UP FORWARD

by David Thibodeau

Fire direction of field artillery depends on forward observers who must be at the front with the infantry units to call down, observe and correct artillery support. By June 20, 1944, D plus 16, the regular section doing this work was needing some relief, so Capt. McGannon called a meeting of the available enlisted men and asked for volunteers to go "up forward" with the Lieutenant observer. I raised my hand and volunteered.

Thus it was that another man and I had a jeep ride about June 25 to the front lines near Avranches, relieving the two men who had been there for about three days. We got off the jeep about 1/2 mile from the front and walked. Vehicles tend to draw enemy artillery and mortar fire.

AVRANCHES
Avranches

As we went single file in a sunken road, we passed some dead Americans, including a freshly killed GI who was hit by artillery fragments while in an attitude of digging with his entrenching tool.

The sunken road gave us good cover, so we were able to reach the front hedgerow as darkness came. The men we were relieving were glad to see us and handed over the clumsy radio and battery packs. After dark you could stand up and walk around in relative safety. We heard the Germans rattling their messkits as they were fed that night. The whining sound of a tank engine came across clearly for a long time from the German side.

In the morning, after an artillery barrage from our 105's, the Infantry moved out of their foxholes. World War I style, and headed toward the next hedgerow with rifles at the hip, firing occasionally, with I and my colleagues in the midst of them. As we approached the next hedgerow, about 80 yards away, we noted we weren't being fired on, as the Germans had pulled back. I saw two dead Americans in a foxhole, apparently the high water mark of a previous attack, with their riddled helmets inclined toward each other like two maudlin drunks.

We covered three more hedgerow intervals then came under machine gun fire which stopped everything. We were in a farmyard, and a chunky German soldier with no legs was lying dead on his back in a wheelbarrow. Apparently his friends were trying to get him to safety, but when he died they left him there.

The attack bogged down at that point, and we settled in for the rest of the day, using the German foxholes for cover. An American Major, heedless of risk, was standing erect holding a map, and pointing here and there. The rest of us laid low in the foxholes and didn't stick our necks out. 1 heard that the next day the Major got a bullet right through his head. After a time, German 88's began coming in right over us and seemed to be landing only a short distance behind our position. About an hour later we were relieved by two more fresh guys from the battery. and thankfully headed back to the rear. We saw then what the 88's had been after. A mortar crew of three men had taken a direct hit. They were blasted outward from their mortar, the dust had settled over them, and they looked like they had been there forever. We passed a collection point for wounded men, and one of them had had his abdomen completely ripped open. He was clawing the air like a swimmer and kept saying "Help me, Jesus! Help me, Jesus! over and over. A couple of others were silent and motionless and probably dead.

The jeep ride back "home" to gun section 4, pulling distance between us and the carnage in those hedgerows, was a trip to a different world. Still an element of danger, but nothing like what we were leaving behind in the rifle companies. I never volunteered again to go "up forward", but my turn came again at a place called Mortain, which turned out be a lot worse than Avranches.

HORIZONTAL FLOURISH LINE

 

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