Tales from the old-timer

On Toward Paris and Germany

After Mortain German resistance melted away but we did have one skirmish that cost my gun section four casualties and our tank. We were in a gun position only about 800 yards from the enemy, and we were firing charge one with our howitzer. I could see our projectiles rushing through the air like big watermelons. All of a sudden the Mess Sergeant came running yelling, “Tanks! Tanks!”

The guys were gassing up our M-7 nicknamed “Short Arm” and suddenly an enemy projectile hit and it burst into flames. It held maybe 400 gallons of gas. McIver was climbing up the side and the enemy shell went right between his legs. We formed a skirmish line by a hedgerow, in case of an enemy infantry attack, but nothing happened. McIver and three other men were wounded by shell. The rest of us climbed onto another M-7 and we went to the alternate battery position. When we got there a bunch of German 150 mm shells started landing all over the area, very close.

A new guy fresh from the States climbed a tree earlier to cut some branches so our gun had a clear field of fire and a German rifle bullet went right over his head. He let go and dropped to the ground after that.

We in the 4th Division were the first American unit to enter Paris in a couple of days and it was a glorious time! The Parisian ladies managed to dress glamorously despite three years of war and deprivation.

We bivouacked (camped) in a big park, and one of our guys, nicknamed “Dagwood,” spent the night on a blanket with a lady who had driven up on a bicycle. All night long Dagwood was saying “Ooh, La La!” It was his last thrill as he was killed a few days later by a muzzle burst, when our shell exploded when fired. All he said was, “What happened?” before he died.

We chased the Germans up the roads, and our 8th Air Corps had strafed their columns burning out hundreds of their tanks, trucks and armored cars. They were empty shells along the roads leading north to Germany and the Siegfried Defense line was not even manned. It was empty. Everything we ha gone up north to overrun the German V-2 rocket launchers that were pounding London and other British areas, but it didn’t succeed. A movie, “A Bridge Too Far,” was made of that debacle.

Our guys did some deer hunting as we were in a static position and nothing was going on. The deer in the Rhineland are much smaller than our Wisconsin ones. We were down to about 6 or 8 rounds for our new gun. We had got a new tank and named it “Berlin Bound.” We ran out of cigarets and were bumming them from the Belgian and German civilians.

There was a huge forest, the Huertgen Forest, on the German frontier, and Eisenhower, fearing a flank attack on our armies facing the German Siegfried Line, poured five of our Infantry Divisions in there, despite that our superiority in armor and aircraft were useless in the roadless density of the forest.

Before it was over, these divisions were made up mostly of replacements, as we had thousands of casualties, including Pvt. David A. Thibodeau, age 19, who took a wrong turn and got lost, ending up being captured by a German Infantry Squad.

They made me sit by the base of a tree and a German Sergeant came up to me and said cheerfully, “For you der vor iss ofer!” It was about 11 a.m. on Nov. 10, 1944.

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