by David Thibodeau
The thinkers at General Eisenhower's Supreme Headquarters had a plan for our forces to break out of the bloody stalemate of the hedgerow fighting, which seemed to go on forever. The morning of July 25, 1944, we men in Section 4 of Battery B 42nd Field Artillery Battalion were told that there would be a big air raid on the Germans that day. Big it was. It was one of the bigger three -hour military events in history, and the biggest one-time use of air power until then.
Three thousand bombers participated in the attack on the German front lines. We heard them coming as a distant rumble. When they flew overhead we watched as the bombs fell, glinting in the sunlight, making a sound like several express trains tumbling end over end. When the bombs hit the ground it was really noisy. The Germans fired on the planes, and we saw 7 B-24's and B-17's go spinning down in flames. We counted the parachutes and many of those Army Air Corps crewmen didn't get out.
The dust cloud raised by the bombing moved back and some planes began dropping their bombs short, on our own men waiting to attack, killing hundreds including Gen. Leslie McNair. The bombs were hitting so close to us that the earth shook, and we dived into our holes, no longer watching a show, but now part of the show, targets of friendly fire.
The breakout followed, and hundreds of German soldiers came out of the woods stunned into silence and deafened by the gigantic bombing attack. The area was pock-marked with craters for many hundreds of yards when we passed through.
Shortly after the breakout, our battery was firing on a target only about 600 yards away, using charge I. You could see the projectile leaving the muzzle of the howitzer and watch it go all the way like a watermelon.
A day or so later, one of the cooks came running out of the woods yelling "tanks! tanks!" and about then my M-7. which was being gassed up, took a hit from a bazooka or an .88 shell and burst into flames. Fletcher Melver was climbing the side and the projectile went right between his legs. A new guy known only as "The Kid" was on top of the tank helping to pour gas. He was wounded bad enough to be sent home to the States. Our tank driver, Spence, was also wounded.
Our tank was named "Short Arm," and was loaded with ammunition. It burned for a while, then exploded, as about 60 rounds of 105 mm. shells went up.
A few days later we got a new M-7 which we named "Berlin Bound." My turn to go up forward again came August 7, at Mortain. It is a town in north central France and is well-named, as the word Mort in French means "death."
Mortain was much worse than Avranches had been. We were crossing a sunken road single file, one at a time, and a German tank would fire a burst at each man as he jogged over. The bullets were cracking over the men's heads. The time intervals were too regular, and the machine gunner got belter as each man crossed. Finally a GI got hit right through the lung and fell sprawling in the road. He kept asking if his legs were sticking up in the air, which they were not. I was afraid he had spinal injury. I dragged him to safety and plugged the hole in his chest with his compress bandage, but I could still hear sucking noises and realized they were made by the big hole in the other side of his body, so I used my own compress bandage on that one.
My Lieutenant was looking over the hedgerow with his binoculars, trying to locate the tank, when the German gunner fired a burst and the Lt. was thrown back with three rounds through his upper body. Through his clenched teeth, he said. "Fire the round, Sergeant."
As we were out of business with no Lieutenant, I crossed the road and went back to the aid station, maybe 250 yards to the rear, to get help for some of the men. The aid station was a realcharnel house of wounded and dying men. One guy, with his stomach and intestines completely exposed, kept dog paddling in the air like a swimmer, and saying, "Help me, Jesus. Help me Jesus!"
The aid men came and took away the young infantryman and my Lieutenant. A couple of hours later new Lieutenant, fresh from the states, arrived. He was under a tree with no helmet on, trying to fire a mission on the German tank, when a shell blew up in the tree over his head. He put his helmet' on then. I was so fine-tuned I projected myself into the air and landed in a hole in one motion when that shell hit.
There was a big crater near us with an M-1 rifle and bayonet stuck into the ground where some GI got blown up.
The Infantry was ordered to attack. They seemed reluctant to, climb over the hedgerow so an officer yelled, "Follow your Company Commander!", and the Captain led the way. We were going single file along a hedgerow when the machine gun opened up on us and knocked over three or four guys behind me. I hit the ground right then, and the German kept playing the gun back and forth. I think he could see that big radio I had strapped on my back, and he knew what it was for. I could see the slugs hitting the embankment behind me. Then he would sweep the whole field and return to me, but he was shooting a little high. After playing dead for about 15 minutes, I got up and ran behind the hedgerow again. I peeked though some roots and a couple of bumblebees were visiting flowers right in front of me. unaware of the flying lead around them. There was a boy choking and bleeding to death from a throat wound right next to me and I could do nothing for him. None of us could. After a while he quit kicking around.
Now there was a burning American halftrack in the road where my Lieutenant and the Infantry kid got shot up. The German tank was having a good day.
This attack bogged down completely, and we stayed where we were until the next day, when a new Lieutenant and two fresh men from the battery came to relieve us. The Lieutenant who got shot at Mortain survived, and sent us some cigars from a hospital in England. He had been wounded on D-Day, and just got back in time to get hit again at Mortain. Two Purple Hearts, but he hadn't seen much of the war. On the trail going back to the pickup point where our jeep driver was waiting, my eyes fell upon the chunks of a human head lying on the ground, wrong side out. needing a haircut. It was a good farewell symbol for bloody Mortain.
