With the first signs of light, I visited my gun positions to make sure the men were alert. Hardly had I returned to my hole to give a little attention to my personal needs when Lieutenant Black, Company G’s commander, went past me like a man pursued.
Without pausing, he shouted: “Get ready. We move out at seven!”
A dozen questions welled to my lips. I wanted to know where we were going, what preparations to make, what was our objective, where did he want my guns placed. But he was gone. As leader of a machine gun platoon, usually detached from the parent heavy weapons company to support a rifle company, I would become accustomed to learning less than all I wanted to know about a situation, but this was the shortest order I ever received, before or after. On that fragmentary information we had to risk our lives.
I knew we were heading toward the resort town of Dinard on the north coast of the Brittany peninsula, just across a bay from the port of St. Malo—at least, we had been heading in that direction the day before, and I assumed we would continue. Through the soldier’s newspaper, Stars Stripes I knew that the 83d Division was attacking St. Malo and finding it difficult. Our regiment, the 8th Division’s 121st Infantry, was attached to the 83d Division to move to the other side of the bay and take Dinard, thereby relieving pressure on the 83d.
Orienting my men as best I could under the circumstances, I told them to get the guns ready to displace forward. Then I tried to get a little breakfast. All I could find was the dinner portion of a K-ration, a can of cheese and an envelope of powder which some imaginative soul had chosen to call lemonade. In the chilling drizzle of that late August morning, I would have given many a dollar for a cup of coffee instead.
Finally, word came to move out. I watched the men take their guns out of action with the skill and confidence of veterans. We stepped out of our holes and started forward.
We had not gone ten yards when German machine guns opened fire. Less than ten feet to my right one of the bullets caught Second Lieutenant William Carroll, a rifle platoon leader from St. Louis, in the leg. As he fell into a vacant foxhole, an alert medic jumped in to help him. I looked at him, wet my thick, dry lips, and muttered the only words of condolence I could find in my heart.
“You lucky bastard,” I said.
I had no way of knowing at the time, of course, but my path would cross again with Bill Carroll’s, next time under even more unfavorable circumstances than these.
The machine guns did not stop, nor did we—at first. Advancing across a slight rise in the ground, we took off toward open fields in the direction of Dinard. Off to my left, a rifleman fell into a foxhole and started sobbing like a baby.
We had gone about 150 yards when the men ahead of us abruptly hit the ground. I tried my best to see what was holding us up, but without success. Word came back to dig in. Jerry machine guns continued to fire and artillery shells began to strike dangerously close. We dug while lying flat on our faces, like clumsy, over-sized gophers. No further explanation came from up front.
Later in the day word passed from man to man that we were to attack again, this time behind a heavy artillery preparation. Our artillery was at its best as round after round passed overhead. We had a feeling we could have reached up and touched the shells as they passed, and the earth actually trembled when they hit. A slight wind blew dust, dirt, and the yellow smell of powder back on us.
As the fire ceased, I scrambled to my feet and ordered my platoon forward, but most of Company G’s riflemen still hugged the ground, uncertain that the final shell had fallen. I swore out loud. The basic idea behind an artillery preparation is not only to kill the enemy but to drive him to shelter so he can’t man his guns and stop your advance. You presumably will know when the barrage will lift, he will not; thus you can advance close on the last shell and get on top of his position before he knows what’s taking place. Though the men of Company G responded to my urging, we lost precious minutes that meant the difference between success or failure. The German machine guns again opened fire, and their artillery again began to fall around us.
When word came down the column to go back from where we had started, I determined to work my way forward to find out what was happening and why my machine guns were not being used. I had gone only a little way when German shelling came so close that I dived into an empty foxhole. I was about to get moving again when two GI’s dived right on top of me.
This hole, it developed, was theirs. With some scrambling, we worked out a compromise. Since it was their hole they got in first, then I got on top of them. Despite my weight, they were delighted with the arrangement. Not only was a covered foxhole a luxury, but a lieutenant for a roof was more than a rarity.
As the shelling slacked, I continued to work my way forward until at last I reached Lieutenant Black. He showed me in an instant why we were stopped. Across the entire front of the company stood a steel antitank fence. The Germans had zeroed their machine guns along the face of it and already had taken a heavy toll of the men who had tried to climb it. The scattered bodies offered mute testimony to the effect that we wouldn’t get through here, not in daylight at any rate.
When I got back to my platoon, I found my men had assumed something had happened to me, and two of them already had started on a search. Though it gave me a good feeling to know they were concerned, I easily convinced them any report of damage to me was considerably exaggerated. However, I could not as readily dismiss the injury to two gunners. A shower of shell fragments had ripped into one man’s face, while a machine gun bullet had struck another in the stomach. Both had been evacuated by the time I got back and never did return to the platoon.
Having seen at first-hand the antitank barrier, I assumed we would stay in this position for some time. We prepared the gun positions, then I started my own foxhole.
Throughout the day I dug, wondering with each exchange of shells where Jack was and how he was faring. When the shells passed overhead and crashed near where I knew Company F to be located, I prayed hard for him and knew that he was doing the same for me. It would be a crushing blow to be separated from Jack at this point by some errant German shell after we had conquered all the vicissitudes of the Army’s personnel system to stay together since our friendship had first begun at Non-Commissioned Officers’ School. How many experiences we had shared, through Officers’ Candidate School at Fort Benning, through assignment to a division at Camp Van Dorn, then successively through shipment as replacement officers to Camp Shanks, New York, then to England, to a replacement depot in France, and at last to the same battalion of the 121st Infantry.
Yet the day passed, as would many others, with no word from Jack. I would have to be content with the maxim that no news is good news.
I slept soundly that night, exhausted from the previous night and the tension of the day. Only occasionally did the chattering of my teeth bring me back to consciousness. It was incredible how cold it could be in Brittany in August.
I had not fully realized how soundly I had slept until, as a foggy daylight came, I stirred from my hole and saw, only inches away from the lip of my hole, a dead man. I learned later that medics evacuating wounded during the night had discovered one man was dead and had rolled him off the stretcher in the inky night.
As I stood gazing at the poor fellow one of my section leaders, Staff Sergeant Louis Mazza, grinned at me.
“I can just imagine the wrestling match you would have had, Lieutenant,” Mazza said, “if they had rolled him in on top of you in the dark.”
I laughed.
“But this is one match I would have won,” I said, “that is, if it hadn’t scared me to death.”
Were we irreverent to the dead? Perhaps. But who had a better right to be irreverent, even callous, than the men who might join the dead before another sun set? And who could live with death and horror as constant companions unless he found something to balance the score?
The Battalion S-2 (intelligence officer), First Lieutenant Bob Fay, meanwhile had set up an observation post (OP) only a short distance from my platoon’s positions.
“Plenty’s been going on,” Bob said when I wandered over to see what was happening. “The 3d Battalion broke through the barricade but has been cut off ever since. Nobody’s been able to reach them.”
The 1st Battalion, Bob told me, had been committed on our left to take the farm buildings. This left my platoon at this point on the extreme right flank of the regiment—a “wide open” right flank. In a way I was pleased with this news, half wishing that something would develop on that flank so we would have something tangible to shoot at. I was beginning my third day in com-bat and my machine guns still hadn’t fired a single round.
It is hard to recall now how many days we stayed on the hill or just which event happened on which day. Company G was not called upon to attack the antitank barrier again; we stayed in place to protect that flank while other units tried to open a road so our supporting tanks could get through. Meanwhile, we tried to make the best of a cramped, underground life.
During one of the enemy shellings, Sergeant Clarke called to me above the din of exploding shells:
“Hey, Lieutenant, ain’t this a helluva way to spend my birthday?”
Somebody in another hole started singing, and others took up the chorus. I found myself joining in with my tin-eared baritone.
“Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday to you.
“Happy birthday, dear Sergeant C-l-a-r-k-e…
“Happy birthday to you.”
Once established on the hill, I had little to do. I frequently checked the guns, the positions, my men, but I never had to wander far from my foxhole. It was not long before I began to feel strangely naked and exposed outside my hole. I kept telling myself, with an appealing and convincing philosophy, that having no real duties outside the hole, it would be stupid to wander and get wounded or killed for no gainful reason. The fact is, I was developing a serious foxhole complex, and so were some of my men. Each time artillery fire fell near us, its terrifying crash was followed by the metallic clank of men digging just a little deeper into the earth—me included.
Often I lay on the bottom of my hole reading the letters from Eleonore I had received in England and looking at pictures. But I didn’t write to Eleonore. For the first time in my life I was involved in something which I did not want to share with my wife, at least not until I could better measure my own reactions and find some way to transmit the strange feelings that were surging through me.
One sunny day as I lay there, wishing I were almost any place else in the world, I began to watch two strange little insects vainly trying to climb the steep sides of my foxhole. Each time they would reach a point about half way up, then slip and fall back to the floor. I watched them through several valiant attempts until finally I reached out, tenderly picked them up, one by one, and set them outside.
“You might as well go,” I said out loud; “no use in all of us staying here.”
One pleasant thing about our little sojourn on the hill was that it gave me an opportunity to get to know my men better. On the surface they were a fine bunch of fellows, and I was pleased to find that they withstood close-range inspection with even better results. Many were devout with deep religious roots—others could trace their religious conviction to the time they heard their first German artillery. But no matter what their religion, almost all were closer to their God than they had been for years. One man gave me a small Catholic prayer book, whereby I became closely acquainted with the soldier’s saint, Saint Sebastian. The religion of the foxholes was a serious matter to all of us, and no man hid his piety.
As a former Georgia National Guard regiment, the 121st Infantry—we called it the One-Two-One—entered combat with a preponderance of men from Georgia, but by the time I got to my platoon, the Southern accents were tempered with tongues from all parts of the U.S. My new platoon sergeant, Sergeant Clarke, was one of the originals from Georgia. One of the section leaders, Gerald D. Smith, was equally soft-spoken but came from Illinois, The other section leader, Sergeant Mazza, was a Northerner whom we knew as Lefty. I admired Lefty’s spirit, and we often collaborated in little gags in an effort to keep the men in good humor.
While looking through my wallet one day for something to read, I came across an unused pass from Camp Shanks. It was an extra one Jack and I had prepared as insurance in case something should happen and we needed it on the spur of the moment to get away to Norma and Eleonore. None of the statistics on it had been filled out. I made it out now to Sergeant Mazza and authorized him to visit the town of Dinard, our objective.
“Hey, how about it, guys?” Lefty yelled as he left my foxhole, waving the pass. “I got a coupla broads lined up in Dinard and a three-day pass!”
It was funny at the time.
One of my squad leaders, Sergeant Vincent Gulaza, a swell youngster from Ohio, was certain the war was going to end on a specific day because he was doing a Novena and saying a certain amount of prayers each night. One day he came to see me a little crestfallen.
“Lieutenant,” he said, “we’ll have to postpone the end of the war. I fell asleep while saying my prayers last night. That breaks my Novena. Now I’ll have to start all over again.”
I sympathized with him and asked that he let me know the new date so I could be ready.
Another squad leader, Woodrow W. Edwards, was almost completely deaf. How he had gotten in the infantry and stayed there, I could never understand. He couldn’t even hear the shells come in. He had to watch the other men and take his cue from them when they hit the ground. I subsequently instigated proceedings to have Edwards transferred to a position in the rear where his handicap would not endanger him and his squad.
The men in the squads represented a varied assortment. Young Bob Osterberg of Chicago had been in college when summoned to the Army and hoped after the war to study for the ministry. Bob Nachtingall (whom we called Nightingale) was a physical culturist who somehow managed to further his interest in body building even in the foxholes. Blackie Napolitan was another sincere youngster from Philly. Jerry Schwartz was a Brooklynite whose high school French, when practiced on the natives, contained more than a smattering of Brooklynese. Johnny Tardibuono, also from New York, delighted in being called “Broadway Johnny” and looked and acted like the movie version of a racketeer. He might even have been one for all I know.
Of two men who alternated as messenger, Hugh Perkins had run a couple of cigar stands in civilian life back in Indiana and studied magic as a hobby. The other, Jimmy Hearld, came from the hills; we all swore they had to tie Jimmy down to get shoes on him the day he joined the Army.
So we stayed on the hill and got acquainted.
Meanwhile, I continued to worry about Jack. From my foxhole I could see the group of houses around which Company F had dug in, and I could see when the positions came under enemy fire. One day I happened to be in contact with Battalion by telephone when Jack was there and had a chance to speak with him.
“Don’t forget,” I told him, “Norma, Eleonore, and I wouldn’t like it if you weren’t there for the reunion.”
Jack Bochner was the one really close friend I had made in the Army; in fact, one of the few genuinely close friends I had ever made. There had been little time for friends before, struggling from high school into the hard knocks of the wrestling profession. Strange, too, that it should have been Jack, for we had little in common in background or temperament except that we both came originally from New York. Jack was an advertising artist who played the piano beautifully. I had made my living by more rugged pursuits. We had first come to know each other when we occupied adjoining bunks at Camp Wheeler, Georgia, and found ourselves sitting up late at night doing the same thing, writing long letters home. It was many months later when we had been able to introduce Norma and Eleonore. We had been delighted when the girls established a friendship apparently as deep as ours.
Maybe it would have been easier on both of us had we not succeeded in landing in the same battalion, if we had experienced our combat miles or even continents apart. I do know it would have been impossible to convince either of us at the time that this would have been best.