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The Peninsula
follow us, but certainly not a jeep. So there I was-no map, no radio, no telephone,
and all my men back with the jeeps which I might not see for some time. The infantry
marched in two or three single file columns with a few patrols protecting the flanks.
There was little talking, and almost nothing happened. Once or twice I heard rifle shots
off to the right, but they were just single rounds. Once we got a radio message from the
next battalion to watch out for snipers on our right. "Let me take my platoon over there,"
begged one lieutenant. ''I'll take care of those snipers. I'm mad at them, and I ain't about
to get happy at 'em. One of the bastards got my buddy."
It was about mid-afternoon when the burp-guns opened up again. The command
group (the new battalion commander, his S-3, Captain George Godding, Lt Drake, and I)
had just arrived alongside a Norman farmhouse, and we went into the farmyard to hide
behind the buildings. We contacted the leading company on an infantry handy-talkie
radio and learned that they were pinned down trying to cross a road a few hundred yards
ahead of us, that they had received only machine gun fire, and that they had not been able
to locate the machine guns. The battalion commander radioed the same information back
to his CP.
We waited. Some of the men started scouting around, looking for eggs or
potatoes. I leaned back against an earthen mound in the sun and dozed. The machine guns
went on firing.
Lt. Curtis, B Battery forward observer, came up and reported that he had
performed the spectacular feat of laying wire and almost keeping up with the infantry too,
but that now he had run out of wire several hundred yards back, and the line was not
working anyhow, so he could not phone back for more wire. He said he would go back
and have the line repaired and get some more wire. I again cursed myself for inefficiency,
gave him a pat on the back, and sent him on his way. He had done his best, and if I had
done as well, we might have been able to accomplish something between us. As it was,
neither of us was much good without some sort of communications to our own battalion
so that we could ask for fire.
After a while the infantry battalion commander decided that we had better go up
and see what was going on, so we went forward, crawling on our hands and knees the last
hundred yards, until we reached the road they had been unable to cross. The German
machine guns were still firing intermittently, and I couldn't even tell from what direction.
Just then there was a commotion to the right front, across the road, and the
lieutenant who had been mad at the snipers came running across the road hustling a
frightened German soldier in front of him. The lieutenant held a pistol in his left hand. He
had a clean bullet hole through his right wrist. The German's left arm was limp and his
elbow dripped blood.
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