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Upstarts
One day toward the end of the war we were deep in Germany when Bob Wilson
of B Battery told me, "I've started letting my men smoke at night around the battery
position. With the German Air Force so short of planes, I think cigarettes have a low
priority as targets."
I stopped and thought. Sure enough, it had been months since I last heard
"Bedcheck Charley" fly over after dark. And equally as long since we had seen more than
one or two enemy aircraft in a day's time.
So on April, when we saw a flight of ten or twelve aircraft overhead, flying east,
someone in the CP waved to them and shouted, "Atta Boy! Go get' em!"
The flight turned in a wide loop and came at us, concentrating on B Battery,
strafing and dropping bombs!
Now we could see the German crosses on their wings.
Everybody dived for cover - everybody but the AA gunners of Mayfair First Dog,
who leaped into the action they had been ready for all along, and men firing our own
truck-mounted .50 caliber machine guns. In the next ten minutes, the First Platoon of
Battery D, 537th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion, earned their pay for all their months in
combat. More than half the enemy planes fell in flames before the rest gave up and flew
away.
Doc Davis did a month's work in the hours that followed. This time there were
enough casualties to keep him, his ambulance driver, and his aid men all busy - eight
casualties in B Battery alone, including First Sergeant Lonnie Hester. As a matter of fact,
I believe Davis even set the broken leg of one German pilot who had managed to bailout.
And he came to supper that night radiating fulfillment.
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