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The Peninsula
I believe it was about 9:30 that morning when Corporal Shaffer appeared. He was
the man who had been pinned down with Col Costain, and now he kind of fell out of the
hedge beside me. His clothes were soaked with rain and he was shivering in long
uncontrollable shudders. It was cold that morning. I tried to get him to take my field
jacket, but he refused it and kept on shaking.
I asked about Col. Costain. Shaffer told me what I had dreaded to hear: Costain
had been killed almost immediately after being pinned down. He, Shaffer, had lain still
all day and crawled out after dark. While starting across a hedgerow, he heard four
Germans talking right on the other side, so he squirmed into the underbrush on top of the
hedgerow and lay listening to them all night. In the morning they went away, and he
crawled on until he dropped almost in my lap. He was not wounded, but I guess he hadn't
dared let his teeth chatter all night, and he was making up for lost time this morning.
I had him driven back to our CP, and after getting dry clothes and eight hours
sleep, he was back for duty. A good man.
It was difficult to get used to the idea of Col Costain's death. Aliveness was such a
strong characteristic of his. But there were other things to do besides worrying about that.
The infantry battalion commander joined us for about an hour, then disappeared
again. Lt. Drake seemed perfectly at home sending orders to the companies as if he were
the CO himself, and I didn't hear of any of the captains commanding companies complain
about taking orders from a lowly lieutenant. When I commented to him about the
colonel's absence, he shrugged and said, "He von't be vit us for long anyhow."
We moved forward slowly but more or less steadily that day, and I managed to
keep up until, late in the evening, while guiding my telephone wire men forward, I got
temporarily lost from the OP group and didn't find them again until dark.
I ran out of wire a couple of hundred yards from the OP and saw that I would
have to send or go back and get my two jeeps and some more wire. My men had all been
working like dogs, stringing wire and carrying heavy radios, and besides I wasn't quite
sure one of them could take care of everything I wanted, so I started back myself. It was
dark in the sunken trail I had to take-dark as pitch. I heard some footsteps behind me.
Probably some doughboy* (I hoped).
I turned and quavered, "Who's there?"
"Hell, sir," came the voice of Private Forand, a man who was a disciplinary
problem and a pain in the butt in garrison, but proved to be a hero in combat, "I ain't goin'
to let you run around in the dark alone. I'm coming along." And he did. I thought he was
being over-protective, but I was glad of the company.
When I finally located one of my jeeps and its sleeping driver, I ran into another
difficulty. The driver, upon awakening, enthusiastically declined to drive around in the
dark. At first I thought that he meant he couldn't see well enough, but that wasn't it. He
was, frankly, yellow. He said he could hear those burp-guns and he had no intention of
driving any closer to the front lines than he already was.
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