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Fresh in France - From the beach, a five-mile march to the St. Germaine demarshalling area was made over sandy roads. Leaving the demarshalling zone at 10 a.m. on July 22, the convoy travelled 38 miles to Fierville, its first French bivouac area, where it remained for six days with no more important disturbance than the nightly appearance of enemy planes overhead. "Guard, guard!" came the call one night to the ears of Sentinel Celio C. Hernandez in a low, strained voice as he stood his post in the blackness of the Normandy orchard in which the company was bivouacked near Fierville. T-5 Hermandez could hear someone approaching. Recognizing the voice as that of Lt. Becker, later evacuated, he called in reply, "Here I am, sir, what do you want?" "This is the OD," came the relieved answer, "I didn't want you to shoot me!" Before leaving Hernandez, Lt. Becker, learning that Hernandez didn't know who was on the next post, asked him to go to it and tell the guard the OD was coming and not to shoot. In the meantime, Pvt. Benjamin "Windy" Howard, guard on the neighboring post, having heard the conversation, called over, "Come on, Lieutenant, I recognize you and won't shoot!" That was how things were on July 23 when green Normandy hedgerows, orchards and wheatfields might be pretty in the sunshine, but looked treacherous after dark to the newly-arrived troops.  "Pretty in the sunshine but treacherous after dark" One of the minerollers served its purpose early in the campaign, but that was all -- there wasn't anymore. At that point, the cumbersome and troublesome hulks could have been abandoned, for they destroyed no mines after July 27 when that one roller exploded one mine. On that day, Evacuation, plus the First and Second Maintenance Sections, went to La Haye du Puits from Fierville to assemble three rollers. Two were ready by noon, and members of the Evacuation Section drove them to the 25th Engineers at Lessay. That night, Lt. Klawon and Tech. Sgt. Estle V. Clark were on their way to the same place with the third roller when, on a secondary road, they ran over and set off the only mine to be accounted for by a total of 45 tons of equipment in the entire European campagin [campaign]. Leaving Fierville at 9 a.m. on July 29, the company crossed the division's "initial point" at 1:15 p.m. the same day to begin the long, exciting drive which led to the vicinity of Brest. It was on the 23-mile march from Fierville to a hedgerow bivouac near La Violette, which was reached at 5:40 p.m., that some of the men were shocked by their first sight of German dead, a sight which was to become commonplace as days and miles went by. At least one meal for one member of the company was spoiled by the first look at a German soldier who had lain dead along the road for three or four days. Staff Sgt. Johnny Werth was downing a cup of soup when he saw his first one. With a suddenly strained look on his face, he handed the cup to Lt. Drymon and asked, "Would you mind pouring this out?" While in bivouac near the town of La Violette, the gas truck was out in the darkness the night of July 30 servicing those out-of-this-world monstrosities, the minerollers. Working in the usual complete blackout, Staff Sgt. Stanley Miernik took a five-gallon can from the gas truck, piloted by T-5 Herbert Ludwigson, to put oil in the gear box through which the chains of one of the rollers were driven. It took the whole five gallons, and there was considerable dismay when it turned out that the roller's gear box had been filled not with oil but good old olive drab G. I. paint. And that was the last paint in the company. A little later the same evening as Herbie was driving the gas truck along its blacked-out way, he and the others on the truck -- Lt. Drymon, Pvt. Ivan "Frog" Bacheldor, T-5 James W. "Shorty" Pow, T-5 Erasmus F. Duke, Miernik, T-5 Clarence H. Sherrin and T-4 -John F. Wisdom -- heard loud sounds of something big and noisy approaching. No one was sure just what it might be -- a German tank wouldn't have been too much of a surprise -- and in their uncertainty, Herbie pulled the gas truck to the side of the road preparatory to coming to a cautious halt. Just then someone really "lowered the boom" on the poor gas truck. With a terrifying crash, it was struck in front, badly smashed, and thrown back about 50 yards in the direction from which it had come -- by one of the minerollers! Fortunately no one was hurt. Those riding in the seat were thrown out, and those in the rear were bumped around with no way of knowing what in the world was happening. |
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Baptism - with Bullets - While maintenance work already had delivered, indirectly, telling blows against the Nazi enemy in France, it was on the afternoon of July 31 that German soldiers first faced bullets from the ordnancemen of Co. "B." That also was the company's first taste of enemy action. And the man of the hour was kinky-headed, fast-moving Staff Sgt. Sam G. "Spike" DeStefano. Spike and most of the rest of Second Maintenance Section had left the bivouac area two miles southwest of Mont Martin to repair vehicles at another Normandy Peninsula town, Brehal. It was a hot, sunny afternoon, and the Second Maintenance men were concentrating on a halftrack. On the scene also were Lt. Frank W. Haught and Captain Buehrig who had come up to see how his boys were doing. All were grouped around the halftrack which stood at the side of the street almost in the center of town. The 2 p.m. sun was getting in its work and there was drowsiness in the hum of conversation and the methodic clatter of tools as work progressed. This peaceful scene suddenly was shattered by the crash of rifle fire, and as bullets buzzed close, men and officers scattered for cover. Spike, noting that the fire apparently had come from a church steeple about a hundred yards away, dashed for the .50 machine gun on his 2 1/2 ton truck, swung the gun toward the steeple, and cut loose 35 rounds, silencing the enemy with the heavy .50 slugs. M. P.'s, appearing with the noise, immediately set out to check, and the Second Maintenance men resumed work on the halftrack. While all concerned took it for granted that the steeple had housed a sniper, only unofficial reports reached the company as to what the investigating M. P.'s actually found. The unofficial count: Two dead German soldiers. Acutely embarrassed but for no social reason was Lt. Haught. When the sniper fire came, the lieutenant had T-5 John M. Pasztornycky stripping and cleaning the .30 machine gun on his peep. This was only the first fire from the company to be directed in the direction of the enemy, and some which followed was of much heavier caliber. The Artillery Section, in testing guns the men had repaired, threw many rounds into German positions across France and Germany. Because of lack of a proper firing range and fear of hitting friendly troops, it was decided soon after reaching France that the artillerymen might just as well "kill two birds with one stone". So, when repaired or adjusted artillery pieces were to be tested, the Artillery Section men would take them up front, receive their reading of fire, and throw a few rounds into enemy positions. |
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This Is It ! - It is a safe guess that no men in the company ever heard of the Normandy towns of Mont Martin and Avranches before July 31, 1944, when they moved into a bivouac two miles southwest of Mont Martin in a hedgelined field where a rough night was spent before moving on to Avranches. But those names were soon to be spelled with capital letters in their minds, and probably still will be when the Me-109's, the Ju-88's, the big bombs, the burp guns, M-1's, carbines, ack-ack and potato masher grenades are as obsolete as those pyramidal piles of round shot beside Civil War cannons on the grounds of old county courthouses. There, in the chatter and blue streaks of strafing Messerschmitts and Focke Wulfs, amid flying shrapnel, rocks and clumps of Norman earth blown skyward during the swan song of the arrogant Luftwaffe, was born in many a mind the thought: "This ordnance isn't what they told us back in the States it would be!" Evacuation Section was the last to pull into the area, reaching it just before dark, in good time for the show. Two of the prime movers joined the company that night while the third stayed behind to transport a mineroller which had broken down. As their mover stopped near a hedgerow, T-5 Erwin G. Venator and T-4 Leonard W. Salger noticed an inviting haystack over in an adjoining field, and decided it would be a good place to sleep. But by the time they had gassed their mover and were ready to turn in, they made up their minds to throw their bedrolls on the ground beside the mover and sleep there. The next morning, there was no longer a haystack, for one of the bombs to fall during the night left only a huge crater where the stack had been.  "Only a crater where a haystack had been" When the planes came, about 11 p.m., the personnel of Evacuation Section, having dug no slit trenches, took refuge in and under the movers. Venator, however, had lain down beside a hedgerow, and when the bomb hit the haystack, one rock struck and knocked off his helmet, another hit his thigh, and a third chipped a bone in the lower part of one leg, causing his hospitalization. During the bombing, T-4 Lonner Chandler and Staff Sgt. Earl D. "Rocky" Frazure were sharing a foxhole when something -- it must have been a rock -- fell into the hole at their feet, striking Chandler and giving him a limp of several days' duration. When struck, he turned a flip trying to get out of the hole before the bomb, which he thought had landed in with Rocky and him, could explode. PFC Earl C. Botts, another of three men injured that night, was asleep when the excitement started. "I awakened at the sound of the first bomb to find myself running," Botts explained. He ran under a tree where a slight ditch offered a little protection, but falling rocks from a bomb explosion filtered down through the branches, one of them inflicting a shoulder injury. Just before the enemy planes came over, men of Instrument Repair were sitting around indulging in one of those "sessions." When action started, they all scattered to their previously dug foxholes and slit trenches. T-5 Abraham J. Yablonsky reached his only to find it occupied by T-5 Harold V. Schafer who had been in another sector doing some visiting. Looking up at the hapless "Yabo" who was looking down, Schafer asked, "What's wrong, bud, didn't you dig yourself a hole??" It was no time for argument, so Yabo galloped over to, and dove under, the Instrument Repair truck! At dusk, T-3 Earl B. Hudgins, T-4's Guy E. "Lard" Hollifield, Robert L. Peck and Leslie A. Harding, PFC George B. Francy and T-5 Wesley T. Smith had crawled into their bedrolls outside the Automotive B truck and were discussing events of the day when "Lard" expressed the wish that their nightly visitor, "Bed-Check Charlie," would come over so they could get to sleep. It wasn't long until the drone of Charlie's motor was heard, and the men lay watching the tracer display as the German plane cruised over the area and then moved on. "It's all over now for the night, we can go to sleep," announced "Lard," and they did. When the six men -- with the rest of the company -- awakened at 11 p.m. with all hell popping above and around them, a piece of flak shrapnel fell on "Lard's" bedroll, convincing the big boy that it was time for action. "Men," he shouted, leaping out of his bunk, "don't you think we had better get into the holes?" All took the advice except the man who gave it, for he had dug none. Francy, however, shared his hole with "Lard," who was still remedying his deficiency with pick and shovel long after the bombers had passed and the rest of his group had gone to sleep. After the last bomb had fallen, the last strafing bullet snapped into the ground, sleep did not come readily to many men. Far into the night and early morning, picks and shovels played a WPA symphony as those who had not dug holes did so and those who had dug deeper. While no actual measurement was made of depth attained, a G. I. poll (*) of the company next day gave the honor to Lt. Klawon whose head and working shovel were all that could be seen by the dawn's early light. Also to be heard in the comparative quiet immediately following the departure of enemy planes were slight clicking sounds, not caused by anything falling through the trees and accompanied by dialog. T-5 Oliver "Alabama" Ayers and T-4 John F. "Navigator" Giles were rolling the bones as usual, but this time the cry was not, "Seven, you fools!" Heard instead in the moonlit night was, "If I live through this, never again will I be caught on bended knee worshiping the cubes!" That night brought a vow which was kept: Staff Sgt. Ted Anderson, Small Arms Section chief, who was caught in his underwear when the bombing started and nearly froze that way in his slit trench, swore never again to remove his clothes at night until the end of the war. He didn't! (*) Not the kind of "poll" used to arrive at the army's point system. |
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Coffee in a Chimney - Early in the morning of August 1 while the company was in bivouac near Mont Martin, men of the Second Maintenance Section and Lt. Donald M. Bailey, whose driver was T-5 Frank R. Kubas, had an "argument" ' with the Luftwaffe while on a mission to recover a tank which had rolled down an embankment a few miles east of the town. Present were Tech. Sgt. Gerald R. Pratt, T-4's Cecil E. Odom, Kermit C. Johnson, Carter E. Kelly and John M. "Butch" Metrick and T-5's Lou Poznick and Russell E. "Stump-Jumper" Paugh. Having pulled the tank back onto the road and gotten it into running condition, they started back to join the company which had pulled out of the bivouac area. They had reached the small town of Sar-Telle at noon when enemy planes roared overhead to begin strafing and bombing. Leaving the vehicles, the men made for a tavern not far off. As he ran, Pratt could hear "singing" noises behind him, and Stump Jumper, bringing up the rear, could see the causes of the "singing" sounds -- bullets from a plane kicking up puffs of dust in the road before ricocheting off. Inside the tavern, Stump Jumper became conscious of something he hadn't noticed before, a burning sensation in his right arm. A bullet had grazed him, not even breaking the skin. Coming out of the tavern when the shooting stopped, the men noticed fresh holes in a truck parked in front of the "oasis." When the group moved out of town, Pratt left Odom and Stump Jumper at a crossroads to wait for Lt. Bailey who had gone ahead in an attempt to locate the rest of the company which had moved out while they were busy. Pratt and the remainder of the group went ahead to wait at another crossroads. Odom and Stump Jumper pulled their 3/4-ton truck off the road and went about the business of making coffee. One cup of water was heated and another was heating when more German planes appeared, strafing the road. Both men bailed out of the truck to dash for a nearby farmhouse which they entered without bothering to knock, Stump Jumper still carrying his cup of coffee. With the road outside the house being strafed, the mere shelter of the building did not seem enough. Stump Jumper and Odom crawled right into the chimney where they drank the former's coffee while sweating out the strafing which ended with no harm done. Meanwhile, back in the company bivouac area that morning, T-4 George W. Larsen, T-4 Sanford J. Littlejohn and T-5 Celio G. "Nigger" Hernandez went down to a small creek to bathe. When they reached the stream, Larsen found the water far too unsanitary for him, and refused to have anything to do with it, regardless of how badly he needed a bath. "That stuff is too nasty," stated the fastidious one. At that moment, came the Luftwaffe, several strong, and when they had passed, Larsen picked himself out of the "nasty" water into which he had dove, clothes and all. |
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Avranches - During the afternoon and night of August 1 while the company was in bivouac one mile from Avranches, about half a mile off the road in a hedgelined field, after a 25-mile march from Mont Martin, came memorable moments, sidelights in the grim business of war. One such involved men of the Second Maintenance and part of Evacuation Sections who had gone into Avranches on the warm, moonlit night of August 1 to load minerollers on prime movers. The town and vicinity were considered "hot," and Lt. Young, in charge of the loading job, had told the men to "get out of town" in case things became any warmer. Enemy planes were trying to bomb out a bridge up the road at the time. Around midnight, one plane flew directly over the town. It drew fire from friendly troops, and, not knowing what would happen next but having an idea, the "B" Company men took off, following Lt. Young's suggestion. Meanwhile, the bombing up the road increased in intensity. Helping load the rollers was a wrecker driven by T-5 Harold "Hank" Witkowski. When the German plane flew over and the shooting started, Hank left the wrecker and sought safety with the rest of the men. After everything had quieted down without any bombs or strafing, much to everyone's surprise, the scattered workers began to gather again at the scene from which they hastily had departed. Walking back with Hank was Alabama Ayers. Strolling through the town, they saw a wrecker like Hank's with its radiator pushed clear through the wall of a house on the main street. It had entered the house between a door and a window in the front of the building. "Huh," twanged Bamy, "that fellow sure must have been scared!" Hank grunted his assent, and they continued up the slight grade to the corner where Hank's wrecker had been parked. Arriving at the corner, Hank took a look, and the words which fell from his lips were, "Christ, my wrecker's gone!" It was easy to back the big vehicle right out of its hole in the Frenchman's house, and only the bumper was damaged. Explaining that the bombing must have loosened the brakes, Hank nevertheless was of the jocular opinion that the wrecker "was trying to get under cover like the rest of us!" One man not bothered by any of the exitement [excitement] in Avranches that night was T-5 Raymond J. Peters, the only cool head in the group. In a truck, he slept soundly through the whole thing! At approximately the same time -- the enemy plane scare lasted about 45 minutes -- Sgt. Franklin Westphal, who had sought protection in a ditch alongside the road just outside of town, was having his troubles. Hearing trudging steps coming along the road toward him, Westphal, from his position of defilade, shouted, "Halt!" The approach continued in the night, and he repeated his command more urgently. Still the steps drew nearer, and, remembering he was in a foreign country, Frank yelled, still. from deep down in his ditch, "Halt, goddam it, I can speak French!" But it made no difference to old Dobbin or whatever his French owner called him, for the horse clopped right along past the "B" Company "linguist." On his way along the road before reaching Westphal, it was learned later, the horse also had thrown a scare into Spike and T-5 Walter P. Malikowski, both of them thinking the animal was a German moving along through the night. Earlier that same day which many remember as one of much strafing by Heinie planes following the bombing of the preceding night, there were numerous quick dashes for foxholes and slit trenches. One such concerned T-4 Charles E. Mispagel who had failed to dig a hole in the bivouac area off the road near Avranches. About 2:30 p.m., he looked up to see six enemy planes coming over, and immediately made a dash for a hole dug by T-3 Clifford H. Lozo. Diving over a fence between him and Lozo's sanctuary, he landed in the hole, right on top of Lozo who thought a bomb had made a direct hit. Another Luftwaffe "victim" that day was T-4 Joseph Funicelli who had dozed off inside the company halftrack during a roadside halt. When the planes came over, he was awakened by Pvt. Nathan Parees. Grabbing at his helmet, he opened the rear door of the halftrack and hit the ditch. When danger had passed, other men in the ditch looked up to see Joe with a five-gallon can on his head, instead of the helmet. And that same afternoon it fell to the lot of T-4 Thomas Walters to start what almost turned out to be a small-scale civil war in French civilian circles. |
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Horses - All along the way to Avranches, roads had been littered with destroyed enemy vehicles. One German convoy, which had been caught and annihilated by American airmen, consisted of a great number of horse-drawn vehicles. Along the road and ditches with the demnants of all sorts of wagons and gun carriages, lay many of the horses which had been pulling them when the American planes zoomed over to write an end to that movement. Having been dead several days under the hot summer sun, their odor was not one of violets. But not all the horses had been killed. An enterprising Frenchman had caught and collected in a fenced field about 25 of the animals which had escaped slaughter. This field was across the secondary road from that in which the company bivouacked one mile southeast of Avranches, and was within plain sight of Walters who caught guard at the entrance to the company's new area. No sooner had Tom taken his post than a Frenchman came along, pointed at the horses in the field across the road, and asked a question which Tom guessed correctly was, "Can I have one?" Nodding a cheerful affirmative, Tom watched the Frenchman enter the field and select himself a horse. He motioned for the Frenchman to take two, what the hell Three other sons of la belle France, passing along the road at the same time, saw what was happening, and asked Tom if they too could have horses. "Sure, help yourselves!" Beaming, they went into the field, and each made two selections from the stock on hand. Before any of the quartet had time to leave with his animals, however, the Frenchman who had collected them in the first place appeared in a state of indignation and excitement from a house in the vicinity. There ensued a very fast, furious and hot argument such as only members of the Gallic race can wage. It finally subsided just short of the free-for-all which the impressed Walters expected, and all four of the horse-takers turned their beasts back into the field and went their disappointed ways while the "herder" strode majestically back to his house. Tom wondered just what the latter had told the other four Frenchman to make them see things his way. |
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Came the Dawn - When the company moved out of its bivouac area that night, the kitchen truck left with only half its personnel, and among the missing was the mess sergeant, Harlan Bailey. Bailey, with T-4's Van Payne and John J. DeBarbieri, PFC Charles E. Sims and Pvt. Arthur Schumacher, had taken cover in the woods earlier in the evening, unaware of the fact that the company was to leave that night. Holed up snugly, they stayed right there in the woods. Finding the company gone in the morning, they managed to climb aboard one of the prime movers which usually followed the rest of the vehicles, and eventually rejoined the organization. The other half of the kitchen crew -- T-5's Earl T. "Hillbilly" Drumheller and Earl C. Botts and PFC's Guido W. Augustine and Lyle E. Boone -- manned the kitchen truck as it moved out, wondering what in hell had happened to their buddies. Passing through the Normandy Peninsula town of Granville on the afternoon of August 2 with a convoy of minerollers, prime movers and wreckers while the rest of the company was moving southward in the vicinity of Avranches, T-5 Otto "Booby Trap" Neuman and Hank Witkowski got started on a chain of events which led to a rude awakening. While the convoy was halted in Granville because of congested traffic and the ponderous size of its vehicles, Otto and Hank took a short walk, and, as usually happened, it was then that the column got rolling again, leaving the pair stranded. After a frantic search, the two decided there was nothing to do but make the best of the situation while waiting for an opportunity to rejoin the convoy or for someone to come to get them. During the course of the warm summer afternoon while moving from one to another of the spots of interest in the French town, Otto spied a World War 1 German helmet in a shop window, purchased it for a dollar, and, substituting it for his own G. I. number, paraded the streets in it for the remainder of the day. Exactly what happened from then on is something neither man can recall in detail, but they did sufficient walking to become very tired and sleepy as daylight dimmed to darkness and the night wore on. However, events of the following morning stand out clearly in their minds. Awakening on the ground in the cool morning air, their first impression was that they were in the middle of a crowd of men. Audible were voices and movement all around them. The second impression, also coming before they opened their eyes, was that the voices they heard were speaking a language which was not English, and neither was it the familiar-sounding French. Could it be -- yes, Otto said, it was -- German! There they were, lying defenseless in the midst of German soldiers. Hundreds of German soldiers. Full and startled awakening also brought into focus several armed M. P.'s who were guarding the Germans and who had found place for Hank and Otto to spend the preceding night - in a PW enclosure! |
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Moonlight and the Luftwaffe - Leaving the bivouac area near Avranches at 1:30 a.m. on August 2, many a heart was beating hard and fast. From the campsite all had been able to see the main road being strafed and bombed that moonlit night, and the order had come down to "stay with your vehicles in event of strafing or bombing." No sooner had the company hit the highway than enemy planes appeared, and, with a bright, full moon shining from a cloudless sky, each man felt that he personally was sitting out there on the road as a target for the trigger-happy Luftwaffe. And there was much sitting, for the march was slow, with the column spending much time parked alongside the road. Towns along the way were aflame, many having been bombed not long before. It was during one of the multitudinous halts that Staff Sgt. "Rocky" Frazure, Tom Walters and T-5 Roy Holsonback had some hair-raising moments. Having dismounted from the Machine Shop truck in which they were travelling, they were standing on the road, talking, when they heard and saw a German plane strafing the road in -- their direction. Walters hit the ditch on one side, while Frazure and Holsonback dove into that on the other side of the highway. Walters, to his dismay, landed on the body of a German soldier, and what was worse, he wasn't sure whether the man was dead or alive. And he didn't take time to investigate; as soon as the plane had passed, he scrambled out of the ditch. Frazure and Holsonback joined him on the road, but before he could tell them what he had found, another Heinie plane came along with evil intentions. Walters, not liking the aspect of German companionship, dead or alive, in the ditch which he had vacated, but entirely satisfied with its depth and protective quality, made for it again. And this time the other two followed him. Tom managed to miss the Heinie on his second dive, but Frazure landed right on top of him. Scared beyond words, Rocky was off the body on first bounce, vacating the spot just in time for Holsonback to land on it. All Holsonback could do then, with the plane in range, was to stretch out beside it. Not sure whether the German was dead or alive, he expected a knife in his back any second. None of the three lingered an instant after the passing of the plane, and consequently it never was learned whether or not the man in the ditch was capable of any harm. If he wasn't dead though, all three agreed, he certainly was bruised. The balance of the 17-mile trip from the vicinity, of Avranches to a point near Percy was spent in much the same manner with enemy planes bombing and strafing the road all night. Men, remembering their instructions to stay with the vehicles in case of bombing or strafing, were amused by an incident which occurred as they were pulling into their bivouac area at 6 a.m. August 2. Vehicles were moving off the highway-to-the accompaniment of much loud and impatient "guidance" from a bevy of brass, ranking from major on down. "Come on, move -- get that damned thing off the road! was a sample of the voluble advice from prodding brass who were vying with each other in the production of confusion with multiple orders. Then came a single German fighter plane, the pilot letting off one short strafing burst as he passed, without causing damage or injury. From that moment on, not an officer was to be seen, and the company vehicles, with no further orders, moved quietly into their area in near record time. Five men of the company were evacuated on August 2 because of nervous disorder caused by the intense excitement of the preceding two days and nights. They were T-5 William J. Callahan, PFC Pellegrino R. Marsala, T-5 Trevor Prince, T-5 Harold Harbry and Pvt. W. F. "Hopalong" Parker. Of these, Harbry was the only one to come back, returning on August 12 at Plabennec. His friends were especially glad to see Harold return, for with him he brought several bags of mail for the company. These, he had picked up at Administrative Center on his way through. Joining the company for the first time in France the same day was T-4 Joseph Lauchack who had been hospitalized in England. |
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Vigilance - The night after a 17-mile march from the area near Avranches to a point near the town of Percy found everyone digging holes or looking around for a good bomb and strafe-proof place in which to sleep. They were taking no chances by then with Adolf's Luftwaffe which had made itself very annoying in the past few days. Pvt. Buic L. "Red" Sharpe, Pvt. "Pappy" Bradford, T-5 Jacob E. Tuel, Pvt. Wesley M. Simmons, T-4 Mispagel and T-5 Donald R. Kenyon, who were on a guard outpost, found an admirable spot, a plot of ground enclosed by thick concrete walls about four feet high. Moving in, in the darkness, they spread their bedrolls, and looked forward to secure slumber while not on post. Hardly had they assumed the horizontal position of parade rest when gutteral sounds began to issue from another corner of their thick-walled enclosure -- and movements were heard. "Heinies!" was the frightened conclusion. After the enemy did not appear, the group finally got up sufficient nerve to investigate. They found one large, dirty French porker who didn't mind too much sharing his home with them. In fact, he was so hospitable that when "Yabo" Yablonsky joined the group later that night for protection, the pig grunted what passed in the swine language for, "what the hell, come on in, bub, one more won't make any difference!" On one of the Evacuation Section's operations apart from the rest of the company, Pvt. James K. Aleshire learned firsthand how to fire a .50 caliber machine gun, and T-4 Leonard W. "Whitey" Salger found that he could get into places he couldn't back out of. At the bivouac area near Percy, Evacuation Sections from all three letter companies of the battalion were combined and left behind when the rest of the battalion moved out on August 3. They were to come later because of the impossibility of keeping the big movers travelling at the same rate of march as the rest of the vehicles. Thus, the Evacuation Section of "B" Company was apart from the organization until it rejoined the company at Plabennec where the other sections had gone into bivouac at 9 a.m. on August 9 after a 12-mile march from Bourg Blanc. While the Evacuation boys were in the vicinity of Noval Pontivy and Percy, Aleshire got an urge to learn all about the operation of the gun on his mover, and went about it in a thorough manner. After questioning Sgt. John Mushik for several minutes on the procedure and working of the weapon, he climbed into the mover's cab, into the gun ringmount, pointed the muzzle heavenward, and pressed the trigger. With the first of the horrible din that only a .50 machine gun can make, the other men scrambled for cover. Whitey, standing near the mover, dove between the big vehicle's dual wheels. When it was realized that Aleshire was doing the shooting and everyone came out of his hole, Whitey found himself unable to back out of his position, so tightly was he wedged between the huge tires. Instead, with much wriggling and swearing, he had to force himself on through to emerge under the vehicle. In a bivouac near Becheral, the men, arriving there at 2 p.m. on August 3, were able to relax and rest a few minutes that afternoon for the first time in four days. They even were able to take baths in a small creek running through a wooded section -- if they cared to ignore the danger of sniper fire -- and many did. The rest, however, did not last long for 20 of them -- all of the grade of T-4 and down except for Staff Sgt. Buford J. Prince, who had volunteered, and Lt. Klawon. This group was placed on a roadblock on the main highway, about a mile from the company area, near Battalion Headquarters. The reason for the block was a report to the effect that a battalion of German infantry and several tanks were in the rear of the ordnance battalion and were expected to attempt passage through the area during the night. Included in the blocking force were a tank with a 75 mm gun, several bazookas and men armed with carbines. The roadblock party spent a vigilant night, but no enemy appeared. As for the balance of the company, even though enemy planes were over all night, they enjoyed their first night's sleep in 72 hours -- the slumber of sheer exhaustion. |