Our trip through Paris never got beyond speculation. Our train did pass on the outskirts of the city, but it was at night and none of us even suspected we were in the vicinity.
But we apparently could not be content unless we were speculating about something, for no sooner had we learned that we had left Paris behind than we began to guess just when and where our ride might end. At one stop a man talked a Frenchman out of a tattered road map, and by plotting on the map the names of the stations we passed through, we managed to figure roughly where we were.
When we finally did crawl creakily out of our 40 & 8’s, it was on the northeastern border of France near the Duchy of Luxembourg at a quaint old town called Longuyon. Waiting for us was a reception committee made up of men who had preceded us in the motor convoy. They guided us into an assembly area in a large forest several miles from town where we went into bivouac while awaiting the rest of the regiment. As night came, word spread that we would leave by truck the next morning for our new assignment at the front.
From France we passed into Luxembourg, then into a corner of Belgium. Following our course on our tattered map, it seemed for a while as if we were going in circles, and we began to wonder if anybody actually knew where we were headed. Yet we didn’t mind for the weather was delightful, we had the covers off the trucks, and the roads were lined with people who shouted and waved Allied flags at us. Gay signs of welcome, and pictures of the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg covered every house and store front.
At long last we came to the pleasant city of Diekirch, ostensibly undamaged by war. It felt good to see a place that size without the destruction we had come to expect in France. But beyond the outskirts of the city our trucks finally stopped and we piled off. We were getting close. We were to walk the rest of the way.
Lieutenant Fay briefed me as we marched along a tree-shaded road paralleling the little Sauer River.
“Paul,” he said, “we relieve units of the 5th Armored Division. Our company will be stationed in Bettendorf, just a few miles ahead. I won’t make any definite plans until I see the terrain, but while I go ahead with the non-coms to reconnoiter, you take care of the rear. Find us a good CP in Bettendorf and keep everybody ready to move just as soon as you get word from me.”
Bettendorf proved to be a quiet little rural town with several beer parlors—the sight of which brought whoops of joy as we marched along. Passing through the town quickly, I found a deserted chateau on the far edge, the side closest to where I thought our positions would be. After a cursory inspection, I decided it would make an ideal CP. The men quickly nicknamed it “the Castle.” I set up the company headquarters in a room dominated by a huge fireplace.
After completing all that I thought necessary for the moment, I went up the hill to look for Lieutenant Fay. I found him talking with a group of men from the 5th Armored and for the first time got some idea of where we were and what we were to do.
The hill we were on ran parallel to the Our River, the dividing line between Luxembourg and Germany. Through tall trees tinged with autumn colors I could make out the far bank of the river and beyond it parts of the German border fortifications, the Siegfried Line. The concrete pillboxes and a curving line of concrete antitank obstacles looked unreal against the rural setting. Seeing the defenses for the first time sent little chills up my back. I could not help but shudder at the prospect of attacking it.
“If they had just given us some gasoline and some infantry,” said a bearded sergeant from the 5th Armored, “you guys wouldn’t have had to worry about going through them dragon’s teeth or nothing else. Our whole company was ten miles through that line and never met no opposition to speak of. We just rolled past pillbox after pillbox. All of them empty.”
“Yeah,” a tank driver put in, “then we ran out a gas. We begged for it, but we couldn’t get it. Somebody else had a higher priority, they said. Who should a had more right than us? We were right through the toughest part of Germany like a dose of salts.”
“What made you pull back?” I asked.
“Orders,” spat out one man.
“Yeah, orders,” said the sergeant. “Orders and the fact a few Krauts begun to sneak in behind us and cut our supply lines. We couldn’t even get no ammunition, so they told us to fall back. We didn’t have enough infantry to hold the pillboxes, and we didn’t have no TNT to blow ‘em to hell. We didn’t even have enough gas to bring all our tanks back. We didn’t have nothing.”
The withdrawal had obviously affected these men deeply. They had been in the vanguard of a bold, rapid sweep across France and into Germany. They were proud, and the sting of defeat, no matter what the excuse, was hard to take.
“A lotta guys gonna have to die to take that ground back again,” said a man softly who had been standing quietly while the others talked. “A lotta guys gonna have to die.”
He was right. A lot of men would die here, for this was a part of the front which Hitler would choose for launching his big counter-offensive in December—the “Battle of the Bulge.”
Lieutenant Fay and I surveyed the long hill and the positions occupied by the 5th Armored.
“Well, we’re going to get a taste of a defensive situation,” Bob said as though thinking out loud, “but it’s going to be a helluva defense. We couldn’t stop a company of boy scouts if they wanted to take the time to walk around us. The closest company to us will be more than a mile away. Looks like our platoons will be so far apart they won’t be able to see each other, even in daylight.”
Bob’s concern was well founded, for the 8th Division had drawn a sector 28 miles wide, a width normally accorded three divisions even in less compartmented terrain.
“Our job will be to hold key terrain features. We’ll have to send out plenty of patrols, and we’ll have to keep German patrols the hell out of our lines. We’ve got to see they stay on their side of the river—and we’re under strict orders to stay on ours.”
“That last part shouldn’t be too hard to manage,” I grinned.
Completing our reconnaissance, we selected tentative positions for the platoons, and I went down the hill to bring the company forward.
With the thought that we might be here a long time, we told the men to dig in solidly, not small foxholes or prone shelters but dugouts big enough to hold three men comfortably, covered with logs and tarpaulins to keep out the weather. We put two platoons in position on the hill and kept the third in Bettendorf as a reserve that could move quickly to either forward position if the situation demanded. Battalion headquarters in turn set up a rotation plan whereby each company was to spend six days on the line, then three in reserve. When our first stay in reserve ended, we moved to the opposite end of the long battalion position so that we could become acquainted with the length of the entire front.
The first few days in these positions we knew little of what to expect, so everybody was jittery. The attitude of the men went to two extremes; some acted as though Jerry was a thousand miles away while others could see him lurking behind every tree. But it was not long before all became convinced that caution was essential, for as men of Fox Company were adjusting their positions one night, the Germans skillfully ambushed an entire rifle squad.
Since the day we arrived in Luxembourg was October 2nd, my birthday, I considered it fitting that I should sleep that night on a bed, my first time since landing in France. I spread my blankets and bedroll with great ceremony across the bed in one of the rooms of the chateau and then luxuriated in the delightful softness of it. Of course, there were two other men in the bed with me which made it a trifle crowded, but it was a bed.
Early in our stay in Luxembourg, a miracle happened. Jack was assigned to company E.
It was not the permanent assignment both of us had hoped for. I had been pressing Bob Fay to get Jack in the company ever since I had been transferred, and Bob was sympathetic enough to put pressure on battalion. At last Colonel Casey agreed that since Company E temporarily had fewer officers than any other company, he would let us have Jack, but only until replacement officers arrived. We considered we had accomplished the first step and that making the transfer permanent would be easier now than it would have been otherwise.
When the company completed its six days in the line and came back to the chateau in Bettendorf, every man got a hot shower or bath in a big brewery, converted for the purpose, in Diekirch. Because the weather had begun to turn cold, few of us had elected to take al fresco baths in our helmets. Thus, these baths were not a luxury but a prime necessity.
The fact that beer—watered, to be sure—was available in Diekirch did not make the visit any more unpleasant.
When our three days in reserve were over, we moved to the position on the right of the battalion front, and I shifted the company CP to the little town of Mostroff. The forward platoons were in and around the village of Reisdorf, near the junction of the Our and Sauer Rivers.
We had only been there overnight when we received a rude shock. Orders arrived for Bob Fay to report to headquarters of the Ninth Army for duty. He was to leave immediately.
We hated to lose Bob, and he disliked going, but all of us realized that men live longer in a rear headquarters, and we were glad to see him get the break. He had already proven his ability and courage in combat so that a rear echelon job was something he could wear with dignity. He packed his gear and was gone almost before we could realize it had happened.
I took over command of the company and left immediately to have a look at the front line positions, but when I got back to Mostroff at nightfall I found my command had been short-lived. Regimental headquarters had sent down Captain William Mc-Kenna, of Macon, Ga., to fill the vacancy. Captain McKenna was an experienced officer who, a month or so earlier, had been wounded by a hand grenade. He had only recently returned from the hospital.
Until late that night Captain McKenna and I hunched over a map while I told him what I knew of the company’s positions. Hardly had we turned in and fallen asleep when the field telephone beside my bed jangled nervously. The Jerries had attacked one of our positions, a voice on the other end of the wire told me excitedly, and wiped it out.
Hurriedly, Captain McKenna and I dressed and started forward to determine for ourselves just what had happened. We reached the position just at daylight and there heard a strange story of coincidences that can and often do cause tragedy in war.
The position that had come under attack was located at a bend in a road where a machine gun crew from Company H was covering the road with fire. A half squad of riflemen had dug in on either side of the road to protect the gun so the position constituted a fairly strong outpost. The men manning the position had been anticipating return of one of our patrols which had gone out earlier. Unknown to them, though, the patrol had gotten lost in the darkness and had come through our lines at another location.
Word of the patrol’s return didn’t reach the outpost, and about two hours before daylight the men at the outpost heard a noise to their front. They ordinarily would have fired immediately, but suspecting it was our patrol, they called out, “Halt!” and demanded the password. The only answer was a scuffling noise on the road.
Still concerned lest they fire on our own men, they repeated the challenge. A hand grenade was the answer. For the Germans it was a lucky toss for the grenade landed directly in front of the machine gun, wounding both men behind the gun and putting the weapon out of commission. Alerted, the nearby riflemen opened fire, but a burst from a Jerry machine pistol killed two of them.
The report I received that the position had been wiped out was exaggerated, but losing two killed and two wounded in this manner was bad enough.
During the next few days Captain McKenna directed minor adjustments in our positions. He was, I soon learned, a thoroughly capable and conscientious officer, firm but fair in everything he did. He never took anything for granted, going into the smallest details to make sure everything was just right and everybody understood. I admired him and learned a lot by watching him.
When we became accustomed to the way the Captain wanted things, the company functioned smoothly. First Sergeant Foy easily handled details that other non-coms might have overlooked, thus enabling me to spend a number of nights up forward with the platoons and to go on numerous patrols.
One night I got a call from Jack to send someone to his platoon to bring back three prisoners. I decided to go myself.
At Jack’s command post I looked the three men over critically. They were typical Jerries, unkempt and dirty. All three had been wounded and returned to duty before being completely recovered.
The prisoners protested that they had come across the river with the sole object of surrendering. Yet all three had been armed when captured and were heading back toward Germany with chickens under their arms.
“If you were going to surrender,” the interpreter asked, “why did you have the chickens?”
“We had no white flags to wave for surrender,” one of the Germans replied, matter-of-factly. “We were going to wave the chickens.”
“I suppose,” the interpreter rejoined, “you brought along your rifles so you could give them to us because we are short of weapons.”
“Yah, yah,” the German answered eagerly.
Brushing aside further protests, we hustled them outside for the trip to the rear.
One day the 121st Infantry commander, Colonel Jeter, and our battalion commander, Colonel Casey, made a tour of our part of the front. Hardly had they left when Lieutenant Joseph Kowalewski, who had taken over Bob Fay’s old job as Battalion S-2, toured the same route with a messenger and an artillery liaison officer. After passing through one of our outposts and going less than a hundred yards, a Jerry armed with a machine pistol rose from a pile of leaves and motioned them to surrender. With the muzzle of the weapon staring at them, the three men needed little urging.
Though our men in the outposts could see what was happening, they dared not fire for fear of hitting the three Americans. But when the German insisted on marching his captives toward Germany, this proved too much for Joe Kowalewski. Letting out a loud shout, he threw himself to the ground. The other two men dived in opposite directions. Picking up the cue, the men in the outpost began to fire. The Jerry didn’t even bother to look around. He headed post haste for Germany, leaving behind a thankful trio of escapees who considered they had spent the shortest time on record as prisoners-of-war.
As the story of this narrow escape spread through the company, none of us could help wondering what would have happened if the Jerry had chosen to rise when Colonel Jeter and Colonel Casey were passing.
One of the most maddening aspects of our stay in Luxembourg was a perpetual shortage of artillery ammunition. Each gun was rationed to a strict number of rounds per day, with the artillerymen strictly forbidden to fire more unless we were actually under attack. Utter frustration often gripped us as we spotted particularly inviting targets on the other side of the river and called back to the artillery fire control center only to learn the artillery could not fire.
“Sorry, Lootenant. We used up our shells for today. Try again tomorrow. Maybe you’ll hit the jackpot.”
And while we gritted our teeth, Jerry walked about unmolested beyond the range of our rifle and machine gun fire. Eventually, they grew bolder and bolder until we almost felt like swimming the river and throwing rocks at them.
It was during this time that the mortar platoon of Company H came into its own. By hook, crook, and other connivance, the men of the platoon managed to accumulate a fairly sizeable stock of ammunition and gradually began to take over most of the fire missions which ordinarily would have been handled by the artillery. We patiently watched our enemy as he went about his daily routine, moving from pillbox to pillbox, assembling for details, digging potatoes, or perhaps going to the latrine. Then with carefully planned malice aforethought let loose with a potent mortar barrage that drove him back into cover for good.
H Company’s mortar platoons were led by capable officers. Oid Wineland, comparatively new to the unit, was one of the men whom we saw constantly searching for targets of opportunity. Winey, a big man from Kansas, not only proved his ability with the mortars, but later, after recovering from a wound in a hospital in England, he returned to take over a rifle platoon composed entirely of Negro soldiers. Under his superb leadership they proved their right to glory, earned a flock of decorations and the undying admiration of a unit born in the heart of Dixie.
Our system of rotating companies eventually returned us to the old chateau in Bettendorf. I came to love this old building. Constructed originally in 1729, it was quaint and picturesque. Though many rooms contained bunks and other installations which the Germans built during their occupation, the charm of the building still shone through. In some rooms we could see evidence that Jerry had removed much of the priceless carved woodwork and the ancient trophies that once had adorned the walls. We vehemently condemned this looting, but I fear our indignation stemmed less from some high moral sense than from the fact that we were simply mad as hell he beat us to it.
In the courtyard of the chateau was a tiny chapel with a vine-covered entrance. Jerry obviously had used the chapel for sleeping quarters with his usual disdain for cleanliness, but in a short time we cleaned it up, and many a man found time for a moment of solitude or prayer at the altar.
While in Bettendorf I was lucky to find a place in nearby Diekirch to have the films developed which I had exposed at Dinard. Though I could not get prints made, since no paper was available, I cut the negatives apart and included them in small lots in my letters home. This was contrary to regulations, but the mail was spot-censored, and fortunately the censor never spotted any of the negatives. Eleonore got them printed for me at home and sent them back. The whole process took weeks, but it was worth it.
As the weather grew colder, all of us began to think about Christmas, even though it still was October. To a large degree, our thoughts centered on whether some miracle might end the war by then, but we also had other, more personal reflections. Christmas seemed particularly important to me, for Eleonore and I had celebrated it together for 12 years and had always made it a very special day. I could see no possibility of being able to buy her a Christmas gift, but I hated for the season to pass without some reminder that I had not forgotten the special significance the holiday held for us.
One night I got the idea of writing to my sister, Margie, and making her my Santa Claus. At my first opportunity, I wrote a long letter, explaining in detail exactly what I wanted her to buy and how I wanted her to entice Eleonore from the apartment, then sneak in and fix it up just as if Santa had been there.
Once the letter was in the mail, I felt better. Now, no matter where I was or what happened to me before Christmas, Santa Claus would find Eleonore’s chimney. It was a brand new chimney at that, for Eleonore and Norma had managed to find an apartment in Long Beach, N.Y., to share. Eleonore subsequently sent me a key to the door which I hung around my neck with my dog tags and vowed—and prayed—that someday I would open that door with that key.
It could not all be thoughts of Christmas, for though we were comfortable compared to most combat situations, still there was plenty to keep us on the alert.
Perhaps the most disturbing of all our chores was patrols. As Battalion S-2, it was Joe Kowalewski’s job to get information about the enemy, and the primary means of accomplishing this was to send out patrols.
Joe was a big fellow, good-hearted, easy to get along with, but he was fairly excitable and had a loud voice that literally boomed. When a patrol was on his mind, he would crash into the CP and bellow:
“It’s a suicide mission, that’s what it is, a suicide mission. I told them bastards up in headquarters not a man would come back alive, but they say it’s got to be done and it’s got to be done their way. It’s a suicide mission, that’s what it is. We’ll have to get volunteers. You got any?”
When Joe erupted in this fashion, the men around our head-quarters would exchange silent glances and then slip silently away to vague duties which suddenly assumed tremendous importance. You would never get a volunteer the way Joe went about it.
Actually, Joe knew that we seldom if ever called for volunteers for patrols. Somehow in the movies men always step forward briskly to ask for dangerous missions, but in the real infantry men looked on volunteering as an easy way to end a military career. While they might be fully willing to take on any task specifically assigned them, they had no desire to ask for trouble. We solved the problem by keeping a duty roster for patrols just as we kept duty rosters for other onerous tasks. Each man took his turn.
It may sound as if we were reluctant to fight. The fact is, I cannot ever recall seeing the hero type who is supposed to champ at the bit, who cannot wait to tangle with the foe, to wrap his bare hands around his enemy’s neck and hear him groan as he throttles him. As most GI’s will tell you, men went into battle because that was their job. They fought because they did not want to let their buddies down, or the folks back home. They stuck it out and did what was required of them. Though they waved no flags and made no speeches, underneath they felt a surge of patriotism, a sense of duty that made it impossible to quit. They fought when orders came to fight, but when chance afforded them a period in reserve, they were exultant—this was a way to stay alive just a while longer.
From Company E’s first day in combat in July until our stay in Luxembourg, this rifle company of 190 men actually had had 625 men assigned to it at one time or another. When you became aware of this tremendous turnover, attributable in almost all cases to wounds or death, you entertained unmitigated respect for any assignment which lessened your chances to be among those who came and went.
There may be some form of combat where men feel differently, where there is glory in battle and honor in death, but in the infantry where artillery guided by distant hands crashes around you and bullets fired by unseen assailants crack past you or tear into your body, this is not the case. When you see men die with their faces in the mud, when you see their raw wounds filled with flies and filth, you know there is no glamor.
An infantryman’s life is strange. He comes into the army from a comparatively isolated, private civilian existence into a daily routine that makes him quickly realize that he is just one cog in a tremendous military machine. He is never alone, no matter where he turns. Always there are vast numbers around him, men in the same drab uniform, in camp, in town, in barracks, on parade. When he gets on a boat to go to war, he is crowded into an incredibly tiny space—one little speck in a gigantic, crowded movement. As he approaches the enemy he is part of another tremendous display of military power, of trucks, tanks, artillery pieces, planes. As he steps into the attack, the line thins a little, but still he has the familiar faces of his own company about him.
Then, all hell suddenly breaks loose. The noises of battle are loud and frightening, and the soldier hits the ground, scared and confused. He looks around for the reassuring sight of the men who have been with him for so long, men who have for so long usurped his privacy, men he longed to escape from any number of times in the past, but not now. But with his head close to the dirt, his rifle bulging painfully under him, his helmet falling heavily over his eyes, he can see no one. For the first time since he came into the army, he is alone, completely and dreadfully alone.
The war now belongs to one man, this man alone. He is fighting the whole German army, the entire enemy nation unassisted. Just when he needs and longs for companionship, the companions have disappeared. The fate of nations now rests solely on him.
If a man has the guts, he somehow conquers his fears and goes on to fight the war and discover that other people are present and that the other people are experiencing the same loneliness, the same fears. He shrugs it off and plunges on, but never will he lose completely that nightmare of being horribly alone.
It is men like this who realize what lies ahead and fear it, yet who somehow control their fears and go ahead to do a nasty job who are the real heroes.
Nor are there as many of them as one might presume. Few recognize what a small percentage of men in an army actually do the fighting. It takes hundreds and thousands to support the relatively few who populate the tank and rifle companies down where men do the dying. Even in a rifle company, the primary fighting unit of a division, some of the men are comparatively far removed from the direct combat which is the infantryman’s basic job. During the war, a rifle company contained 190 men, but only 160 of them actually saw the enemy and knew that searing inner conflict when it came time to get up out of a hole and move toward other men who were trying to kill you.
Somebody figured out that our infantry divisions during World War II incurred 25 percent casualties. This figure in itself is astronomically high in relation to other types of units, but it takes on new and dreadful significance when one realizes that almost all these casualties occurred in the 27 rifle companies of the division and three out of four of them in the rifle platoons of those companies. This means that those rifle platoons lost 90 percent of their men.
That’s where war really hurts, down in the rifle platoons, down where they do the dying.