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Chapter 16
Deja Vu
Infantry-artillery relations got better after that. I hitched a ride back from the
hospital with Col Bell, CO of the 359th Infantry.
I don't remember how I happened to run into him: maybe he had come there to
visit the wounded. The back seat of his jeep was cramped, because it held bedrolls and
other gear, and the top and side curtains were up. That gave some protection from the
wind, but the air was cold, and my eye still hurt. However, it was good to be going back
where I belonged.
It may have been Col Bell who told me that "Foxhole" Smith, CO of the 3rd
Battalion, was a casualty: his jeep had run over a mine the morning after the night attack.
Our new liaison officer, Vince Mendicino, hardly got acquainted with him before he was
gone.
Their battalion exec, Major George Godding, replaced Smith. I remembered him
as a captain when he first arrived as a replacement, and the then battalion commander
called him "S-3" because he couldn't remember his name. Anyhow, Godding and
Mendicino learned to know each other and to work together well.
Col Bell dropped me off at his own CP, where I phoned Upstart to send a jeep
after me. A good thing, too, for they had moved, and I would have had trouble finding
them, with my one good eye watering from the cold.
My memory is less sharp from here on to the end of the war. A number of scenes
and episodes stand out in my mind, but I am shaky as to precisely when and where they
happened. It may have been on the trip from the hospital or on another occasion when we
rounded a curve in the road and I caught my breath at the sight of The Castle, an edifice
right out of a book of fairy stories. It stood on a crag, and its outer wall, complete with
battlements, seemed to rise as a direct continuation of the vertical cliffs of the crag. It
must have been the model of which all lesser castles are an imperfect imitation. I have
been told since that the castle is named Esch sur Sarthe [I
hope that is how it's spelled],
that it is one of Luxembourg's chief tourist attractions, and that its picture is on the Grand
Duchy's currency. Although I only saw it momentarily, the memory still impresses me.
When I finally got back to our CP, another change had been made. Bob Hughes
had been shaken when Richter was killed before he could be transferred to a safer job,
and he began to worry about our other long-term liaison officers, Bill Beck and Don
Wilbourn, both fugitives from the law of averages.
Now the A Battery commander, Capt John Klas, needed surgery. He had
developed a pilonidal cyst on the southernmost tip of his spine (nicknamed "jeep ass"),
and the pounding it took from riding in military vehicles had made it bigger and worse.
So Beck was brought in from the cold as a liaison officer and put in command of A
Battery so Klas could have his operation.
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