Walter Underdahl's WWII Memories
This is a story written by Walter Underdahl in about 1991.
Walter was born May 4, 1920, inducted into the Army in February 1942, and discharged on November 1, 1945.
He was awarded the Bronze Star for meritorious service in France.
Walter was born May 4, 1920, inducted into the Army in February 1942, and discharged on November 1, 1945.
He was awarded the Bronze Star for meritorious service in France.
Shortly after D-day we loaded on ships for France. We landed on Omaha Beach maybe about D plus 0.3. We got onto landing craft to go ashore then the trucks came and we went inland a few miles. We dug holes deep and big enough for 2 guys and found branches and things and covered them with dirt as we were told we would be there for a couple of weeks. The Germans would shell us once in a while.
One morning we were woken up early and told this was the day. We packed our backpack and four of us were told to go with G Co. We carried mine detectors with us and joined G Co. We crossed a small river or canal in boats while still dark. The Germans had been alerted by the artillery barrage and were firing our way. They were shooting some tracer bullets, and it was like some 4th of July. We ran across the land into a wooded area. By this time we were lost.
I guess after it became light some officers came by and with his map, he decided we were to go up this narrow cement road and look for mines. The four of us started up the road and probably went over a mile. We could find nothing, not even our own soldiers. We rounded a corner and that is when our sergeant figured something was wrong. We moved back down the road and crouched in the ditch.
After some time, G Co., whom we were supposed to be behind, came up to us. As they rounded the corner, all hell broke loose and the battle started. We had been up that far, but the Germans, I guess, didn't want to give away their position and shoot at just four soldiers. We sat for a while then following our troops forward. For this mistake on some officers' part, four of us received the bronze star. Tried to make us feel real good. That was the last time we carried our mine detectors because when you are up that close you have to move fast or get shot.
After that we looked for places that might be mined or on bridges that could be booby-trapped. After a couple of days of this, we rested for a few days. I never did see my friend from Denver, CO who lived in that hole with me. I heard he got wounded in the knee. While waiting the next few days I saw the number of a unit that Bill from Rose Creek had been transferred to after our basic training. I talked to some of the guys and was told Bill had been killed a few days earlier.
On July 25, we were ready for the big push out of the staging area. There was going to be about 2,500 bombers coming over and bombing ahead of us. It didn't go well that day because our side sent up flares to mark the lines where the bombers would drop their bombs but the Germans sent up flares also and marked the lines further back. The bombs landed on our 3'd battalion and killed several just ahead of us and the bombing was called off for that day.
The next day they came again and this time they marked the lines with planes flying across our lines so they couldn't be mistaken. The bombing went on for maybe four hours. Then we started to move ahead. On the way I saw one of my friends from Grand Meadow still sitting behind the steering wheel in his truck where he died. As we went through the German lines, the German soldiers were just sitting by the side of the road too dazed to know what was going on. We just went on and let the troop behind us take them prisoner. We marched all night for a while through a deep gully and when in there, the Germans put on a barrage of artillery with no place to run. We just lay down. They said in the book there were no casualties, but one friend of mine, I never saw again.
The next day we came to St. Lo, France and the city was completely leveled. The battles in the hedgerows were just moving a little at a time. These were built up mounds of dirt, around five or ten-acre fields. The tanks couldn't get over them. Then they put bulldozer blades on front of the tanks and pushed holes through them. For the minefields, they made some rollers for the front of tanks and welded chains to them and they spun around and pounded the ground to explode the mines.
One particular day I remember so well, I was with G Co. I was carrying ammunition from back to the machine guns. I went back to get another arm load and they sent a replacement along back, but we got in an artillery barrage and he didn't make it to the front. That same day, some GI, I don't know why, jumped over the hedgerow and ran toward the Germans behind the other hedgerow. He was wounded. One of the first aid men held up his Red Cross flags to go after him and they shot him too and then another after him also got shot. It soon got dark and the firing stopped and I went back to my unit. I don't know how they turned out.
The next morning the sun came out bright and it was so quiet, the Germans had pulled back. A small reconnaissance plane went up to see what was going on and moved forward a little at a time and all at once, they blew it right out of the sky. The next I remember well is when we moved in to replace 1st Division. It was a quiet Sunday afternoon. The 1st Division boys said it was no use digging foxholes as it is very quiet. It was then, but about two hours later, it wasn't. All hell broke loose and we had to move back into the edge of a wooded area. It was starting to get dark when our lieutenant came and told the sergeant to pick three guys with him and go back to the area we left because they had left some very important papers back there. Well, I got to be one of them. I can still see the sergeant grab that lieutenant by the shirt and tell him if anyone got killed and he got back, that lieutenant would be paying for what he did. We drove back in a jeep and all we found was the lieutenant's gas mask. Luckily we didn't get shot at because there was another case where the Germans didn't want to give their position away for four dumb GI's in a jeep.
The next four or five days, there were about 40 of us left in this corner of the wooded area. I know the communication man said our wires had been cut so he lost all contact with anyone else. We went into the woods and when the fog cleared a little, we could see the Germans down below us in the valley. Two times during those days, a German tank came up the road behind us and came within probably one hundred feet of us, looked around and went back. All we had for protection was some carbines and maybe a grenade launcher. We hid well so they didn't spot us. It wouldn't have taken much to wipe us out.
One morning, the sun came out bright, the fog lifted, and here came our planes to bomb the Germans down below us. Three of us stood up to watch our planes and here came one shooting right toward us. The other 2 guys with me got hit with the small caliber guns. Guess I was lucky again. We had an ambulance there and they put them in it and started to find a first aid station. Later we leamed that they were captured by the Germans and taken to the hospital in Paris. They weren't hurt too bad, and when our troops liberated Paris, they got well and came back to us. We all figured we were left out there in front so we could warn the other troops if the Germans attacked. Later we learned that on the other end of the line there was really bad fighting with our first battalion of our regiment and they had been partially over run. Later, when we moved out, we could see all the German tanks that the airplanes had destroyed.
We always felt better when we had our planes overhead. They were guardian angels. At night, they had some planes, P38's I guess they were, painted black and when you heard them overhead you slept better because then the Germans would not shell us or they would give away their position. The reason we got fired on by our own planes that day was because that little road was the dividing line between the Germans and ours and we were on the wrong side of the road.
The next few weeks we had small battles. One French town we liberated - the people brought some French men that had been friendly to the Germans and they shaved all their hair off so everyone would know them. That same night, a man came to us and wanted to be protected by us. We put him in a house by us and put a guard there. He might have been the mayor and collaborated with the Germans. Well, later that evening, a man dressed as a priest came by to visit him. We didn't hear any disturbance, but the next morning the man was dead, killed by the man posing as a priest. I guess in the end, they all got what was coming to them.
Through Eastem France, we moved pretty fast into Belgium and then we were the first into Masstrict Holland. I was in a jeep with an officer that day when we got into town. I guess it was the mayor or someone like him that came to us. We had no one who could understand him until we found someone to interpret for us. Anyway, the officer said we could have anything we wanted because they were so happy to see us. Our division headquarters stayed in that town for a while, and they tell in the book what a wonderful time they had, but I remember we holed up in the railroad station and the Germans shelled it all night long. So it wasn't any fun place.
One day on top of a hill with a wide valley down below, a few of us came up to some of our tanks. We had to get ahead also, so the tank men said to get on top of the tanks and they'd give us a ride down into the valley. The German soldiers jumped out of the Foxholes and ran and the tank gunmen just mowed them down. A lot of times I saw French people take the good clothes off the Germans and especially their shoes, and bury the soldiers anywhere in the field. There must have been a lot of unaccounted for Germans.
One day, a German tank blocked our advance and they called in our planes to bomb them and one of our planes came in so low and slow that he couldn't get back up and he came over the tree tops dropping down on them and finally breaking apart. He survived without a scratch. He came over and said he guessed he would stay with us for a few days to see what we did.
I think of so many things that happened. Like one night, I lay down in a small ditch to sleep and when I woke up, just my face was out of the water. It had rained and it never even woke me up until I was almost drowning .
One day we were going through a town and this Holland man waved us over to his place. He had a garage dug into the hillside and in there he had a new Plymouth he had bought before the Germans came. He had covered the whole garage with dirt and they didn't find it.
When we left Holland, we went across the German border and then you had another thing to watch out for because you were in an enemy country. At that time, the German army was disorganized and our scouts said they had drove way ahead and found no soldiers. But our tanks and trucks had run out of fuel and our supply lines were too long and we had to stop for a while and this gave the Germans time to regroup.
Moving into Germany, the German people that stayed behind were always wondering what we would do to them. But those that stayed behind didn't believe that we would hurt them as they had been told. We had one young replacement come to us who had been raised in some country next to Germany. When we stopped for rest, he would throw down his gun and helmet and all and go off to talk to the people. He said they were nice people and they wouldn't hurt you. He didn't even believe that the soldiers would shoot you. I heard he just was wounded.
The next unforgettable battle was through the Siegfried Line, which was on the Wurm River. Where we went through it, it had pillboxes and houses that were fortified with thick walls and roofs. I was sent to go into the attack with G Co. again. There was a bridge we were to cross and we were to check it out for explosives. We were right up front with the riflemen. Before daylight the artillery started shelling them and about daybreak, we started across the open area. They had footbridges to put across the river and it was a small stream so that part was easy. We checked the bridge and it was all clean so troops could follow across there. But the German shelling was bad and the German soldiers were running all over most of them wanting to give up. There was a pillbox right by the bridge, but the Germans in there had had enough and was just wanting to be captured. I think we only moved into the town about two blocks that day and then settled in for the night. I was with the G Co. captain. He told me to stand guard outside this house we were in. He said to dig a hole out front but I decided I would just stand in the doorway. Later,I saw a flash on the hill and I hit the floor inside the door. The shell hit the front of the house. Luckily I was inside the door or I might have been killed in a hole out front. It blew the roof off the second floor and not much damage in where we were.
The next day, the captain said we could go back to our Co. We went back as far as the river and the shelling was so bad. We went into this old grain elevator down at the bottom. It was all made of cement so it was pretty strong. We stayed there for two days until our company came forward. The shelling was terrific for those two days. I guess because we were right by the bridge and the Germans didn't want to let other troops come across. Eventually they knocked out the German artillery and our tanks were brought to cross the 21 bridge and help drive the Germans out of that town. The next day as we moved through the streets and fields, there were dead Germans and livestock laying everywhere. To get through the Seigfried line was one of the important actions we had to do. That was the Germans last big defense line.
For the next few weeks, we moved slowly from one town to the next or as it seemed, one coal mine to another. I know we spent a lot of time in coal mine openings. It was cold and snow on the ground. There was a lot of German artillery shelling. I know my ears were bleeding for a while, but the medics said that will stop, which it did.
The last big attack we did in Germany, they called the perfect infantry attack, or so the book says. It was dark when we started across this opening field. I guess the first soldiers across got through before the Germans knew they were coming, but by the time we came along, the artillery was pretty heavy. I knew I had been getting tired lately and that day, I got about half way across and I just lay down and thought, "to heck with it". After resting a while, I got back up and when coming to the coal dust piles across the fields, it was either go where the artillery was coming in or go around the other side of the coal pile. Going around the other side was a minefield. Four or five of my buddies were laying in that mine field with feet blown off. Through some miracle, I walked through and never stepped on a mine. The Germans had left so quickly that their coffee was still hot in a little building by the mineshaft. I heard later that the guys in the minefield had to be there most of the day. The medics tried to help them and lost legs in the mess. They said they had to bring in bulldozers and go up to the guys and pull them up on there to get them out. One of the guys that lost his leg was one that got shot by our own planes that I mentioned a while back. The other one had been a professional boxer before coming in the Army. He used to like to give us a rolled up newspaper and ask us to try to hit his head while he ducked and moved around. I saw in my division News Magazine a few years ago that he was living in North Carolina and getting along O.K.
Our next move was back to the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium. I was riding in a jeep with some officers. We came through one town in Belgium and had the radio on a German station and they announced exactly where we were in that town so they had to have observers in that town. Toward evening we came upon a truckload of ammunition. The driver was lost and our officer put two of us on the truck to help him find where to go. We drove around and one M.P. would send up one road, then another would tell us somewhere else. Finally close to midnight, we came onto an officer in the M.P. He sent us back to another town to spend the night. He said some of these M.P. were really German soldiers who were wearing the M.P. uniforms they had taken off captured Americans. When daylight came, we found our unit.
Later, I don't know how many days, our sergeant picked 5 or six of us and we had to go forward and be spotters for the artillery Co. We walked through the woods for probably a mile to a river and right across the river was a German command post we could see real well. We scattered around the woods for guard duty. It seems like all day, German vehicles would drive in to their command post and we would blow them up with artillery fire. That night on our way back to our company, I was so weak that I crawled some of the way and one of my buddies helped me. From that day I don't remember a thing until I was at a first aid station and a doctor asked me how long I had been in battle and he said that was it and that I was going to the hospital and no more combat. We drove back in the ambulance. I think it was some town in Belgium to get on a plane at this little airstrip.
The Germans were sending in these buzzbombs - ones that had just so much fuel in them and when they ran out they would fall and explode. The plane would come in and land and some would climb in and then another buzz bomb would come and they would take off until it exploded and then land again.
Well, we finally got loaded and flew back to the hospital in England. I think it was the day before Christmas when I got there. Well, I went back to France and was put in some outfit, which had never been in combat, and I and a lot of others who should have gone home on points stayed there doing nothing until October. Then we got on a ship at Marseille, France and then to New York and home.
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One morning we were woken up early and told this was the day. We packed our backpack and four of us were told to go with G Co. We carried mine detectors with us and joined G Co. We crossed a small river or canal in boats while still dark. The Germans had been alerted by the artillery barrage and were firing our way. They were shooting some tracer bullets, and it was like some 4th of July. We ran across the land into a wooded area. By this time we were lost.
I guess after it became light some officers came by and with his map, he decided we were to go up this narrow cement road and look for mines. The four of us started up the road and probably went over a mile. We could find nothing, not even our own soldiers. We rounded a corner and that is when our sergeant figured something was wrong. We moved back down the road and crouched in the ditch.
After some time, G Co., whom we were supposed to be behind, came up to us. As they rounded the corner, all hell broke loose and the battle started. We had been up that far, but the Germans, I guess, didn't want to give away their position and shoot at just four soldiers. We sat for a while then following our troops forward. For this mistake on some officers' part, four of us received the bronze star. Tried to make us feel real good. That was the last time we carried our mine detectors because when you are up that close you have to move fast or get shot.
After that we looked for places that might be mined or on bridges that could be booby-trapped. After a couple of days of this, we rested for a few days. I never did see my friend from Denver, CO who lived in that hole with me. I heard he got wounded in the knee. While waiting the next few days I saw the number of a unit that Bill from Rose Creek had been transferred to after our basic training. I talked to some of the guys and was told Bill had been killed a few days earlier.
On July 25, we were ready for the big push out of the staging area. There was going to be about 2,500 bombers coming over and bombing ahead of us. It didn't go well that day because our side sent up flares to mark the lines where the bombers would drop their bombs but the Germans sent up flares also and marked the lines further back. The bombs landed on our 3'd battalion and killed several just ahead of us and the bombing was called off for that day.
The next day they came again and this time they marked the lines with planes flying across our lines so they couldn't be mistaken. The bombing went on for maybe four hours. Then we started to move ahead. On the way I saw one of my friends from Grand Meadow still sitting behind the steering wheel in his truck where he died. As we went through the German lines, the German soldiers were just sitting by the side of the road too dazed to know what was going on. We just went on and let the troop behind us take them prisoner. We marched all night for a while through a deep gully and when in there, the Germans put on a barrage of artillery with no place to run. We just lay down. They said in the book there were no casualties, but one friend of mine, I never saw again.
The next day we came to St. Lo, France and the city was completely leveled. The battles in the hedgerows were just moving a little at a time. These were built up mounds of dirt, around five or ten-acre fields. The tanks couldn't get over them. Then they put bulldozer blades on front of the tanks and pushed holes through them. For the minefields, they made some rollers for the front of tanks and welded chains to them and they spun around and pounded the ground to explode the mines.
One particular day I remember so well, I was with G Co. I was carrying ammunition from back to the machine guns. I went back to get another arm load and they sent a replacement along back, but we got in an artillery barrage and he didn't make it to the front. That same day, some GI, I don't know why, jumped over the hedgerow and ran toward the Germans behind the other hedgerow. He was wounded. One of the first aid men held up his Red Cross flags to go after him and they shot him too and then another after him also got shot. It soon got dark and the firing stopped and I went back to my unit. I don't know how they turned out.
The next morning the sun came out bright and it was so quiet, the Germans had pulled back. A small reconnaissance plane went up to see what was going on and moved forward a little at a time and all at once, they blew it right out of the sky. The next I remember well is when we moved in to replace 1st Division. It was a quiet Sunday afternoon. The 1st Division boys said it was no use digging foxholes as it is very quiet. It was then, but about two hours later, it wasn't. All hell broke loose and we had to move back into the edge of a wooded area. It was starting to get dark when our lieutenant came and told the sergeant to pick three guys with him and go back to the area we left because they had left some very important papers back there. Well, I got to be one of them. I can still see the sergeant grab that lieutenant by the shirt and tell him if anyone got killed and he got back, that lieutenant would be paying for what he did. We drove back in a jeep and all we found was the lieutenant's gas mask. Luckily we didn't get shot at because there was another case where the Germans didn't want to give their position away for four dumb GI's in a jeep.
The next four or five days, there were about 40 of us left in this corner of the wooded area. I know the communication man said our wires had been cut so he lost all contact with anyone else. We went into the woods and when the fog cleared a little, we could see the Germans down below us in the valley. Two times during those days, a German tank came up the road behind us and came within probably one hundred feet of us, looked around and went back. All we had for protection was some carbines and maybe a grenade launcher. We hid well so they didn't spot us. It wouldn't have taken much to wipe us out.
One morning, the sun came out bright, the fog lifted, and here came our planes to bomb the Germans down below us. Three of us stood up to watch our planes and here came one shooting right toward us. The other 2 guys with me got hit with the small caliber guns. Guess I was lucky again. We had an ambulance there and they put them in it and started to find a first aid station. Later we leamed that they were captured by the Germans and taken to the hospital in Paris. They weren't hurt too bad, and when our troops liberated Paris, they got well and came back to us. We all figured we were left out there in front so we could warn the other troops if the Germans attacked. Later we learned that on the other end of the line there was really bad fighting with our first battalion of our regiment and they had been partially over run. Later, when we moved out, we could see all the German tanks that the airplanes had destroyed.
We always felt better when we had our planes overhead. They were guardian angels. At night, they had some planes, P38's I guess they were, painted black and when you heard them overhead you slept better because then the Germans would not shell us or they would give away their position. The reason we got fired on by our own planes that day was because that little road was the dividing line between the Germans and ours and we were on the wrong side of the road.
The next few weeks we had small battles. One French town we liberated - the people brought some French men that had been friendly to the Germans and they shaved all their hair off so everyone would know them. That same night, a man came to us and wanted to be protected by us. We put him in a house by us and put a guard there. He might have been the mayor and collaborated with the Germans. Well, later that evening, a man dressed as a priest came by to visit him. We didn't hear any disturbance, but the next morning the man was dead, killed by the man posing as a priest. I guess in the end, they all got what was coming to them.
Through Eastem France, we moved pretty fast into Belgium and then we were the first into Masstrict Holland. I was in a jeep with an officer that day when we got into town. I guess it was the mayor or someone like him that came to us. We had no one who could understand him until we found someone to interpret for us. Anyway, the officer said we could have anything we wanted because they were so happy to see us. Our division headquarters stayed in that town for a while, and they tell in the book what a wonderful time they had, but I remember we holed up in the railroad station and the Germans shelled it all night long. So it wasn't any fun place.
One day on top of a hill with a wide valley down below, a few of us came up to some of our tanks. We had to get ahead also, so the tank men said to get on top of the tanks and they'd give us a ride down into the valley. The German soldiers jumped out of the Foxholes and ran and the tank gunmen just mowed them down. A lot of times I saw French people take the good clothes off the Germans and especially their shoes, and bury the soldiers anywhere in the field. There must have been a lot of unaccounted for Germans.
One day, a German tank blocked our advance and they called in our planes to bomb them and one of our planes came in so low and slow that he couldn't get back up and he came over the tree tops dropping down on them and finally breaking apart. He survived without a scratch. He came over and said he guessed he would stay with us for a few days to see what we did.
I think of so many things that happened. Like one night, I lay down in a small ditch to sleep and when I woke up, just my face was out of the water. It had rained and it never even woke me up until I was almost drowning .
One day we were going through a town and this Holland man waved us over to his place. He had a garage dug into the hillside and in there he had a new Plymouth he had bought before the Germans came. He had covered the whole garage with dirt and they didn't find it.
When we left Holland, we went across the German border and then you had another thing to watch out for because you were in an enemy country. At that time, the German army was disorganized and our scouts said they had drove way ahead and found no soldiers. But our tanks and trucks had run out of fuel and our supply lines were too long and we had to stop for a while and this gave the Germans time to regroup.
Moving into Germany, the German people that stayed behind were always wondering what we would do to them. But those that stayed behind didn't believe that we would hurt them as they had been told. We had one young replacement come to us who had been raised in some country next to Germany. When we stopped for rest, he would throw down his gun and helmet and all and go off to talk to the people. He said they were nice people and they wouldn't hurt you. He didn't even believe that the soldiers would shoot you. I heard he just was wounded.
The next unforgettable battle was through the Siegfried Line, which was on the Wurm River. Where we went through it, it had pillboxes and houses that were fortified with thick walls and roofs. I was sent to go into the attack with G Co. again. There was a bridge we were to cross and we were to check it out for explosives. We were right up front with the riflemen. Before daylight the artillery started shelling them and about daybreak, we started across the open area. They had footbridges to put across the river and it was a small stream so that part was easy. We checked the bridge and it was all clean so troops could follow across there. But the German shelling was bad and the German soldiers were running all over most of them wanting to give up. There was a pillbox right by the bridge, but the Germans in there had had enough and was just wanting to be captured. I think we only moved into the town about two blocks that day and then settled in for the night. I was with the G Co. captain. He told me to stand guard outside this house we were in. He said to dig a hole out front but I decided I would just stand in the doorway. Later,I saw a flash on the hill and I hit the floor inside the door. The shell hit the front of the house. Luckily I was inside the door or I might have been killed in a hole out front. It blew the roof off the second floor and not much damage in where we were.
The next day, the captain said we could go back to our Co. We went back as far as the river and the shelling was so bad. We went into this old grain elevator down at the bottom. It was all made of cement so it was pretty strong. We stayed there for two days until our company came forward. The shelling was terrific for those two days. I guess because we were right by the bridge and the Germans didn't want to let other troops come across. Eventually they knocked out the German artillery and our tanks were brought to cross the 21 bridge and help drive the Germans out of that town. The next day as we moved through the streets and fields, there were dead Germans and livestock laying everywhere. To get through the Seigfried line was one of the important actions we had to do. That was the Germans last big defense line.
For the next few weeks, we moved slowly from one town to the next or as it seemed, one coal mine to another. I know we spent a lot of time in coal mine openings. It was cold and snow on the ground. There was a lot of German artillery shelling. I know my ears were bleeding for a while, but the medics said that will stop, which it did.
The last big attack we did in Germany, they called the perfect infantry attack, or so the book says. It was dark when we started across this opening field. I guess the first soldiers across got through before the Germans knew they were coming, but by the time we came along, the artillery was pretty heavy. I knew I had been getting tired lately and that day, I got about half way across and I just lay down and thought, "to heck with it". After resting a while, I got back up and when coming to the coal dust piles across the fields, it was either go where the artillery was coming in or go around the other side of the coal pile. Going around the other side was a minefield. Four or five of my buddies were laying in that mine field with feet blown off. Through some miracle, I walked through and never stepped on a mine. The Germans had left so quickly that their coffee was still hot in a little building by the mineshaft. I heard later that the guys in the minefield had to be there most of the day. The medics tried to help them and lost legs in the mess. They said they had to bring in bulldozers and go up to the guys and pull them up on there to get them out. One of the guys that lost his leg was one that got shot by our own planes that I mentioned a while back. The other one had been a professional boxer before coming in the Army. He used to like to give us a rolled up newspaper and ask us to try to hit his head while he ducked and moved around. I saw in my division News Magazine a few years ago that he was living in North Carolina and getting along O.K.
Our next move was back to the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium. I was riding in a jeep with some officers. We came through one town in Belgium and had the radio on a German station and they announced exactly where we were in that town so they had to have observers in that town. Toward evening we came upon a truckload of ammunition. The driver was lost and our officer put two of us on the truck to help him find where to go. We drove around and one M.P. would send up one road, then another would tell us somewhere else. Finally close to midnight, we came onto an officer in the M.P. He sent us back to another town to spend the night. He said some of these M.P. were really German soldiers who were wearing the M.P. uniforms they had taken off captured Americans. When daylight came, we found our unit.
Later, I don't know how many days, our sergeant picked 5 or six of us and we had to go forward and be spotters for the artillery Co. We walked through the woods for probably a mile to a river and right across the river was a German command post we could see real well. We scattered around the woods for guard duty. It seems like all day, German vehicles would drive in to their command post and we would blow them up with artillery fire. That night on our way back to our company, I was so weak that I crawled some of the way and one of my buddies helped me. From that day I don't remember a thing until I was at a first aid station and a doctor asked me how long I had been in battle and he said that was it and that I was going to the hospital and no more combat. We drove back in the ambulance. I think it was some town in Belgium to get on a plane at this little airstrip.
The Germans were sending in these buzzbombs - ones that had just so much fuel in them and when they ran out they would fall and explode. The plane would come in and land and some would climb in and then another buzz bomb would come and they would take off until it exploded and then land again.
Well, we finally got loaded and flew back to the hospital in England. I think it was the day before Christmas when I got there. Well, I went back to France and was put in some outfit, which had never been in combat, and I and a lot of others who should have gone home on points stayed there doing nothing until October. Then we got on a ship at Marseille, France and then to New York and home.
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