Filthy Thirteen

by Richard Killblane

  The next day we went back and joined our unit. They were just holding a perimeter defense at the time about eight miles west of Carentan. The first thing that I wanted to do was lay down and get some sleep, then eat. I found an empty barn about fifty yards from the Regimental CP.

  Little ole Shorty Mihlan came running up to me wanting to know what all had happened. He was still Colonel Sink’s orderly. I explained what we had done. He then asked, “Jake, how would you like a big steak?”

  I said, “I’d like a steak pretty good.”

  So he came back in, a little bit dirty and grubby. He opened up his field jacket, reached in and pulled out a big, thick steak. Then he gave me the rest of his bottle of cognac and said, “I’ve got plenty of it.” I was exhausted and had had hardly any sleep for five days. I laid my rifle down at the base of the ladder and crawled up there in that hayloft and began to work on that steak and cognac. I could not eat all of it but I ate most of it and really enjoyed it. When that hot steak hit my belly and that cognac warmed me up I just passed out like a light. The next morning, Mihlan woke me up thumping me on the chest with another bottle of cognac. We got to talking and he asked, “How would you like a steak?”

  I said, “Boy, good.”

  So he took off and in probably twenty minutes he came walking back, looking at everybody and watching everything. He came up and pulled another steak out of his jacket just as big as the first one.

  I said, “Shorty, these steaks are delicious but you can overdo a good thing. Let’s don’t kill the goose that lays the golden egg.”

  He asked, “What do you mean?”

  I said, “From the amount of this meat that you’re bringing me, Colonel Sink is pretty soon going to figure it all out. If he sobers up, he’s going to know we’re stealing his steaks.”

  He answered, “This isn’t his steak.”

  I said, “It’s illegal some way because you’re sneaking around doing it.” I asked, “What do you mean these are not his steaks? Where are you getting them?”

  This was the seventh morning after the invasion and those dairy cattle the Allies had killed were just laying around all over the place. That was what the guys were eating, but on the sixth day the medics put out a big order that we could not eat them any more because that meat would be contaminated. The weather in June was fairly cool. I imagine some of it might have been contaminated but if they were taking it off of the hindquarters, it would not be. That is what Shorty was feeding me.

  He said, “I’m getting it off of them cattle.”

  I said, “The medics put out an order that you could not eat that any longer.”

  He just flipped his cookies [vomited] when I told him that.

  I ate that steak, then rolled out of bed and started down the ladder. I looked down and there was that boy I had whipped back in England. I had my trench knife in my boot but I did not have a gun. He was standing down there looking right up at me with an M-1. He was not aiming it at me but I did not know whether to jump on him from the ladder or just climb on down and make an attack.

  He backed away from the ladder and said, “Well McNiece, we did you a real bad deal there in Toccoa, Georgia. I can understand your attitude toward me because of that. I think that you pretty well evened it up back there in London. How about us shaking hands?”

  I said, “That sounds like good news to me.” I only had a knife but was fully prepared to fight him. He was a pretty nice guy but was killed not too long after that.

  SEVENTH DAY: ATTACK ON CARENTAN

  D+6: June 12, 1944

  The 501st and 502nd had tried to take Carentan but failed. The Krauts were dug in pretty good and held the high ground. I had rested for a day before the 101st finally decided to send the 506th in on a direct frontal attack. It was the only way we were going to get those Germans out of there. Regiment decided that Headquarters Company would fall in with the 3rd Battalion. We would move in there during the dark hours of morning as close as we could and then throw incendiary mortars in to pin the Krauts down. We would then rush them in a frontal bayonet assault.34

  So we started out from near St. Come du Mont about midnight.35 We traveled about four miles and would attack from the south, just two miles past the main bridge. We went out through this flooded area where I had been seven days before. Sergeant Bruno Schroeder, who worked in the S-2, was leading this column of men from Regimental Headquarters Company.

  I told Lieutenant “Willy” Williams, “Schroeder’s off the beaten path. We’re lost. He’s missed our gathering place.”

  He asked, “Are you sure?”

  I said, “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  He asked, “How do you know?”

  I said, “I’ve spent five days and nights down here.”

  The first thing we knew, the Germans started eating us up with machine-gun fire up at the front where Colonel Sink was. Colonel Sink and all of his staff were right up at the head of the column. He sent a command back for Willy to send a couple demolitions men up there to knock out that machine-gun nest. I heard it passed along. Willy was on one side of the hedgerow and I was on the other. Of course, I knew who Willy was going to send.

  Willy whispered, “McNiece, McNiece.”

  I said, “Hell, I can’t hear a word you are saying, Willy.”

  He said, “Come over here.”

  I started climbing over the hedgerow to where Willy was. It was more than three or four feet high. I had a musset bag on with two or three bottles that Shorty had given me just before we started out. When I climbed up, the bag became tangled up in a wire strung along the base of the hedgerow. It just rattled like a pop truck. There was a machinegun nest within about forty or fifty yards of that point. When they heard the noise they just began to mow that hedgerow. I bet I tore up a thousand feet of that barbed wire before getting on down to the ground.

  I told Willy, “Willy, I heard the orders come back. Why don’t you just send him a quick sweet reply and tell him to take care of the machine guns up there and we’ll take care of ours back here. We’re completely surrounded. I told you that Schroeder was lost long ago. We are in the middle of the outskirts of Carentan right now.”

  The thrust was not supposed to start for about two hours. They had not even laid the phosphorous mortars in on them. So Willy told them, “We are surrounded. We’ve got machine guns back here looking us right in the eye. You all take care of the front and we will take care of the back.”

  They had us pinned down tight. We could not make a move. The hedgerow probably was not over two hundred yards at the widest point. Yet, it really did not stay very hot once we start laying in on them. Every time we saw a flash we shot at it. Finally we killed them inside that hedgerow with rifle, grenades, and machine-gun fire. Once we killed everything in there, we had a hedgerow to fight out of. Schroeder had led us clear into the town on that deal. He received a battlefield commission for leading us into this trap.36

  Colonel Sink then put us into a perimeter defense and we just hunkered down. I just laid down and went to sleep. Lieutenant Sylvester Horner came along, kicked me and asked, “What in the hell are you doing?”

  I said, “I’m getting some sleep. What do you think I’m doing.”

  He asked, “Why are you sleeping? You’re supposed to be looking over this hedgerow to stop anything that moves.”

  I said, “Why do you think they would attack in here tonight when it’s dark. When all they have got to do is wait until it gets daylight and start picking us off like ducks? Nobody’s coming in here. I’m going to get me some rest. You’ve got about two more hours to get you a nap if you want it. When they get a little more light, they’re going to shoot us like we were a bunch of ducks. I’m going to grab me some sleep while I can.”

  Well, in about an hour and a half, around 5:30 or so, we started throwing phosphorous in and pinned the Germans down. Then we started breaking out. I was on the left of this road. There was a deep cut, probably anywhere from twelve to twenty feet in the hedgerow
, for the road to go through. I started moving to it when this ole boy opened up on me with a burp gun. There was a little defilade area and I jumped into it. I was not twenty yards from that guy with the burp gun. I could feel those bullets impacting into my musset bag but they did not touch me. It was a hell of a feeling to lay there with a burp gun pointed at me dead center and ripping my bag apart but he could not hit me. But I could not move. He shot up all my cognac and that made me mad.

  I reasonably knew where he was. I could see the flashes from his stinking gun. So I kept listening to the number of rounds he was firing. I was not fifteen feet from this bank. I just waited until I thought I had a chance. After he ended a burst I then made a run back down into that road. I just came right on up behind him through this cut up the road. I climbed up over a hedge that was about eight feet high. I could not see anybody. I then moved on up to this tree. I found the burp gun but I did not find anybody. So I always believed that it had been a French civilian. No German would have abandoned his weapon.

  The others were fighting up this street. So I just moved on up the road and took up the fight. We had fixed bayonets but the Germans would not fight us that close. These Germans started retreating the minute we started in but there were pockets of them left in the confusion. We just mopped them up house to house. It took us until noon before we wiped the Germans out.

  [Tom Young fought alongside Jake and remembered:]

  The next morning after we attacked Carentan, Jake and I were together. We heard this, “clompity, clompity, clomp,” coming down the street. This German had put on wooden shoes to make us think he was French. That bastard was shooting at us. I had dug a little foxhole but could not get down deep enough. He shot a hole in my canteen. Jake was cussing him. After the German emptied his grease-gun, Jake jumped up before he could reload and swung his rifle butt at him like he was swinging a baseball bat. He knocked that German down and his helmet went rolling up the street.37

  STUMP JUICE

  After we had taken Carentan, we were laying around in this building. A small bomb had nearly destroyed it. Right next door, there was a music shop with guitars, fiddles, and such. So we took all of them. Hell, everyone of us had some kind of instrument—a fiddle, a guitar, or some kind of stringed instrument or a horn and we were laughing and whooping it up. Only a few of the guys could play any music but we could have been heard ten miles away. We were just having a good time.

  Meanwhile Tom laid down by a fireplace to get some rest. He looked up in the chimney and saw a box. He messed around, then jammed his legs up in there and dislodged it. It turned out to be a whole case of cognac. There was also a box of wine up in there. So we really started to work on it when Tom laughed and said, “The Colonel will send you a guy immediately.” Since we were in Regimental Headquarters Company, he was in the same area.

  Pretty soon Shorty Mihlan walked in and said, “Colonel wants a bottle of that stump juice you’ve got there.”

  I told Tom, “Give him a bottle of that wine.”

  So Tom said, “Okay.”

  He gave Shorty a bottle of wine and he took off. He was back in five minutes and said, “You can have this damn wine. The Colonel wants some of that stump juice you’ve got hid. He does not have any stomach problems. He just wants something good to drink. He said he would take a bottle of that.”

  Tom said, “Tell him we don’t have any.”

  Shorty said, “I ain’t going to tell the Colonel that. He’s up there in that second story window with a pair of field glasses that can read the labels on that stuff ten miles away. He knows what you’ve got. He’s been watching you. So do you think I’m going to go back there and tell him that you don’t have any schnapps.”

  Tom said, “Okay, he can have one bottle. We’ve got a whole platoon here drinking out of this and he won’t get any more than that. He’ll have to get out and hunt some himself.”38

  Colonel Sink was a real drinker. He was a great soldier and a fighting dude though. He knew tactics. He stayed in and made twostar general.39

  Two or three hours later, someone came up and told me I was on guard up at the CP. Boy, I was drunker than nine hundred dollars. So I went up there and stood guard. I still had a bottle of that cognac in my jacket. Lieutenant Horner walked up and asked, “Jake are you aware of the new orders out that any paratrooper who is drunk will be disarmed?”

  I said, “Yeah, I think I’ve heard about it.”

  He asked, “What have you got in your jacket there?”

  I said, “I’ve got a fifth of cognac.”

  He said, “You’re already drunk and you’re standing here guarding Colonel Sink’s CP. I don’t know what to do.”

  I said, “Okay, I’ll tell you what. Let me give you this gun and you stand guard and I’ll keep the cognac.”

  The second day in Carentan, a sniper had killed four or five paratroopers right down there in this one area. We had to be awful careful because there was so much sniping over there. The civilians would snipe at us just as much as the Germans. France had been under occupation for four years. A lot of those women had married German soldiers and had one or two kids by them. We had a difficult time with snipers because there were so few of us left in that town.

  Most of these paratroopers had been killed within a twenty-yard radius. I searched all over for any doors or windows that it might have come out of. I concluded it was not coming out of the houses because someone would have detected it. Basically it could only have come from the big Catholic church.

  I took four or five boys with me and went in and met this priest. He could not speak my language and I could not speak his but I made him understand what we wanted and asked him to lead. He kept saying something about the Geneva Convention and religious freedom. I could understand what he was talking about, so I told him, “No. We’re going to clean this place out. You just get on outside.”

  We went right on through it. It had a balcony going up into this steeple. So we started through there. We opened every door we came to. We were looking it over and made no headway finding anybody. So the closer we came to the top the more I was convinced we were going to run into something but we did not find a damn thing.

  Well, there was not a whole lot left for us after we took Carentan. It was really the first town of any importance that was taken by the 101st. We did not stay in Carentan very long. We held it for about ten days, then were relieved by someone in the 83rd Infantry Division. They moved a line infantry regiment in where we were and took over. Then they withdrew us and pushed us on out south and east of Ste. Mere Eglise. They just put us in a defensive position. From then on there was not a lot of fighting out there.

  AWARD CEREMONY40

  June 20, 1944

  They moved us back to a holding position. We had suffered such high casualties that we did not have the combat strength left to do any fighting. So they had us up there on outpost duty in an area that was not threatened. Then someone from division came around and issued orders with a list of all the personnel who they wanted to go into Carentan for an awards ceremony. So we assembled and went in there.

  Tom Young and I were together. The first thing we did when we got into town was break loose. We decided that we would go find us some women and whiskey. Tom wanted to get a haircut. So we took off from there and fooled around for quite a while and then came back. We could see that things were finally moving into shape. They had a big podium there with six or eight men on it. I believe it included General Taylor, General Higgins, Colonel Sink, and Uncle Charlie Chase. That area was kind of like a triangle and not even a block in size.

  Well, Tom and I just worked our way up into the formation. Meanwhile, Maxwell Taylor was talking. He was reading off his spiel about what a tremendous job his division had done. He was proud of them and he was going to issue a bunch of awards, ribbons, and medals. Boy, then three 88 shells just dropped in that triangle. At the first, the boys started breaking their ranks. Taylor yelled, “ATTENTION! Stand where you are!�
��

  Me and ole Tom had already backed up in a doorway when the Germans dropped three more right in that square. There were bodies all over that street. Tom and I just kept moving back in between ranks. Just as quick as the Germans could they had thrown in six rounds which landed in that square every time. After they finished, Taylor went ahead with the awards ceremony. Since we were down to such a strength, we could not be used as a combat unit.

  LEACH SENDS FOR A PRISONER

  After Carentan we occupied a section of the front. The Germans occupied a hill overlooking our position. We were just eyeball-to-eyeball with them. Lieutenant Leach was in the S-2 and making these wild selections for missions.

  Leach wanted to send me with about four or five people out into the German main line of resistance. He wanted us to bring back three Germans alive so he could question them. He wanted to know their unit identification and strength. Ninety percent of our interrogators spoke German fluently and most of them were Jewish. Boy, they got the information out of those Krauts. They did not fool around. Leach was Jewish and that was what he was wanting to do.

  I told him, “Well, I don’t care anything about going out there and getting my head blown off just to get someone for you to talk to. You know what their strength is already. You know what they’ve got up there and I do too. If you want to send me out on a search, kill, and destroy patrol, I’m ready. But I’m not ready to go out there outnumbered a hundred-to-one just to get you any prisoners. I won’t go.” I looked at him, “I’ll tell you what though. If you think that information is so important, I’ll take you with me so you can see that it is done right.”

  Well, he was not even about to leave the safety of that CP under any circumstances. He remembered the threat I had made to him back when he was in my platoon. He knew I would kill him if he went out there. Of course he did not go, nor did he send me out chasing down any German prisoners.41