One May night, the Third Battalion heard military movement on the other side of the Elbe. Some foolish American officer ordered random fire over the river. He was foolish because our reconnaissance parties and the Soviets had met several times. We knew they were on their side of the river, and they knew we Read More
In early April 1945 we had not yet met the Russians, but they frightened us. The battalion stopped at the Elbe River, some fifty miles northwest of Berlin. We dug in and waited. The waters of the Elbe were cold. German soldiers and civilians came Read More
In April 1945 I used the M3 twice in a single day. We had crossed the Rhine and come to an ugly town, Bad Ems, on the Ems River. The city center was an oblong square surrounded by four story apartment buildings. In the plaza was a bulletin board, and tacked under the glass a Read More
They were late picking me up from Holland. It was a week before I joined the rearguard in Homburg, a small town on the west bank of the Rhine. Although there had not been much physical damage, we weren’t certain the enemy hadn’t left snipers somewhere. Desultory fire continued until the tanks arrived. I never Read More
It took more than a month to get the Germans out of the bulge. Because General Bradley had guessed wrong and chose ammunition before winter wear, our boots were inadequate. Special units like the paratroopers had waterproof footwear, but our standard GI shoes were porous. A frostbite deadened two toes and the bottom of my Read More
Seven years after the war ended, I met General Omar Bradley at a cocktail party. He had been the Commanding General of the Twelfth Army Corps and he had ordered the attack. I had studied the war for a number of years. Almost no popular history was written about the November campaign north of Geilenkirchen Read More
I met Hyman Lipsky in an abandoned chicken coop outside a chateau near Marche-en-Famenne, Belgium on December 24, l944. Hyman and I had been part of an OPL, an outpost line before a MLR, a main line of resistance. Some tanks from the 116th Panzer Grenadier Division had overrun the two of us. The Germans Read More
The man who fired the BAR and saved me was John Stoddard Robas. He was slim, apple-cheeked, quick, and had only one eye. When we were sent to the 334th Infantry Regiment to become combat soldiers we were told it would only be a matter of time before he and I would be transferred. The Read More
Five months after D-day, both sides were exhausted. The Germans retreated from France to prepared positions inside the Siegfried Line. The Americans and British waited for supplies. The lines were fixed. November 1944 was a battle with echoes of World War 1. We huddled in holes in the ground to escape machine gun fire from Read More
Part of the orientation training for every new soldier was a viewing of the film Why We Fight. It showed the evil side of the enemy, the rape of Nanking, Stuka bombers over Spain, the Wehrmacht triumphing down the Champs Elysées. Those were the bad guys we were fighting. Why We Fight ended with a Read More