On December 16, 1944, I was in Reims, France as a member of the 325th Glider Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division. On 20 December, 1944, I was in Arlon, Belgium, as a rifleman replacement as part of CCA (Combat Command “A”) of the 4th Armored Division “Old Blood and Guts’ had ordered Hugh Gaffey to haul ass up the Arlon-Bastogne road to break the encirclement of the 101st in Bastogne.
After a hellish ride from Reims to Arlon in a “deuce-and-a-half” we loaded in some half tracks and about 1600 hours started north out of Arlon on the Arlon-Bastogne road. Progress was slow and we did not close on the blown bridge over the Sure River at Martelange until about 1300 hours, December 22nd. We had covered about 20 of the 28 miles from Arlon to Bastogne. While we waited for the engineers to finish the bridge over the Sure, we had a feast when one of the guys pilfered a ten in one ration off one of the tanks. I drew guard duty about 0400 hours. It was a bright moonlight night – – I thought I would be less of a target if I stood in the shadow of a tree. While leaning up against a small tree I could feel this lump on my back. I found out it was about 10 pounds of TNT wired to the tree with primer cord so that in case of retreat the engineers could blow the trees as a form of a roadblock. I chose some other place to stand to finish out my tour of guard duty. As we were closing on Martelange in the half tracks, as we rounded a curve and climbed a slight rise, as we emerged from a cut in the road, it seemed like were a hundred 105’s on both sides of the road which all opened up at the same time. The sky suddenly became bright as day and the noise was deafening. It was at this time that I had the first of my laundry problems. To the uninitiated, that means that I was scared “s———.s
About 0800 hours we got across the Bailey bridge over the Sure and we fanned out. CCA was given the main Arlon-Bastogne road. CCB was on the left flank using the secondary roads as its route to Bastogne. CCB was flanked on its left by the green, newly arrived 76th Infantry Division CCA was flanked on its right by the ‘Blue Ridge Mountain Boys’ of the 80th Infantry Division. We rode along on the backs of the Shermans. I had on my G.I. “Long johns,” O.D. pants and shirt, two pairs of socks, jump boots, four buckle overshoes, knit sweater, banana cap, helmet, “tanker overalls,” and extra pair of socks under each armpit, my “K” bar knife, my G.I. gloves, I had thrown away my gas mask, I had an ample supply of toilet paper inside my helmet, and my pockets were stuffed with “K” rations, candle stubs, cigarettes, grenades, and 2-½ pound blocks of TNT complete with fuse to blow myself a hole in the frozen ground, if necessary. I had my good old M-1 with the regulation belt load of eight clips ball and two clips A.P. four and one on each side, bayonet, canteen, first-aid pouch, two extra bandoleers of ammo, and three bazooka rounds.
By now it had snowed and just about everything was hidden by this white blanket. As we rode on the backs of the Shermans, we stood on one foot and hung on with one hand for as long as we could stand the cold, and then we switched hand and foot and tried to get some circulation going in the hand and foot we had just used. This was made more difficult because the tank turret was being constantly traversed from right to left and left to right. The tank I was riding on and three others fanned out in the fields left of the main road. Suddenly the tank I was on, the lead tank, stopped and the sergeant “volunteered” another G.I. and I to investigate what appeared to be a squad of German soldiers moving along in extended order. “They” turned out to be a row a fence posts, but to this day, I was sure at first, that I had seen my first “krauts.” Another laundry problem. One of the other tanks broke through a barbed wire fence and a strand of barbed wire slapped a G.I. across the face, turning his face into raw hamburger. A G.I., wearing an unbuttoned overcoat, jumped off his tank and when the coat tails billowed out behind him they caught in the tracks and sucked his legs into the bogie wheels of the tank.
Suddenly the tank I was ridding on stopped and one of the other tanks fired a whole belt (200+ rounds) of tracer ammunition at a haystack along side a barn about 200 yards in front of us. No sooner did the tracers bounce off the haystack when the other two tanks opened fire and destroyed a German tank that had been trying to hide in the haystack. I guess that the tankers had learned from experience that tracers do not bounce of haystacks. We moved forward about another 20 yards and the tank I was tiding on got mired down in a small stream that had become hidden due to the heavy blanket of snow. All I could think of at the time was to get away from the tank and I took off running as best that I could with the way I was dressed, with what I was carrying, and the deep snow. (Oh, yes, by the way, it was a least 20 degrees below zero at the time.) I must have managed about 50 yards when the fire from a German Nebelwerfer began falling around the stuck tank.
They assembled us foot troops back on the road (there were 26 of us in this one bunch) and we started north again toward Warnaco, a wide spot in the road about two miles further ahead. We walked strung out in a line in the ditch on the right hand side of the road so we wouldn’t be such good targets for those damned 88’s. A little way up ahead was an American 2-½ ton truck nosed down in the ditch and it had a big red Nazi flag with a black swastika on it across the front of the radiator. We had to climb the road embankment to get around the rear of the truck and as I passed by the cab of the truck I could see another good Kraut sitting behind the wheel with the top of his head blown off.
About another 500 yards up the road we came upon three tanks surrounding a farmhouse where they had a sniper trapped. The sniper had already hit three GI.s and they said the sniper was a woman and by the way that she fired she must have an M-1 with plenty of ammo. The three tanks proceeded to blow the farmhouse into a pile of rubble. I don’t know if they ever got the sniper or if the sniper was a woman. Our orders were to “get to Hell to Bastogne” so we took a break in a pig pen to get out of the cold. There were a half dozen pigs and some sheep in this pen about 20′ by 20′. There was also a dead pig and two dead sheep in paid any attention. I mean the GI’s or the pigs.
The town of Warnaco was where the Germans had set up their command center. If you were passing Warnach in a car and sneezed, you probably would miss it altogether. To enter Warnach, you make a right turn off the main Arlon-Bastogne road. I was walking along behind a tank taking full advantage of the warm air from its radiator when suddenly I had this funny sensation in my ears and the sky turned red. (It was about 0400 hours) Then the same thing happened again. A Hidden German S.P. gun in an orchard ahead had hit the tank twice and set it on fire. I saw two GI’s jump into a ditch along side the tank and start to get one of those new folding bazookas ready to fire. They didn’t have much luck and one of them yelled, “Let’s get out of here,” and they jumped up and ran. I was young but my mommy didn’t raise no dummy so I proceeded to ‘haul freight,’ too. In the process, my feet became entangled in some old chicken wire in the ditch and when I started to run I fell forward on my face. To this day, I don’t know how I did it, but my guess is I broke that wire with my hands.
As I ran back toward the Arlon-Bastogne road along a brush filled ditch to my left, I heard somebody yell, “Hey, infantry.” I hope that that tanker realize how lucky he was that I didn’t shoot him, but he told me he had a fellow tanker man whose right hand had been almost severed and was only hanging by some skin. I put the wounded tanker’s left arm over my shoulder and his buddy did the same with the mangled one. We would walk three-four steps and the wounded tanker would pass out. We would drag him three-four steps and he would come to and take three-four steps and pass out again. We managed to get him to a medic.
I got back to my squad who had assembled along side a barn and when I got there I saw about a dozen German prisoners standing with their hands against the side of the building. All but one of the German prisoners were Wehrmacht soldiers but the one on the right end was an SS Panzer soldier dressed in black coveralls. He was a handsome S.O.B. with a head wound and blood running down the left side of his face. None of the Wehrmacht soldiers had guts enough to turn around and ask for some gloves to cover their hands, but not the SS Panzer soldier. He turned around and in perfect English demanded gloves for his hands. A small American G. standing close by said, “I’ll give you some gloves you Kraut son-of-a-bitch” and poll-axed the SS trooper. They all turned around and put their hands back on the wall. The GI with the Thompson offered to return the prisoners to a POW camp to the rear but they wouldn’t let him go because he had just gotten word that his brother had been killed in the South Pacific. Later we watched about 12-15 P-47’s doing their job on some German columns. They were too far away to hear but we could sure see them plain enough.
We were told we were going to spend the night here and by the time I got the message the only place I could find to lie down was at the top of the stairs. All I took off were my four buckle overshoes and I used my helmet for a pillow. It seemed like only a couple of minutes but was really several hours when a sergeant came running in yelling that a bunch of German paratroopers had landed to our rear. Everybody engaged in organized confusion (or SNAFU).
It was about 0400 so I sat up on the top step and started to put my overshoes on when I got the damnedest cramp in the calf of my leg that I have ever had. But being smart I figured that by the time I got the other overshoe on the cramp would have gone away. When I started to put the other overshoe on, I’ll be damned if I didn’t get a cramp in the calf of that leg. I beat on them with my fist to no avail and they finally went away. We were told that we were going to attack Warnach again. By the time we got started it was daylight and this 90 day wonder Louie wanted someone to use the .50 cal on top of the tank to rake the roadside and ‘scare the hell’ out of the Germans. I was getting smarter by the minute and I remembered the old Army adage ‘Don’t never volunteer for nothing.’ After about 100 rounds the .50 jammed and the GI bailed down off the tank. As we turned a corner to the right, there in the middle of the road sat one of those German motorcycles with tracks at the back as a sort of a road block. The 90 day shave tail told the sergeant that he would back off a bit and then blast the motorcycle out of the way just in case it was booby-trapped. No sooner did the tank fire when a hidden German S.P. gun to perdition. Suddenly somebody yelled and two Krauts broke out of a copse of trees about 200 yards further down the road where it took a half dozen steps and then retreated to the safety of the trees. The other one ran along the fence for about 200 feet, calmly climbed over the fence just as you or I might do it today, and started to run up the road. Another 20-25 feet and he would have been safe, but all of a sudden he went about ten feet in the air, came down face first and never moved. When the two German soldiers broke out of the trees, we all started to fire at them – -M-1’s, Thompsons, BAR’s, carbines, grease guns, and maybe a couple of.45’s, too.
An officer came running over and ordered two other GI’s and myself to search this farmhouse. As it turned out, I was the only one with any grenades left and I had bent the pins over to make sure one of them did not come out while the grenade was in my pocket. Because of my cold hands, I couldn’t get the pin out so I tossed the grenade to one of the other GI’s. He got the pin out, but as close as he was to the door, he should have lobbed it underhand but instead he threw it overhand and missed the doorway. The grenade hit the edge of the door and bounced back into the yard. The GI yelled, “I missed the door” and took off. I knew what to do, too, so I hauled ass behind a pile of rubbish in the corner of the yard. It seemed like forever and the grenade hadn’t gone off. I stuck my head up to see what was going on just as the grenade went off. I guess I was just plain lucky. I had an M-1, one of the other GI’s had an M-1, and the third guy had a Thompson sub. I was second through the door in front of me. The other M-1 emptied his through the door to his left and the Thompson emptied his clip up the stairway to his right, and there we three stood just like the Three Stooges.
As we stepped back out into the yard, a Sherman started to rake the side of the building with .30 cal starting at the eves and working his way across the building and then down and across again. Then all of a sudden when he was about six feet off the ground he quit and took off. I am almost certain that I managed to hide my whole body under my helmet while the tanker was hosing down the wall of the house. Suddenly, out of nowhere a cow came around a corner of a nearby burning building followed by an old woman who looked to be in her nineties and carrying a switch with which she was chasing the cow. The cow and then the old woman in pursuit disappeared around the other corner of the building and was gone. Where she came from I don’t know and where she went I don’t know.
I got mine on Christmas Eve; had to wait over four hours to be evacuated. I was supposed to be air evacuated back to England but the friggen fog had come back in so I wound up in a field hospital in Commercy, France on Christmas day, naked as the day I was born with a small Red Cross package sitting on my chest.
The records show that the taking of Warnach cost America five Sherman, 68 GI’s killed or wounded. The Germans lost 135 dead on the streets and in the houses with a like number either wounded or taken as POWs.