UNKNOWN SOLDIERS: Reliving WWII in Europe

The grinning Kraut on the left is holding the fearful “burp gun.” (Collection of the author)

Next day the only OP we had out was pulled in, I journaled succinctly, “as the enemy hit its house three times.” That night the German 14th Army attacked with a pincer against the British salient on the Anziate highway in heavy rain that grounded our planes, infiltrating either side and coordinating their attack on the flanks with their frontal assault. The salient was eliminated, with 1,400 British casualties, mostly captured. It was bad. Mark Clark ordered a final Beachhead defense line prepared.

While the Devil was loose on our right, eleven of us were sent up, as I put it wryly, “to patrol a 1000-yard gap between First and 3rd Battalions while 2nd came up to relieve the First. We contented ourselves with staying at the edge of the woods until one.”

Some contentment. Ninety-one yards of the Allied second front in Italy apiece. If the paratroopers across the river bed over there in the dark had known that a handful of jumpy amerikanischen Dummköpfe without even a machine gun and no hand-to-hand combat experience were all that stood between them and the breach of a half-mile front, what a party!

[This image is copyrighted and is available in the print edition, and is available online by clicking here: http://www.diggerhistory.info/images/weapons-german-ww2/mp40.jpg.]

The burp gun, or German Schmeisser MP40 (Courtesy of Digger History www.diggerhistory.info)