For several hours we made our way through the dark along the road toward Brest, then stumbled into fields near a group of battered farm houses to pass the rest of the night. The ground was littered with German equipment, ammunition, and weapons, obviously left behind in a hurried withdrawal. When it got light, we again took up the march, this time advancing cautiously in two columns on either side of the road in deference to enemy artillery. Some rounds came fairly close whereupon we invariably crouched low in the ditches or fell to the ground.
I felt a trifle foolish when I looked up from one of these quick dives to see a number of French farmers walking nonchalantly down the middle of the road. Their indifference to the danger was in sharp contrast to our actions and although we admired their courage (or was it ignorance?) we wished they would find some other place to stroll. They made us nervous.
“Those silly bastards don’t know there’s a war on,” growled Johnny Tardibuono.
Our objective turned out to be a position only recently vacated by two companies of the 28th Infantry, which had been captured en masse. It happened following particularly heavy fighting when the Germans had asked for a medical truce to evacuate their dead and wounded. But when it was granted, they took advantage of the lull to infiltrate behind the two companies. The ruse had enabled the enemy to capture or kill all the men in one quick blow.
We were thoroughly shocked at the shambles we found. Though we had become accustomed to seeing Jerry’s belongings scattered all over an area, it came as a jolt to see U.S. equipment spread about in the same manner. Not only was there issue equipment like belts, packs, raincoats, and helmets but also clothing and personal effects of every conceivable nature—well-worn letters from home, half-written letters of reply, shaving kits, combs, tooth brushes, writing paper, and pictures of sweethearts, wives, and kids.
I felt my blood chill as I examined the tragic scene.
“We got to give those bastards a taste of their own medicine,” was the way Mike Jukl, usually an easy going fellow, summed it up.
After considerable work, we managed to make the area present-able and began to dig in while waiting for our assignment. But reminders of the tragedy continued to crop up. One man was completing a foxhole he had found half dug when he uncovered the arm of a GI who had been completely buried by the explosion of a shell. He came upon the mutilated corpse so suddenly he almost fainted.
During our first day there the weather cleared, and with this first absence of clouds, air activity increased considerably. We watched in awe at the antics of our P-39’s and P-47’s as they delivered huge demolition bombs, smaller fragmentation bombs, machine gun fire, and Napalm bombs which exploded in a great, spectacular gush of flaming oil. The planes zoomed low over our heads as they streaked for Jerry’s lines to support our attacking units, and we were loud in our praise of the airmen we had so often villified during training because we thought they had an easy life. Taking back most of the mean things we had said about them we were ready to admit they were our allies. We were even ready to admit out loud that they were soldiers, which was quite a concession for infantrymen.
Just as we were shouting the airmen’s praises without restriction, a pair of Thunderbolts roared out of the sky. To our horror we could see their bombs release and come screaming straight at us. In open-mouthed amazement I stared, then let out a bellow:
“Hit the dirt!”
The bombs landed about a hundred yards away with terrific blasts. I had no sooner scrambled shakily to my feet and checked my platoon to make sure everybody was all right when the P-47’s returned to strafe. This time the men needed no urging to embrace the hedgerows. The planes zipped past, spitting blatant messages of death, then zoomed off. We stood up, brushed off and hardly had time to cuss before two others roared out of the sky on a bombing run. Again we hugged the earth, but these bombs fell well to our rear.
“Lieutenant,” one of my squad leaders sputtered, “we better put out our panels. Those crazy bastards are after us!”
“Take it easy,” I cautioned, even though I shared his misgivings. “We’ve got no orders to put out panels. They’ve probably got those planes stopped by radio by now.”
The panels to which the sergeant referred were identification panels about four feet wide and ten feet long, made of a light-reflecting material, a bright cerise on one side, white on the other. They were to be displayed to mark the front lines of our units as a guide to our pilots but strictly were not to be used except on specific authorization. We soon found out why.
My field telephone rang and an angry voice demanded. “Have you got your identification panels out?”
I could truthfully say no.
“Don’t ever put them out,” the voice roared, “unless you get specific orders from this headquarters.”
It turned out that a unit of the 28th Infantry, well in rear of our position, had grown nervous during the air attack and had put out its panels without instructions. The result had been tragic. Our planes had flown over, spotted the panels, and naturally assumed that everything forward of the panels was enemy. One of the bombs hit close to regimental headquarters and killed two men.
In the bombardment of Brest, we not only had constant support of the small fighter planes but also the big fellows—the B-17’s, Squadrons of the big ships flew over in tight, massed formations to drop huge blockbusters on the enemy defenses and on the enormous submarine pens in Brest. One day we had two separate attacks by the B-17’s. My boys were so elated at the sight that they got out of their foxholes and cheered lustily as the bombs fell in clusters toward the German positions.
The cheers suddenly caught in our throats however as we saw one of the planes swerve into another, knocking off the tail. Both the big ships seemed to fall apart in the air, and pieces hurried earthward as harbingers of the remains. It seemed to take forever for the main body of the planes to crash to earth, and yet not a parachute appeared. From where we watched, untutored as we were in the problems of the men in the sky, it seemed that some of the crews should have been able to escape, and we prayed to the last for the billowing silk that would indicate they had succeeded.
The tragedy made us feel closer to the men of the Air Corps and impressed on us that we had no monopoly on death.
As the air attack continued the next day we again watched with the awful realization that we might witness another tragedy. This time Jerry antiaircraft guns opened up with fire that looked like harmless little puffs of black smoke in the sky. We watched in astonishment as one of the puffs appeared directly under one of the planes. The big craft disintegrated in a great burst of smoke and flame. We surmised that the German fire had exploded one of the big bombs, for the end came with dramatic but merciful suddenness. And again, no parachutes.
Not all the tragedy in the air was so impersonal. Our division commander, Major General Donald A. Stroh, was in a forward position watching an attack by fighter-bombers when one of the P-47’s, hit by enemy fire, plunged out of control. With a blazing roar it crashed into the side of a hill. The General turned away from the sickening sight. He did not know it at the time, but the pilot of the plane was Major Harry R. Stroh, the General’s son. Major Stroh had volunteered to fly the support mission to give his dad’s Division the help it needed.
From our vantage point we could trace the progress of the battle by watching the way our artillery fire gradually crept forward. About 800 yards ahead of us was a thick woods which our artillery was giving a heavy pounding when we first reached the position. We watched the shells hit the trees and burst spectacularly in the air. We saw brilliant white phosphorous shells create a gaudy pyrotechnic display and wondered what Jerry thought of the might of our artillery. His reaction probably was reflected in the answering shells he sent toward us, constant reminders that punishment in war works both ways. At Dinard we had already acquired a healthy respect for Jerry’s accuracy with artillery; here at Brest we gained a new esteem for the size of the shells he threw. They screamed in with frightening noise like a speeding freight train, and the accompanying blast convinced us that at least a train load of explosives came with each one. The answer to these enormous shells lay in the fact that the French had fortified Brest from attack by sea, and we were paying the price for French thoroughness—the big guns which had been mounted to duel with warships were now turned around to fire at us.
The Germans made every effort to stop the Infantry because they knew that until we advanced and actually occupied the ground, they were not licked. Though we noted that they soon stopped firing at our attacking aircraft, we did not know why until one day someone captured a prisoner carrying an order saying the Germans were to reserve all their fire for our Infantry, including the fire of antiaircraft guns. General Ramcke was conserving his ammunition for a long siege. This meant we would get not only exclusive attention from the 88’s but also from the 40mm and lesser-caliber pieces whose shells arrived with silent suddenness and exploded above us in deadly little puffs of smoke.
When the shelling gradually moved ahead of the woods where it had been concentrated for so long, we knew our men had taken that objective. Shortly afterwards we received word to move for-ward. Our 3d Battalion now was ahead of the woods attacking the Pontenezan Barracks, an old French installation where many American troops had been quartered during World War I, including some of our own 8th Division. As the 3d Battalion became involved in this fight, our battalion moved into a gap in the line between the 3d and a battalion of the 13th Infantry on our right. With this protection, the men of our 3d Battalion were able to focus all their attention on the barracks and take their objective, clearing the way for an attack the next morning on the town of Lambezellec.
With my section leaders I moved ahead to reconnoiter positions from which we could support the attack on Lambezellec, Our path took us through the still burning woods which had been so heavily shelled, and we could see why Jerry had been able to withstand so much punishment. The place was honeycombed with thick concrete pillboxes. We had to make sudden use of them when Jerry turned his own big guns on the woods.
Following a trail of wounded men streaming back from the barracks area, we reached the spot from which the attack was to jump off the next morning. I made a detailed investigation to make sure our guns would be in the best possible positions, for the scheduled attack was somewhat complicated. The 13th Infantry had been stopped cold on a ridge, whereas our 121st Infantry had advanced several hundred yards farther. Our battalion was to be committed against the flank of those Germans who were holding up the 13th Infantry so that we actually were to attack directly across the 13th Infantry’s front. They were to support us with fire if possible. It was a tricky maneuver that could fail easily if not properly co-ordinated.
Unsatisfied with several positions which I looked over, I decided to go forward on the ridge to see if I could do better. The Germans must have had the ridge under observation for even though I was careful to conceal my movements, they picked me out and began to plaster the area with 50mm mortar fire. This small mortar was one of the most accurate weapons of the German army. In this case their aim was off by only ten feet! My messenger and I crouched on one side of a tall hedgerow while about forty shells landed just on the other side. We could feel the shell fragments lash the dirt above us. Concerned lest the enemy mortarmen make a quick adjustment of their fire, I motioned for my messenger to follow and headed for the rear.
In the end I chose a position near a tank destroyer which looked down into a gully through which our attacking battalion was to move. The men in the tank destroyer warned us to be careful moving about on the ridge. Earlier in the day, as Jerry was throwing artillery at them, one shell had hit within two feet of their lightly-armored vehicle. The men were still somewhat groggy from the concussion. They were lying there quietly in the hope that Jerry would think his markmanship had been totally accurate and forget about them.
While waiting for my messenger to go back for the rest of the platoon, I moved to the right to contact the adjacent company of the 13th Infantry, where I looked at some of the Jerry positions through field glasses at one of the 13th’s observation posts. Before returning, I stopped at the company command post and was shocked to find that the company commander was obviously on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He babbled continuously and incoherently about the trials and tribulations his company had experienced in the advance. He never stopped talking or staring. I began to feel strange and got out as soon as possible and made excuses before his condition proved contagious.
As I hustled away, a tired, bearded sergeant followed me.
“Don’t hold that against him, lieutenant,” the sergeant said. “He’s a fine officer. I swear he is. But none of us has had much sleep lately, and he takes his responsibilities too much to heart.”
Back at the position I had chosen, there was little sleep that night for us either. We had too much to do to be ready for the next morning’s attack; besides, it was hard to sleep at any time in the holes we dug around Brest. It was impossible to tell what made our teeth chatter so much—the intense cold of the nights, the foggy, clammy atmosphere, or the unearthly noise of the incoming artillery. At least the unusually low temperature of the French summer gave us an excuse for shivering that spared embarrassing explanations.
When morning came our artillery began a preparatory barrage. It was a ticklish problem of accuracy for the artillery because the shells had to clear our ridge and drop into the gully just ahead of us. It took exceptionally close figuring to accomplish this delicate adjustment. The noise of the onrushing shells rose from a whisper to a shout. It was the biggest preparatory barrage we had seen thus far in the war.
From our positions it seemed that the shells must be only a few inches above our heads. Though we sat on the edges of our fox-holes at first and watched the thundering spectacle in awe, gradually we slumped into our holes until eventually we were lying flat on our faces, fully believing we were about to be blasted into eternity by our own artillery. We had the feeling that if we stood up, the shells would slice us in half. The smoke and dust from the explosions drifted back over the trembling earth toward us and was choking, smothering, terrifying.
Then, as swiftly as it had begun, the shelling stopped and the ground stood still. With a cautious, uncertain look over our shoulders to make sure no more shells were coming, we got off our bellies and moved to our guns.