by Thea Marshall, Member
This May 2016 query letter was written by Ann Hall Marshall, Capt. Robert T. Marshall’s wife of over 50 years, and my Mom. Sadly, my mother didn’t live to see this book (Healers and Heroes, publication pending) come to fruition—she died in August, 2016.
Ann Hall Marshall wrote:
“During WWII, while all around them men were killing and being killed, soldiers in the front-line aid station risked their lives to rescue GIs lying wounded and helpless on the smoking battlefield.
When WWII began, Robert Thomas Marshall (1919-1996) was drafted as a buck private during his first semester of graduate school. Four years later, he was discharged as a captain, with a Silver Star, Purple Heart, and four battle ribbons including the Battle of the Bulge. He was a medic in General Patton’s third army.
I have the large, annotated maps on which my husband marked their route.
On his own initiative, my husband kept a log of what went on in the aid station. Surprisingly, that included an overseas romance. Dr. Andy Dedick, commanding officer of the aid station, married Lt. Kate Golden, a nurse from the field hospital. Bob was best man.
I am 95 years old. My daughter, Thea Marshall, and I will soon publish a book titled Healers and Heroes. I will send you a copy. If this is of interest to your (magazine, program, newsletter) please contact me for further information.”
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Although I live in Hawaii and my Mom was in Maryland, we were in close communication about the manuscript development. She advised, informed, and collaborated extensively—I did the legwork, naturally!
Mom found great pleasure and purpose in developing this compelling project that was so dear to her heart. As you can see from the above query, my mother was a fabulous writer (published in her own right!) and in full command of her mental faculties to the end.
Despite many hurdles, it’s a wonderful privilege to continue with the plan that my Mom and I undertook together. I miss her terribly, but I am working hard to fulfill my promise to her and will soon publish my Dad’s front-line account (written post-hostilities in Czechoslovakia, using logs, maps, notes and first-hand accounts).
A bit of further background:
Capt. Robert T. Marshall served with the 26th (Yankee) Division, landing on Utah Beach in September of 1944. They joined the Battle of the Bulge on December 20, 1944.
My father’s duties included scouting strategic locations for their Division’s medical aid stations, then setting up the “facility” in preparation for upcoming battles. As is evident from his own self-deprecating narrative, Dad also rescued wounded soldiers, planned evacuation routes, and organized and carried out a plethora of related actions that advanced the war effort.
My father was wounded and evac’d in late March, 1945—he and his comrades received treatment for their wounds by a medic on the scene, and were then transported to the very aid station they had set up earlier that day at Grossauheim. S. Sgt. Walter German generously contributed to the narrative, filling in the rest of the story until VE Day.
Following is an excerpt by my Dad from the forthcoming book, Healers and Heroes:
Chapter 2 – How a Jew Helped a Nazi
At this time, the regimental aid station was set up only a mile or so behind us on the road leading out of Bures. The crew had dug themselves into the side of the hill, and I know this was the first and last occasion on which they soiled their lily-white hands by digging foxholes. (In all fairness, we soon broke ourselves of the habit as well.) Lieutenant Markham was one of our few casualties when a chunk of masonry dented his scalp during some excitement in the town of Coincourt, where Charlie Company was holding court.
From this area we moved into Rechicourt to relieve the 2d Battalion. This was on November 1, and from the moment we landed, things began to happen. “Coke” and I spent the best part of the day reconnoitering the companies’ positions. Able Company was to take over the southwest slope of Hill 264 and Baker the southwest slope of Hill 253; the Heinies provided occupation forces for the other sides of these respective mounds, while the hilltops made a suitable no-man’s land.
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The enemy was also in Bezange-la-Petite. That day was foggy, so we had no trouble contacting Lieutenant Lehrman of Fox Company and Captain Carrier of George Company, which Baker and Able were relieving respectively. The route to Able would be good: a straight road almost to the company CP. However, the one to Baker involved a bit of cross-country work as well as a good sense of direction. The line companies were not to make the switch until after dark, but we made the aid station swap in the afternoon. We had a couple of downstairs rooms for the station, while the gang slept in the attached barn.
The fireworks started shortly after dark when George Company, which had not yet been relieved, called to say they had a couple of casualties. We went out to find Lieutenant Randazzize (who had been in charge of the officers’ mess at Fort Jackson) shot through the ankle, as well as a couple of enlisted men who were even worse off.
We had gone at first to the George Company CP, but they had not only failed to furnish us guides to (or at least a faint idea of) where the casualties were, they also had moved one of the wounded from the spot where he was hit (fairly close to the evacuation route we had planned) to their own ammo dump, which was quite a piece out of the way. I naturally blew my stack, but we finally wandered all over the damn hill and got everybody collected and started back. During the whole trip back, the least injured of the three was hollering like a stuck pig, until I felt sure the Heinies up the road thought Ringling Brothers’ circus was headed for Bezange-la-Petite. Somehow we managed to get back without drawing any enemy (or friendly) fire.
The next night we got a call from Able and went out to find that a shell had landed in T/4 Joe Cabral’s foxhole. He was one of the aidmen with Able. We dug him out and brought him back to the aid station, but he was dead when we got there (and probably had been when we picked him up). Friday night T/4 Bill Market, a Baker aidman, got a shell fragment in his scalp, so we drove out and picked him up. Larry Honaker from the station went out to Baker as a replacement.
During the time we were at Rechicourt until the attack on November 8, a few odds and ends cropped up to keep us amused. Father Bransfield was staying with us and celebrated Mass each morning in the sacristy of the village church. Indeed, the sacristy was about all that was left of the church. Andy and I went out to pay a social call to Baker Company, and spent most of the trip hitting the dirt when a machine gun opened up nearby. We later discovered that it was a Dog Company gun firing from Hill 296 over our heads into Bezange.
Organizing himself into a one-man commando unit, Maj. Swampy Hilton went out to blow up a German artillery piece that stood between the lines in Baker Company’s sector. He came back and gave a glowing report of the success of this mission—how he had crept under the very noses of the Germans, tied dynamite on the gun, lit it, crept back, and watched the gun blow sky high. We later learned that the gun had already been deactivated by the 2d Battalion, while Honaker, who was an eyewitness, told us that Swampy had confined his efforts to throwing hand grenades at the offending weapon from a foxhole within the safety of our own lines.
Morgan Madden and Herbie Scheinberg were given the task of closing the latrine in our backyard and digging a new one, but they got confused, reversed the order, and dug the new one first. It was lucky for them that they did it thus, for whilst they were digging, a mortar shell dropped squarely into the old latrine and obliterated it. The odd part was that neither was injured, although they were within fifteen feet of the explosion. Rechicourt also saw me—after two long, hard, and faithful years—shed golden bars for those wrought of silver. For a while I had gotten to thinking that the damn War Department had decided to let me remain a second louie for the duration as an awful example to our drafted citizenry not to go to OCS, especially not MAC OCS.
One dark night, Lt. George Winecoff, exec of Baker, came into the aid station humbly seeking our assistance. It seems he was unable to navigate his usual ration route to the company and wanted us to guide him over the one we were using for evacuation—the route we had figured out all for ourselves, and that was a much better one. It tickled us to think that the infantry should come seeking such technical help from the medics whom they usually razzed for knowing so little of such matters. But we pitched in and delivered the rations and kept the gloating to a minimum.
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Finally on the morning of November 8, the 1st Battalion attacked Bezange-la-Petite, which was our small part in the larger picture, the big Lorraine offensive by Patton’s Third Army. The medic plan had been figured out long in advance: We would evacuate Able right from Rechicourt and would set up an alternate aid station in the Chapelle St. Pierre, which was only a short distance behind the Baker CP, directly on our route of evacuation. Before daylight on the 8th, Bruegge, Madden, Jenkins, Geisler, German, Scheinberg, and I (along with one or two more) made our way to the chapel. We listened to the artillery preparation and watched the tracer shells from Geydos’ 57-mm anti-tank guns sailing through the dawn into Bezange.
The Heinies retaliated in kind, landing several shells within ten feet of the chapel and dropping a portion of its roof on Madden’s head, thus giving him his first Purple Heart. But we had gotten our signals crossed and were busily praying to St. Joseph, in whose honor we mistakenly thought the chapel was erected. The saints must have smiled tolerantly at our ignorance and pitched in together to give us a hand, for Madden’s scratch was the only one during the counter fire.
Soon the day had come in earnest, and with it the casualties started pouring in. Baker Company’s task was merely to clear the Jerries from the other side of Hill 253 and this they accomplished in short order and with a minimum of trouble after the artillery barrage had lifted. The enemy left as many dead and wounded as he had inflicted. We ran the jeep forward to the creek that flowed near the base of the hill and hand-carried the casualties down the hill. Back in the chapel, Bruegge and Geisler were busy passing out plasma and splinting, while the rest of us made it our job to bring them the patients. Lt. Joe Senger, our S-4, dropped in for a visit and was soon put to work hauling wounded from the chapel back to the main aid station.
The trip from the hill wasn’t too bad until the Heinies decided to blast Baker from its heights with artillery. A good many shells would just miss the top and would keep on going down into the valley near the stream straddling our evacuation route. Several shells breezed in as we were getting the last of the GI casualties off the hill. One of these chaps had trench foot and exhaustion so bad that two of the boys were carrying him. We hit the dirt, waited for a breathing spell, and then lit out on the double for the jeep before more shells landed. And who should be leading our pack but the crippled exhaustion case— and he beat us all with his shell-inspired sprinting.
Next we turned to the German casualties. It would have done the Jewbaiting Nazi politicians a world of moral good to see Herbie Scheinberg helping one of their fallen warriors across the be-shelled valley floor to the chapel. Indeed, Herbie picked up a hunk of German shrapnel in his arm from a near hit during one of these excursions. It wasn’t serious and Herbie kept going, but I still like to think about how I once saw a Jew earn a Purple Heart helping save Nazi lives. That’s one for the books!