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Upstarts
I presume it was normally a bucolic, peaceful scene, but while we were there it
was definitely not peaceful. The German Seventh Army, which had tried unsuccessfully
to cut us off by breaking through to the coast, was now retreating to keep from being cut
off itself, and this valley was their last open escape route.
The first day there was only a trickle of traffic along the east-west roads that ran
across our front, but as time went on, it became a flood, clogging the roads, then
overflowing into the fields.
We fired. And fired. This was the sort of situation field artillery was meant for,
the sort they talked about at the Field Artillery School at Fort Sill, where observers
occupied an observation post and could see where the enemy was, fire at them, and
observe the effect of the fire. It was completely different from the blind groping we had
done in the hedgerows.
Of course the artillery didn't do it all, by any means. Fighter-bomber aircraft
strafed and bombed the columns, too, and every now and then, German units would turn
off into the hills, trying to get out of the valley, and would have to be fought off by our
infantry and tanks.
I suppose it was murder, though we didn't think of it that way at the time. If we
thought at all, it was that any German men and equipment destroyed here could not be
used to destroy us later.
The columns were pretty mixed. Tanks, trucks, VW bugs, men marching on foot,
but most of all, horse-drawn artillery and supply wagons. The Germans used a lot of
horses, hay being easier for them to come by than gasoline. Even their Panzer divisions
had horse-drawn supply trains to bring them, among other things, gasoline and diesel
fuel.
The roads became clogged with wrecked vehicles and dead horses, and a good
many Germans who could travel across country - infantry and tanks - took to the fields.
The gray-clad infantry tried to advance from cover to cover, running between patches of
woods, and some of them got through that way. A number of the vehicles managed to run
the gauntlet too, especially on the road, which passed through Chambois.
Our observers repeatedly called for fire on the village, where a few volleys at the
corner of First and Main Streets (probably named the Avenue Jeanne d'Arc and Rue
Victor Hugo) would have stopped traffic for a long ways. But we were forbidden to fire
into Chambois: the British had troops there, we were told. Everyone who could see the
town indignantly declared that if there were any Limeys in it, they must have been hiding
in the cellars or wearing German uniforms, but we still couldn't get clearance to fire
there.
Eventually, however, after four or five days, we were given permission to occupy
Chambois, and the 2nd Bn, 359th Infantry, got the assignment, with our battalion in
support. When they had taken the village, Jake had our forward switchboard moved onto
the north-south road leading into Chambois, about a mile south of it. With Chambois in
our hands, the gap was pretty well closed.
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