Het verhaal van Leo Lichten's eenheid (en) - Hoofdinhoud

From The 84th Infantry Division in the Battle of Germany By Lt Theodore Draper:

PRUMMERN

ON SATURDAY morning, November 18, the bell tolled for us. It was cold, wet, and gray. The roads were muddy and the fields were small swamps. At best, the Geilenkirchen area was not one of Germany's more attractive places. In the fall, after weeks of bombing and big guns, of trucks and tanks that dug into the roads, always sinking deeper and deeper, and the complete absence of any living thing not in uniform, it was grim. If combat has a perfect atmosphere, the land around Geilenkirchen that morning had it. Because the enemy had so much time to prepare, to evacu­ate all civilians and concentrate on defense to the neglect of everything else, nothing seemed to matter any more except the battle.

The code name for this action was "Operation Clipper." Together with the 43 ( British) Division on our left flank, we had as our mission to drive the enemy out of the Geilenkirchen salient. Our 333rd Infantry and 334th In­fantry were poised to strike frontally from the south, while the 43 (British) Division was hitting the salient from the west ( Map 4 following page 36).

In general, the plan of attack was divided into three phases:

• 1. 

  At 7 a.m., November 18, the 334th Infantry would jump off on the right flank of the salient to capture the village of Prummern, the high ground between Prummern and Geilenkirchen, and the high ground between Prummern and Beeck.
• 2. 

  At 12:30 p.m. the same day, the 43 ( British) Division was going to jump off to win the ground between the villages of Tripsrath and Bauchem.
• 3. 

  Finally, at 7 a.m. the next day, November 19, the 333rd Infantry would open the third phase to clear the valley southwest of Geilenkirchen and to take the town itself.

In effect, we were going to squeeze the salient from both sides before launching the assault on Geilenkirchen, the 43 (British) Division on the left, the 334th Infantry on the right. By doing so, we could prevent the enemy from punishing the 333rd Infantry from the flanks when it made the frontal attack on the town. The enemy's defenses were so thick and the area so small that, at the most optimistic calculation, plenty of opposition had to be expected. We were minimizing these dangers, however, by chewing away at the flanks first, because the dominating ground around Geilen­kirchen was on the flanks.

"The advance down the Würm River valley was a most difficult operation for new troops inasmuch as the entire valley was covered by the Siegfried defenses," General Bolling said at the time. "That it was the most likely avenue of approach to the main Siegfried Line was well known to the enemy when he established these defenses. It was decided, therefore, to envelop the likely avenue of approach and take the high ground that dominated the Würm Valley."

In order to see the continuity of the action, it is best to follow the attack on Prummern to its conclusion before going into the attack on Geilen­kirchen. But it should be remembered that, after the first day, both actions went on simultaneously and tied into each other. The attack was just as mutually supporting as the defense. By the time the 84th entered the battle, the Siegfried Line was swaying at a half-dozen points, and north of Aachen the front for 15 miles was blazing.

D-minus-1

The day before our D-Day, November 17, was spent in Palenberg by the 334th Infantry. The most important job was "briefing" the men. In small groups, the battalions were told how they fitted into the general plan, what their special missions were; where, why, and how they were going to accom­plish them; what opposition they could expect and where. Weapons were never cleaned before, and probably never after, as scrupulously as they were that day. Every man had a thousand things to do—it takes a little experience to get down to the bare necessities.

There was one important detail the day before. It was known that the enemy had mined the approaches to the railroad between Geilenkirchen and Immendorf—it turned out to be an anti-tank mine belt 25 yards wide. Behind the mine field, underneath the railroad bank, were dugouts. This was the first German defense line in the sector. A patrol from the 334th had found two gaps in the mine fields north of Breil and both of them were mined by our own men to prevent the enemy from using them. At mid­night, November 17, the mines in these gaps were removed, but the margin

of safety was not big enough for our tanks and troops. A British unit, Drew-force, including two troops of "Flails" and an "artificial moonlight" troop, went out at 6 a.m. on November 18, one hour before the jump-off, to widen the gaps. Four giant searchlights threw a light haze over the area. (The 84th was the first American unit to use artificial moonlight, and it was success­fully employed throughout the campaign in the Siegfried Line.) The heavy, clanking chains of the "Flails," five to each gap, detonated the mines. Two platoons of infantry supported the "Flails." Engineers checked. Sherman tanks stood guard. The whole mine-removing operation was covered by the 84th Division Artillery. The way was clear.

As for the 334th, its 1st Battalion on the right was sent to take Prummern, its 2nd Battalion on the left to take the high ground between Geilenkirchen and Prummern, while the 3rd Battalion was held in reserve. A British tank unit, the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry Regiment, veterans of Africa and Normandy, was attached to the 334th. Companies B and C of the 309th Engineers (C) Battalion were also added. Direct artillery support was pro­vided by the 326th FA Battalion. In short, this was planned as a co-ordi­nated attack by infantry, armor, engineers, and artillery.

In the dark of Saturday morning, at 4 o'clock, the 334th's 1st Battalion moved out of Palenberg to the tiny village of Hoverhof. There the final for­mation for the attack was organized. At 6, the battalion went forward again, this time to the village of Breil. At the same time, the "Flails" were widening the gaps. North of Breil, the battalion was supposed to pass through one of the gaps, followed by the tanks. The 326th and 692nd FA Battalions fur­nished direct support for the infantry. Three artillery observers for the 326th rode in the tanks to give the Sherwood Rangers direct support.

On a smaller scale, the battalion staff had to make the same sort of plan that the army, the corps, and the division had made. The chief problem after the mine field was nine pillboxes between Immendorf and Prummern, protecting the southern approaches to Prummern. These pillboxes were the battalion's immediate objectives. The battalion commander, Lt. Col. Lloyd H. Gomes, explained his line of reasoning:

"I divided these obstacles into two localities, one containing six pillboxes, the other three. Since the gaps created in the mine field would be narrow, from the viewpoint of sending deploying infantry through them, I decided that the battalion would advance in a column of companies, Company A to lead, followed by Company B and Company C in that order."

The first group of six pillboxes was emplaced just north of Immendorf. The town had been taken by the 2nd Armored two days earlier but the pill­boxes had not. This group was designated as "X." The other three pillboxes were about 600 yards farther north, almost midway between Immendorf and Prummern. This group was called "Y." Colonel Gomes added:

"The plan was to have Company A go through the gap and strike hard for X, infiltrating through the fortifications and smothering the pillboxes by fire. To assist Company A, we had four tanks, four tank destroyers, one heavy machine gun platoon with all the fire support of the mortar platoon and artillery on call. Company B was to jump off after Company A, initially prepared to reinforce Company A's fire and then move on to its objective Y. Company B was to have one platoon of tanks and one platoon of heavy machine guns with artillery on call."

There was one more thought in the plan. Company C was saved for the direct assault on Prummern, once the pillboxes were taken. Company B, which had to dispose of fewer pillboxes, also was going to participate in the attack. It was anticipated, however, that Company A would need time to reorganize after its fling at the group of six. In the second phase, then, Com­pany A would replace Company C as the 1st Battalion's reserve.

D-Day

Finally, it was 5 minutes to 7, November 18. Our artillery opened for five minutes to prepare the way for the tanks and doughboys, to make the ground ahead so hot that the enemy would have to stay in his hole as our infantry jumped off. A soldier who is afraid to stick his head out of his hole means one weapon less to worry about, and it is the soldier at the weapon, not merely the soldier, that counts. That is what an artillery "preparation" can do for an infantryman who has to expose himself all the way to those enemy holes.

It was 7, H-Hour. The infantry was ready to go through the gaps but the tanks were not. They were slowed up by mud and all the tanks had to pass through the gap on the right. The infantry did not wait and went off alone at exactly 7.

Company A got as far as the orchards on the eastern edge of Breil. There the men ran into fire for the first time. Eighty-eights and mortars began to pile in. The first two platoons escaped the worst of it and hit out for the railroad. The remainder of the company was held up for a while in the orchard. At the trenches along the railroad embankment, they ran into live German soldiers for the first time. In some spots, there was hand-to-hand fighting—one of the rare cases. Most Germans in those trenches were not too determined to die. But surprise was gone. The enemy's shelling of the entire area was intense. From the trenches, 1000 yards had to be crossed to get to the pillboxes. Instinctively, a new man seeks protection in the ground, any ground. A major effort of will, or somebody else's will, is necessary to get him out of a hole. The battalion commander went down to the platoons and one started moving after another.

Meanwhile, Company B was also moving through Breil in the orchard on the western edge of the village. The 1st Platoon, in the lead, went through the orchard and worked its way eastward along the railroad track, then struck out cross-country toward the three pillboxes. The other platoons were held up by heavy artillery fire at the railroad track. The 1st Platoon was out "in the breeze."

These first pillboxes were not as hard to handle as we had expected. Company A could see its set of six from the captured trenches. The tanks and Company D's Machine guns began to pepper the forts. When fire is accurate and continuous, the Germans inside have to close up all the open­ings, to "button up." As soon as a box closes up, the men inside are virtually blind. It is possible to creep up to one and even to jump on top of it. The break came when some men dropped smoke grenades into a ventilator from the roof of a pillbox. No fewer than 45 men came out of one pillbox. Then Company A dug in slightly southwest of Prummern and spent the rest of the day and night there. Once the set of six pillboxes was taken, it was given a rest and Company C was sent in.

The set of three pillboxes farther north had to be taken by the 1st Platoon of Company B because the other platoons could not get beyond the artillery barrage at the railroad track. Nevertheless, the 1st Platoon had a compara­tively easy time of it. Before launching the attack on the pillboxes, the 1st had connected up with two British tanks. Tanks and doughboys moved up together. About 300 yards from the pillboxes, they stopped. The tanks opened up. The doughboys went ahead alone slowly. Most of the Germans were waiting in trenches in front of the pillboxes, not in the pillboxes themselves. This particular trench system was very elaborate, planned to enable the enemy to get back all the way to Prummern without exposing himself to normal observation. But he never got the chance to carry out the plan. As soon as the tanks let go, the enemy in the trenches began to head for the pillboxes. A few, more frightened or more daring, tried to make for Prummern. By this time, our doughboys were too close and flight was suicide. Apparently none of the Germans tried to fire from the pillboxes themselves. The three were occupied in 45 minutes. It was just short of 9 in the morning.

Our trouble with pillboxes in the Prummern area was not over by any means. On the whole, these were some of the easiest and we were glad they were, otherwise we might have spent too much of our energies before we could tackle the village itself. It is interesting to note that a platoon did the work of a company, as so many times a company has to do the work of a battalion.

Paradoxically, it is often safer to go out in the lead than to follow up, especially when the enemy's most effective answer is his artillery and mortars. In this case, a typical example, the leading platoon had bounded off and had almost come to grips with the enemy before the attack was spotted. In due time, the enemy woke up and fired back but the platoon had advanced too far to get this fire. Instead, the platoons a few hundred yards to the rear received most of it. Sometimes a whole company will slip through but the rest of the battalion will be caught in a deadly barrage. To lag back in an attack may be the surest way of never getting back.

Then the few who have slipped through must decide the issue of victory or defeat. If they feel deserted, they may halt or hesitate, or even try to go back. Any one of these three reactions may be fatal, not only to the attack but also to the men who have been lucky so far. They have slipped through only because they have caught the enemy off balance, unprepared, and they must at all costs keep him that way. After all, he cannot know how many have slipped through or who was held up and where. In the face of a slashing attack, he is not in a position to consider that it was really sup­posed to come off with a company. All he knows for certain is that he can almost hear some of us breathing. All he knows is that those grandiose defenses which had promised him so much have failed him, and it is his skin next.

If the platoon had tried to get back, in all probability it would merely have fallen into the barrage that held up the other platoons. If it had halted and hesitated, it would have given the enemy time to size up the situation and save it. It took on the job of the company by itself and had the Germans stumbling out of their holes in a matter of moments. It is typical of modern warfare that the leading elements do a very large share of all the fighting. Prummern Falls

After 9 o'clock of that murky morning on November 18, the 1st Platoon of Company B was out alone between the captured pillboxes and the village of Prummern. The rest of the 1st Battalion was a good 1000 yards behind. The platoon was dug in, the men could see the first houses from the tops of their holes. It was not too uncomfortable. The artillery was heavy but all of it was flying overhead. It was too risky to assault the village all by them­selves so there was nothing to do but wait until the others had negotiated those long 1000 yards. About 10 o'clock, six more British tanks showed up but did not stay. Another hour passed. Finally, at noon, some more figures appeared at the pillboxes, which were now empty, then more and more. They were the rest of Company B and Company C.

The battalion commander was determined not to lose any more time. The attack against Prummern itself jumped off at 12:30, Company B on the right, Company C on the left, Company A in reserve. A ten-minute artillery preparation led off. The ground was flat. No concealment was possible. From the southwestern edge of Prummern some machine gun and sniper fire came their way from scattered trenches and foxholes, but the opposition was not serious. The two companies stopped in their drive to take the vil­lage only long enough to clean out the trenches and wave prisoners to the rear.

Once in the town, all enemy mortar and artillery fire ceased. Prisoners stumbled out of their houses and cellars. A grenade went into every house to help the others make up their minds. An hour and a half later, Companies B and C were through Prummern, though mopping up was going to be a much longer job. They dug in in orchards in the outskirts, Company B on the western edge, Company C in the north, and Company A on the south­west. By dusk, the three companies were settled around the western half of the village but an important enemy strong point was holding out in the northeast on some difficult high ground.

Meanwhile, the 334th's 2nd Battalion was driving another wedge into the Geilenkirchen salient. While the 1st Battalion had been striking directly at Prummern, the 2nd Battalion was moving up on the left between Prummern and Geilenkirchen to win a stretch of high ground northeast of Geilen­kirchen. Its story was much the same. Company E slipped through the gap in the mine field at 7 o'clock that morning, November 18, but Company G, which followed, received the same fire which held up most of Company B. As a result, it took some time for Company G to catch up. The mud was too much for the tanks so Company E went forward for a time alone.

For about an hour and a half, Company E advanced toward its objective, some high ground that would cut the road between Geilenkirchen and Immendorf. Enemy artillery and small arms fire worried them all the way but, fortunately, it was not very accurate. The hill was taken before 9 o'clock. Then Company F took over. It was sent out to take some more high ground northeast of Geilenkirchen. The second hill was taken by 3:10 that afternoon. At dusk, the battalion tried to push forward again, this time to a hill east of Suggerath. A network of trenches and pillboxes blocked the way. In the dark, under increasingly heavy and accurate fire, for by that time the entire sector was blazing, the effort had to be abandoned. Nevertheless, the dominating ground east of Geilenkirchen, the main objective, was wrested from the enemy. The battalion dug in for the night. It was a stormy, sleepless night because the foxholes were out in the open and the German guns were sleepless also. By that time, they knew where to find us.

The first phase of the battle of Prummern was over. That evening we had Prummern, or most of it, and the ground on the west between Prummern and Geilenkirchen was also ours. The enemy was still in Geilenkirchen it­self—the salient was now a thin sliver—and the eastern side of Prummern was much less satisfactory than the western side. In effect, by dusk, we had driven a salient into the enemy's salient. If he was dangerously exposed, neither were we completely covered. In such a situation the hours of the night are long and tense. Has the enemy decided to pull back and save us more trouble? Has he decided to strike back and make us fight twice as hard to hold the ground?

We did not have to wait long to find out.

The Enemy Can Attack, Too

It is time to look at the other side of the coin. What was the battle of Prummern like for the enemy? Obviously it is not possible to tell the Ger­man story in any detail, but even the general outline may be revealing and help to round out the picture.

When we attacked on November 18, Prummern itself was held by ele­ments of the 343rd Infantry Regiment of the 183rd Volksgrenadier Division. This division had been so badly punished in Russia that it had to be with­drawn to reorganize. The 183rd arrived in the west on September 18, 1944, exactly two months before our attack. It was committed early in October in the battle of Aachen but, again, it suffered so heavily that it had to be pulled out. In the relative lull of October 15-30, its casualties were replaced partially, its equipment patched up, its staff shaken up. At the beginning of November, it was thrown in to hold the Geilenkirchen sector, the 1st Com­pany of the 343rd Infantry Regiment in Geilenkirchen, the 2nd Company in Prummern.

In Prummern, these Volksgrenadiers did not show up very well. That first day they were pushed around without too much difficulty. Most of our trouble came from the German artillery farther back, not from the German infantry. But it should be remembered that, by the time we attacked on November 18, the general assault on the Siegfried Line was 48 hours old. It was perfectly clear to the German command that a major offensive was under way all along the front. Already on November 17, the 9th Panzer Division had been committed against our 2nd Armored Division in the sector next to ours. In this offensive, the sectors were so narrow that it was easy to spill over from one to the other. As a result, when the 84th began to cut through the 183rd, the enemy had the 9th Panzer on the spot to take a crack at us.

The mission of the 183rd Volksgrenadiers apparently was to hold, to hold if necessary to the last man, to keep us out of those painfully prepared posi­tions. The 183rd did not hold and certainly not to the last man. The fact that the German command decided to throw in the 9th Panzer in a desper­ate effort to win back every possible foot of ground, to counterattack as often as we attacked, was one of the key elements in the whole situation. It meant that we had to fight to hold our gains. In the Siegfried Line, the enemy was not merely trying to delay us; he was trying to keep us out altogether. He was not fighting economically; he was investing as much as he had.

It was 10 o'clock that night, November 18. The 334th's 1st Battalion was dug in on the western side of Prummern. Another hill, this one almost mid­way between Prummern and Beeck, had to be taken before the night was over. Company B of the 1st Battalion and Company F of the 2nd Battalion were chosen for the job. A patrol was sent out to reconnoiter, to find a route to the new objective.

The patrol came back at about 2 in the morning. It brought back impor­tant news, more important than a route. Six enemy tanks were just north of Prummern and moving into the town. A half hour later, at 2:30, the blow fell. From Beeck, from Lindern and farther back, German artillery began to pour steel into the village. The tanks raked the streets. The place was bedlam. The effect was weird, shells exploding, houses burning, flashes streaking. The barrage lasted a half hour. Then the tanks moved in.

It was a well-conceived, determined, large-scale counterattack by two companies of the 10th Panzer Grenadier Regiment and the 2nd Battalion of the 33rd Tank Regiment, units of the 9th Panzer Division. All that night, Prummern was no-man's-land. From the northern end the enemy's tanks made the whole village unhealthy.

Lt. Carl C. Palm, 1st Platoon of the 334th Infantry's Anti-Tank Company, had to spend the night in town and his experiences were typical. After two of his guns were placed, his third brought him to the attention of one Ger­man tank. Palm spent most of the night in a haystack across the street from the enemy's command post. He paid the Germans back by taking pot shots at anyone who left the CP, carefully timing his rounds with the enemy's artillery bursts so that his shots could not be picked up. He could not tell whether he was able to hit anyone but was more interested in the fact that he lived through the night in that haysack without anyone hitting him.

The next afternoon, November 19, Palm decided to make a getaway. The village was suspiciously quiet but he did not know why. He sneaked out the back way of his barn into the yard and then made his way to another barn. A German suddenly confronted him. Palm's gun went off automat­ically. "He ran into my gun," Palm said. He left the dead German and made a dash for a stable. To his chagrin, he found another German inside. He was afraid to shoot this one because he decided that he had made too much noise already. It struck him that the enemy might be all over the place and that his old hayloft might be the safest place after all. He took his live Ger­man with him to his hideout. The two made a strange pair for an hour, the captor afraid that he might be captured momentarily. To Palm's surprise, Captain Harry M. Deck, his company commander, came walking down the street. He was looking for Palm's platoon. In the end, they found half the platoon.

Palm did not know it at the time but the two Germans that he ran into while he was trying to make his own getaway were trying to hide for the same reason that Palm had crept into the hayloft the night before. The enemy force had gone into the village that night but had been forced to pull out in the daytime. Those two were refugees. As far as Palm was con­cerned, the important thing was that, after a night of terror, Prummern was

again relatively safe on the afternoon of November 19, safe enough to walk in the streets, even if you were apt to bump into miscellaneous Germans in almost any cellar, stable, or barn. But why it was relatively safe the next day is part of a larger story which had to be pieced together.

Prummern Falls Again

As a matter of course, every commander who has had any training or experience tries to hold something back in reserve when he engages the enemy. A company commander holds back a platoon, a battalion com­mander a company, a regimental commander a battalion, and so on. That reserve is his second punch. The first one may hurt the enemy and the sec­ond one may knock him out. But the reserve is also his insurance policy. The first one may have hurt the enemy only enough to bring on a full-fledged counterattack, to force the enemy to trade blows. Since the enemy is apt to throw in his fresh troops to make the counterattack, it is very sen­sible to have some fresh ones to meet it.

But there is more to it than that. Every commander may know enough to keep a reserve force at hand for an opportunity or an emergency, but there is nothing in the books to tell him exactly when to use it. If he uses up his reserve too soon, the enemy's counterattack may catch him by surprise anyway. If he waits too long, the battle may be decided before he makes up his mind. The problem of throwing in his reserves at the right time is one of the most delicate and decisive a commander can face. As long as he holds something back, he can feel a certain sense of security that he can make an extra effort if he has to. But once he has flung everything he has into the battle he has his back against the wall. It is his last throw of the dice. Psychologically, that is an embarrassing moment for any commander.

The battle of Prummern was a lesson in reserves. When it opened on the morning of November 18, two battalions were used, the 1st and 2nd Bat­talions, 334th Infantry. By that night, when the Germans counterattacked in force, both of them were quite exhausted. Behind the 1st Battalion, how­ever, the 3rd Battalion was following at a distance of about 1500 yards. The 3rd Battalion spent the night around the railroad tracks west of Immendorf. The next day it was still relatively fresh. It was also near enough to Prum­mern to help out without delay. On the morning of November 19, the 3rd Battalion was thrown in.

The northeast corner of Prummern was the town's hot spot. The Ger­mans knew how to take advantage of favorable terrain, how to site their guns to do the most damage, and Prummern was no exception. Just outside the northeastern edge of the village was some high ground. In drawing up our own plans, we called it "Mahogany Hill," though as hills went, it was not impressive enough to have a name of its own. Also at that corner of Prummern, there was a very useful intersection which controlled the town's two best roads. On the hill, the enemy put three pillboxes. The intersection was protected by two pillboxes, one in front, one behind. As long as the enemy held on to the northeast corner, the job was only half done.

At 11 o'clock, the 3rd Battalion was sent out to take Mahogany Hill. Company I led. The company entered Prummern and was making its way through the southern quarter of the village when the second battle of Prummern broke out. A German company was barring the way. For a half hour, the fight was fierce. Both sides suffered heavily. Everyone was so close that hand-to-hand and bayonet fighting was necessary. At the end of that half hour, Company I dug in on the eastern side of Prummern about 400 yards from Mahogany Hill. Company K was following and dug in behind.

That afternoon, November 19, Sherwood Ranger tanks went into Prum­mern, shot up at least two German tanks, and controlled the village, except for the northeast corner which was still very lively all that day.

The attack on the intersection was left for November 20. Company I and Company K started out at 8 o'clock in the morning but were held up 15 minutes later by heavy machine gun fire. They called for artillery and smoke on the pillboxes, started forward again, advanced into the valley in front of Mahogany Hill, moved about 300 yards and stopped. At 3 o'clock that afternoon, they tried again but the intersection frustrated them. At 4:30, Company L was committed, tried to make a flanking movement on the hill from the right, got halfway up Mahogany Hill, went as far as 100 yards from the first pillbox, received a concentrated dose of machine gun fire which just raked the ground, and dug in for the day. In effect, our infantry was closing in on all the German strong points but another blow was necessary to knock them out.

This was one time the tanks came in handy, especially some of the models the British were using. As dusk was settling, about 5:30, two Crocodiles or flame-throwing tanks shuffled up toward the crossroads. About 75 yards from the first pillbox, they began to spit out their incredible fire. The spurt of flame struck the target. The walls of the pillbox seemed to burn like wood. It was a matter of moments. Then the second crackled. The men who were lucky enough to see the spectacle momentarily forgot the mud and the danger and Mahogany Hill. It was one of those terrible and beau­tiful sights which the machines of war create so often almost in spite of themselves, which seem all the more unreal against the ugly reality of war. Once the Crocodiles had worked them over, those pillboxes were black, shrunken coffins. Inside, as soon as the flames penetrated, the heat became inhuman. By dusk, the crossroads was safe. Only Mahogany Hill held out. Since it was outside Prummern, the village was finally ours by November 20. Two days later, Mahogany Hill also fell, curiously to Company L alone, because the other two companies had gone forward meanwhile to attack Beeck. Having held out for four days, the enemy in the pillboxes on the hill evidently felt safe and was caught off guard.

Life around Prummern

Prummern was our first objective. We were learning.

We learned that it was not necessary to use a whole company to take a pillbox. As few as five or six men, if properly trained and guided, can do the job. A single BAR ( Browning Automatic Rifle) can close up a pillbox. A single bazooka can blow in the embrasure. To take one of the pillboxes on Mahogany Hill, Company L sent out two bazookas, two BAR's, and two men with 10-pound pole charges. To send out more men is simply to expose more men. To use smaller teams means that more pillboxes can be engaged at the same time so that every pillbox in the vicinity has too much to worry about to help out another.

We were learning. As important as anything else, our men were learning how to live in mud, in soaking foxholes, under artillery fire, under constant strain. In war, there are two kinds of battles and many times it is hard to know which is worse. There is the battle to kill the enemy and there is the battle with yourself to live. The one is against people, the other against mud or ice or rain or vermin or boredom or homesickness or imaginary terrors. In Germany in November, it was mud. Now and then we fought the enemy, for a few hours or a few days. The mud we fought always, every miserable minute. The mud was Germany

It is amazing what a little mud in the wrong place can do. It will make your rifle a worthless piece of junk. It will jam it just when you need it most. It will ooze through your shoes and through your socks and eat away your feet. It will make your foxhole a slimy, slippery, smelly jail. It will creep into your hair, your food, your teeth, your clothes, and sometimes your mind. The enemy's best ally in the Siegfried Line was trench foot. There is one consolation. If you get enough mud, you are almost sure to get used to it. Also, fortunately, some things are worse than mud. The first time you have to spend the night in a foxhole three-quarters full of water, you will feel elated the next time you only have mud to worry about. You will also think to yourself what a wonderful war it would be if only you could hit some fine, solid ground and not mud all the time. Thoughts like that make life bearable in battle.

As Prummern showed, the shooting was by no means one way. The Ger­mans did plenty of shooting themselves. A wise man learns to hit the ground in no time. It is something else to hit the mud. It is something else to sink into 4 or 5 inches of mud, swampy, filthy mud, every time you have to duck. It is also something else to have to get up out of that stuff and some­times drop down and get up again and again. The artillerymen had their mud too. The 95 pounds of a 155 mm. shell can drag a man down deeper and deeper. The men of the 327th FA found that out.

The wire men also had their mud. If the wire is on the ground, the stuff works its way in and shorts it or skidding cars have a way of taking wire for a ride. The alternative, putting the wire overhead, where bullets and shell fragments like to congregate, is not much better. And yet, the work of the 84th Signal Company and the Communications Platoons was re­markably effective. The former's responsibility was back of the regiments. It always managed to keep two lines in to each regiment, as well as lateral lines to the artillery. The commanding general always had a direct line to the regiments which was held in the clear for him.

We learned fast. The 334th's 3rd Battalion, for example, organized carry­ing parties from the rear to bring socks, water, food, and clean rifles to the foxholes at night. The main thing was socks. They were changed every night. The rifle problem was met by taking them from the cooks and service company men and giving them to the men in the front lines. The carrying parties took back the rifles jammed with mud and the men at battalion head­quarters spent the next day cleaning them. The 784th Ordnance Company also provided clean weapons on an exchange basis in addition to its normal duties. The 84th Quartermaster Company supplied clean socks for the entire division.

Prummern was tough, especially tough because it was the first experience in combat. It would be unjust to the men who fought there to pretend that it was pretty and easy. There were no easy fights in the Siegfried Line for another month. We paid for every yard, but the important thing was that we handed out more punishment than we took. If it was not pretty for us, it was much worse for them.