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Chapter 15
Battle Casualty
During the summer campaigns there were all sorts of reports and rumors, some
based on fact, of dirty tricks played by the German forces. For example, in Normandy
about the time of the breakthrough, I saw abandoned bundles of mildly pornographic
booklets obviously intended for distribution to British troops. They were in comic book
format portraying with heavy-handed "humor" the light-hearted if fictitious rape of an
English woman by an American soldier. The scurrilous booklet bore the advertising
imprint of a bar in New Jersey, also fictitious, I am sure.
And then there was the use of land mines and booby traps, more directly lethal,
and used by both sides. Of course they were more useful to retreating forces than
advancing ones, so the fact that the Germans used them more than we did does not
indicate any moral superiority on our part.
Another terrifying report was that retreating Germans would stretch piano wire
across roads throat high to the driver of a jeep or a 3/4 ton truck. A piano wire is too thin
to see from a vehicle traveling at road speeds, but strong enough to sever a neck which
meets it at 25 miles per hour. At least so the rumors said. And since in the summer we
traveled with tops and windshields folded down, there was nothing between driver or
passenger and a possible wire.
The solution was variously called a wire catcher or an anti-decapitator. It was a
vertical length of heavy angle iron welded to the front bumper of each light vehicle,
extending upward to about the height of the vehicle's top if it had been in place. The
topmost several inches bent forward to prevent a wire from sliding up over it and back
down. The very top end was pointed.
I never heard of one of these catching a wire, but I never heard of anyone who had
one being decapitated either, and they made us feel more secure.
First Lieutenant Vincent Mendicino [a fraternity brother of T/4 Harris in the FDC]
replaced Richter as LnO with the 3rd Battalion. Vince had been the B Battery executive,
responsible for the firing and maintenance of the howitzers, and as such had little
experience with the infantry, but he was a senior lieutenant. And he was idiot enough to
want the job, which meant a captaincy if he survived.
His first day was a long, rough one. The infantry made a little progress through
the snow, but they were still a good mile from their objective, the five-point road
junction, at dark. They expected at this point to button up for the night, but then came the
surprise. They were to make a night attack with orders to reach the objective by six in the
morning.
A night attack meant that we had to be ready to fire for them at any time during
the night. Obviously we couldn't get by with our usual practice of going to bed and
leaving one officer and one enlisted man awake in the FDC. I was trying to figure out
what was the minimum staffing we could get by with, when I got help with my decision.
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