Our first look at the gully was heart breaking. Hanging over it was a long, low cloud of dust and smoke that obscured everything. We held our fire. I knew our riflemen were advancing through the gully, but I dared not fire for fear of hitting them. I sent my messenger, Hugh Perkins, to find the commander of Company F, whose company we were supporting, for additional instructions, but Perkins came back with word that Fox Company had run into no opposition and the company commander wanted us to wait where we were until he sent for us.
In a few moments the air became almost as full of Big Brass as it had been of shells a short while before. The regimental commander, Colonel Jeter, and the assistant division commander, Brigadier General Charles W. Canham, came to our position in hope of using it as an observation post to watch the progress of the attack. Reporting to them in snappy fashion, I told them what I knew of the advance up to that point, since they obviously could see nothing until the dust settled.
“Take your men and move along with the others,” Colonel Jeter ordered, with never a glance, I thought to myself, to see if any of us were wearing German belts.
“Yes, sir!” I responded, realizing that his orders superseded any I had received from Company F’s commander and, what is more, made better sense. Turning, I gave a short command to my men. Within an instant they were on their feet and on the move. I caught a slight gleam of astonishment in Colonel Jeter’s eyes at the speed with which we made ready to go. There was no point in telling him we had just finished extensive preparations for just such a contingency.
As we moved down the ridge onto a road leading into the gully, everything was strangely quiet. Not a vehicle or a soldier was to be seen along the whole stretch of road that only a short time before had been teeming with traffic.
We continued down the road with a file on either side when a plane bore down on us savagely, with machine guns chattering. It was a “friendly” plane, a P-47, but that made no difference— it was shooting at us. The bullets bounced off the road, sending up chips of asphalt, and as the pilot banked to make another run, we fled from the road into the fields. God bless our Air Corps, but…
For the rest of our journey, we stayed well concealed, as far from the road as possible.
The day our 2nd Battalion made the sudden wheeling movement in front of the Lambezellec ridge was one day when every GI in our outfit admitted the generals earned their pay. All the German positions—and they were both numerous and formidable—were facing toward the ridge where their well-placed weapons had stopped the 13th Infantry. But as we came in on the German flanks, none of the guns was able to cover us. The Jerries had to abandon their positions and fall back. We moved cautiously but steadily toward the town of Lambezellec with comparatively few casualties.
Most of our advance that day consisted of searching evil-smelling Jerry dugouts for stray prisoners and souvenirs. We found a little of both, but in the process we lost a lot of respect for the German as a soldier. We saw evidence everywhere of his lack of training in simple sanitation and field discipline. Though we could appreciate that our artillery and planes had kept him in constant fear and danger, we could not understand how any man could defecate in the very hole in which he had to live. Nowhere did we see a common latrine, something which was normal practice with American troops. Nor did we see any evidence that Jerry had learned to dig a small hole to bury his personal filth.
As we entered Lambellezec, the undivided attention our artillery and aircraft had been giving the town for some time was apparent. The streets were pockmarked with holes and cluttered with the debris of ruined buildings. Broken trees further blocked the streets. The center of the town was particularly badly damaged, almost flattened.
When men ahead of us came to a halt, we set up our guns in the middle of a fallen building at the intersection of the town’s mam streets Here we might be ready for danger from any direction. We had crouched behind broken walls to relax and catch our breath for the next jog ahead when suddenly we heard the clatter of horses’ hooves on the road. Two beautiful animals came into view. How they had escaped harm in the shelling amazed us. The fact is, they were totally oblivious of the war, for the male of the pair was engaged in a pursuit of a far more interesting and amorous nature. With a wild and anxious neigh, he tried to mount his companion, but either his anxiety or her coyness spoiled the effort.
We forgot the war momentarily to give full attention to this equine diversion. As the horse Whinnied in frustration, we cheered them on. When the male failed again, we groaned in sympathy.
It was the best show of the war to a bunch of men who for months had been forced to keep sex well in the back of their minds, and we admired the animal’s determination to get on with his pleasure despite the efforts of war to interfere. In espousing his cause, perhaps we were seeking a measure of vicarious satisfaction. But to no avail. Though the stallion’s efforts became increasingly furious, though his neighs fairly reeked of frustration, his aim failed to improve.
In time, the amorous exertions of the pair carried them away from our positions to a spot obscured from our view. Yet for a long time we still could hear the male whinny and snort and knew that the mare was standing faithfully but impatiently, waiting for him. In the end, one of the men thought he detected a note of triumph and proudly announced that the stallion had won. But it was pure conjecture, really, and was probably fathered by wishful thinking. We had no proof, and we never saw the horses again, though we continued to hope that they, at least, had overcome this basic frustration which war had imposed on millions of people.
As we waited for orders to resume the advance, our area became filled with visitors, one of them a cameraman from a British newspaper. He wanted some “real action pictures” and asked to borrow some of my men for the shots. Knowing that we might have to move out at any moment, I was reluctant to comply until I saw that several had already begun to primp for the camera, and I didn’t have the heart to refuse them.
Never did a cameraman have more willing subjects. The men crept and crawled and ran with their weapons through mountainous piles of rubble until their tongues were dragging. The cameraman got his “action pictures” and was happy, but later I had doubts as to whether or not I had done the right thing. Many of the men wrote home with instructions to their families to be on the lookout for the photographs, and return letters indicated that relatives were poring over every publication with infinite care. Their chance of seeing the photographs even if they were used were slim indeed, for they were taken for a British publication.
The sudden influx of visitors gave us the impression we were rear echelon. We felt especially so when Military Police arrived and, despite the razzing, nailed up a huge sign: “This Town Is Off Limits.” One of my men insisted that if the town was off limits, we were trespassing and the MP’s should cart us all off to some rear stockade. Surely this must have been some kind of record for putting a town off limits after capture.
When word did at last come to move forward we got only as far as a cemetery on the far edge of town before again being told to halt. A cemetery is an undesirable place to be under almost any circumstances, but despite the danger, we were naturally reluctant to dig in.
“I wonder if we have to belong to the grave digger’s union to dig a foxhole here,” said Jerry Schwartz.
“No,” retaliated Vince Gulazza, “but you dig and you’re liable to contact the French underground.”
With a slight disrespect for the dead but a healthy regard for the living, we turned to the deep vaults for protection.
Just before dark we moved forward again to occupy a hill that was studded with Jerry defenses—deep trenches, pillboxes, fox-holes, and antiaircraft guns. As we scrambled over the positions, weapons ready for action, we were delighted to see that the 88’s which were to have stopped us already had been put out of commission by our planes. Nearby were piles of shells that had not been fired. The guns and the pillboxes had been prepared for demolition, but whosever job it was had either run or been killed.
After making a quick inspection for booby traps, we crawled into the big shelters for protection. When night came, we found out how Jerry had been able to withstand so much of our artillery bombardment, for even though the Germans shelled the hill all night with their heaviest weapons, we were hardly disturbed.
In the morning I was ordered to transfer my platoon to support of Company E in a resumption of the attack. Moving to Easy Company’s area, I found the company commander, Captain Ben Inman, in a cellar alongside a road which ran parallel to wide open fields which the attack would have to cross. I gave him an idea of what my guns could do to help, then set about the task of finding good firing positions.
I managed to find several good positions, but when the attack started the riflemen needed more support than we could provide. Thus, the attack bogged down in front of one of the bulwarks of the Brest defenses, Fort Bougan, an old French fortification built originally in 1680. It was old, but it was massive and virtually impregnable,
Among the wounded who drifted back from the direction of the fort was Lieutenant Lee Norman. Bandages covered his head.
“One of those damned mortar shells got me in one eye,” Lee said in a matter-of-fact tone. “I guess I won’t use that one anymore.”
Lee went on to tell us about the fort. He said he got a look at it before they put his eye out, and the way he figured it, we were in for a tough job.
Lee was right. Even in the face of modern weapons, Fort Bougan was formidable. The walls were 25 to 35 feet high, and a dry moat 15 to 20 feet deep surrounded the entire structure. The walls were of such incredible thickness that shells tossed at them bounced off like marbles on a floor. Even later when our artillery brought up big 240mm pieces and fired almost point blank, the effect was scarcely noticeable.
We were stopped cold.
Still unconvinced that we could not take Fort Bougan, my battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel James Casey, suggested that my platoon might be able to help by firing our machine guns over the heads of the riflemen and over the walls into the fort. I set out to reconnoiter for positions. Eventually we came across a lieutenant who suggested we go with him to a spot from which we might get an unobstructed view across the dry moat.
Following him, we crawled into a crevice behind a small parapet of earth. I cautiously raised my head to look around.
C-r-r-ack!
I ducked in the day’s fastest move. So close had a bullet come to my ear that I thought at first it must have injured the drum. For days afterwards I was to have a perpetual ringing in my ear and a small shiver up my spine every time I thought of how close that one came. This, I was convinced, was as close as a bullet could come without ending a man’s military career.
Completing my survey, I returned to battalion headquarters where Colonel Casey was awaiting my report.
“I might as well throw a handful of rocks up there as use my machine guns,” I told him.
He wanted to know what I would suggest now that I had had a close look at the fort. I replied that direct-fire weapons like tanks and tank destroyers appeared to be our only chance.
At Colonel Casey’s suggestion, I waited around the head-quarters until he could send for a tank company commander. Having already conducted a careful study of the best firing positions for my own guns, I had no trouble pointing out to the tank commander the best positions for him. The rub came when he chose the very spots where I had located my guns. My men had to move.
Backing, turning, twisting to take advantage of all possible concealment and cover, the tanks rumbled noisily and slowly into position. Though the Germans threw round after round of artillery fire after them, the tanks pulled in close to a group of houses before the fire found them. On the other hand, their own fire turned out to be almost as ineffective. One tank knocked out a poorly-camouflaged 88mm gun that was outside the tort, but the rounds directed at the fort itself did almost no damage.
Under cover of the fire from the tanks, a group of men from Company G under First Lieutenant Gordon Arnold, whom I had known back at Camp Van Dorn. managed to get into the moat and tried to scale the walls with ladders, but to no avail. The Germans quickly picked up the movement and poured such heavy fire into the moat that the men had to withdraw.
There could be no question about it, our attack was stopped. Orders came down to contain the fort while the 2nd and 29th Divisions continued to fight forward in other sectors.
The comparative lull in operations gave us time to get better acquainted with the men of the tank units and to take advantage of some of the extra comforts they carried on their big vehicles. It also gave me an opportunity to straighten out a small problem within my platoon which had been created without my knowledge by my company commander.
Unknown to me, technical sergeant Albert Lawrence, who had been platoon sergeant before I joined the platoon, had recovered from earlier wounds and returned to the company. Assuming I did not want my platoon organization upset, the captain had failed to notify me of Sergeant Lawrence’s return. He had held him back at the company command post while Lawrence fumed and fretted and blamed the whole unfortunate episode on me.
After two weeks the captain at last confided to me what he was doing. It seemed obvious that the sergeant had been getting rotten treatment, and I took it upon myself to ask him personally to come up to the platoon. I had never been certain that Clarke was the man to be my platoon sergeant, even though he had held the post for several weeks and was an excellent soldier. I thought I would see how Lawrence worked out.
It took little time to see that Sergeant Lawrence was the man I was looking for. He was not only capable, but he took over the platoon in a quiet, confident way that made the men like him immediately. It was a pleasure to have him with us. Though I regretted having to shift Sergeant Clarke back to his former job as section leader, I considered that arrangement best.
Not all was so serious and somber during our stay opposite Fort Bougan. There was, for example, the experience of two of my men, Bill Fisher and Bob Osterberg, when they took refuge in a Jerry sentry box one day during a heavy shelling.
The sentry box was ostensibly constructed of concrete and looked like one of those old-fashioned sentry posts that always appear in story books at the entrance to the king’s estates. The space inside was just enough for the two men to sit, facing each other, on steps no doubt built for the sentry to stand on when looking out the observation slits. The men’s faces were only a foot apart. Although the shelling was heavy, the men passed the time in comparative comfort and apparent safety while talking of other, better days.
Suddenly their calm was rudely interrupted by an ugly piece of hot steel which ripped through one wall, went right between their heads, and pierced the other side of the sentry box. What they thought was concrete was nothing more than hollow tile blocks faced with plaster! The two men stumbled out of their falsely secure hiding place, shaken, and trembling.
The story had a sequel which I learned from one of the letters I censored. Since I never divulged the contents of any letter, no matter how trivial it might seem, I had to resist the impulse to tell the others.
At the first chance to write home after the incident in the sentry box, Fisher wrote both his wife and his mother.
“I want you to go out right away,” he implored each of them, “and give some money to a worthwhile charity. Don’t ask me why—just do it. Perhaps someday I’ll be able to explain.”
In the meantime, Fort Bougan refused to budge. News spread that they were bringing the 240’s forward to blast at the walls point-blank, but on the same day these big pieces were scheduled to arrive, men appeared in our area wearing the big Indianhead shoulder patch of the 2d Division. Rumor quickly had it that we were to be relieved.
It didn’t take long for the rumor to be confirmed. As soon as night came, the 121st Infantry picked up its weapons and gear and silently stole away. At the same time the 2nd Division’s 9th Regiment moved in.
Over rough trails lighted at intervals by burning buildings we stumbled and cursed our way to a spot where a big hill shielded us from observation. There was a long column of trucks waiting for us.
“Uh-oh,” said one man, “they must have dirty work ahead. They wouldn’t be nice enough to give us a ride if they didn’t have a lousy job in mind.”
He was right. They had another job for us.