My squad was positioned to the northeast, just outside the cemetery. We dug in two or three feet from the large stone wall surrounding it, tying in with Company G to our right. For small arms fire, my squad had one of the quietest parts of the front. The situation was quite different for the 3d Platoon of Company D, for example, which was positioned where the entire 2d Battalion had originally planned to take up the defensive, and my own squad had originally been designated to operate as an outpost.
There was firing going on around the cemetery, but we had an outpost in daylight and listening posts at night, located at least one or two hedgerows out in front of our squads and platoon position. But no one in and around Ste. Mère-Eglise was spared intense mortar and artillery fire. The Germans fired everything they had on the town, from corps on down to division artillery. In our position, shells that flew into the cemetery struck monuments, gravestones, and walls. Bits of marble and gravestones were flying all around, in addition to the steel shrapnel. When I went around to inspect the foxholes, I told the men who were digging down deep, “Another six inches and I’ll call it desertion.”
D-Day duties included patrols. I went out with some men to recover the dead. We went out as far as we could without getting into a fire-fight, pulled the bodies out of the trees, then carried them back and laid them out on top of the ground in the cemetery. The best we could do for them was cover their bodies with parachutes. We laid out nine troopers, most of them from Company F, 505.
I also remember Corporal Krueger telling us about his patrol to clear out some houses. The artillery fire was so accurate that we suspected the Germans had left some artillery forward observers in Ste. Mère-Eglise to direct fire on us. Krueger’s patrol went into the taller houses and worked up to the roofs. They didn’t come across any Germans, but on a couple of occasions Krueger had trouble getting in, so he gave the locks a blast with his Tommy gun.
Finally, the patrol walked up to a house whose owner was still around. Krueger was all set to give the lock a burst with his gun when the Frenchman came running up, crying out, “Mais non! Mais non!” Then he reached out, turned the knob, and the door just opened. All Krueger had to do was walk in. When he got back, we all had a good laugh about him shooting his way into the houses like a big-time movie hero.
The artillery fire was heavy throughout the day from very early on. It increased in volume, then died down a little, then continued until well after midnight. That night we were on a high state of alert, expecting attacks at any moment. I was awake around midnight with my head and shoulders out of the foxhole, when I heard one particular artillery round coming in, and misjudged it entirely. It landed a lot closer than I expected, but even then it was quite a ways away. I got hit in the left shoulder, spun around, and dropped in the hole. I felt my shoulder, trying to determine how bad it was. It had gone completely numb. I had visions of the large chunks of shrapnel that I had seen lying around from other artillery shell explosions, pieces as long as eight inches to a foot.
I panicked a little; I thought I might lose my shoulder. This is the type of thing that drives men into shock. Shock is a big killer on the battlefield. It doesn’t matter if you’re hit hard or lightly, a man who goes into shock is in a dangerous situation. I hollered for a medic and Joe Carnecki, our aidman, also from Erie, came running over. He examined my shoulder and tried to calm me down; he said it wasn’t very bad. A small rectangular piece of shrapnel, maybe an inch and a half in size, had lodged in my flesh but hadn’t penetrated far. It was pretty well spent when I got hit.
Joe put a field dressing on my wound, gave me a shot of morphine, and asked if I wanted to go to the battalion aid station. I thought I’d be better off right there with the platoon. I was put in a prone position in the interior of the cemetery, just over the wall from my squad position. The one benefit of being wounded was that I didn’t have to be on the alert. I let the effects of the morphine take over, and I quickly dropped off to sleep.
Chapter 17
Patrols and Hedgerow Battles: From Neuville-au-Plain and Le Ham to St. Sauveur-le-Vicomte
I awoke before daybreak on June 7, went over the wall, and got back in squad position. I was told that after midnight the enemy had increased the volume of artillery and mortar fire, hitting a lot of headstones and monuments in the cemetery, but I had slept right through it. My shoulder was feeling somewhat better. I thought I could do more good by staying than by being evacuated, so I remained with my unit. I received my first Purple Heart for this wound.
Later on D+1, my squad outpost reported an incoming column of troops identifying themselves with orange panels or smoke. I went to the outpost, stood on a hedgerow one or two out from our position, and welcomed the troops coming in from the beaches. As the first men approached I hollered, “What outfit?” It was my stepbrother’s company—Company G, 8th Infantry, 4th Division. As they passed, I kept asking if anyone knew where Harry was. Some of his platoon said he’d been detailed to escort POWs back to the beaches. I stayed awhile, thinking he might still come along, but some idiot at the back end of their column took a shot at me. I guess he wasn’t familiar with the paratroopers’ uniform. He missed me by at least a foot, but I thought, “Harry or no Harry, I’m not about to be shot at by my own troops.”
In the early morning of June 8, we received orders to move out in attack formation to the north. On the night of June 7, the 505 had been attached to the 4th Infantry Division, with the objective of liberating Cherbourg, the deep-water port on the northern end of the peninsula. We were attacking toward the Quineville-Montebourg-Le Ham ridge with three other infantry regiments, the 8th, the 12th and the 22d, all newly committed. Our first objective was to clear out Neuville-au-Plain, then to establish a line of departure west to the Merderet River. On our way, we came across one of the worst killing fields I have ever seen.
Two platoons from Company E, 505, headed by Lt Theodore Peterson and Lt James Coyle, with Lt Thomas McClean and his Company D platoon on the right, had successfully counterattacked against a German infantry battalion that had attempted to move into Ste. Mère-Eglise by the main road. The Germans were caught in a sunken lane bordered on each side by a hedgerow. Company E went up the lane with two Sherman tanks from the Howell Force, and the only way the Germans could escape was to run up the path or flee across the open fields.
Company E was working up close in unison with the tanks, and the Germans had run out into the open, exposing themselves to small arms fire by Companies E and D. I later became friends with Lieutenant Coyle, who attempted to stop the massacre and get the Germans to give up. He actually went out into the field and hollered for them to surrender. He got the firing stopped and the Germans moving to the end of the field with their hands up, but a German let loose with a burp gun and hit him in the ass, and so the shooting continued. Coyle made it through in command, and they took more than a hundred fifty prisoners. He got to the battalion aid station lying on his stomach on the deck of a tank.
As we moved up through that lane in the aftermath of the action, we were literally stumbling over the bodies of Germans. It was nightmarish. Many who were not shot and killed had been wounded, or killed by the tanks running over them. The bodies were actually flattened out by the tank tracks. It was pretty dark, and we had a hard time moving, not knowing when we would be stepping on bodies. Some of the wounded were still crying for help.
As we continued on our attack, I was very cold. I was not feeling well because of the wound in my shoulder. At Neuville-au-Plain, we were told that the 8th Infantry Regiment was supposed to come up on our right, but we had gotten ahead of it. The 505 stayed the whole day of June 8 in Neuville-au-Plain, waiting for the 8th Infantry to join up with us. During that time, we went out on patrols, which consisted of at least one rifle squad and sometimes a whole rifle platoon.
We had two scouts in each rifle squad, whom we jokingly called the first and second target. Whenever we were not defending every hedgerow, whether we were attacking as part of a
larger unit or on patrol, we sent scouts out ahead to the next hedgerow. They crossed the open field or moved along the hedgerow in the direction of the attack. The remaining squad members would deploy along the hedgerow we occupied, ready to give them fire support. Sometimes this worked, and sometimes it didn’t. If the scouts made it to the other side of the field without drawing fire, they looked around as best they could, then the rest moved across. If they got fired on, we knew we had a fight on our hands, and we deployed and fired, or tried to maneuver to the next hedgerow.
I was moving along a hard-top road in a patrol of two rifle squads when we came to a manor. It was part of my job to go into these houses to check if they were occupied by Germans. I went up to the front door and started in, but a Frenchman came out from wherever he had been. I got across to him that I was looking for Germans. “Non, non,” he told me, “The Germans, they left long ago.”
Just about that time, some of our patrol started around to the left of the manor and courtyard. Lo and behold, around to the right rear they discovered a German machine gun position. Luckily, the gunner was asleep. Maybe he had enjoyed a little too much of the Frenchman’s wine the night before. Whatever the case, it was a lucky break for us; we took the gun out and captured the gun crew. I was disillusioned from trusting the French about German positions after that.
As we continued our advance, we began to receive 88mm artillery fire. A round hit in the field about a hundred yards in front of us. But the thing was a dud; instead of exploding, it hit the ground, skipped, leaped, and skipped again right through our formation, passing within maybe twenty feet to my left. There we were, our mouths hanging open, just watching that shell come at us. Whenever we witnessed a German shell like this, we’d holler, “Made in Czechoslovakia!” We thought the slave labor sabotaged the Nazi shells.
The most important event on June 8 occurred when I took a combat patrol out to our front. We were moving cautiously along a hedgerow when I saw some bodies at the far end of the field. As we approached, we saw they were dead Germans. We also found two live friendlies lying close to the bodies, attempting to get some cover and/or concealment on the bank. The friendlies were Lieutenant Colonel Kuhn and his radio operator. The colonel, who commanded a battalion of the 507 Parachute Infantry Regiment, had broken his pelvis when landing on June 6. His radioman had landed close and stayed with him. They had been lying there for at least forty-eight hours, and the colonel was really hurting. He and his radioman were very hungry and thirsty.
Before we found them, a German patrol had come upon Colonel Kuhn and his radioman and captured them. They hadn’t resisted, nor would I or most other soldiers in their situation. As the Germans were discussing what to do with them, a high explosive shell landed close enough to kill two or three of the Germans. The remaining patrol members had taken off.
There was a lot of litter lying around—discarded ration boxes, the Americans’ possessions, equipment the Germans had left after looting them, and the dead Germans’ field equipment. I saw a black shoulder holster among the litter. I had always wanted a shoulder holster, and they were not an item of issue. As this one was black, I knew it was not American, because the official color for all our army’s leather items was brown. I picked it up and was starting to strap it on, when the colonel asked, “What are you doing with my holster?” I said, “I’m sorry, sir, I thought it was German,” and went to take it off. He then replied, “You can keep it, soldier.” I used that holster for the rest of the war, and still keep it in my gun case as a souvenir.
We made some field-expedient stretchers and carried the colonel back to our position, where the medics took over. We then continued on our patrols, meeting with light resistance. We had one platoon on either side of the road. Whenever I heard one of our machine guns, I could almost tell who was on the gun just by the way he fired. Every gunner seemed to develop a rhythm of his own.
The next few experiences I recall are difficult to pinpoint exactly on the map, and I’m uncertain of the dates. This is partly due to faulty memory, as I try to piece together events fifty years after they occurred, and partly to conditions at the time—the difficult, repetitious nature of a terrain full of hedgerows and swamps, and the fatigue and confusion of constant front-line battle waged for many days with little rest or relief from other units. It’s also true that our immediate objectives were frequently changed or called off, partly owing to the poor drops of other regiments, and partly to unexpected conditions on the ground. Squad leaders like myself were rarely informed of how our orders fit into the larger picture, and the picture was always shifting. I do know that the following events all took place between the early hours of 9 and 15 June; that is, between the time the 505 began to advance westward from Neuville-au-Plain toward Le Ham and Montebourg Station, and the time we went into a hasty defense just outside St. Sauveur-le-Vicomte.
Around dawn of June 9, the 505 opened a new attack accompanied by the 2d Battalion, 325th Glider Infantry Regiment and a platoon of tanks from the 746th Tank Battalion that had both been attached to the 505 two days earlier. We were advancing towards an area that had a large hangar-type building when we came under self-propelled artillery fire. This was direct, point-blank artillery fire, which is extremely unnerving. The Germans had established a very strong line of defense that forced us to stop to dig in. Our battalion was in an especially bad situation with little cover, under continuous firing with rounds coming in at the rate of one per minute. The gun worked up and down our area, showering us with hundreds of artillery bursts.
I was on my knees, digging in along a hedgerow with my trenching tool. To my right, in an open field, were several cows. One moment I was digging, and the next thing I knew, I was blown out of the slit trench and up against the side of the hedgerow. The explosion knocked me unconscious for maybe fifteen to twenty seconds. Coming to, I looked around and realized the shell had landed between me and the nearest cow. She was lying dead, with all four feet sticking up in the air. At the same time, I realized I could not see normally. The explosion, powder and heat from the shell burst had caused me to lose the sight of my right eye. I was the only one affected by this particular burst, and people started hollering for the medic. All this time, the guns kept right on firing.
Joe Carnecki appeared and treated my burns. He got me to an aid station where the doctor washed my eye out and cleaned my face with solution. He examined me as best as he could, and said my blindness was only temporary. He put a large white compress bandage over my eye and cheek, and I was allowed to rest at the aid station for an hour or so. Then I got up and returned to my squad area. My left eye was still in pretty good shape, but unfortunately, it was not my shooting eye. This incident resulted in my receiving a second Purple Heart.
When I got back to my slit trench, I found my helmet a few feet away, where it had been knocked off in the explosion. A piece of shrapnel had bitten off part of the rim, making a rectangular hole about two and a half inches long along the edge, and maybe one and a half inches wide. Very luckily, we never wore the chin straps of our helmets after the jump. This was precisely to avoid injury in the case of explosions, which could knock the helmet off and injure your chin if you wore the strap.
We held in that area for almost the remainder of the day. The resistance had been building up in front of us, but the self-propelled gun had finally stopped firing. When the warning order was passed to continue the attack, we were still taking a lot of enemy fire from our front and left front. We did move up to the line of departure, which was near where I’d been hit. Then the order was passed down the line to hold the attack.
We took cover as best we could along the hedgerow where we had been going to start the attack. The tempo of artillery fire increased. Suddenly, we heard a shell hit on our left flank, almost at the top of a tree, and the cry “Medic!” went up. Pretty soon people came along to our left rear carrying one of our wounded. It was a fellow by the name of Henry Cloherty, who in addition to being the comedian of the 1
st Platoon was one of the oldest men. We called him “the old man” or “grandpa”—he must have been all of thirty. Henry was cursing very soundly, complaining he was afraid of what folks were going to think. This was his third Purple Heart, and he had gotten every single one for being “shot in the ass.” He had a nice-sized piece of flesh torn out of his backside.
We continued to wait for word to come down to jump off. By this time it was close to dark, and we were not particularly happy about attacking at night. While it was still dusk, Sergeant Yachechak, a squad leader in the 2d Platoon, walked over to an opening in the hedgerow to the left of my squad and unlatched a gate between the fields. When we got the word to go, at least my squad and the 2d Platoon could dash through the gate, rather than having to climb over the hedgerow. It was a miracle he wasn’t shot while standing upright doing this.
We continued to wait, and everyone seemed to have a bad feeling about the attack. We talked amongst ourselves in low tones, and during that short period two or three of the men recounted their life stories. I had begun to remove my bandage from time to time to discover if I could see. Eventually I took it off altogether, for I felt that if we attacked at night the bandage would be an aiming point. I was able to use my shooting eye again twelve or so hours after I had been hit. Finally, just as night fell, the attack was called off, to the great relief of everyone in Company F.
Later during the night of June 9–10, we were given the objective of seizing the Montebourg-Le Ham road. The 1st Battalion was to attack down the railroad line to Montebourg Station, with the 2d behind it. We were then to turn west to take Le Ham. The 2d Battalion, 325, was moved to our southwest flank, and we were given support from glider and parachute artillery battalions. The 3d Platoon of Company F was positioned on the left flank of the company and the battalion. Our left flank was a hundred seventy-five to two hundred fifty yards from the railroad track, which we were supposed to use as a guide on our left flank.
Descending from the Clouds Page 15
