If You Survive (14 page)

It was there in that green forest that we ran into the most frightening weapon of the war, the one that made us almost sick with fear:
antipersonnel mines
. By now I had gone through aerial bombing, artillery and mortar shelling, open
combat, direct rifle and machine gun firing, night patrolling, and ambush. Against all of this we had some kind of chance; against mines we had none. They were vicious, deadly, inhuman. They churned our guts.

They were planted a few inches below the soil and covered by leaves or natural growth that left no sign. Not a bit of ground was safe. They went off if you stepped on them with as little as five pounds of pressure, or if you moved their invisibly thin trip wire. The only defense was to not move at all.

A mine usually blew off one leg up to the knee and shattered the other, which looked like it had been blasted by a shotgun at close range. If the man was not killed instantly, he needed immediate attention due to shock and loss of blood.

Soon each of the line companies had lost men to mines, and the rest of us were afraid to walk anywhere. A call went out to the engineers and the pioneer platoons, which had specially trained men, who cleared paths through mine fields. Each path was about three feet wide and was marked by white tape. The specialists used mine detectors very slowly and deliberately; yet despite their care, an engineer lost his leg in one of the cleared paths.

After that tragedy they began to probe every inch of ground with trench knives, gently working the knives in at an angle, hoping to hit only the sides of mines. This way they came upon many devilish little mines handmade from cottage cheese-type crocks and sealed with wax. Their only metal was the detonator, which was too small to be picked up by mine detectors.

The engineers and pioneers worked day and night for several days on what had to be one of the nastiest jobs of the war; each probe could be a man’s last.

One night the captain of H Company, the Second Battalion’s
heavy weapons company, came up to our area. He was a big, heavyset, dark-complexioned man, and he was very concerned about his company’s mission. He was looking for advance positions for his heavy machine guns so they would have clear lanes of fire on long-range targets behind the enemy’s lines. This overhead fire was intended to harass the enemy during the rifle companies attack on the Siegfried.

The captain went about his task conscientiously, even though it was somewhat disheartening: he never could see where his bullets were landing. Heavy machine guns were much more effective on defense.

The captain talked about his plans perhaps a bit more than necessary and paced about in what seemed a nervous manner. Less than ten minutes after leaving me, he strayed off a marked path and had a leg blown off up to the knee. At least he was alive, we figured gratefully, and he would be going home.

A few nights later, just as I was getting ready to lead a reconnaissance patrol into the Siegfried, Captain Newcomb and I were told to report at once to battalion headquarters; Colonel Walker had some new ideas to give me for the patrol, and a short delay wouldn’t make any difference.

It was a night of almost total blackness, by far the darkest I had ever experienced. The thick, tall pines were by themselves enough to cut off reflected light, and above them was absolutely nothing. The sky was completely overcast, and we couldn’t even see our hands when we waved them before our eyes. The only way we could stay on the dirt road was to walk in the deep tire ruts. Captain Newcomb wondered aloud how I was ever going to lead a patrol under such conditions.

We knew we had arrived at battalion headquarters when we heard the metallic click of a safety going off a rifle,
followed by a frightened voice’s demand for the password. The guard then led us to Colonel Walker’s tent, a few yards off the road among some thick pines.

As soon as we got beyond the blackout curtains we had to shield our eyes against the bright glow of the Coleman gas lamp. Gathered around Colonel Walker were his staff officers: Major Samuelson, Captain Tom Harrison, Captain Kerr, and Lieutenant Simon. The colonel came quickly to the point. He told us that division wanted to know more about the enemy, and so they needed a fresh prisoner. He therefore had changed my reconnaissance patrol to a combat patrol.

I was to take about twenty men and move into the town of Miescheid astride the Siegfried to our front. My mission was to engage the Germans in a fight—using trench knives, bayonets, and grenades. We were to inflict as much damage as possible, then quickly take a prisoner and get out.

Our purpose was to determine enemy strength and, through a prisoner, find out what kind of an outfit we were facing. Colonel Walker made it clear that taking a prisoner was of utmost urgency.

I was shocked at the idea of leading twenty men into a black abyss and was well aware that hand-to-hand combat was about the last thing they wanted to do. On the other hand, I knew Colonel Walker would accept no excuses. I did venture to ask him, however, if he was aware that it would be difficult to find more than two bayonets in the whole company and very few more trench knives.

Angrily, the colonel turned to Simon, the supply officer (S-4), and demanded the reason for the shortage. Simon replied that when the veterans got wounded they either took their weapons with them or left them in the field. New replacement troops were not coming up with bayonets or
trench knives, and his own requisitions were being scratched.

Colonel Walker at once ordered a full report from his company commanders on the number of bayonets and trench knives on hand. Then he told me I was to round up all the weapons I could from E Company and proceed as ordered.

Captain Newcomb and I were very quiet as we stumbled blindly along the ruts heading back to the company. We decided it would be useless to take only volunteers; there wouldn’t be any. The captain suggested I immediately call out my first two squads, of twelve men each, ready to move out on patrol.

None of the men were more than fifty yards from my foxhole, but it still took over a half hour for them to assemble their gear and find their way to me in the total darkness.

I carefully explained our mission to the men sitting on the ground around me. Immediately a voice came out of the blackness: “Lieutenant, what are the consequences if I refuse to go on this patrol?”

Before I could answer, another spoke up: “I don’t give a damn what the consequences are. I’m not going!”

I quickly ordered a stop to all such talk, saying that I knew who the complainers were (I did), and that I had better not hear any more from them. I stated very firmly, in a tone no one could mistake, that I didn’t like the orders either, but that I had been ordered to lead them on this damned patrol, and that we were all going, like it or not.

That was the one time any man ever dared question my orders. I was glad I had acted quickly to stop the discussion before it got out of control. It had been close to becoming a serious problem! The fear of those damned mines was sure to be half the trouble.

No one uttered a peep after that, and I went ahead with the patrol orders. We agreed on a system of sound signals, making use of a pocket comb, and a few minutes later we started out.

Never, I think, was there a combat patrol like that. The only way I could control twenty men I could not see was by deploying them in a long, snaking single file. Each man groped around until he had hold of the belt of another man, and then I felt my way to the front of the column. Somehow I was able to make out the needle of my compass, and I slowly drew the line ahead as I stumbled over the uneven ground.

We bumped into trees, bushes slapped us in the face, and we tripped over roots. Once someone fell flat, losing his hold on the belt in front; for a few minutes we had two lines. I stopped my section and quietly groped back to look for the other line. We found one another through the sounds of our comb signals, and soon we were all one line again. I was so busy, I never gave a thought to the mines.

Several times I had to stop and go back along the whole line to warn each man to be quiet. Then a new problem developed. Someone started to cough and it quickly spread along the line. I bawled the men out because of the danger their noise put us in, but I couldn’t see them in the blackness, and it all seemed so futile.

By the time we reached the edge of the woods and came to the open fields, I realized my orders were impossible and decided to salvage what I could of the asinine patrol. First I went back to my original mission, a reconnaissance patrol rather than a combat one, and I selected five men who had not been rebellious coughers. I was sure I could control that many, and from then on we would be out in the open and extremely vulnerable.

Once we were out of the thick pine forest we could make out one another’s shapes as far as four or five feet
away. Leaving the other men with orders to stay put, our small patrol set out across the field in diamond formation, with one man slightly ahead of me in the lead.

It wasn’t far across the fields, and in a few minutes we saw the dark outlines of buildings in Miescheid. Normally a tiny crossroads settlement of innocent farmhouses, it now sat atop the Siegfried Line, with formidable rows of dragons’-teeth tank traps in front.

We did not know what sort of ambush we might be walking into, and we were scared as hell. We had to force ourselves to move from one shadowy building to the next in the deep blackness. We couldn’t even make out where the windows were, and we listened carefully for any sound of the enemy. We even tossed pebbles to attract some response but we got nothing at all.

After a while I was satisfied we had done all we could, so we withdrew quietly back to the woods, picked up the others, and returned to the company. I told Captain Newcomb exactly what I had done and why, and he told me not to worry about it.

“Get some sleep,” he said. “You’ve earned it. I’ll give the whole story to Colonel Walker.”

I crawled into my foxhole and tried for sleep but was too keyed up. The patrol had been total frustration from the very beginning, the only success being that I had brought the men back alive. I hoped Colonel Walker would not insist on my trying it all over again.

Next morning I rehashed it all with Captain Newcomb, and I told him I expected to catch the devil from Colonel Walker, but the colonel never mentioned it at all. Probably he had been out later and realized what a hopeless night it was to go anywhere.

Later that morning a six-man patrol led by a lieutenant from battalion headed through the woods toward the old
farmhouse at its edge. They were in diamond formation, and their route was about one hundred yards to the left of ours the night before.

A few minutes after they had passed us we heard a rifle shot, followed shortly by several thumping explosions. Then someone yelling for a medic. My platoon medic and I at once headed toward the sounds, and some of my men followed.

When we got close, the lieutenant yelled at us to stay back. Mines! He said they would all try to crawl back to us. It seems the point man had been shot, and the other five had gone forward to help. All five stepped on mines and lost limbs. The lead man was dead, shot by a sniper.

The young lieutenant kept his cool. He lay where he fell and carefully directed each man to crawl out of mine field back along the paths they had taken. Each man somehow managed to get out on hands and knees, dragging his shattered stump.

It was horribly gruesome. Five young men lying there with mutilated legs. Thank God for the initial numbness that gave us a chance to help them before the pain hit. It took quite a while to get them bandaged and sent on their way, even though we had help right away.

We taped off the entire area and marked it “MINES” as the last man, the lieutenant, was evacuated. We did not attempt to get the dead scout. Certainly there was no use in risking men for one already gone. I have often wondered who that brave young lieutenant was and how he and his men made out.

How lucky we were to have missed all the mines! But I was weak and shaky for many hours afterward just thinking about how close we had come to them. It would have been even worse in our case, for we would have been helpless in the total blackness the night before.

*  *  *

One day we heard the pillboxes to our front were going to be bombed by our P-47 fighter-bombers. To get a better view of the dive bombing, less than a half mile from our area, some of us walked through the woods and the mines to the old farmhouse we had found on our night patrol.

We climbed up the back side and lay with just our heads above the roofline. Grandstand seats on the fifty-yard line. It was a tremendous show. We watched spellbound as the P-47s came over at ten thousand feet and then, one by one, tipped their wings and dived straight down at the pillboxes.

The drone of the planes’ engines became a thunderous roar as they sped earthward. My heart seemed to stop, and I held my breath waiting for them to pull up out of the dives.

When it seemed suicidally late they released their bombs and somehow managed to level off just a few hundred feet from the ground. The bombs hit smack on top of the seven-foot-thick concrete-and-steel pillboxes.

From our angle, we could see no damage at all. No roofs were caved in, no huge cracks appeared. Probably the Jerries had hellish headaches from concussion, but nothing was visible. All the great show did was raise dust.

Later in the war we heard the Army had developed a special 155mm shell for our Long Tom artillery. This shell was to be fired like a rifle bullet, point-blank into the pillbox, and was designed to penetrate before exploding. Unfortunately, they weren’t around for us to use.

The next day we were moved back about a mile into reserve. While in this area, three of us went deer hunting in the woods to our rear. One of the men got a deer, and the cooks gave us a nice venison dinner.

While out hunting, I saw my first buzz bomb. I had heard a lot of them go over, and at night we could see the balls of fire shooting from their tails, but none of the men with me had ever seen one. The unmanned missiles traveled
so fast that by the time the roar of their motors directly overhead reached us, the buzz bombs were a half mile beyond. I just happened to be looking out across a valley and spotted one leaving the area. It looked like a long, sleek plane with stubby wings.