We travel-worn replacements were adopted by F Company, 318th Regiment, Eightieth Infantry Division, on November 13, 1944. Our induction was without ceremony, as befitted such a routine event, for there had been several similar infusions of bewildered replacements in the period after the division’s heavy losses during the Lorraine battles of October and early November. My own odyssey, that of a nineteen-year-old GI, had begun six weeks earlier on the quay in Greenock, Scotland, where I debarked from Queen Elizabeth along with fifteen thousand other American soldiers. We then entered the replacement system’s sluice, which dumped its contents into the hungry divisions on the line.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in MHQ magazine
• Subscribe online and save!
 

As I traveled through the replacement pipeline, the few friends I had made during the crossing went to other units. I knew no one in the group who joined F Company, now in reserve building its strength in the village of Haute-Vigneulle in Lorraine. There were occasional shell bursts, but the unit was not seriously bothered by them. I was impressed by my warlike surroundings, though the veterans were unaffected. They had seen much worse and now luxuriated in the relative peace.

This idyll was about to end. On November 24, an officer told us that the next morning we would descend the south slope of a nearby valley and cross a small stream, destroying whatever enemy we encountered. We would then drive up the north slope and seize its crest. The two Maginot Line bunkers glaring down from that promontory, sited for all-around defense, need not trouble us, he said; artillery would deal with them. Difficulties were minimized, and the briefing ended.

The officer did not disclose the purpose of the drive. In any case, the men of F Company did not care. The immediate front, not high strategy, was our real concern, and we replacements worried most about how we would endure the utterly new experience that awaited us. Actually, it was a major effort, involving the whole of the Fifth and Eightieth Infantry divisions against the Falkenberg Stellung (Falkenberg Position), defended by the Thirty-sixth Volksgrenadier (People’s Infantry) Division. The Thirty-sixth was understrength and not well-equipped, though it was augmented by a battalion or two from the 347th Infantry Division. The Americans would attack with three infantry regiments, a tank battalion and two tank destroyer battalions in close support. A five-minute artillery bombardment would precede the operation.

Late that afternoon we were led to the top of the south slope and told to dig in just below the crest in two-man teams. Excavating the thick, clayish soil, soaked by weeks of rain, was an ordeal. The day soon became night. When my foxhole companion and I had to answer the call of nature, we slid out of our hole as best we could. A faint light suffused our surroundings, for the heavy cloud cover could not completely hide the full moon. While we attended to our needs, there was a blinding flash and a shattering explosion. An enemy mortar had zeroed in on our position; its alert crew must have seen faint movement and dropped a ready shell into the barrel. It was almost a direct hit–all that saved us was that glutinous clay that had made our digging so difficult earlier in the day. The shell buried itself, exploded, and rained clumps of clay upon our prostrate forms. It was a narrow escape. A Hollywood war movie would have had us philosophizing at length over the meaning of this adventure in light of the experience we were to undergo the next day. Drenched and miserable, however, we exchanged scarcely a word as the two of us slithered back into our hole. We huddled in our watery shelter and awaited the dawn.

When it came, F Company assembled in the slowly gathering light and moved down the hill in a skirmish line. The rain had almost stopped, and the valley ahead could be seen through the trees. In the dimness, I could make out other companies on our right. As we moved forward, our shells were striking the north slope and its bunkers, but this activity and the closer sounds of machine guns and rifles went almost unheard by me. I was intent on keeping my place in the line and navigating the slippery slope with its brush and trees.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to