Honor Before Glory

by Scott McGaugh

  Oh my God, Sakato thought before he yelled, “Watch out for the machine guns! They’re taking the hill back!”

  Tanamachi inexplicably stood. “Where?”

  The answer was a German machine-gun burst that ripped into Tanamachi. Sakato ran to his friend, who had fallen into a foxhole. Sakato held his friend, blood soaking both uniforms.

  “Why’d you stand up?”5

  Tanamachi gurgled in reply. Seconds later he died, limp in Sakato’s arms. Sakato cried in the middle of battle. They had shared a Waldorf Astoria room in New York City when on leave, carefree and happy, looking out the window for a few hours when they discovered they had no money after paying for the room. Now they had shared death. His friend’s blood coated Sakato’s hands. Tears blurred the battlefield for a few seconds before they evaporated in rage.

  “You son of a bitch,” Sakato yelled as he, too, rose to his feet, in full view of the enemy.6 He could hardly have frightened the Germans. Sakato, the smallest and sickliest of five brothers, zigzagged toward the enemy, firing his Tommy gun from his hip, spraying the forest as Germans fell on one side and then the other.

  His suicide charge so unnerved the Germans that several raised hands and white handkerchiefs fluttered. Sakato had nearly singlehandedly halted the counterattack and taken prisoners. He had killed twelve Germans, wounded two others, and taken four prisoners. But he had lost a friend. Sakato had only thirteen days’ battlefield experience when he mounted his charge up the hill. As a replacement soldier, he had halted a flanking attack by the enemy, taking charge when his squad leader had been killed.

  The previous day, Tanamachi had told Sakato that he felt sick to his stomach. Sakato had told him to report to an aid station. Tanamachi refused, picked up a grenade launcher, and reported to his assembly area. Once the 2/442 had secured Hill 617, Sakato walked back to Tanamachi’s body, soaked with blood and mud. Tanamachi’s blood on Sakato’s hands had crusted and then been rubbed off by his still-warm submachine gun. Sakato removed Tanamachi’s lucky 1921 silver dollar that he had carried in his pocket. After the war, Sakato gave the silver dollar to Tanamachi’s mother.b

  UNCERTAINTY CONTINUED TO GNAW AT HIGGINS’S MEN. THE Germans had probed their perimeter regularly for five days. Short of an all-out attack, they nonetheless inflicted casualties and kept the surrounded battalion on edge. By now the Germans knew the exact location of the battalion, so its artillery barrages had become increasingly deadly. When Higgins made his morning rounds, his men reported three more had been killed overnight. Slowly, brutally, the Germans were chipping away at Higgins’s force, killing a soldier or two with an artillery attack, wounding a few more by machine gunners and snipers. But on October 29, the war of attrition became one of potential decimation. The Germans launched an all-out attack, from nearly every side of the perimeter. Small-arms fire, machine-gun bursts, and mortar shrapnel tore into the battalion’s foxholes. For the first time, German soldiers appeared everywhere throughout the forest as they slowly advanced.

  In the next few minutes, Eason Bond would have to decide whether he would lay down his rifle and accept capture. A few yards away, Jack Wilson and Burt McQueen kept their machine gun on single shot, saving precious ammunition and waiting until the advancing enemy crowded together enough to justify bursts of death. The battalion’s riflemen had kept the Germans at bay in previous days. Now it would be up to the machine gunners to turn back the German assault. The supremely confident Martin Higgins knew what he had to do as he looked down at the letter he was writing to his wife when the attack started. He took just a second or two to jot down one more thought—”Time out for a while, Marge. I’ve got work to do,” he wrote before carefully folding the letter inside a piece of orange parachute and tucking it into his wallet.7

  Once again, however, the 1/141 repulsed the Germans’ most aggressive attack. As the forest settled, a now familiar droning hum off to the south slowly emerged. Soldiers looked up into a blue sky they had not seen in days. Another American resupply mission by the 405th was approaching the surrounded men. The first group of aircraft arrived over the battalion’s position at 1045. By now the pilots knew exactly when to drop their loads. Fifteen aircraft bombed the battalion with medical supplies, plasma, and ammunition. According to Major John Leonard, who had again led the mission, twenty-two tanks fell within the perimeter. Four others had landed only fifty yards outside the perimeter, and another two tanks were one hundred yards from Higgins’s position. Red parachutes laid on the ground, as if they were the remains of Christmas packages torn apart in glee. Red silk—draped across mossy boulders, waterlogged pine needles, and freshly dug craters—became festive slivers of hope in a forest of gloom and desperation.

  Once again, the men broke open the tanks and carried all the supplies to a central distribution point near Higgins’s foxhole and not far from a handful of medics who were treating the wounded. The medical supplies and plasma gave them hope that at least a few of their casualties might survive grimy wounds and infections. Everyone else waited until Higgins and the other lieutenants determined how the new supplies would be rationed. “They brought the food, piled it up, and looked at it. It was the strongest discipline I ever saw,” Higgins said after the war.8

  Then disappointment returned. They still needed batteries for the FM-frequency SCR 610 radios used by other men attached to Higgins. With fresh batteries the radios had a range of five miles and enabled entrenched observers to communicate directly with their artillery batteries. That was far more effective than routing messages through Blonder. Higgins’s men also could not find nearly enough Halazone tablets to disinfect the putrid water they were drinking. The tablets and 610 batteries may have had been in the tanks that had irretrievably fallen into German territory. Food was good, but safe drinking water was critical. Higgins reported that he still needed a supply of tablets and batteries.

  ANXIOUS AND INCREASINGLY DESPERATE, GENERAL DAHLQUIST couldn’t stand not being at the front line. About the time that Sakato and others launched the attack on Hill 617 and Higgins’s men prepared for the airdrop, Dahlquist and his aide Lieutenant Wells Lewis drove east across the ridge. They followed the logging road and used the latest field reports to find Lieutenant Colonel Singles’s position. Dahlquist wanted to know what was keeping the 100th from greater advances and apparently didn’t accept the explanations he was getting over the radio.

  Lieutenant Colonel Singles walked over to Dahlquist’s jeep. When Dahlquist asked for a map of the ridge, Singles didn’t have one. Lieutenant Boodry, his operations officer, typically had carried the battalion command map, but he had been killed the day before. Lieutenant Lewis offered his. Tall and handsome with wavy, flaxen hair, Lewis looked like the prototypical general’s aide. He had graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard with honors five years earlier. The twenty-seven-year-old was the eldest son of novelist Sinclair Lewis and had published his first novel while in college. He was the “golden boy” of the Lewis family.9

  As Lewis unfolded his map on the jeep’s hood, a German only forty yards away took aim. The bullets slammed into Lewis’s back. Some soldiers nearby thought they came from a sniper, but others were sure it was a short burst from a machine gun. Blood splattered onto the general’s uniform. Lewis staggered and fell into Dahlquist’s arms. Almost in slow motion, Dahlquist dropped to one knee to lay him on the ground. Dahlquist greatly admired Lewis, even though he had been Dahlquist’s aide for only three months. Lewis was dead. Shock washed across Dahlquist’s face. He would later acknowledge that it was if he had lost a son. That was evident when Singles approached Dahlquist.

  “Lewis is dead,” said Dahlquist.

  “I saw that,” said Singles. Perhaps Singles had seen so many men die in recent days that another loss meant little when more men would die soon, possibly within the hour. Another lost life that perhaps had been avoidable. No one questioned Dahlquist’s personal bravery. He was willing to meet with a battalion commander within a stone’s throw of the enemy, e
ven at the cost of his aide’s life.

  A few minutes later, when the commanding officer of the engineers, Colonel Oran Stovall, arrived to investigate the burst of gunfire he had heard, Dahlquist still held Lewis. “They were shooting at me and killed this fine young man,” said Dahlquist.10

  GERMAN MAJOR FRANZ SEEBACHER HAD SEEN COMBAT IN POLAND, Greece, and Russia. It’s unlikely he had experienced the situation facing him on October 29. The commanding officer of the 201st Mountain Battalion faced an overwhelming American force. Like Pursall, Singles, and Hanley, his units were understrength and an uncertain supply of ammunition was a constant worry. And, like Dahlquist, there was a missing battalion.

  The 201st and 202nd Mountain Battalions had arrived in the Vosges only a few days earlier as reinforcements for Lieutenant General Ernst Haeckel’s 16th Volksgrenadier Division. Each comprised about one thousand men. These were mobile, semi-independent divisions that carried nearly everything they needed for battle. They comprised three rifle companies, a weapons company with machine guns and mortars, a headquarters company, and platoons of light artillery, engineers, and medical personnel. These had been elite battalions at the start of the war. But five years later, replacement troops generally were only young volunteers and men convalescing from Eastern Front injuries. They were critically needed by Haeckel. Haeckel’s division numbered three thousand on October 1 but had lost an estimated six hundred during the rescue mission. By November 1, only nine hundred would be left.

  The two mountain battalions, elements of the 16th Division, and Lieutenant General Wilhelm Richter’s 716th Volksgrenadier Division had been the primary enemy force the 442nd faced. In recent days, the 442nd had learned from captured German prisoners that the enemy faced similar issues of command uncertainty. The commanding officer of the 202nd Mountain Battalion, Captain Erich Maunz, had been killed six days earlier. The 202nd had been cut off by the Americans. Worse, there were no communications, which left the fate of the 202nd very much in doubt.c

  German soldiers who had been captured near Hill 617 the day before by Hanley’s men confirmed that five companies from the two mountain battalions had arrived a week earlier. The newcomers were disorganized on the battlefield. Training had been minimal, and esprit de corps was almost nonexistent among the men who had been thrown together. They had not expected Lieutenant Colonel Hanley’s attack from the north, and several dozen had surrendered to soldiers of the 3rd Division, not far from Hanley’s men. Hanley learned that one of them was a battalion commander who was up on the ridge on a reconnaissance mission. Another had a German map that showed precise locations of defensive positions as well as a regimental command post in the town of Vanemont, about two miles to the east.

  The captured Germans also painted a dire picture of defenders as depleted and desperate as the rescuers. One German company had entered the battle with sixty men, but now had only thirteen who were equipped with two machine guns. Four companies in another German battalion had a total of only one hundred men. Those still fighting from their foxholes were relying on horse-drawn supplies and had been low on ammunition for two days.

  They also reported that German replacement troops had been positioned on both sides of the logging road leading to Higgins’s men. Now there could be no element of surprise. The Germans and Americans knew the locations of each other’s units, where their command posts were located, and where artillery batteries were established. Both knew when, where, and how each side resupplied its frontline troops. Both had concentrated their forces on the only route to the surrounded battalion.

  YET EVEN WITH SUCH CERTAINTY, POTENTIALLY HORRIFIC MISTAKES could still be made, particularly by men who were exhausted and perhaps in shock over the loss of a best friend, a respected squad leader, or a trusted aide. Not long after Dahlquist had left Lewis’s body to others, the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion received orders from Dahlquist at 1400 to fire on position 345573.d Many officers who heard the order referring to “345573” knew it was Higgins’s position. The general wanted his artillery to fire on Higgins?

  “345573. I want clearance from 1st Battalion, 141st on the hill,” radioed Captain Moyer Harris, a forward artillery observer.11 Harris was responsible for a seven-man observer team that accompanied the lead elements of the rescue force. All seven had volunteered for the mission and were led by Staff Sergeant Don Shimazu. At one point, they had crept through a minefield unknowingly until they looked back and saw the Achten Minen signs. Dahlquist’s order didn’t make sense to Harris. He wanted Higgins to “authorize” the general’s order.

  “We’ll have to check with them. That plots right in the middle of the lost battalion,” replied Lieutenant Colonel Baya Harrison, the commanding officer of the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion.12 If the American artillery could drop shells from several miles away onto a target of perhaps 50 yards in diameter, it didn’t make sense to put deadly artillery inside Higgins’s 350-yard perimeter.

  “The General wants us to fire on that [Higgins] point. I wish you would check. We had a call from the forward observer that General Dahl quist wanted some shoot on Hill 345573. Isn’t that in right in the middle of the lost battalion?” asked Harrison.

  “Yes, it’s in the middle of the lost battalion,” replied another divisional officer.13

  The record is unclear whether the 522nd radioed Blonder to ask Higgins to confirm Dahlquist’s order. But the 522nd never fired at 345573. It also is not recorded if Dahlquist learned that the 522nd never fired on Higgins’s men. Less than an hour after he had ordered the artillery bombardment, Dahlquist sent an entirely different message to Higgins, one that the supremely confident lieutenant had already refused on several occasions. “Start patrols out to contact [the advancing 442nd] on the trail you were on. If enemy attempt to interfere, get to work on their rear flank.”14

  Higgins and Huberth must have been flabbergasted by Dahlquist’s order. They canvassed their respective companies and those under Nelson and Kimble. Despite the arrival of some supplies, their men were weak, dehydrated, and sleep deprived, and dozens were in excruciating pain from trench foot. Some had only a handful of ammunition left. They had lost a major part of their fighting force on an earlier Dahlquist-mandated breakout attempt. Daily enemy infantry attacks and nightly artillery bombardments had added casualties and litter cases sometimes by the hour. To make matters worse, the fighting so far on the twenty-ninth had been the most vicious Higgins’s men had endured since they had been surrounded nearly a week earlier.

  How the hell are we to attack the Germans from the rear? And what about their tanks? Even if they could mount an assault, the logging road leading back to the Germans’ roadblock at Col des Huttes crossed open stretches of forest and swales of boggy, open ground. The enemy would have deadly fields of fire if Higgins’s men tried to cross the stretches of chest-high willows that offered almost no natural protection against mortars and machine guns. Higgins and the other lieutenants may have discussed Dahlquist’s order before replying. Twenty minutes later, Higgins sent his response—again refusing an order by his superior officer.

  “Received 5,000 rounds of M1 and 800 rounds of carbine ammo. Patrol would necessitate large force, impossible to spare men due to German patrolling and attacking. Also have too many men with bad feet.”15 Although Higgins’s men presumably had some ammunition left before the resupply, the ammo recovered from the 405th’s resupply missions gave him only enough to maintain his weakened defensive position for a limited time. It was far short of what was necessary to mount an attack. If five of Higgins’s riflemen each fired their M1 rifles six times a minute, they would exhaust five thousand rounds of ammunition in only two and a half hours. Higgins had once again told Dahlquist he didn’t have enough men and ammunition to do what the general wanted. They would have to remain hunkered down in a battle of bloodletting attrition as the 442nd advanced, one tree at a time.

  A FEW HUNDRED YARDS AWAY, MUTT SAKUMOTO COULD HEAR the firefight deeper in the forest. He was a member of
a Company I reserve platoon in the rear. This likely would be the last chance that Sakumoto could have one of his cherished cigarettes for quite a while. The men were sitting around a tree, waiting to be called forward, when Dahlquist approached. Sakumoto was stunned that Dahlquist was at the front.

  He looked directly at Sakumoto. “What are you boys doing sitting down?”

  “We’re the reserve platoon.”

  “Let the other boys do that. Flank the enemy! Flank the enemy!”16

  Sakumoto and the others got to their feet, moved across the road, and promptly ran into soldiers of the 100th. The flank was already covered by units of the 100th. Dahlquist didn’t know the precise locations of his units, but that apparently didn’t stop him from prowling the front line while his aide’s body was taken to the rear.

  Dahlquist spotted Shig Doi, also of Company I, looking in another direction. Doi had volunteered from an Arkansas internment camp and been told he would be assigned to the artillery because of his mathematical ability. Instead, he was lugging a rifle a few yards from Germans. Dahlquist tapped Doi on the helmet and told him to move forward immediately. “You can’t do anything here,” said Dahlquist.17

  Dahlquist continued to make rounds, acting more as a company commander than a division’s commanding officer. He approached the 100th Battalion’s Lieutenant Allan Ohata. “How many men do you have here?” he asked.

  “One company sir.”

  “That’s enough. Here’s what you do. We’ve got to get onto that hill and across it. You get all the men you have and charge straight up that hill with fixed bayonets. That’s the only way we can get the Krauts off it.”

  “You want my men to charge up that hill, sir?”