by Ray Lambert
One night I decided to leave our aid station to check on the company that was fighting on the hill above, not more than two or three hundred yards away, if that. They’d had heavy action during the day and I wanted to see how my medic was doing.
It was just getting dark. I could see well enough to pick my way across the slope, heading for the peak where the company had dug in. I stopped for a moment, getting my bearings. I saw one or two of our soldiers about two hundred feet away, on the other side of the hill.
Just then I heard a scraping noise above me. I stepped back against a boulder, trapped momentarily as a figure loomed above. He had a rifle in his hands, bayonet fixed at the end.
He yelled something, and I realized he was German.
Then he leapt down, charging at me, blade first.
Five
My Life in My Hands
Instincts
I ducked to the side like a matador, grabbing for the rifle barrel. I caught hold of the wood under it, but the German pulled back quickly, and the blade of the bayonet sliced through my hand.
I tucked to the side, still trapped. Time seemed to move in two different directions simultaneously, quick and slow.
The German stumbled, gathered his strength, then charged toward me.
My fingers were sliced, my field jacket cut. I was still alive, though. I dodged.
A thousand thoughts and none flashed inside my mind.
Without really thinking, I reached to the holster I’d been carrying for weeks and pulled out the Colt. As the German charged again, I fired point blank into him, twice.
I ducked as he fell off to the side, tumbling a few feet down the hill.
How did I pull the trigger with my finger half sawed off? How did I have the presence of mind even to draw the weapon, let alone aim it?
Questions I still ask.
* * *
I bandaged my hand, stopping the bleeding, then looked at the German.
Dead. He was the first man I’d killed in combat.
Clearly an enemy.
But he was about my age. Maybe not that much different in many ways.
I was no more than twenty-five yards from the GIs on top of the hill, but they hadn’t heard the fight. After making sure my enemy was dead, I walked back down to the aid station. By then it was dark. The air tent was lit by an oil lamp, with the light just bright enough to show how red the blood on my hand and gun was.
“What the hell happened to you?” the doctor on duty asked.
“I got in a fight with a German.”
I gave him the details. Our litter bearers went out to get him. When they brought him back, we checked for his ID. German dog tags were oval-shaped, and in two parts, so that one could be kept with the body and the other sent for records. As I looked for his wallet, I found a photo in his pocket. It was of him and two women.
I guessed they were his wife or girlfriend and a sister. The sort of photo I might have.
There was writing on the back, but nothing that explained who or what the people were. Without thinking, I tucked the picture away. Maybe at that moment I intended to track down the family, or more likely, thought I could give it to whoever would be responsible for repatriating his body. But none of that ever happened, and today it’s another of the very few mementos I have.
Along with the knife he’d tried to kill me with.
I don’t think I was scared during the fight. There was so much that happened in those few moments, with the importance of every inch of movement multiplied. But as soon as it was over, I broke out into a sweat.
A Silver Star
My hand was chopped so bad I had to go back to the regimental aid station to get thoroughly stitched up. My injuries had to be recorded, which brought me another Purple Heart. Then they told me to go back and get the other hand shot off.
Not exactly. But I went back happily anyway.
Over the years, the exact details of the fight have softened, but I can still look at my hand and wonder how I was able to get out alive. And I can wonder especially about the man who tried to kill me.
The German was either some sort of sniper or a straggler. How long he’d been there was impossible to tell. Very possibly he’d survived an earlier battle, maybe been wounded. Undoubtedly he was out of ammo—a good thing for me. Why he chose that moment to come out of hiding I’ll never know.
Possibly, he was as surprised to see me as I was to see him. Maybe he thought he had a clear run down the hill back to his lines. Or maybe he’d been waiting for hours to find one American to take a last revenge on before he died.
The front lines at that time twisted all through the hills. You couldn’t necessarily tell who held which piece of ground if there was no fighting or groups of soldiers nearby. Not only did the small units at the forefront of the fight move around, but the geography increased the uncertainty. Physical barriers or markers like a river were rare. Many times a road would belong to whoever was near it. If no one was firing at you, you might assume you were behind your own lines, only to have a very rude awakening.
Three days after the bayonet attack, the 1st Division and the rest of what was now called II Corps made a heavy attack against the Germans. Code named Operation Vulcan, this drive was like a spike in the side of the German forces. It was a slow, bloody push east, hammering the Germans as they retreated from the British in the south toward Tunis.
The 1st Division moved up the Tine River Valley in north-central Tunisia, making progress in fits and starts.
We’d become a different army by then. Months of war and getting our noses bashed in had taught us a lot—most important, how to kill.
Besides our division, II Corps included 1st Armored and the 9th and 34th Infantry Divisions. Patton had secretly returned west to prepare for the next operation, but Bradley was just as aggressive.
Still, the Germans fought back hard. They would constantly counterattack, or launch what were called spoiling attacks aimed to throw off our plans when a fresh push was in the wind. A spoiling attack was like a light jab; the Germans hoped it would cause us to rush to that spot, postponing or even calling off the main assault.
It was a nice trick. We didn’t fall for it too often.
I was back with my unit as the offensive got under way. By April 28, we’d reached the outskirts of Mateur, which was west of both Bizerte and Tunis and about equidistant from each, at least as the crow flies.
The Germans began pounding our units with artillery shells. The aid station itself was close to the shelling, so we pushed it to a safer spot. Then I went up in the Jeep to help one of the nearby companies gather the wounded.
Between the shells falling all around and the twisting terrain, I didn’t realize the road took me right through the path of a German advance. Ignorance was bliss—I got to the company and piled five guys in and onto the Jeep before taking off back to the aid station. I made it without a problem, or so I thought. Some bearers took the wounded and I was off again.
Going back up, I realized I was being fired at. Bullets flew past the Jeep. The artillery barrage had been meant to soften up our defenses for an attack, and here it came—right across the road I was driving, directly into the heart of where my guys were.
I found five soldiers lying on the battlefield as the Germans charged past. I got the GIs into the Jeep, then hauled out of there, racing down the roads as quickly as I could.
There were a lot more wounded back at the position; men were lying on the ground where they’d been hit by shells or shrapnel or gunfire. The Germans were already through the position, charging toward the survivors.
The way the roads were laid out in the hills, the only way to reach the men who’d fallen was to go back the way I came.
So I did.
This time bullets hit the Jeep. Somehow I made it to the field. I could only find two more men on the ground before I realized it was time to make a U-turn.
“This is the last time I can go,” I told myself.
By no
w it was all too obvious I was behind the enemy advance. At least one German machine gunner began throwing lead at me as I drove away. The only thing that saved me was the sheer confusion of the battle. Everything was exploding—artillery, mortars, rifle fire.
I made it to the aid station. There was no time to count the holes in the Jeep—I helped get the men from the vehicle and went to work on their wounds.
I guess they were impressed when they heard the story back at Division Headquarters. Three months later, I got a citation signed by Terry Allen himself. Sandwiched between the words “Confidential” was a message that read in part:
Under the provisions of AR 600-45, as amended, Staff Sergeant Arnold R. Lambert, 7006617, Medical Detachment, 16th Infantry, is awarded the Silver Star for gallantry in action.
Bouncing Betties
You would think that after so many battles, and so many bullets flying close, death would be something on your mind.
It wasn’t on mine. I didn’t think about dying, or even that I could die.
I don’t mean I wasn’t scared at times, but that was more an immediate, emotional reaction to things. Sitting around thinking about my death, how I would get shot or blown up, what my parents would think, who’d come to my funeral—none of that was on my mind.
It would have been realistic or at least understandable to have those thoughts. And truly, I knew people were going to die. But death was abstract. Or maybe more accurately—it was going to happen to someone else, not me.
Never me.
* * *
I have strong memories of different things, bits of battles unmoored from what came before and after. That loss of context must be what happens when you grow old, the tax you pay for living a long life.
I’m thinking it was around this time or not too long before that I went with one of my men to scout ahead for an aid station. We were doing that a lot now; it meant the battalion and the division were making real gains and moving up.
There was a tank battle going on somewhere ahead, and we were in a big flat area. We saw a guy walking in a field off the side of where we were. Suddenly, there was a puff of smoke. He’d stepped on a mine, a Bouncing Betty, I think.
The Bouncing Betties were nasty pieces of work. They were S-mines to the Germans, S for Schrapnellmine or Splittermine. You’d step on them, and the mine would spring up into the air, igniting right about groin level. It was designed to spray fragments of the metal surrounding the explosive into your crotch, castrating you but keeping you alive.
At least that’s what we thought. You can imagine what it would do psychologically, and not just to the man who was maimed.
We saw the dust as it settled and stopped. My driver started to get out to retrieve him.
“I’ll go,” I insisted. We argued very briefly, but I made it clear I was going—I wouldn’t send anyone else in my place, no matter the danger.
I got out and found the GI’s tracks through the dirt. I followed his tracks to where he lay. True to its design, the mine’s shrapnel had caught him in the groin area and around the legs. But he was alive, and I could tell he would live if we treated him. He put one arm around my neck and I picked him up, carrying him like a baby back through the tracks that took me to him. We put him in the Jeep and hustled back to the aid station.
I never figured out why he was alone there. Maybe he was catching up to his unit. Strange things happen in war, and you never know how or why.
* * *
High-ranking officers and VIPs often stopped at our aid station, even when things were hot, since it was about as close as you could get to the front line without—usually—exposing yourself to direct fire. General Allen would come in a lot.
But the highest-ranking general who came in wasn’t there to observe; he came to get patched up.
It was Lieutenant General Lesley McNair.
By this point, McNair had had a long and distinguished career. He’d been in World War I and had made brigadier general at age thirty-five—then and now incredibly young for such an important post. Just before the war, he’d been made chief of staff at Army General Headquarters, or GHQ, and now was head of Army Ground Forces, posts that made him responsible for increasing the size and training of our forces, and was largely responsible for organizing the army’s structure and the way we fought.
McNair had come to Africa to get a firsthand look at what was going on. While here, a German shell had hit nearby, killing a man as well as slightly wounding McNair.
It excited us a bit to treat someone of that stature. His wounds, fortunately, weren’t very severe. A little sulfa, a bandage, and he was fine.
I didn’t work on him, but I did talk to him. In times like that, these guys are very normal people. McNair didn’t put on any airs. He asked about how we were doing and for details on casualties, all that kind of stuff. Funny how getting wounded can show who you really are.
* * *
Battle wounds weren’t the only maladies we had to deal with. Simple, even small ailments could become big problems.
Like flea bites.
Toward the end of our campaign in Africa, men started turning up with red dots all over their bodies. They were caused by fleas—the area was infested with them. Goats roamed the countryside, not only in the locals’ farms but free, through the woods and underbrush. The problem got so bad that a delousing machine had to be brought up to the front. We’d have whole companies go through a delousing procedure, stripping and then getting treated. Their clothes would be treated separately, with high heat to kill the pests.
It wouldn’t have been a pleasant treatment back home. Imagine what it was like under war conditions.
Prisoner of War
As April turned to May, the war in Tunisia turned more and more in our favor. Yet no fight was ever easy.
A key battle was fought at and around Djebel Tahent, a hill known to us as 609. The strategic high spot, which housed positions that were shelling the 16th Infantry, was attacked by the 34th Division without much success. General Allen then sent our regiment’s 1st Battalion to take a nearby hill; his idea was that holding that hill would force the Germans to retreat or at least ease pressure on the rest of our units. They took the hill, but the Germans soon counterattacked.
One hundred and fifty prisoners were taken. Among them was my brother Bill.
I didn’t know it at the time. It wasn’t unusual not to see Bill for days and weeks, as our units were not often together. And while soldiers who came to the aid station often brought news, there was so much going on as the division pushed to cut off the retreating Germans that I didn’t even know that any of our men had been captured.
Bill and the men taken at Hill 609 didn’t stay prisoner for long. Taken to Tunis, they were marched to an old Italian freighter at the waterfront. Along with their commander, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Denholm, they joined about three hundred other American and British POWs aboard the ship May 5. The boat left port early the next morning, only to come under attack from Allied planes.
Bullets ripped through the deck and hull; the ship took on water. The captain turned back. Before he could reach port, fresh attacks scared the ship’s crew so fiercely that they abandoned ship, leaving the captain alone on the bridge with the German guards who’d come to watch the prisoners.
The planes kept attacking the ship, which was now dead in the water. That night, some of the British prisoners managed to swim to shore and get help. The air attacks stopped, and the prisoners were rescued, my brother among them. They were all soon back in action, Bill included.
Final Victory
By May 9, 1943, the Allies controlled Tunis and Bizerte. The 1st Division sat firmly in the Tine Valley; all the roads in the area were ours, and the only thing left to do was accept surrenders and mop up the last diehards.
Free once again, my brother joined me and the other medic staff sergeant at the regiment, our friend Larry Wills, on an informal reconnaissance in one of the villages the 16th Infantry was ho
lding. The Germans had left quickly, abandoning many of their possessions, including a number of vehicles.
One was an Indian motorcycle. Another was an Opel Olympia, a European car made by General Motors. A third was a one-and-a-half-ton troop truck.
My brother wanted the Indian. Just in case it was booby-trapped, we tied a rope to the bike and dragged it about ten feet. When it didn’t blow up, my brother hopped on. It started with a single kick.
I took the Opel. It was in good shape considering what it had certainly witnessed in the last few days. There was only one item that needed attention—it lacked a windshield.
A wrecked Jeep a short distance away supplied a replacement. It wasn’t a perfect fit, but with some rope holding it in place, it did the job well enough for me.
Larry got the truck. We drove all three vehicles back to our units, not knowing how long we’d have them, but planning to get the most from them in the meantime.
* * *
With Rommel gone and the Germans now completely out of Africa, it wasn’t long before we were ordered to return to Algeria. Arrangements were being made for the 1st Division to go back by ship and truck convoy. My brother, Larry, and I had a better idea. We convinced the regimental surgeon, our boss, to let us drive the vehicles back so they’d be available to our units. To our great surprise, he agreed.
And so began a several-hundred-mile road trip through war-torn North Africa. Now that we weren’t being shot at, Africa was a beautiful place. The hills of northern Tunis were green with the recent rains; at times the sun would glisten off rock faces as if they were finely cut jewels. The valleys and slopes gave way to a flat expanse of semi-green fields before sliding us to savannah and then desert, then back up to green as we veered in the direction of Algiers at the edge of the Mediterranean. The roads were often dirt or gravel; occasionally we’d make our own paths across flat fields before getting back to hardtop. If it weren’t for the reminders of war—broken tanks, busted houses—it would have seemed more like a camping trip than a military maneuver. Not quite a lark, but maybe the closest you could get to one under those circumstances.