 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
Champagne from a Canteen Cup
like this, and he went about coolly collecting all the classified documents and destroying
them to prevent possible capture. Captain Barnes*, the liaison officer from the 345th,
strolled around with his hands in his pockets, watching the fall of tree branches broken
off by the firing, and asked the S-3, Lt Col Sutton, "Say, Earl, what do you make of all
this?"
On the other hand, Major Garner McNaught, the S-2, whom I had known well
since Camp Barkeley and whom I had admired as a gung-ho officer, went completely off
his rocker and had to be evacuated for combat fatigue. One never knows.
There were two tactical results of this strange battle: The 90th Division advance
was delayed for about 48 hours, during which our battalion fired over a thousand rounds
of ammunition, including seventeen rounds of propaganda shell full of leaflets urging
them to surrender. However, the German Panzer Brigade was shattered and destroyed
piecemeal. Its one battalion of armored infantry riding in open personnel carriers tried to
escape by a road that was also the narrow main street of a village where our reserve
regiment was billeted, and the doughboys picked them off by firing out of the second
story windows of the houses along the street. The two tank battalions lost control and
disintegrated into individual tanks wandering desperately.
We saw some famous battlefields of World War I. We had already passed
Chateau Thierry; now we came to the Marne, Verdun, and the Argonne Forest. There
were still ridges decorated with rusted barbed wire where trenches had been and where
that war had stagnated for months and years. Now we drove through in minutes.
We saw and had time to explore portions of the French Maginot Line, a massive
reinforced concrete structure with slits for observation and embrasures for firing cannon
and machine guns. Beside one observation slit there was a sketch of what could be seen
through it, and notations of the firing data needed to strike any feature in the sketch.
Fortunately for us, this portion of the line was built to defend against an attack
from the east, and the Germans could not use it to defend from us coming from the west.
*****
Again things looked promising from where I sat. It was autumn now, and we
might not end the war in time to be home for Christmas after all, but we should at least be
deep in Germany by snowfall. We were almost to the Moselle River, and beyond it was
territory the Germans claimed as part of Germany. Not far beyond was the Rhine, and its
far bank was undeniably Germany. There was another river, the Saar, between the
Moselle and the Rhine, but we paid little attention to it.
I don't remember why, but Eric Peach was unable to make the reconnaissance for
one move - I think he had to go to a meeting or something - and I was told to do it for
him because Col Bixby, the new Div Arty commander, wanted it done without delay. I
took the recon party forward with Bixby's instructions ringing in my ears: "Don't waste a
lot of time looking for something elaborate. We'll be moving again in a few hours."
95
|
 |
|