Chapter 6 - France
As each unit was called for off loading into the landing craft, it filed onto the deck and prepared to go over the rail onto the cargo nets draped on the side of the ship. As we waited to swing over the rail we could see La Havre less than a quarter of a mile away. The town was nothing but a pile of masonry debris. The streets, which had been bulldozed up from the quay, passed up the hillside above the harbor. I couldn't see any inhabitable dwelling in the part of the town that was observable from the ship. Even though we were in protected waters the landing craft were heaving up and down several feet. As each GI reached the bottom of the net several men stationed in the boats steadied him as he released his hold on the cargo net and dropped into the boat. When I was part way down the net my rifle started to slip from my shoulder. While grabbing it my foot slipped from the net and I found myself hanging nearly inverted grasping my rifle in one hand and dangling by my knee which was locked over a cross strand of the net. Fortunately men in the boat were holding the net away from the ship's side so I didn't hit my head as I slipped. With a little scrambling I managed to right myself and safely make my way into the landing craft.
I don't remember how we disembarked when reaching shore. Ten-ton truck and trailers, with stake sides, were waiting for us on the quay. We scrambled up with the help of the officers into the trailers and were packed so tightly we could hardly move. I found a spot at the side of the trailer that allowed me to hook my musette bag over the trailer side and hang thereby taking the weight off of my feet. One GI bent over to look down from the truck and his helmet slipped off and fell to the pavement. Lt. Elias picked it up and tossed it up into the crowd. Soon another helmet hit the pavement and Lt. Elias was soon running from one side of the trailer to the other retrieving helmets. After five or six helmets had hit the pavement Elias yelled that the next jerk that dropped his helmet was going to be in serious trouble. The clanking of helmet on the pavement ceased and there was a ripple of laughter through the crowd, which drew a shaking fist and then a grin from the Lieutenant.
A light snow was falling when the trucks started slowly moving out of the port area and through the shattered city. Under the overcast sky in the late afternoon La Havre was a truly depressing sight. We were traveling north as far as I could tell from what little brightness I could see in the overcast sky. The day ended and we drove on through the falling snow packed so tightly that we couldn't fall down. The truck drivers were careful not to jerk us around any more than necessary and so none were hurt in our four or five hour drive. I guess we bumping along through the night at approximately 15 miles per hour. We eventually arrived at our destination near Bacqueville just inland from Dieppe and with the help of the officers who had been riding in the truck cabs were unloaded by the light of flashlights. We milled around in the darkness until organized into squads and platoons and were led to our billets for the next few days. The second platoon was housed in a large home with a castle like tower on one end. The machine gun squad was assigned the second floor of the tower. The room was circular and was large enough for all eleven of us to stretch out our sleeping bags to get some sleep. Since there wasn't any heat in the building most pulled off our equipment, shoes and overcoats and climbed into the sack, field jackets and all. We stayed in this chateau several days awaiting the vehicles. It was from this chateau that I wrote a letter home on the sixth of January to let my parents know that I was in France. The censors wouldn't allow us to write where in France we were so the letter was headed by "Somewhere in France". This restriction prevents me from really tracing accurately my travels through Europe during the war. It is only by fading memory and research in my division and army histories that I can reconstruct my wartime path through France, Holland and Germany. The half-tracks, which had crossed the channel in landing craft, finally arrived and the next day the division started east across France. Driving across France we greeted by many French people along the road and handed loafs of bread and sweets as we slowed enough to grab this food.
During the evening of the first day driving we discovered that our voltage regulator was out of adjustment and the engine wouldn't run with the lights on. As a result we fell behind the rest of the battalion and in order to catch up we were driving through a strange country at thirty miles an hour in pitch darkness with the light from a single flashlight to guide Pastewka. We drove into one village square and only at the last minute found the exit from the square required a sharp left turn at the very end of the square. There was a lot of screeching of tracks and tires and rattling of armor plate as we thundered into the square and made a sliding turn and departed. Several villagers were just sticking their heads out of windows to see what the racket was as we plunged on into the night.
Our first night time stop was in the outskirts of Compeigne approximately 90 miles from our starting point. Due to the voltage regulator problem we arrived very late and only got a few hours sleep. The next day, with the half-track's voltage regulator adjusted, we made it to Rheims, a drive of an additional 60 miles in extremely cold weather. To one accustomed to modern freeways this must seem like slow progress; however, considering the extreme cold and the icy roads encountered on the second day, which caused some vehicles to slide off the road at nearly every turn, this was commendable progress. French civilians were stationed at each steep curve to spread sand under the wheels and tracks and to assist the division engineers and maintenance battalions to winch ditched vehicles back onto the road and when necessary around the curves. We watched several tanks try to negotiate an insufficiently banked curve. As the driver of the first tank braked the left-hand track to start the left-hand curve, the tank pivoted slowly around its vertical axis and ponderously continued on in a straight line. It slid into and out of the roadside ditch finally coming to a halt thirty feet into the field and ten or fifteen feet off the road. In the softer dirt the tank broke through the frozen surface crust and was able to gain some traction and make its way back to the road where with liberal application of sand and the help of winches it disappeared around the curve. The second tank repeated the exact same maneuver. The half-tracks by using both their front wheels in addition to their tracks seem to have more traction and were able to negotiate curves better than the fully tracked vehicles.
While the company was erecting its pup tents for the night and eating an evening meal a shot rang out. We later found out that someone had attempted to remove a machine gun from a half-track without knowing how to unload it. He had lifted the cover and removed the ammunition belt from the gun but had failed to eject the cartridge in the gun's chamber. When he removed the gun from its swivel mount he momentarily set it on the side of the half-track, accidentally hitting the trigger and discharging the gun. The bullet grazed one GI's head and buried itself in the abdomen of another GI. When we heard that one GI had been wounded in the head and another in the stomach we expected that the GI with the head wound would not survive and that the GI with the stomach wound had a good chance. An ambulance was summoned and the wounded men rushed to a nearby hospital. The next day we were told to mount up and prepare to move out. The division was moving further east.
After another all day trip we arrived at a road junction near the town of Verdun after dark. We were now beyond the light line and had to drive with only our black out lights for guidance. Under these rules you followed the faint red taillights of the vehicle ahead of you and tried to keep a fixed interval of about 30 yards between vehicles. In a pitch-black night this is a difficult task. A non-divisional truck pulled into the column in front of a tank several hundred yards ahead of us and the tank driver started following the truck. The truck slowed down just before the junction leading to Verdun and lost contact with the vehicle in front of him. The truck then took the road into Verdun and the tank driver not seeing any lights on the other road branch and being tired followed the truck. The truck led about fifty half tracks, tanks, and self propelled howitzers into Verdun before the error was discovered. The column had to do a 180-degree turn on the main street of Verdun in the middle of the night. Each vehicle was told to make a U-turn and return to the missed junction. Several homes lost front porches in the chaos as the tanks pivoted on the road. Pastewka found an intersection just in front of our track and managed by backing and filling to get the track turned with only minor damage to some poor Frenchman's front yard fence. By the time we were all sorted out and found the rest of the 58th battalion most of the night had past. We bivouacked about five miles west of Verdun. We hid our tents and vehicles in some woods. That evening we heard that the GI wounded in the stomach had died and that the GI hit in the head would be returning to the company soon.
We stayed west of Verdun until the 12th of January. During the three-day stay in Verdun the company was taken on a hike with full field gear to keep us in shape. The roads were still covered with a thin coating of ice and as the company moved down the road someone was always in the process of falling or trying to get up. Sometimes several GIs would be down at one time. Off the roads in the snow we could move about without falling if we used reasonable care. Big Al and I wandered over the fields and ran into the French trench system from the First World War. The old trenches had caved in and were now only shallow ditches about six feet wide and a foot deep with a shallow mound running down both sides of the ditch. These wandered for miles through the trees. While examining the trench system we tried to catch a rabbit by driving it out of it's warren by stamping our feet and shouting at one entrance while waiting with a club at the other entrance. We were a complete failure and had given up on our game hunt, when a French farmer walked up and offered to help. He pulled a ferret out of his jacket and stationed one of us at all but one of the warren entrances where he had placed nets; he then slipped the ferret down the unmanned entrance. Within minutes the rabbit stuck his head out of one of the holes and was dispatched. Big Al skinned and cleaned the rabbit and we hung it, and another we caught, from the half-track when we returned to camp.
The wounded GI had been returned to the company while we had been sight seeing, and one look at him convinced me that he was about to go into shock. Big Al went to get his platoon leader while was placed in a pup tent with two other GIs under several blankets. He was still a pale white and shaking like a leaf when his Lieutenant arrived. We decided that light line or not we had to build a fire to warm the shocked GI or we were going to lose him. This we did and kept the fire going during the night. He seemed much better the next morning. To this day I don't understand why he was sent back to duty in his condition.
The next day the sun broke through the clouds and the temperature went up to a few degrees above freezing. Since there was no wind I decided to strip down and take a quick soap and snow bath and put on some clean underwear. That was a serious mistake because by evening I knew I had something wrong with my kidneys. The next morning I made sick call where the doctor told me I had a kidney infection and gave me some sulfa drugs. He warned me to drink several quarts of water a day while on the drug or I would find myself in the worst pain I had ever suffered.
About noon of the day I took my bath the skies had cleared completely and sky was a sparkling blue. We heard the faint drone of aircraft motors and look up to see the sky streaked with white contrails. We watched for nearly an hour as hundreds of planes slowly crossed the sky from West to East. The formations nearly covered the sky from the Northern to the Southern horizon. This was the first 1000 plane raid by heavy bombers we had seen and it was an awesome sight. We didn't see the planes return and I suppose that they had turned either North or South after they had dropped their bombs to return to England.
That night, having passed one night with a fire for the wounded GI without attracting any attention, the machine gun squad built a huge fire in the woods to keep warm. The flames were leaping six to ten feet in the air and we were all feeling splendidly warm for the first time since leaving England. As we were congratulating each other on our comfort, a roaring Lt. Elias came charging out from the trees yelling for us to put the damn fire out. Seeing our squad leader Dudley Thrower there he relieved him of duty and told Frank Balestrucci that he was now the squad leader. He turned to Big Al and informed him that he was now assistant squad leader and that Big Al had damn well keep us under control or he would make life miserable for all of us. With our ex-leader in tow he stalked off, while the rest of us hurriedly smothered the fire.
The next morning, the 12th of January, we were told to strike camp, load up and be prepared to mount up and move out on a moments notice. The battalion started southeast and was on the road all day. The temperature was back down to zero Fahrenheit and riding in the open tracks was miserable. Since I was drinking several quarts of water a day I had to urinate several times an hour. I climbed out on the mine racks while someone was holding on to my belt to relieve myself. The road march was stopped every hour to allow us to dismount and walk around to warm up. At the noon halt I couldn't feel any thing below my ankles when I jumped off the track.
It was so cold that when I took my gloves off to open a can of C ration spaghetti by the time I grabbed the can opener key I didn't have enough strength left in my fingers to open the can. In frustration I finally warmed my hand on the track's exhaust manifold and opened the can with the fire ax off of the track, scooped the contents off the road with my spoon and gulped it down cold. By the time we arrived at our destination near Pont-a-Mousson, a trip of only 60 miles, half the company and I had frost bitten feet.
I think this happened because our feet were resting on the steel plate of the bottom of the track. The plates acted like giant radiators that sucked the heat out of our combat boots.
My battalion crossed the Moselle River on a stone bridge in Pont-a-Mousson and drove a few miles east of the town. My company was billeted in a village of about ten houses, some with barns. The ground was rolling and there were woods within a quarter of a mile of the village. The village was deserted and many of the structures had been damaged by shellfire. The machine gun squad was assigned a barn to sleep in. I found several bales of hay in the hayloft to spread my sleeping bag on. Unfortunately there was a shell hole in the barn roof and snow had blown onto the hay and melted and refrozen until the hay bales were solid blocks of ice with tufts of hay sticking out of them like a scraggly beard.
During the first night I had to climb down the ladder leading to the hay loft every hour to relief myself and was becoming wide awake in the process and, therefore, wasn't getting any sleep. In desperation I found a hole in the side of the hayloft a few feet from my sleeping bag and used it during the early hours of the morning. I staggered out into the sunlight the next morning only to have Captain Malarkey yell for me to grab my rifle and ride shotgun with him in his peep. He wanted to drive up to Metz and didn't want to risk going alone. For the first few miles of our drive the Captain complained bitterly that someone had pissed all over his peep the night before and that it was now covered with frozen pee. I consoled him with by agreeing with him that it really took a bastard to piss on his peep. Fortunately he decided to return to the company area before I had to ask him to stop so I could relieve myself. I am sure he was suspicious that I had done in his peep and was trying to get me to admit to the foul deed; however, my sympathizing with him seemed to satisfy him and that was the last I heard of it.
While we were near Pont-a-Mousson we were issued white paint with which to camouflage the tracks. This took the better part of the day to accomplish. The two rabbit we had caught near Verdun had been hanging from the track for several days was now frozen solid. I think you could have killed someone with them. We found a French family living in farmhouse a few hundred yards from our billeting village and the lady of the house offered to cook the rabbits in a stew. The second day of our stay the squad shared the two rabbit stew with the French family of about five people. Two rabbits don't go very far in feeding 17 people. However the farmhouse was weather tight and warm and the French family interesting to talk to.
Most of the company had frost bitten feet by now and some were coming down with diarrhea. We were given pills for our stomachaches and galoshes with straw for our feet. The galoshes weren't very good to walk in but they did keep our feet warmer. It was nearly a week before we were well enough to start taking conditioning hikes. The weather had continued to be extremely cold. During the night the time on guard duty was cut to one hour and even then the corporal of the guard came out with some help so the relieved guard could be helped back to the company command post. Here the sentry was stood before a fire and thawed out till he could move under his on power. It was pure misery. During one of these thawing exercises the fire was built up so high that the ceiling around the chimney caught fire. All of the water in the cans had frozen solid and we were getting desperate. Fortunately there were steps up to the attic and five of us ran up the steps and urinated on the attic floor and succeeded in putting the fire out. The command post smelled badly for a few days and we were careful to keep a bucket of water near the fire where it wouldn't freeze. In addition frozen sentries were thawed out more gradually. The GIs who were pulling guard duty all slept at the company CP when not on duty.
One morning I woke up and picked up my rifle and noticed that the bolt was not fully seated. I pulled back on the cocking lever and out popped a cartridge. Someone had borrowed my rifle during the night while I was sleeping and had attempted to load a round into the chamber and failed and didn't realize it. I could have forced the bolt home and later killed someone. I was furious and told Lt. Elias what I had found. He got the platoon together and warned us all not to borrow another's weapon without asking and warned of the danger of loading a weapon and leaving it without unloading it. He pointed out that we had already lost one member of the company to carelessness and he didn't want another accident.
During the first week of our stay near Pont-a-Mousson I was given the task of checking all of the automatic weapons in the platoon. We loaded all the weapons into a half-track and drove out to an open area with nothing near it for a mile except an abandoned Sherman tank. With the help of the half-track driver, I took each weapon in turn, loaded it and fired a burst of a few rounds at the tank that was nearly 800 yards away. I actually took a 50 caliber machine guns, placed it on a tripod, removed the bolt and bore sighted on the turret of the tank with it firmly locked on the tripod, reassembled it, loaded a single round of incendiary ammunition and fired it. Even at nearly a quarter mile the ballistic characteristics were good enough that the round hit only about few feet below the bore sight point. I was very impressed with the hitting power of the gun. When I finally got around to testing my own gun teams light 30 caliber; I mounted it on its tripod, loaded a belt of ammunition and pulled the trigger. One round fired and then nothing. I pulled back the bolt and tried to get another round into the chamber but the whole gun seemed to jam. I unloaded the belt from the gun and with great effort got the bolt back so I could lock up the drive spring. More fussing and pounding got the bolt forward far enough for me to get the drive rod free of the back plate so I could get it out of the gun receiver. I then turned the gun up on its back and a pile of metal powder poured out of the receiver. I got the bolt out of the gun after unscrewing the cocking lever and peered into the receiver. The whole barrel extension had disintegrated into the pile of metal powder that had poured out of the gun. The temperature had been so low that the gun's barrel extension had got below its transition temperature and the metal had become so brittle that it had disintegrated on the first shot. I wondered how close the other weapons were to their transition temperatures and what their reliability might be. Fortunately the daily temperature slowly increased and we never used our weapons in such cold weather.
One day about ten of us were traveling down a road to the west of the Moselle River. I can't remember where we were going now; possibly for a shower or to get medical shots which we tended to get every time we moved from one corps to another. We were happily bouncing along the snow incrusted road with the wind blowing back into the cargo space of the truck from the open back end; the tires were humming, the exhaust growling and the canvas cover over us drumming when we were shocked out of our reverie with a tremendous explosion. We weren't sure what had happened until we traveled another short distance down the road and could see the first of a group of Sherman tanks parked along the side of the road practicing with their 76-mm guns. The first shot had been fired just as we were passing the first tank. We were only a few feet behind the tank when it fired and the muzzle blast of the high velocity gun, so close, was enough to wake the dead. I later heard that the tankers had got into trouble for using a French farmer's barn for a target. It was a stupid thing for them to do and I suppose the farmer got a new barn. I never found out if there had been any live stock in the barn when they shot it up.
During the period when the temperatures were going below zero Fahrenheit nearly every day, we were slowly losing weight because of lack of calories. Someone stole a wheel of cheese from the kitchen truck and a group ate it all in a few minutes. Capt. Malarkey got the whole company together and read the riot act to us. He threatened all kinds of dire consequences if it happened again. He then told the company first sergeant to dismiss us. The first sergeant waited until the captain had walked away and then told us that he didn't know whether the captain's threats were realistic or not. But he added that if anyone stole another cheese and he, the first sergeant, didn't get his share, and he ever caught the culprit the thief would wish he'd never been born. He then dismissed the company. I never got a piece of the cheese. A few days later the company started consuming their emergency D ration bars. Again we were assembled for another dressing down but the rations were replaced and the kitchen started serving bigger helpings the next day.
By this time everyone was wearing as much clothing as we could put on. I was wearing a summer undershirt, a winter undershirt, a wool shirt, two sweaters, a fatigue jacket, a combat jacket and an overcoat when I went outside. I had put on summer and winter under pants, wool pants and fatigue pants. I was wearing summer socks and heavy wool winter socks. My combat jacket had a hood on it that I pulled over my knit wool cap. I had so many layers of clothing on the top of my torso that I couldn't keep my rifle slung on my shoulder and had to carry it in one hand. I had a pair of wool gloves with leather palms but they didn't really keep my hands warm when the temperature was zero degrees and the wind was blowing ten to twenty miles per hour.
I got a sinus infection during the second week near Pont-a-Mousson and had a splitting headache. I went out on a conditioning hike in the middle of a blinding snowstorm. We were holding on to the fellow in front to prevent our becoming lost. I was in such pain with my head that when we passed an intersection that I recognized I told the GI behind me to grab on to the GI in front of me and I staggered off through the blizzard back to my sleeping bag. That evening my head got so bad I went to the platoon medic and asked if there was anything he could do. He had me stretch out on a couch and stuffed a Q-tip soaked in medication up each nostril. After ten minutes he had me sit up and removed the Q-tips. It seemed that a cup of fluid drained out of my nose and the pain disappeared. I have never before or since felt such instant relief. I wore a wool facemask when I went out side and I didn't have any more problems that winter. We were also issued shoepacks at the end of January. These were rubber shoes with leather above the ankles. There was a thick felt inner sole that could be replaced if it got wet and the shoes were sized so that a heavy knitted wool sock and a standard issue wool sock could be worn at the same time. This footwear solved the problem of frozen feet and the company was soon able to move about at a normal pace. The galoshes, which had been very awkward to walk in, were turned in to the supply sergeant. Special arctic mittens were also issued at this time. They were made of a heavy poplin with cuffs that went up to our elbows and had leather palms and a trigger finger on the top of mitten that allowed us to fire a weapon and then pull our finger back into the mitt with the rest of our fingers. Inside the mitt was a heavy wool mitten and inside that was a wool glove. If this equipment had been issued in a timely fashion it would have saved all a lot of pain that and subsequent winters.
During the third week of the year we heard a load explosion and later were informed that a squad of engineers had been killed while clearing out mines and booby traps near Pont-a-Mousson. During the last two weeks of the month Combat Command A was assigned to the 94th Infantry Division to assist in taking a portion of the German West Wall south of Trier. CCA was gone from the 19th to the 28th of January and suffered heavy casualties in their first engagement. Our squad drove through CCA area immediately after their return and for the first time I saw the complete exhaustion I was later to witness on both our company's personnel and on the Germans we were to capture. It was a truly depressing sight. Shortly after the return of CCA to the division we were assigned to the Ninth Army and began our move to Holland. During the divisions stay near Pont-a-Mousson metal grousers were attached to the tank tracks. The grousers extended to the outside of the every second or third tread about four inches and had points next to the tread that projected below the bottom of the tracks about a half-inch. These points were hardened and dug into the ice on the roads enough to give the tanks vastly improved traction. On the trip north only a few tanks and self propelled howitzers ended in the roadside ditches.
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