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Upstarts
I had often wondered what happened when a man refused to do his duty, but it
had never happened before, and this seemed like a hell of a place to have to find out. I
considered pulling my pistol on him, but he was still half-asleep, and it was too dark for
him to see the pistol and be properly impressed. Also too dark for me to shoot him if he
called my bluff. And if I made him perform that way, what of it? I could never trust him
anyhow.
So I compromised and talked him into driving me back to the 915th CP, away
from the burp-guns. There I awakened Captain Jacobs and requested that he relieve the
man, pointing out that a liaison section is no place for a driver with insufficient guts to
drive around after dark near the front lines.
Jake concurred, and suggested that I take Joe B. Davis as a substitute. I don't
know just what Joe B. thought of me, but I do know that he never questioned my orders,
screwy as some of them sounded, so I was happy to have him.
I picked up a couple of reels of wire and finally got back to my station about an
hour and a half before time to jump off in the morning. I still didn't have my wire
completely laid, because I couldn't find the end in the dark, but I figured that the action
would be slow and difficult again in the morning and I would have plenty of time then,
and I was dead tired, so I lay down and shivered until daylight.
In the morning a lot of things happened. We were late getting started, because the
infantry battalion commander was relieved first thing and it took them awhile to re-
organize and get things rolling under the new one, a vigorous young major. But on the
other hand, I had trouble getting my wire straightened out too, and by the time I was
ready to go, the infantry had already moved out. The enemy, it seemed, had withdrawn
during the night, and so we were just walking straight ahead against no resistance at all.
Finally I had to abandon my wire and drive around by road with my jeeps to catch up to
them.
I caught them when they stopped on their objective, and was just in time to hear
about a new plan and a change of direction.
Fortunately, one of the artillery observers, Lt. Curtis, had had better luck with his
wire than I did, so I was able to tap in on his line and scoop everyone on the new
regimental plan by phoning it to our CP.
That was the first and last brilliant thing I did all day, because immediately after I
pulled the prize boner of my career as a liaison officer, the inexcusable sin of getting out
of communication. We were going along as fast as we could walk, and I decided that it
would not be feasible to lay wire, so I would have to rely on radio. Since the easiest way
to carry a radio is on a vehicle, I told Joe B. Davis to follow me with the jeep and radio. I
also tucked my map, an indispensable tool of the trade, in the jeep.
Oh, foolish me. My mistake was soon apparent, but it was too late to change my
plans. We started out on foot cutting straight across country, climbing hedgerows
between fields. There were no roads going our way. A helicopter might have been able to
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