One day when Lieutenant Kowalewski came to our company CP with an order for a patrol, he was in top form.
“It’s a suicide mission, I tell you,” he informed everyone within the wide range of his booming voice. “They want a night patrol to go more than two thousand yards down to that lousy river and see if the Jerries have put any bridges across. It’s a suicide mission, I tell you. Suicide.”
Regiment, I soon learned, wanted not only to determine if the Germans had built bridges but needed to learn if they occupied several farm houses which lay between our positions and the river. It quickly became apparent that this was hardly a job for night-time.
“There’s no moon,” I said. “That means we’ll have to feel our way along every inch of that river to see if they’ve built a bridge. Even then we won’t be sure. Why not a daylight patrol? Then the men can go to some high point where they can see a great stretch of the river at once. Besides, who the hell’s going to search those houses at night?”
“That’s what I told you,” Joe said. “It’s a suicide mission. Can you get some volunteers?”
“I’ll make up the patrol,” I told him. “In the meantime, you see if you can’t get it changed to a daylight job.”
As Joe set off for battalion, I called in one of our best squad leaders, Staff Sergeant Howard Pople, of the third platoon. Sit-ting around a map, we discussed the job, but it soon became clear that Pople, like me, had no taste for it as a night mission. Among other things, it called for too deep a penetration beyond our own lines.
Sharing his apprehension, I gradually became conscious of a strange feeling inside. Sending men to do a tough job rather than leading them was always difficult, but this was a case where I did not even believe in the job. I felt I could not live with my-self if I failed to go along.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Sergeant,” I said as I noticed Pople lick his lips in a gesture of indecision. “You and the men go on up the hill and get ready to move, either by day or night. I’ll wait here to see if we can get it changed to daylight. I’ll also see Captain McKenna and get permission to go with you,”
Pople’s face showed obvious relief.
When Captain McKenna returned, he objected at first. He had definite ideas about men sticking to their assigned jobs. Mine was executive officer of the company, not a patrol leader. Besides, we were too short of officers in the company to risk one unduly. But he did not reckon with my persistence, and at last I wore him down. Then Joe telephoned to say regiment had okayed it as a daylight assignment.
Anxious lest we run out of daylight, I took off quickly to meet Sergeant Pople in the third platoon positions at the top of the hill. Though Pople had lined up a full combat patrol, I thought we could do the job better with fewer men since we had no intention of precipitating a fight. I cut the number to four—Pople, Private Cecil Smith, Private Manuel Melgosa, and myself.
As soon as I had briefed the men on what we intended to do, we set out through the woods. We used a diamond formation. This meant that the man in front was responsible for the area straight ahead, a man out to the right and another to the left were responsible for the sides, and another in the rear was responsible for making sure we were not surprised from behind.
We traversed the small woods in front of the third platoon positions with no difficulty, then came to a dangerous open area which we had to cross before entering a dense woods through which we would move all the way to the river. Lining up along the edge of the trees we scanned the woods ahead as best we could, then set out across the open field on a dead run. Once we gained the first trees, puffing, gasping for breath, I called a halt. Again we looked around before taking up the slack in our formation. Even though the woods was dense, it was a typical European forest with little or no underbrush so that we still were able to see for some distance. Deciding at last that our dash across the open had alerted no enemy, we continued forward.
Instead of being able to move on a direct course, we had to change direction frequently because of gullies and creeks that criss-crossed our path. We kept hoping that the high ground beyond each gully would provide us a view of the river, but each time we found only more thick woods. With haste and caution, we kept moving.
Acting as the point, I had just crossed a gully when suddenly I froze and signalled for the patrol to halt. Just ahead in a small clearing I saw what appeared to be a group of Jerries sitting around a tree. Piles of wood, neatly stacked and apparently recently sawed, stood nearby. We obviously had stumbled on a Jerry work party.
As I crawled closer for a better view, Pople came up by my side. The afternoon light was already fading. Through the thick branches of the trees above us, only a little light filtered to the ground. For almost a minute we peered intently at the group of Germans ahead, wondering what we should do.
“Let’s shoot the bastards now,” Pople whispered. “We can’t miss from here.”
“No,” I hissed. “We’re supposed to get information, not kill Jerries. If we fire, the only thing we can do afterwards is run. If we do anything, we’ll crawl down and get some prisoners. We could send Smith back with the prisoners, then go ahead.”
Watching our enemy intently, I gradually became better accustomed to the dull light under the trees. Something inside me began to raise doubts about the soundness of my vision. At last I reached behind my back and pulled my field glasses into position. I muttered an oath, then handed the glasses to Pople, His face broke into a wide grin of relief. Our Jerries were nothing more than limbs of trees which had assumed human form in the fading light. The recently cut wood in neat stacks was real enough, but the Jerries were not.
My plan of finding a vantage point from which to view a long stretch of the river began to appear less and less feasible as we crossed one gully, then another, only to discover that the rise ahead provided only a view of more trees. We were all about to give up when, keeping a straight course, we at last did emerge at the edge of woods. Ahead of us stretched the Our River itself. Directly beyond, a German pillbox yawned open-mouthed at us. Watching for signs of activity but detecting none, I marked the location of the pillbox on my map, then signalled the others to follow and headed south parallel to the river.
We had passed a number of dead cows, obviously killed only recently by artillery fire, when we came upon a small herd of live ones. Seeing the cows approaching, we hid in a ditch, not for fear of the cows themselves but for fear seeing us might excite them and their excitement in turn might alert any observing Germans. Our concern proved well-grounded for despite our efforts to hide, the cows spotted us and started a minor stampede. In turn, Jerry quickly began to throw rifle and machine gun fire in our general direction. Sticking to the ditch, we continued to the south while Jerry persisted with his fire, not directly at us we noted with relief, but where we had been.
Our trip parallel to the river convinced me that Jerry was building no bridges. In fact, the river was so swollen beyond its banks that it had flooded some portions of farm land on our side and some stretches of the dragon’s teeth of the Siegfried Line on the other side. Tactical bridges would be difficult to keep in place in the swift current.
Satisfied at last that we had accomplished everything expected of us at the river, we headed back through the woods toward our own lines—a trip that was almost all uphill. On top of that, Sergeant Pople had a bad cold and we had to halt at intervals to permit him a rest so he would not break into a fit of loud coughing. Finally, however, we came to the edge of the woods and only the big clearing separated us from the other stretch of woods which hid our company’s positions.
Under normal practice, we would have raced across the clearing to the protection of the other woods, but Sergeant Pople’s condition dictated otherwise. He obviously was worn out.
“I’ll never make that on the run, Lieutenant,” he told me. “I’m plumb out of juice.”
Surveying the situation, I decided to take the clearing at a walk but to move close to a slope on our left. This would provide some concealment from German observation, and I hoped that a single file formation with exaggerated intervals between men might discourage any enemy gunners who did happen to spot us. Since Pople was the man to whom we had to adjust our speed, he went first.
I fidgeted nervously as Pople started out with a pace that seemed incredibly slow. I thought we would never get across, but somehow we managed it without incident. I was the last to reach the woods on the other side where I found Pople and the others flopped on the ground catching their breath. I had not the heart to urge them to their feet to get moving right away.
We were sitting there puffing when we heard the sound of a big gun somewhere on the German side. We took no real notice for we had been hearing guns and listening to shells pass overhead at intervals all through the patrol.
“Sounds like somebody’s going to get it,” Pople remarked casually.
We heard the shell coming, whispering, whirring warning, but still we had no cause for alarm. We had heard any number of others doing the same thing all afternoon. Then suddenly this one took on a new note. It came closer and closer. We knew all at once that this one was different. It was not meant to go over.
Though I started to dive for cover the explosion caught me in mid-air. With a reverberating roar, the shell burst. The concussion forced my helmet down over my face, and threw me to the ground.
Stunned, I scrambled unsteadily to my feet. Looking about quickly, I saw none of the men was injured, at least not obviously. Then we began without ceremony to execute that well known military maneuver known as getting the hell out of there.
We had only one thought, putting as much space as possible between us and the spot where the shell had landed. Somebody on Jerry’s side obviously could see us. Jerry had thrown that single shell for registration, to see if he was on his target. Now that he was sure he had the range, he would open up with all barrels.
The fusilade of shells was not long in coming, but neither had we been idle, having already put considerable distance between us and the spot where we had rested. Hearing the concentration on the way, we threw ourselves to the ground, waited for the shells to explode, then rose again to race farther and farther away.
Four times the shells roared in, seemingly about to engulf us each time, but our legs had not failed us. At long last we paused for a moment to catch our breath and take inventory. Only I had any sort of wound to show for the experience, and this only a simple cut on one hand. Wrapping a handkerchief about it to stop the blood, I motioned to the others to keep going.
We made one more stop, to check the group of farm buildings to see if we could find any signs that the Germans were using them as observation posts. They turned out to be empty with no apparent indications that Jerry ever had been there. With this accomplished, we breathed a collective sigh of relief and headed into our lines.
After thanking the men for a good job, I turned in a long report on the patrol to battalion. I ended by suggesting that it might have been easier had they sent a liaison plane aloft to observe the whole length of the river and take photographs. Somebody apparently thought not too badly of the idea, for the next time I visited battalion headquarters they showed me a group of aerial photographs of the river and stood around waiting for me to compliment them on their cleverness in thinking of this approach.
I remained stubbornly and intentionally silent.