by David Thibodeau
When I returned from "up forward" to gun section 4 of Battery B after the Mortain battle early in August 1944, I expected to tell the guys about my hair-raising adventures. I didn't have a chance to get a word in edgewise. The Germans had bombed the battalion the night before and everybody was in a slate of high excitement and talking about the air raid. Fletcher Melver had tried to crawl between the bogey wheels of the tank, they told me, because he was so scared. Some men were killed at Headquarters Battery, but our area had only some pretty impressive bomb craters to show.
It was something like when I first came home to Peshtigo with my war stories, but never got a chance to tell them, as the town was full of Navy men back from the Pacific with tales of a big typhoon off Okinawa.
Melver was from South Carolina, and though he could not read or write, he had a way with language and freely gave descriptive nicknames to others. He named one of the guys from the wire section "Liverlip" because his lower lip hung down kind of loose. That was the only name I ever knew the man by.
Melver was constantly adding camouflage to the tank after that, ignoring techniques we had learned in basic. The idea was to break up the contours of the tank with netting and some fresh foliage. Melver kept piling on little trees until the whole thing stuck out like a sore thumb. No amount of cautioning and theory would deter him.
After the St.-Lo breakthrough, the situation was very fluid, and one time we were in gun positions so close to the enemy our shells were going only about 800 yards. You could see the projectile leave the tube and go curving off toward the Germans like a big watermelon, as we were using a minimal powder charge.
The howitzer had to have a clear field of fire, as the shells are armed after firing, and if one hit a tree branch it would explode on top of us. Sgt. Billingsley wanted one more branch cut, so a new guy we called "The Kid" cheerfully volunteered to climb up with the saw and take care of it. After he got up there a German rifle bullet cracked right over his head and he dropped the saw and plummeted down, unhurt but wiser. Billingsley decided to let well enough alone.
We were firing a few missions, which was routine business for a 105 mm battery, when all of a sudden one of the cooks, "Pappy," came running out of the woods yelling "tanks! tanks!" The battery exec then ran out and hollered "march order!", which meant to pack everything up for a quick move.
Our tank driver, Coker, and 'The Kid" were gassing up our M-7, and Melver was climbing up the side when an enemy projectile hit, setting "Berlin Bound" afire, and wounding Coker, "The Kid," and Melver with fragments. Coker and Melver had light wounds, but 'The Kid" had a head wound severe enough we heard he was sent back to the States.
Everybody ran back a couple hundred feet and flopped down on the ground with rifles at the ready, both because we thought the Germans were on us and also because the burning tank had about 40 rounds of high explosive ammunition under the deck.
The next thing we saw was "Liverlip" standing alone, calmly using a fire extinguisher on "Berlin Bound," our burning M-7 tank. After a few minutes we cautiously approached and some others got extinguishers to help him. As the remaining 3 tanks had loaded up with antitank shells, the Germans apparently, decided not to come at us. Berlin Bound kept burning, however, as it was loaded with gasoline, and blew up in a few minutes after the battery moved to an alternate position, but Liverlip got the Silver Star and deserved it.
