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Déjà vu
And mines buried in the ground had been covered by snowfall. Often the
triggering mechanism froze so the mine would not explode - until it thawed. The
engineers were kept busy sweeping the roads and fields for mines.
There were major command changes, too. General Van Fleet, like McLain before
him, left us to assume command of a Corp. Replacing him was a Major General Rooks,
and we also got a new assistant division commander, Brigadier General Earnest.
Of perhaps even more importance, our infantry finally got issued snowpacs, a
type of watertight boot with heavy felt inner soles, designed for wear in snow. They were
to replace both the combat boots that had caused so much trench foot and frostbite and
the heavy cumbersome rubber overshoes worn over them. [Most infantrymen didn't wear
the overshoes anyhow, because when they had picked up a normal load of mud, they
weighed about ten pounds apiece.] But shortly after the snowpacs came in, the weather
turned warmer and the snow melted. They had no arch supports, and when used on hard
roads they caused many a fallen arch. And since they were waterproof, when feet began
to sweat in the relatively warmer weather, there was an epidemic of athlete's foot.
This sounds like criminally lousy planning on the part of the supply people.
However, when you consider that things like footgear have to be ordered far enough in
advance to be manufactured, and that the factories have to find scarce materials like
leather and rubber after they get the order, and then the finished product must be shipped
across a submarine-infested ocean, it is miraculous that we got them at all. Particularly
since in the preceding summer, when the order needed to be placed, it looked as though
we could win the war before winter.
As I mentioned earlier, the roads in that part of the world were rudimentary;
heavy military traffic nearly destroyed them. And now the ground off the roads turned
into a muddy morass. I recall riding on one road that was the de-tracked roadbed of a
railroad. It was narrow, and there was only one-way traffic. Some engineer had put up a
series of signs, Burma-Shave style:
Stay in the middle
Do not pass
Off this road
Mud's up to your A.
* * * * *
By and large, my memories of the campaign from the Our River to the Moselle
are pretty much of a blur. I don't even remember what we were doing on March 2, my
thirty- first birthday.
But on March 14, we had arrived at the Moselle, a good seventy miles north, or
downstream, from where we had crossed in the Metz campaign. At this point, there was a
sense of deja vu: not only had we struggled with the pillboxes of the Siegfried Line twice,
but now we had to cross the Moselle for the second time.
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