escape when the German defenses had begun to crumble there. Now they were trying to locate someone
who would send them home. These boys had been in the type of labor outfit that kept making defenses
for their "masters" as the Germans had been driven back. After the questioning was over the Poles were
loaded on the kitchen truck, to be carried as "Men of all work".
On the sixth of August we moved through the Foret de Mayenne finally arriving at Chalons du
Maines, after dark. The night was very quiet, with the exception of "Bed Check Charlie" who still
managed to pussyfoot over us in his washing machine powered plane, endeavoring to locate the
"DAMN YANKEE" but to no avail. That night he stayed around too long, for as he was circling
overhead a new sound, a savage snarling roar was heard coming from our rear. Next it was the
stuttering of a group of machine guns, and several rounds of tracer snaking out of the dark, directly over
Charlie's head and down he came, a flaming pyre, vivid proof of the deadliness of the stinging "Black
Widow" our new night fighter.
That same night the boys in the rear echelon were caught by some enemy planes, who first flared
the entire area, and then laid their eggs as the boys were just moving into position. Sgt. Pinky
Pendegraft, Headquarter Battery clerk said that as the flares dropped the boys all got out of the truck and
jumped for the hedgerows. The casualties were heavy, many wounded and killed.
At noon on the seventh we went into a rendezvous area close to Montsurs, and while waiting for
the reconnaissance to be completed we were "buzzed" by about a dozen ME109's who had a few more
holes in their wings when they left us. When we moved we went about 12 miles down the road to the
vicinity of St. Suzanne, where there had been quite a scrap between the task force out in front of us and
the enemy. We went into position just off a large fork in the road, massed, and alerted for a tank attack
that was expected in our area.
The next morning we learned that the attack that was supposed to come off, and never did, had
been intercepted by an infantry roadblock. With one bazooka round fired the enemy motor column
surrendered, 70 prisoners were taken on that deal. Further to the west, the main part of the enemy
column had been cut off and wiped out by Task Force Weaver, one of our pincer-like feelers that was
out in front of us.
That day, in order to speed things up a bit we operated on a new system. We were to follow the
infantry and only move into position when resistance that could not be handled by the infantry was met.
Our recon would be at the head of our part of the column. Our route took us through Viviers, Bernay,
and Suvre. The French people were really becoming more and more demonstrative as we moved
through the various towns. Throwing apples and more flowers in our way, and whenever we stopped
they would give Cognac and cider.
Around 0400 the next morning we dropped trails in the neighborhood of La Chavell well within
range of Le Mans, one of our main goals. After daylight Charlie Battery had a little excitement.
Captain Lippard found a La Salle in good condition, and so he added it to his column vehicles. Also
there were a few prisoners taken in his battery area. When the recon party went out that morning Cpls.
Snider, the colonel's driver and Jack Greene, radio operator, flushed and captured 5 krauts and turned
them over to the infantry for processing. Back at the batteries we were doing very little, but we did
manage to listen to the news broadcasts telling us of the drive that Von Kluge's 7th Army armor was
making around Mortain desperately trying to cut us off from our sources of supply, but troops were
rushed in and those German vehicles that managed to escape the deadly firing of our rocket firing planes
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