Descending from the Clouds

by Wurst, Spencer F. ; Wurst, Gayle;

  When we got this order, we dug deeper. We knew the Germans would not only be alerted; they would also lay down a final protective fire of heavy artillery and mortar. We dug like crazy and tried to get overhead protection in our foxholes. We designated sectors and fields of fire for each rifle, machine gun, and BAR. I don’t remember if they used a flare for the signal, or if we synchronized our watches, but at an exact moment, all up and down our line, we opened up and fired off the designated number of rounds. The noise was deafening; for every round we fired at them, the Germans must have fired two rounds back. They never did tell us if the attack was successful. We just followed orders, and got a hell of a lot of return fire for our trouble.

  Eventually, we got the word that we were going to be relieved in place. The enemy’s observation was so good from Hill 131 that instead of withdrawing by platoon and company and marching back, we had to slip to the rear by squads. This way, the enemy would not have large numbers of troops to shoot at, and we would suffer fewer casualties from artillery and mortar fire. It was a good idea, but I initially wondered why we were not relieved at night, for this would have hidden our movements from observation.

  We infiltrated back to the rear under squad control to a designated area by following a compass reading. Even in daylight and with a compass bearing, the terrain prohibited us from seeing far, and I think some squads wandered around half the day and night, trying to find the assembly area. I ran into Chappie Wood near a pretty well defined point, as he encouraged the squads infiltrating back from the front. He was a fine chaplain, who made all four of the 505’s combat jumps.

  My squad’s movement didn’t go as well as I would have liked, but we managed to find our way back. They put us into an assembly or bivouac area under the cover of some trees. We received periodic rounds of artillery, but we didn’t suffer any casualties. There, at long last, we were able to get a few days’ rest.

  On July 2, our dreaded prediction came true: the 505 was given the mission to take Hill 131. Colonel Vandervoort decided to attack in a column of companies. The whole zone was much too large to clear, and we were never at full strength after the first few days. At the time we got the news, Company F was down to around only fifty-five men.

  Securing Hill 131 was the first objective in the plan to rout the Germans from La-Haye-du-Puits. This is one of the few instances we had time to issue a proper field order, and we knew what was really going on. The 2d Battalion was to lead a column of battalions to the first of three phase lines that increasingly narrowed the terrain from our line of departure, encircling the area and Hill 131 and mounting up to the summit. Phase Line A, at the base, ran from the swampy area called the Prairies Marécageuses to the village of Varenquebec to the south. At Phase Line B, on the crest of a ridge, the 2d Battalion was to turn left and move to take the summit, which was Phase Line C. The 1st Battalion would continue straight ahead to the St. Sauveur-le-Vicomte—La-Haye-du-Puits highway, and the 3d Battalion was to take out the remaining pockets of resistance.

  On July 3, Company F was deployed with the 1st Platoon to the left, the 3d Platoon and the remnants of the 2d Platoon to the right. At this point, the 2d Platoon was down to eight or ten men, having lost a stick on the drop into Ste. Mère-Eglise and suffered other casualties. They were to provide security on the right flank of the two attacking platoons.

  As we went into the attack formation on the line of departure, Rosen and Brokaw, two of the survivors of the 2d Platoon, moved to the right of my squad. As a flank security patrol, they had a little more freedom of action. I tried to make a joke, saying we sure were glad to have the big 2d Platoon on our right flank. They replied in kind, telling us never to fear about this flank. The fact was, if anyone was to provide flank protection to my right, I would rather have had those two men and the remainder of the 2d Platoon than any other unit.

  We moved up well before daylight into terrain that differed from the defensive hedgerow area below Hill 131. As we continued upwards, more brush, cover, and large trees appeared along the side of the hill. The hill was 131 meters above sea level and very wide, so we were only attacking one small portion. To keep us oriented, a .50-caliber heavy machine gun to our distant right rear fired at regular intervals so we could use the tracer streams as our right flank. As we moved up to the line of departure, we saw that Colonel Vandervoort had preceded us. There he was, in a raincoat with his crutch, his leg either still in a cast or heavily bandaged. It was pretty tough going for me and my squad, let alone for someone with a crutch and only one good leg.

  We ran into resistance about two hedgerows out in front of our line of departure. The mortar fire was accurate; the small arms resistance was not as bad as we’d expected, but the mortar fire increased to heavy. The 1st Platoon and the rest of the 3d took casualties. I glanced off to my left flank as I approached a hedgerow, and I saw the mortar squad of Sergeant Brown’s 1st Platoon just coming up. A mortar round exploded almost between the legs of a mortarman named O’Byrne. He was listed as DOW, but I don’t see how he survived an instant.

  None of my squad was hit. What really saved us was the weather. It was a rainy day full of mist and low-hanging clouds, which greatly reduced visibility. If it had been clear, they would have been able to drop far more artillery fire right on us. It turned out, too, that some of the Germans didn’t like the rain. We actually had to pull some of them out of their foxholes and take them prisoner. They had covered their holes up so they wouldn’t get wet, and were either taken by surprise or didn’t want to fight.

  As we advanced, we came upon a road. The first man in the 1st Platoon got to the hedgerow alongside it and discovered two or three Germans walking along, as if they didn’t know an attack was under way. He fired a whole magazine from his Tommy gun and never touched a hair on their heads! He then hollered for them to give up. Luckily for him, they raised their hands and were taken prisoner, for he had totally emptied his magazine. This incident became a company joke. We kidded the guy about his bark being worse than his bite. He couldn’t hit a damned thing with his Tommy gun, but he sure could scare the Germans into surrendering.

  We got up to Phase Line B at about 8:20 A.M. The 1st Battalion went out straight toward the St. Sauveur-le-Vicomte—La-Haye-du-Puits highway, and we went to the left, toward the top of Hill 131. About halfway up, we took some prisoners. One of them was a German officer who spoke excellent English. Judging from his accent, I thought he had probably been educated in England. At a lull in our movement I started to question him, not so much about our intelligence needs as about his views on the war. I asked him who he thought was going to win. Of course he said Germany. He teed me off by saying, “Aren’t you a bit young to be a sergeant in the parachute troops?” I shut him up and took his watch, which was a good one. I turned him over to a guard to be taken back and interrogated, and we continued forward.

  The 81mm Mortar Platoon did some pretty good shooting that day in support of our attack. We came to a German position that had suffered a near direct hit with 81mm mortar fire. One of the dead Germans had had a leg blown off, which was lying some distance from his body. An old song was still popular at the time, “I Ain’t Got Nobody.” Eisenhart started singing it to the blown-off leg, accentuating the words so it sounded like “no body.”

  Company F was the first to get to the top of the hill. As we approached the summit, the weather began to clear. We moved over the top and across a short, flat piece of ground that extended to the forward slope. We had very good observation into German-held territory, and the Germans could see us just as clearly.

  A column of German infantry was withdrawing on the road, a good thousand to a thousand two hundred yards away. We had some eager beavers in the platoon. My machine gunner, Neipling, was one of them, and he opened fire. The tracers burned out long before they got to the target, but he must have hit close, because the Germans scattered off the road into ditches and hedgerows. Neipling was teed off that he hadn’t gotten any good hits. His action did al
ert a German self-propelled gun that immediately took us under fire. It was eight hundred to nine hundred yards to our direct front, a tank chassis with an open fighting compartment mounting an 88mm. I ordered Neipling to cease firing, and we shifted to get some cover and concealment. There was precious little of either in the area, and the SP rounds hit far too close for comfort.

  So there we were, lying out naked on the knob of one of the highest hills in Normandy, allowing a German 88 to fire directly at us. After we had taken a number of close ones, I hollered back for permission to withdraw far enough to get some cover, but close enough to defend the forward slope. The order came forward: no withdrawals. It was German doctrine to counterattack whenever a position was lost, and this is what our officers expected. So we lay there, taking the fire. I sent a runner to find someone with the authority to allow us to withdraw. I suggested we leave one or two men on the forward slope as an outpost and withdraw the rest of the squad back to the military crest of the hill. The answer was still no. The SP was plainly visible to us, but if we took it under fire, we would only draw attention to ourselves. At that range, our fire would have been ineffective, and we had no friendly artillery to call. The only thing to do was stop shooting and start digging in.

  Then one of the oddest things I have ever seen happened. Eisenhart rolled over on his back in a very, very shallow slit trench, and immediately went to sleep.

  After fifteen minutes or half an hour, I glanced to my rear over the slope and saw the company CP group coming up. I think Lieutenant Case was acting as company commander, because Captain Barnett had been evacuated due to wounds. I am sure they had been warned we were under direct fire, but they came forward enough to be seen from the enemy positions, and bunched up under a few big trees. Within a minute or two, the German gunner put a round right into the trees over their heads. There were five or six in the CP group, and I believe they were all WIA. I don’t think any were wounded seriously, but they were all evacuated to the rear. Most, if not all, later returned.

  Finally someone got some artillery fire in and around the German self-propelled gun, which stopped firing and moved. An hour or so later, we got orders to move to our right and farther down the forward slope, where we could get some cover and concealment. We dug in pretty well in this position.

  The day after taking Hill 131, we marked the Fourth of July. Every artillery piece, and I think mortars as well, fired simultaneously in celebration. The 8th Infantry Division took over the mission from the 505, moving through our position on July 8 to continue the attack on La-Haye-du-Puits. For awhile, an occasional artillery round still came in, but basically, we were cleaning our weapons, waiting to be moved, and getting some much-needed rest. One of the biggest events was the arrival of some C rations. On July 11, the 82d Airborne Division was designated First Army reserve. Finally, we got the word we were going back to England.

  Chapter 19

  As Close to Home as It Gets: Return to Camp Quorn

  On D+36, we assembled from our position at Hill 131 and marched down to the road. Just off the road was the body of a very large German soldier, most probably killed in our attack on July 3. He was very ripe and bloated. Some comedian had painted a sign on a piece of cardboard, and hung it over a branch of the tree he was under. It said, “Please bury me, I am dead! Honest!”

  We were trucked back to a bivouac area very close to the beaches. The area was entirely littered with a huge amount of government-issue equipment and clothing, all discarded by the follow-up units that had come off the beach and moved inland. Battalion headquarters had acquired several quarter-ton jeeps, which were quickly traded for booze with some of the naval officers from the ship that would take us to England. Within very short time, spray-paint outfits appeared on the beach. Don’t ask me where they came from; they must have had their own power sources. The Army vehicles quickly became Navy vehicles, painted Navy gray, complete with fictitious registration numbers, and loaded onto the LSTs that took us back to England.

  Our LSTs pulled away from shore late in the afternoon of July 13. We had been in Normandy for thirty-seven days. Company F had gone into combat with about a hundred forty-seven men, and I would guess that we loaded forty to forty-five troopers onto the ship returning to England. Those absent had not all been killed or wounded in action. Some had been evacuated sick, and recurrent malaria had especially been a problem for troops that had come up from the Mediterranean.

  We debarked at Southampton amidst bands playing on the docks and crowds of cheering civilians. Back “home” at Quorn, too, we were met by wildly cheering crowds. As we marched along, many young women inquired about their boyfriends. It was hard to shout back the answers as we went by, but I’m sure many of them discovered bad news very shortly. Some people did receive news on the spot that muted the joyful noise of the crowd.

  Within a couple days, we were given seven-day furloughs. I returned to Glasgow. Sadly, this time I was not in the company of Sergeant Ray, who had been killed at Ste. Mère-Eglise. It seems to me our whole time in England was quite short. My overriding memory is of how very peaceful it seemed after having been under fire for more than a month in Normandy. It took me awhile to get used to the peace and quiet.

  There were, however, some significant events. The 82d had the honor of having General Eisenhower troop the line during a division review on August 10, 1944. We were at full strength, having received more than six thousand replacements from parachute and glider schools. This was the only time I saw Eisenhower during World War II. There was also a regimental mourning parade to honor the men killed in action. We marched with our rifles slung upside down, muzzles towards the ground. The names of the dead were read off as the regiment stood at parade rest.

  At the end of the parade, General Gavin stood on a jeep with the regiment gathered around him, and gave us a pep talk over the PA system about finishing the war in Europe. “When we get through with these damn Germans, we’re going to clean up the Japs!” he finished triumphantly. A mass of groans rose up, as if someone had kicked the entire regiment in the backside. Not even Gavin could get us excited about that. We were sure that we were in the war until it ended in Europe, but we hoped and prayed we then would be allowed to go home.

  Other events in Camp Quorn were significant for me on a personal level. Most importantly, our company commander asked me to take the first sergeant’s job. In addition to the prestige, if you want to call it that, this meant a pay jump of three grades. I gave it a lot of thought, and decided to accept with one reservation: if I was not satisfied with the first sergeant’s position, I could return to my sergeant’s job with the 3d Platoon. This was granted, and I took the post.

  Being first sergeant was big trouble. The major problem was that I had no qualified company clerk. This was a key man for the first sergeant, for the company reports could not be submitted in longhand, and it was the clerk’s duty to type them. Without a fast typist who knew Army procedures, you soon became hopelessly behind in your work. I also should have had some administrative help from our company officers. In 95 percent of the cases, they were damn good leaders in combat, but a lot of them had no concept of administration. They were in the same boat as me, and thus of little or no help in bailing me out.

  It seemed there was no end to the comings and goings that had to be reported, and I was no typist. Men were returning from the hospital daily, and some of our wounded were being sent home. In addition to keeping track of all of these people, reports on men missing in action required taking statements from the soldiers who had last seen the MIAs. On top of it all, we were getting replacements who all had to be accounted for and picked up on the morning report. A special report I remember particularly well asked for the location of each man killed in action, pinpointed by six-number map grid coordinates. It was impossible to locate the place of death for all our KIAs and plot them in such fine detail. In many cases, we were fortunate to have any map at all of the area in which the man was killed.

  To
add insult to injury, I received thirteen Joneses in a single group of replacements. Someone in charge must have gone down the roster alphabetically and said, “Here are thirteen Joneses! Let’s assign them all to Company F!” Believe it or not, four of them had the same first and middle initials. Worse, we already had three or four Joneses in the company already. The only way I could tell one Jones from another was to read their middle names or go by their serial numbers. This is one time I complained loud and hard. I won that battle, for they split up the new batch of Joneses.

  I worked many long hours alone at this job, which often extended to midnight. Of course, the first sergeant was also the first man up in the morning to call the company out for reveille, take status reports from the platoons, and perform a dozen other tasks. About the only good thing about it was that I never had to write death letters to the next of kin. I did have to keep after the officers to write them, though, for it was a very hard thing for them to do.

  I remember particularly a regrettable incident that occurred one afternoon when I was busy with paperwork. A soldier walked into the orderly tent and asked if he could see a private named Arnold, a very nice kid from the 1st Platoon who had died of wounds in Normandy. Without thinking, I gave him a snotty answer. “The platoon is out for training,” I said, “And besides, Arnold’s dead.” The soldier was Arnold’s brother from the 307th Airborne Engineer Battalion, who had made a special day trip for a visit. I quickly apologized and attempted to make amends, but the damage had been done.