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Our Finest Hour
I was vaguely aware that the FDC had become a spectacle, like an operating room
theater. Around the edges of the room were all the battalion staff and several liaison
officers from other battalions, plus Eric Peach and the CO of Highchief. Not to mention
General Bixby and Col Theimer from Div Arty. I would have had stage fright if there had
been time.
Then I felt someone beside me, and Col Theimer's voice said, "Where are you
firing now, Captain?"
I said, "Fire!" into one telephone and, "On the way!" into the other and started to
figure out some kind of answer for the question. Maybe to gesture at the pins in the chart
and say, "Right there"?
But just then Bixby tapped Theimer on the shoulder. "Colonel Theimer, I want
you to go back to our CP. I don't think we both should be gone at a time like this."
I didn't like Gen Bixby, but right then I would have kissed him, except that there
wasn't time, and I still had a telephone in each hand.
That was a record day of firing. We shot up so much ammunition that we had to
borrow from our sister battalions, United and Urban. The 915th fired 3,555 rounds, and if
you count what the Cannon Company expended, it added up to 4,502. To put that in
perspective, our next highest day, fired at Chambois, was 2,400 rounds.
Highchief Six (the commander of the 949th FA Bn) came in with a broad smile.
After all those weeks of ammunition shortage, his battalion had fired 900 rounds. That
was a lot for a 155mm battalion, which has a much slower rate of fire and much heavier
shells than ours. "One of our ammunition handlers keeled over from fatigue with a shell
in his arms," he reported, and added, "Morale has never been so high!"
Thus ended our heaviest day of firing. A successful day, too. We had done our
part in breaking up the last desperate counter-attack in the German effort to save Fortress
Metz from recapture. Two days later they had fallen back far enough for the 915th to
cross the river, and on our heels came the 10th Armored Division to pass through the
90th and exploit the breakthrough. And only eleven days after the initial crossing of the
Moselle River, elements of the 90th Division, coming from the north, met troops of the
5th Division, coming from the south, to complete the encirclement of Metz. It was our
greatest campaign. In spite of the hostile weather, the raging river, and the desperate
Germans, we had taken the fortified city of Metz for the first time in history!
[Note: Nine years later, when I was stationed at Metz, one of the main streets, the
one our caserne was located on, was named Rue de La Vingteme Corps Americain, after
the XX Corps, of which the 90th and 5th Divisions were parts, along with the 95th and
the 10th Armored.]
Meanwhile, however, our battalion underwent another traumatic experience,
which I'll discuss in Chapter 12.
137, (138 blank)
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