Charles Haug
112th Regiment, 28th Infantry Division

Preface 

This Is a Story of the Months I Spent In Combat With The 112th Regiment Of The 28th Infantry Division In Europe During World War II. 

Our Division Was On Line Near Bastogne In December 1944 When Field Marshal Von Rundstedt?s Panzer Division Made It?s Gigantic Attack Which Developed Into ?The Battle Of The Bulge?.

We Fought And Retreated For 10 Days Before Any Help Arrived.  Military Records State That We Made A Heroic Retreat, But Those Of Us Who Were Lucky Enough To Make It Back Know Better.

We Were Smashed, Beaten, And Defeated.

:: WRITTEN 1949 ::

DEDICATED TO MY GOOD FRIEND & COMBAT BUDDY FRANK JORDANO

My story begins on September 12, 1944. This was the day that our boat

left the port at Boston for Duty overseas. I had been in the Army about a year and a half, and was fully used to all of the regular Army routine, but this was something new for all of us. There were about 4,000 G.I.?s on the boat and we were all being sent over as replacements In the Infantry. We knew that as soon as we arrived overseas we would be split into hundreds of different groups and each group would be assigned to a different combat outfit, as the need arose.

Just before we were loaded on the boat, we were each given a complete new outfit, including everything from new shoes, to a new rifle. This was to be ours, and we were to take care of it as best we could. As we carried our big packs and bags on the boat we soon realized that this was more clothes that we could ever carry in combat, and we later found out that all the clothes we kept for ourselves were the clothes on our backs. The rest were thrown in a pile at some depot overseas and were reissued to G.I.?s whose clothes had been so badly worn they had to be replaced.

All during the first day on the boat everyone seemed to be on deck

and in a very excited mood. For most of us it was our first real ride on the ocean and everything seemed so new. There was a big silence that grew over the ship though, as the U.S. coastlil2e seemed to sink out of sight into the ocean. We knew that it would be a long time before we would see it again, and for a good many boys on our boat it was the last time they ever saw it.

By the end of the second day we had all explored every part of the ship and everyone felt like veteran sailors. Most of the time was spent at shooting craps or playing cards for the remainder of the trip. We were fed two meals a day, but by the third day out, quite a few were sea sick and nothing tasted good.

On the eighth day land was finally sighted, and that afternoon we docked at Liverpool, England and unloaded the ship. The first thing that caught our eye about England was the old ?BOBBY? standing on the far end of the dock with his tall hat, long cape, and big club. We were loaded directly into railroad passenger cars which took us to southern England. This trip took about a day. We unloaded near a small town on the coast.

We walked into a large field surrounded by hedges which was our home for. the next two weeks. It started to rain as we put up our tents and everyone became soaked to the skin. It rained nearly every day we were in this field, but we would train between showers and try to wipe the rust from our rifles during the evenings. Every night we could hear the constant roar of planes overhead. Most of these were our B-17 Bombers leaving and returning from missions.

On October 1st the order finally came for our group to leave for France. We were ordered to change all of our English money Into French Francs, and final inspection had to be made to make sure that each of us had a gun. We were loaded Into a small ship from India. All of its crew were colored and no one could eat the food they tried to feed us. It took about a day to cross the channel, and as we neared the French Coast we got to see our first real view of destruction from War. Our ship stopped in front of the Omaha Beachhead, and we were loaded into landing? barges which took us to the shore. As we looked up the coastline In either direction all we could see was wrecked ships and landing barges. They had been scattered along a five or ten mile stretch and had been dragged together so as to form a break from the ocean. This made It possible for us to unload the barges without having the waves tip everything over. It started raining early in the afternoon of the day we were landing, and we looked more like a bunch of -drowned rats than American soldiers. As soon as we were all on the beach we started up the high cliff directly in front of us. By this time the rain seemed to be coming down in tubs full, and the mud on the trail we were climbing was over a foot deep. All we could do was pull our feet out of the mud and slide around till we got to the top. On our way we passed our first German Pillbox. There were several of these on the Omaha Beach, but they had been completely destroyed on D?Day. When we finally reached the top of the cliff we found ourselves directly in front of the huge American Cemetery which contained all the G.I.?s that had been killed on D?Day only a few months before. As far as we could see there were little white crosses with a big American Flag at the far end. As we looked at these thousands of crosses we realized for the first time just how many men can be killed in a single battle.

 

Our first days in France were spent mostly in walking and sleeping in small fields along the way. It was still raining steady, but by now we were used to being wet and we knew that the worst was yet to come. We finally were loaded into a bunch of trucks and taken to Le Mans, France. This was a replacement depot where we were to be held until we were needed further in the front. On our trip to Le Mans we passed through hundreds of small towns in Normandy. Everyone of these towns were completely destroyed. As we passed through St. Loo all that could be seen standing was a few battered walls. We saw very few civilians about and they looked in very bad shape. They said they knew we were supposed to be their allies, but the American Bombers had smashed every one of their homes and they couldn?t understand why we had to hurt the French people so, in order to push back the Germans. But even alter all this these people were still able to smile and they waved at us as we drove past.

 

We stayed at Le Mans until about the 15th of October, then we received orders to be moved closer to the Front. By now the front ran from the east edge of Belgium, down along the eastern border of France, to about a hundred miles west of the Rhine River near Switzerland. We were assigned to the First Army and we moved by rail directly to Belgium. This was our first experience in the famous 40 & 8 Boxcars. The French Boxcars are very small and 40 G.I.?s had to squeeze into each of them. When you ride for 5 days and 5 nights straight in them you are mighty glad to get out and walk awhile. We arrived in a large town in Belgium and were housed in an old factory. It was in this town that we experienced our first real air raid. As the siren sounded we all rushed out into the street to see if we could see th~ planes coming. It didn?t take long, and we could hear the roar of the motors overhead, as well as our own fighter planes which were taking off from a field on the outskirts of the town. Soon we heard a bunch of loud whistles overhead and we suddenly real?ized that we were hearing bombs falling. As we dashed to the factory doors the whole town seemed to bust open and shake. None of the bombs made a direct hit on the building we were in, but the plaster fell from the ceiling on us and the rooms became so full of dust and powder from plaster that we couldn?t see across the room. Soon we heard the sound of many machine guns overhead and as we watched we could see our fighter planes attacking the German Bombers. We saw two planes burst into flames and crash, but of course, we couldn?t tell if they were ours or the German planes.

We stayed in this town about three days and waited for orders to be called forward. There wasn?t much to do In the town except to attend the daily services held by the Army Chaplains. While I was attending one of these services I ran into a guy by the name of Gustafson who I had gone to school with in Minneapolis.

We had sat next to each other for 9 months in a Business Law Course at the Minnesota School of Business and after the service we had a long talk about old times. On the third day in the town we were told that we were being moved Into a forward replacement depot. This meant that we would be moved up to about three miles behind the front lines. This made us all quite nervous because now we knew that we would soon be in it. We were each issued an apple, a stick of chewing gum, 2 boxes of ?K? Rations, and 8 clips of ammunition. They had a small swing band playing for us as we loaded into the trucks. The song they were playing was ?Deep in the Heart of Texas? and that was the last music we heard until the war. was over.

We arrived at the forward replacement depot about 5 o?clock on the following day. The first thing we heard as we started to unload from the trucks was a series of loud, thundering, crashes at the edge of town. This scared us all and we thought the Jerries had us for sure this time. The G.I.?s stationed in the town soon started to laugh at us and they told us that this was our own artillery guns set up at the edge of town, and that they were firing long range shells into enemy territory. We soon became used to the noise and found out that our guns sounded pretty good. In this town we were split into many small groups and housed in the buildings which were still standing after the town had been taken. During the first night in this town a heavy snow fell. This was the first snow storm of the year and the temperature fell to a very uncomfortable degree. Also during our first night we had our first experience with the famous ?Buzz Bomb? or German V?Bomb. I would estimate that about 25 of these bombs went over us on this first night. They sounded very much like an outboard motor on a lake and as you looked into the still night you could usually spot a red flame moving rapidly through the air. As long as you could hear the motor you knew that there was no danger of the bomb landing. But once you heard a motor stop all you had to do was wait about a minute and the whole sky would light up as it struck the ground and exploded. Seconds later you could hear a thundering roar echoing through. the valleys and woods. If they landed within a few miles from you, you could feel a jolt from the ground you were standing on. Only one of these bombs landed close to our town and the next day, we went over and looked at the large hole it had dug in the ground. During our first night in this town, I happened to be one of the guys called to go on guard at the edge of town. I was sent out into a thick clump of trees about five hundred yards in front of the town, and was told to report anything which I thought was out of the ordinary. Everything seemed out of the ordinary to me. I was to be on guard from midnight to four in the morning. In the still night, I could clearly hear the constant chatter of the machine guns about three miles away at front. I could also see the sky light up every so often whenever the Germans would send flares over our positions. It seemed that they would send a flare up about every 20 minutes to see if they could catch anyone moving around from their holes, or anything that they might take a shot at. I later found that no matter where we were at the front, we could always expect to have a big flare blossom out over our heads at least every half hour each night. I got through with the 4 hours guard without much happening except for an occasional German shell which would land close to the town. It was right then and there that I learned how to distinguish the difference from the sound of our shells and the Jerries. It was a good lesson, and I never forgot it for the rest of the time we were around the front. Whenever one of their shells were headed your way, you would hear a loud shrill whistle, which would turn into a loud scream. Then there would be a clash of iron and you could heat the pieces of shrapnel sing over your head. You wanted to stay close to the ground until these pieces had all landed, because they didn?t care who they hit.

All during our second day in this forward replacement depot there was a steady stream of ambulances rushing to the rear hospital tents. Each was loaded as full as possible with wounded G.I.?s. We all had a rather hollow feeling in our stomachs as we watched these truck loads of mashed flesh pass to the rear. We knew that this meant that things weren?t going too good right ahead of us and that we would be soon be called up to replace these men. We didn?t know it at this time that the battle of the Hurtgen Forest was being fought just a few miles ahead of us. This battle proved to be one of the bloodiest battles we were to be near. By the end of the third day, we estimated that at least a full division of men had been wounded and hauled back through our little town. We didn?t know it, but we had guessed right. These were the men of the 28th Infantry Division. They had just suffered a complete defeat in the Hurtgen Forest and out of every 1000 men that had gone into the attack in the Forest just a few days before, there were now only about 200 men left.

By evening of the third day we were immediately ordered to the front. This happened to be November 11th, Armistice Day. It seemed rather strange that we were moving up on the same day that World War I had ended. We were to become a part of the 28th Infantry Division. We all were feeling mighty green, and as we left the town, we were each handed an extra 8 clips of ammunition. There was no gum or candy given out this time and we knew that this was going to be it. We walked nearly all night through the slushy snow and wound around through trails and muddy roads. We had to reach the outfit we were to be assigned to before dawn, so that our movement couldn?t be observed. There was no small arms fire to be heard this night because the Germans had set up their lines in the Forest and the few men that were left in the 28th Division had pulled back into a draw to reorganize. When we reached them, we could have nothing but pity for them. They had been in the attack for eight constant days and as I said before, there was only a handful of them left. Their clothes were all caked with mud, their faces were all dirt and grease. None of them would say a word to us. They just sat and stared. Occasionally, one would drop his head between his knees and would sob like a baby. They had had enough. They didn?t want us to replace their buddies whom they had just seen fall, because this meant that they would have to go up into it again. All this did not matter to the high officers of the Army though. They immediately made each of these poor men a sergeant, and they put them in charge of us green replacements. We immediately started to ask them hundreds of questions about combat, but they still said nothing. They said we were better off if we didn?t know. We were all privates and had been taught to respect rank. These boys had been privates only 8 days before like ourselves, but now they were considered experienced combat men. We were told to do as they said ?? they said nothing ?? they just didn?t ever want to go up there again, and finally a couple of them told us that if we were ordered to attack into these same woods again, they were going to shoot themselves. This gave us a lot of confidence and we were sure that we could lick any Germans anywhere ?? like so much #?&%$.

Well, we stayed in this draw a little over a day and we organized ourselves into squads, platoons, companies, and battalions. A bunch of trucks .hauled us up a big supply of machine guns, hand grenades, rifle grenades, mortars, bazookas, and a few blankets. By now the snow was about a foot deep and it was turning quite a bit colder. We each dug our self a hole in the draw and waited for our orders. I was assigned to Co. B, of the 112th Infantry Regiment, of the 28th Division. My job in the company was to be a platoon runner or messenger between my Lieutenant of the second platoon and the Company Commander. I was to travel alone at all times and I had to be fast because I later found out that whenever we were in contact with the enemy, they would shoot at anything they saw move. When I heard what my job was to be, that hollow feeling seemed to be bigger than ever in my stomach. It seemed to me that I would be a constant target. I later found out that I wasn?t too far wrong.

Our orders came to move about 5 o?clock in the evening. We were told that we were going to be taken by truck about 20 miles farther north in the line and then we were going to relieve a Division which had been on line about a month. This made us feel a little relieved at first because now we knew that we wouldn?t have to meet the same Krauts in the Forest that had just whipped our Division.

We loaded into the trucks about 6 P.M., and we headed into Luxembourg. We traveled all the way through this little country and when we got to about 5 miles from Germany the trucks stopped. We were unloaded and told that we would have to walk about 10 miles to the front, because they didn?t dare to bring the trucks any closer. By this time the front was about 5 miles inside of the German Boundary line. It was very hilly country in front of us and our troops had just reached the jagged cement teeth of the famous Siegfried Line. It was dark and cold as we started the long climb up the small mountains and hills. We had to reach our destination before dawn, ~because we didn?t want to be observed while we were relieving the other Division. About 3 o?clock the next morning, we reached the last high hill which we had to climb. We were told that the Division we were relieving was dug in on the forward slope on the far side of this hill. The road up the hill was about 2 miles long and very steep. We could see the German Red Flares burst over the men on the far side of the hill continuously. These flares were shot up into the air from a special German Gun and you could hear a soft thump in the distance as it was shot. About 30 seconds later, the whole sky would light up over you, and stay lit for about a minute. Each flare was equipped with a small cloth parachute and it would slowly drift to the ground. As we got to the top of the hill we were suddenly caught moving when one of these flares burst over us. It didn?t take long and we had our first taste of the German artillery

and mortar shells. We must have made a very pretty picture to them as the flares burst over us. We had been taught to freeze still whenever a flare burst, but instead, we ran like crazy trying to get into a hole or something. The shells really started coming in, and the white snow just seemed to turn black as the dirt from the hillside scattered around when each shell exploded. This shelling continued for the rest of the night and we immediately moved into the positions of the retiring Division. They moved back over the hill to a rest camp. Very few of our men were hurt during this shelling and we all felt quite lucky.

As daybreak came, the shelling stopped and now we were to have our first view of what was supposed to be the front. We looked down the side of the hill we were on, and all we could see was Lutzkampen, Germany, about a half mile in front of us at the base of the hill. In back of the town was another hill which had a gradual slope leading back another half mile. Also running on the far side of Lutzkampen we could see the cement dragon teeth of the Siegfried Line. We could count about ten rows of these teeth, each about four feet high and spaced about three feet apart. They had been placed there many years before the war, and their purpose was to keep tanks and vehicles from breaking through. They ran continuously for as far as we could see in either direction. Directly behind these teeth could be seen a mass of tangled up barb wire. We had been told that scattered throughout this barb wire were thousands and thousands of anti?personnel land mines. These are the type that when you step on them, they explode with enough force to blow both of your legs off. We couldn?t see any Germans anywhere. The Division we relieved said there were no Germans in Lutzkampen, and they said we should keep two outposts of about three men each on the far side of Lutzkampen, in order to pick up any movement made by the Germans. Also, there was not a single civilian in the town, so we wouldn?t be bothered by them. At first, as we studied the hillside on the far side of Lutzkampen, we couldn?t see anything that looked like it was supposed to be a trench, or a fox hole, or a pill? box. But as we kept studying, we began to notice little places on the hillside that caught our eye. We soon figured out that these were the pillboxes of the Siegfried Line. They were all dug underground and each one held about 20 Germans. The only openings on the front side of the pillboxes were the little slits just big enough to stick a machine gun through. They were made of concrete, reinforced with iron rods and nothing could damage them except a big charge of dynamite placed directly on top of the pillbox. We were in no mood to run over and start tearing these things apart, so we just stayed steadfast in our holes. We knew everyone was full of men, because everytime they would spot any of us out of our holes, they would turn their machine guns loose and play a little song for us.

As we began making notations of every pillbox that we spotted, we soon found that we had about 120 of them located directly in front of us. Then we realized that there were Germans out there even if we couldn?t see them. By evening of the first day, we were all organized and we all felt pretty much at home. The front didn?t seem bad at all. None of us had fired a shot yet, and outside of an occasional bunch of Mortar shells and Artillery shells landing around there was very little activity. I had my dugout in a little wooded draw near the Company C. P. There were three of us in the dugout, Frankie Jordano, Quimby, and myself. We were each a runner for our own platoon. As soon as it became dark, we went out and dragged a bunch of old logs over our dugout. We then covered these with evergreen boughs and some grain shocks which had been left standing in a field nearby. We found an old five gallon gas can and made ourselves a little stove inside of the thing. We burned little pieces of bark in the can and it gave us enough heat to warm ourselves up every so often. Most all of the rest of the men in our Company had the same idea. They all covered their dugouts with straw and tried to find some way to keep warm.

One thing that we soon learned was that one of us had to be awake and on guard outside of our dugout at all times, so we went on for two hours and then we could sleep for 4 hours. Just as I had finished my two hours guard on the first night, the First Sergeant, Ralph Mc Geoch, told me I was to help one of his men lay a telephone wire down to one of our outposts in the town. I thought that was a hell of a note. There were two hundred men in our company and here he had to pick on me.????just as I was ready for my sleep: too. Well, we started out by leaving one end of the wire at the C.P. and then we headed towards the town with the spool of wire. Our old wire had been cut in two about a half hour before when a mortar shell burst near it. The spool we had had never been oiled and as it unwound itself on the shaft it squeaked like an old lumber wagon. It didn?t do us much good to try and walk quietly, because anybody within a half mile could hear us coming anyway. We finally got to the town and to the house that our 3 men were supposed to be stationed in. They heard us coming and halted us as we reached their door. Just as luck would have it, we had both forgotten the pass?word for the night. But they didn?t shoot us because they figured that only an American could be so dumb as to come walking with a squeaking roll of wire like we had just done. This was about 10 o?clock at night and the three men called back to the C. P. to let them know that they were in contact with them again. The two of us started back to the place where we had started from. We didn?t like the idea of following this wire back again, so we decided to take a shortcut. This was our first big mistake. It wasn?t long until we didn?t know which direction we were going. Every tree looked just alike. There was no moon, but the flares kept bursting every so often and we kept freezing in our tracks each time. We wandered around like a couple of lost sheep. Each time we saw some landmarks that we thought looked like the place where our C.P. was located, we would find that there was nothing there. Finally about 4 o?clock in the morning we spotted the clump of trees from which we had started. We had spent 6 hours in just trying to get from the town back up the hill to our dugout. Well, anyway, this taught us another lesson. From then on whenever we laid wire in a strange place, we always followed the wire back again, so we could end up where we started.

There was very little activity for the whole first week that we were on line. We had still seen no Germans, but they always let us know they were there whenever possible. Our kitchen crew had moved up to a draw just behind our hill. We were fed two meals a day. One time about 4 o?clock in the morning and one about 9 o?clock at night. We had to eat during the darkness because we couldn?t take the chance of getting out of our holes and moving any during the daylight.

About our eighth night on line, we had our first real excitement. Two guys who were in a dugout next to ours were trying to keep warm in their little hut covered with logs and straw. They were burning bark in a can as we all had been doing, but they must have fallen asleep. It seemed that the can must have tipped over and the straw caught on fire. There was a pretty good wind out and it was only a matter of seconds before there was a big lire with flames shooting up about 20 feet. We saw the two guys come crawling out and roll in the snow to put out the fire in their clothes. But, that wasn?t the worst of it. We had created a wonderful target for the Germans. We all rushed and tried to put the fire out. In our excitement, we completely forgot about the Krauts sitting just a few hundred yards In front of us. They didn?t for?get about us though. They let us have it with everything they had??Mortars??Artillery shells??Machine Guns??and even their riflemen started trying to pick us off. We jumped back into our holes and let the thing burn up. The two men had to go to the rear and get a new pair of pants each. Their rifles had burned up in the hole too, so they had to get a fresh start.

The next day, we all decided it was too cold to try and stay in these dugouts any longer. Our Captain sent two patrols into Lutzkampen to pick out some houses for us to move into. That night, we moved up to Lutzkampen and crawled into the basements of the houses on the outskirts of the town. Our Company was the only Company right in that vicinity. ?C? Company was dug in about three quarters of a mile to our right and another outfit was dug in about a half mile to our left. This meant that we had around 200 men around Lutzkampen.

The next day was December 2nd, my birthday. I remember I made Frankie Jordano carry all the messages for me to my platoon on that day, because I was 22 years old, and I wanted to live through that day in peace. On this same day, a Company order came through, which made every Pvt. in the Company a Pfc. Everyone, that is, but one. Me! Yes, out of the 200 men In the Com?pany, I was the only Pvt. By this time, Frankie Jordano and I had become very good friends. We had lived together in the same hole for over a week and we got along fine. He thought it was awful that I didn?t get promoted, so he went to the First Sergeant. Frankie told the old man that if I didn?t get Pfc., then he didn?t want his either. This was the first that the First Sergeant knew that my name wasn?t on the list, so he came to our basement and apologized to me. The next day, a special order came through, and I too, was now a Pfc.

By our sixth day in Lutzkampen, we had still had no direct contact with the enemy. They were still sitting tight in their pillboxes and we hadn?t tried to go after them. On the seventh day, we got to shoot our rifles for the first time. By this time, we had set up outposts all over the town. We really weren?t expecting to ever see any Germans and some of us got rather careless in the way we wandered about the town during the daylight. A very good friend of mine, Bud Kunz, was one of these guys. On this seventh day, he was walking around from house to house trying to see if he couldn?t find some souvenir to take with him. He was walking all by himself close to the edge of~ town when all of a sudden he ran into something he didn?t expect. He ran smack into three Krauts coming walking directly into our little town.

It was about 12 o?clock noon and they were not trying to conceal their approach in any way. It was the first Krauts that Bud had seen and he became terrified. He made no effort to shoot, but instead turned on his heel and ran as fast as he could for the basement where we had our dugout. He made an easy target for them. All three opened up with their ?Burp Guns?, a gun similar to our ?Tommy Gun?, and Bud dropped to the street right before our eyes. They had hit him about ten times in the neck and back, and a big pool of blood soon gathered around his body. He must have been dead before he hit the ground. The three Germans kept coming up the street, but by now we had about 20 rifles pointed in their direction. Everyone seemed to start shooting at once and two of them dropped to the street. The third ducked in between some buildings and must have found his way back to his lines because we never saw him again. We had killed one of the men that dropped and the other guy was hit in the ankle, and his leg was broken. Two of our guys dragged him into a house and tried to find out what in the hell they were doing in town, but he wouldn?t answer. Later, he was loaded into a jeep and taken to the rear for questioning.

Bud Kunz was still laying on the muddy street where he had fallen. Our First Sergeant told Frankie and I to go out and pick him up on the stretcher. Bud was the first G.I. that we had seen killed, and I?ll always remember the expression on his face. His .head was laying in the mud, and there was a big pool of bloody water all around his body. His mouth and eyes were wide open and his face had the pale color of a wax dummy. As we were carrying him to a dugout, I tripped and fell and his body fell on top of me. My pants became-covered with his blood and it was two months before I was able to get a different pair of pants.

It was about this time that we began to have a lot of trouble with ?Trenchfoot? in our Company. Our feet had been wet so much, and we had not had our shoes off for so long that our feet began to swell up and ache. They would turn almost blue in color and when we finally started taking our shoes off to look at them, we found that our feet immediately got so big that we weren?t able to get the shoes on again. We were not sick enough to go to the rear, so there was only one solution. They gave us each a pair of overshoes about two sizes too big for us. We each got a pair of dry wool socks and we put our Combat boots up on a shelf someplace for a couple of weeks. I think we all felt like a bunch of ducks with our big feet, but the overshoes were the only things we could get to fit on our feet. Whenever you would try to get some sleep, you would always wake up by feeling some sharp pains running up your legs. However, in about two weeks the swelling went down and we were able to wear our shoes again.

 

During these two weeks, there was very little activity around the front outside of the routine patrols, which our Company Commander, Captain Deck, would order each night. He would send out about 5 men each night to go up as close to the enemy lines as possible to try and see if they could see or hear any movements anyplace. I don?t think any of the patrols ever found anything worth reporting, but the Captain always managed to scare 5 guys each night by making them go up there. Once in a while these patrols would get caught when a flare would burst over them and you could always hear a terrific amount of small arms fire whenever this would happen. We lost very few men on these patrols though, and they are one thing that just has to be in the Army.

By now, it was the 15th of December, and the three of us in our basement dugout started to think about Christmas. It was only 10 days off, so we decided to do something about it. The way everything looked, we would be sitting in this town for the rest of winter, so we thought we would make the best of it. We cut ourselves a little evergreen tree from the edge of town and set it up in the basement. We went through the rooms in a couple of the houses in the town and we soon came across a whole box of Xmas tree decorations. We loaded this little tree with everything possible, and we weren?t going to let anything spoil this Xmas.

The evening of December 15th came just as all the other evenings had come. Our usual patrol went out front of our lines and reported back that they had heard or seen nothing unusual. The three of us in our basement dugout had a hole dug at the edge of town where we took turns standing guard. Just as all the other guys in the town has been doing. We would go on guard for two hours and then come back and try to sleep in our dugout for the next four hours. We still had our two outposts in front of our lines, but now they were located about two hundred yards in front of our town. They would call back to the 1st Sergeant at the C.P. every hour on the hour and report that everything was o.k. I remember my hours for guard on this night was from 10 P.M. to 12 midnight and from 4 A.M. to 6 A.M. I relieved Frankie at the hole at 10 P.M. as usual and settled down for a two hours watch. Nothing out of the ordinary happened while I was out there. It was a cold clear night and

the only noises I heard during the couple hours guard were a few coughs from our own men, who were in holes farther down the line. Quimby came to relieve me at midnight just like always and I remember I told him there was one thing I didn?t see during my two hours guard that I had always seen before. There hadn?t been a single German Flare shot up over our lines during the whole two hours. We didn?t think any more of it and I went hack to the dugout and crawled in beside Frankie. At 2 A.M. Frankie went out and relieved Quimby and Quimby told Frankie that there hadn?t been a single flare shot up while he was on guard either. It didn?t take long and it was 4 A.M.?--my turn to relieve Frankie Again. He said too that no flares had been shot up during his two hours. This meant a whole night without a single flare. It was now 4 A.N. of December 16th. I was pretty sleepy and I was wishing it would soon be 6 o?clock so I could go back and sleep a little bit again. 5 o?clock finally came and now it would only be one more hour. Little did I know then that I had had my last real sleep that I was to get for the next 10 days. Ten minutes past five A.M., Dec. 16, 1944????What the hell happened!? Who turned on the light switch? What am I seeing? At first I thought I had fallen asleep, but, no!????the whole sky had just become light, just as if someone had turned on a light switch. This was no German flare because you could always see them come sailing over you. This was something much bigger than a flare. Something we had never seen before. The end of the world, maybe! It took about a minute before we finally got our mouths closed again. By now, everyone had seen it and there was,a big commotion in our little town. Believe it or not, it was daylight over us and for as far on each side of us as we could see. However, when we looked directly in front of us into the German lines, all we could see was the cold black night. We couldn?t hear a sound anyplace, and it made chills run up and down your spine. Our watches ticked on. Soon it was 5:30 and no change. We were in daylight and two hundred yards in front of us it was night. But by now we had partly solved the big mystery. We came to conclusion that the Germans had set up about 30 or 40 gigantic searchlights in a mountain about 3 or 4 miles in front of us. They had aimed the beams directly at our lines and they could see every move we were making. We immediately called back to the artillery and asked them to fire their long range shells into the mountain and try to knock out the lights. Ours let loose with everything they had, and I mean everything. In fact, they got so excited that they shot every shell that they had. Next they shot up all the reserve shells they had, and then there was silence. They called us and told us that they were completely out of ammunition and they wouldn?t be getting any more for a day or so, so it would be no need for us to call on them for the next 48 hours. That was just dandy. By accident, they had hit one of the search lights, so now there was only 39 of them left shining on us.

By now, it was 6:15 A.M., we still had heard nothing and the Germans hadn?t fired a single shell into our lines. BUT 6:16 A.M. came! And with it came the heaviest German Artillery Barrage that we were ever to be in. The shells whistled and screamed, the ground shook and bounced, and they had zeroed in beautifully. You felt like your very insides were going to jump right out of you.

This shelling kept up until 15 minutes to 7:00, and then there was silence. 7:15 A.M. Still silence. None of us said a word. Our eyes were as big as saucers, and all we could do was stare into the still darkness ahead of us. About this time, the phone in the C.P. rang. It was our farthest outpost with three guys in it. They talked fast and were scared stiff. They said that somebody had just thrown a hand grenade at them and they could hear men walking in front of their hole. About that time, we heard in the distance, about two or three German ?Burp? Guns (Tommy Guns) let loose, and we could no longer get an answer from this outpost on the phone. All three of the kids were dead. About 5 minutes later our second outpost called back on their phone and said that someone had just tossed a hand grenade, at them. A few seconds later more shots were heard, and we were minus another three men. This was our initiation to the famous ?Battle of the Bulge?. We didn?t know it yet, but we had been caught directly in the middle of the German Attack.

Now we were next in line. There were around 190 of us in the town, and we all took up our positions in our holes at the edge of the town. We had no idea what was coming, but we knew that they weren?t coming over to sing Christmas Carols to us. Frankie, Quimby, and I each had a hole close to Capt. Deck and our First Sergeant. They wanted us close by, so that we could carry messages for them to our platoon Lieutenant as soon as they could think of something to tell them.

From 7:00 to 7:30 there was complete silence in front of us. It was still dark, excepting for the light beams which were still blinding us. A few minutes past 7:30, we experienced what was perhaps the biggest hair raising scare of our entire Army Career. Out of the still darkness came the awfulest screaming and yelling you would ever want to hear. The Germans were coming! They were screaming like a bunch of wild Indians. They were less than a hund?red yards in front of us. How they ever got so close without us hearing them, we?ll never know. But there they were. They were coming running as fast as they could, directly towards our positions. There was a steady stream of lead pouring from their guns. It seemed that about half of their bullets were tracer bullets and the red streaks snapped in ever direction. We immediately opened up on them and the battle was on.

The First Sergeant called Frankie and I to his dugout immediately. He wanted us to be ready to leave with the first message he could think of. As soon as our men started firing at the Germans, they took cover in the ditch of the road they were advancing on. At some points, they were as close as fifty feet to some of our men. All shooting was close range stuff, and it was just a matter of who could shoot first.

By now, the dawn was just starting to break, and we could make out pretty well just where the Germans were. We estimated that there must have been about two hundred Krauts attacking our positions, so we figured we could give them a pretty even match. However, we had one distinct advantage. We were in holes and dugouts. They were in the open field and in the ditch. During the first half hour of the battle our men had pretty easy picking, and many Germans were killed.

Capt. Deck was getting pretty nervous in his dugout, as we all were. For some reason, he suddenly decided that he had to be up closer to the other men in order to direct their fire. He was the firs~ one of our men to leave his hole and he ran fast in a low crouch towards the 1st platoon men. He had run about fifty yards when the Germans spotted him. Just two shots and our Company Commander, Capt. Deck, fell to the ground in front of us. We had only two medics in the Company and they rushed out to the Captain as soon as they saw him fall, but they never made it. Both of them were shot down and killed before they had gone 20 yards. Our Captain was also dead when we finally reached him.

The shooting back and forth kept up continuously for over an hour. The Germans would attack in groups of about 6 or 7 men each. But we were usually able to knock them off before they could get very far. They did make some

progress though. Once we could see a bunch of them attack one of our machine gun positions. They killed our guys and we saw them run back over a hill with our machine gun. That left us with only one machine gun left in the Company.

About this time the 1st Sergeant sent both Frankie and I with messages to our platoons. My platoon was scattered along a hedge on the edge of the town, and that seemed to be the longest run I have ever made. I had to run right past the place where Capt. Deck had been killed and I figured sure that I would be spotted. But by now, there were so many of our men running around that the Krauts didn?t know who to shoot at. When I reached the platoon, it took a long time to find the Lt. He was all over the place and he was doing a very fine job of directing the fire of his men. He told me to tell the Sergeant that they would soon have the Krauts under control. So??I carried my very im?portant message back to the Sergeant, and waited for him to think up some other question for me to run and ask.

By 9 o?clock the small arms fire finally stopped. Sticking up from the ditch where the Germans were laying, could be seen a bunch of white handkerchiefs waving. By this time, we had killed about 135 of the Germans and one of our men had just picked off their Captain, so the remaining 50 or 60 men decided to call it quits. As they came out of the ditch with their hands up, we were surprised to see that they were all a bunch of kids. The oldest was perhaps about 18 and they went on down to about 14 years old. This is what we had been fighting all morning. They must have been pretty good shots though because our losses were by no means light. Out of our original 200 men, we now had less than 90 men left. As soon as we had finished searching the Krauts, they started to ask us questions. The main one seemed to be, ?Will We be sent to New York??. Two of our men took the prisoners and headed for the Battalion C.P. in the rear. They were captured by another group of Germans who had just pushed through ?C? Company on our right though, so this meant that the prisoners we had just captured were once more in the German Army.

While all of this was going on, we were busy trying to help our wounded guys into a building. There must have been about 40 of them and we could give them very little help. Both of our Medics were dead, and we had no vehicles in which to carry the wounded to the rear. I will always remember their moans of pain and their pleas that we try to find some way to help them back to an aid station. But we could do nothing for them. Germans had pushed through the outfits on both the right and the left of us, and by now they were moving rapid?ly to the rear. Nearly all of our rear reserves had been captured by noon of this day, and that left us sitting in a little piece of land about a mile wide and a couple miles deep. We had licked the first wave of the enemy that hit us, but we knew by now that the Germans had made up their minds that they were going to win the war, and that there would soon be more Germans moving in on us. We could hear frantic fighting going on all around us all morning and as the day grew on the shots came from farther and farther behind us. Our lines had crumbled.

We still had some faith left in the American Army though, and we prayed that other outfits in the rear would be able to stop the Germans and push back up to us. Early in the afternoon of this day we began to hear many vehicles and tanks approaching on the roads in front of us. As we watched through our field glasses, we could see hundreds of German tanks, trucks, and half tracks coming down the winding roads. We knew that we didn?t have a chance, but we had lost all contact with the rest of our division and we had not had any orders to withdraw, so we had to sit tight. We did, however, move out of Lutzkampen and into our old positions in the hills just behind Lutzkampen. Our wounded were all left In Lutzkampen and we never heard from them again.

About 3 o?clock In the afternoon, the second wave of Germans reached Lutzkampen. They stopped their trucks and tanks In town and hundreds of Ger?mans unloaded from the vehicles and began searching the houses. We heard many shots and I suppose they killed all of our wounded that we had just left. About 5P.M. their work was done and we knew that they would soon be coming from the town towards us. We had nothing to defend ourselves with except our rifles. Our Artillery was completely out of ammunition and our machine gunners had all been killed. About 5:15, the dreaded moment came. Six small German tanks headed out of Lutzkampen in our direction. Behind the tanks came hundreds of Germans on foot. The tanks seemed to crawl along about 2 or 3 miles an hour. We bit our lips and prayed. There were still about 90 of us on the hillside. As the first tank reached our first two guys in a hole, we witnessed the most horrible thing that any G.I. dreams of. The tank was equipped with a flame thrower. It stopped about fifty feet from the hole and as the two kids sat there helplessly, a gigantic stream of roaring fire shot in on them. Their worries were over. They had been burned to a crisp.

All of us on the hillside saw this, and we knew we were next. It terrified our guys, and many of them jumped up from their holes and ran back over the hill and into the thick woods in back of us. As the seconds ticked on, more and more of our men kept running to the rear. It was a sight that would hang heavy on any Americans heart. It was a sight of DEFEAT?-- our own men running to the rear in no organized manner. I guess the only reason Frankie, Quimby, and I didn?t get up and run, was that we were too scared to get out of our holes. Also, the First Sergeant, was near by and we were supposed to carry messages for him. Remember?

It wasn?t long before the tanks once more started moving slowly in our direction. By now they were less than 200 yards from us. We were scared and shaking. But just at this instant a miracle happened. From a hillside about a quarter of a mile to our left, we heard a series of sharp cracks from an Antitank gun. It was shooting tracer shells and we could see the streaks of fire coming from the hillside towards the tanks. The first few shells missed, but the third shell made a direct hit on the first tank and it burst into flames. The streaks of fire kept coming from the hillside and soon the second and third tanks were also in flames. About this time the German ammunition in the burning tanks started exploding. Did we ever have fireworks. Shells exploding in every direction. It was only a matter of seconds an~ the fourth and fifth tanks were also hit. Their tracks were knocked off and they weren?t able to move. The sixth tank must have got scared out. We saw it turn around and head back into Lutzkampen. The Germans coming on foot also turned around and! ran back to Lutzkampen. They made no further attempt to attack that night. I?ll always remember Lt. Peetz, my platoon officer, jumping from his hole and yelling, ?We licked ?em! We licked ?em!?

Up until the time we heard the first shots from the hillside we had no idea there was any of our anti?tank guns up there. We later found out they were with the 106th Infantry Division, and we were mighty glad to have them on our side.

Darkness soon came upon us and the tanks were still burning. About 9:00 P.M. our First Sgt. Ralph Mc Geoch decided that he wanted to know just how many of our men were still on the hillside with us. He Sent Frankie and me out into the darkness to bring back all of our men that we could find. He wanted to organize all of his men so we would be ready for the attack which we knew was coming the next morning. Frankie and I checked every hole where we knew our men were dug in. Most of them were empty. When we finally got through about midnight, we reported back to the First Sergeant. Counting ourselves, we now had only 18 men left on the hillside.

Many of the rest had gone deep into the woods behind us and we were not able to find them. Yes, we now had 1 Lt. and 17 enlisted men left in our Company. We hadn?t had any contact with the rest of our Division since early in the morning. Our Company Commander was dead and Lt. Peetz took over his command. lie said that since we had no orders to withdraw, we would have to stay on the hillside and fight to the last man.

All of us paired off in two?s and crawled into holes to take up our positions. I was in a hole with Frankie. Throughout the night, we could smell the awful smell of burned flesh. It was that of the Germans who had been caught inside of the first three tanks. They never had a chance to get out. About 3:00 o?clock in the morning Frankie and 1 noticed a black object moving back and forth In the snow about a hundred yards in front of our hole. It looked to us like the body of a man crawling up the hill on his stomach. As we strained our eyes and listened, we could imagine that he was moaning and calling to us. Both Frankie and I kept our rifles on fire and were ready to shoot. It was a long night. As the dawn started to break, we could see that our black object was only a clump of weeds that had been blowing back and forth in the wind.

Soon it was daylight, and much to our surprise the Jerries stayed in Lutzkampen and were making no effort to attact. Lt. Peetz kept repeating that he wished we could get our artillery outfit to shell the town. He figured with all those Krauts in Lutzkampen, we had a wonderful target in front of us. All of-our communication wires back to the artillery units had been cut, so we had not had any contact with them since they called and said they were out of ammunition. Suddenly our First Sgt. Ralph Mc Geoch got a wild idea. He figured that maybe by now, they had been able to get some more ammunition and Lf we could get word to them to shell Lutzkampen, we could knock out a lot of Germans. He asked for a couple of volunteers to act as a patrol to contact the artillery. None of us responded to his call. We figured things were bad enough without having to chase around by ourselves in the daylight. BUT, his finger pointed??and Ken Janne and I had been ordered to contact the artillery. Ken was from Wichita, Kansas, and lie came over on the boat with Frankie and I. This meant that there would now be only 16 men left to defend our positions around Lutzkampen. Ken and I said good?bye to Frankie, and we wished each other luck.

We knew that the Artillery was supposed to have a forward observer on a hill about a quarter of a mile to our right. We crawled from our holes and ran as fast as we could for the hill. We hadn?t gone over 200 yards when we were spotted from the town. They started firing mortar shells on the hill?side we were climbing. About fifteen of the shells landed around us but we were not hit by any of the shrapnel... It seemed like a long climb, but we finally got to the clump of trees on the hill, where we were supposed to find the forward observer. But we didn?t find our artillery men. What we found was two G. I. helmets, two Army rifles, and two cartridge belts laying in a pile on the ground. This meant only one thing. Our two artillery men had been cap?tured during the night. It also meant that the Germans had taken this ground and they probably had men around very close. Ken and I decided we?d get the hell out of there. We knew that the artillery had been dug in about a mile or so behind our lines, so we decided we?d try to ?get back to them with the message from the First Sgt. We made our way to the edge of the clump of trees and we came upon a big field. We had to get across this field in order to get to the wooded area behind our lines which led to~ our artillery positions. Just as we started across the field, we heard a roaring sound to our left. We took one look and our hearts jumped to our throats. What we saw was a huge black German tank. It?s men must have seen us coming from the woods and it was moving itself into a better firing position. We made a mad dash for the opposite side of the field, but as we ran we heard a machine gun open up from the tank. As the bullets hit the ground, we could see the snow jumping about 30 feet from us. They had missed and we were soon deep in the woods headed for the rear. We didn?t stop running until we were so tired that we couldn?t hardly breath?  Then we s1owed down to a walk, and our only thoughts were that we wished we would soon bump into some G.I.?s.

We must have wandered around in the woods until about 2 o?clock in the afternoon without seeing a soul. We came across many fresh tracks of G.L boots in the snow though, so we knew that we were headed in the right direction. About 2:30, we suddenly saw two G.I.?s standing on a hill In front of us. We rushed up to them and they said they were with the Artillery outfit. We had reached our goal. With the Artillery outfit, we also found the rest of the guys in our Company who had jumped up and ran as the tanks were coming the night before. We got in with them and started to dig ourselves a hole so we could have some pro?tection in case the Germans should start shelling our area. The Artillery men told us that they were still all out of ammunition and had no hopes of getting any more. Most of them left their big guns and grabbed their rifles. They were now to be riflemen with the Infantry. All together we now had nearly 100 men again, and we each wondered what would happen next. Ken and I knew that we should by right try to get back to our First Sgt., but we decided that we would stick with these men. We figured it would be suicide to run up to our old positions.

All was quiet on the hill where we were dug in, until about 4 o?clock in the afternoon. We must have been spotted by some German Artillery observer, because all of a sudden, a terrific artillery barrage started coming in on us. It lasted about 20 minutes and we stayed deep in our holes. As soon as it was over, we were ordered to retreat into a valley behind the hill. About this time, it started to get dark, and we were told to head West. We knew that if we went West far enough we would eventually hit the English channel. Our big joke at the time was that if we ever got there, we were going to swim right over to England.

We hadn?t walked far when we came to a small road running East and West. We didn?t know if the Germans had gone up this road yet or not, but it was easier walking so we headed West on the road. By now, it was about 8:00 P.M. There was no moon and the night seemed cold and black. We must have followed the road through the hills for about a mile, when we came to a small bridge over a river about 50 feet wide. Just as we got to the bridge, we heard someone yell ?HALT!? in front of us. The first few guys in our line saw that it was two German Guards standing by the bridge. Our guys fired three shots and the two Krauts dropped to the around without firing a shot. The rest of us ran across the bridge as fast as possible and into the hills on the other side. We knew now that the Germans had taken this road and that we would probably be meeting more of them soon. We cut across country for about a mile and by now we were all getting mighty tired. We finally stopped and we each started to dig ourselves a hole so that we could have some protection in case we were attacked again. By this time, about two-thirds of our guys had lost their shovels from their belts, so we had to take turns digging. We stayed in these holes until about 4 o?clock in the morning. We had no blankets and by this time, we were all so cold that we felt numb all over. There was about 6 inches of snow. It was now the morn?ing of Dec 18th. Most of us had lost overcoats on the first day of the attack, and the light jackets we were wearing had no lining. The Germans were now be?ginning the third day of their attack.

As we sat in our holes, we watched a patrol of about twelve Germans pass through the woods a short distance from us. We were told to hold our fire, and the Jerries didn?t spot us. As soon as they were gone, one of our officers told us to crawl out of our holes and head west once more. It would soon be light and we had to go someplace where we would have more cover. We started walking. About 6:00 A.M. we came to a small town and three of our men went into the town to see who was in it. After about 20 minutes, they came back all excited. They said that there were about a hundred men from our Division in the town and our moral was lifted 100%. Once we were in there, we found that our Battalion Commander, Col. Nelson, was in charge of these men. They had been driven from another town the day before, and they were happy to have us join them. We now had a few men from almost every Company in our 112th Regiment. Everyone told the same story. They had all been attacked on the first morning, Dec. 16th, and most of their men had been either killed or captured.

It didn?t take long and it was daylight again. Col. Nelson and his men had managed to save two of their machine guns and they set one up at each side of the town. He ordered nearly all of the men to dig in around the town and the rest of us were to stay in town and help him. Twelve of us were ordered to take care of the ammunition he had saved for the machine guns. He told us that in case we were attacked, it was our job to see to it that we carried plenty of ammunition out to the machine guns. By~8:O0 o?clock everything was still quiet and we thought our job was going to be easy. The twelve of us started to hunt around in the house where the ammunition was stored. We found a trap door that led to a basement. In the basement we found a wine cellar. Everybody had a drink.

While we were in the cellar, we heard our machine gun on the far side of the -town start firing. This meant that the Jerries must be coming again. Wouldn?t they give us any peace? Must they attack all the time?

It wasn?t long until we heard big shells coming into the town and our riflemen opened up near the machine gun that was firing. We knew now that the Germans were close. We soon found ourselves running and crawling towards the machine gun with extra belts of ammunition.

We got to the machine gun all right, but what we saw coming was not a very pleasant sight. We saw German tanks coming up a road directly in front of us and German Infantry were headed for our town on foot to our left.

Our riflemen and machine guns were firing everything they had at the infantry men coming across the field, but they kept advancing steadily. By the time the twelve of us were back in town to get our next load of ammunition, the Krauts had knocked out our machine guns. Our Col. could tell that we were out-numbered about 10 to 1 and it wasn?t long until our whole outfit was once more on the retreat. The tanks rolled into town from one side and we withdrew into the woods on the other. We lost many men.

We made our way into the woods behind the town and the Germans lost contact with us. Our Col. led us through the woods for about five miles before we stop?ped to rest. It was now about 3 o?clock in the afternoon. We all threw our?selves on the ground and no words were spoken. As we lay there we realized for the first time that we were mighty hungry. Some of our guys had not had a bite to eat for three days now. Many of the rest of us had found food in the base?ments of the houses in the town we had just been in. Some of us still had hunks of bologna stuffed in our pockets, and we had been eating on it as we had been walking. Our Col. decided that each of us should share alike. He made everyone empty all the food we were carrying in our pockets into one pile. He then split it up and each of us got a little something to chew on.

It was now drawing near to the third evening of the German breakthrough. Our Col. told us that we would have to spend the night in the woods. Each of us started to dig a shallow hole. We were in a small wooded area which was surrounded by fields on three sides. In the field were standing many grain shocks which had never been taken in from the last harvest season. Each of us got ourselves one of these grain shocks and dragged it into the woods. We lined the bottom of our holes with the straw and as we crawled into the hole we pulled the remainder of the straw over us to serve as a blanket. We knew that we were going to have another cold night ahead of us.

Just as we were settled for the night, we saw about 5 G.I.?s coming on foot across the open field. As they got nearer, I suddenly recogni2edFrankie as one of them and I ran out to meet them. When I got to them I found that they were 5 guys from my old Company. Besides Frankie, there was Quimby, our First Sgt., and a couple others. We were all together once again. They told Ken and I that the Germans had attacked them just a short time after Ken and I had left on the patrol to the Artillery, and also that they were the only ones that managed to keep from getting captured. They had been running and walking now for nearly 24 hours straight, and they were completely exhausted. When they got in our woods they just fell on the ground and went to sleep without even digging a hole.

This night seemed to go by exceptionally slow and it was the coldest one we had had so far. We all tried to doze off now and then, but it was no use. It was to cold to sleep. It was too cold to do anything. About 4 o?clock in the morning it started to snow, and it kept getting heavier all the time. By the time it was daylight, there was a real snow storm on. There wasn?t much of a wind, but the snow was coming down so heavy that you couldn?t see over a hund?red yards in front of you. Our Col. in charge said that this was the chance we had been waiting for. Now we could start moving in the daylight and the Krauts wouldn?t be able to see us. We had close to 200 men in our little group now and soon we were headed West again on the first road we came too. We thought we would keep going until we ran into something. By noon we were still going and we had not seen any signs of any Germans or any Americans. But all of a sudden the snow quit falling. We didn?t dare stay on the road any longer, and we didn?t want to take the chance of getting caught in another town. We came upon a huge chateau, just a few hundred feet from the road, so we moved in and took the place over. There were no civilians around anyplace, so we weren?t able to get any information as to whether the Germans had been there or not. We were now back in Belgium and all of the civilians had been fleeing with the Americans rather than be captured by the Germans again. We stayed in this old chateau for the remainder of the day and the next night. During the night, we could hear a lot of small arms fire in the distance. This meant that there were other G.I.?s still resist?ing the Germans close to us. Our Col. sent out a patrol to contact them and they reported back that these G.I.?s needed help desperately. By dawn we were on our way to help them. We had had no food since the couple bites of bologna the day before, and our stomachs were aching. We soon got to the town they were in, and once more our men started to dig in positions around the town. This time the Germans weren?t attacking yet. They were dug in on a hillside about three quarters of a mile from our town, and the only action there was the exchange of small arms fire between our troops and theirs. I went back to my old job as a messenger for our First Sgt., and we organized ourselves as best we could.

We stayed in this town until about noon the following day. Several waves of Germans hit our positions on the edge of town during this time, but all of them were repelled by our troops. On one attack, our men captured about 10 Krauts and they were brought into the town for questioning. The guys we were helping in the town still had a radio set with them and they were constantly trying to contact some of our troops in the rear to see if there was any help headed in our direction. Several times they were able to contact other outfits but each time they would contact one, they would always report that their opp?osition was too great and they were pulling out for the rear. There seemed to be no help coming from anywhere. We ourselves had now retreated about 30 miles since the first day of the attack, and it looked like the only thing we could do was start retreating again. Finally, our radio men contacted some tank our? fit and they said they would come and help us. They ran out of gas before they ever got to us though, and they were caught helplessly by some attacking Krauts. During the forenoon of this second day, two of our men in the holes at the edge of town shot themselves through the foot. They said it had happened accidentally, but our Officers knew better. These guys just couldn?t take it any longer, so they figured if they shot themselves, the medics would see to it that they got safely to the rear. Had they known that they would be left in the town when we started to retreat again at noon, I?m sure they would have pointed their guns in some other direction.

Yes, by noon of this day, we were once more on the retreat. The Germans had pulled up with heavy forces and tanks to the edge of our town. Our officers knew it was useless for our few men to try to hold against them as they started to attack and we all moved into the thick woods behind the town. I have no idea as to how far we walked, but I know that by this time the moral of our remain?ing men was very low. Everyone was hungry and tired and cold. Whenever two or three of~us got together, we would always find ourselves talking about one subject. That was the big question as to whether or not we should give ourselves up or not the next time we were attacked. For the past week, we had only had a few bites to eat and our stomachs ached. We had been beaten every time we had met the Krauts and they seemed to be getting more powerful all of the time. We knew of no help coming from the rear, and we thought that the American Lines must have crumbled throughout all of Europe. We thought the Germans were winning the war.

About this time our Officers decided that they would try retreating as we had learned while training in the States. This was known as ?Rear Guard Action?. It meant that as we retreated our Officers would leave about 12 men at each big crossroad we came to. These men were to stay at this spot and hold up the Germans for as long as they could??or until they ran out of ammunition. This would give the main body of our group more time in which to get back. It meant certain death or capture for the men left behind though.

We started retreating on the roads once again, and the officers started to leave a few men at each crossroad. By, the time we got to the fourth crossroad it was Co. B?s turn to leave 12 men. Frankie, Quimby, and I were three of the 12- men ordered to stay behind. We were scared and as we watched the rest of the guys head down the road, we were wishing we could be going with them. Soon they were out of sight and we were left to our fate. We started digging holes with our helmets, but the ground was frozen and we couldn?t make much progress. We felt helpless and we all had lumps in our throats. The longer we stayed here, the more nervous we got. -We tried to figure out how in the devil 12 G.I.?s armed with only rifles, could hold up a whole German Army. There seemed to be no answer and our only hope was that no Germans would come up our road. We must have stayed here about two hours without seeing or hearing anything. Suddenly, we spotted a half track coming down the road to our right. It was coming very fast and we got ourselves into position to do the job we had been left to do. As it got near to us, we saw that it was an American half track, but to play safe, we kept our rifles pointed towards it. The driver spotted us as he came to our crossroad and he waved his arm. He stopped and he had five 0.1?s with him. Three of them had been wounded badly and were laying in the back. He told us which outfit they were with, and that the Germans had just attacked them about 2 miles down the road. They said that most of their men had been captured, but they had got away and they were headed for the rear as fast as possible. They told us that we were crazy if we stayed here and waited for them to attack us, but we had been ordered to stay here, so we stayed. They took off again, and it wasn?t long until they were out of sight also. We didn?t have to wait long and we heard many vehicles coming down this same road and? the half track had just come. As they got closer, we could see that it was the Germans that were coming this time. We could see a long column of German Trucks, headed by three huge tanks. Each of the trucks was loaded with German Infantry men. They were out to lick the Americans. The closer they got the more scared we got. The rumble from the tanks and trucks got louder and louder. When they got about 500 yards from us the lead tank spotted us and opened up with its machine gun. Our rifles were useless against the tanks. We were soon driven from the crossroad and into the woods again. We retreated until we spotted a small town at the foot of the hill in back of us. We could see no activity in the town, but we spotted a couple of jeeps standing by one of the buildings. We ran into the town and up to the building where we saw the jeeps.

Inside we found four who were waiting and were in the same boat as we were. They knew the Germans were coming, but they didn?t know which way to retreat in order to get away from them. We told them about the long column of Krauts that we had just seen coming in this direction and we all decided to get out of town, before we were caught. By this time, we were getting desperate.? We decided we would keep running as long as we had any breath left in us. As we came out of the building, we once more spotted the same long column of tanks and trucks. They were headed directly for our little town. The twelve of us ran for the woods on the far side of the town, and the rest of the G.I.?s? jumped in their jeep and headed out of town in the same direction on the road. Once more the tanks stopped and started to fire at us as we ran from the town. This time they scored some hits. Two of our guys were hit and they fell face first into the snow. As soon as we were in the woods the Krauts pulled into the town. We kept running because we knew that they were at our heels. I ran into a branch once and lost my helmet, but I didn?t take time to stop and pick it up because every second counted. I remember Frankie ran into another branch once and hooked his jacket. He gave one tug and kept going. The whole back of his jacket got left hanging on the branch, and all he had left was the front and two sleeves. We must have run for an hour steady, and then we were so exhausted that we all stopped, threw our?selves on the ground, and rested. Our lungs ached from lack of wind.

By now it was dark again and as we lay there, we suddenly realized that it was Christmas Eve. We didn?t have the slightest idea where we were, and none of us seemed to care whether it was Xmas Eve or not. All we knew was that it was cold, and we wanted something to eat. We laid there for about a half an hour, then we decided we would try once more to see if we could find our way out of this mess. We started walking. I had a compass that we could see at night, so we set our course due West. We walked for about an hour and we came to a river about a hundred yards wide. By now it was 9 o?clock at night. There was a full moon out and there was millions of stars overhead. On the far side of the river it was all open country with no trees. We could see a road running parallel with the river about two hundred yards on the other side of the river. It was cold, but the river was still running. There was just a little ice near each bank. We knew we had to get across the river, but we could see no bridge, so we stopped again to figure out our next move. As we stood there, we saw about twenty sharp flashes in the hills about 3 or 4 miles directly in front of us. A few seconds later, we heard a bunch of shells screaming over our heads and crash in the woods about a half mile behind us. We looked at each other and a big smile broke on our faces all at the same time. These shells were American -??We could tell by the sound. Did this mean that the Americans had stopped the Germans, and were attacking back again? Did it? Were we only a few miles from the American lines again? Were we? We slapped each other on the back, and our hopes of gett?ing back again had been raised sky high. As we stood there we saw more and more flashes and more and more of our shells whistled over our heads. Now we knew for sure that these were Americans coming in our direction. We couldn?t wait to get to them. We jumped into the river and waded across the icy stream. Lucky for us ??it wasn?t deep. The water came to about our knees and it ran into our shoes but we didn?t care. The Americans were coming! We were soon on the bank on the far side and as we walked the icy water squished in our shoes. We started going down the road on the far side of the river. We were headed for the hills where we had seen the flashes from our artillery guns. We hadn?t gone far when we came to a small house and barn along the side of the road. We could see a light in the house shining through a crack in the door, and we rushed up to it hoping that maybe we would run into some more G.I.?s. One of our guys ran up to the house while the rest of us hid in the barn. He walked into the house and all was quiet. Soon he came back to the barn and told us to come in. He said that there were three Belgium civilians in the house, and they would tell us what they knew about the movements around the area during the past day. As soon as we were all in there, they all started to talk at once. We couldn?t understand much of what they were trying to tell us, but we understood enough so that we? found out that the Germans had captured all of this ground and they were dug in, in the woods and hills all around. They said that the Germans had been going by in trucks for two days straight now, and they had seen hundreds of American Prisoners being taken to the German rear by German guards. They said that there had been heavy fighting going on between the Americans and Germans all during this past day a few miles away. They also told us that they didn?t think we would have much of a chance getting over to the American lines because there were thousands of Germans all over the place. With this information we decided that we would have to figure out some pretty clever schemes if we were going to get back without getting cap?tured. One of the Belgiums asked us if we were hungry, and we all shook our heads. She went down in her basement and brought up two loaves of dark bread and a small tub of butter. We sliced the bread, put big hunks of butter and had a real feast. We ate until the bread was all gone. There were about ten of us in the house and we figured our chances of getting back were mighty slim. The bread and butter had tasted so good that each of us pulled out our billfold and emptied every cent we had on the table in the house. We told them that that was our pay for the food. In a few minutes, we were out of the house and on our way once again.

We had gone just a few rods down the road, when we heard a Jeep coming from behind us. We jumped into the ditch, but the Jeep stopped when it got to us. The driver had spotted us in the moonlight. We were very much surprised to find that there were two G.I.?s driving the Jeep. We thought these roads were taken over by the Germans. We soon found out that these two G.I.?s were in the same boat as we were. Their outfit had been retreating for the past week as we had been doing. They didn?t know where they were going, but they wanted to get back to the American lines. As we were standing there talking, an American armored car pulled up behind them with about 5 more G.I.?s in it. They told us that if we wanted to climb on, the armored car would go first and we would all try to break through to the American lines. As we started to load on, another Jeep pulled up and stopped. There was getting to be quite a gang of us. The armored car pulled up in front, I got in the first Jeep with a bunch of guys, and Frankie and Quimby got in the last Jeep. The armored car and our Jeep started out, but the last Jeep seemed to have some trouble and it didn?t get started with the rest of us. This was the last that Frankie, Quimby, and I were together. They never did catch up with us. This was the last I saw of Frankie until I went to visit him a, year later in Pittsburg, after we were out of the Army. Frankie told me ?this story of their adventure from this time on:

Frankie said that when their Jeep finally got started they had lost sight of us, so they just headed down the road in the same direction they had seen us go. They hadn?t gone far, when they cam~ to a fork in the road, and here they must have taken a different road than we had just taken. They traveled for about a half mile when they ran smack into a German roadblock. Frankie said that Kraut machine guns opened up on them and those that weren?t hit made a dive for the ditch. There was no place for them to run so they just laid there. It wasn?t long until the Krauts started tossing hand grenades in on them. One of the grenades landed alongside of one of Quiinby?s legs and ex?ploded. Quimby?s leg was broken and ripped to pieces. Frankie said he tried to help him as best as he could. A few minutes later a bunch of Krauts rushed them and captured the ones that were still living. Frankie hadn?t been hit so they made him and another guy come up on the road and they made Frankie take off all of his clothes so they could search him. They gave him back his pants and shirt, but they had been thrown in the snow and he was about frozen stiff. Next they saw Quimby laying in the ditch, so they dragged him up on the road too. Quimby?s leg was giving him a great deal of pain, but the Krauts didn?t seem to care. They just stood and looked at him, and finally one of the German Officers walked up to him. He took his rifle and pointed it a Quimby?s head.

 

The story of the guys in our jeep was a little different. When we pulled away from Frankie and Qulinby near the farm place, we took the other road at the fork. We drove about a mile without running into a thing, then we came to an?other small town. There was no road around the town, so we knew that we had to go through it. The Armored car in front of us speeded up to about 40 miles an hour and made a mad dash into the town with us following. As we came to the first house, we saw a German Half track standing along side of it and a Kraut Guard standing in front of the house. As we drove by, his head made a quick turn, and as soon as we were past, we saw him run into the house. We didn?t see an?other soul until we got to the last house on the other end of the town. Here the same thing happened and we saw him run for the house too. By now, it was about midnight, and we were going full speed ahead. We must have gone about a mile out of the town, when all of a sudden, we came up over a small hill in the road and there right in front of us, were two long columns of German Infantry men coming on foot in our direction. One column was on each side of the road. Both the Armored car and our Jeep stopped as quickly as we could. The Armored car was still in the lead, and It really caught it. The Germans opened up on it with a terrific amount of small arms fire. I don?t believe any of the men got out of it alive. Our jeep driver threw the Jeep in reverse and we started to back down behind the small hill we had just come up. Just as we were going back over the crest of the hill, a machine gun burst hit our Jeep and the driver was killed. The rest of us made a jump for the ditch and we ran across a small open area towards some woods. There was about eight of us running and the Krauts spotted us. They opened up again and three of our men were hit. They all made it to the woods though. We made an awful lot of noise ~?.s we were trying to run back in the woods, so we all stopped still for a minute. We could hear the sound of many feet coming running up the road we just left, and we knew It was a bunch of the Krauts looking for us. We all laid down in the snow and covered ourselves with it so they wouldn?t be able to see us from the road. All eight of us were as still as could be, and we could plainly hear the Krauts talking among themselves just a couple hundred feet away. Twice they called into the woods and told us in English to come out with our hands up, but we laid still. Finally the whole bunch started to walk down the road again and we made our way deeper and deeper into the woods. When we figured we were in far enough, we stopped to see how bad our three guys had been hit. One of the guys was a Lt. and he had been shot through both of his legs. None of his bones had been broken, so two of us had to help him walk from then on. One of the guys had been hit in the neck and it was bleeding very bad. His left arm was hanging limp and his jacket was covered with blood. He told us he thought he could make it all right if we didn?t go too fast. The third guy had been hit in the seat. He said he could make it all right if he didn?t sit down anyplace. Next we check?ed to see what guns we had left. We had two rifles. The rest of the guys had all lost their guns when we jumped from the Jeep a few minutes before. I was the only one that had a compass, so we set our direction for due West again. We had to walk slow and we tried to help the three wounded guys as much as we could. We must have walked for about an hour through the woods and the going was rough. We could find no trails anywhere, and by this time, our three wound?ed guys were almost exhausted. The Lt.?s legs had turned stiff from the wounds and two of our guys had to drag him between them in order to keep him with us. The kid that was shot in the neck kept falling down all the time and he was getting awfully weak from loss of blood. Each time we would stop to rest, the blood would drip from his limp arm and the snow became stained with blood. About 4 o?clock in the morning, we finally came to another road. We looked down the road and we spotted another small town about a half mile away. We knew that we couldn?t keep going like this much longer, so we decided to hit for the town. We decided that if there were Krauts in the town, we would give ourselves up. With this thought in mind, we headed slowly down the road for the town. The moon was still shining bright, and we knew that if there was any?one in the town, they would see us coming. W~ got to within a hundred yards of the first building in the town, and we stopped to see if we could hear any noises from the town. Everything was still. We started slowly ahead? again. Suddenly right in front of us a voice in the still night yelled ?HALT!? We froze in our tracks. We could not see anyone, anyplace. Then the same voice yelled, ?Who the hell are you?? We hollered, ?Americans?!! Then the voice said, ?One of you come forward to be recognized?. One of our guys walked up to this first house and we saw a guy step from the shadow of the house. It was a G.I. It was hard to believe our eyes, but it was true. We had reached the American lines. We all rushed up to him and started to ask him a hundred questions. He said he was with the 82nd Airborne Division and they had just captured this town about 3 hours before. There were about a thousand paratroopers in the town and they were gett?ing ready to start attacking in the direction we had just come from. They were going to start their attack at daybreak. As soon as we got in the town, the paratroopers loaded our three wounded guys In an ambulance and headed for an Aid Station with them. The five of us that were left were taken to a house where the officers of this outfit had their Command Post. The officers said that they wanted us to help them, if we could. They unfolded a bunch of maps on a table and asked us to point out all the places we had seen heavy forces of Germans during the last couple of days. They said they needed this information so that they would know where to concentrate their forces when they started their attack in a couple of hours. We put a bunch of marks on their maps, but I don?t imagine they used them once they started. When we finished, they loaded us in a jeep and hauled us back to their kitchen crew. Here we were fed the biggest meal you would ever want to lay your eyes on ?? and we really ate. It was now early morning of Christmas Day, and the paratroopers left the town and started their attack into the woods ahead. The five of us jumped in a truck that was going to the rear for supplies and we set out to try and find the rest of our 28th Division.

We rode back about 10 miles and we came to a large town. There were a lot of M.P.?s in the town, so we asked them If they knew where the 28th Infantry Division was reorganizing. They told us that we would have to go about another 20 miles to the rear to another large town, and we would find the 28th Division trying to get organized there. We hopped on another supply truck and soon we were back with the 28th.

It took about a week for us to get organized again. Thousands of green replacements were hauled into our town and assigned to our outfit. We also had to get all new equipment because nearly all of our Artillery pieces, machine guns etc. had been captured by the Germans. As soon as we had everything we needed, we started to train with our new replacements. We knew that we would soon be called forward again to help counter?attack in the Bulge.

On January 5th, our orders came. We had now been off of the line for nearly two weeks, and the 1st Army figured that we should be pretty well rested up again by now. We were ordered to move forward and help in the attack. We now had everything we needed except for a kitchen outfit. ??So, we had to live on cold rations.

None of us were in very good spirits as we started going forward again. We were In no hurry to get up there. Every day that we could stay off of the line, meant another day that we could be sure of living. The trucks hauled us up to about 10 miles from the lines again, and as it started to get dark, we once more found ourselves walking in two columns down the road headed for the front. We had hilly country to go through and our progress was slow. We were to be ready to start our attack at 7 o?clock the next morning, January 6th. Our objective was to capture the town of Spineux, Belgium. The only information we had about the town was that we would have to attack through some woods for about 5 miles before reaching the town. We were told that there were heavy German forces dug In throughout these woods, and that we would probably meet a lot of resistance when we got to the town itself.

The night was another cold one, hut there was a bright moon out. We kept moving steadily down the road with very few rests. About midnight, we found our-a selves with only about 2 more miles to go, so we knew that we would probably be able to get a little rest before we shoved off in the attack at daybreak. Sudden?ly, over our heads we heard a loud roar. We looked up, and two German planes had spotted our column moving on the road. They came at us one behind the other, and when they were directly over us, we heard a bunch of loud whistles. Both planes were dropping many, many anti?personnel bombs on us. We all made a dive for the ditch and luck was with us again. The planes had misjudged and all of their bombs landed and exploded in an open field about 200 yards to our left. None of u~ were hit, and we were soon on our way again.

When we got to our jumping?off point, we all laid down in the woods and waited for the daybreak. About a half hour before it was light, we started for?ward on the attack. Our 112th Regiment acted as one body and we shot many spear?heads into the woods ahead. It didn?t take long and we could hear the familiar sound of the German machine guns firing in our direction again. We ran into many German strong points, but our Officers would send patrols on each one, and the Krauts started to retreat. This was the first time that most of us in the 112th Regiment had ever seen the Germans back up, and it did us a lot of good. We be?gan to think that maybe the Germans weren?t the super race we thought they were. This time, we had them on the run, and we were following close behind. Even though most of our men were green troops, we kept ourselves organized beautifully. We kept constant contact with each other, and we were suffering very few cas?ualties. Our medics were on the ball, and our wounded were always taken careof as best possible. By three o?clock in the afternoon, we were almost up to the town. Our Company had captured about 20 Krauts and we sent them to the rear with a couple of our guys. Everything went fine until about 4 o?clock. We were still advancing slowly, but we found ourselves fighting in awfully thick woods. There was an awful lot of brush, and we could only see for a short distance. About this time some of our new men started to get scared and they got ?trigger?happy?. In other words, they started to shoot at anything they saw move in front of them. About 5 of our own men were shot and wounded or killed by some of these new men.

 

Soon it started to get dark, and we weren?t quite to the town yet. Our Officer in charge decided that we should stop and dig in for the night. He said that we could attack the town the next day. Our Company gathered together in one group and each of us started to dig ourselves a hole to spend the night in. One of the guys in our Company had just captured a Kraut, so he gave him his shovel and made the Kraut dig a hole big enough for our guy to get in. He sat and ate a box of ?K? rations while the Kraut dug his hole. It wasn?t long until it was dark again. It was cloudy this night and there was no moon. We figured we had chased all of the Krauts back into the town of Spineux, so there wouldn?t be anything for us to worry about this night.

All was quiet until about midnight. Then we suddenly realized that we had underestimated the Krauts. The crazy fools left the town and started attacking back into our woods. I guess we all felt like a bunch of stupid jackasses. We had had them on the run all day, but now we had stopped and had given them time to reorganize. They were after us this time. It wasn?t long until our whole Company was surrounded and small arms fire was coming in on us from every direct?ion. We immediately began to spread out, but as they saw us moving, we drew more and more fire. Many of our guys were hit. We formed a big circle and the battle was on. It kept up for about an hour, and then slowly the German guns quit fir?ing. They must have withdrawn back to the town again, because by 3 A.M. all was quiet. I was in a hole with one of our new !hen and this was his first night of combat. He was scared to death, and I was trying to make believe that this was old stuff and that I wasn?t scared a bit. Suddenly, we heard someone walking in the brush in front of us and we heard a voice call out ?hello?. We spotted the figure o~~a man walking towards us. We couldn?t tell whether it was a Kraut or one of our men. Suddenly, the kid I was with raised up and fired, and the man fell to the ground. As daylight finally came and we could see the color of his uniform, we could tell that it was a Kraut, and he lay less than 30 feet from our hole. As it got light, and we could see all around our Company, we counted over 30 dead Krauts that our men had shot during the night.

Soon we were on our way once again for our objective, Spineux, Belgium. By noon, we were all in our positions around the town. We could see many German soldiers moving around in the town and they hadn?t spotted us moving up on them. Our big battle was soon to begin.

Our officers radioed back to our artillery and told them to shell the town heavy for twelve minutes. We had to get across an open field about 250 yards wide before we could get to the first buildings of the town. Our officers told us that when the artillery had been shelling for 11 minutes, we were all to leave the woods at once and head for the town. This would get us up to the town just as the shelling stopped, and we would be able to get the Krauts before they had time to get out of their holes.

Just as the shelling started, the order came for us to fix bayonets, and prepare to charge. As each minute ticked by, our hearts beat louder and louder, for at the end of the 11 minutes, we knew we would be in the open and on our own. The end of the 11 minutes came and we found ourselves racing across the open field towards the town. This time we were all screaming like a bunch of wild Indians. We were firing our rifles and Tommy guns in every direction. The shelling stopped as we hit the town, and we made our way from house to house. During the first half hour the Krauts gave us a bad time. They were firing at us from windows, down steps, and cellars, but their resistance slowed up as we progressed, and by dark the town was ours. We had captured over 200 Germans, including 6 Officers. It took us a long time to search the prisoners and we all collected a big supply of souvenirs. It was here that I got my first German Pistol, a beautiful German P?38 with a leather holster and 2 clips of ammo. This had been the height of my ambition since we entered combat. I also got myself a razor off of one of the prisoners, which I used for many years. I had lost my razor on the first day of the breakthrough a month before, and I hadn?t shaved since.

After we were through searching all of the prisoners, we gathered up all of their wounded and we made the Germans carry their own wounded to the rear. By now it was dark again and our Officers said we would spend the night in Spineux. We split up in bunches of about 5 guys each and went into the basements of the houses. Our bunch happened to get in a basement that had been used as the German Command Post. There was a stove that was still going good, and it had a

big kettle on top of it. We lifted the cover and there before our eyes were two chickens being boiled in water. These Krauts had been making themselves some supper just before we started our attack. We tested the meat and it was well done. We each broke off a piece and stared eating. It wasn?t long until the chicken was gone. Our stomachs were full, the basement was warm, and the five of us settled down for a good bull session. We had a couple of candles burn?ing on a table and we were in Home Sweet Home. About 10 o?clock that night, two of us decided we would go upstairs with our flashlight and see if we could find any more souvenirs laying around in any of the rooms. We left all of our guns in the basement and started searching every drawer in every room. When we got to about the fourth room, we opened up the door and flashed our light inside.

I was holding the flashlight and what I saw made my hair stand on end. Both of our mouths dropped wide open. There on the floor in front of us sat two Kraut soldiers. Whoever had searched this house earlier in the day had missed them, and we had been sitting in their basement eating their chicken. We had no guns with us, so we just kept the flashlight beam on them. They slowly got up on their feet, and both of them raised their arms up over their heads. Their rifles were laying over in the opposite corner and they had just been sitting there waiting for someone to find them. We got them down in the basement, and after we finished searching them, one of our guys headed for the rear with them.

The next day, we were relieved again by another outfit and this was the last action we saw in the Bulge.

Our 28th Division was now ordered back to a rest camp. We traveled by truck and went back into France again. We ended up about 200 miles behind the lines, and we split up into many groups. Each group would move into a different town and each 4 or 5 guys would move in with a French family. There would be one kitchen crew in each town, and we were fed three meals a day again.

 

WITH THE U.S. 1ST ARMY ?? This is the story of a retreat, a heroic story of a regiment over?run by Germany?s crushing armies during the early days of the mid-December offensive ?? the 112th Infantry of the 28th Division.

Col. G.M. Nelson, of Paris, Ill., and the company commanders kept the remnants together somehow to continue fighting although over?run time after time. Now they are doggedly smashing the foe and leaving thousands of them on the battle?fields.

The men of the 112th never will forget those days of torturing confusion as they fought and wandered like hunted animals in the forest. They tell a story terribly real in its simple truth.         

The 112th had been asked to hold a sector far too wide ?? so they got Field Marshall Von Rundstedt?s most powerful attack.

?I sat behind a machine gun at 6 o?clock,? Lt. Khalil, of Oneida N.Y., re?counted as if he were unable to believe it.

?They were running, armored cars and tanks, everywhere, all over us. I fired in three directions. More tanks were coming.

?I called for artillery. We got some; then they said they had fired their last and that was all. We asked for tank destroyers. They never came. We lost contact with the other platoons. We killed Krauts by the hundreds that day and got killed.

?The next morning more tanks were coming. The troops on our right flank had pulled out. We couldn?t fight tanks with rifles, so some of us got out ?? 16 of our platoon, 7 from the 2nd, 15 from headquarters. We were scared, but still ready to fight. Sgt. Ed Zahar, a Chicago kid, sure helped me that day.?

Those other platoons? Well, they came out ?? somehow. Sgt. Earl Sikkila, of St. Paul, kept one together by staying at the telephone even when the Germans threw grenades in the room.

Pvt. Bob Vanderford of St. Paul stayed at his machine gun with Jerries all around him. One jumped in his hole and Vanderford pretended he was dead, and got away with it.

Pvt. Marion Susak, of Chicago, calmly abolished a machine gun with rifle grenades. Pvt. Ezra McDonnel of Sweetwater, Texas, pinned down 25 Jerries for seven hours with an automatic rifle.

All this in the whirlpool of war, with their flanking friends pulling back everywhere.

?The Jerries were on three sides,? weary Lt. John Peetz said. ?We dug in. The artillery was terrific, and 10 heavy tanks drove us out. We had 35 engineers and infantry mixed; more engineers drifted in, a platoon from K Company and other stragglers.

?We were covered by our artillery when they hit us. Two platoons of our men tried to cross the ravine. Those who made it said the tanks had sprayed them with machine guns while the Jerry infantry captured their mortars. We got orders to withdraw and defend another town, but found the Jerries there. We went by an alternate route over the hills, taking vehicles and blowing bridges.

The Jerries stormed D. Company ?yelling and raving like drunks ?? and we shot ?em down.? Then in came the tanks; the boys asked for tank destroyers and got light tanks, which retreated when they saw the hopeless situation. So they dug in, under the artillery and screaming Mimi fire.

They found the flanks unprotected at dawn. They retreated and dug in ?? retreated and dug in ?? were killed or wounded as artillery hit them ?? but all the time fought and held whenever possible, throwing road blocks when such actions seemed necessary ?? and often it was suicide. But every move delayed the Jerry advance while our reserves moved up.

The story of each unit is the same. The men of A Company repulsed attacks for two days, then they were over?run by heavy tanks.

The Germans were carelessly daring and ?C? Company took so many prisoners that they were in the way, with every man needed. Sgt. Edward White, Fort Lauderdale, Fla. took the prisoners back through the barrage.

But that didn?t last. The next day the Jerries hit with terrific force ?? and it was the same story ?? hurrying in scattered confusion to re?group as best they could.

They lacked blankets, and it was bitter cold. They were hungry, carrying the wounded, and often lost for days.

The artillery fired close support for them, holding the tanks back. Then the infantry would dig in to cover the big guns pulling out.

Their story is that of thousands of Americans, over?run before our armored divisions could be swung down to meet the Panzer columns.

It is a chapter in our military history that is none too pleasant. But it is a chapter we must read with the grim determination that we almost didn?t come to their aid in time or fast enough.

(Following is a dispatch by AP War Correspondent Lewis Hawkins on the Ardennes? offensive)

WITH U.S. THIRD ARMY, Jan. 6 -- (AP) ?? When the Germans see troops wear?

-ing the red keystone insignia from now on they had better be prepared for the roughest kind of going.

That red insignia, which the Germans call the ?bloody bucket,? marks the 28th Infantry Division, a former Pennsylvania National Guard unit.

Temporarily, the 28th was shattered as a fighting force, but it won precious time for the rest of the Allied forces. It suffered losses in personnel and equip?ment ?? but it was no annihilation.

Now, as a new and honored member of Lt. Gen. Patton?s fighting team, it is going back into battle. The wearers of the ?bloody bucket? have many memories. Among them are:

The voice of a young captain speaking over the radio: ?Down to our last grenades. We?ve blown everything there is to blow except this radio. It goes next. I don?t mind dying. I don?t mind taking a beating. But we will never give in to these bastards.?

Then this sender clicked off for the last time.

The order that went down to another surrounded unit to quit fighting and try to slip as many men as possible through the enemy lines, and the answer that came back by radio.

?We can?t get out, but we?ll make ?em pay.?

Men like Corp. Ben Bertram of Chicago who actually had the experience of a German company bivouacking around him while he slept, but who slipped out and finally got back to fight again after four days of foodless wandering.

(Excerpts from article by John Thompson, Chicago Tribune War Correspondent)

WITH THE U.S. FIRST ARMY, Jan 3 ?? Ten American divisions -- and an infantry regiment of the 28th Division ?? which played vital roles in halting Field Marshall Von Rundstedt?s great winter offensive were off ically identified tonight.

These names for the United States military honor roll, in addition to the 1st Infantry, the 82nd Airborne and the 7th Armored Divisions, previously ann?ounced, are: the 2nd, 9th, 30th, 75th and 99th Infantry Divisions, combat command B of the 9th Armored, and the 112th Infantry Regiment of the 28th Infantry Division.

The 112th, holding south of St. Vith, fought a rearguard action which, when historians get around to calculating the action, will rank as one of the really decisive engagements of the war.

Later, the regiment withdrew with other infantry units into a defensive oval of armor back of St. Vith.

THE COLMAR POCKET

We stayed deep in France until about the middle of January. Then we received orders that we were to make a very secret move. We were to be attached to the French 1st Army and we were to help them attack in the clean?up of the Colmar Pocket. This was an area in Alsace Lorraine just a few miles north of Switzerland. The City of Colmar was still held by the Germans and it was located in a very mountainous area. The Germans were well dug in through?out the mountains and grape vineyards and it was to be our job to push them back across the Rhine River, capture all of the small towns on this side of the Rhine, and finally take the city of Colmar itself.

As we started to get ready to move, we were constantly reminded of the secrecy of our move. We were ordered to remove all of our Division insignias from our clothing and we were ordered not to tell any of the FRENCH civilians of the move we were to make. We had to scrape all of our division markings from our trucks and vehicles. No one was to know that the 28th was moving in?to combat again. Green replacements were again hauled into our Division and we were once more built up to full strength in men.

Everything went as scheduled and soon we found ourselves loaded in box?cars headed southeast. It took us about 3 days to make the trip and the box?cars were mighty cold to sleep in during the nights. As soon as we reached our destination, we immediately headed for the front again. This time, we found ourselves in very mountainous country. Very different? from anything we had fought in before. We had to walk about the last 15 miles up the mountains before we could meet the German lines. The paths were so steep and rough that the only way we could get our supplies along up with us was to take everything on French Pack Mules. We strapped all of our heavy equipment on the Mules and carried the rest. By now, it was nearing the end of January and the snow was about three feet deep. It was still very cold and we knew we were in for a bad time. We were each issued a white sheet that fit over our helmets and covered our entire bodies. The purpose of the sheets was to blend us in with the snow so that the Germans would not be able to spot us moving along the mountain side. We didn?t know that the Germans were also wearing white sheets and that we soon wouldn?t be able to tell one from the other.

My Company, ?B? Co., relieved a French outfit, who were dug in around Sigolsheim, a small town on the mountain side. Sigolsheim had taken a terrific beating and during the past few weeks it had changed hands between the Germans and French 4 times. There were no civilians in the town except 2 monks who were sticking it out in the basement of their monastery. The Germans were dug in about a half mile below the town in the grape vineyards.

Our orders were to sit tight in Sigolsheim, and wait until every unit in the area was ready to attack. Then we were all to jump off at once and push the Krauts into the Rhine. We were told that it would probably be about 2 weeks be?fore the big push was ready to start. In the mean time, we were to send out patrols each night and find out as much as we could about the strength of the German positions.

The first day went by with very little firing between our positions and the Krauts, but just as it started to get dark on this first day, the Krauts fired a bunch of shells over our lines. The shells exploded over us and leaflets drifted down to our men. We thought that we had made a secret move, but the Germans welcomed us to the Colmar sector. And on the first day too.

Copies of the leaflets are on the next page.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------image here

This picture was taken when June & I visited Sigolsheim in 1972.  None of us paid much attention to these leaflets. We had gained confidence in ourselves again now, and we had no thoughts of surrendering.

During the whole first week, we had very little activity in our new positions. As we looked through our field glasses, we could plainly see the Krauts sitting in their holes just a short distance from Sigolsheim. The only time they would shoot at us was when they would spot some of us moving around in the town during the daylight. We soon learned that we had to stay in the basements as much as possible, because they would always pump in a bunch of mortar shells on us when?ever they could find something for a target. We had three mortars of our own in the town and we made it very uncomfortable for them at times too. Nearly every day we would zero our mortars on two or three of their positions and fire away. All of us got a big kick out of sitting and watching them through our field glasses whenever our mortars were firing. You could see their heads bobbing up and down out of their holes like a bunch of gophers. A couple times, we spotted German medics come running up to their holes and carry some of their men back. Their medics carried a big white flag with a red cross on it to make sure that we wouldn?t shoot them.

As I said before, Sigolsheim, had changed hands between the French and Germans 4 times up to this time and there had been much heavy fighting through?out the entire town. This, of course, left₅many dead German and French soldiers laying around everywhere. No one had ever taken time to pick up the bodies. As we moved around in the town after dark each night in our white sheets, we felt like a bunch of spooks in a graveyard. You usually had some pretty sharp chills run up and down your spine whenever you would come around a corner and meet two or three sheets in the moonlight come walking over a bunch of dead bodies. It took some time to get used to it, but there was no other way.

I remember we found the bottom half of a Kraut laying in a small building next to the basement where we had our dugout. Also, in this same room, there laid a leg cut off above the knee of some other guy. These must have been some pieces that somebody had picked up after a bombing and thrown in there. We all decided that we would use this room for our toilet and for some reason, we always came back with a very satisfied look on our face each time we had visited the sacred room.

Also, in this same town, we soon realized that we were in the wine district. In every basement throughout the town, you could find two or three barrels of wine.

Many of our men started drinking heavy, and some were too drunk to be trusted anyplace with a gun. There was no place that any of us could go during the day?light, so they just sat and drank till dark. Many got sick and had to be taken to the rear. The climax came when one of our own guys was killed one night by one of these drunks on guard. He thought our guy was a Kraut walking up to him. From then on, the drinking quieted down a lot.

During the entire two weeks we stayed in Sigolsheim, the Krauts kept send?ing patrols? into our outposts every night. Nearly every night, two or three of our men would either be killed or captured. By the end of the first week, it began to work on our nerves. Many of our men refused to go out to certain out?posts, because they knew it would mean certain death for them. I remember one night one of our Sgt.?s called a couple of his men yellow cowards because they refused to go to an outpost. Finally, they said that if he would go with them, they would go out there. He went, and that same night all three were captured by a German Patrol and we never heard from them again. On one of these nights, Charlie Klein, was killed while in an outpost. He had been a very good friend of Frankie and I before the breakthrough, and our 1st Sgt. picked me as one of the guys to go out and carry him back into the town. Charlie was a heavy guy and we had a hard time getting back up the side of the mountain with him. He had been killed by a mortar shell which hit and exploded directly on top of his hole. A kid by the name of Watson was in the hole with him too, and he died also before we could get him back into the town.

At the end of our two weeks, our orders finally came for the attack. We were ordered to attack out of Sigolsheim, and into the grape vineyards direct?ly in front of us. Our first big objective was to capture the town of Ingersheim, which was located at the bottom of the mountain about 4 miles in front of us. We were to start our attack at 7 o?clock the next morning, January 29th. We all tried to get a good night?s rest during our last night in our town, but it was no use. Everyone was silent, but everyone?s eyes were wide open. We knew that we would soon be pushing into heavy German Forces, and that by this time tomorrow night many of us would not be around anymore.

Dawn came sooner than any of us wanted it to this next morning. It wasn?t long until we found ourselves headed out of Sigolsheim, and down the mountain. Two of our guys weren?t with us though. They had started drinking again during the night and they kept on until they both passed out and they were in no shape to do anything. The rest of us called them cowards, but maybe they had the right idea. They didn?t have to go into the attack anyway.

We hadn?t gone over 500 yards, when we ran into a terrific amount of small arms fire. The Krauts seemed to have machine guns placed all over in the grape vineyards and many of our men were hit. We kept advancing steadily though, ?and one by one the machine guns quit firing. I remember once that 5 of us were running up a row in the vineyards and a Kraut machine gun opened up just to the right of us. All five of us threw ourselves on the ground and tried to figure out just where the gun was. Suddenly, a burst of machine gun fire came directly in on us. The kid laying just ahead of me was shot through the stomach and he doubled up in pain. The first kid in our column was hit in the neck and was killed instantly. The rest of us jumped up and ran behind some rocks. We never did find out where the machine gun was, but some of our other men must have knocked it out, because it fired no more.

By mid?afternoon, we found ourselves at the edge of the town of Ingersheim. We were meeting very little resistance by this time and we moved into the town. The biggest share of the Germans had already pulled out of the town and were headed fast for their rear. The few that were left in the town gave themselves up easily and by 5 P.M. the town was ours. The French civilians came streaming from their basements and rushed out into the street to meet us. Most of them were carrying two or three bottles of wine and they wanted to make sure that each of us had a bottle of our own. Many of the women threw their arms around our men and kissed them. No one objected of course. We were, the first American troops they had ever seen and they were all so happy to be rid of the Germans. They just couldn?t do enough for us. We all moved into the basements of the town and settled down for the night. We? had to wait for orders before we could start attacking again.

During the night, our orders arrived and at dawn the next morning, we left Ingersheim and started attacking up a mountain directly behind the town. Our orders were to capture a small town on the mountain side about 15 miles from Ingersheitn. The name of the town was Trois Epis. This meant that we would have to climb up hill all the way and knock out any German resistance that we met. When we got about a mile out of Ingersheim, we met our first German resistance. About 20 Krauts were dug in along the mountain side and they started to give us a bad time. However, it didn?t last long, and soon they had their hands up and they were all glad to become prisoners. A couple of our men took them back to Ingersheim. We kept climbing the mountain for all the rest of the way. Our path was rugged and our progress was slow. By dark, we were about half way up to our little town of  Trois Epis. We all thought that we would stop and rest in the woods for the night, but our officers said that we would have to keep climbing the mountain all night and be ready to attack the town at dawn. This mountain was the steepest we had ever been on. As you know, we were just a short distance from Switz?erland where the mountains are really big.

About midnight, we met a new resistance in our small path we were following. The Germans had chopped down hundreds of small trees and they had fallen over our path. There was no other way to get up the mountain, so we found ourselves climbing over tree trunks, crawling under them, and squirming in and out between branches until we were all in. This was extremely hard on our machine gunners and mortar men, because they were carrying all of their heavy equipment on their backs and they were getting caught in something all of the time.

By 4 A.M., we finally got to within a few hundred yards from our objective, Trois Epis. There were heavy forests on each side of our path for the remainder of the trip, so we stopped to plan our attack. Our officers finally sent two patrols of five men each to go ahead of our main body. One patrol was to go on each side of our path and they were to stay about a hundred yards apart. It was still dark as they moved out about 5 A.M. and they, of course, were not able to see each other. The woods were very thick and as soon as they got to the edge of the town, they were to meet at our path. Then the rest of us were to move forward and start our attack. The purpose of sending the two patrols was to make sure that there were no Germans dug in along our path ?which could fire on our main body.

Everything was silent as our two patrols moved out, and the rest of us stayed still and waited for our signal to attack. About ten minutes ticked by without us hearing a sound anyplace. Then suddenly, we heard both of our patrols open up at once. Each patrol had a Tommy Gun and we could hear them both firing heavy just a few hundred yards away. We could hear some of the guys yelling, ?Medics, Medics!? and we figured our patrols had run into something pretty stiff. Our entire outfit moved forward and prepared for the attack. Just as we got near to the shooting, it stopped and we met a couple of our men in the patrols come running down the path towards us. They were shaking so that they could hardly talk, but we finally managed to make out what they were saying. Something awful had happened. Both of our patrols had ~lost contact with each other as soon as they had left us, but they kept advancing steadily. When they had just about

reached Trois Epis, one of the guys saw something move in the brush to the right of him. It was dark, but he figured it was a Kraut, so he fired. What he had actually seen was a kid from the other patrol on the other side of the path. When the other patrol was fired on, they naturally thought that they had run in?to Germans, so the battle was on. Our own men shooting at each other. The result?? Two of our kids badly wounded and three killed. Another stupid mistake that had probably happened many times before in nearly every battle that was fought. We all felt bad about this, but it was soon light and our attack had to go on as scheduled. We met German resistance at the first house we came to, and they were scattered throughout the entire town. By noon, we had killed or captured most of them and the town of Trois Epis was ours.

As we searched the houses, we came upon many civilians in the basements. The Germans had bound their wrists with wire and told them to stay there. They told them that the Americans usually kill all civilians as they take a town. As we helped the civilians out of the basements and untied them, they would fall on their knees and beg for mercy. When they found out that we weren?t going to kill them, they would throw their arms around us with joy.

In the center of Trois Epis was a large Catholic Church. We found the priest and 7 nuns tied with wire in the basement. When they were freed, they invited all the civilians and all of our troops into the church for a short Mass. The Catholic boys sat in the front pews with the civilians, and the rest of us sat behind them. We took of f our helmets, and held our rifles between our knees. The nuns stood in the back of the church and sang.  It was a beautiful service. This was the first time most of us had been to church since entering combat.

We left one of our men on guard outside of the church, in case we had over?looked any German soldiers during our search of the houses in town. Just as the Service was finished, we heard a shot and as we left the church, we found our guard laying dead on the steps of the, church. A sniper had picked him off. We sent a patrol after him and soon the sniper was dead also.

Our losses had been quite light in taking the town, so we gathered up all the kids that had been killed and laid them in one house. We made stretchers for our wounded and by 3 P.M., we were all headed down the mountain again. We were all out of food and we had to get our wounded back to Ingersheim for treat?ment. We had taken our objective and we headed back for more orders.
 

Going down the mountain went considerably faster than coming up. By midnight, we were once more in Ingersheim, and we each went back to our same basements where we had slept two nights before.

The next day, we were told that other units of our Division had captured the town of Colmar, and the Germans had been pushed back across the Rhine. Our work was finished.

We moved up to a small town along the Rhine River and took up a holding position to secure Colmar. We stayed here until about the middle of February.

Our next move took us out of the French Army, and we once more were assign?ed to the American 1st Army up near Belgium. This time, we moved by truck and it wasn?t long until we found ourselves hundreds of miles north in the line. The Americans were still about 30 miles from the Rhine River up here, and our orders this time were to help the American 1st Army push up to the Rhine.

We moved up on line about March 1st, and started to get ready once more for an attack. By now, spring was on the way, and much of the snow had melted from the hillsides.

About this time, I got infection in both of my feet. They had been frozen several times during the winter, but never bad enough to be evacuated to a hospital. This time they were quite bad though and soon I wasn?t able to stand on them because of the pain. The day before our outfit was to jump off in the attack, I was loaded into an ambulance and taken to a hospital in the rear. I ended up in a hospital back near Paris, and I stayed there for 6 weeks. When I was O.K. again, I was given a three day pass to Paris and then sent forward to rejoin my outfit. It was the last part of April when I got back to my old Co. ?B? again, and they were sitting in a small town just the other side of the Rhine River.

We never moved into Combat again and in a couple weeks, the War in Europe was over. Our Division was put in the Army of Occupation in Germany until July 4th, when we left Germany and headed back for the states. On August 3rd, 1945, we landed in Boston and each of us headed for our own homes to begin our 30 day leaves.

This is the story of my days in Combat with the Infantry. It is written exactly as I remember it. The war has now been over for four years, but these few pages will undoubtedly be a highlight in my memory for the rest of my life.

I am just one of the millions of guys who have had many of these same experiences, and to most G.I.?s, this would probably be only a minor part of the experiences which they have had. I received 3 medals and I did nothing to earn one. I am just an ex-G.I., who prays and prays that there will never be another war.