Descending from the Clouds

by Wurst, Spencer F. ; Wurst, Gayle;

  The attack did not get underway until the afternoon of June 10. My squad, the 1st, was in the lead. We came to a hedgerow, glanced across, and discovered the high embankment of the railroad track to our left front. Fabis and Watro, who was acting as second scout, were the first two men across. Krueger, who had taken over from J. E. Jones as assistant squad leader, started across next. About halfway across, he drew some machine gun fire from the direction of the tracks, but he made it safely. We stopped for a few minutes, and tried to pick out the machine gun position. We couldn’t locate it, but we fired some rifle rounds in that direction, and it did stop firing. I decided I had to be the next one across. I got about twenty steps out, heading across the field, when I was taken under very heavy machine gun fire.

  You really know you’re being shot at when the bullets start cracking all around you. I tried to speed up, but I was carrying so much equipment that I tripped and fell. For a split second, I tried to play dead, but I soon changed my mind because the bastard never let up on the gun. The bullets were hitting all around me. I jumped to my feet and started across the field. I vividly remember looking up in the direction I was headed, and there was Krueger. He jumped right out in the open, armed with a Tommy gun, and sprayed bullets in the direction of the railroad tracks. Whether he hit anything I do not know, but he sure did make the Germans keep their heads down and stop firing.

  I got to the hedgerow without being hit, dove into the mass, and came up and over on the far side. The shooting stopped. There we were, the four of us on one side of the field, and the rest of the platoon on the other side behind us. We could hear German commands, and it sounded like they were moving in on us from the direction of the railroad tracks. I knew Lieutenant Carroll, our current platoon leader, would not try to send any more men across that field. We were cut off.

  This is one of the times I unloaded. I threw everything away that was not essential for fighting. I dumped all my souvenirs, any extra stuff, in anticipation of running awfully fast or being taken prisoner. As we listened for the Germans coming down from the tracks, we got into the hedgerow as deeply as we could, and even started digging. We were ready.

  Watro was out a little further than the rest of us, having gone across a short field. He motioned to us that he was going to change his position to see if he could locate the machine gun. He disappeared from sight, and then we heard shooting off in his direction. Twenty minutes or a half hour later, he crawled back into view with a big grin on his face. He held up three fingers. He’d gotten a German MG crew with his scoped rifle.

  As we waited in position, facing the railroad tracks, we heard firing down to our left front. Then we later heard an attack off to what would have been our front. There was so much noise that it sounded like the 325th was attacking again. I later discovered that Lieutenant Carroll had moved the platoon back to one end of the field we had crossed, where a huge gravel pit was located. He was attempting to cross the field to get to our side, running along the edge of the pit when the Germans opened up on him. This left him only two options: continue running and get hit, or go over the bank and down into the gravel pit. This was almost a sheer drop, about thirty or forty feet deep, but Lieutenant Carroll went right down over the edge. He was pretty badly shaken up, and had numerous cuts and bruises, but he wasn’t seriously injured.

  Meanwhile, the four of us were sweating it out on the wrong side of the field. We had to remain as quiet as possible. We thought the Germans were moving in on us, and the last thing we wanted was to draw their attention. The same thing could be said for Carroll and the rest of the platoon. If that machine gun had moved one hedgerow south, they could have wiped out our platoon, or at the very least done serious damage. Carroll was doubtless under pressure to keep up the attack; he had no option but to leave us to our fates. After not hearing from us, he assumed we were dead or captured, and reported us missing in action.

  We waited until dusk, then we made a break back in the direction we had come from. We finally managed to work our way back to the company position. This episode was fatal to other members of our platoon. After the four of us had gotten across the field, Carroll sent two men down toward the railroad tracks in the attempt to silence the machine gun, but they made the wrong move. Private Eli Potty and Pfc Arthur Lemieux, who was from my own squad, were both killed trying to save our lives.

  The company stayed in position as dusk fell, when we got orders to advance under cover of darkness. Any night movement in combat is very tricky. Nevertheless, we followed our SOP and sent our scouts out one hedgerow in advance of the platoon. As we went forward we ran into some small arms and mortar fire, and were given an order to flank the resistance to our front. We crawled for about two hundred yards through a swampy meadow in the attempt to take advantage of all possible cover and concealment. When we completed the flanking movement, the Germans had already withdrawn. We did not take any casualties, but we ended up completely soaked—covered from head to foot with thick, black slime.

  Luckily this night we had Fabis as first scout. He and Krueger, who was acting as our second scout, were moving across a field when a German spied Fabis as he approached a hedgerow. The hedgerow obstructed the German’s view, so he didn’t understand that Fabis was an enemy soldier, and he asked him what he was doing there. Fabis could speak and understand German very well, because he’d been born in Czechoslovakia, where he had spent his early years before emigrating to the United States. In nine out of ten cases, someone who heard German would have started shooting then and there. I know I would have. But Fabis had the good sense to comply with the demand. He calmly turned around and walked back, rather than running—therefore not drawing further suspicion—and reported the incident. This allowed us to get into an excellent position for a later attack on the Germans as a group.

  Lieutenant Carroll sent me out to verify the presence of the enemy, so I went across the field to the hedgerow, turned right, and went a few yards until I found a gap. It sloped down quite deeply to the middle before it came up again on the field I was about to enter. I had started down the near slope, which was very short—when I glanced up and discovered a very large German soldier blocking my way at a distance of about fifteen feet. The encounter was especially memorable, because he was in an elevated position on the other side of the bank. As I looked up he was looming over me, silhouetted against the clear night sky.

  He saw me and I saw him. I very cautiously moved so my rifle was at the ready—that damned ’03 bolt-action rifle with the grenade launcher. I backed up and he backed up. When I got to the corner of the hedgerow and the passageway, I executed a left face and returned back along the hedgerow, which was about four feet high at this particular spot.

  Lieutenant Carroll had been bringing up the platoon. I moved quickly down the hedgerow and whispered that the Germans were on the other side. By this time, my squad and most of the rest of the platoon were deployed along the hedgerow. I think Carroll and I stuck our heads through for a look at the same time. And what a sight we saw—a whole line of Germans with their backs to us, resting up against the hedgerow. We, too, had rested this way many times. I got my rifle in position ready to shoot, and Lieutenant Carroll opened up with his .45-caliber Tommy gun. He had a fifty-round circular magazine on it, the only one I ever saw in the service. When this happened, our whole platoon started shooting.

  The muzzle of my rifle was only two feet away from the first man I shot. I continued firing until I emptied the ’03. In my haste to reload, I started putting in the blank cartridges that I always carried in my left hand so I could fire a rifle grenade. I realized my mistake, and pulled the .45 from my shoulder holster and emptied one magazine of seven rounds from that.

  Fabis was just to my right. He actually reached through the hedgerow and grabbed a German who was crying for help with his wound and wanted to surrender. It was very quick thinking on Fabis’ part. In the meantime, the German leader was trying to get his men under control. I could tell he was standing upr
ight from the sound of his voice. Fabis told me later he was cursing his men and ordering them to get their weapons into position and return fire. We shot a whole lot of rounds in his direction. Evidently, we did not hit him, because before too long they got their machine guns into position on either corner of the field and started laying down very effective fire onto our side of the hedgerow.

  One of the other platoons was to our right, fifty to a hundred yards away, and the word came down to withdraw. This we did, pulling and dragging our prisoners with us. The wounded man Fabis grabbed was the first man I had shot at close range, and he was hit in the ass. We took two more prisoners, who were not wounded. We moved maybe three fields or hedgerows back and set up a hasty defense.

  The Germans kept moving forward just as we had, from hedgerow to hedgerow, taking one field at a time. They had set up their automatic weapons in the corners and blasted away. Luckily, they stopped one field in front of us.

  It was very cold that night, and we had not dried off much from the long, muddy crawl we had undertaken. We kept the POWs with us until daylight. The wounded prisoner was hurting, but all we could do was bandage his wound.

  I later found out that Captain Barnett, our company commander, had lost contact with the battalion, and was determined to reach Le Ham. In the absence of orders, he had continued the attack that night, and Company F actually got as far as the road on the southeast side of the town. This is why we were sticking out there so far in advance of the rest of the battalion.

  Captain Barnett must have sent out a patrol, because we finally made contact with the battalion on June 11, and actually had to move even farther back. The 3d Platoon established a hasty defensive position on the left side of Company F, which was on the left flank of the battalion. At about 10:30 A.M., we heard the 325th Glider Infantry Regiment open the attack on our left flank; there was a large volume of return small arms fire, and artillery and mortar fire began to increase not only on our left flank but also in our direction. I believe the enemy thought more units than the 325 were going to attack, and so we got a lot of crap thrown at us. The 325 was some distance away, but even above the sounds of the firing, we could hear the officers and NCOs kicking ass. I wondered about this, because in a similar situation, we would have tried to keep the noise down.

  Captain Barnett got a little anxious about the action in front of the company position, so he told me to take a patrol out to the front and find out what was going on. As far as I was concerned, I knew exactly what the hell was happening. I didn’t think too much of the order to take a patrol out under those conditions, but I got a couple of my men and we very slowly and cautiously moved out, exposing ourselves to small arms and artillery fire.

  We went about two hedgerows farther out and got into a pretty well concealed position, from which we could observe to our front. I felt we had gone plenty far enough. We were out an hour or so, then returned to our company’s defensive position, which was still taking some fire. I reported to Captain Barnett that I couldn’t see anything at least two hedgerows out, and I guess that satisfied him. We went back to our holes.

  I can’t remember moving back from this particular position. The 325 had a tough time of it, having to advance over swampy ground with little cover for up to six hundred yards through walls of heavy small arms fire. The 2d Battalion, 505, laid down a base of fire for this attack, and the 456th Field Artillery Battalion fired a concentration barrage into the east side of Le Ham, giving the enemy a real pounding. The 325 overran the town at about 6:00 P.M., but by that time most of the Germans had pulled out, leaving their artillery behind.

  Division ordered the bridge on the Merderet near Le Ham blown up, and our three battalions made a defensive line from there to north of Montebourg Station, where we linked up with the 8th Infantry Regiment. We stayed in this defensive position until June 13, when the plans for VII Corps were changed. Heavy German resistance in the north made our corps commander, MajGen J. Lawton Collins, decide to cut off the Cotentin Peninsula near Barneville-sur-Mer before pushing toward Cherbourg, which now was slated to be taken by the 9th Infantry Division. The new objective for the 82d Airborne was St. Sauveur-le-Vicomte. We were to attack abreast of the 9th, taking the terrain up to and including the part of the city lying northeast of the Douve River. Our mission did not include crossing the bridge into the heart of town; it was to create a defensive line across from it, running along the riverbank.

  The 505 was released from control of the 4th Infantry Division and the 2d Battalion, 325, returned to its regiment. We were relieved by elements of the 90th Infantry Division after we had been on the line for eight days. They looked a hell of a lot worse coming up to the front than we did going back. In some cases, it looked like the infantrymen were overweight and hadn’t had proper physical training.

  On June 13, the 505 moved through Picauville on trucks on the way to our bivouac area, and we also passed through Ste. Mère-Eglise, which now was thronging with rear-echelon troops and other units coming into battle. A bad rain was falling and the night was cold and wet. Our B bags finally arrived on June 14, but we didn’t get a chance to use them. That night, the regiment was ordered to prepare for the attack on St. Sauveur-le-Vicomte at 9:00 P.M. We moved to a forward position west of Etienville, but the 505 was not committed to battle until the afternoon of June 15.

  The attack began about noon on June 14, with the 325 and the 507 committed side by side on the road between Pont l’Abbé and St. Sauveur-le-Vicomte. The 507 was heavily counterattacked, which slowed the movement down. Rations were not getting down to us. We were so desperate for food that we went out to search the bodies of the 507 dead. This was a dangerous thing to do, as there was still plenty of resistance out in front of us. We waited until after dark, then a couple members of my squad and I carefully crawled out of our hedgerows and went through the troopers’ pockets. We did find some K rations the Germans had missed. We crawled back and split them up among the squad.

  The one detail that stands out in my mind is that all the 507 paratroopers had sharpened their bayonets to a very keen edge. Some of these were actually fixed on the end of their rifles. I guess sharpening them had been part of the pre-combat thinking of these dead soldiers, more or less to psych themselves up. I remember one in particular that had been ground to an especially fine point.

  The 505 jumped off on the afternoon of June 15 and attacked right through the 507. The 1st Battalion was to the right, and our 2d Battalion was to the left, covering some of the 507 territory. The 3d Battalion, 505, was in reserve. It was obvious that the 507 was not in very good shape. To start with, it had had a bad drop. They’d been pretty well scattered, although one large group, the 3d Battalion, I think, had formed the perimeter on the far side of the swamp, where it had held out against repeated German attacks. Now they, like us, were being used as regular leg infantry.

  In the 2d Battalion, Company F’s right flank was the road. The 1st Squad of the 3d Platoon—my squad—was the right-flank squad, guiding on the road. The 1st Platoon of Company F was on our left, and the 2d was probably in support, but I’m not sure. By this time I’d exchanged my ’03 rifle for a good old M1, which made me feel much more secure.

  The battle itself was the same old story: the Germans had armor, and we were fighting it out hedgerow by hedgerow, using the main road as a guide. We ran into direct fire by 37mm flak cannons, and there were 75mm antitank guns, and of course, machine guns and mortars. The Headquarters Company mortar platoon sent shells into the German position, but we had no supporting armor. Finally, Colonel Vandervoort borrowed a couple of Sherman tanks from Colonel Alexander and used them to lead an attack with a platoon from Company D that wiped out the German stronghold.

  After this, the going was much faster. As it began to get dark, we passed a German self-propelled gun that was blazing furiously. My squad was in front, moving against relatively light resistance. I don’t know who or what had knocked it out. We held up at dark or shortly thereafter on June
15, and went into a hasty defense. We were only about two miles outside St. Sauveur-le-Vicomte, but the 60th Infantry Regiment was far behind us, which left our right flank open. The division orders to hold up for the night greatly annoyed General Ridgway. He got permission to go on to St. Sauveur the next morning regardless, and the 3d Battalion moved up from reserve to guard our open flank.

  That night was exceptionally cold and miserable. We were on at least fifty percent alert, so only half of us could sleep at any one time. None of us got too much sleep, and all of us were hungry. Little did we know that the next morning, we would not only clear the way to St. Sauveur-le-Vicomte, but actually cross the Douve River.

  Chapter 18

  Long Days in Normandy: The Battle of St. Sauveur-le-Vicomte, the Bois de Limors, and Hill 131

  On June 16, we took up the attack toward St. Sauveur-le-Vicomte at 7:00 A.M. As we got closer to town we encountered increased resistance and had to push the Germans back again, hedgerow by hedgerow. We also encountered fields of Rommel’s asparagus, poles twenty or thirty feet high, planted in pastures and other open spaces, strung together, and wired with Teller mines rigged to detonate when gliders or parachute troops hit them. The poles would also sheer off a glider’s wings.

  As we approached the town, the 505 was on the right and the 325 was on the left. The ground dropped off to the Douve, which was more like a good-sized creek in the northeastern United States. In addition to our little 75s, we finally started picking up artillery support from the infantry divisions, including corps artillery. The 505’s mission was to hold a defensive line at the Douve on the heights across from St. Sauveur-le-Vicomte, but not to seize the bridge or take the town.