The Douve Canal was fairly narrow and had real high causeways running the full length of it. The dike on both sides of the canal was probably ten to fifteen feet high. We could walk back and forth behind it. We had plenty of cover so none of us dug in. We just laid on the banks of the causeway and fought back and forth with rifle fire across the river. There were Krauts right behind the other causeway just across the river but they had the high ground. It was still dark enough that they could not see us but they knew we were in there. Of course, we did not know what the picture was behind us at all.
I was soaking wet from my toes clear to the top of my head. When we jumped in I had on long handle underwear, a full set of ODs and then my jump suit. After I got those wool ODs soaking wet, I could hardly move around. They were heavy.
It was just getting daylight. The first thing I did, when I got a break, was take off my jump suit then rip the ODs off. Once wet they were going to need some air and sunshine or they would never dry. They were wool. So I took them off and laid them right beside me. I just laid them out flat where I could dry them one side at a time.
I did not have them off ten minutes when the Germans dropped one mortar round from back across the water and it landed right in the middle of those clothes, right in the middle of them. There was not a piece of them left that could have been used as a handkerchief.
That mortar shell also knocked sand and stuff in my eyes. I lost my vision. I just had a very misty look. Everything was burning so I reached up and wiped my face. I looked at my hand and could definitely see that it was covered with blood. I thought, “Boy, this is one heck of a way to be, in here blind, fifteen miles behind the front lines surrounded by ten million Krauts.” That was the most helpless and frightening time for me during the whole war.
I was blinking my eyes and they began to water. This washed the sand out. My vision just cleared right up, which was great news. I had been hit up around my eyes and across my hand. It turned out most of the blood came out of my hand.
It is almost ridiculous to think but I went clear through that war from the day before D-Day till the end and I never got hit bad. I never did go to the aid station on account of that wound in Normandy. It just healed up by the time we got out of there. There were a lot of real fine pieces of metal though, that looked like little short needles, in my face above the left eye. They would work their way out long after the war was over. Those in my hand went clear through.
The first thing I did after that was dig me a standing foxhole. I dug one six feet deep in about two minutes. After I got down in that hole, I thought I needed a good big shot of that Copenhagen to calm me down.
When I had gotten ready to load on that plane, I put on all the gear I could. I stuffed all my demolitions gear in my musset bag on my back. We did not have any room for a blanket or shelter half. The rest of our personal gear like razor and razor blades, cigarettes, whet stone and K Rations were stuffed in the pockets of our jump jackets and cargo pockets on our pants. Why, I just had these two front pockets left and they were pretty big pockets. They were about half full so I put everything over in one pocket. Then I had three of those K Ration boxes. They were about the size of a kitchen match box. I also had two cartons of Copenhagen. They were paste board outside and inside they were lined with wax. I thought, “I can’t take them both with me. So I’ll throw this food away. It won’t ever get so tough in there that I can’t find something to eat, but it may be a long time before I have a chance to get some more Copenhagen.” So I threw my three boxes of K Rations out on the ground and stuck the two cartons of Copenhagen in the big pocket on my side.
When I reached down in my jump suit pocket to pull out a box of that Copenhagen, those boxes had just dissolved and come apart. We had been in the water for three or four hours getting to that last bridge. I had also fallen down and landed on them. I just had two big pockets full of mud, water, and sea weed. The whole thing was ruined. I did not have a thing left in the way of Copenhagen. I just pulled out a handful of Copenhagen and seaweed. It would be thirty-six days before I would get another box of Copenhagen.
I finally got straightened around there after I was hit. Jack Agnew was off about ten yards down the causeway from me. He asked, “Mac, what’ve you got to eat?”
“Nothing. What’ve you got to eat?”
He answered, “I’ve got one can of cheese.” (They were about the size of a shoe polish can.) “You want a piece of it?”
I said, “Yeah, throw me one over.”
So he just broke that thing in half and threw me half of it. That is all we ate that morning. The first day or so I was very hungry and then after a while I was not hungry any more. But once I got thirsty, it was terrible. I could not get any water. I could hear the water running in the canal all night long right in front of me but the Krauts kept flares up in the air at night. If someone tried to get in the canal they would kill them. We had nothing to eat or drink for five days and nights.
AGNEW AND THE GERMAN SNIPER
That day we just fought back and forth from across the canal. The Germans had one ole boy who was a crack shot. Boy, he was a sniper. He hit a lot of our men. There were only about fifteen of us in there at first and he killed four or five of us.
Jack Agnew and I put our heads together. I told Jack, “The only place that he could be shooting from is that two-story building. You get your eyes wide open and watch and knock him one.”21
That German shot three more men. Jack leveled down on him and just cut him in half. He jumped up on the causeway and said, “I got that son-of-a-bitch.” I think it was the first man he had really killed.
I grabbed him by the ankle and jerked him down. His head did not clear that causeway an inch before there came a burst of machine-gun fire that just ate it up.
[Jack Agnew remembered:]
“The Germans could see us on the other side of the embankment from the church steeple. If we stuck our heads up the Krauts would blow them off. Every time someone would come in from behind us, they would wave as soon as they saw us. We were trying to tell them to get down and the first thing you know, a sniper must have picked off about sixteen of them before they reached us. We lost a lot more after that.”
Agnew said that after he killed the sniper, “I was so glad when I got that guy that I jumped up on that dike. Jake pulled me back over just before they shot it up.”22
FIGHTING
We were supposed to hold the bridge if we could. We could do that unless they came on there with armor. We did not have anything that could stop a tank, except a bazooka and satchel charges which were not very good choices. The bridge was seventy-five yards across from end to end. If troops got on that bridge, we could kill them off as fast as they stepped foot on it.
The Germans did try to cross that bridge with infantry that first morning.23 We killed them as soon as they got on the bridge. The next day they tried again to move troops out on it but we also blew them away as they assembled. The Germans never tried to cross that bridge again. Aside from that there was not too much activity. We just waited until we heard some activity then we would peek up over the embankment and shoot at them.
Every time I raised up, I threw a burst into them across the river. I would then duck back down and go on over to another spot because they were watching the other one. This is how the fighting took place over the next few days. This way we did not expend too much ammunition. We also gathered up ammunition from the dead.
I was moving around and shooting. I looked over at Mike Marquez and he had not moved at all. Mike was a big Mexican kid from El Paso but not too smart. He was a good soldier though. He never was frightened of anything.
Well, he was lying on that causeway and just stayed in the same position all the time. He would raise up and fire off a burst then duck back down. I thought it would just be a minute or two until they leveled in on him. I looked back over because I was going to tell him what to do. He had just laid his rifle right there against the causeway where it
would be handy for him. The barrel of his rifle was sticking up in the air higher than the causeway!24
I went on over there and told him, “You idiot, why don’t you just stand up there to where they can see you? If you want to commit suicide, do it quickly.” I said, “Move around once in awhile. Don’t come up in the same place two or three times.”
He said, “Okay.” He was not offended at all.25
Meanwhile there had been different guys scattered all over this area. The air force had started dropping men from the tip of the Cherbourg Peninsula and had been trying to work back twenty-five miles this way. There was just one, two, or maybe three paratroopers who were left out of a stick of ten or a platoon of twenty men. They just kept straggling in.
They heard us in there firing those M1s and knew we were paratroopers. They could identify the sound of our rifles. There was a world of difference between the sound of an M1 and a German rifle. So they thought, “Right down there, there is something going on. That must be the best place to be.” They would then work their way into us, sneaking in at night. They would then take up a position on the line. The second evening about dark a lieutenant came in. From then on we directed the stragglers to him. I guess by the third day, we probably had from forty to sixty men, just leftovers from different groups. I do not know how many exactly but we had a pretty good bunch of men.26
P-51 MUSTANGS27
The invasion forces on Utah beach were supposed to have reached us at that bridge by dusk the first day. Well they did not make it on the first day and they did not make it the second day and they did not make it the third day. We did not have any contact or communications with anybody outside the bridge area. I am sure they did not think it was possible for anyone to be in there for three days and still be moving around. I guess they thought that we had been eliminated because late in the afternoon on the third day, here come these four P-51s.28 They circled and came in on us in single file. I thought, “We’re screwed.” The first one missed the bridge and the second one hit it, man, just head on and blew that thing sky high. At first I was filled with a surge of anger. We had been guarding that bridge for three days and three nights against terrific odds and then our own air force came in and bombed it.
The air force had an order that they were not supposed to return and land on the runway with live bombs because an accident might destroy ten other planes. So they had the understanding that after they accomplished their mission, they would expend their bombs on a secondary objective and get rid of their ammunition, then fly back home.
Well, when the second one hit it, the other two peeled off. They were so low that they could see us in our foxholes and the Germans in their foxholes on either end of the bridge but they just figured we were all Germans. So they circled around, split up and two of them took the Germans and two of them took us. They came in and dropped the rest of their bombs, then strafed us with machine guns.
I was overcome by a great sense of fear to be under that bombing. Then I had a sense of calm. There was nothing any of us could do but wait for the bombs to fall. One ole guy had dug a seven-foot standing foxhole. A big chunk of that bridge came right down in that foxhole and drove through his head. After the planes flew away I was shocked at the loss. Out of the forty men we had in there, we probably lost fifteen to our own air force. So we did not have anything to do. We did not have a bridge to worry about anymore. It was gone. No tanks were going to come across there, so all we were dealing with then were those German soldiers. In that respect we were still in good shape.29
A KRAUT BATTALION30
The Americans were pushing these Krauts back to us. We were in a defiladed area from the causeway back to the high ground over on the other side, about five hundred yards. About every one hundred or seventy-five yards, not exactly but pretty regular, the farmers had dug ditches out there about six feet deep and eight feet wide to drain that meadowland during the rainy season. We were sitting there just on our hind end fighting a little. When they would lay it in on us, well we would fire right back at them.
The Germans from the beach had retreated and retreated and retreated until the afternoon of the fifth day they had come right up to the edge of the water. Every time they would show themselves, we shot at them. When they realized what our situation was, they sent an officer and a sergeant in there under a white flag and demanded that we surrender. They knew there was not very many of us in there.
I do not even remember our lieutenant’s name. He said, “What in the hell do you mean, us surrender. You’ve got to surrender to us. If you stay where you are, those Yankees coming from the beachhead will eat you up. You’ve retreated up to here already. If you come out in that water we will kill you like a bunch of ducks. If you would all like to surrender intact, stack all your rifles and all your weapons over there and just put up a white flag and surrender to them boys coming in.”
This German officer, I believe he was navy, said, “Why we would not surrender to thirty or forty people. I’ve got a whole battalion.”
Our officer said, “Well, get your ass out in the water and come right on out here!”
The lieutenant came back and told us, “You let them come out in the water and cross the first ditch. When they get halfway to the second ditch, I will blow this whistle and we will all open up. Then you pick out the thickest bunch of them and shoot into them. They will not have anywhere to go or nothing to get into.”
We had two or three light machine guns and mortars. The rest of us were mostly demolition saboteur people. I think we still had one bazooka in there. Anyway we were a lightly equipped bunch of people.
So the Germans charged right out in that water firing everything they had. We did not fire a shot until they got right in between those two ditches. Then we went to work on the bastards. We cut them down by the hundreds with the first salvo, then we just picked them off one-by-one. All they could do was get down in that water. The water was anywhere from calf to knee deep. Some of them tried to make it back to the original ditch. There were a few of them close to that second ditch who made a dash to get into it. Once they got in they could not get out of it. When they did we just zeroed in on some old boy and waited for him to come up for air and then we just blasted his head off. We killed off nearly the whole bunch. They did not have a Chinaman’s chance.
When the Germans on the other side of the river saw this happen they did not know what in the hell was going on. There was very little fire from across the bridge. Within fifteen minutes this American unit that had pushed the Germans to the bridge saw what happened and then they began to lay a heavy covering fire on that town of Carentan.
After we finished rubbing out the Germans we went out and combed the field. A lot of the wounded laid there and played dead. We walked out through there killing the ones that were just wounded or hiding.
Jack Agnew and I worked together. He had a Colt forty-five. A chaplain named Captain Tilden McGee went up with us and signaled for us to stop. I signaled for the other guys to stop, then I moved on up. I saw this Kraut in one of these deep ditches. Just his head and shoulders were above water. One of those machine gunners had tore his chest clear up. It was like a sponge. He was laying there trying to breath. He was pumping that blood and foam out in that water.
I said, “Here he is,” and they walked over there.
Chaplain McGee said, “Give him a shot.”
I looked over at Jack and said, “Agnew, you’ve got that forty-five. Blow his head off.”
Agnew shot at him and missed him. Then he kneeled down and put that Colt against his temple and just blew his head clear off of him.
That chaplain just screamed. He said, “You knew I didn’t mean to shoot his head off. I meant to give him a shot of morphine.”
I said, “I’ll tell you what, Chaplain, you do anything you want to with your morphine. There will be a thousand paratroopers all around here that will need a shot of morphine. We are not wasting it on these Krauts. You’re going to kill him anyw
ay. Do it quick and easy in his sleep.”
When we got together later at some of these “get togethers,” I asked Agnew, “What are you doing now?”
He answered, “I’m retired now. I work with the NRA all the time.”
I said, “What are you doing with the NRA?”
He said, “I run the rifle range and the target practice and teach these people how to shoot.”
I laughed and said, “You must have improved a hell of a lot since I last knew you, Jack, and what I saw in combat.” Of course we were sitting around with the others and I kind of grinned and Agnew blushed. Then someone said, “Come on, tell us what you are talking about.” So I told them about Jack missing that German while standing over him, then having to kneel down and stick it to his temple before he could hit him. I said, “And now he is a range instructor up there in Philadelphia.”31
A JUICY STEAK
D+5: June 11, 1944
We got out of there on the night of the fifth day.32 We knew the Americans were right behind us so we walked out in that field and called out so they would know we were paratroopers. After linking up we headed on back to join our unit. It was five or six miles back to regimental headquarters. They directed us to this little old village. So we went down there and reported in. I had five or six demolitions men with me from Regimental Headquarters Company.33
Most of us had had nothing to eat or drink for five days. A lot of cattle had been killed over there by bombs, gunfire, and artillery. The French saw how things were developing. When we got out of the water and among those Frenchmen, they had cooked up a big ole pot, nearly as big as those army kettles. They had gone out there and cut meat off of those dead dairy cattle. They cubed it up and added some greens and potatoes and onions in it. They boiled that thing up and had it ready. They also baked that big ole heavy French bread. They fed us that soup and it was the best soup that I ever tasted in my life. My belly had shrunk up so much that I could not eat much of it. But it was real good.
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