Descending from the Clouds

by Wurst, Spencer F. ; Wurst, Gayle;

  During the night, I heard a shot or two up toward the pillbox on my right flank. It wasn’t close enough to worry about and no one sounded the alarm, so we let it go. At daylight, I went to check my platoon position and my men. Instead of taking my rifle and putting on all my gear, I just slipped my .45 into my right hip pocket. I was wearing a low-hanging field jacket and a raincoat.

  I had just started through the platoon position when an artillery round hit the top of one of the trees about fifty yards away. It must have been a direct-fire round, because I didn’t have time to hit the ground before it exploded. I felt the impact of shrapnel on my right hip. It was bad enough to knock me down. I reached back with my right hand to check how badly I was hit, but couldn’t find any blood. When I examined my field jacket and raincoat, I found a hole in my pocket. The piece of shrapnel had gone through and hit the receiver of my .45, which saved me from a penetrating wound.

  At first I thought I was lucky, but a lot of my men said, “There goes your million-dollar wound.” I had thought a lot about that million-dollar wound—the one that’s bad enough to get you back to the States, but not bad enough to cripple you for life. The war was drawing to a close. It didn’t take a Ph.D. to figure out we were going to win in months or even days, and everyone was hoping that he wouldn’t be the last man to die in World War II. In the end, I didn’t know how I felt. I was both teed off and elated.

  I picked myself up and continued to check the platoon position, working my way from the other end of the tree line up to the pillbox. The body of a huge German soldier lay near the entrance. He was in full combat gear with an impressive radio set strapped to his back. He didn’t smell, so I knew it was a recent kill.

  I talked to Sergeant Brown, whose squad was responsible for local security at the pillbox. To enter, you had to go down some steps into the ground, where it leveled off. It had been a miserable night, so Brown had positioned one of his newer replacements at the bottom of the steps, rather than put him out in the weather. He had also loaned the soldier his .45, because he could swing it better than a rifle in those close quarters.

  During the night, this hulk of a German had started down into the pillbox. The man inside challenged him but got no reply. When he challenged him a second time with no reply, he shot him at a range of ten or twelve feet. Then he panicked, thinking he’d shot one of his own men. He woke Brown, who was sleeping in the pillbox with some of the squad. Brown went to the entrance and identified the body, and they laid the German outside near the entrance. He had intended to slip back into our lines with that powerful radio and direct artillery fire from the pillbox.

  Continuing toward the Roer, we first had to make a five-mile march to the rear, and then come up again. The spring thaw was in full progress. The mud was so thick and heavy I almost had to fall out because it was so extremely hard just to pick up my legs. We sank in well over our ankles and sometimes halfway to our knees, then had to pull our legs out again. We kept on like this for five miles. I managed not to fall out, but it used up all my energy.

  We finally reached the west bank of the Roer. The Germans had blown up the discharge valves of the dam on February 9, putting the river at flood stage. The west bank was a high slope, a good five hundred yards from the top of the ridge into the valley. When we hit the crest, we were in a big forest of deciduous trees. We sent patrols down to the riverbank, and they reported it would be almost impossible to cross. They didn’t run into any resistance on our side, so we were ordered to go into a defensive position on the high ground of the west bank. The trees were so thick from the top to the bottom of the ridge that we actually had to try to clear lanes of fire down to the bottom. We never completely succeeded, but we did manage to clear lanes out to two hundred or three hundred yards. Although we weren’t too far downstream, I never did see the damn dams.

  We were only there for a week or ten days, but it seemed much longer. We dug in pretty well and got replacements, an unusual occurrence on the front that shows how far under-strength we must have been. They had been following us from way back on the other side of Schmidt. They were the sorriest looking group of reinforcements I have ever seen. They had passed through Death Valley in the dark, stumbling over bodies for most of the night, trying to get out of there. Daylight was even worse for their morale. It was very difficult even for some of the most seasoned veterans to go through the remains of that carnage in broad daylight, but this group was fresh off the boat from the States. By the time they got out of Death Valley, they were one subdued bunch. I can say this—we never had any difficulty getting them to obey orders. When we told them to dig in, they dug in. They must have thought the horror they had seen was the norm.

  We took artillery and very long-range machine gun fire from the eastern ridge. It didn’t cause any casualties, but it let us know the Germans were there. The mess staff tried to get us at least one hot meal a day by means of a Weasel, a full track, open-carriage vehicle used primarily to evacuate the wounded and get food and ammunition to the forward units over tough terrain. They parked some distance away, hidden from the eastern ridge, and a third or so of us would be relieved to go back for a hot meal, and then we’d switch off. We got a little lazy and talked the Weasel driver into coming forward a bit more each day, until he finally came right up onto our position. The visibility was poor that day, we hadn’t received any incoming fire, and we were pretty relaxed. Half the company was lined up for the meal, with the vehicle right on the slope of the ridge. Although it was spring and we were in the trees, they weren’t in leaf yet.

  We no sooner got in the chow line than two or three heavy machine guns opened up on us. We scattered so fast it would have been comical if it hadn’t been so dangerous. Fifteen men must have stacked up on the protective side of the Weasel, and the rest of us sprinted for our holes. The Germans were hitting high, but they threw a lot of fire at us. This is what happens in potentially dangerous situations if you relax your guard. As it turned out, we bragged that Company F, 505, was the only outfit that ever got pinned down by machine gun fire in the chow line.

  Stories like this that we told about ourselves helped get us through. They relieved the pressure a little, and acted as a psychic survival mechanism. We liked to turn close scrapes into comical exploits. The latrines were prime targets for such jokes, and one of the funniest things in this line happened on the west bank of the Roer. On the front, the procedure was to dig a hole, perform our duty in it, and cover it up. One day a soldier, following regulations, moved away from his fighting position, dug his hole and squatted. A few moments later, he looked up to discover a German ten or fifteen feet away. To make matters worse, the trooper had leaned his weapon against a tree. But the German had a big smile on his face. He very nicely put up his hands and wanted to be taken prisoner. So the trooper caught with his pants down was saved, and the joke went round that he was such a great soldier that he never stopped capturing Germans for a minute, not even to take a shit.

  Around February 19, we heard we were going to be relieved by the 9th Infantry Division. We had a very difficult, muddy march back from the front line. We moved to the rear until it was safe to bring up trucks, then we loaded up and moved back to a railhead and onto old boxcars called 40 and 8s. I remember passing through Aachen, one of the first large German towns for which we had fought, where Hitler had ordered his troops to stand fast and cling to every inch of German soil. They had certainly followed his orders. The town was a complete wreck.

  From Aachen we took the train back to Suippes, the camp we had left in December 1944. Instead of occupying the old French Army barracks again, however, we were billeted in squad tents in an area set up for the 505. This was a lot better than being out in the weather, but I can’t remember any stoves or heat. We were there throughout late February and early March, but base camp leaves me with few memories. We had a regimental review, and I was awarded the Silver Star for my action in the park in Nijmegen. They may have given me my two Purple Hearts at the same
time.

  Many men came back to the unit at Suippes from various hospitals, and we received replacements for those who wouldn’t be returning. I remember the return of Eisenhart, the BAR man from my squad who had been seriously wounded in Nijmegen. His leg had taken a long time to heal and was still hurting. He should still have been in the hospital, but he insisted on coming back to the unit. I heard that Mike Brilla also came back, even after losing an eye in the explosion in Hunner Park. If this is true, that the Army saw fit to mark him for duty again illustrates how hard up we were for reinforcements.

  Sometime in March, we heard a loud noise. We ran out of our tents and looked up to see a huge armada of transport aircraft forming up for the invasion across the Rhine. They were flying at a distance, but we could see them very clearly. For once the 505 was not featured in the main show. We were content to sit back and watch it go by.

  About this time I was approached by Lt Joe Holcomb, who had just returned from a lengthy stay in the hospital because of the wound he had sustained in Nijmegen. He asked me if I would be interested in going to a school back in the rear areas. I had some doubts about this, but the war in Europe was drawing to a close, and if I completed this school, I would be commissioned as a second lieutenant. I finally agreed to go, with one qualification: If I were successful, I would be reassigned to the 505. Little Joe assured me it was set in cement that any candidate who finished the course would be reassigned to his parent unit. So off I went to take what I was told would be a “combat platoon leader’s course.”

  As I later learned, this school also had the task of “retreading” Army Air Corps personnel, anti-aircraft artillery personnel, and others as infantry replacements for the front-line. Even before the German Ardennes offensive in December 1944, front-line units were suffering from a critical shortage of men. The Army had incurred a higher than expected rate of casualties; moreover, higher headquarters, including Eisenhower’s own, had been building up their strength to the detriment of front-line units. SHAEF itself was as large as an entire division, with a strength of 16,312 in February 1945. Because senior commanders had been improperly assigning replacements to higher headquarters and rear-echelon units, the front-line infantry was seriously under-manned.

  Courses began around April 1, 1945. A regimental personnel sergeant drove me to Fontainebleau, where so many French kings and Napoleon had had their summer palace. First we passed through Paris, where we arrived quite early and spent the rest of the day really hanging one on. Both of us were well into our cups by the time I had to report to school, which was housed in carriage houses, stables, and dwellings that had been part of what you could call the logistical support for the palace and king’s court. I was so far gone I could barely walk up to the desk. I think I caused a little trouble there, but luckily not enough to get me kicked out before I started.

  I don’t remember if Little Joe had mentioned the term “OCS” or not, but I discovered I was enrolled in a very short-term officers’ candidate school. It was conducted, of all things, by personnel assigned to a reinforcement battalion, which was actually a school battalion at the Ground Force Training Center of the ETO. I was the only member of my regiment who was sent to the Ground Forces Training Center at the time. It was there that I received word of President Roosevelt’s death, which shocked us all.

  The class consisted of 242 officer candidates, organized into a company of five platoons of about fifty members each. About 20 percent would be weeded out for different causes. As far as academics, training, and leadership went, it wasn’t much of a challenge for me. I’m not bragging; the fact is, I had served for more than four years. I had been through the mill in basic training, had led a parachute infantry platoon in combat, and had occupied every rank from private on up to platoon sergeant.

  Each platoon of candidates was assigned to a tac (tactical) officer, whose sole assignment was to evaluate us. The tac officer was the supreme man. If you got on his bad side, you might as well submit your resignation. Mine, Lieutenant O’Conner, had been a combat platoon leader. Shortly after we started, he called me in for an interview. The school was just as chickenshit as any other in terms of discipline, but I hadn’t done anything wrong in my own eyes and couldn’t imagine why he scheduled the session.

  His first comment took me completely by surprise. He said, “Wurst, what the hell are you doing at this school? Why didn’t you receive a direct commission?” I explained the circumstances, and he said that as far as he was concerned, by my grades and my combat record, there was no reason I should have to finish the course, but he didn’t have much say in the matter. He couldn’t afford to be friendly to anyone in his platoon, but I felt good about having a combat veteran to evaluate me. After our interview, I felt pretty much at ease for the rest of the course.

  Twice, we all had to evaluate the other members of our platoon on a scale of one through fifty, and write at least one paragraph describing why we had selected the top five men, and another on the bottom five. The tricky thing was that we all were rated on how we rated each other, so it behooved us to call it how we saw it. It kept us wide awake, continually looking for strengths and weaknesses in all our team members. We called this evaluation “Fuck Your Buddy Week.”

  We also had physical training run by a lieutenant colonel named Delescue. If someone started lagging behind in a run, Delescue would holler, “You’re gonna die! You’re a damn combat platoon leader! Infantry platoon leaders are a dime a dozen! And if you don’t get this, you’re gonna die sooner than the rest of them!” He harped on this an hour at a time. Statistics show Colonel Delescue wasn’t far from wrong. It reminds me of an old combat sergeant major in the British Army who was asked to define the duty of an officer. He replied, “They show us how to die.”

  To me, the best thing about the school was the instruction in platoon tactics. A school platoon of combat infantry performed a vivid demonstration of the theory of “fire and movement.” It was a marvelous sight to behold. Never could more than one or two men have been targeted. They kept making short, quick moves from one piece of cover to the other, taking advantage of folds in the ground, of natural cover and concealment. An “infantry company in the attack” problem was our last tactical exercise. By then, we had been fitted for our Class A uniforms, so all of us thought we had it made, but I think the instructors purposely assigned a marginal candidate as company commander for the exercise. His decisions were faulted and he was washed out within a few days of graduation. Word traveled fast to classes behind us. The purpose of this exercise was probably to keep them on their toes.

  We were a couple weeks away from graduation when the end of the war in Europe, VE-Day, arrived. We were reigned in pretty tightly, so our celebration amounted to a few hours’ pass on a weekend. VE-Day came to me as a reprieve. I never expected to survive the war. I was like a person on death row who had suddenly been given a pardon. Then again, I worried that, even if I did survive the European war, as a new second lieutenant I would likely be sent to the Pacific. I tried not to give this much thought.

  What I did think about was all the good men who had been killed in combat. I strongly believe in God and His miracles, and thank Him for my survival every day in my prayers. When you’ve come a fraction of an inch from death many, many times, you never forget it. To be alive yourself seems a miracle, but the deaths of so many of your buddies who have died so brutally, sometimes needlessly, are wounds that time never heals. “Why them and not me?” After almost sixty years, the question still haunts me.

  I continued my studies at OCS, and graduated first in my class. We were reassigned to our parent units after graduation, but Army channels were so slow that on the anniversary of D-Day, I still had not rejoined the 505. It was after midnight on June 5 and into the morning of June 6, and I had had a few drinks in a café somewhere in France or Belgium. It was packed with American soldiers, officers and enlisted alike. I hollered and got everyone’s attention, and we drank a toast to the men who had carried ou
t D-Day the year before. For a couple of moments in that noisy, crowded café, there was nothing but absolute silence.

  Epilogue

  Homeward Bound

  As it turned out, I didn’t get sent to the Pacific. I reported back to the 505 as second lieutenant in June, and became a platoon leader in E Company of the 2d Battalion. We were still at war with Japan, but everyone was clamoring to get the men out of uniform. I was a “high-point man,” which meant I was eligible for discharge according to a system that calculated total months of service, overseas duty, combat, decorations, and marital status or dependents. I considered going to Berlin, where the 82d Airborne Division had been selected as the Guard of Honor, but I was tired of moving around. I wanted to go home, marry a suitable girl, have a family, and stay in one spot.

  I flew back in mid August on the Green Project, a program that rotated the highest of the high-point men back to the States by plane. Other than the German jet fighter I’d seen in Holland, planes were all propeller-driven. Our carrier was a C-54, a four-engine cargo plane. There were no seats: we placed blankets and lay down directly on the cargo space.

  Crossing the Atlantic was a real adventure: we flew to the Azores and refueled, then went all the way up to Newfoundland. We debarked just long enough to get rip-roaring drunk in the Officers’ Club, where I traded a pistol or two for half a case of White Horse scotch. Next we headed for New Castle Air Base in Delaware, where we got sprayed with a bomb against foreign bugs and illnesses. I got off the plane with one big hangover in a cloud of fumigation. When my feet touched the ground, nothing else mattered. Finally, I was home.