If You Survive

by George Wilson

  By now the bulk of the German armies was trapped by the combined Allied armies. British and Canadian armies were crushing down from the north to meet two American armies driving up from the south. This maneuver became known as the Falaise Gap. Worst of all for the Germans caught in this pocket must have been the annihilating bombing and strafing by Allied planes, then in complete control of the skies. Thousands of Germans nonetheless made their escape toward the Seine. The dead Germans were literally stacked by the hundreds—in some places two and three feet deep. It was a real massacre. All of the roads for miles were strewn with German corpses and littered with hundreds of smoking or burning tanks, trucks, and wagons. The debris of the fleeing Germans was everywhere. Hulks of burned-out tanks, trucks, half-tracks, and self-propelled and towed guns were dramatic proof of the devastating power of airplanes. My feeling of utter helplessness during the brief bombing a few nights earlier made me realize what must have been absolute terror and total panic for the German soldier under the deluge of destruction from our Air Force.

  Large foxholes had been dug by the enemy all along the road, ready for instant use. The strafing and bombing planes gave the retreating Germans no rest. The ability of German supply forces to get food and ammunition to their armies had been obliterated. I imagine the German truck drivers were always looking for the next foxhole they might dive into if strafed.

  The combination of our devastating ground tactics and our superior air forces had almost totally destroyed two of Germany’s best armies in less than a month.

  I wonder if the Air Force ever received enough credit for its awesomely effective job. One can only speculate how many infantry lives the Air Force saved. For all that, I am willing to admit that I always resented the extra pay and comfortable living of the Air Force boys. I am now prepared to declare my deepest, most profound appreciation for the work they did and for the incredible risks they took every time they were in the air. We were in a war that was coming at us from all sides, from the front, from the rear, from the flank—from the ground up, if we happened to step on a mine. Or from the air from bombs, strafing, and artillery of all sorts. Our rest was in a foxhole with a helmet for a pillow. The foxhole was considered our furnished quarters, so the Army did not allow us our forty dollars, a month quarters allowance. Such is the life of the infantry.

  We rode big six-by-six trucks day and night. After dark the truck column was blacked out except for cat’s-eye slits in their lights, which were so dim the weary drivers could hardly make out the truck ahead. Combat military police were at some of the road junctions directing traffic.

  On one of the quick turns my driver’s reactions were too slow, and we careened into the ditch, breaking the front left spring and tearing the front axle loose. When the last of the convoy wheeled past, we found ourselves all alone in a private no-man’s-land. I posted guards, and the rest of us tried to get some sleep. The driver crawled under the truck, but he was too scared sleep.

  Around sunup a big maintenance truck hooked onto us and dragged us to an orchard where a maintenance crew began repairs. We were ready to roll again at noon, and the crew captain let me study his map for the route the Fourth Infantry Division had taken. I made some notes, and we headed out by ourselves. I told our driver we had to catch the division before dark or we’d be camping out again by ourselves.

  I never knew a two-and-half ton truck could move so fast. That driver, with tires screeching, wheeled us around curves and bounced us through village after village. We ripped across open country until, just before dark, we caught the division. It had stopped to gas up, and some of the trucks were already moving out as we arrived. We quickly tanked up, grabbed some rations and water, and found our place back in the column.

  Rumors began to come alive. The most exciting was that we were going to bypass Paris. None of the junior officers really knew what was going on. We could only listen to our seniors and use our imaginations.

  One morning about the third week of August we were ordered up to west bank of the Seine some twenty miles from Paris. We were in the Arpajon-Corbeil area. It seems that one of our other battalions had tried to cross the river in twelve-man pontoon boats under the screen of fog, and about two thirds of the way across, the fog had lifted and left the battalion helpless. Most of the boats had been sunk, and many of the men lost, hit by direct fire from 20mm-antiaircraft guns that were based on the other bank. Rapid-fire antiaircraft artillery makes a very effective weapon for sinking small boats on a swift river. It was a disaster. Very few of the men made it back to shore. The men had carried a lot of heavy equipment, and the current was swift, so only those able to shed their equipment quickly had been able to escape.

  With a precedent like that we were not too crazy about our assignment, as it was now our turn. We gladly waited for the engineers to bring up more boats, and meanwhile our mortars and artillery blasted away at the other bank. We could clearly see the German gunners abandon their guns and run back over the hill.

  The Seine at that point was still very large and deep enough to allow oceangoing freighters, which meant it was a least twenty feet deep. The current was frightening, much too fast for our flat, square-nosed boats. We were told the current was nine miles per hour, good jogging speed, but to us it looked much, much faster.

  Soon my platoon was loaded, twelve to a boat, and we took off, paddling like mad for the east bank. The wild current swept us a couple hundred yards downstream, and every moment we braced for some kind of enemy fire as we paddled hard for shore. This time all the luck in the world was with us, for there was no opposition from the Krauts. Our artillery and mortars had completely routed the German AA gunners. We hit the east bank without a loss.

  We quickly pushed straight ahead inland to the high ground a half mile ahead. As soon as that position was denied to enemy observation our engineers began to build a pontoon bridge, a frustrating, if not impossible, job. As soon as they set up a section it was swept away by the powerful current. Soon they were running out of pontoons, and something had to be done.

  It seems an older Frenchman, a retired World War I naval captain, had been watching interestedly, and he now came forward and told me he probably could help if I could lend him about twenty men. His idea involved three ships that happened to be moored on the east bank directly across from the pontoon bridge. The plan was to release the huge ropes on the downstream ship’s stern, letting it swing out across the river as a kind of gate to slow down the river enough to get the pontoons assembled across it. Carefully following the old captain’s able directions in English, my men wound the big ropes around the dock snubbers and a few trees. The swift current eased the ship’s stern out until it was straight across the river, slowing the current just enough.

  The engineers’ sectional spans began to settle in place, and soon the bridge was complete the first tank rumbled across. I was sure those engineers would not soon forget that French naval captain and his ingeniously simple strategy.

  Now that the bridge was in place and the east bank secured, we were no longer needed there. So we walked back on the bridge to the west bank. We did not know it at the moment, but our next stop would be Paris.

  VII

  PARIS

  Paris, the City of Light, the flower of Europe, was about to fall again. This time some of the troops headed for the city were, indeed, Frenchmen, being part of the French Second Armored Division. Our Fourth Infantry Division was held back, for political reasons, to let the native division go in ahead.

  We were, nonetheless, the first American troops to enter Paris on August 25, 1944, an incredible, indelible day! It was exactly one month after my first day in combat.

  Within the city itself, all was confusion and wild celebration. The population had gone insane with jubilation.

  We stayed in our vehicles and slowly moved through the crowded streets on our way toward the Eiffel Tower. Small cars with FFI—French Forces of the Interior—painted in bold white letters on their sides sped aroun
d corners. Young, wild-looking French men and women hung from every window of the cars. They waved hysterically and brandished weapons as they passed. We were afraid we might become their targets. I guess they were all right, but somehow we did not trust them very much.

  It was little chilling to watch some of our Sherman tanks, now in the hands of this French Second Armored Division, wander all over the road. The drivers were either too drunk or too excited to keep in line. What a nightmare for a traffic cop, a drunken driver in a Sherman tank! We really didn’t blame them, after their four years in exile or underground.

  Then we were on the Champs Élysées, and it was packed with insanely joyous Parisians. Men, women, and children hung precariously from every window and jammed every doorway. The streets were almost a solid wall of humanity, and our trucks could barely crawl through them.

  These people shouted and cheered at the top of their voices in sheer ecstasy. In a desperate attempt to thank us for freeing their lovely city, they tossed us flowers, candy, cookies, bottles of wine, and other things they really could not spare.

  They just could not find enough good things to shower upon us. The young French girls threw kisses, and many were able to climb aboard our trucks and give the GIs the real thing. Our boys hated to let them go. I shook so many outstretched hands that my arm ached.

  One French blonde clambered into the cab of one of our trucks and settled onto the lap of a sergeant and kissed him. The sergeant must have figured that was unmilitary behavior, for he promptly pushed her back into the crowd. It was many, many weeks before the men let him forget it.

  We pushed right on through the center of the city to the northeast corner, which was much calmer. There we were assigned areas for bivouac and cautioned not to wander, since there were still Germans about. I had my men pitch tents in some backyards and told them to stay put. Less than an hour later, you might know, two men from another platoon wandered off in search of wine and women. They immediately ran into Germans instead. One of them was shot in the exchange of fire, and the other fled back to the company.

  He ran into an officer on the street and excitedly told him what had happened. The officer at once grabbed all the men he could load onto a jeep and took off up the road after the Germans. Very quickly he ran into the Germans and found himself in a small-arms fight that was too big for his small group. Without telling the men, the officer jumped in the jeep and tore back to our lines for more support. My company was then ordered to attack.

  We marched up the road about a half mile, passing our dead GI, who was sprawled by the side of the road where he had fallen. As we approached a railroad yard and roundhouse where the Germans seemed to be holed up I was ordered to take my platoon on a right flanking move and attack on signal to take the roundhouse.

  We maneuvered behind houses and through backyards until we were in position, and I radioed that we were ready. Instead of being ordered to attack, I was told to withdraw back to the company area. I was told only that there had been a change in plans.

  We learned later that we had been led into another regiment’s combat zone. This neighboring regiment had almost let us have it with their artillery. Fortunately for us, their artillery forward observer was on the ball and recognized us as friendlies.

  The next day I witnessed one of the emotion-ridden French kangaroo courts. There were several defendants, mostly women, on trial for collaboration with the Germans. As each was convicted in about five minutes she was led out onto the porch of a large house, and a local barber shaved her head. At the end of the trial, the convicted were lined up and forced to march through the streets.

  Their shaven heads made them stand out, and the mob jeered and poked at them and pelted them with rotten eggs, tomatoes, and even paper bags of excrement.

  Many such trials were going on around us, we heard. The retribution was beastly. With their bare scalps, these people were marked for a long time. They had to struggle and beg for the essentials of life. If guilty, perhaps they were lucky. Some of these luckless people might have been trying to make the best of a desperate situation. Some of the women had two and three children fathered by Germans. Others believed their husbands had been killed and so had fallen in love with their captors. For those, on the other hand, who had suffered without collaborating through four years of privation and hunger, the sudden release was emotionally explosive. To them it was not a time to grant mercy they themselves had been denied.

  It reminded me of an occasion back in Normandy when we actually had to shoot a Frenchwoman because she was firing at us. It seems the father of her children was a German soldier, and he had been killed right in the yard of their farmhouse.

  Near the end of the war, I saw the long trains of 40 & 8 boxcars. The capacity of each was stenciled on its side: “40 hommes, 8 chevaux”—forty men or eight horses. Each was loaded with Frenchmen heading for home after four years in Germany as slave labor. I wondered if they had any idea what awaited them. They all were riotously happy.

  After only a day or two on the northeast side of Paris, we again took up the pursuit of the Germans. We started out on foot in two columns on either side of the road, with my platoon in the lead. At the far edge of town we came upon a large villa enclosed by a stone wall. The huge house had a nice stand of tall pines in front, and the Germans had not failed to build platforms close to the treetops so that they could observe our actions. East of the villa stretched a huge sugar beet field, and beyond that a hayfield.

  Artillery shells began to land among the trees where we stood, and we spotted some Germans out in the beet field about a quarter mile away. Lieutenant Colonel Walker ordered my platoon right out into the open field to clear it out. I sure didn’t like being that sort of sacrificial offering, so I asked him to shell the Germans as we went out.

  In a few minutes our shells began to land among the Germans, and I led the platoon out into the sugar beet field. Our artillery soon became too much for the enemy, and they began waving white flags. I had my men hold their fire, and we waved to the Germans to come on in and surrender as soon as we could stop our artillery from firing on them.

  About thirty of them got up and came toward us with their hands on their heads. We covered them until they reached us and then passed them on to the rear as prisoners. For them the war was over.

  We continued our advance across the open field. It was a very tense business; we were so completely exposed. At one point I just missed stepping on a terrible antipersonnel mine we called a Bouncing Betty. Three tiny prongs showed through the earth about three inches from my foot.

  I instantly yelled “Mines!” and told my men to watch where they walked. Those things really scared hell out of me. They were completely hidden, very deadly. They work in two stages. Stepping on one of those prongs or touching a trip wire with five pounds of pressure sets off the first stage. The mine shoots up like a small rocket, and when it’s about ten to twenty feet high it explodes again. The second explosion scatters hundreds of ball bearings in every direction, like a shotgun. No one is safe within forty yards of the device. The second explosion is so close to the first you hardly have time to move. Falling down, which is the natural reflex, just exposes more of the body.

  Somehow we made it all the way across the sugar beet field and then far into some hayfields where we stopped for the night. At least we were able to make comfortable beds among the haystacks.

  About this time a solitary Frenchman wandered by. It seemed he owned a small fleet of buses, and the Germans had taken them all in their escape from Paris. He knew they were short on gas, and he hoped to find them abandoned and unharmed along the road. We wished him luck.

  Paris was now safely in Allied hands, and the rest of the pursuit was ahead. I hoped our luck would hold out. My platoon actually had not lost a man since Saint Pois.

  VIII

  THE PURSUIT CONTINUES

  With Paris behind us and the German armies in full retreat, we tossed all caution to the wind. Combat teams wer
e thrown together by mixing a few tanks with each infantry battalion. The infantry rode on the back of the tanks or followed in two-and-a-half ton trucks.

  A wild, mad, exciting race seemed to be on to see which army could gain the most ground in a single day. We were in the First Army under General Hodges. The headline hailed the colorful, flamboyant Patton as the hero of the day, boldly announcing, “Patton’s tanks roll fifty miles.” While our First Army usually made about the same distance, we were not mentioned; or, if anything was said, it was usually hidden on a second or third page of Stars and Stripes, the Army newspaper. Back home, too, the bold headlines were all about Patton. He did deserve a lot of credit, but we resented the neglect of the First Army and the efficient General Hodges. He never received near the credit he deserved.

  Resistance continued to be very light, and we were able to gain fifty or sixty miles each day. The German rear echelon blew up a few bridges and toppled some trees across the roads at points difficult to detour. Places with a hill on one side and a ravine on the other were ideal for that type of roadblock. Usually the Germans did not defend those roadblocks, but you had to assume they were mined or an antitank gun was hidden somewhere, or you might get caught in a trap and lose some men or equipment.

  Sometimes we traveled all day without any action. Ironically enough, we now crossed some old World War I battlegrounds that we recognized from historical markers or statues.

  One city I remember was Soissons. Many of our men had fought and died in its vicinity some twenty-five years earlier. Somehow, being on the scene, it all seemed so unreal. Theirs was the war dedicated to end all wars, yet here we were on the very same scene again. Perhaps members of Congress should serve automatically as frontline troops. Surely such top-notch, intelligent men could find a way to stop wars much sooner if they were directly involved. It seems the young men are destined to carry out, mostly without question, the plans and orders of their seniors.