War Stories III (35 page)

Company H, 120th Infantry,
30th Infantry Division
St. Lô, France
10 August 1944

Operation Cobra started out with our air force bombing the German positions in front of us. Unfortunately, they also bombed us—
twice.

The bombers came right over top of us and I looked up and saw the bombs dropping and yelled, “Mother!”—I don't know why—and ran to the other side of the hedgerow and jumped into an old German trench that was already full of GIs. When the bombs hit, the ground and the trees flew up in the air and anyone who didn't get to the other side of the hedgerow was killed or wounded. We lost almost half our company.

The next day we were all ready to go again, and the bombers dropped bombs on us again. But this time they also got a lot of the Germans.

As we were attacking past St. Lô, a German shell hit in front of me as I was running with my rifle up in front of me. Shrapnel hit my rifle and broke the stock and rifle into two pieces. The fragment also got me but if I hadn't been holding my rifle up the fragment would have hit me full in the chest. But it hit the rifle first, so it was a minor wound. I didn't bother to report it.

On our way to Mortain, we were ambushed by a group of Germans from a cemetery beside the road outside this little town. The Germans were firing at us from behind the tombstones. I got mad—I got up—and ran towards the tombstones firing my rifle and the Germans ran.

As we headed into the village there was a German tank sitting in the middle of a “Y” intersection, with its barrel pointed at us when we came around a bend in the road. We couldn't get away because the houses are up close to the road on both sides. And so, instead of running back, we ran forward and got so close to the tank that it couldn't depress its barrel
low enough to hit us. It turned out that the gunner in the tank was already dead—but we didn't know that at the time.

When we got to Mortain, I was ordered to set up my machine guns along a road that ran along the base of Hill 314. We moved into some shallow foxholes that had been dug by the 1st Division and waited. None of us were told that the Germans were expected to counter-attack—though I learned afterwards that we had intercepted their communications to that effect.

Early in the morning of August 7, well before first light, my machine gun position by the road started taking rifle fire, so they started firing back. I ran down to the gun and told them to wait until the Germans got closer so that we didn't give away our position.

There were about 700 of us on the hill—from E Company, two platoons from G Company, my machine guns from H Company, and K Company from the 118th Regiment. But that wasn't much to stand and fight against an entire Panzer Division.

After the first probe we could hear the German tanks moving toward us—and then our artillery started firing. But in between each salvo we could still hear their tanks coming up the road.

The artillery fire forced them to move in small groups of a couple of tanks supported by infantry. There was a lot of rifle fire from down below us in the town of Mortain and then we started taking heavy mortar fire. A round hit in the trees to my right and then another one to my left and I dove into a trench and the next round hit right next to my machine gun.

The concussion shoved me from one end of the trench to the other and broke the legs on the machine gun tripod. The ammunition in the ammo can was pushed halfway through the steel can and the ammo belt that was on the gun was wrapped around a branch above us. My section leader, gunner, ammo-man, and runner were all dead.

During the battle we found some water from a well, but no food. There was an attempt to drop food, medicine, ammo, and radio batteries by parachute, but it didn't work. The wind took them away from our lines
and most of it ended up with the Germans. Since we had no aid station, we had to tend to our own wounded. When our radio batteries died, only the artillery forward observer on top of the hill had communications. After six days, the Germans must have realized that they couldn't take the hill and they began to retreat.

B Battery, 230th Field Artillery Battalion
120th Infantry Regiment, 30th Infantry Division
Mortain, France
22 July 1944

 

I was a forward observer, the official title was reconnaissance officer, and my job was to go wherever I was assigned—which could be with an infantry or armor unit. Sometimes we would set up an OP—an observation post—in a church steeple or on top of a building where we could observe the enemy. If I saw a target I'd tell my radio operator and he'd call the battalion with the target and its coordinates. I'd also tell the type of target it was—like infantry, tanks, assault weapons, and so on.

The area around Mortain was hilly country. The village was tiny—a little over 1,600 people—with a town hall dating back to the seventeenth century.

On the afternoon of 6 August 1944, I was told to get a forward observer party together. The four of us in my party set out in a jeep and met a liaison officer, Lieutenant Lee, in Mortain. I remember he had a big map and we looked at it. And there was the obvious place to be—Hill 314.
The number 314 on the map meant that that hill's elevation was 314 meters. The hill was significant because it had a commanding view to the east and south and, to the west, was the village of Mortain.

We were told that the enemy was retreating—and they had been. I expected we would just sit up there and if we saw any movement, we'd just call in fire.

Sunday August 6 was our first day on the hill. E Company arrived and got into position. Our communicators came up to check out the telephone lines. The infantry brought a hot meal in—in containers that they carried in jeeps. Late in the afternoon we had seen dust being kicked up in the distance and I called in fire on some German patrols.

But after dark, activity really picked up. We could hear the sound of German tank engines and the clanking of their treads on roads below us. And it didn't sound like they were retreating—like we'd been told. Shortly after midnight, all hell broke loose.

We weren't equipped to dig in and hold out. The terrain was rocky, and impossible to dig down more than eighteen inches or two feet. In addition, the infantry on the hill weren't equipped to do battle against armor.

They had a few mortars, almost no bazookas, virtually no medical supplies, no mines, and no anti-tank guns—just rifles and machine guns and a limited amount of ammunition. But we did have artillery, with the CP five miles away—and we had maps. They were Michelin
road maps
—but that was better than nothing.

Directing artillery requires a lot of precision—just as with rifles and pistols or even bows and arrows. There are people who are good shots and people who aren't. I just was one of the fortunate ones who could estimate distances accurately and as it turned out, I was one of the better shooters.

The Germans were to our east and north, and E Company took the brunt of the onslaught in the initial assault, but eventually all the infantry was heavily engaged. The Germans were from the 2nd SS Panzer Division, one of Hitler's favored and most seasoned units.

Early on the seventh, a German artillery officer in a jeep-like vehicle drove up to the base of the hill, reconnoitering a gun position and not
really realizing what was going on. He was captured, along with his men. After that, every time a German unit approached the hill, they were blasted with my artillery.

H Company was on the south slope of the hill, right in the path of the German onslaught. They were totally overrun and most were either killed, wounded, or captured. And a few straggled up that slope to the E Company position and were absorbed by E Company—but there were only a few of them. We didn't really quite comprehend the immensity of the attacks until midday on the seventh. By then we realized we were surrounded, because now we were being fired upon from all directions.

Every night the Germans would try to get close in so that we wouldn't fire artillery for fear of hitting our own soldiers. And every time they tried this, they were pushed back. The infantrymen were holding on by sheer determination. It was essentially rifles against tanks as far as the infantry was concerned, plus of course, the artillery, which we were able to control and direct.

We were determined to hold on until we were triumphant or destroyed. Only that determination—to not yield ground—stopped the assault—for a while.

We never heard that reinforcements were on the way until the very end, and I think that's probably because no reinforcements were available. Our company still had working radio batteries, so all the guns of the battalion were at my beck and call. Plus we could call for fire from the other artillery battalions with 105s, 155 howitzers, Corps artillery, the Long Toms—a total of thirty-six guns. At one point, we were shooting over 2,000 rounds a day. That's a lot of artillery.

The Germans countered with a mobile anti-aircraft weapon—their 88 mm guns—with a diameter of about three and a half inches. This weapon was useful not only for shooting at aircraft, but could also be used against targets on the ground. They used the 88s as mobile, self-propelled guns and mounted them in tanks—clearly outgunning our Shermans.

On the second night of the fight, a German tank got almost into our position, very close to where we were, and fired a round over our heads
that lit up the landscape. Then he called on us to surrender. The next day, the Germans sent an officer with a white flag to our lines and demanded that we surrender. Lt. Curly told him to go to hell.

We started out with about 700 men, and by the time the battle was over, 40 percent were dead, wounded, or missing. The Division G2, from five miles away at the CP, made the assessment on the fourth day of the battle that the Germans were essentially defeated. Well, he was correct in that assumption—as far as the overall picture was concerned—but what that G2 officer couldn't see was that they were still trying, fighting fiercely, to knock us off Hill 314.

Water and food ran out and an infantryman came by and gave me a slice of a rutabaga—which I'll never eat again. I had a single high-calorie chocolate bar, meant as one meal for a soldier. Five of us divided it, and that was our food for a day. And when that ran out, that was it.

The battle was over on 12 August, about noon as the Germans began withdrawing. The 320th Infantry Regiment of the 35th Division reached us later that day, and we were finally relieved. They had fought their way up, and got to us just as the battle was over. So we found our jeep, started it up, got in it, and drove back our battalion HQ.