeps. We started east and passed hundreds of the wood wagons heading toward the Elbe. Most of the drivers just looked at us as we passed. They all appeared to be old men. I don’t think any of them realized who we were.

Zwer and I were together again. As we came to towns we noticed that the Russians were of a more European type; less oriental looking.

At the first town there was a woman soldier directing traffic. She had a tommy-gun slung over a shoulder. We stopped at her hand-signal and when she noticed us she brought her gun up to bear on us. Ally or not, I didn’t like having the gun pointed at me so I picked up my carbine from where it lay on top of the windshield cover and pointed it at her. Zwer said, “Take it easy.” I continued to hold the carbine on her in a Mexican stand-off. A Russian officer came along and saw the flag on the front of our jeep. He spoke to the lady who lowered her gun. So did I. He came over to us, threw his arms around us and gave us those two-cheek kisses. I smiled at the lady-soldier as we went by and said, “Boy, you’re ugly.” She didn’t smile back.

At the next town a similar incident occurred. This time the soldier directing traffic was a man. Maybe we looked like Germans. Maybe we looked like American. He too raised his tommy-gun. I came up with the carbine again in another stand-off. Again a Russian officer came by, looked at us and said something that sounded like “Americanski.” He yelled at the soldier with the gun and hit him across the face with an open-hand slap, almost knocking the man to his knees. He then came over and gave us the same greetings as the previous officer.

Our destination was a town named Juterborg. It was a good-sized town with many buildings over three stories. The Russians in this place were not quite as offensive as their soldiers in previous towns. Many even greeted us warmly. With much difficulty, we eventually made it understood that we were looking for Americans who had been prisoners of the Germans. One of the Russians pointed to a house across the town square.

We drove around the square and parked in front of the house. As was custom, by this time, we didn’t knock at the door, but just opened it and walked in. In the hallway we saw a woman who was probably the lady of the house who looked up at us with some fright. Naturally she didn’t recognize us as Americans and in the dim-lit hall she must have thought we were Russians.

We told her, in our acquired broken German, that we were looking for any American prisoners of war. She was still frightened and hesitatingly pointed to a closed door. We opened the door that exposed a dining room and sitting at the table was a G.I., eating. He looked at us for several seconds before he realized we were real, then said. “I’ll be a son of a bitch!”

We asked him if there were any more G.I.’s around and he said there had been a camp, but everyone went in different directions when the Russians came. He told us his unit and where he had been captured, but I soon forgot it.

He said goodbye to the German woman who had now lost whatever little protection he offered from the hordes in town. She didn’t say much except a polite “Goodbye” to the G.I., but her despair and resignation was obvious.

We made the return trip without incident and the soldier was sent back across the Elbe and probably a quick trip back to the States.

Again, the next morning, we left for a similar patrol. We were operating twenty five miles from the rest of the U.S. Army, in retrospect, I don’t know that it was so important that we locate prisoners of war because there was no reason they shouldn’t be released by the Russians. Maybe we were unknowingly testing the reaction of the Russians to American and Allied forces.

This day we didn’t find any more prisoners and just sort of wandered around the countryside. There were places with many Russian troops who didn’t appear to pay any attention to us and probably not knowing who we were. We didn’t attempt to talk with them because of the language barrier. As we drove down a country road, the right-rear tire of the jeep went flat. It seemed odd. Except for a tire hit by shrapnel on the Rhine River, I never had a flat-tire on the jeep.

We got out and I looked under the rear seat where the jack was always stored. It was gone. Some blankity-blank had stolen my jack! Now there were no American units we could expect to come by and we hadn’t seen jeeps used by the Russians. We were in a remote area with no houses or people in sight. We sat at the side of the road and smoked.

While we sat there, trying to figure out a way to raise the wheel off the ground, we heard voices from a field across the road. Four huge Russian soldiers, spirited by vodka, came walking toward us. The eyed us suspiciously and after our previous experiences, we did the same. After a few seconds one of them broke into a smile and shouted, “Americanski.” At least that’s what it sounded like.

We got the bear-hugs and kisses from these men who seemed genuinely happy to see us. After the exchange of greetings, they pointed to our flat and spoke in a questioning manner. I guess they were wondering why we were not changing the tire. We tried to explain to them we didn’t have a jack, by making the jacking motion. They laughed and made gestures that indicated we had no problem. The four of them picked up the right rear of the jeep and placed the axle on a kilometer-marker nearby.

While I took the wheel off they told us they were Cossacks. Each man appeared to be about six foot-four. We explained we were Cavalry and that gave us a common bond. With the fresh wheel mounted, we said goodbye to these men and thanked them for their help. They still stood there waving when we lost sight of them.

We stayed in Klieken a few more days. Uneventful days, except when two of the Siberian-type Russians came into our town. Our Headquarters Platoon was in town with us and even had the kitchen set up. We had just eaten dinner (army lunch) and were returning to the house we used. We heard a woman screaming and ran into the house the screams came from. Inside were two Russian soldiers ransacking the place. Drawers had been pulled out with their contents spilled on the floor.

I was carrying an issue .45 caliber pistol (part of my personal arsenal) and had it in my hand as two of us entered the house. The Russians looked up and their faces became sullen. I motioned for them to get out. They understood, but didn’t like it. They moved to the door as though they were ready to leave anyway. I don’t think this incident was the start of the “Cold War”, but it could very easily become a hot war.

Russians weren’t the only trouble. Maybe it was the same day I heard another woman scream and I ran down a hill to the source. This time it was a man from Headquarters Platoon who was trying to rape a Polish girl. There was a contingent of forced-laborers also living in Klieken. I had the .45 in my hand again and the man stuttered excuses for his actions, but got up and left. The girl was unharmed and returned to the house they were living in. I was beginning to feel as though the whole world had gone mad. I guess it had.

At daybreak of May 5th we were told to pack up. When everybody was ready, the order came to “Mount-up.” I did not lead out on our trip to the Elbe. We left in almost reverse order of the way we had come in. If I was not the last vehicle, I was close to it. The road was covered with mud and horse manure from the Russian wagon-teams. In the rear of our column we got full benefit of it, thrown up by wheels in front of us.

Americans had been withdrawn from east of the river. We once again crossed over the 83rd Division’s pontoon bridge, now named the Harry S. Truman Bridge. It was the last time we would feel the undulation of a pontoon bridge.

We drove to some town where we were to come under control of our old favorite 30th Infantry Division. No more relieving in foxholes though. We were to take positions as the “occupying” force in Germany.

Incongruous as it was, the word came down for one of the men to go on pass. When asked , he said, “I don’t think I want to go.” The platoon sergeant asked, “Who’s next?” Then answered his own question. “Newton, you’re next.” I asked, “Where to?” “Paris.”

I got out of the jeep and the sergeant asked, “What are you doing?” I told him I was going on pass. He said, “You can’t take a rifle on pass to Paris.” I put the M-1 in the jeep. He said, “You need an overseas cap in Paris.” I hadn’t seen the cap in eleven months. It must have been somewhere in the bottom of my duffle bag. Another man had his so he lent it to me. I looked at myself in a nearby window. The front of my helmet, the top half of my field jacket and my face were crusted with mud and fibres of horse manure. The sergeant yelled “Get going, the trucks are waiting down at the corner.”

We arrived in Paris May 8th – Victory in Europe Day; V.E. Day. We had transferred to trains from the trucks and then to trucks again across Paris to the hotel reserved by the army for soldiers on pass. It was my first three-day pass in the army.

The hotel was elegant with much marble and soft carpeting. We had individual rooms with bath. I washed my hear in the sink. There was so much mud left afterward that I washed it again. I ran warm water into the tub and when it was full as I could get it without running over, I sank into it and lay there with just my head out.

I had the feeling that someone would come in and tell me I had three minutes to finish, but no one came. I got out of the tub after my bath and drained the water. When I returned to the bathroom to comb my hair, I saw the dirt-ring around the tub. I was so ashamed of the dirt I cleaned the tub before a chambermaid found it.

We ate in a splendorous dining room where a string quartet played music of great composers. There were waitresses who served our food on chinaware. I felt like a party-crasher who would soon get caught.

We went into the streets after supper. The City of Light lived up to its name this night. We got caught up in one of the serpentines of happy Frenchmen that walked through the streets of Paris that night with arms linked together. Thousands and thousands of them. We managed to break away from the boisterous affair in a short while.

We later found ourselves on a narrow street and walked into a nightclub. Inside there was some kind of entertainment that was overwhelmed by the noise of rear echelon G.I.’s. A waiter came to the table and asked if we wanted champagne. At one thousand francs, or twenty dollars, a bottle, we passed.

Two of us sat there watching the festivities. Most of the American soldiers were those stationed in Paris, or nearby. They wore neatly pressed uniforms and many were wearing highly polished Oxford shoes. Their ‘Eisenhower’ jackets bore emblazoned shoulder patches, campaign ribbons and rank insignia.

We sat there, conspicuous in unpressed wool shirts and trousers. Mud and horse manure still adorned our scuffed combat boots.

As we were about to extricate ourselves from the madness of this place, the waiter came back and said some people had invited us to join them. He pointed them out to us, sitting at a higher level than we. As we looked up, they smiled and motioned for us to come up.

When we arrived at their table, one of the men introduced ut to the others; his wife, her sister and husband and their daughter.

He asked where we were from. Without hesitation I replied, “Germany.” I immediately corrected the language to, “Deutchland.” What an I doing? I’m speaking German to a Frenchman. I couldn’t think of the French word for Germany.

The man smiled and asked where we were from in America. We told him. They recognized San Franciso as soon as I said it. There were futile attempts at conversation and I finally asked, “Parle vous Alemagne?” I had finally remembered the word for German. They didn’t speak German and mine was very limited so it was just as well.

We spent the next to days seeing what we could of Paris in that short time. The following day we checked in at the Gare du Nord and boarded the train for Germany.

The outfit had moved to another town and later we moved again to Friedberg near Bad Nauheim. I watched the displaced persons who passed on every road in Germany. They were walking, pushing broken-down bicycles and carts loaded with their few possessions. They were heading to whatever was left of their homes in every part of Europe. They had suffered through years of war, but I viewed them as I would spectators leaving a stadium after the game. The game was over. But what do the players do after the spectators leave?

The war was over. The army had devised a plan for sending its soldiers home on a point-system; one point for every month of service; and additional point for every month overseas; five points for ‘battle’ stars; five point for medals.

I had a feeling of foreboding when the troop clerk came in one morning and asked, “Newton, you have more than five points, don’t you?” I had five points before I got out of basic training. I only looked at the clerk and said nothing. He said, “I’ll try to find out where the rest of them are.”

The 125th Cavalry Squadron would be made up of men who had accumulated 75 points for the trip home. I had 72. I was transferred out. I was transferred to the 2nd Signal Battalion in the same camp in Friedberg. The 125th moved to Heidelberg.

I was transferred, along with Pete Petrone, to some kind of Signal Messenger unit in Paris. We came in every two days for another 48 hour pass.

The unit was billeted in a hotel near the statue of George Washington in the middle of Paris. Meals were served on tables set with dinnerware. Waitresses did the serving. The men of the unit slept in rooms on beds that had been there when the hotel had been civilian. When you came in after a night on the town, there was coffee and snacks. I asked one of the regular soldiers of this outfit how long they had been living there like this. He replied, “Ever since we got to Paris.” That had been since July or August a year ago.

When Pete and I came in for another pass one day, the First Sergeant told us not to hang our laundry on the balcony overlooking the street. I guess we were offending somebody’s sensitivities.

I lay on my hotel bed one day, bitter that I wasn’t allowed to go home with my outfit. I tried to reconcile this way of life with last winter’s life on the line. I couldn’t understand how such a gap could exist.

Hot meals served by waitresses? I thought of the winter hoboes scraping Veal Loaf out of their K-Rations. Flush toilets? The hoboes had to use empty K-Ration cartons and throw them out of the holes. Hotel beds? I could only see the hoboes of December huddling in the bottom of their holes, pulling muddy blankets over their helmets and shoulders. How could you send me home with an outfit like this> I’m a Hobo, First-Class!

We lived in this fantasy land until late November when we drove to Le Havre to embark on the U.S.S. United States for the trip back across the Atlantic.

R E M O U N T

PART

7

“Hi, Ma.”

“Oh, you’re back. If I’d known you were coming I’d have been dressed.”

“That’s okay. I didn’t know how to get in touch with you until I got back.”

* * * * *

“This is Jim. He was in the tank corps with Patton.” (Is anybody going to buy a round?)

“I wasn’t in tanks. I was cavalry in Ninth Army with Simpson.”

Sotto voce; “That’s okay – these guys don’t know the difference.”

* * * * *

“Hello, Jim.”

“Hello, Joe.”

Joe was a German-Jew who escaped before the war started. I worked with him before I went in the army.

“You saw, Jim?”

“I saw, Joe.”

By chance, our ship’s destination was Boston, the same port from which I had sailed for England. I tried to remember what I felt then – and couldn’t.

There was still a sign on the end of the pier. The summer’s sun and fall rains had faded it by now, but it still bleakly said, “Welcome Home – Well Done.”

After the big divisions had come back to city parades the sign had not refreshed with new paint. The big divisions paraded in big cities and not in their home states because the men who left from Tennesse and Pennsylvania and Oklahoma were not there anymore – not many of them.

The dock was empty when we returned; except for a few longshoremen and some soldiers in charge of transportation. The Red Cross ladies were not there with the soggy doughnuts and lukewarm coffee as they had been when we left.

A troop-train was waiting as we disembarked and by the time we had all boarded, it was almost dark. Trains never run through the best part of any town, but the people who lived nearest the tracks took time from preparing or eating dinner to wave to us through rear windows. That was nice. I looked at them and thought it was nice of them to do that.

Many of the men in the car waved back in animated fashion as though acknowledging they had met the enemy and defeated him. I resented their taking credit for the fighting and the dead.

Trucks drove us from the rail-head inside Camp Miles Standish to the barracks area. I carried my duffle-bag inside and threw it on a bunk. We were told supper would be ready for us in the mess hall as soon as we were ready.

I sat on the bunk watching the others. I couldn’t quite understand the exuberance they showed. I looked again for a shoulder-patch of some combat outfit, but I still couldn’t find any. If there was just one; somebody from the Second Armored or even a division we hadn’t worked with. If only there was a Combat Engineer or a Tank Destroyer. What I’d give to see the familiar Old Hickory insignia of the Thirtieth. Somebody I could walk up to and just say. “Hi.” and know that he knew.

The soldiers walked or run toward the mess hall in groups. I waited until most of them had gone, then left the barracks. I walked alone through the cold Massachusetts night. Old, dirty snow crunched under my boots . It didn’t sound like the new, white snow in Holland a year ago that made a squeeking sound beneath boots and tires.

The December night was clear and starlit. The path I followed was illuminated by lights from the mess hall.

Inside the mess hall, men were taking their trays to tables and ate as though it was their first good meal in a long time. how many of them had ever lived for weeks at a time on K or C-Rations? How many of them even knew what a K-Ration was?

I was still pondering all this exuberance when a well rounded-out mess sergeant asked, “What’ll you have?” He looking at me as though he know me. I looked back, but couldn’t see anything about him I recognized. Maybe he had cooked in some line-outfit. “What’ve you got?” “Anything you want.” I ordered a well-done steak. When it was ready, I took my steak and a pitcher of milk to an empty table.

The meat was round steak, but it was good. I took a long time to eat it. I finished off the pitcher of milk. The first few swallows were good, but I never cared for milk that much. When I finished, I started to pick up may tray. The mess sergeant said, “Leave it, We’ve got guys to clean up.” I thanked him and walked back to the barracks.

The army was efficiently shipping its men back to their homes. So efficiently, that it seemed they wanted to get rid of us. Some went by train, and some of us by plane, A few of us were sent by train to New Jersey where we boarded a C-47 parachute “jump” plane. There was no heat and we sat in aluminum bucket seats.

A few days later, December 13th, 1945, I was in Camp Beale (later Beale Air Force Base) near Sacramento. The army was really rushing the “Process-out” procedures.

I went to a supply warehouse where they made sure I had a complete uniform to go home in. A corporal grabbed a tan field jacket and said, “You can’t have that.” I grabbed the jacket back from him and said “Sure I can.” I had never seen a tan field jacket anywhere before and I intended to keep that one.

He said, “You‘ll have to turn that box in.” He was referring to the .50 caliber machine gun ammunition box I carried. It was stenciled with “NEWT” from my first jeep, and the Red Horse of the outfit. It had ridden with me all during combat. I said, “Only after the fight.” He said, “Well, keep it out of sight.”

A dentist examined my teeth and asked. “Want to stay around a couple days and have your teeth fixed-up?” I said, “No thanks.” That tooth had broken on peanut brittle while we were on the Rhine.

A Technician Fifth-Grade took my pulse without looking up from a copy of Colliers. I asked, “How’s my pulse?” He said, “Normal.”

A doctor scanned my meager Medical Record and asked, “Did you have any illnesses or injuries?” the “Guardhouse Lawyers” said you should have something on the record for future claims. I told him about falling down a flight of stairs and my legs becoming useless. He said, “There’s nothing on your record to indicate you sustained any injury to your back. Did you report it?”

I knew he wouldn’t understand not reporting something like that because you didn’t want to be separated from the outfit. “No. I guess not.”

I waited in line for the final processing. The army wanted to provide its veterans with help back into civilian life by evaluating the skills, trades and experience learned in the army, finding corresponding jobs in the civilian market. A form listing these skills would be typed-out to present to prospective employers.

As I waited, I heard men ahead of me tell the clerk what they had learned and done. Almost all had something similar to their army jobs typed on the form; mechanics, typists, radio repairmen, cook – all jobs necessary to operate a massive army. Some had even spent their military careers going to college.

I hadn’t thought about this and didn’t know what to expect, but I mused to myself, Huh, this is where they separate the men form the boys. These guys will have to find jobs as cooks and typists. Without reasoning, I wonder what special rewards were set aside for the guys who had been shot at.

I finally sat before the classification technician. “What’s your MOS?” (military Occupation Specialty) I told him and he typed: “Truck Driver, Light.”

The reality of it hit me like a sudden punch. My MOS was the same as all the hundreds of thousands of G.I.’s who drove trucks up to 2 ½ tons. If you couldn’t do anything else – you drove a truck.

“Wait a minute. I drove point in cavalry.” I don’t think this guy even knows there was cavalry in this war.

“What does that mean?”

I briefly explained the point to him and he added, “Experienced in driving vehicles over rough terrain under hazardous conditions.”

“I guess there won’t be many jobs like that in civilian life.”

He asked. “Did you do anything else?”

Everybody seemed satisfied that was enough at the time. now my mind was whirling because I was holding up the line. You don’t hold up lines in the army. Did I do anything else? Well, let’s see.

I was trained as voice radio operator in Tank Destroyers. I learned to use that secret M 208 encoder/decoder. I can set an anti-tank mine. I can rig a booby trap. I know how to heat c-Rations on the jeep manifold. I can adjust artillery fire. I can light a match without showing a flame. I can field-stip a 45 pistol, a carbine, an M-1, 30 and 50 caliber machine guns and the BAR. That’s it. The BAR!

Desparate now, I blurted out, “I got pretty good with a B.A.R.”

“What’s a bar?”

This guy never heard of a B.A.R.? The Krauts hated B.A.R. Men; maybe they killed them all off.

“No, Not bar; a B-A-R, the Browing Automatic Rifle.”

The clerk quickly leafed through a book the size of a bible until he found it.

“Walrus Hunter.”

R E M O U N T

PART

8

The day after yesterday – 1945

The Red Horse : Dismount

San Francisco, On December 14th, 1945 was a dismal place and matched my mood perfectly. The city was overcast with a dense, wintertime fog. It came down in a fine drizzle.

That morning, at Camp Beale near Sacramento, I accepted a ride with a young soldier whose parents had come to pick him up. Young? He must have been about my age, but he looked so much younger than the guys in my outfit. He never left the States and he apparently must have seen his folks from time to time because their greeting, while warm, was not as though they hadn’t seen him for a long time. He introduced me and they said they would be glad to give me a ride to Oakland. After we got in their car, they made polite conversation.

“Where were you?”

“Europe”, I replied.

“Oh yes? Where about?”

“England, Wales, (was that the same war? It seems so long ago, now) France, Belgium, (this is getting embarrassing – their kid never left the States) Holland, Germany.”

“You really saw a lot of the country. Ever get to London or Paris?”

“I spent some time in Paris after the war.”

“How long were you in Germany?”

“Last September ‘til July.”

“See any big towns there?”

“Not much to see – just rubble.”

The bigger the pile of rubble, the bigger the town must have been.

“What division were you in?”

Why does everyone think you had to be in a division?

“I wasn’t in a division. I was in the Hundred Twenty Fifth Cavalry.” Now they’ll joke about horses. “Mechanized.” That stopped them.

“Oh, I see.”

“We were reconnaissance for Nineteenth Corps.”

“Oh, I see.”

No – you don’t see. I wish I had taken a bus.

They dropped me off in Oakland after I spent the rest of the trip pretending I was asleep. I caught the A.C. electric train across the Bay Bridge and into San Francisco. Now I stood in the drizzle waiting for a streetcar to take me the last four or five miles home.

While I waited, I wondered; What’s wrong with me? Am I the only guy who misses the war? All the others being discharged at Camp Beadle were acting like kids because they were getting out of the army. Well – I guess they were kids, but so were those replacements when they first got there. Only, they weren’t kids anymore after a couple weeks. Everybody looked alike in the mud, everybody, every…body.

The kids coming through Beale had been inconvenienced. Inconvenienced because, after all the training, they ended up with the menial, boring jobs that had to be done in the army. I would probably be happy too, if I’d spent a couple years in some forlorn camp counting blankets.

What is it? Dou you get used to the fear, the danger, the thrill? You sure don’t feel like you’re used to it while it’s happening. Maybe it’s just the guys in the platoon, but they’re just ordinary guys. Except they were where the fighting was, where the bleeding was.

I walked the long block to market Street. Bars exhaled cigarette smoke and stale beer. Shops had outside speakers playing Christmas music to remind passerby they had less than two weeks to get their shopping done. I walked I the city that had been changed little by war. I peeled the diamond-shaped ‘ruptured duck’, that showed I had been discharged, from my jacket.

I boarded an “N” streetcar and reached in my pocket for a nickel. The conductor on the open platform put his hand over the fare-box.

“Thank you.”

He pulled the bell-cord twice and the car started to move. He said, “I don’t think I’ve seen those insignia before. What are they?”

I turned a shoulder: “Nineteenth Corps.” He examined the silver tomahawk on the blue field. Nothing.

I turned my right shoulder toward him; “One Hundred Thirteenth Cavalry Group.” He now examined the rampant Red Horse set on Cavalry-yellow background with a green cactus for service on the Mexican border and the red Fleur-de-Lis for World War One, woven on a special loom in Holland. Nothing.

“Where were you?”

“Europe.” I know That was the ‘civilized’ war. But please; don’t tell me I’m lucky I wasn’t in the infantry.

“What did you do?”

Again? How com nobody knows what we did?.

“I was a walrus hunter.”

Now I’m sorry I was rude. He was just trying to be friendly. The conductor turned to look for passengers at the next stop. I stepped up into the rear passenger compartment.

A middle-aged couple sat on a side seat, facing the aisle. The man leaned over close to his wife and, in a loud whisper, said, “Look at the ribbons on this guy.”

There weren’t all that many ribbons, but I thought I saw him looking at five, tiny bronze Battle-Stars on the European Theater of Operations ribbon. They don’t mean much by themselves, Mister. You didn’t have to fight to get them – just be in the area, but thanks, anyway.

I took a seat facing forward in the almost empty streetcar.

Sweet and lovely, sweeter than the roses in May …

We had a few laughs though, didn’t we Ger’? Driving through the snow drifts just to get a case of beer, and I didn’t even like the stuff.

What did you do? Everybody asks, “What did you do?” No one really wants to know. Even G.I.’s who didn’t get into combat didn’t want to know. They resented us after it ended.

Well, we sat in holes for three weeks waiting for our feet to turn purple. Want to know what a man looks like when his head comes off while he’s running? Want to know what scared is? I’m the army’s expert on that.

Sweet and lovely, heaven must have sent her my way … Why didn’t you stick with my Gerry? We were still standing after they shot the platoon apart, weren’t we?

I looked through the little droplets of fog on the streetcar window. So many sailors and marines on Market Street! I had almost forgotten about them.

“What did you do?’

My mind flashed back to the German officer, still in uniform, but with rank and insignia removed. It was soon after the fighting stopped and I was alone in the bar of a hotel in bad Nauheim, sipping a beer. The German came in with his wife and started up the stairs to their hotel room, Just as he reached the top, he turned and stared at me with what appeared to be pure hate on his face. I must have been staring at him too, or I wouldn’t have noticed.

I’m not sure what he saw in my face. Maybe he blamed me, personally, for his empty sleeve. Maybe he came home to find his wife with some G.I.. I don’t think anyone in the bar noticed either me or the German – they were all too busy enjoying themselves.

It was the briefest of encounters that so many people experience under so many different circumstances, but for the German and me it would have been all right if they started the war again in the morning. War was still fresh enough that we knew we had been enemies; and neither of us would have to ask the other, “What did you do?”

I Skies up above me, never were as blue as here eyes … God; Why do I miss it? Why do I feel so alone?

I stared out the window at Market Street, but I only saw the M-4 tank of the Second Armored. The lonely, shot-through, burned-out tank sitting next to the only house for hundreds of yards in any direction. The war had moved on, but they let the M-4 sit there with its gun pointed down at some now forgotten enemy. It was still there last Spring with new grass grown around it.

The streetcar continued up Market Street, stopping at every block to let people on and off. I wanted to jump off every time it stopped.

I didn’t know what I’d do if I did get off, but I wanted to avoid the inevitable homecoming. But Why? I had as much, and more, to come home than a lot of guys. I was afraid. When I walked through the front door it would be over for sure. And I didn’t want it to be over. Something had been left undone and I couldn’t think of what it was.

Het, Partner. Remember how I pulled you through the snow on that sled, up on the Roer?…. And she loves me, who could want a sweeter surprise…

I looked at my watch wishing it could stop time until I could think straight. Something is all wrong about this. Something is missing. God: Help me. Why isn’t it over?

It wasn’t really ‘my” watch. It was from a German soldier. A cheap watch with a metal cover that closed over the face of it. I wished I could give it back to whoever he was. Or was he dead and didn’t need it any more? Why can’t I remember who he was?

Ganley, you dumb bastard, why couldn’t you have just stayed where you were? Nobody told you to come up that road. All you had to do was sit down and wait. Look at me. I’m back; I’m almost home.

Almost home … Sweet and lovely, there is nothing more I can say ..

I stayed on the streetcar. Panic was inside me. It can’t be ending just like this. I listened for a voice that would wake me; MOUNT UP. MOVE OUT!

The streetcar left Market Street and entered the tunnel under too-steep hills. The car lurched on and I looked at the watch again.

It’s after midnight there now.

It’s so dark there.

And so cold.

It’s so far, far away now.

Is it snowing in Margraten?

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