Sketch sent to me by my friend and Ardennes survivor, John McAuliffe. Tell me that you don't feel chilled to the bone after staring at this for a while?
Excerpt taken directly from Gen Omar Bradley's book, A Soldier's Story. This was during the Normandy Invasion, one month after the initial landing in 1944.
Each year at noon on the 4th of July, the army observes the holiday by firing 48 guns in a national salute. While lunching with Gerow two days before, I had suggested we keep the tradition by firing a live salute into the enemy's lines.
"Just 48 guns?" he smiled.
"No hell no, Gee. (nickname for Gerow) We'll fire every gun in the Army."
Eddie the Canon --as Hart, the artilleryman, had been named by Dickson--issued an army-wide order that evening for a TOT salute. TOT to an artilleryman means Time-On-Target. Each gun was to be fired with such split second timing that every shell would explode on the enemy at the exact moment of 12. And each target, Hart instructed his gunners, was to be a remunerative one.
At precisely noon on July 4 the startled German darted for cover as 1,100 shells from that many guns exploded in a clap of thunder. It was the largest and most remunerative national salute the U.S. Army ever fired.
I returned to the Army CP on the afternoon of July 4 after yanking the lanyard of a 155 to find that Eisenhower had squeezed into the back seat of Queseda's P-51 for a fighter sweep over the Allied beachhead. They grinned like sheepish schoolboys caught in a watermelon patch. Queseda had been cautioned by Brerenton to stick to the ground in France where he was worth more to us in a swivel chair than in the cockpit of a fighter. And Eisenhower was frightened for fear word of his flight might leak to the newsmen.
"General Marshall," he admitted, "would give me hell."
Marty Terry, grandson of Charles Bryant, just sent me a couple of the recent photos he found of H&S Co. I found my dad and he found his grandfather. Yipee! I am so excited. I am sharing the photo I just got a couple of minutes ago.
My dad is sitting, first row and is the 5th guy on our right. Marty's grandfather is wearing sunglasses and seated in second row about third down from the 540th sign.
He also found the company roster which is a superb find. I will now have the names of all the men in H&S. Can't wait to show this to Bill Vanderwall, member of H&S, when I go to visit him this summer. Man am I a happy gal!!!
Here is one of Marty's letters to me this morning:
Hello!
I just raided my grand fathers army trunk and
found a ton of photos, rosters, letters, etc. I am
My wife and I have been married for 60 years and we had a boy friend-girl friend relationship for 10 years before that. In the 58 years since I returned from overseas service in WWII, we have rarely been apart for more than a day or two. But I remember well those years when we were apart and they were the loneliest times of my life.
My first Army assignment after OCS was to an Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C. We married and rented a room on a cotton and tobacco farm owned by a caring elderly couple, the Elliots. Those were among the happiest days of my life. But after only eight weeks, it all came crashing down around me. Because of staggering battle losses in Italy, Infantry replacement officers were in desperate need. As junior officer in my company, I received orders, along with several others, to report to a Port of Embarkation. In record time, I was on my way to the Anzio Beachhead in Italy. There were 5,000 Infantry replacements aboard our troop transport. I didn’t come home for 2 years! Five hundred of the others never came home at all!
In Infantry combat, life takes on an intensity unmatched by any other form of activity. There is fear, and there is valor in overriding the fear to do what has to be done. There is awesome responsibility. Responsibility not only for the mission but for the lives of the 35 enlisted men under your command. There is enormous satisfaction in doing the job well. A whole gamut of emotions sweeps over you with an intensity that cannot be imagined. And one of the most powerful of these is loneliness. Men fall around you and you can’t help but wonder when your turn will come. The statistics your brain takes aboard tell you that you can’t possibly survive. You will never see home and your loved ones again. But there is no satisfactory alternative to going on and doing what you have been trained to do. There is no end to the War in sight. You have no doubt that you will go on until you are killed or so badly wounded that you can’t be patched up and sent back to your unit.
You write often and treasure the letters from home. Your wife at home is in your thoughts at every quiet moment. A hopelessness comes over you because you know that no one in this Regiment is going to make it to War’s end, an event which is not even on the horizon. Common sense tells you that. And yet there is that thread of hope that you reach out for. Maybe it won’t happen to me. You know it will, but maybe, just maybe . . . And you go on, and on, and on.
You are surrounded by hundreds, maybe thousands of men, yet you feel alone. The only ones you see are the men in your own platoon and even they are spread out so you see only a few at a time. Your training tells you that you are responsible for these men, for their well-being, for their very lives. They’re not friends, not buddies, there is no familiarity. You call them by their last names. They call you “Lootenant,†pronounced with two o’s and the accent on the first syllable.. They are your charges. The Army has arranged things so that you exist on two different levels, officer and enlisted man, even though you share the same foxhole, rations, clothing and blanket. The Army tells them that they must respect you and follow your orders without question. The Army tells you that you must earn their respect by looking after them, keeping them fed, clothed, and as safe as is reasonably possible consistent with performing the mission. You both take that charge very seriously. Your lives depend upon it.
What about the other officers in your company? Can’t you make friends there? Somehow or other it doesn’t seem to work out, primarily because you are physically separated most of the time. It’s not like an Army post in the States. There you see each other at reveille formation, three times a day in the mess hall, at the officer’s club after duty hours and perhaps in the BOQ. In Infantry combat, there are no formations, and meals are eaten alone right out of the C ration cans you carry on your back. There is no officers’ club, no BOQ.
I have heard it said that officers and men alike avoid making friends because it only hurts that much more when your friend “gets hit.†In my experience, that line, and others like it, come only out of a movie script. Aside from physical separation, the reason Infantrymen don’t make friends is because of the high rate of turnover. People come and go constantly and they all remain strangers. In my regiment, wartime battle casualties came to 500% of average strength and non-battle casualties (evacuation for malaria, trench foot, pneumonia, accidents, etc.) took another 500%. The Division goes on because of a continuous flow of replacements coming up from the rear as the casualties are evacuated. On average, every spot in the Regiment is filled at one time or another by ten different men. The average length of stay is measured in weeks and the overlap between individuals is even less. It’s not uncommon for a man to be evacuated before others even know his name. How could he possibly have made friends?
During his time in combat, he is constantly lonely because he knows no one. He has never been so lonely. Nor afraid. If he is wounded, evacuated and later returned to his unit, he will find few familiar faces. Those few that he may have known will have been hit and replaced. And this applies to junior officers as well as enlisted men. After replacements are assigned to units, they never see each other again.
It’s a terrifying, miserable, and above all, lonely life in an Infantry Company. The only personal objective, the only hope, the only prayer is for survival. Because survival means return to your loved ones and an end to the terrible loneliness.
Russell W. Cloer, 10/19/97 Rev. 11/14/97 Rev. 5/5/98
I was platoon leader of the 7th Infantry I and R platoon, (Intelligence and Reconnaisance) through 6 campaigns in WWII. Our principal job was to patrol ahead of the regiment to find the enemy (when he was withdrawing) and report on his strength and position.
The picture, which is shown in my bio above, thanks to J3rdinf, (my buddy who served in the same regiment in WWII), shows me and my driver in a wooded area in Italy. The driver is PFC Leo Perrault. Note the 50 cal machine gun on a centrally located mount and the canvas cover on the windshield which was always in the down position to avoid reflecting light.. It bulges, because the drivers used it as their footlocker. The windshield was never put up and if it were, you couldn't see through it because the shatter proof glass was all cracked by hard objects in the drivers "foot locker," including one or more bottles of "vino". Two men in the back seat would operate the machine gun as needed. The angle iron wire cutter welded to the front bumper, does not, unfortunately show in this picture. I don't remember ever seeing a canvas top and of course there were no side or rear windows!
I had four of these jeeps in my platoon and they were invaluable in fluid situations. They and the drivers were usually kept at the rear CP motor pool and would come forward when I called for them. They had four wheel drive and a low range gear box when needed and would go anywhere!
Please don't conclude that I never walked! There were as many foot patrols as jeep patrols, but those jeeps were a treasure!
I vividly remember one incident in France. The Krauts were withdrawing and I was sent to find out where they were. We were on a wooded dirt road and as we rounded a bend, there came a French sedan, up close, coming toward us. In it, I could see there were 3 German officers and a driver. Their driver backed up into a K turn to escape. I ordered my gunner to fire and the 50 caliber MG raked the car from end to end. All four of the occupants were killed instantly. I remember the puffs of dust that rose as each bullet penetrated the old sedan.
Russ Cloer, (WWII Lt. and Cpt., 7th Inf, 3rd Inf Div), 6 campaigns in WWII in Italy, France and Germany.
You betcha!
