NAME: Carlyle “Carl” Coleman
DATE ENTERED SERVICE: 1942
CAMPAIGNS: Normandy, Northern France, the Rhineland, the Ardennes, and Central Europe
On June 6, 1944, the 8th Infantry Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division stormed ashore at Utah Beach. The landings began at 0630 hours, and I came in later that day driving a Sherman tank with the 70th Tank Battalion. But my time at the edge of the armored thrust into France was short.
Not long into the campaign I ran over a mine, and my tank was damaged beyond repair. Being without a tank and since there were no replacement vehicles immediately available, I soon found myself transferred to E Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment, where I became a ground-pounding infantryman. With the other regiments in the 4th Division, I would take part in five campaigns and see much of Europe.
I was assigned to a Lieutenant Turner, who I quickly grew to admire for his fortitude and leadership. He was no doubt the coolest man under pressure that I have ever known. I think he had ice water flowing through his veins. He was the type of leader you would follow through the gates of Hell, and I know this to be true as we knocked on the door several times before the war was over.
After the tough battle through the hedgerows, the regiment participated in the advance on St. Lô, while the other regiments of the division were taking the port city of Cherbourg, which finally fell on June 27. The struggle to seize the important port city did not end our campaign, though.
On July 25 my division took part in Operation Cobra, advancing between the 9th Division on our right and the 30th on our left. The offensive got going with an attack by hundreds of our bombers. After the planes had roared away, my company began its advance at 1100. The pace of the next three days was frantic as we rolled over any enemy positions we came across. The carnage we saw among the Germans was unbelievable. As strange as it seemed, as I walked past the twisted and torn remains of our enemies I almost felt sorry for them.
By the middle of August, the battle for Normandy was over, and we continued our advance into the heartland of France, everyone dreaming of the time they would have once Paris was reached. From here on, it was the same old daily routine: another battle, another firefight, another foxhole to dig, another nightly patrol. We fought with three different armies at one time or another through France, Belgium, Luxembourg and into Germany. It was all bad, but the worst was the Hürtgen Forest.
The woods were a meat grinder. The slaughter began on November 13, 1944, when we relieved the 28th Infantry Division, which had suffered some 6,000 casualties in just six weeks. We remained in the woods until December 3, and when we were finally relieved we had suffered casualties as severe as those of the unit we had relieved.
Hoping for a respite, we were sent to Luxembourg to receive replacements badly needed to fill out our ranks. We had been at ease for less than a week when the Germans launched their Ardennes offensive.
Despite our battered condition, we were rushed to the threatened area and committed to a battle over the same ground we suffered so much to take the first time. When the Battle of the Bulge was finally over, “Old Blood and Guts,” Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, sent Maj. Gen. Raymond O. Barton, our division commander, a letter stating, “Your fight in the Hürtgen Forest was an epic of stark infantry combat, but in my opinion your most recent fight, from December 16 to 26, when with a tired division you halted the left shoulder of the German thrust into the American lines and saved the city of Luxembourg…is the most outstanding accomplishment of yourself and your division.”
In April 1945, I got to Dachau. Despite all that I had seen of war, I was not prepared for the unspeakable horrors within. The railroad siding was lined with boxcars full of the dead. Bodies in the main compound were stacked like cordwood. Those I saw alive looked like zombies. They were the walking dead. Some were so weak from malnutrition they could neither stand nor walk. Their wretched little bodies were covered with sores, scabs and open wounds. My stop at the camp affected me deeply and it made me realize what I had been fighting against for so long.
After 299 days of combat, out of the division’s total of 325, I spent a short time performing occupation duty, before being shipped home in August 1945. After the atomic bombs were dropped, I was discharged and left to live with my nightmares.
Originally published in the September 2006 issue of World War II. To subscribe, click here.
