If You Survive (23 page)

The convoy covered over one hundred miles, passing through many villages and small towns and then Luxembourg City itself. I can understand why so many of us have returned to those battlefields, for there is where we came of age, there is where we went through our rite of passage. I recall names such as Zweifall, Eupen, Houffalize, Bastogne, and Arlon. Under other circumstances, and perhaps in the early fall when the hardwoods were in full color, it could have been a most enjoyable, scenic excursion. Now it was dreary, gray, bleak, cold, miserable winter.

Convoy travel was usually irritatingly slow and fitful. No one along the line ever knew why there had to be so many stops, why the convoy couldn’t get going again quickly. The halts were always exasperating, particularly since we knew there probably was no other traffic, certainly not civilian. It took us all day to travel about one hundred miles.

At least when we were stalled the wind wasn’t so bad. Once we started up again the wind whipped through the open cabs of the trucks and the jeeps and bit right down to the marrow. It had never seemed that cold when we went hunting in the freezing wilds of Michigan, though we were better dressed then and weren’t riding in open cars. My feet were so icy that they began to hurt. They weren’t in particularly good shape; I hadn’t been able to change socks or even take my shoes off for three weeks.

Finally I had to do something about it; perhaps my actions made a little history—I am probably the only one ever to have built a fire on the floor of a moving jeep. I simply emptied a K ration box and set fire to the wax box.
This helped my hands, but I couldn’t get my feet over the fire long enough to help. The driver looked at me a little strangely but didn’t say anything.

Forwarding units had gone ahead the previous day to arrange our exchange of position with the 331st Regiment of the Eighty-third Infantry Division, and my company wound up near the Moselle River in Luxembourg about twelve miles southeast of Luxembourg City. My command post was in Oberdonwen, Luxembourg.

We were now part of a sector of the German western front known as the Ardennes, which two weeks later became part of the Battle of the Bulge. For almost four months, as though by tacit agreement, there had been little activity, except for occasional minor patrols just to keep an eye on the area. For us it would be a rest and training area. We were just a shell of the old Twenty-second Infantry, and we would now rebuild, train the new men, and absorb them into a fighting unit. We hoped.

In the same area, the rest of the Fourth Division had very loose defensive positions along a twenty-five-mile stretch of the Luxembourg-German border, west of German troops facing the Sauer and Moselle rivers. Each rifle company covered at least a mile of the front. My F Company had an exceptionally large area. By road it was over five miles from one of our outposts to the company command post. In addition, we had several outposts between which we had to keep patrols roving.

The terrain was rugged, with many winding roads, steep slopes, and deep valleys. There were many gaps in our defense, and it would not have been difficult for the Germans to penetrate quite a distance into our territory without being stopped. Our line was very weak; at best it would only be an early warning system.

We were not the only ones so vulnerable, for the entire seventy-five miles of the sector was held by divisions
chewed up in the Hürtgen that were then only at token strength. What we were doing was apparently the only thing that could be done with such damaged divisions, and no one seemed overly concerned. The Allied High Command was well aware of the circumstances and took the calculated risk.

To me it was a most unaccustomed luxury to live in bare, unheated houses. It might be cold sleeping on the floor, but it was dry and out of the wind and weather. We also had kitchens with us, and regular hot meals were a sumptuous treat the new men did not yet appreciate.

Once all the men had been housed and fed, I decided it was time to look after myself. After three weeks of the dirtiest sort of existence in the Hürtgen and a long, nasty convoy, I was somewhat ripe. I asked the cooks if they could scare up some hot water for me. They scrounged around and came up with an old ten-gallon copper tub in which they heated water on the gas kitchen range.

They carried this marvelous bathing contraption upstairs into one of the vacant rooms. I dropped my old clothes in a heap and crammed as much of myself as possible into the warm water. Very soon the heat began to defrost my poor feet, and the pain became so severe that I had to get out of my wonderful tub and change quickly into clean clothes. Then I shaved off three weeks’ growth and went down the stairs, where I was met with the nervous stares of men who wondered who this resplendent new officer might be.

My feet were so swollen the next day that I couldn’t get my shoes on. They continued to hurt for an entire week. Colonel Kenan sent the battalion surgeon over to examine me. He rubbed my feet a little, gave me some Epsom salts, and told me to soak in hot water as much as possible.

I was still without a second-in-command. I asked Colonel Kenan if I could have Lieutenant Lee Lloyd, my old friend from E Company. The Colonel arranged the transfer.
Lieutenant Lloyd took over at once as my executive officer, running the patrols and outposts and also all the company details while I was still struggling with my poor feet. Toward the end of the week, when I was able to move again, Lieutenant Lloyd took me on a jeep tour of our lines. All I could do was shake my head at the futility of ever having to defend our position against serious attack, should it come to that.

Oberdonwen was a very old, typical middle European village. The farmers’ houses and barns were more or less backed up against one another for mutual protection, and the surrounding land was farmed in all directions. Unlike the usual American practice, isolated farm homes were rare in much of Europe. I would have guessed that at least one hundred people normally lived in that communal village; all had decamped, except for the Catholic priest and a few of his helpers. They stayed in the convent, apparently living off supplies stored in the cellars. They were not at all friendly—possibly out of wariness for the Germans so close to the border, possibly because of the normal fear and resentment toward any invaders—so we left them alone. We were living in their homes, after all, yet they were not our hosts.

We had not had any enemy action at all in that part of the line; it was therefore something of a surprise to learn from Colonel Kenan that we were to be pulled back even farther behind the lines. Second Battalion was now regimental reserve, and we came back a few miles into the Schrossig-Moutfort area, where we occupied some barrackslike buildings. The buildings were heated and had hot showers, and though they were not fancy, we loved them.

On December 14 Colonel Kenan phoned to tell me that he thought I ought to take a few days off. It seems that Regiment had acquired a nice house in Luxembourg City, supplied a cook, and set it up as a temporary escape for
those most needing a change. At first I wasn’t particularly interested, because I already had passable living quarters; and, being somewhat conservative, I wasn’t wild about floating in liquor or chasing women. Not that I disapproved for others. The colonel insisted, however, and sent over a jeep and driver to pick me up. I knew I couldn’t have left the company in better hands than Lieutenant Lloyd’s, so off I went for a few days Rest and Recreation.

The winding blacktop road went through some picturesque villages and pretty countryside. After a short while we came upon the pleasant view of the city on its rather high plateau some miles ahead.

We went almost up to the main business section. The driver stopped before an imposing, modern two-story brick home and said, “This is it, sir.” There I was greeted by four other officers from the Twenty-second, none of whom I’d met before. Our sole bond was that we’d had our fill of the Hürtgen and probably had no business having survived it. We respected one another because of the horrible experiences we had shared.

Luxembourg was a rather large, beautiful old city, after Paris by far the biggest I’d seen on the Continent. Even though it was shelled every day for months by a German railroad gun about twelve miles away, it seemed a most peaceful, tranquil retreat from a very distant war.

After settling my few belongings in the lovely wallpapered room assigned to me, I stretched out blissfully for a short nap on the big double bed. I couldn’t believe it—a real bed with a genuine mattress, white pillows, and white linen!

It was only a short walk downtown. We all went out together to see the sights. The local citizens were all openly friendly, and many of them spoke English. Schoolchildren also spoke to us freely; English was a required subject in the schools.

As part of my adjustment to civilian ways, I treated myself to a dish of ice cream and a movie. It was an old Western with the soundtrack in French and subtitles in English.

I couldn’t wait to try out my warm, comfortable bed, and it did give me a night’s delicious sleep. Hot pancakes and syrup for breakfast was another treat. Good coffee, table and chairs, and silverware made the whole meal a delight.

The next day we met four very nice fighter pilots over coffee in one of the little cafés. We compared notes and had a great time talking with them. There was not the slightest bit of envy or rivalry. They even offered us a chance to shower in their quarters, not realizing we had our own. We parted with friendly waves and mutual encouragement to keep up the good work.

It was a bit of a shock to find my battalion jeep driver waiting for me when I returned to quarters. He had orders from Colonel Kenan to get me back to my company at once because of activity on the front. My R & R thus ended abruptly, and I headed back to what had by then become, for me, the real world.

S
econd Battalion was in its usual turmoil, everyone scurrying around getting packed for a quick move. Colonel Kenan told me to get right down to my company. He said the only information he had so far was that the Germans had made a sizable attack against the Twelfth Infantry. The Fourth Infantry Division had three basic infantry regiments, the Eighth, Twelfth, and Twenty-second. As the Twenty-second Infantry reserve battalion, we were temporarily assigned to the Twelfth Infantry. We would be fully briefed once we got on the scene.

It was December 17, barely two weeks since we had pulled ourselves out of the Hürtgen forest holocaust and we were about to be thrown into something again. I worried about how unseasoned F Company was. With only four officers and eighty-four men, the company was eighty men short of full strength as well.

Thanks to Lieutenant Lloyd, the company was already mounted in trucks and ready to move when I arrived. In forty-five minutes we arrived at the assembly area about a
quarter mile south of Beck along the road to Berberg, and I hurriedly joined the other company commanders for a briefing.

Colonel Kenan told us the Twelfth Infantry had been hit pretty hard along most of its front and that a fierce battle had developed at Echternach on the left front. German units were known to have bypassed Osweiler in the center and Dickweiler on the right.

The Allied High Command had gambled by using a very thin defensive line along the Belgian, Luxembourg, and German borders—only five divisions defended the entire seventy-five-mile front, which would take at least twelve divisions to defend properly, and none of them was ready for combat: the 106th Division was fresh from the States and had no combat experience. Many of its weapons were still in crates. The First, Fourth, Twenty-eighth, and Ninetieth divisions had taken part in the battle of the Hürtgen forest and were at about half strength; it is easy to understand why many units were overrun in the initial fighting. One company of the Twelfth Infantry was trapped in Osweiler. Our main objective would be to attack at once and get to Osweiler to rescue that company.

The colonel asked if any of us had ever fought with tanks. I waited while no one spoke up and then admitted to having been in the Saint-Lô Breakthrough. So he gave my company the job of working with a company of tanks from the Nineteenth Tank Battalion of the Ninth Armored Division.

The colonel’s plan was for a two-pronged advance on Osweiler, with the main body of the Battalion—Companies E, G, H, and Headquarters—approaching directly southeast along the road to Osweiler, and with F Company going south one mile to Berberg to pick up the tank company and then heading eastward through Herbon to Osweiler
(see map). I was cautioned that the Germans might already be near Berberg.

Within a few minutes we were on the way to Berberg, about one half mile south, where the tanks were waiting. As soon as I’d assigned men to ride each tank we took off for Herbon, our first objective, three fourths of a mile to the east. Everything was peaceful and normal until we went through Herbon, and then we passed several dead GIs on a small ridge to our right. Judging by the positions they had fallen in, my guess was that they’d been gunned down by an armored vehicle, rather than by footsoldiers, and this made us even more cautious as we followed the blind bends in the winding road.