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Upstarts
When, nauseated in mind and body, I came back into the courtyard, the scarecrow
was listlessly trying to eat a C ration that someone had given him. I don't know what ever
happened to him: Captain Jacobs was already out looking for a less filthy location for a
CP, and we moved out as soon as he got back.
For awhile the 359th Regimental Combat Team (RCT) was again attached to the
4th Armored Division, an outfit we always enjoyed working with, both because by now
we were on the same wave length and because they knew how to break through enemy
resistance and to advance rapidly in pursuit after the breakthrough was made.
[They also enjoyed a not-so-secret weapon, an officer named Creighton Abrams,
who had already become legendary as a Lt Col commanding a tank battalion, because
whichever Combat Command his battalion was with always advanced fastest. At the time
I met him, he had been promoted to Colonel and given a Combat Command - a brigadier
general's job. He was a big, ebullient man with a loud, infectious laugh. And he was
destined to wear four stars as Army Chief of Staff.]
The 359th RCT followed the forward elements of the 4th Armored Division to
protect the flanks and to clean out any pockets of resistance they might have by-passed.
One day we advanced along a road, which followed the course of a small river - the
Werra, I believe. Our battalion would go into a hasty position, then move by bounds to
keep up.
As they rolled along the road, the leading tank battalion was fired on from across
the stream. The threat was not enough to make them halt, but after they had gone by, they
sent word back with the location of the village whence the enemy had fired. A couple of
companies of the 359th were ordered to cross the river and capture or drive the nuisance
away. They wanted the 915th to be ready to fire for them.
We had already occupied positions well beyond the village, and were faced with
the unique situation of firing backward, more or less over our right shoulder. It was going
to be a small operation, so I decided to have only one battery turn around to support
them, leaving the other two available to fire in the direction of the main attack.
I phoned C Battery and gave the executive explicit instructions as to what
direction they would be firing in. There are two methods of "laying" a battery for
direction. The most accurate one, which we generally used, gave them an angle from a
line on the ground, but the angle could be either one of two directions, front or rear. This
was rarely a problem, since everybody knew which direction we were headed, but under
the circumstances, I felt it better to "lay by compass," using the angle of direction from
north, which could only be interpreted one way.
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