If You Survive

by George Wilson

  A little later the fighter-bombers hit Canisy, setting many fires and creating more rubble. We mounted our tanks and went on in. It was a bit larger than Saint Gilles, up to maybe seven or eight hundred people. The drifting smoke screened the fires a little and made an eerie glow in the oncoming darkness. It was all very spooky, and it seemed my eyes couldn’t travel fast enough to find signs of a hidden enemy who might be watching us as we rode through town on the backs of tanks.

  Fortunately, the Jerries had pulled out, and so we pushed right on through Canisy and into the night. Now we were in even more of a no-man’s-land. The Germans were so unaware of our penetrations that in the darkness a German tank came up from the side and was moved right into our column by a smart MP, and then one of our tanks knocked him out from the rear.

  As the Nazi tank burned and its shells began to explode, we were forced to detour in the field around it. When we returned to the road, a German colonel drove up with a staff car and was immediately captured.

  At 2:00 A.M. we were still going strong and getting near our first day’s objective—Le Mesnil Herman. My platoon was in the lead again as we approached town, and I was on the armored platoon leader’s tank, which was third in line.

  The point tank stopped about one hundred yards ahead, halting the whole column, and in the lull we immediately heard German voices jabbering away—apparently excited at seeing American tanks six miles behind what they thought were their front lines. Their chatter came in clearly, even above the noise of our idling tank motors.

  I was now able to spot their voices at no more than ten feet from the right side of our tank, and I knew we had only a moment. I threw a hand grenade and at the same time yelled at Sergeant Williams, just behind me on the tank, to shoot his rifle grenade.

  Just a second later the Germans let go with a panzerfaust, and I think our firing first may have upset their aim—for they missed the broad side of the tank where we were sitting and instead hit solid front armor about three feet to my left. The armor-piercing shell of the panzerfaust exploded, but the angle was wrong for penetrating the armor. Nevertheless, it left huge catlike claw marks across the front of the tank, some almost two inches deep and very jagged. My hand nearest the blast stung sharply and turned out to be burned.

  I can’t help believing that if we hadn’t gotten off our grenades so quickly the German aim might have been truer and our tank would have blown up and taken the rest of us with it. But the tank commander inside our buttoned-up tank evidently wanted no more of that spot, for suddenly we took off at full speed, jerking ahead so fast that some of us nearly lost what were at best very precarious seats.

  At that moment our fourth tank, just behind us, was hit by a panzerfaust and burst into flames. I had no hope at all for any of the men—the five crew members inside, and all of my eight men riding the back. I really don’t know their fate; I never saw any of them again.

  Now we had a new problem. Previously the darkness had been some protection, but the flames of the burning tank lit up our road as brilliantly as a high school football field on a Friday night. We felt as though we were suddenly naked on Main Street.

  Our three lead tanks now were bunched up about two hundred yards past the burning tank and some three hundred yards short of Le Mesnil Herman. My men and I piled off and took cover in the small ditches by the road. The hedges were not very close to the road there, and that was something of a good break because panzerfaust teams couldn’t get quite so close.

  The only way I could communicate with the tank platoon leader was through a field phone we’d rigged up on the back of his tank, and I used it now to talk over our awkward situation. We decided to radio the CO for instructions, since it didn’t seem sensible to try to go on into Le Mesnil Herman with only three tanks and twenty-four riflemen. The tank lieutenant had been in the fighting in North Africa and Sicily, and, since it was my first day in combat, I asked his opinion on what to do with my men. He suggested I spread them out a little more to make sure the Germans didn’t get too close with a panzerfaust.

  Our radio instructions seemed slow coming in, and we waited nervously in the bright light for minutes that seemed to drag into hours. At last we got word simply to turn around and rejoin the main body of the task force, now in a field about a quarter mile back.

  Great—but how? The tanks had to stick to the road, brightly lighted though it was, and that sure didn’t look very attractive to me, but I couldn’t see any other way out.

  The tank lieutenant suggested I keep my men spread out while they turned the tanks around in the road. This done, I asked what next.

  “Well,” he said, “it looks like the only way out is to make a fast break for it.”

  “Then should I get my men mounted back on the tanks as fast as I can?” I asked.

  “Hell, no,” he snapped. “They’ll shoot your men off like flies.”

  Without another word, all three tanks took off so fast the phone on the command tank was jerked from my hand and we were left standing in the road with our mouths open. I was furious, but I knew I couldn’t waste time on anger. Something had to be done, and fast. Some of my men were on the edge of panic. One was crying, and I noticed a few others were trembling. I didn’t particularly blame them; we were surrounded by Germans who could see us plainly and soon should move in on us. We couldn’t even call for help, because our radioman had left his radio on one of the tanks. We were completely on our own.

  As the tanks had charged away one of my men had run after it, trying to grab on from the rear. His feet bounced a couple of times in the road, and then he had to let go because of the extremely hot exhaust. So he was stuck with the rest of us.

  The Germans shot panzerfausts at each tank as it passed the one still on fire, but they missed every time. The tanks thus had been lucky enough to get through; now it was our turn to run the gauntlet.

  The instructors back at Fort Benning had never told me what to do in a situation like this, so I probably did everything wrong. I did remember one of their morsels of general advice, however: When in doubt, get off your butt and do something. It might take the enemy by surprise.

  I quickly got the sergeants together and told them that my simple plan was to make a break right down the road past the burning tank, fighting all the way. One thing in our favor was that I’d made each man carry four hand grenades instead of the usual two (my first hunch).

  My orders were to move out in single files on either side of the road with the men ten yards apart and no two abreast, to avoid bunching. Each man was to have a grenade in hand to be thrown over the hedgerow on my command. After getting rid of the first grenade, they were to run like hell. While they ran they were to keep throwing grenades as often as possible, but to be sure to keep on running. When they were out of grenades they were to fire their rifles at the top of the hedges while they ran. When rifles were empty, the orders were to keep on running without stopping to reload.

  Grimly, and without a word, the sergeants moved off and quietly lined up the men. In a few moments we headed for the burning tank. Platoon Sergeant Reid took the lead on the right, and I took it on the left, since I already knew where the German panzerfaust team was on that side. The other sergeants brought up the rear.

  On my side of the road there was no hedgerow for some seventy-five yards, until we came to the corner of a field. As we walked toward this hedge I carefully pulled the pin from my grenade, just in case it was needed quickly.

  When I had walked only a few yards (which seemed miles) beyond the hedgerow corner in the glaring light, I heard German voices just over the hedge. Evidently they were excited about seeing American infantry walking openly down their road. I instantly threw my grenade.

  The Germans yelled, “Grenade! Grenade!” and I could hear them scrambling for cover. I then yelled, “Let’s go!” at my men—and we broke the world’s record for the 440.

  Somehow I threw my other grenades and emptied my rifle as we tore along the road. The Jerries fire
d machine guns and tossed grenades into the road. One grenade landed about three feet from me, but I was long gone when it went off.

  When we passed our burning tank, we were too scared of enemy action to worry about any of its shells going off. It was very hot and bright, almost incandescent, and smelled of burned flesh. A couple of dead GIs lay by the road, but we couldn’t help them, so we kept on pounding down the road like a bunch of berserk Indians, firing all the while.

  Suddenly we came upon the poor GI on guard in the road for our main body, and he just stood there transfixed, as though he’d seen a ghost. He couldn’t even open his mouth to challenge us.

  I checked my twenty-four men and all had made it, though two were slightly wounded. We had been miraculously lucky.

  It was now about 3:00 A.M., and my longest day finally was over. We dug slit trenches just deep enough to get our bodies below the surface of the ground, then tried to get some sleep. Though I was totally exhausted, my mind was much too wound up to relax in sleep. The tragedies and excitement of the day kept racing through my mind over and over. Also, the Germans were famous for counterattacks, and I didn’t know at what moment they might come.

  I knew two of my men had been killed and two others wounded, and I could only assume the eight riding the blazing tank had been killed. I hoped some of them might have escaped, but I didn’t see how.

  I certainly did not consider myself any sort of hero in any of this action, but my men thought otherwise. They wrote me up for a Silver Star, for gallantry in action above and beyond the call of duty. It was duly approved and later presented to me in person by our division commander, Major General Barton.

  Thoughts of a medal had never occurred to me, though I did appreciate it once it was awarded. My thoughts during the action were very rudimentary: How in hell do we get out of this mess? As it turned out, all we needed was speedy action—and a tremendous amount of good luck. Speaking of luck—I had indeed been very lucky to survive my first day of combat. In the tank shootout at Saint Gillis, if the Germans had knocked out our tank, I’m sure they would have turned machine guns on me and at thirty to forty yards would have mowed me down. Again, when the Germans hit our tank with the panzerfaust, just a foot to the left would have knocked out the tank and me with it. My rabbit’s foot worked great that day!

  III

  SAINT-LÔ BREAKTHROUGH

  (Second Day)

  The few remaining hours of darkness passed uneventfully in the task force bivouac, a large field a half mile north of Le Mesnil Herman. Few of us settled our nerves enough to sleep, and the cold damp earth of our slit trenches had not eased our muscles.

  At first light we were told to get ready to move out again. The orders were inevitable, but the part that galled me was that my platoon was to lead the attack again. Customarily, each of the three rifle platoons in the company took turns up front, which was only fair. Captain Holcomb explained it was the battalion commander himself who insisted my platoon lead again, since we had been the last ones in contact with the enemy and therefore knew his location better than anyone else. I still felt misused but didn’t trust myself to say anything.

  We struggled off in the attack after hastily jamming down a cold K ration breakfast. This time, as we headed for Le Mesnil Herman, we at least could see where we were going and didn’t have to stick to the road. The tanks cut straight across the hedgerows behind which the Germans had been the night before.

  Rifles and machine guns opened up on us at once with an angry clatter. My men ran over the rough field as fast as they could to get behind the tanks, and they fired their rifles back at the hedgerows whenever possible. They panted for breath, and their faces were flushed.

  Each tank had two machine guns and one 75mm cannon, and they let go with all weapons blasting away as they drove ahead. The enemy were so well pinned down they didn’t even lift up enough to fire their panzerfausts at our tanks. Soon our combined firepower was too much for them, and they began to wave white handkerchiefs. I learned later that over two hundred prisoners had been taken in this attack, and I’m sure glad I hadn’t known there were that many of them around. Some of them, I think, must have come from beyond the small fields we fought in.

  The Germans usually were very good at taking care of their dead and wounded. After burials they stuck a bayonet on the man’s rifle and jammed the rifle in the ground at the head of the grave, with the soldier’s dog tags hanging on the stock and his helmet on top of the butt.

  We did pass about ten new graves, obviously dug during the night, and this must have been the toll of our grenades. There was no way of knowing, of course, how many additional might have been wounded.

  As we continued forward a frightful, almost inhuman scream came from the hedgerow close by on my left. I jumped through and found a wounded German bellowing in terror. He lay in the cart trail that ran down the middle of the hedgerow, and he was right in the path of one of our tanks. The tank was buttoned up, and the driver probably couldn’t even look down to the road through his vision slits.

  I instinctively jumped in front of the tank, waved it to a halt, and dragged the wounded man to the side. His eyes showed me gratitude far better than words—for I wouldn’t have understood words anyway. I couldn’t help wondering whether a German would have helped me the same way, but somehow a helpless wounded man didn’t seem like an enemy.

  As we finally came to the first buildings on the edge of Le Mesnil Herman we began to pick up some sniper fire and had to hit the ground and then run from cover to cover. We moved quickly from house to house and found that most of the enemy had fled.

  As we crossed one street my radioman was shot by a sniper hiding in the upper floor over a store. I had crossed the road myself running hard, with the radioman following. It seems he had dropped a K-ration box, roughly the size of a carton of cigarettes, in the street and stupidly went back to pick it up. When he bent down to pick it up, the sniper got him.

  Our platoon medic rushed out to pull the radioman back, but he was already dead. Before the medic could run back, the sniper shot him in the side—even though he wore on chest and back the big red cross on white background that is supposed to give immunity. The medic was able to drag himself back to shelter, where he calmly dressed his own wound and stayed in action. He would have evacuated a rifleman with a similar wound, but he knew how badly he himself was needed.

  To my mind, the medics were the unsung heroes of the war. Their duty was so routinely hazardous that it was hard to tell when they went beyond its call. Most important was their deep effect on morale; we just knew that if we ever got hit, a medic would come out to get us, no matter where or when.

  Later, when we were able to reach the radioman, we found he had stuffed his pockets, his shirt, and even his oversized leggings with boxes of K rations. He had lost his life over a box of barely palatable survival food.

  Now we had three men definitely killed, and each was unnecessary—the man who stood up in the open and fired at an armored half-track, the one buried by our tank, and the chowhound.

  Sergeant Williams also was wounded in this action, but he was a very unusual case. A mortar shell had exploded near him, and even though the medic could not find a scratch on him, he was paralyzed from the neck down. He could move nothing but his eyes.

  This same Sergeant Williams had taken a bullet through the neck around D day and returned to the front in six weeks. He had a very heavy, bull-like neck, but, it seemed to me, he had returned too quickly after such a severe wound. He was an exceedingly stubborn individual, for he recovered from his second injury and returned to action in September. Then he was too close to a German grenade and was paralyzed a second time. After his subsequent recovery, he again applied for frontline action, but was finally turned down. Some guys really did take a lot of punishment and had the starch to come back willingly for more.

  After going through the few remaining buildings in Le Mesnil Herman, I was ordered to take my platoon around to the left side
of town and clear out a pocket of Jerries in an apple orchard.

  Along with some tanks, we made our way to the first hedgerow on the edge of the apple orchard, about two hundred yards beyond the northeast corner of town. These tanks were from the Sixty-sixth Regiment of the Second Armored Division, and we had trained together as a team for breaking through hedgerows.

  Our practice was for the tanks to fire all out at the hedgerow as they advanced, and when they got close enough they would raise their fire and my platoon would duck under, rush in, and toss grenades over the hedge at any Krauts waiting to ambush the tank. This was the way our attack on the apple orchard began, but for some unknown reason the lead tank did not wait for our grenades but plowed right on through the hedgerow.

  As the tank tilted upward on a small crest of dirt it had plowed ahead the waiting Germans hit it with a panzerfaust in the underbelly. The tank immediately burst into flames but continued to roll on for about thirty yards until it stopped against an apple tree. It was the second of our seventeen tanks to be knocked out by panzerfaust near Le Mesnil Herman.

  The sergeant in command of the tank climbed out of the turret and, with .45 pistol in hand and bleeding from his nose and ears, he charged back at the hole his tank had made in the hedge, and captured the six Germans who had ambushed him and who were by then waiting for the rest of us to come through.

  Without pause, the sergeant then asked for help to get his wounded crew out of the tank. Several of us rushed right out and got two of the crew out, but it was now too hot to go in for the driver and assistant driver. They both were dead anyway, the sergeant said.

  After dragging the two wounded tankers back to our side of the hedge, we yelled for a medic—and the wounded medic himself came up to help. He immediately asked for an ambulance, and so the tank captain got on his radio. One of his half-track ambulances soon arrived and drove right out to the hedge where the wounded lay.