by David Thibodeau
The 4th Infantry Division entered Paris Sept. 25, 1944. The French resistance and the Free French 4th Armored Division got credit for liberating the city for politically correct reasons. The FFI, or Marquis, the resistance guys, went tearing around town in taxis with guns poking out of all the windows, putting on a great show, after the Germans had left.
We stayed in Paris about 4 days, then chased the Germans north, about one jump behind them. We went past some famous World War I battlefields at St. Quentin and Mons, and were soon on German soil.
Our tank broke down with clutch trouble about 50 miles north of Paris, so the rest of the division went on without us. We were just camped out like Gypsies with not a care in the world. I saw a big barn about a quarter of a mile away, so my friends Clark and Cass went with me to check it out. When we got to the barn we left our carbines on the ground and climbed up in the hayloft.
We lounged up there for a couple of hours, alternately talking and napping, as the hay felt good after sleeping on hard ground for two months. Clark had spent a semester at Purdue University and knew all about Einstein's theories. He also spoke a little German, so after awhile I asked him what to say if you wanted some Germans to surrender.
Clark said, "Kommen Sie herous mit Hande hoch!" Clowning then, I shouted in an angry voice, "Kommen Sie herous mit Hande hoch!" The phrase means "Come (you) out with your hands up."
There was a commotion way in the back of the hay mow, and three uniformed German soldiers came out at a crouch with hands clasped above their heads. They thought I knew they were hiding back there.
We tumbled out of the loft to the ground and got our carbines, and covered them as they climbed down behind us. I went back to where they had been hiding, and found some binoculars and three Walthers P-38 shiny black pistols, all with a round in the chamber and the safety off. They must have heard us coming, debated shooting us, then decided to wait it out.
We radioed the MP's, and they sent a jeep to get our prisoners, three officers from the Paris garrison. As we bounced along in the jeep, Cass, who was from Detroit, kept his carbine trained on the three Germans with the safety off, as he didn't trust them. I had the feeling they weren't about to try anything, as they were now in a position to live through the war and go home afterward, not too bad of a deal.
A big repair unit arrived and the clutch in our M-7 was replaced so we could be on our way again, on to Germany and, we hoped, an early end to the war. But the German army, defending its own homeland, had marvelous recuperative powers, as would be shown at Arnhem, the Hurtgen Forest, and the Ardennes.
