The previous weeks of relative quiet and inactivity had most of us thinking of winding this thing up and getting home. This feeling was increased as we moved from little town to little town on trucks. We crossed the Neckar River by foot bridge without incident and moved to Obergriesheim, the Battalion objective, which we captured on April 3:
The tanks went down the main drag, with infantrymen on both sides, guns at the ready. The two machine gunners of the fourth platoon were behind one of the tanks, ready to cover the flanks if resistance was met. I had seen a number of movies showing triumphant troops entering a town just like this one, so I knew what to do in case any cameras that might be clicking for Metronome News back in the States. So I attached the shoulder piece to the machine gun [Note: The M-1919-A-6 light machine gun was equipped with the traditional tripod, but also had a separate shoulder piece and bipod that would convert it in theory to a heavy duty Browning Automatic Rifle. I had never used it before, but it made a mean looking weapon for the cameras], loaded the belt and draped it (the belt, not the gun) around my neck. All of this was designed to present the picture of the brave liberator when the beautiful girls came out to drape us with flowers, as they always did in the newsreels. I ignored the fact that this was Germany, most Germans hated and feared us and a GI could be fined $64 if caught fraternizing with them.
Even if these considerations had been overcome, it still wouldn't have worked out. The gun and ammo belt together weighed about as much as I did, and I probably couldn't have lifted the gun to shoot the guy next to me, much less someone in a house on the street. Also, if I had managed to fire it, the string of sharp-nosed bullets in the belt around my neck would probably have cut my head off. So much for heroism, so after a few hundred yards of this, I was happy when the sergeant yelled for us to cover the flank. Action at last! I jumped in a ditch, swung the gun into position, reloaded the belt and began to deliver short bursts of withering fire toward a building on the hill above us. There was no response from the enemy, so I concluded that I had either killed every German in town or there were never any there to begin with.
One incident that day illustrates our state of mind under those conditions. The short battle for the town had left some fires, and the local fire department had stretched hoses to fight them. The other gunner in our platoon took out his .45 and without expression or comment blew several holes in the hose. No one objected. We didn't like the Germans very much, and we still hadn't learned about Buchenwald or Auschwitz.
After we had secured the town, we took up positions on the side of a hill overlooking a road, presumably to cover the flanks of advancing armor. We didn't bother to dig in because the natural terrain gave plenty of horizontal protection. So we didn't count on the two German jet planes.
As we learned later, these were Messerschmitt ME 262's, a twin engine jet plane introduced very late in the war, but had it been produced in quantity a year earlier it could have changed the entire balance of air power in favor of the Germans and prolonged the war for months and perhaps years.
[Note: The ME-262 had a speed of 520 mph, v the best allied 400, and was armed with 4-30mm cannon, v the .50 cal or at best the 20 mm the allies used. In a March 18, 1945 air raid on Berlin, for example, 14 fighter groups escorted 1,250 B-17 bombers and were set upon by a single squadron - about 20 - ME-262's. Result: 25 bombers and 5 fighters lost without a single German plane being shot down. Their main weakness, other than their small numbers, was that they used fuel made from potatoes, and this used virtually the entire German 1943 crop, resulting in much European hunger in 1944.]
We may have been the first ground troops to see jets, because there were only a very few, and they could stay in the air only about ten minutes. But that was plenty. They flew just over the road and whizzed past us like nothing we had ever seen. An antiaircraft flak wagon - a half track with four 40-mm cannon - started firing on the jets when they came into sight. But their shells kept bursting about a mile behind the jets because their sights weren't calibrated for such speed. Even though there was little chance that we could be hit by anything, we got the feeling that we were in the center of a giant bullseye. There is absolutely no defense against strafing - you can't dig deep enough - but we tried.
The next day, we watched P-47's dive bombing a German convoy - we saw a full size locomotive on its side at least a dozen yards from the track - and literally miles of dead horses and mules and supply wagons and trucks destroyed by strafing from our planes.
[NOTE: Those who have studied the war in detail say that the primary reason for the collapse of the German war effort was lack of fuel, caused in large part by our Ploesti Oil Field raids in 1943. In any event, that was the reason for the miles of animal-drawn vehicles.]
All of the German activity was moving Southeast, toward Bavaria, rumored to be Hitler's impregnable fortress that would hold us off for the rest of the Third Reich's 1,000 years Hitler had promised. None of this equipment or supplies made it there, and neither did Hitler.
We were beginning to feel better. We were beating the Krauts. The only Germans we had seen for days were either old men or very young boys. One boy of maybe twelve was captured manning a machine gun to protect a bridge and apparently didn't know how to work the thing. So we began to regain our optimism. We could see the end in sight.
On April 8, 1945 our hopes of a quick victory were dashed. We had moved across the Jagst River through Untergriesheim, trying to go around the West side of what we later found to be Hill No. 215.8, when without warning the Company was pinned down on the forward slope of that hill by murderous small arms, mortar and artillery fire. The German lines appeared to be over 200 yards away in a line of trees so there weren't any targets for my gun. We imagined that we were in their full view, and I remember trying to dig a foxhole while on my stomach, and cursing my big buttons that kept me from getting lower. Even those on the other side of the crest of the hill weren't safe from the mortars and artillery.
We thought we were saved when the TDs (tank destroyers, tracked, lightly armored vehicles about the size of a tank, carrying an anti-tank cannon) appeared over the crest of the hill behind us. They fired a few rounds at some gun emplacements and proceeded to scoot. A TD could scoot at 60 mph in reverse, and one did so directly over the foxhole of one of the GI's, who survived and threatened to take them out himself if they came back. Our only effective offensive weapons were our 105mm Battalion artillery, our 60mm mortars and the company sniper, whose Springfield "03" rifle accounted for several Germans at maybe 300 yards. Our planes were busy elsewhere, helping Companies B and C in their fight for Odheim.
This five day battle had gained 200 yards, and cost our side 38 killed, 42 wounded, five light tanks, one medium tank, and one tank destroyer and one of our planes. We lost some good friends in that battle, including T/Sgt. Frank Bujnowski, who had just received a field commission. Later, we learned that we had been pinned down by an entire regiment of SS [Schutzstaffel, or Protection Detachment, the elite of the German army]!
By April 11, the Germans had resumed their retreat, presumably heading toward Bavaria. But this turned out to be Company A's last battle, and the last of organized German resistance in the area.
The next nine days proved that disorganized resistance can be pretty dangerous. We were subjected to "screaming meemies," (a device that looked something like an overblown Gatling gun, with rocket tubes instead of barrels. For some reason it made a screaming sound when they started firing the rockets) and some sniper fire, but no more fire fights.
On or about April 22, we captured a turkey who could very well have been an SS man in disguise, so to be on the safe side we shot and ate him. This was the Company's last hostile action. We also liberated some eggs, and someone found a pan and some grease and fried them. I seem to remember I ate eight eggs that day, right out of the frying pan, and it was the most delicious meal I had in Europe, maybe because of no real eggs for six months and maybe because it was about as good as European food got in those days.
On the 23rd, we were in a relaxed enough position for me to be aware of feeling kind of poorly, which I attributed to the eggs. But when it didn't get better the next day, and they told me my eyes were yellow, I reported to the aid station. There, the orderly took a urine sample, looked at it and said "you lucky bastard, you're going ZI [Zone of the Interior, or home]."
(I found out later that a lot of our guys got hepatitis because of some tainted needles they used for the yellow fever shots we got back in the States. It was officially classified as a serious disease warranting a transfer back home. I wondered also if the guys who had been captured had gotten it. If so, their ordeal would have been a lot worse).
I went back and got my stuff, which included my war souvenirs, said goodbye to my new buddies, gave away my beautiful Remington-Rand .45, rode a jeep to a pasture they were using for an airfield and watched a C-47 [The military version of the finest aircraft ever built, the Douglas DC-3] land with a load of gasoline for Patton's tanks. We boarded the plane after they had finished unloading the 5-gallon jerricans. It had benches down the sides that would hold maybe forty or fifty people, and reeked of raw gasoline. When we had all boarded, the pilot got aboard smoking a cigarette and not being too careful where the ashes or sparks fell. Although everyone smoked and had cigarettes, none of us lit up on the trip. I remember thinking that this would be one HELL of a way to die, but they started the engines and flew us to England without incident.
Revised 6-3-95