Morning found us with part of a squad somewhere in Huertgen along with a contingent, size undetermined, of Company C, 13th Infantry, while the rest of us sat munching a cold, totally unsavory breakfast K-ration in the same muddy holes and communications trench where we had taken refuge the day before. Because of the confounded and unfounded belief that the Germans had left the town, nobody had sent anybody to help us. We were certain now, of course, that the house to our right rear contained no enemy, for it had burned to the ground. I also felt I had improved our defensive posture somewhat. But about the only thing which had really changed for us was that we had fewer men than the day before.
If we had entertained any doubts whether Jerry still defended Huertgen, they were dispelled as soon as it grew light enough for him to see. Any time we showed our miserable heads, he greeted us with accurate bursts of fire. His artillery and mortars continued to plaster our positions in a quantity which revealed no worries about ammunition shortages. But we stuck to our holes and the shelling caused us little harm except to fray further already ragged nerves, although it did cut our newly-acquired telephone communications with battalion. Though my radio man, Sergeant Leon D. Larus, of Naylor, Georgia, worked faithfully in an effort to revive our radio, his efforts appeared to be hopeless and we remained out of touch with the rest of the U.S. Army. Jerry alone seemed to know or even care where we were, though we could hardly appreciate the violent way in which he reacted to us.
As mid-morning arrived I noted an unusual amount of activity back at the woods line, but I could not make out what was happening. In the hope that something to ease our situation, might be in the offing, I urged Sergeant Larus to greater efforts with the silent radio. An hour before noon, as we succeeded in getting all the parts back together after cleaning and working with various components, I spotted a covey of medium tanks heading from the woods line straight up the road toward Huertgen. It was an electrifying sight.
“Get set to move!” I yelled. “Pass the word along. Get set to go with the tanks!”
The tanks were almost upon us when we finally established a weak and inconsistent radio contact with battalion. I asked if they wanted us to go with the tanks.
“Yes,” came the reply in terse fashion, “join the tanks!”
I explained quickly to Bill Carroll to take half the men beyond the road and attack the houses on the south side of town; I would stay with the others on the north. While he got ready, I raced from hole to hole explaining to the men what we were about to do. Bursts of machine gun and rifle fire followed my movements, but they merely served to add to my speed. I was careful never to move in the same direction twice and never to emerge from a hole from the same side I went in. I would crouch, figure my next move before I made it, and then race like a mad man for the next cover.
In one hole I found a man alone. He was getting his pack and rifle ready, slowly, deliberately. I explained carefully to him, as I had to the others, to advance by bounds, picking out the next hole before he moved. In his case I pointed out a hole only ten feet away. I told him to get to his feet quickly, take two long steps, then dive for the hole. From there he would have a protected approach to the communications trench and could continue forward under cover. The man listened to me with a fixed stare.
“Do you understand?” I asked.
Licking his lips, the man nodded. Slowly, like an automaton, he began to get to his feet. But instead of moving immediately, he stood still and gazed around him.
“Move man!” I yelled. “Move fast!”
But he did not move fast. He seemed not even to hear me—he was paralyzed, hypnotized by the fantastic situation in which war had plunged him. Climbing from his hole, he stood fully erect. Ever so slowly, as though pulling his feet out of clinging mud, each movement taking an eternity, he made a step forward.
It was the last step he ever took. A bullet caught him flush in the face. With the same slow motion he had used to get out of the hole, he sank to his knees and slumped forward on a blood-smeared face.
I stared at him unbelievingly, a motionless bundle of muddy olive drab. For what must have been a full minute, I did not move. I could only think over and over and over that I had done it, I had sent this man to his death. Yet gradually a sense of resentment began to surge through me. He need not have died, I argued angrily. He had only to listen to me and understand what it took to stay alive. It wasn’t my fault. It could not be my fault. I had tried, I had tried.
The sudden barking of direct fire weapons aroused me, I had to move. Using the same technique I had so carefully but futilely explained to the soldier, I dashed from the hole and back to the dugout at the end of the communications trench.
By this time Carroll had assembled his men, and the tanks were among us.
“Better get going, Bill,” I urged. “If we time this right, we’ll have a much better chance.”
Bill sat on his haunches in the narrow trench. His face was pale, dirty, unshaven; his eyes were set. I knew exactly what was stirring within him and, knowing, could not find the words to give him confidence. He licked his lips nervously. Finally, squaring his shoulders, he rose to his feet and motioned for his men to follow. Running, bobbling, weaving, they rushed across the road.
Watching only briefly as Bill and his men ran, I hurried to the closest of the medium tanks. The machine guns on the big tank were smoking from the heat of firing so long and so often. Just as I approached, the turret gun blasted away with a roar. Jerry artillery began to fall in the field. It was sheer pandemonium.
Beating on the side of the tank with the butt of my carbine, I shouted frantically for the tank commander. At last the lid of the turret raised an inch or so and a man peered out.
“What do you want us to do?” I shouted, hoping to be heard above the din.
“Don’t get ahead of us,” the commander shouted back, “and, hey, don’t get behind us!”
Bending low, I raced back through the mud to the communications trench. The men were ready to go, almost eager, it seemed to me, to get the dirty business over with, win or lose. Somehow I felt G Company was snapping back. We would do a good job in Huertgen.
Before we could leave, one of the sergeants who had gone with Lieutenant Carroll ran up to me. He was Staff Sergeant James C. Nutting, a tall, lanky boy who had been very ill the entire day and night we had spent outside Huertgen. I had wanted Nut-ting to go to the rear with the litter bearers, but he had argued that his place was with the men of his platoon. I had relented and let him pass the night in the little dugout, bundled up in my overcoat.
“Lieutenant Boesch,” Nutting gasped, out of breath, “there’s a colonel in a house on the other side of the road. He wants you there immediately. He said bring your radio.”
I looked at Nutting in amazement. A colonel? Up with us? With all this action going on? It was incredible.
“You sure you’re feeling all right?” I asked, half serious, half facetious.
“I’m sick as a dog, lieutenant, but honest to God, there’s a chicken colonel on the other side of the road. I never saw him before, but he said for you to get over there right away. He ain’t kidding, lieutenant.”
Turning to follow Nutting, I passed command of the left side of the road to one of the platoon sergeants who had missed out on the trip to Paris.
“Looks like you’ll get to town anyway,” I said.
“Yeah, but this ain’t Paree, lieutenant,” he shot back.
For a sick man, Nutting used his long legs well. In a matter of minutes we were inside a battered house where I saw a full colonel wearing the big Indianhead “Blushing Apache” shoulder patch of the 2d Infantry Division. He was a short, powerful-looking man who stood with one eye glued to a break in the wall watching the progress of the attack.
He turned.
“You got your radio?” he asked.
Instead of replying directly, I responded in distinctly non-military fashion.
“Who are you?”
The colonel grinned.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m on your side. I’m P. D. Ginder. I’m in command of the task force that’s attacking this town. I’ll need your radio and your operator. Tell him to stick with me.”
The officer impressed me. Here was a man who knew what he wanted to do and was determined to do it.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “Anything else?”
Colonel Ginder looked me full in the eye and answered forcefully.
“Yes,” he said. “Get with your men. Keep them moving and don’t stop. We’re going to take this town.”
I gave him a snappy and sincere “Yes, sir!” For the first time, I could genuinely believe that we were going to take Huertgen. I raced from the house, across the road to rejoin my men.
By the time I got back, the platoon sergeant and the other men had overrun the group of houses from which the Germans had terrorized us for a miserable day and night. They took close to 75 prisoners. Even the most pessimistic among us had never suspected that these houses contained more than 20 well-placed Jerries.
This, I thought to myself, should answer for all time whether or not the Germans had evacuated Huertgen.
As we started forward again, a heavy barrage of German artillery began to fall. All of us raced for shelter, and I found myself taking refuge in a house with the prisoners and the men assigned to guard them. Jerry either had written off his own men or figured that we, as the attackers, would be moving in the open while his own troops would be protected by the buildings. The roar of his artillery grew tremendous and awesome.
As the barrage decreased in intensity for a moment, a strange procession approached our house, seeking shelter. It was the medics of Easy Company, carrying what was left of a man on an improvised stretcher fashioned from a piece of board. The man had been badly hit. One arm hung by a thread of flesh that seemed reluctant to let go, one leg was bloody and twisted curiously, and gory gashes poured claret from various holes in his body. Yet somehow the man still lived.
Staring at him, I was seized suddenly with an almost uncontrollable hatred for those who had caused this unbearable misery. Lifting my eyes, I fixed them on three German officers. I wanted to empty my carbine into them. Subconsciously I must have fingered the weapon, for the enemy officers began to fidget nervously as though they had read my thoughts. My physical appearance alone was probably enough to frighten them—uniform hopelessly stained with mud and blood, filthy face covered with a heavy beard, eyes bloodshot. One of the officers took a step backwards, almost involuntarily. His move snapped my trend of thought as suddenly I realized how close I was to murder.
Leaving the guards with the prisoners, I rejoined the attack at the next row of houses. Here, intermixed with men of Easy Company, who, I learned, had come forward with the tanks, we were temporarily stymied until a nearby tank began to blast the lower floors of the next houses. This enabled us to dash forward, plunge through windows or holes punched in the walls by the tank’s big gun, and come up with ten prisoners.
It was a wild, terrible, awe-inspiring thing, this sweep through Huertgen. Never in my wildest imagination had I conceived that battle could be so incredibly impressive—awful, horrible, deadly, yet somehow thrilling, exhilarating. Now the fight for Huertgen was at its wildest. We dashed, struggled from one building to another shooting, bayoneting, clubbing. Hand grenades roared, rifles cracked—buildings to the left and right burned with acrid smoke. Dust, smoke and powder filled our lungs making us cough, spit. Automatic weapons chattered hoarsely while the heavier throats of mortars and artillery disgorged deafening explosions. The wounded and the dead—men in the uniforms of both sides—lay in grotesque positions at every turn. From many the blood still flowed.
From house to house we fought, each house a determined strongpoint until the Germans inside at last became convinced they could hold out no longer and still live. First the tanks would spray the houses with machine gun fire, driving the Germans from the openings. Then they would open fire with their big cannons, blasting holes for the infantry. At a signal from us, the tanks would raise their fire to the next houses to prevent other Germans from opening up on us as we rushed forward. Tossing a hand grenade as a deadly calling card, we hurled our bodies through the holes or through windows or splintered doors. Then it became a battle from floor to floor—from room to room. Many times the Germans retreated to the cellars. Another hand grenade tossed down the steps often was sufficient to produce frantic cries of “Kamerad! Nicht scheisen!”
One problem was to keep the men from hunting souvenirs, thereby delaying the attack. These were the first houses we had taken inside Germany, and it was hard to convince them everything was not theirs for the taking. It had belonged to the enemy, thus now it belonged to us.
The mounting toll of prisoners posed a problem too, for each man sent back to guard a batch of PWs meant one man less to carry on the fight. Pausing briefly in one alley I consolidated several groups under Staff Sergeant Paul E. Grosch, a German-speaking soldier, then later Colonel Ginder assigned a staff sergeant from Company E to take all the captives to the rear. Now that the Germans had done their dirty work and then surrendered, they were anxious to get out of Huertgen, for the village was a death trap that recognized neither friend nor foe.
Emerging from one house, I bumped into Captain Cliett, who had been as busy as I since the attack started. We exchanged a few words about the attack, noting particularly what enthusiasm this strange colonel, P. D. Ginder, had generated in all of us.
Cliett, it turned out, had had no more prior warning about the attack than I. He had been hiding in a hole while mortar shells burst about him when he heard a voice suddenly bark at him:
“Captain, why the hell aren’t you up there with your men?”
Cliett had looked up in amazement to see a chicken colonel.
“My company’s right here, sir,” Cliett stammered, “what’s left of it.”
“Well, damn it, round them up and get into town.”
“Isn’t it a little too hot out there right now, Colonel?” Cliett asked.
“Well, damn it, Captain,” the colonel replied, “if you get wounded, you’ll get a nice rest in the hospital. If you get killed, you won’t know anything more about it. If neither happens, you have nothing to worry about. Let’s get going!”
Cliett had met P. D. Ginder.
Captain Cliett and I were about to part company, each to get on with the task of mopping up the Germans in Huertgen, when without warning, Cliett tossed a bombshell full into my heart.
“Well, Paul,” he said, “they got your buddy.”
I stopped in my tracks. My knees grew weak. I could feel the blood leave my face.
They got your buddy! They got your buddy! That’s what Cliett had said.
He could mean only one thing.
He meant Jack.