Tales from the old-timer

Breakout in Normandy - On to Mortain

The hedgerow fighting was a slow, plodding progress, with the Infantry gaining a couple of hundred yards daily with heavy casualties. General Eisenhower planned a giant air raid on the German front lines for about July 25. All that we heard that morning was that there was going to be a big air raid. It was big all right. The first wave was about 1000 medium bombers, followed by 1000 heavy bombers, B-17’s and B-24’s, and then another wave of medium, lasting about three hours altogether.

We heard the bombs rushing through the air then the tremendous booming of their explosions. At one point the bombs seemed to be approaching us as indeed they were. The first bomb explosions kicked up a lot of dust and the wind blowing toward us carried the line of dust “backward” so subsequent squadrons were dropping their bombs at what they thought was the drop line, and killing the Infantrymen of the 8th Regiment of our 4th Division. The Commanding Officer, General Eric McNair was killed, we heard the next day.

But the Germans were hard hit and their survivors were wandering around dazed, and hundreds were rounded up and taken prisoners.

We saw seven of our heavy bombers hit and shot down, and we counted the parachutes as they bailed out from the twisting burning falling, burning bombers, sometimes three or four, sometimes only a couple of them.

Despite the tragic short drops, the resistance melted away and our men broke through the Germans easily, and gained much ground.

We moved ahead several miles with scant resistance, and joyful French civilians greeted us with flowers and cheers along the roads leading up to Paris.

Hitler planned one last blow, however, and sent four or five crack armored divisions in a planned counterattack to drive the Americans and British armies all the way back to the English Channel.

It was again my turn to go up forward and I found myself crouched behind a hedgerow near a town named Mortain, and it was well-named as I had some narrow escapes. We were watching the infantry guys running one by one across a sunken road and every man was greeted by a burst of machine gun fire. The intervals were too uniform, and sure enough the machine gunner fired sooner and a man was knocked over with a bullet through his lung and was lying in the road.

He had his nickname, “Blackie,” on the back of his jacket, and I dragged him to safety behind the hedgerow, and used his compress bandage to plug the hole in his chest. I still heard the sucking sound of his breathing, and rolled him over. There was another big hole in his back and I plugged up that one with my compress.

My Lieutenant was looking over the hedgerow with his binoculars, directing fire on the tank where the machine gun was firing from, and he took two bullets in his chest, also, and was flung backwards. Unlike in war and cowboy movies, men shot in the chest don’t call out “I’m hit” as he clutches his breast and then says, “Don’t tell Ma!” Real bullets knocked the men sprawling with the impact.

I had to cross the sunken road twice to the aid section about 400 yards back to get the aid men to come for Blackie and our Lieutenant, but two of them finally came with stretchers and got them. The Germans respected the big Red Crosses they wore and did not shoot at them.

About a half hour later we launched an attack on the Germans, running single file toward the opposite hedgerow. We were going single file and the same machine gunner had shot Blackie and my Lieutenant and knocked over three or four men behind us. I and my partner, whose name I never knew, hit the ground, and the machine gunner kept sweeping the area and coming back to try and to hit us. I saw the bullets hitting the hedgerow behind me, but he didn’t, or couldn’t depress his gun enough to hit us. After some time we jumped quickly up and ran behind the hedgerow we had started from. I was lying on the ground and a wounded man kept kicking at me for a long time before he bled to death.

A new Lieutenant arrived and he was fresh from the states. He was sitting under a tree calling in a fire mission over our radio, and he was bare-headed. A few German 88 shells came in and exploded right over his head. He then decided to put on his steel helmet.

We heard later that the officer survived his wounds and sent cigars to the men in our battery. I don’t know if Blackie survived.

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