Honor Before Glory

by Scott McGaugh

  ABOUT THREE MILES AWAY, HIGGINS’S MEN WOKE UP AND scanned the forest for signs of a German attack as they resumed digging in. If a man wasn’t watching for or fighting the enemy, he had better be protecting himself against the next enemy attack. A helmet, trenching knife, folding shovel, and even a penknife made digging exceedingly slow for some, while others kept watch for the enemy. After each thin scoop of boggy forest dirt, groundwater seeped into the deepening holes. Somehow foxholes large enough for two men took shape. Two adjacent holes that were particularly large—perhaps to be used as an aid station and command post—were located in the center of Higgins’s position. Some men began cutting stout branches to build a roof over their crater. Once in place, dirt, pine needles, cantaloupe-size rocks, and mud were layered on top to create a roof capable of withstanding a blizzard of metal and wood shrapnel from tree bursts. Crawling into a dark hole, hoping to sleep in a filthy uniform, and trying to ignore the bone-chilling groundwater didn’t seem so bad if a soldier knew his roof would protect him from iron shards the size of a man’s palm and swarms of ten-inch wooden daggers that sounded like angry bees during an artillery attack.

  It was impossible for Higgins to determine how many enemy soldiers had surrounded his men, what kind of heavy weapons they had at their disposal, or if reinforcements were arriving sooner or later by the hour. (The 442nd’s headquarters staff estimated there were at least two hundred Germans between Higgins and the relief force.) Despite his lack of intelligence on enemy strength, Higgins knew he could lessen the odds of the enemy overrunning his men.

  His men had experienced how difficult and deadly it was to attack uphill. But now they held the high ground—a high point on the ridge. The Germans would have to attack uphill against Higgins’s defenders. If the 1/141 could somehow be kept supplied, Higgins was confident his men could hold out until relieved. And if the Germans gave Higgins’s men enough time to establish dug-in positions, it would be even more difficult to attack the 1/141. An entrenched force in fortified foxholes enjoys a three-to-one advantage in manpower over an attacking force. Digging in would essentially triple the combat effectiveness of Higgins’s men.

  Higgins could also take away the element of surprise by posting lookouts, who scanned the dense forest for enemy movement. For the first time since August 15, the enemy would have to come to the 1/141 instead of the reverse.

  Higgins made other tactical decisions to both protect and repel. He ordered mortarman Bruce Estes to bury his mortar and ammunition. The vast stands of black and stone pines trees that rose more than one hundred feet over their position created an impossibly dense canopy that made mortar warfare impossible. Unable to use it themselves, burying it might prevent it from falling into German hands. Free of his mortar assignment, Estes was sent to man a machine-gun post.

  Higgins placed his heavy machine-gun positions for maximum range and spread. Twenty-year-old Jack Wilson was responsible for one of the two World War I–era .30-caliber heavy machine guns on the eastern end of the perimeter. The nearly one-hundred-pound tripod-mounted weapon fired up to six hundred rounds per minute and had a maximum effective range of six-tenths of a mile. But he had set it on “single shot,” partly to save ammunition and also to avoid revealing his position. Wilson had fought with the 141st through some of Italy’s toughest campaigns and might have been one of its luckiest soldiers. Shrapnel had once grazed his lip and embedded itself in his backpack. A machine-gun round had creased a finger and broken his shovel’s handle. A water can attached to a jeep next to his leg had been shot away by enemy fire. And only a few days earlier, his rifle had been shattered, the binoculars on his hip had taken a direct hit of shrapnel, and he had been knocked unconscious during a German tank attack. He had opted to stay with his unit rather than report to an aid station. His head still ached and his ears rang as he and Burt McQueen set up their machine-gun station.

  Not far away on the perimeter, an Irish kid who had grown up around Amsterdam Avenue in New York City peered into the forest from his foxhole, looking as far as the mist would allow. Edward Guy carried a rifle and memories of growing up in a poor family of ten children in a five-room house. His mostly unemployed father had provided as best he could as a dishwasher and by carrying signs on the street, but it was a family at loose ends. Guy had dropped out of school after he tired of playing hooky and risking the wrath of his mother, who favored whacks with a shoe as corporal punishment.

  Only two years earlier, he had been working in a pharmacy in Newburgh, a town of about thirteen hundred residents perched on the Ohio River in southwestern Indiana. He had received his draft notice when he was working as an apprentice engineer in an Evansville boat-yard, building navy landing craft, called LSTs. He opted for the army rather than taking a chance in the navy. He didn’t have much confidence in the navy’s LSTs after seeing how they were constructed.

  He had met Higgins when Guy arrived as a replacement the year before. Higgins had impressed Guy right away as “a tough little guy. A regular guy. Honest, fair, and wouldn’t [order his men] to do anything he wouldn’t do. A lot of officers aren’t like that. He demanded discipline,” Guy recalled after the war.1 Now Higgins had assigned him to protect the trapped men within the perimeter.

  But the deadliest enemy facing the 1/141 was the most basic: a lack of food and water. Most men had carried only a day’s ration and a canteen of water. The food supply was soon exhausted, and a few slightly orange chanterelle mushrooms scavenged among the pine needles were nutritious but woefully inadequate. A communications sergeant, James Comstock had lived on a farm in Pennsylvania and knew how to find them. Boiling the few he scavenged in his canteen’s water produced little more than a thin broth. He had earned a battlefield commission to become a sergeant four months earlier in Italy and had been eager for his parents and girlfriend to learn of his promotion. He was nineteen years old. Meanwhile, the two French guides, Henri Grandjean and Pierre Poirat, showed others how to scavenge for other edible mushrooms and pointed out which wood should be used to heat water because it produced minimal smoke.

  There was a marginal supply of water a short distance away outside the perimeter. Some men thought it was a seeping spring. Others saw it more as algae-covered groundwater in a crater. Nevertheless, the Americans craved that water supply—the safest way to collect water was to send a night patrol crawling to the mud hole, some men carrying the canteens and others sweeping the forest with their rifles and machine guns, safeties off. Although the Germans had placed a sniper near the water hole, Higgins ordered his men not to shoot any Germans there. He didn’t want decomposing bodies contaminating his only water supply.

  The supply of water-disinfecting Halazone tables lasted only one day. Higgins and the other lieutenants could only imagine how their exhausted, starving soldiers’ stomachs might react to contaminated water if help didn’t arrive soon.

  Mortarman Estes, though, had found a temporary solution in the bottom of his foxhole. He had grown up on a family farm in Georgia. The youngest child in the family, he had taken care of his mother and family while siblings raised cotton, corn, cattle, pigs, and mules. Along the way he had developed some self-reliance skills. He carried a small gas stove in combat. As long as his fuel supply lasted, he mixed lemon powder with the brown water and boiled it. A metal cup of steaming gritty water held between two aching hands in a constant misty rain provided a few seconds’ relief for those lucky enough to share the bounty. Higgins later marveled at the variety of equipment his men carried in battle as well as their ingenuity.

  But Estes couldn’t be distracted from watching for Germans in the morning. Higgins’s men had noticed a pattern was emerging—the Germans seemed to favor an early-morning probing attack on the Americans. Some men called it “time for breakfast,” in a bizarre universe defined by hunger, thirst, and uncertainty.

  BY NOW THE RESCUE CAST HAD GROWN TO INCLUDE THOUSANDS of men, from riflemen to truck drivers to artillery crews. At Dahlquist’s division headquarters, t
here were intelligence, operations, and logistics units each focusing on their aspect of the mission. Dahlquist’s chief of staff, Colonel Charles Owens, was the liaison between Dahlquist and the 141st’s commander, Colonel Carl Lundquist. Lundquist also had intelligence, operations, and logistics officers under his command. Although the 442nd’s 2nd Battalion had been assigned to Lundquist, the 442nd’s commanding officer, Colonel Charles Pence, monitored radio messages and the situation on the battlefield. He needed to maintain overall situational awareness in the event the impulsive Dahlquist called the 442nd’s remaining 100th and 3rd Battalions out of reserve with little notice.

  Dahlquist had the entire 442nd, 142nd, 143rd, and two battalions of the 141st at his disposal. So far, units of the 142nd and 143rd had made minimal progress trying to reach the 1/141. He also commanded 131st Field Artillery Battalion and 111th Engineer Combat Battalion. Tank units had been brought forward to engage the enemy, and air support was also available if the skies cleared.

  But no military mission could be successful if it could not be reliably supplied with ammunition, food, medical supplies, weapons, and replacement troops. The 141st’s logistics officer radioed the 36th Division’s engineer battalion that the heavy vehicles and light tanks were destroying the muddy paths used by supply trucks. As the ruts deepened, some vehicles bounced off the road, while others high-centered when their undercarriages dragged through the mud. Thirty truckloads of gravel were dispatched to the front, just as Dahlquist arrived at the regiment’s command post at 0850 for a briefing by the regimental operations Officer. It was a brutal report.

  The 2/442 was already stuck in place, unable to cross a trail. Sakato and others were several hundred yards from their objective, Hill 617. If the 2nd Battalion could capture it, the high ground would protect the left flank of the rescue mission. But the direct approach up a draw on the southwest side made the 2nd Battalion an easy target for the Germans.

  Sakato and others were pinned down by an unknown number of enemy infantry supported by least five machine-gun nests. The Germans held Hill 617 and had placed dozens of guns in broad foxholes facing down the draw where the Americans were approaching. To Sakato, the enemy seemed nearly invisible. The Germans were experts at camouflage. They had mounded the dirt they had excavated by hand onto the backside of their foxholes to camouflage their silhouettes when they fired at the advancing Americans. Two companies of the 3/141 had also been halted by enemy fire. Although the 131st Field Artillery Battalion was firing on enemy positions, a mud-soaked stalemate had developed. It was only midmorning.

  About one hour later, the new commanding officer of VI Corps who had replaced blunt and driven Truscott, Major General Edward Brooks, appeared at the command post. A World War I veteran, the square-jawed Brooks was an imposing figure. His superiors thought so highly of Brooks that he had skipped the rank of colonel when they promoted him to brigadier general in 1941. He had led troops in some of Europe’s toughest battles and had helped pioneer self-propelled guns. Now a single trapped battalion threatened to throw a tightly coordinated VI Corps advance off balance. Dahlquist’s 36th Division was supposed to stay abreast of the 3rd Division in the advance toward St. Die. If too many assets of the 36th were shifted to a rescue mission, the 36th’s advance would be slowed, creating a gap between the 36th and 3rd that could become an open invitation for a German counterattack. Even though Wiese’s German units were generally short of men, Brooks could not allow that to happen. So the commander of the VI Corps had to devote his time and attention to reaching a single battalion that could be lost to the enemy.

  His orders on arrival were as precise as they were unquestioned. Direct the 2/442 to fight due east across Hill 617 toward the surrounded battalion. There would be no flanking attempts by the 2nd. Further, Colonel Lundquist was to send his tanks directly forward toward any German roadblocks they encountered and blast a clear path. Reports from the field indicated there were as many as three enemy roadblocks in place, plus an untold number of strongpoints. Many would be heavily mined. Finally, send the remaining infantry of the 141st around both sides of the first roadblock. Brooks wanted an all-out assault.

  Following Brooks’s orders and sensing his urgency, Dahlquist lambasted Lundquist. Dahlquist reminded Lundquist that he had four battalions at his disposal but “still are not doing anything.” According to Dahlquist, the 2/442 was to operate on its own. Dahlquist pointedly asked, “Can’t you use artillery on the enemy?” It was on only the last point that Lundquist stood up to the general. He told Dahlquist the Americans were so close to the enemy that they would suffer casualties from friendly artillery fire. Dahlquist didn’t buy it. At 1108 he ordered, “Artillery fire on enemy in front of the 2nd Battalion. Have artillery fire over target first; then adjust by sound; forward observer with 2nd Battalion should be able to do this.”2

  Dahlquist had set aside his responsibility as the 36th Division’s organizational leader to become the operational leader of the 141st Infantry Regiment, issuing tactical orders that usurped Lundquist’s authority. Dahlquist, a general with three months’ combat experience, had taken control from Lundquist, a man with one month’s combat experience. One prewar planner was taking over for another, commanding troops on the front line. Dahlquist’s chief of staff, Colonel Owens, had been Dahlquist’s top aide for only fourteen days. Dahlquist and Owens collectively had less than five months’ combat experience. Many men under Dahlquist’s command suspected the imperious general was intent on becoming the first senior officer to enter Germany. Dahlquist, they said, would not tolerate an extended delay to rescue a single battalion in his advance toward the Rhine River.

  He also expected Higgins to fight his way out of his predicament. At 0835 Higgins’s only radio operator, Erwin Blonder, had received a bewildering message. Higgins was to launch a major attack against the Germans from the rear and break through the roadblock that held his battalion prisoner. No matter how bloodied Higgins’s unit had become, his men were to leave their foxholes and attack the Germans from the rear. Whether they had enough ammunition or what they were to do with the wounded men on stretchers apparently did not concern the anxious division commander.

  For his part, Higgins couldn’t accurately assess the combat strength of the enemy, know the enemy’s strongpoints, or anticipate where enemy troops in reserve might be stationed. He would be attacking blind and would be leading a depleted unit hobbled by debilitating hunger and more than twenty wounded.

  Radioman Erwin Blonder was the link between the surrounded battalion and thousands of men fighting to reach it. Tall and lanky, Blonder had grown up in the Cleveland, Ohio, area, the son of a prosperous wallpaper and paint business owner. A thoughtful and introspective youngster, he had played the piano, met his future wife when he was in high school, and been an average student before attending the University of Arizona and Ohio State University. Very patriotic and interested in world history, he had volunteered one month before graduation.

  As a forward artillery observer with the only working radio, it was Blonder’s job to keep Higgins advised as infantrymen, tank crews, mortar squads, artillery batteries, road builders, supply personnel, truck drivers, medics, mine diffusers, and others planned, reacted, and mobilized. Most of the radio traffic for nearly two days had consisted of variations of “Hang on. Sizable force coming your way.”

  Blonder’s radio was crucial because Higgins’s field telephone was useless. Communications Sergeant James Comstock had strung telephone wire as Higgins’s force had advanced. But a German artillery bar rage had cut the line the first night. Comstock and another man had left Higgins’s position almost immediately as the others dug in. They sneaked through the forest in search of the break in the seven-strand line. As they backtracked they ran the one-eighth-inch-thick wire through their hands in the darkness, feeling for a break in the black tar-covered line. When they found it, Comstock quickly repaired the break. But then they were nearly captured when “German soldiers came up the path [so close t
hat] we were able to identify them as German soldiers by looking up toward the sky and seeing the dips in their helmets. We lay still until they passed us. . . . [T]hey were so close I could have reached out and tripped them, but I think I was too scared to move.”3 The two Americans returned to their battalion. But the telephone was still out of commission. There must have been other breaks. Throughout their battalion’s ordeal, the telephone line was never repaired.

  Blonder’s SCR-300 field radio had become standard issue to army units just a few months earlier. Ultimately, fifty thousand “300s” would be deployed in combat. The thirty-eight-pound low-power backpack radio had proved itself reliable, easy to use, and relatively waterproof. With its antenna extended, its range was approximately three miles, although the weather and nearby peaks sometimes lessened its effective range. Most critically, its battery life was eight to twelve hours. And it was already reaching that limit. Whether Blonder could coax additional power out of his battery might determine the fate of the surrounded battalion. He was receiving and sending as few messages to the regimental command post and others as possible, mostly in code and always brief. He and Higgins could control how many messages they sent, but they were at the mercy of how many messages they received from Colonel Lundquist as well as division and regimental intelligence, operations, logistics, and artillery personnel. Each message drew the battery closer to death.

  In the Vosges Mountains, Blonder had found himself on a far more intimate battlefield than anything he had experienced previously. As an artillery observer alongside infantry units in Italy, he had typically seen “Germans moving a thousand yards away from you and [then] you bring artillery fire on them,” he had written to his parents three weeks earlier. “You kill a few and wound some. You don’t stop to think whether it is right or wrong but know that the more Germans you kill the quicker the war will be won.”4 Now the former Boy Scout licked his cold radio battery to extend its life as he relayed messages between Higgins and various command posts, hoping that the communication would result in enemy killed.