 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
Chapter 11
Our Finest Hour
Crossing a river when the enemy occupies the far bank is a ticklish operation. It is
generally done in three phases. In the first, the advance infantry elements paddle across
the river in boats furnished by the engineers and debark on the opposite side. All the
space they occupy on the far bank is called a bridgehead.
In the second, they move forward, attacking any enemy they find to drive them
back far enough to get the crossing site out of range of enemy artillery. This is called
"expanding the bridgehead" and is important because the engineers now have to construct
a bridge across the river, and being shelled by artillery while doing it tends to make them
nervous at best and to kill them at worst. Artillery fire can also destroy sections of the
bridge about as fast as they can be assembled.
The third phase comes after the bridge is constructed, so that heavier traffic such
as tanks, artillery, and supply vehicles can get across to support the infantry elements.
Until completion of the bridge or bridges, all supplies and supporting equipment have to
be ferried across on boats and rafts.
It is absolutely essential that the first phase, the crossing in boats, be
accomplished before the enemy realizes what is going on. Infantry soldiers huddled into
boats are pretty helpless if someone with a machine gun starts firing at them in
midstream. Even if the bullets only sink the boat without wounding anyone, a boatload of
men laden with packs, rifles, ammunition, et al, will have a rough time swimming to
shore.
Consequently, the initial crossing is almost always made at night, with a
minimum of noise and lights. And the preparations for the crossing must be something
between inconspicuous and invisible, so that the enemy will not be expecting you.
I had a few weeks to break into my new duties with the fire direction center. They
weren't really onerous right then; in fact the main problem was to avoid firing too much,
because ammunition was rationed again. We were told it was being stockpiled for some
big operation. We did have "Highchief," the 949th FA Bn (155 mm howitzers) from
Corps Artillery assigned to reinforce our fire. That meant they had to shoot when we
asked them to, and so they carried part of the load. However their ammunition was
rationed too, and neither of us fired nearly as much as we might have liked. Nonetheless,
there were some other possibilities we exploited.
A battery of 76.2 artillery guns made in Russia, of all places, had been captured
from the Germans, along with an enormous supply of ammunition. Unfortunately the
sighting systems on these guns had been sabotaged, and none of our American ordnance
experts was able to fix them. That meant their fire could not be shifted from one target to
another without getting weird and unpredictable results, nor could all four guns be made
to fire at the same target without carefully adjusting each individual gun by trial and
error. All we could do with the damned things was to zero in each gun, one at a time, on a
target, then leave it pointed there, so we could fire the whole battery at the same time when
133
|
 |
|