UNKNOWN SOLDIERS: Reliving WWII in Europe

minefields in the area our Second Battalion was taking over north of the Overpass. Pullman returned that evening:

Goddam, here they came, the flares first, then the bombers. We just threw ourselves under the trucks. The bombs are comin’ down, and here’s Gerencer under one with me, and I says, “Les, what the hell was that racket?” And hell, it was our helmets hit together. He dove under one side, and I the other.

A barrage hit at dawn while I was in the CP itself, which was sandbagged, and I said to somebody, “I’ve always wondered what would happen when they got as much artillery as we have, and I’m finding out now.” This British brigadier came in, wearing his little beret and a very unusual badge, and of course he’s putting me on, a nice young American lieutenant, with some story about a patrol he sent twenty miles behind the lines. Just then a shell from the Anzio Express arrives, and Jesus, there you are in front of a British brigadier, so you’re not going to show fear, but you’re just absolutely ready to shit your pants. All kinds of casualties, and his driver’s hit and comes in with a piece of shrapnel in him, and says “I’m sorry, Sir,” and collapses.

About that time Maxie from Second Battalion shows up. “Ready to go, Jack?” Sure I’m ready to go out there in the cold, and they’ve probably run out of ammunition and so they quit firing. I didn’t want to leave the dugout but I did, and we went up and guided some of the boys through those minefields.

Meanwhile, Pullman had sent Sergeant Dick Beech, Jerry Waldron and a third man to set up an OP around Second Battalion as far up Highway 7 as they could get. Jerry remembers considerable activity in the sky:

We worked from about ten [at night on the fifteenth] until three in the morning laying two or three miles of field phone wire, all on foot, to a house that was directly behind the front lines where we found a British forward artillery observer and his radioman. He told us he was still awake because there was so much movement of all types on the German lines. Within thirty minutes, and just after we had checked in with the CP by phone, all hell broke loose. Dawn was breaking, and their artillery was all over us, the most concentrated on one front I’d ever faced, because we were way out ahead of the Overpass and to the left, out around E Company, not far from the highway. It was a rolling barrage ahead of the German infantry attacking down the highway. Within five minutes our phone line was blown out.

The barrage lasted well over half an hour. I spent it on the floor under a table, while the Limey lieutenant’s in his chair tipped back against the wall telling his man, “Let’s see if we can get back with the radio and tell ’em what’s happening,” but it was no damn good either. He may have been Coldstream Guards, whose officers never hit the ground while under fire.²⁵

When the barrage was over both of us went on our scopes. A brief firefight ensued, and we quickly saw why our guys had been routed—a long, gray line of German infantry proceeding up the hill like Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg. Dick