If You Survive (20 page)

Then I asked the sergeant if he’d go with one of my men and take a walkie-talkie to his captain, and he agreed to give it a try.

It seemed only a few minutes later that we got through to B Company on the radio, and I was able to get the complete tactical situation from their captain. The Germans had several strong points to the captain’s front, making a frontal attack very hazardous. The captain said the Germans were well dug in and were also using the cellars in town for protection against our artillery. He had seen plenty of action on the west side of town where he was, and also on the northwest, but he didn’t know about the south. He hadn’t seen any action there and thought it might be our best approach, if we could get across the open ground.

I thanked him for the very important information. Based on this, I told him we would enter the village from the south, near its southwest corner. He wished us luck and said they would try to hang on until help arrived.

Using a flashlight under a couple of coats, I showed my officers the general layout on the map. From our position, about five hundred yards southwest of town, we would head due east until we were even with Grosshau, when we would turn northward. One platoon would lead off the attack and take the southwest corner of town and then continue northward in hopes of getting behind the German front-line defenders. The second platoon was to follow right behind and then turn to the right when it reached the north side, thus getting behind any defenders up there. The third platoon was to follow along until it got to the edge of town and then was to turn to the right and take care of the south side. There were only two blocks in the town, so we planned to mop up quickly. We hoped no civilians were in
town. In the darkness, they could easily be killed by mistake.

After another strong reminder to the officers to keep a close hand on their men and to keep me informed, we shoved off. The moon was not yet out, and far across the wide fields the ghostly shape of Grosshau seemed to beckon. We crouched low to reduce our silhouettes as we quickly filtered across the field. In a few minutes we came upon a small cemetery on the southwest corner, and, to my immense surprise and relief, not a shot had been fired. I couldn’t believe it.

A few minutes later the lead platoon jumped off in attack. They came upon the Germans from the rear, as hoped, and took them completely by surprise. Apparently they were exhausted themselves and had given all their attention to their front. I couldn’t understand why they had had no defense at all on their south flank, but I was deeply grateful.

The moon was still behind the clouds, and in the full darkness it was difficult to keep close track of the men as they went from house to house to root out the Krauts. We had only a few flashlights but still managed to find sometimes two and sometimes up to eight Germans sleeping in each cellar. Some of them didn’t show up until daylight.

In a half hour we had the town secure, a job made easier because no civilians were found. I radioed Colonel Kenan, who was profuse in his congratulations as he told me the rest of the battalion would be moving up shortly. Meanwhile, I had set up my main defensive line on the eastern side of town, close to the important north-south road. We were prepared for a German counterattack.

Around midnight I felt everything was completely secure, so I tried to get some rest in a nearby cellar. I was just getting comfortable and starting to reminisce about
how incredibly lucky we had been to take Grosshau so easily when a messenger roused me to get me up to the front line.

There I found Caldwell quite bothered and upset. The forward observer agitatedly pointed to the ridge out front and slightly southeast of town and asked if that didn’t look like Germans to me. With the help of field glasses and in the light of what was by then a very bright moon, I clearly made out a column of what could only be enemy soldiers. They were wearing German long coats and were marching in single file toward the northeast, about five hundred yards to our front.

Caldwell complained that he had fired a couple of rounds at them but that when he had ordered a barrage his battery had turned him down. His commanding officer explained that his map showed that the hill was being held by Americans.

So I trained the field glasses on the marchers once more, and in addition to their long coats I saw that they were carrying long-handled shovels, which our men rarely had. I then called Colonel Kenan and asked his permission to fire, since both the artillery FO and I were positive they were Germans.

The colonel called me back in a few minutes and told me he had checked it out and had to deny permission. He said a unit from the Fifth Armored Infantry claimed they had men on that hill. I protested so heatedly that the colonel told me to send out a patrol to check firsthand.

One of my new lieutenants led a small patrol across the road and along a small ditch toward the marching column, and I watched intently through my binoculars. They got within fifty yards of the marchers and radioed back that they were definitely Germans. He could see the cut of their helmets, their long coats and long shovels, and, most convincing, that they were carrying their wounded toward the
German front. And they were speaking German.

Colonel Kenan still was reluctant to let us fire, and he ordered me to send out another patrol—this time to the Fifth Armored, about a half mile south on the road to Kleinhau. The patrol leader returned in about an hour and reported that the CO there stated flatly that his men were dug in on that hill and that he was sending more people up there.

I was frustrated and disgusted; Caldwell was furious. The Fifth Armored didn’t know how to read its map, but absolutely nothing could be done about it. I went back to sleep.

My play-acting radiomen had performed surprisingly well that night—as radiomen. They made a few mistakes, but they got right into things and were pretty excited. They did their own jobs and even volunteered for extra work when we were in town. I was quite pleased.

That night also was a pleasant surprise. The Germans let us sleep. There were no mortars, no artillery. And there were no counterattacks. I almost thought that this respite might be due to their not even knowing we had taken the town, for it had been quick and almost noiseless.

Early next morning I was summoned to a meeting of company commanders at battalion headquarters, now in Grosshau, and our attack orders were very simple. Captain Toles would lead G Company on the right, and I would lead F Company on the left. We were to cross the open field and advance up the hill to our front, the same hill the Germans had marched along, immune to our artillery, the night before. After covering this ground, about eight hundred yards, we were to enter the woods and continue the attack eastward along a small fire trail, with F to the left of the trail and G to the right.

Meanwhile, First Battalion would attack parallel to us
and about a half mile to our left. Our objective was the far edge of the woods about two miles ahead, just west of Gey, gateway to the Cologne plains.

Since friendly troops, namely the Fifth Armored Infantry, were supposed to be holding the hill ahead, we were to use the top of that hill as the line of departure for our attack. It all sounded simple enough, but to me it was too good to be true, because I couldn’t get out of my mind the suspicion that the Germans we had seen the night before might not have gone very far. I expressed my concern but was assured, albeit by people who had not been there with me and Lieutenant Caldwell, that everything was okay.

Captain Toles moved his company up next to mine, and we jumped off as planned. As we headed across the open slope I kept my men spread way out and watched the ridge line very sharply. It seemed odd to me that the American troops on the ridge were not at all visible from the rear as we approached. Our progress the first three hundred yards was almost a stroll, almost like a training exercise back in the States. “States?” What a strange word, and what an impossible distance in the past.

Then it happened. The sky fell in, and we were in hell. German artillery and mortars, machine guns and rifles, and the murderously direct fire of the tank-mounted 88s all hit us at once. Everyone dove to the ground and then crawled to the nearest shell hole or depression. There was no time to think; we simply reacted. Our infantrymen began to fire back with their M-ls, and Lieutenant Caldwell was able to get some artillery on the Krauts, who were well dug in. Now we were paying for the inexcusable stupidity of that armored captain who couldn’t read a simple map.

It may seem strange that our headquarters did not appear to believe our report of the enemy troops. One must keep in mind that a captain had stated his troops were on the hill. No one was willing to take the chance of shelling our
own soldiers based on the night observations of another officer. If we had taken a prisoner, our story probably would have been accepted. However, when in doubt, the colonel had no choice but to refuse the request for artillery. Sad, but true; we had to overcome one more mistake.

This battle raged on insanely, impossibly, for hours as we slowly moved forward. In my five months of considerable combat of all kinds I had never had to endure such a heavy, mercilessly accurate barrage of shells and bullets.

The Kraut artillery forward observer was on the heights above us, and he had perfect vision of our every move. They had let us get so far in the open that we couldn’t pull back in daylight, and our only protection was the irregularities in the field itself. I know the FO had me spotted, because I had to keep moving around while trying to push the men forward, and I was marked by my radioman (and his antenna), who followed a few feet behind.

It was almost a game, and the German FO was very good at it. No sooner had I changed position and allowed twenty or thirty seconds for the range on his cannon to be adjusted than the shells would start dropping in all around me. He was extremely accurate. He already had the exact range and only had to make very slight adjustments.

The mortar observer was just as good as the artillery. I would look up quickly for a new shell hole, get up and spring ten or twenty yards, and dive into the new hole. After about a half minute, the mortar shells, which had to go way up and then drop almost straight down, would pepper the area all around me.

Once my radioman and I plunged into a shell hole about three feet deep and six feet across, and we had hardly settled when the mortars began to explode very close to us. Even if it had been possible to hear their vertical descent, the other battle noises would have drowned them out. This became my single worst experience of the war. Because the
shells came in so fast, I judged they must have had eight or ten mortars zeroing in on us. About one hundred shells came down in an area that couldn’t have been much more than fifty feet on a side. Why they never got a direct hit I’ll never know.

A third man piled in on top of us, and we tried to bury ourselves in the bottom of the hole, praying out loud as we held on for dear life. Handfuls of dirt, chips of stones, and spent shell fragments kept hitting me in the back. The only thing that saved us was the softness of the plowed fields. There could be no tree bursts out there, of course, and the soft dirt let the shells penetrate a bit before exploding and then absorbed much of the force. We were lucky the ground there had not yet frozen. Of course, the fact that there was no direct hit was also a factor in our survival, for which we thanked Providence.

And it was on that terrible open slope beyond the hamlet of Grosshau that young Lieutenant George Wilson, commanding officer of F Company, Twenty-second Infantry, came to the very edge of his breaking point. I had to fight with all I had to keep from going to pieces. I had seen others go, and I knew I was on the black edges. I could barely maintain the minimal control I had after fourteen or fifteen days of brutally inhuman fighting in those damned woods; I had reached the limit of my physical and emotional endurance.

The barrage abruptly ended, and a problem with my radioman, the larger of the two buddies, snapped me right out of my morbid thoughts. He was crying again, though this time with reason, and he begged me to send him to the rear. It wasn’t the best time to bother me, and I couldn’t take it from him. I turned on him angrily and pointed my rifle at his chest, saying that if I heard one more word out of him I’d shoot. He stopped bawling instantly.

A few minutes later in the next barrage, as a kind fate
would have it, this radioman was wounded slightly in the arm, and I had to send him to the rear. And then I became my own radioman.

His buddy, the smaller man with the SCR 300 longer-range radio, which was used to relay messages, was still back in Grosshau with my headquarters group. But a little later, when I tried to relay a message through, I couldn’t reach him. The medics later on listed him as a battle fatigue case.

When I look back, I don’t see how anything could be worse than the punishment we took that day. The Germans had waited until we were out in the open with only shell holes and the undulations of the plowed field for protection, and then they let us have it with artillery, mortars, rifles, cannon, snipers, and—worst of all—the direct fire of machine guns and 88mm High Explosive (HE) shells from tanks right in the line.

The tanks at the edge of the woods would shoot HE shells into the ground just ahead of the attacking infantry. After that the Germans would machine gun the fallen men. I could move only a few men forward at a time. Only those who were fast and could find a hole to dive into after fifteen or twenty yards made it.

The toughest thing for me that terrible, insane day was to hear stricken men all over that slope crying out for a medic who no longer was there. Our marvelous, courageous medics had been working right out in the open wherever they found a wounded man, and they had all been wiped out. Normally the medics were spared being shot at by German infantrymen. However, artillery, cannon, mortar, and tanks could not be so selective. Anyone in the area could be hit; often it was the misfortune of the medics and stretcher bearers to be caught in an area being shelled. At these moments I was furiously bitter at that armored infantry
captain who had insisted his men were on the hill, and I don’t think I could have been trusted near him.