Honor Before Glory

by Scott McGaugh

  Israel Yost, a chaplain with the 100th Battalion, had felt both emotions in the aftermath of taking Biffontaine. “I was furious when I saw the life draining out of the young men in Biffontaine, and at seeing them pushed toward annihilation in the forest,” he recalled.12 The twenty-eight-year-old Lutheran had knelt next to untold numbers of soldiers since he had enlisted two years earlier, leaving his wife, Peggy, behind. She was pregnant with their second child. An intellectual man, Yost had experienced tragic loss early in life when his father, a traveling salesman of farm equipment, had been killed while standing on the side of the road when he was hit by a drunk driver. Now Yost was surrounded by death and loss.

  Yost’s Pennsylvania Dutch accent had brought ridicule in school and spawned an intense desire to prove himself in the eyes of others. After he was confirmed in the Lutheran Church at the age of fifteen, Yost was inducted into the National Honor Society and skipped his senior year to enroll in a Lutheran-affiliated college. The former language major (Latin, Greek, German, French, and Spanish) had graduated from the seminary in 1940. Four years later he knelt next to medics tending to wounded and dying men every day. Yost conducted services for support personnel in the rear and at forward aid stations for shell-shocked men fresh off the battlefield. He witnessed the barbaric toll that assaults on nameless ridges and numbered hills exacted on young souls in battle. That included Young Oak Kim, who had soured on how General Dahlquist was deploying the 442nd in battle, especially when Kim learned his battalion would assault Biffontaine. This new mobilization reminded him of an earlier mission.

  The sun had finally broken through the clouds on October 21 when Kim learned the 100th would attack Biffontaine (where Kim would be wounded) the following day. Kim was irate. Kim’s unit would have to drop off an elevated position to attack Germans holed up in buildings and basements. Better to stay on the ridge, bypass Biffontaine, and pressure the retreating Germans from an elevated position.

  As Kim debated the plan with Pence over the radio, Kim realized that General Dahlquist was standing next to Pence. Kim knew he wasn’t going to win the argument. “I want to state for the record that I am very much against this,” said Kim.13 The only concession Kim exacted was assurance from Pence that other units would advance to maintain American control of the ridge that had already cost dozens of wounded and killed men. Meanwhile, the Germans were sending reinforcements to Biffontaine by bicycle.

  That wasn’t the first time that Kim had been disgusted by Dahlquist’s orders. Two days earlier Kim had been on the radio with Colonel Pence after his unit and others in the 100th Battalion had taken one of four distinct hills that rose at the end of several streets in Bruyères. Each offered a commanding view of the town.f Bruyères could not be liberated without first clearing the hills of Germans. Kim’s men had paid a steep price in blood when taking one of them. “Can you do me a favor? Whatever I say, just answer with ‘yes, sir,’” Pence asked Kim over the radio. Kim’s instinct was to refuse, but he thought better of it and asked if Dahlquist was nearby. He was. Kim realized Pence was relaying an order Pence knew Kim might not accept. “This is an order from the division commander. Retreat from Hill C right now.”14

  The 100th Battalion had finally taken the high ground from the Germans and now was being ordered by Dahlquist to give it back to the enemy. Kim reluctantly agreed, only after talking to his battalion’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Singles. Later, rumors swept through the front line that there had been confusion over whether Dahlquist’s 36th Division or the 3rd Division was responsible for taking Hill C. Could it be that division politics could cost lives? Could an arbitrary line on a map take the lives of sons, fathers, and husbands? The 100th retreated off the hill, and the Germans returned without firing a shot. More than one hundred casualties resulted when units from the 3rd Division retook the hill.

  BATTLE STRATEGIES ASIDE, THE HORRORS CONFRONTED BY soldiers in the foxholes sometimes spawned a fatalistic wish that otherwise would have been inconceivable back home. About six weeks earlier, devout Catholic Martin Higgins had attended Mass. “I prayed to God to be killed and have the war end. I was under the assumption I would be killed. It was the only way I could fight,” he recalled after the war.15 Five years earlier, he had looked forward to his unit being shipped overseas so he could wage war. Now he was surrounded and had accepted his fate.

  About fifteen hundred yards away, George Sakato had undergone a similar transformation when it seemed to him that units of the 442nd had been thrown one after another against the enemy, with little apparent regard for the horrific casualties they were taking. Dwindling supplies and mounting casualties fueled anger and frustration. At one point Sakato had flinched at the bottom of a hill when another soldier detonated a land mine above him. He crumbled to the ground on his remaining leg. “Land mines!” someone yelled. Sakato dropped to his knees and crawled up the hill, sticking his knife into the dirt ahead of him, praying it would not clink against the side of a buried mine. Mines detonated in the face of some men not far away. Oh my god, Sakato thought to himself. What am I doing here? I volunteered for this?16

  Later that day, when Sakato ran out of ammunition with no immediate prospect of resupply, he found a machine gun and ammunition among the dead and bloated German bodies. The infantryman who had been a horrible marksman in boot camp found spraying the enemy left and right was more effective than bracing for the recoil that came from shooting straight ahead. By that point dead enemy soldiers rarely bothered Sakato and others. But as the continuous combat had strung the days and nights together, dead American soldiers splayed across downed trees and straddling ravines disturbed them deeply. Is this worth it? Why us? Don’t they have anyone else?

  MORALE HAD BECOME AN ENEMY ON BOTH SIDES OF THE VOSGES battlefield. “Never before have I led in battle such motley and poorly equipped troops.”17 General Hermann Balck, commanding officer of Army Group G, was hardly satisfied with the fighting strength and discipline of the men in General Friedrich Wiese’s Nineteenth Army. Like Wiese, Balck was career army. He had been an infantryman in World War I after enlisting in 1913. The son of a renowned military tactician, he had spent most of World War II on the Eastern Front, where he had established his reputation as a battlefield commander who often defeated larger enemy forces.

  For weeks Wiese had been fighting the 36th Division with under-strength regiments, some filled with troops that either were on probation or had health problems. He had lost more than one hundred thousand men since August 15. Wiese was fighting a war on his heels, giving ground grudgingly and looking for every tactical advantage he could find. He had discontinued using forward reconnaissance units as his men retreated toward the Vosges. Wiese had one principal asset: his officers generally were experienced, well-trained, and dedicated professional soldiers. They knew battlefield tactics. They had become hardened to horrific casualty rates. And they shared his passion for not allowing the Allies to reach the German border under any circumstance.

  In mid-September Hitler had permitted Wiese to retreat to the Moselle River on the condition that he mount a counterattack when the Americans arrived. But that failed to materialize, as the 36th easily built bridges across the Moselle and pressed ahead toward the Vosges. Wiese instead intended to use the Vosges to his advantage. He likely knew, as Truscott certainly did, that the constant near-freezing rain, fog, and possibly snow would persist for the rest of October.

  The bad weather also contributed to the Americans’ inability to accurately assess Wiese’s fighting strength in the Vosges. In October Seventh Army intelligence could account for only six of nineteen German fortress battalions and only one of three fortress infantry regiments in the region. The closer the Allies pushed the enemy to the German border, shorter supply and reinforcement lines made it easier for the Germans to conceal their actual fighting strength. Wiese’s artillery made effective use of its moderate supply by stationing observers in trees to provide precise targeting information. Advancing Ameri
can artillery battalions tended to use more shells in the absence of well-established observers. Ammunition shortages had forced Truscott to impose artillery rationing in some sectors of the VI Corps’ advance.

  At least Wiese could expect the arrival of the 201st and 202nd Mountain Battalions, even though they would be undermanned and poorly equipped in most cases. That would amount to about 2,000 reasonably fresh troops to supplement the depleted 933rd Grenadier Regiment of 350 men and the 198th Fusilier Battalion in the immediate area. His battle plan was simple: Establish squad- and platoon-size strong points throughout the mountains to maintain pressure on the advancing Americans. Fight a war of attrition through attack and counterattack. Rugged hillsides with slopes of nearly 45 percent, a confined battlefield of approximately twenty-five square miles, peaks that reached two thousand feet in elevation, slick trails, and relentless rain were ideal for that strategy.

  Higgins had at least an inkling of what he faced. The 1/141 had captured three Germans from the 198th and placed them under guard. They told Higgins their units were severely shorthanded and that they were supported by two light tanks. During the day two additional Germans from the 202nd Mountain Battalion had also been captured.

  But as battered as they had become, the Germans held the high ground in most of the forest and had what was later estimated to be 700 troops in the immediate area. This was the enemy force that the Americans faced early on October 26.

  THE PLAN WAS FOR THE 2ND AND 3/141 AS WELL AS THE 2/242 to launch their assault at 0730. The 3/141 was to attack Hill 633. George Sakato and others of the 2/442 would use the same trail the 1/141 had taken and take a strategic hill to the north.

  If the 2/442 reached Higgins’s men, they would not immediately be brought to the rear. Presumably resupplied upon their relief, the 1/141 would keep fighting—and proceed north along the ridge: “If contact was made with the 1st Battalion by the 2nd Battalion, the 1st Battalion was to press on to the heights just north of La Houssière while the 2nd Battalion protected the right flank along the edge of the woods.”18 Clearly, headquarters did not yet consider this solely a rescue mission. Higgins’s men were simply to be reached, resupplied, and sent on to their original objective. Battle plans were to be followed precisely, and timetables had to be met.

  It was an ambitious plan, given the fact that no significant air reconnaissance of the area had been conducted. The Americans had a poor idea of the enemy’s strength. Much of the strategy rested on reports from a handful of German prisoners, some of them newcomers, who had been captured. It amounted to little more than a “follow me and fight” battle plan.19 Even more ominously, Lundquist’s written assessment of his troops late on October 25 reflected the beating they already had taken: “Combat efficient: Poor—limited by combat fatigue, weather and terrain difficulties and approximately a 50% reduction in rifle company strength on position.”20

  Higgins’s troops were running low on supplies, the relief force had suffered significant numbers of casualties and been halted by the Germans, and Dahlquist had ordered an exhausted 442nd back into battle. Mounting desperation soaked the battlefield as night fell and the rain persisted.

  a Like thousands of other Japanese American soldiers, Sagami’s family was forcibly relocated to an internment camp in Idaho. Government death-notification letters to his father and brother, both living in the camp, offered no details of how Yohei died. A half century later, Sakato became close friends with the Sagami family.

  b A Nisei is a Japanese American born in the United States whose parents (Issei) are immigrants from Japan.

  c Experts question whether a muddy water hole on the crest today is the same as the one Higgins’s men used in 1944. Today’s bog is too close to American foxholes to be considered outside Higgins’s perimeter. It’s more likely there was another water hole more distant in the forest at that time.

  d Several were taken to Stalag VII-A, near the Austrian border. More than twenty thousand POWs were housed there until the Allies liberated them six months later, in April 1945. A staple of their diet was a black bread that was more than one-third sawdust, leaves, and straw.

  e The record is unclear on whether forty-eight or fifty-five men were selected for the mission.

  f The hills were designated 555, A, B, and C.

  CHAPTER 3

  FIRE FOR EFFECT

  “ON YOUR FEET!” A FEW MEN IN 2/224 STIRRED AT THE PREDAWN roust by platoon leaders and company officers. Others remained motionless, some under freshly issued rain gear, buying every extra second of dry comfort possible. Stirring would confirm what they hoped had just been a bad dream: that it was time to get up, find the enemy again, kill or be killed. But within minutes hundreds were on their feet in the predawn darkness of October 26. Gun barrels were cold and the backpack canvas was damp as they assembled their gear. Packs needed to be reloaded, a day’s ration double-checked, and ammunition counted before hiking up into the Vosges Mountains, still shrouded in heavy predawn clouds.

  The battalion’s mission called for assembly in the darkest and coldest hours that always came just before dawn and then advancing long before sunrise out of the Belmont area and up onto the ridge. They would be following Higgins’s trail to an assembly area about three tension-filled miles from where they would first climb onto the ridge. Long before the sun rose, Technical Sergeant Rocky Matayoshi in Company G and others who served as scouts moved toward the front of their units. Platoons of riflemen and weapons squads prepared to head up the logging road before the forest lightened.

  They headed out, slightly bent forward at the waist, with their backs rolled forward under the weight of gear that might determine whether they would survive the day’s fighting. Some hauled a radio that weighed as much as thirty pounds. Rather than a pistol, most radiomen preferred a Thompson machine gun and eight magazines of ammunition. Rations, a canteen, a few personal belongings in a pack, and a bedroll added up to nearly fifty pounds on the back of the men who rarely weighed more than 150 pounds. Some radiomen looped their pack’s strap over a tree branch before climbing a hill with their radio and then retrieved their pack when their unit paused.

  As they climbed up the ridge, each man focused on the middle of the back of the soldier immediately in front of him. The darkness was so suffocating that some soldiers tied white fabric or a glow-in-the-dark watch on their packs so the man three feet behind could see him. Others reached out and grabbed the pack of the man ahead of them, creating a human daisy chain. Each had to trust the man in front and mimic his stride, hoping he’d find tree roots or half-exposed rocks that could serve as stepping-stones as he climbed. If one man slipped and fell on the steep, mud-slick trail, he could knock the legs out from under several others below him, as if a bowling ball had found its mark among the human pins. Only the scouts at the head of each advance had a dim view of the forest ahead.

  The 442nd’s scouts often worked in pairs, followed by the riflemen and then those carrying the heavier weapons, such as mortars and BARs. Sunrise dimmed by thick clouds revealed the ridge ahead. They couldn’t be sure the western end of the ridge had been cleared of every German, even though the 1/141 had moved through it a few days earlier. Matayoshi knew that if he failed to spot the enemy, his entire unit might be exposed. A single enemy soldier with a radio could bring a storm of artillery onto them in seconds. It was his job to find the enemy first and then use hand signals to pass the word back to his unit as it crept from tree to tree.

  Their advance unfolded in gut-wrenching slow motion. Progress was measured in increments of twenty yards. Some men could hear their hearts pounding, and many were not aware their breathing had drawn thin. Others less physically fit breathed heavily during the climb. An observant enemy soldier knew to watch for the puff of a misty breath. Although the forest floor was saturated, even a single bone-dry twig could reveal the presence of the Americans. Flat-footed walking dispersed a soldier’s weight to create a more reliably silent advance. Scouts paused for a minute or longer be
hind trees or boulders every few yards, scanning, sensing. Frozen in position, sometimes a scout could sense movement up ahead, seconds before he could see anything or anyone he could identify.

  George Sakato and others used forest sounds as sentries. A forest typically quiets when soldiers slowly advance from tree to boulder to gully. On occasion the warning cry of a marmot, red squirrel, bullfinch, or jay revealed a German machine-gun nest or betrayed a stealthy advance by a 2nd Battalion squad. One 442nd veteran likened patrol to Boy Scout camp in the woods. There was a lot of crouching, watching, and listening. But no Boy Scout was prepared for gunfire eruptions, mortar explosions, and the battle cries of men.

  The 2nd Battalion advanced in a northeasterly direction toward a relatively flat junction of three logging trails and then planned to swing left and advance toward the Germans on their right flank. They would be moving through the 3/141 and taking the point on the Americans’ left flank in a region of the forest known to be targeted by German artillery. The 2nd Battalion’s advance would prevent German reinforcements from entering the battle from the north and east. But as the sun rose and vision improved, small-arms fire brought the advance to a halt. Clearly, the Germans had yet to be cleared off the western portion of the ridge.