If You Survive

by George Wilson

  It was almost a game, and the German FO was very good at it. No sooner had I changed position and allowed twenty or thirty seconds for the range on his cannon to be adjusted than the shells would start dropping in all around me. He was extremely accurate. He already had the exact range and only had to make very slight adjustments.

  The mortar observer was just as good as the artillery. I would look up quickly for a new shell hole, get up and spring ten or twenty yards, and dive into the new hole. After about a half minute, the mortar shells, which had to go way up and then drop almost straight down, would pepper the area all around me.

  Once my radioman and I plunged into a shell hole about three feet deep and six feet across, and we had hardly settled when the mortars began to explode very close to us. Even if it had been possible to hear their vertical descent, the other battle noises would have drowned them out. This became my single worst experience of the war. Because the shells came in so fast, I judged they must have had eight or ten mortars zeroing in on us. About one hundred shells came down in an area that couldn’t have been much more than fifty feet on a side. Why they never got a direct hit I’ll never know.

  A third man piled in on top of us, and we tried to bury ourselves in the bottom of the hole, praying out loud as we held on for dear life. Handfuls of dirt, chips of stones, and spent shell fragments kept hitting me in the back. The only thing that saved us was the softness of the plowed fields. There could be no tree bursts out there, of course, and the soft dirt let the shells penetrate a bit before exploding and then absorbed much of the force. We were lucky the ground there had not yet frozen. Of course, the fact that there was no direct hit was also a factor in our survival, for which we thanked Providence.

  And it was on that terrible open slope beyond the hamlet of Grosshau that young Lieutenant George Wilson, commanding officer of F Company, Twenty-second Infantry, came to the very edge of his breaking point. I had to fight with all I had to keep from going to pieces. I had seen others go, and I knew I was on the black edges. I could barely maintain the minimal control I had after fourteen or fifteen days of brutally inhuman fighting in those damned woods; I had reached the limit of my physical and emotional endurance.

  The barrage abruptly ended, and a problem with my radioman, the larger of the two buddies, snapped me right out of my morbid thoughts. He was crying again, though this time with reason, and he begged me to send him to the rear. It wasn’t the best time to bother me, and I couldn’t take it from him. I turned on him angrily and pointed my rifle at his chest, saying that if I heard one more word out of him I’d shoot. He stopped bawling instantly.

  A few minutes later in the next barrage, as a kind fate would have it, this radioman was wounded slightly in the arm, and I had to send him to the rear. And then I became my own radioman.

  His buddy, the smaller man with the SCR 300 longer-range radio, which was used to relay messages, was still back in Grosshau with my headquarters group. But a little later, when I tried to relay a message through, I couldn’t reach him. The medics later on listed him as a battle fatigue case.

  When I look back, I don’t see how anything could be worse than the punishment we took that day. The Germans had waited until we were out in the open with only shell holes and the undulations of the plowed field for protection, and then they let us have it with artillery, mortars, rifles, cannon, snipers, and—worst of all—the direct fire of machine guns and 88mm High Explosive (HE) shells from tanks right in the line.

  The tanks at the edge of the woods would shoot HE shells into the ground just ahead of the attacking infantry. After that the Germans would machine gun the fallen men. I could move only a few men forward at a time. Only those who were fast and could find a hole to dive into after fifteen or twenty yards made it.

  The toughest thing for me that terrible, insane day was to hear stricken men all over that slope crying out for a medic who no longer was there. Our marvelous, courageous medics had been working right out in the open wherever they found a wounded man, and they had all been wiped out. Normally the medics were spared being shot at by German infantrymen. However, artillery, cannon, mortar, and tanks could not be so selective. Anyone in the area could be hit; often it was the misfortune of the medics and stretcher bearers to be caught in an area being shelled. At these moments I was furiously bitter at that armored infantry captain who had insisted his men were on the hill, and I don’t think I could have been trusted near him.

  Whenever I could get to any of the seriously wounded, I would tell them their only hope was to somehow crawl back to the aid station. Some of the bad ones actually made it. I don’t see how.

  One man made his way over to me, and he was unable to talk because his chin had been shot away. I pointed to Grosshau and urged him to get there as soon as possible. It was all I could stop to do for him then.

  G Company, on my right, seemed to be falling behind, so I called Captain Toles on the radio and asked if he could come up on line with my company, so we wouldn’t be a salient the Krauts could concentrate on. He told me they would be dropping back even farther. Then I received no further response.

  Later I found out that Captain Toles had been seriously wounded and that another of my old friends formerly of E Company, Lieutenant Piszarak, had been killed. Piszarak and I had joined E Company the same day back in July near Carenten, France.*

  Without leaders, G Company just didn’t move, and many of the men drifted back into Grosshau. Colonel Kenan had me send Lieutenant Greenlee to take command of G, but he got there too late. So from about noon onward, my company fought on by itself.

  We were nearing the crest of the hill, and what was left of my forward platoons was being blasted by the tanks in the woods, cutting them down like a giant, bloody scythe. Lieutenant Caldwell got some artillery on them before he was wounded, and I called for fighter planes. Soon some P-47s came over and strafed the hilltop and dropped a few bombs. This helped quite a lot because it forced the German tanks to take cover deeper in the woods.

  During what may have been the peak of the shelling, the man leading my left platoon went berserk and had to be sent to the rear. This forced me to call forward a young officer who had just joined me that morning before we jumped off. Since he had had no chance to get acquainted with his men, I had left his platoon in reserve. Now I needed him and told him to bring his platoon up through the left platoon and continue the attack.

  He immediately began to cry, and he sobbed out that he couldn’t do it. Coming in fresh and going out onto that hill looked to him like an execution. He might have been right. But I had no choice in the matter and had to send him to the rear.

  Thus, for the second time in ten days, I was the only officer left in the company, and most of my noncoms (sergeants and corporals) were gone. I appointed one man a sergeant on the spot. I had long since lost count of how many times I had had to make such instant appointments and promotions. I told him to try to get some of the men on the left moving again while I did the same on the right.

  About a half hour later this new sergeant came over to me and pointed to the only building left standing on the hill to our left. He asked if we had anyone in there. He said it looked like someone was up in what was left of the chimney. I raised my field glasses and sure enough spotted a sniper as he was pointing his rifle our way. I yelled at the sergeant to duck and instinctively pulled him down into a shallow trench dug by the Germans, just as the sniper’s bullet kicked up the dirt beside us. Then I told the Sergeant to get some of his men shooting at the SOB.

  He got up and walked nonchalantly about twenty yards to his nearest men, knelt down, and pointed up to the chimney. This he repeated to the next group of men, and then he casually walked over to a shellhole for himself.

  Just as he reached the lip of his hole the sniper dropped him with a bullet to the head. Damn it, why hadn’t he hustled? The sniper might well have missed. His men quickly got the sniper, who also must have been the mortar FO, because after that the mortars di
dn’t bother us anymore.

  All my leaders were gone again. I didn’t even have a corporal left. Sergeant Bert Smith, the forward observer for the 81mm mortars from H Company, was still with us, but he was busy directing his mortars to fire on any target he could find.

  Our day-long infantry attack, along with great help from our artillery, had driven the Germans out of their foxholes and one big log-reinforced dugout at the edge of the woods. As we entered the woods, a quick look around at our strength made me shudder when I saw how few men had gotten through. And with G Company apparently out of action back down the hill, I realized we were sitting out on the proverbial limb; it wouldn’t take much for the Germans to snip us off once they appreciated our weakness.

  So I kept on doing what I’d been doing all day almost automatically, making quick decisions. There had been no help at all during the battle, and it never even occurred to me to ask for any now. I was still on my own, and my judgment told me to get out of what could have been a trap, so I moved the remnants of F Company back some two hundred yards over ground we had taken and up a slight slope to a former German trench. This would force the enemy to attack uphill and across open ground to get to us.

  I sure hated to give up ground that had been so expensive, but I didn’t see its value if we didn’t survive to hold it. Perhaps I should have called Colonel Kenan and requested that he send up E Company to help out after dark, but decided I had to deal with the problem immediately.

  We moved back to the long trench without any problems, and, although we all were close to physical and emotional exhaustion, each man began spontaneously to deepen the trench, which was originally about two feet deep. Some got it down to about five feet before they felt safe. At least the ground was soft and scooped out easily.

  I had reported by radio to Lieutenant Colonel Kenan and was told to hold where we were. No mention was made of sending up help. I still wonder why E Company wasn’t sent up immediately.

  We had started out that morning with about 140 riflemen, a couple medics, three noncoms, four company officers, one attached artillery officer, and one attached sergeant from H Company. We had lost all the medics, all the noncoms, three of the four company officers, and the artillery observer. And we had lost ninety riflemen. This was, and still is, the most terrible day of my life. The ordeal was beyond human endurance, and I cannot understand how fifty of us survived.

  On the top of the sickening pain of our losses was the nagging bitterness that it probably all could have been prevented if Lieutenant Caldwell, the best FO I ever saw, had been permitted to wipe out the Germans before they could dig in. What a difference it would have made to F and G companies. The losses at G must have been similar to ours. If that Armored Infantry captain had only been able to read his map, that particular battle would never have taken place. Yet, again and again, headquarters denied us the action we, who were on the spot, could have taken to such advantage.

  We had fought all day without food, and now some of us tried to force down a cold K ration, but few of us were hungry. The night of November 30 was cold in that German trench without blankets or overcoats. Wearing only a field jacket, I was so cold that I could not stop my teeth chattering. Although I was completely exhausted, physically and emotionally spent, my nerves wouldn’t quit. I could not sleep. The horrible events of the day kept churning around and playing back vividly as life.

  I was sickened with grief at our losses, and yet it had happened so quickly that the total effect was numbing. The loss of one man is deeply depressing; the loss of ninety is just overwhelming. In fact, I was overwhelmed by the courage of those men, most of whom were very raw recruits, and it gave me a sensitive, even touchy, feeling of pride in the fighting qualities of our twenty-second Infantry. Emotion was all most of us had left.

  As I lay there in the chill, unable to relax enough to sleep, I couldn’t help dwelling on some of the things that naturally bothered me. Why hadn’t G Company come up on line, and how badly had they been hit? And where was E all this time? Was it too risky to send any more men out there to help us? Were we being written off and abandoned? More to the point, and this is what may really have been keeping me awake, did the Germans realize our helplessness, and would they counterattack during darkness and wipe us out?

  Since I am only human, I have to mention how pleased I was to hear from friends at battalion that there was talk that I would be recommended for the Distinguished Service Cross (ranking just below the Medal of Honor) and also would be put in for captaincy. I didn’t know about the DSC, but I sure felt entitled to promotion to captain, the normal rank of a company commander. As it turned out, due to circumstances I never understood, nothing ever came to pass. I never thought much about the medal, but being passed over for an earned promotion did rankle.

  As dawn approached I got out and made the rounds to make darn sure everyone was alert for an enemy attack. At about this time of day—it now was December 1, 1944—Private Mays, our former radioman who had been wounded, rejoined us, and with him came a young retread officer. Retreads had been trained for rear echelon work, and now, in the emergency, they were given some quick infantry training and sent up to the front.

  At this time our First, Second, and Third battalions were given the code names Red, White, and Blue. My new lieutenant told me Colonel Kenan’s orders were for me to hold in place while Blue Battalion went around our left flank and continued the attack. We were to be alert for any enemy action on the rear or right flank of Blue and to stop any such attack. I heard myself wonder aloud, “What the hell with?”

  It was a tremendous relief to learn another battalion would be leading the attack, and I kept in close contact with Colonel Kenan over the radio. Blue jumped off as planned and made it into the woods on our left with ease. Apparently the Germans hadn’t worried much about that flank. An hour later Colonel Kenan radioed me that Blue had run into a battalion of German defenders and was now having a very rough time. Blue was concerned that the enemy might work around between my position and theirs and attack Blue’s rear, so Colonel Kenan ordered me to move F Company, all fifty of us, up into the woods ahead, go in five hundred yards, and then set up defensive positions facing southeast in order to cover Blue’s right flank and rear.

  This normally would have been a simple exercise in control, but it was not easy with only one spanking-new officer and no sergeants or corporals at all. The squads were down to three to five men each instead of the normal twelve, and no squad had a leader. In our exposed position it was impossible to regroup, so I decided to lump all the riflemen into one platoon for the new lieutenant and leave the rest of the company for me. It was too bad Officer Candidate School never taught us how to operate at considerably less than full strength, for that’s the way we always seemed to be in actual combat.

  I called my one and only lieutenant over to my position in the center of the trench and gave him the story of his new platoon of all riflemen, with no sergeants, and I told him to lead them about one hundred yards into the woods and wait there for me and the rest of the company. I would lead the company myself from there on. Then by word of mouth we passed the orders down both sides of the trench. I couldn’t help wondering what sort of message the men at the end received.

  It was a bright, clear midmorning when I signaled the lieutenant. He at once jumped out of the trench and at the top of his voice yelled: “All you riflemen, come on, let’s go!” He started at a trot toward the German lines and after a moment looked back over his shoulder at a sight that should have given him heart failure. Not one single rifleman was following him.

  This young retread lieutenant then made a big sweeping motion with his arm, yelled “Let’s go!” at the men again, and continued trotting forward with hardly a break in his stride.

  I think I was holding my breath, then suddenly some of the men on both sides of me began to climb out of the trench, and soon the whole platoon of riflemen was running after him. They disappeared into the woods without a shot being
fired.

  This was one of the most courageous acts I had ever seen, and I recommended the young lieutenant for a Silver Star, but I never found out if he received it. I felt like giving him mine.

  When the lieutenant and his riflemen reached the edge of the woods, I ordered the rest of the men to stay spread out and follow me. The Krauts evidently had been surprised by the quick rush of the first wave, but they certainly were ready for us. We could even see the flashes of their cannon a half mile off to the left front, and within seconds the shells were blowing up all around us. I was on a direct line to the cannon, and the shells were so big and were coming in so low that I could actually see some of them flying through the air. This gave most of us a split-second warning, and we could dive out of the way.

  It didn’t help one of the men, unfortunately, and he took a direct hit in the chest. His whole upper body disintegrated, but by some weird motor reaction his legs kept going a few steps. I almost threw up. I had seen that particular shell and where it was headed. I had yelled at the man, but he never heard me in all the other noise.

  It was quite a surprise when we reached the woods ourselves and looked around, expecting to be greeted by our new lieutenant, but found no sign of him or his platoon. I left my few men with Sergeant Bert Smith, the mortar FO, and went forward with my radioman to look for the rest of the company.

  We moved forward carefully through about four hundred yards of scrub oak and saw no sign of them. Suddenly we heard noises to the front and edged forward slowly. There we found some German soldiers in a small gully working to free a Tiger tank that was mired in the mud about fifty yards below us. Very slowly we backed off. We didn’t have a bazooka, and we couldn’t be distracted from our main purpose of finding the only riflemen we had.