Master in Many Kinds Of Warfare

THERE is nothing in warfare quite as stimulating as a good, fast pursuit of a demoralized enemy. When the pursued include Hitler's SS thugs, his swaggering Wehrmacht units and the robot bomb baby-killers of the Calais area, trying to make their way back to the Fatherland, it is a downright pleasure.

Even in a changing situation such as this, censorship considerations prevent a minute description of units and their employment, but even the enemy knows that during the past few days some of the world's best Infantry and armored troops, attached to a certain fighting corps, have made history of a high order.

One day they were on the SEINE, the next astride the SOMME, and the next in BELGIUM. Let military observers, who point to former German sweeps through the lowlands and into Prance as tops in military efficiency, chew on that awhile.
It must also be considered that in this long gallop, these forces have demolished tons of German equipment, fought innumerable small battles, run over German columns who proved a nuisance on the highways, killed thousands of the enemy and taken other thousands prisoners.

That these American troops. principally the 30th Infantry Division were the first to enter Belgium is a matter of no great moment, militarily, but is a source of considerable satisfaction to some of the boys who have been "often a brides maid but never a bride" and who have slugged it out face-to-face with the German Army of the west, harried him in his long retreat and given and taken heavy losses, only to see the juicier objectives fall like ripe plums to other outfits.
It is, in a sense, poetic justice.

It will be remembered that certain Johnny-Come-Lately who never faced the bitter, grueling, close-in-warfare of the hedgerow country, had become somewhat boastful of their prowess in cross-country marches. They stated, in a friendly way, of course, that we were sloggers incapable of such high dramatic moments as a long dash through broken enemy lines.

We have now proved that first-class troops can do three things equally well: (1) Stand toe-to-toe and destroy the Germans when they stay in there and fight; (2) outflank and out-move them when they begin a delaying-action retreat; (3) just plain slaughter them when they are on the rim.

We point out these things for the benefit of those who-in a rapidly moving situation highlighted by certain military histrionics-may overlook the fact that right here in Belgium. may be found some of the hardest-hittin', fastest-movin', straightest-shootin', best damned soldiers in the whole history of warfare.

By Roy D. Craft, Le Tomahawk, XIX Corps.
THE STARS AND STRIPES Sept. 8, 1944

LONDON-(AP)-The U. S. strategic air force acknowledged Wednesday that at the height of the Allied aerial attempt to smash the German winter offensive some American Liberators and Marauders nearly destroyed the Belgian town of Malmedy "in error," while it still was held by American troops of the 120th Infantry.

Headquarters of the strategic air force said six medium bombers of the Ninth air force dropped bombs on the town Dec. 23 "as a result of mistaken identity," and that heavy bombers of the Eighth sir force attacked the town the following day, "also in error."

The incident occurred, a communiqué said, during a 48-hour period when the Eighth and Ninth air forces flew more than 7,000 sorties in support of Allied ground troops.
American troops holding the town of 5,000 never lost it, although the Germans approached within five-eighths of a mile. Prior to the bombings there had been reports the town had fallen to the Germans, and the army newspaper Stars and Stripes printed a story to that effect.

0N THE BELGIAN FRONT, Dee 24 (INS). - Anything can happen to tank-men in the fluid fighting that b swirling hereabouts, and it frequently does. But Lt. Col. William Duncan, of Sioux Falls, S.D., thinks he has the topper.

Duncan was placing his tanks of the 743rd tank bn. In position to stem the Nazi tide when an elderly woman tugged at his arm and pleaded for aid to her daughter who was having a baby in a nearby town and was in a critical condition.

Dunoan naturally suspected that it was a Nazi trick to lure him into a trap, and paid no attention until he had finished disposing his tanks. But the woman insisted so fervidly that he yielded and went toward the town - but riding In a tank for protection.

The tank officer was perplexed. He finally solved the problem by her. putting the girl into the tank and sending it back to the nearest hospital where a baby boy was delivered. Then Duncan went back to the war.

Both the mother and her little tank-man are doing well.
THE STARS AND STRIPES Dec. 25, 1944

By Caroline Coyne (Boston Herald staff writer)

WITH THE U. S. FORCES IN GERMANY - In the legends these 30th division front line troops are building there looms large and fantastic the Reluctant Dragon, a big German tank with a "Yah, Yah, I dare you" attitude but no stomach for combat.

Its rare appearances and frightened retreats are reported with high glee, for the lone tank has been able to do us no real harm and the prospect of its emergence from hiding keeps troops on the alert.

A young lieutenant looking out the window not long ago saw the Dragon with the heads of two Jerries sticking out of its turret. He shot both. The Dragon belched fire, turning its guns on the observation post with such power the lieutenant was knocked down two flights of steps.

His ankle was twisted. He got up limped to a coal bin that Col. W. M. Johnson, of Missoula, Mont., commanding officer of the 277th Infantry, was using as a command post and breathlessly reported:

"Sir, I wanted you to know about this before I go back to get those unprintables."

Col. Johnson, one of the finest hosts and best story-tellers at the front, spun yarns about the Dragon tonight as we sat around after dinner in a candlelit basement room at his command post. There was only one story he wouldn't tell: that was how he was able to get as a GI cook an associate chef from the Sherry Netherlands Hotel in New York.

Artillery fire was heavy, but there wasn't very much to worry us because most of the heavy stuff was fired by Americans. The Germans retaliated and one of their shells landed about 200 yards from us. The house vibrated, the candles flickered, but the officers continued to spin yarns.

In the almost cozy room were the Colonel, the Division's chief of staff, Col. Richard W. Stephens, Pierre, So. Dak., three lieutenant-colonels, two captains and the regimental chaplain.

Every regiment boasts of its "firsts" but these men who were among the first to burst through the German defenses at St. Lo and again here at the Siegfried Line seemed proudest of their Chaplain, Capt. Charles F. Engelwald's privilege of being the first American priest to celebrate Masses for troops In Belgium, Holland and Germany. He read his first Mass on German soil with the front of the jeep as the resting place for his portable altar.

Fr. Engelwald seemed prouder, however, of having read Mass last Sunday in a real church at a real altar worthy of that sublime service. It was in a German church at Merkstein.

As the stories began to spin out, he would murmur to me "Listen to this one, it's good:" And he would chuckle before Col. Johnson or the other men really got going.
One of the 30th's favorite characters is Lt. Robert A. Peters, of Lakewood, Ohio, its "Fearless Fosdick," who used to be a piano player in a jazz orchestra. He always manages to find a command post where there is a playable piano. How he does it Is top military secret.

The other day while he was playing he saw a tank coming up the road. He stopped long enough to telephone his sergeant. "Bring me a bazooka." He went back to his music, then thought of Col. Johnson.  "Sir," he said on the telephone "there's a tank outside - a German tank."

By that time his sergeant arrived with the bazooka. Lt. Peters took it, knocked out the tank, then returned to his piano.

The telephone is the best source of stories, Col. Johnson said. There was the time he heard a GI at an observation post report, "A man on a horse Is going down the road." There was the burp of gunfire. "Oh, oh," the GI continued, "there's a horse going down the road."

Another time the lookout at the post telephoned to the artillery, "Six men pushing ammunition cart." He gave the position and the artillery reported itself ready to fire. The lookout continued, warningly "Six more coming to help them. Wheel They got there in time."

Now that they are in Germany with fraternization strictly forbidden and desolation all about them memories of Prance seem rosier .and funnier.

At one place the regimental headquarters was in a farmyard where the dominant scenery was a manure pile Col. Johnson swore was a generation in the making. At the rear of- the yard were some big ovens inside of which the radio apparatus of the signal corps had been set up.

As he walked across the yard one morning, the Colonel said, a German 88 sailed in and landed in that manure pile, spreading it all over the place. Everything was a mess and everyone was in furious temper.  A GI poked his head out of the holes of the big oven, surveyed the mess and commented, "Kinda slippery here, ain't it?"

The young lieutenant-colonel sprawled on the floor remembered it was at that place that they found a grenade that didn't go off. Everyone walked gingerly around it but Col. Johnson picked it up. He walked over to his young assistant, pointed to a bit of dried mud and said. "Mat little bit of mud kept that from going off."

Then he called a second lieutenant, who came forward, saluted smartly and stared sickly at the grenade, "Here," the Colonel said, "get rid of that." He put it in the lieutenant's hand. The young man automatically said "Thank you," gulped, then added

As a mere civilian I've always found the army's red tape inexorable as well as complicated, but Col. Johnson declared there were many AWOLs among the officers and men of the regiment - men AWOL from behind the lines to this fight outfit.  There was nothing of the Reluctant Dragon about the GI who wandered into headquarters this afternoon demanding to rejoin his outfit. He had been released from a hospital in France as recovered from wounds and had hitch-hiked here to Germany to fight with his comrades. In the army you don't just go out and rejoin your outfit.

When he left the hospital, he went with a group of other wearers of the Purple Heart to a railroad train that was to take them to a dreaded replacement center, where army specialists would determine what outfit they would be assigned to.

According to the story, the officer at the train wouldn't let him aboard without the two blankets that are standard equipment for the soldier. That was his opportunity.
"I left my blankets here when I was sent to the hospital," he said. "I came back Red Ball." He seemed proud that he had been able to hitch a ride on one of the fast trucks coming up the Red Ball Express highway.

He was tolded,  "You're AWOL." but he grinned when he was allowed to rejoin his outfit.

"It's funny;" the Colonel commented how attached you can become to a couple of blankets!"

By HAL BOYLE
WITH AMERICAN 30TH INFANTRY DIVISION IN BELGIUM, Jan. 9. - (Delayed) - (AP) What makes an infantry regiment good?

"Good battalion commanders," says Col. Walter M. Johnson of Missoula, Mont., who leads the 117th Regiment, currently regarded by many military men as the finest In the American battle line.  "And I have three of the best in the Army," adds Johnson.

No one who knows the regiment's combat record would doubt that. The battalion commanders - Lt. Col. Robert E. Frankland of Jackson, Tenn., Maj. Ben T. Ammons, also of Jackson, Tenn., and Lt. Col. Samuel T. McDowell of Rock Hill, S. C.,-have been with him In ten battles-and ten victories.

But every man In the 30th Division's famous "break through" regiment names Johnson himself as the wellspring of their success.

'"The Little Corporal," they call him behind his back. He is small --standing under five feet, five Inches and weighs "about 140 pounds after eating all the fruit cakes I got for Christmas"-but he is as frisky and energetic as a fox terrier.

His wry grin, high forehead and neat black moustache are as familiar to his advanced platoons as to his headquarters staff.  If the "Little Corporal" has any falling, it's his desire to beat his own mortars to the objective.

GALLOP ACROSS FRANCE

"That gallop across France was the most fun," he sighs. "You could go out and take towns ahead of the regiment."

Once "The Little Corporal;' who has had command posts in 71 places since his far-traveling outfit landed last June, set up headquarters in front of his regiment. When his troops took half of Maastricht In Holland, Johnson got in a boat with a staff officer. Maj. Warren Giles of Athens, Tenn., rowed across the Meas and took the other half of the town himself.

Back at Fort Benning, Ga., the 117th was a demonstration regiment used to show infantry school scholars how to cross rivers and maneuver in battle. It is still showing them.

Its crossing of the Vire River paved the way for the successful attack on St. Lo and its fording of the Wurm led to the cracking of the Siegfried Line north of Aachen.
But the "break through" boys are proudest of the fact that they never failed to take an assigned objective and never lost it after taking it.

Twice they knocked the elite First SS Adolf Hitler division back on its haunches; last August when the Germans tried to cut the American Armies in half at Mortain, France, and last month at Stavelot when they trapped and destroyed a large portion of this rebuilt panzer division.

Johnson's regiment has taken about 3,500 prisoners-more than its own strength-and killed or wounded as many more. His men have won almost 700 decorations for valor. but their ten victories have not been cheaply bought.

Johnson has been awarded the Silver star, one Oak Cluster and a Bronze Star. He got his first Silver Star in the fight to hold Mortain.

"We called our command post chateau Nebelwerfer;' he laughed. "They were dropping Nebelwerfers all over the place-the manure piles, the barns, the front yards, killing cows and chickens. But they didn't hit the house.

"I guess that was the first time they ever gave the Silver Star to anybody for staying in a house for two weeks, but it was too hot to leave."

WITH 30TH INF. DIV. - Ten Nazi tanks and most of their infantry were destroyed when they counterattacked in a futile effort to regain the Belgian town of Thirimont, according to Maj. Ezekiel Glazier, of Palm Beach. Fla.

Day before, 120th infantrymen had bludgeoned their way into the town on the north flank of the German bulge after a house-to-house battle in which they sometimes found it necessary to burn down houses to oust the enemy.

When the Nazis came back for the town they were repulsed by 120th doughs and their supporting 743rd tanks, the 823rd TDs, and 230th PA.

STARS AND STRIPES JANUARY 30. 1945

By Russell Jones Stars and Stripes Staff Writer
WITH AMERICAN FORCES IN BELGIUM, Dec. 24 - Seven members of the 88 Hitler's elite - today signed sworn statements that they had participated in the Dec. 18 massacre of more than 20 civilians in the Belgian town of Parfondruy, three kilometers south of Stavelot.

The men were among the nine prisoners captured from the engineer platoon of an 88 armored reconnaissance battalion by the 30th Infantry Division. They freely admitted their part in the slaughter and added that members of the same unit were responsible for the slaying of 23 old men, women and children at Stavelot on Dec. 19.

The statements, which were witnessed by an SS officer, offered only the explanation that the platoon commander also captured but so severely wounded that he died in an American hospital before he could make a statement - had given the order that the soldiers should shoot anyone who got in their way.

The group killed at Parfondruy included all the civilians the Germans could find in the town.  The only crime of the 23 murdered at Stavelot had been that they were in the basement of a house which the Germans had captured and the crying of the five small children annoyed the Nazis.

Prisoners said that they were first ordered to kill the civilians with clubs to save ammunition. One Nazi calmly asked for a cigarette as he finished his testimony.

The APO which serves the 30th "Old Hickory" Division has a unique complaint. There are so many packages of poorly-wrapped peanuts that on some days as much as 100 pounds of peanuts kick around loose in the APO. Must make good peanut butter.

By Hal Boyle
A Belgian Town Retaken from the Germans, Dec. 19. - (Delayed) - (AP) - A doughty little colonel who fought the Germans all the way from Normandy slashed one steel tentacle from Hitler's advancing octopus today after a two day battle.

The battle was fought by the 30th Division in the streets of this small Belgian town (Stavelot) which in the last war was one of the first to echo to the iron heels of the kaiser's -goosesteppers.

'"They may try to hit us again but we have knocked them back four times in a row now and I think they may want to take a little time out;' said Colonel Walter M. Johnson of Missoula, Mont., whose idea of relaxing after 48 hours without sleep was to visit a frontline command post.

Outside a small Belgian tank destroyer banged away at an enemy supply column and over the next ridge Johnson's doughboys slowly were cleaning the Nazis from the last houses on the fringe of the town.

Thirty-six hours ago the Germans held the whole village, which squats across a road they would like to continue using. In flushing the Germans out the colonel's men killed scores of enemy troops and knocked out 11 tanks during repeated armored attacks by the Germans.

"We got here after a 48 mile march," he said.  He arrived at the scene of ruin and terror faced with the difficult military problem of fighting in unfamiliar country against an enemy of undetermined strength. The last few miles to the town were lined with thousands of still-flaming gasoline cans which American supply troops had fired rather than permit the German tanks to capture.

The colonel closed at once with the enemy. By noon his men were taking the first head - on series of German counterattacks.  "Just a few minutes ago they tried for the fourth time," the colonel related. "You know they're stubborn, but we started dropping artillery shells among their tanks and that broke it up quick. Each time they attacked with about ten tanks just little counterattacks."

The colonel said the Germans used "very little artillery, but plenty of mortar and direct tank fire besides small arms weapons."  "One thing that pleased us," he said, "was the reaction of the Belgian civilians as we rolled into town. You could tell most of them really were glad to see us.

"Last night the Germans tried one of their oldest ruses - to get across the line in captured American vehicles. They attempted to ride over In three American half-tracks and some Jeeps and again this morning in three Jeeps. We got them all. They were wearing German army uniforms, although riding in our vehicles.

"During the battle we also retook an abandoned American evacuation hospital and found dress uniforms and Christmas presents. The Germans had been too busy to loot the hospital."
MISSOULA (MONT) JOURNAL

By RUSSELL HILL
WITH AMERICAN INFANTRY near Malmedy, Jan. 15. Two miles beyond Malmedy the main road forks, one branch running east to the German frontier, the other south to Saint Vlth. Two subsidiary roads come in at the same place, which has, therefore, been dubbed Five Corners.

The little cluster of houses, which are now in ruins, were known to the local inhabitants, when there were inhabitants, as Baugenz. But the men of the 30th Division who fought here will always remember it as Five Corners. They will always remember it because it was here that they found the mutilated bodies of the American artillerymen who were murdered by the 88 on December 17-

The bodies, which lay on the frozen earth under eighteen inches of snow, were being dug out this morning by American soldiers with anger in their hearts while German guns shelled the crossroads.

Over fifty of the gruesome corpses had already been uncovered and a colonel from 1st Army headquarters estimated ninety to a hundred would eventually be found.

The dead men looked like wax figures molded into grotesque postures. The majority were bunched together in the corner of the field beside the road. They had been lined up there and the 88 tanks on the road had turned their machine-guns on them from about twenty yards away. Then the Nazis had come into the field to finish off the wounded.

Several of the men had bashed in heads. Others had their eyes gouged out. All this could be plainly seen because the bodies had been perfectly preserved by the cold. But exactly how the mutilation was done probably will never be known because the only witnesses were eighteen of the men who feigned death and later escaped. They could not watch what was going on or they would have given away the fact that they were still alive.

Several bodies were found in another field separated from this one by a low hedge. A soldier was standing by a deep hole he had dug near two of the corpses. When asked whether he was digging graves for them, he answered, "No. This is my foxhole. We came 1n here last night and I found them this morning when I started to make my hole larger."

Actually the victims will not be buried here, but after official photographs have been taken of them for the record they will be removed to a military cemetery.

While the snow was being shoveled away a column of twenty German prisoners came marching down the same road from which the Nazi tanks had fired. The American lieutenant who spoke German halted the column and shouted at the Germans, telling them to look at what their people had done to American prisoners. The scared Germans stood there, obviously fearing that the angry lieutenant would order the same thing to be done to them as a reprisal.

When the column had passed on the lieutenant said. "We ought to make every one of those bastards carry one of these all the way back to Malmedy. I am of German descent myself and it makes me ashamed to think of it when I see something like this."
NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE