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Christmas Eve 1945, Tidworth England... A cold, dreary rain is falling. I
had hoped to spend this Christmas at home in the States. V-E Day and V-J Day had come and gone. The lights were again on all
over Europe. But in September, I had left Berlin to spend 3 months of study at Queens University in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Several days ago I had rejoined my unit in the 82nd Airborne at Tidworth, near Southampton. In a few days we will board the
Queen Mary and set sail for New York, where the Division will put on a victory parade down 5th Avenue around the 12th of January.
And so, in spite of my hopes, I find myself spending a Christmas Eve in a Red Cross Club here in England. The donut line inside
is blocks long and it is dreary and miserable outside. And yet, this is the grandest Christmas I've ever spent. To explain
this I will have to tell you a little incident that occured a few hours ago. I was coming back from chow this evening and
struck up a conversation with another 82nd trooper going in the same direction. After a few words, he bitterly expressed his
disappointment at having to spend Christmas away from home. So I asked him where he had spent his last Christmas. He was 19
and had been in the States up until V-E Day. He was surprised when I told him that this was the grandest Christmas Eve I had
ever spent, and so I told him how some of us still in the 82nd had spent our last Christmas.
On December 23, 1944 the
newscast reported the German breakthrough in Belgium had finally been contained and the Allies front had finally stabilized.
Hitler's gamble had been lost! But to us in the 325th GIR, the pictures wasn't that clear. A few days before most of the radio
section in the 1st Battalion had been killed or wounded in a violent German attack. So I was sent from regimental HQ to be
the Bat. Commanders radio operator. The Bat. CO was Lt. Col. Richard Gerard. He was one of the finest officers I was ever
to serve under. The battalion was in a typical Belgium village, winding streets, public pump, cattle, piles of horse manure,
stone buildings, house and barn together... things were fairly quiet. 2 days before, this battalion, as well as the whole
division, had taken the best the German Panzers could throw at us, and in spite of rather heavy casualties, were now in a
position to attack. And yet, the civilians kept asking us if we were leaving. In my fractured French I told them, "Nous sommes
ici et nous reston." (We are here and here to stay). And I sincerely believed it.
The Germans had told these people
that they would be back by Christmas and right now they were only a few miles away. In fact, on the day before Christmas,
I went out with the Bat CO and crawled along a stone fence in front of our last outpost in a small village as Colonel Gerard
looked over the terrain. He was planning an attack over this area the next day. But, late in the afternoon, after being shot
at several times enroute back to the CP, we received orders to withdraw. That hurt. The 82nd hadn't yielded one inch of ground
once captured in this war! Every man in this outfit was proud of that record. And now we were to leave. Orders were orders.
What we didn't know was that apparently while the 82nd's front was stable, our flanks held by other units had given way and
we were in danger of being surrounded by 2 powerful German units.
We packed our stuff quickly and quietly, some of
us had been invited to parties that evening, and we took turns in attending and leaving. We did such a good job of assembly,
few if any civilians knew we were leaving. At 2100 the long column of silent men started moving down the road behind the Colonel
and his staff. Around 2200 the moon came up. I shall never forget that evening. It was a still, crisp, winter evening with
a beautiful full moon adding to the magic of the scene. The ground was covered with snow. The evergreen forest on each side
of the road was dusted with snow and looked like sentinels watching the 2 long lines of men hurrying down the winding moonlit
road. Some engineers were tying explosives around the bases of trees next to the road in order to drop them when the last
unit passed. The serenity was finally broken as arty salvos arched over our heads and exploded miles behind us, covering our
withdrawal.
Around 2300 we took a 10 minute break. Men collapsed right where they stopped on either side of the road.
I began to wonder if I could get back up when it was time to go on. I was wearing my full pack on my chest, a heavy overcoat,
and carrying a SCR 300 radio on my back. I cursed that radio all the way to hell and back, not knowing it would save my life
some days later.
We passed the arty that laid down the barrage to cover our withdraw. Their trucks were all lined up
and ready to hook onto the field pieces and pull out. By midnight we had left the deafening rumble and blinding flashes behind.
There had been few words spoken since we had left. Each man walked or stumbled alone with his thoughts, memories, fears and
hopes. There wasn't much to say and most of us would rather save even the effort of words. Somebody said it was 12 midnight.
A few turned to their nearest belaboring comrades and in tones half in reverence and half in jest said, "Merry Christmas."
The rest silently struggled along that road.
Mile after mile we numbly stumbled forward. I don't think there were many
who felt confident that they could go another step and yet no one fell out. The engineers were now falling the trees and blowing
up bridges behind us. Around 0400 we entered a valley and spent about one hour climbing up the side of a mountain in the cold
and dark. A man would fall down the icy path and knock 2 or 3 men down.
After much falling and profanity, we reached a plateu with some farms. There
were a few barns to house some of the men but most of the men pulled hay from the round hay stacks in the fields and bedded
down in the snow along a fence, under some trees or near a house. Most of us had just gotten our little armful of hay and
had curled up hoping to get a few hours sleep, even in a snow bank, when orders were passed down, "1st Battalion, move out!"
A lot of the fellows could barely stand up but there was surprisingly little or no vocal protest. Soon, a long column of weary
men was moving down that icy road again, onto the highway and into the darkness.
Our mission was to capture, if the
Germans had moved in, a small village about 15 miles distant. No one knew whether the enemy was there or not. By 1000 on Christmas
morning we were a quarter mile away. A recon unit which was driven into the town and upon returning had reported no sign of
any enemy troops in the town. We passed our last dug in troops. Some of them yelled the typical GI phrase, "You'll be sorry!"
At
the outskirts of town an American mine field lay acfross the road. The night before 3 engineers had attempted to clear these
mines for vehicles to pass. Apparently one of the fellows dropped a mine and all 3 were killed. The whole Bat had to pass
by this awful scene to enter the town. It was late afternoon before the bodies were removed. I hope these boy's mothers never
learn how their sons spent their Christmas Eve 1944.
The day was crisp with a few inches of snow on the ground. Truly
it was a White Christmas! But as we filed past the gruesome scene, Christmas seemed further away then home.
Most of us hadn't been able to eat the K-Ration breakfast and there was little
time now, everyone was assigned positions on a side of the town to defend. All afternoon we dug positions in the frozen earth.
Everyone was exhausted, but we had to prepare for the inevitable German attack. A few of the fellows looted some food from
the empty houses but most of us ate K-Rations for our Christmas dinner.
I took several fellows to the barn across the
street where we could hear cows who apparently hadn't been fed for several days. My early days on a dairy farm made me very
sympathetic to their plight. We gave water and hay to the starving cows. Then I found a large pail and milked several cows,
thinking fresh milk would be a real treat! Most of the men refused the milk because it hadn't been pasturized! Such is the
march of civilization.
Late in the afternoon the Germans started moving up to the edge of the woods on the hillsides
near the town. Our arty lay down a heavy barrage to protect us, but very unfortunately several rounds fell short and landed
in the middle of Charlie Company's position. 3 fellows were killed by our own arty. Seems you can't trust anyone these days
and death seems so ironic at times.
As evening closed in, the Germans brought up a tank and started firing right into
the town. One round came down an alley, passed right in front of the Bat CP, past a little house we were using as a switchboard
room, and hit a tree just past the corner of the house. I was standing in the doorway of the chicken coop. The concussion
knocked me clear across the room. Then all Hell broke loose! Somehow, the Germans had managed to slip a rather strong patrol
into the town armed with burp guns. They dispersed and got upstairs by climbing up drain pipes in different houses. As the
German's attack hit, this patrol fired indiscriminatly at the downstairs of the neighboring houses. Every GI knew the sound
of the burp guns so we had GIs in one house firing at their neighbors in the next house. The German patrol ruse and strategy
almost worked, utter confusion reigned for awhile.
It was just a free-for-all in the town. And then a shell from the
tank set fire to a house on the edge of town. The flames lit up Baker Companies position and the snow covered field in front
of them. This side of town had been quiet up until now. The light exposed at least a half of a company of Germans dressed
in white snowsuits halfway across the field. This was the major German assault effort. It apparently was their coup de main.
Baker
Company opened up with everything they had. The Germans were totally exposed. Our MG's raked their lines with deadly effectiveness.
A few Germans managed to get back through the fence alive and into the woods beyond. The rest were scattered all over the
field. The next morning some were even frozen where they had tried to crawl over the fence and into the woods. It was not
a pleasant sight. The attack was broken and by 0300 the battle was over and the town was still ours. We had wiped out the
patrol that had gotten into the town, exfept for about 10 Germans who were captured over the protest of many GI's.
Now
all we had to do was care for the wounded and count our dead.
That was my Christmas, 1944.
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