by Bill Mesce
“They were in an operational area but in reserve.”
“So this was a serious breach of military discipline.”
A shrug. “Technically.”
“I gather you didn’t view it as such.”
“The Articles talk about conduct that ‘threatens good order and discipline.’ Wasn’t my view. It’d been a long crawl up from Salerno, they were just blowing off some steam. I didn’t disagree with the way Porter took action on it, but I wouldn’t’ve pressed it so hard.”
“Still, Colonel, the man was entrusted with the well–being of a squad and then he slipped like this? How did he wind up a platoon leader?”
“You need to ask somebody from 3rd Battalion.”
“But the paperwork crossed your desk, didn’t it, Sir?”
“Porter nominated him for a battlefield commission even before we shipped to England.”
“The same man who busted him from sergeant to private put him up for his lieutenancy?”
“Funny ol’ world, isn’t it?”
“As Lieutenant Colonel Porter’s senior, you were comfortable with this?”
“Like I said, I wouldn’t’ve pressed that wine cellar thing like he did.”
“Who nominated the lieutenant for his Silver Star?”
“Porter. I added my own recommendation.”
“So you know the circumstances surrounding the award?”
“January ‘43, we were operating in conjunction with the 36th Division trying to make crossings of the Rapido River. Never got more than a few toeholds across. Finally, order comes down to pull back across the river. Part of the lieutenant’s platoon – including the fellow who was platoon leader at the time – they were holding a position a little too far out in front and never got the pull–out order. Nobody realized they were still there until the rest of the unit was back across the Rapido. Sisto and the platoon sergeant, guy named Bonilla I think, put a party together, re–crossed the river, fought their way through and got as many of them back as they could.”
“General Terry mentioned a Purple Heart as well.”
“Kid got himself nicked. Refused to be evacuated. Made them treat him at the field hospital and came limping back to his unit.”
“Well, now, Sir, we’re back where the good captain began with you. Your regiment arrived at Rott. Where did you set your headquarters?”
“Rott. General said the situation at the front was ‘fluid and confused.’ His words. Constant problems with communications. He recommended I headquarter in Rott until – and if – the situation stabilized and I could move up closer to where my battalions were engaged.”
“Sir, you said one of your battalions was assigned to the division reserve.”
“Yup. Chose the 2nd Battalion.”
“Colonel, didn’t your 2nd Battalion constitute the entire divisional reserve? There was no unit from the 28th being held back, was there?”
“By the time we got there, General Cota was putting the division clerks into the line. The well was dry.”
“And how long had the 28th been in the Huertgen by then, Sir?”
“I think a little under two weeks.”
Harry nodded gravely, giving the fact time to sink in on the panel. Most of those officers had been in the Huertgen: the sinking didn’t take long.
“Colonel, how much time were you given to plan operations for your battalions?” Harry asked.
“General gave us our briefing and then it was ‘go!’ Immediate. Went back to the assembly area and put them on the march. The first assault on 399 was scheduled for the following morning.”
“By whose order? General Cota?”
“He passed the order to us. From V Corps.”
“What advance intelligence were you given regarding the objective?”
“They told us where it was. I don’t think they knew anything else. Wasn’t sure they were sure about that.”
“No estimate of enemy strength? Disposition? Defenses?”
“V Corps G–2 estimate said kraut defenses had probably already been sapped by the constant fighting in that sector. Same reasoning, figured they’d be short on munitions.”
“Did you make any reconnaissance of the objective?”
“Couldn’t. It was dark when the 3rd took its demarcation position. Porter communicated a request for a delay, I passed it to General Cota, he passed it to Corps, they said no.”
“Colonel Bright, besides the lack of advance information on the enemy’s disposition on Hill 399, did you have any other problems with the operation? Concerns, I mean?”
“Besides my taking an outfit straight from transport to an all–night march into unreconnoitered positions to fight against an objective we know nothing about?” His small frown transmitted bitter anger. “For one thing, the 28th was in such bad shape I didn’t know how much longer they were going to hold. Told my battalion commanders, ‘Carry out your orders but if you get a pull–back order you run like hell.’ Didn’t want any of my people left hanging.” Bright nodded questioningly at the map and Harry nodded for him to go ahead. Bright returned to the map. “Where’s the Main Line of Resistance? There isn’t one. General Cota’s 212th was holding Vossenack and Kommerscheidt, they had a toe in Schmidt but there was no line! Kraut infiltration patrols are wandering around these woods no problem. Snipers. Mine the roads after the engineers clear them.
“The big problem.” Bright traced a wriggling line from Rott to Schmidt. “The Main Supply Route. The only supply route: the Kall River Trail. Not a road. A trail! Places where the mud was over your knees. Barely wide enough for vehicles. A drop–off right alongside the trail. Take a turn a little wide and off you go. Truck sticks in the mud, tank throws a track, Germans leave some mines, the road is dammed. Trying to reinforce and supply an attack all the way up here – ”, his knuckle again rapped Hill 399, “ – from here – ”, a tap on Rott, “ – along this route? Like trying to feed an elephant through a straw.”
“Thank you, Colonel, you can sit down now. Let’s talk about the Hill 399 operation. You said – let’s see, I have it written down here somewhere – ah! Yes, you said you picked the 3rd Battalion for the attack on Hill 399 because ‘overall’ it had the best officer cadre of your three battalions.”
“Lot of the officers and non–coms had experience in Italy.”
“Was Colonel Porter the best of your three battalion commanders?”
Bright paused. I sensed it to be – even in this forthright fellow – the same strain of hesitation I’d perceived in General Terry; the reluctance to turn on a brother officer.
“Colonel Bright?”
“He had his strong points and his weak points. Like most of us.”
Harry tried another tack: “The rest of the officers in the battalion aside, was he the best possible choice for leading the operation?”
Bright frowned. “Don’t know that there would’ve been any good choice for that operation.”
Harry, ever patient, still hovering about looking for a hole in the wall: “Let me put it to you another way: what was your overall opinion of Colonel Porter? You said he had his strengths and weaknesses? What were they?”
“He had the organizational end of handling the battalion down. Been assigned to Ft. Benning before the war. Benning’s the Army’s main infantry training school, he seemed to have a good understanding of tactics and maneuver.”
“You can skip to the ‘but’ now, Colonel.”
Bright nodded with uncomfortable resignation. “Two serious deficiencies. One; headquarters bound. The foxhole grapevine had him yellow, but I didn’t see that. He was just a headquarters officer. Thought that’s where you do it from.”
“And the other deficiency?”
“Better on the defensive than the offensive. Knew how to dig in and hole up. Got nervous on the offensive. Best way I could put it; he was so busy trying not to lose a battle, he didn’t do enough to win it.”
“But you were still comfortable with him in command?”
Bright shrugged philosophically. “It’s a big army. Needs a lot of officers. They’re not all going to be gems. Terms of men and materiel, Italy’s Number Two. The Continent gets first choice. Any officer looking to make a name bucks for The Continent because you know that’s the real show.”
“If I understand what you’re saying, you were wary of what kind of officer you’d get as a replacement?”
“If Porter had been out–and–out bad…” A small gesture of the thumb indicating he would’ve been sacked. “Otherwise, better the devil you know.”
“That in mind, you still felt the 3rd Battalion was a good choice for the hill?”
“My money was on the subordinate officers. Some of the best. Once the battalion was engaged, figured they’d be carrying the bulk of the load.”
“Did you know Major Joyce?”
“Knew all the battalion execs.”
“Your opinion of him?”
Courie stood. “Colonel Voss, you were starting to spoil me behaving yourself all this time. I almost hate to object and ruin your streak.”
Harry smiled wickedly. “I doubt that.”
“Captain Courie,” Ryan said, “when you write your memoirs, you can insert all the witty repartee you want. But here, please omit it. If you have an objection…”
“Sir, the defense has dragged almost everybody conceivable into this case: Major Porter, V Corps – ”
“Well, we don’t want the good major to feel left out,” Harry quipped.
“Colonel Voss,” Ryan said with his best authoritative tone, “that little reprimand I just gave Captain Courie? That goes for you, too. As for your objection, Captain, Major Joyce pressed the charge; obviously there’s the issue of credibility. And as his direct senior, certainly Colonel Bright is competent to render an opinion. Overruled.”
Harry again turned to Bright.
“Joyce was plainly more aggressive,” the regimental commander said. “Sometimes I worried maybe too much. But they – Porter and Joyce – balanced each other out. That’s why I could live with Porter’s shortcomings.”
“Re–direct,” Courie announced even before Harry had taken his seat. “Colonel Bright, I want to go back to the incident at the Rapido River that Colonel Voss brought up. The one that earned Lieutenant Sisto his Silver Star. Lieutenant Sisto’s ‘mission’ to save the stranded part of his platoon…who ordered the rescue attempt?”
“As I recall, something the lieutenant did on his own.”
“To be clear: his unit had been ordered to withdraw back across the Rapido. But the lieutenant took it upon himself to violate the withdrawal order, and risk the lives of a number of men who followed him back across the river.”
“A hell of a way to put it.”
“Is it accurate?”
Yet another rare show of emotion. This one of repugnance: “To a ‘t,’ Captain.”
Ryan declared an end to the morning session and a 90–minute recess for lunch. Harry, Sisto, and Ricks closeted themselves in the lieutenant’s quarters attempting to quantify the gains and losses of the morning, and plan for the afternoon session.
Which left me nicely available. I turned to la comtesse. “Would you care to share a table with me?”
“Enchante.”
The jury panel was sequestered in the main dining hall. Neither one of us dared suggest an improprietous retreat to one or the other of our quarters, so we sat at the window table in the kitchen. The clatter of the Army mess staff Courie had appropriated felt intrusive and hardly conducive to companionable luncheon. We found ourselves hurrying through our meal and then, at the chatelaine’s suggestion, we donned our heavy coats and opted for a walk through the withered garden in the falling snow.
The skies had emptied a good two inches on the ground since it had begun the night before, but there was no wind leaving the cold bearable. The white snow cushioned the hard, menacing edges of the chateau walls, concealed the drooping, empty stalks of the garden, iced the full boughs of the surrounding fir forest. The snowfall and the cottony silence it brought the world gave the castle the air of a fantasy, as if it were suspended in some cloud kingdom.
Far out in the garden, la comtesse pulled the hood of her cloak back from her cheeks, tilted her face skyward, closed her eyes, and let the large, wet flakes alight upon her face. It had been a momentary reverie and when she remembered where and when she was, she opened her eyes and then blinked at me self–consciously. “Like the kisses of butterflies,” she said. “This was how I say to my children when they were small.”
We walked a bit further on, crunching through the wet snow.
“I am not sure I am to understand all that was said today,” she said. “There seem to be many things. From your friend. It is to be confusing to me. Perhaps my English – ”
“It’s not your English, Madame. I think that’s how Harry means it to be.”
To that she smiled slightly in comprehension, her lips opening in an unspoken, “Ahhh!”
We had come to the end of the garden, marked by a low wall of fieldstone. We looked across the unmarked snow toward the shadowy phalanx of interlocked evergreens.
“Why do you ride at night?”
She did not seem surprised that I knew. Her eyes looked deep into the dark forest. “When the horse carry you fast, you are cold, and can only think of the cold. In the dark you can only worry maybe you will hit – how you say? – a branch, oui? It is all you can think. There is no room – ” she tapped her head “ – for other things. For a, um, petite temp – little time – everything is the way it was. Comprenez? But then the horse, he is tired, and I come back…” She turned and gestured at the chateau. “Comme ca.”
I looked at my watch and sighed. “I am afraid this horse is tired.”
She grinned at that, just a little. I held out my arm and she took me by the elbow and we re-traced our tracks through the snow toward the chateau.
*
“Lieutenant Schup, you are the 3rd Battalion’s S–3 officer? Planning and operations?”
“Yes, Sir.”
Courie gestured to the easel behind the chair. There was now positioned on the easel a sizable schematic overview of Hill 399. “Would you please explain how the battalion was deployed on the day in question? We have prepared a diagram. Is this accurate?”
“Well, I don’t know about the scale – ”
“But generally.”
“That’s what the hill looked like more or less.”
“Then that’s good enough for our purposes. If you would, Lieutenant?”
Schup waved a hand over a shaded area along the bottom of the diagram that bulged toward the outside arc of the chevron–shaped hill. “This is where the rifle companies were dug in. As they neared jump–off time, they’d move up to the woodsline. Between the woods and the hill is this open area – a firebreak – about 150 yards wide. There’s a stream that runs along the base of the hill – you don’t have that here – it traces almost the whole length –”
“The precise features of the hill aren’t necessary, Lieutenant. Right now, we’re concerned with how the battalion was disposed on the date in question; the plan of attack.”
Schup nodded. “The order was for all three companies forward. Item was on the far right: they were really just a fix for the krauts on that part of the hill. Then there was a gap in the line right in the middle – here – then facing the left–hand slope was King and Love abreast, King on the left wing. The original plan called –”
“Lieutenant, I’m only interested in the actual execution of the operation.”
Schup didn’t quite frown; he was much too contained a young man for that. But the discontent at being – I suppose the word is “edited” – was there about his eyes. “Ok, Sir,” he said with resignation. “The battalion debouched from the words on schedule at 0500 hours.” He traced a line across the forward slopes approximately a third of the way from the area demarcated as the top of the hill. “There’s a line of k
raut trenches along here. The rifle companies took these trenches around 0900. This was the jump–off point for a special detail that was supposed to make a try for the top.
“In the previous assaults we’d discovered a ‘seam’ in the German defensive line that runs along the crest.” Schup gestured indicating a path up the apex of the chevron. “The underlying rock of the hill pokes through here, so they couldn’t dig in any kind of heavy, fortified position the way they had all along the rest of the slope. Somebody from King Company figured there was one position in the German bunker line on the left slope angled specifically to cover this approach. The way this was supposed to work, this fella from King was going to belly–crawl up to the bunker, knock it out, and on his signal the special detail was going to rush this approach and try to open up the top of the hill.”
“Who was to command that detail?”
“Colonel Porter himself led it.”
“And Lieutenant Sisto was with him?”
“The detail was drawn from his company, so the lieutenant decided he’d go with the colonel.”
“Once the assault detail – as you say – ‘opened up the top of the hill’…?”
“We had a pick–up company waiting back at the woodsline. Once a hole was opened at the top of the hill, there’d be a signal and this second group was supposed to rush up and reinforce the assault detail, then try to open up the remainder of the hilltop.”
“That never happened.”
“Frankly, Sir, a lot of things never happened that day. That was one of them.”
“Where were you through all this?”
“The battalion staff was back at the battalion CP. You can’t see it on this map.” He indicated a point several inches below the ledge of the easel. “It was at a clearing about here.”
“And this was where Major Joyce was as well?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“His assignment being…?”
“There were always a lot of communications problems with the forward line and the units on the hill. Because of the bend of the hill, a company on one flank couldn’t talk to a company on the other, and because of the trees, they couldn’t communicate with either us or the forward line until they’d reached a certain height on the slopes. Our job was to monitor all communications, act as a relay point for messages between the engaged units, as well as between the assault units and local and divisional fire support. But the big job was to always try to maintain some kind of overall picture of how the assault was going.”