I apologize for the price increase imposed by the publisher and the resulting ridiculously high price. It is regrettable, too, that Amazon chose to delete the "buy" button from many of this publisher's books. I also apologize to anyone who buys the book and finds ads in the back for books on totally unrelated topics. This would have been done without my consent.
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Format: Paperback
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Pub. Date: July 2006 
Normandy 1944 Click on title at left to order
ISBN: 1-4241-4913-4
I’ve been writing about the experiences of an 18-year-old soldier in the 4th Infantry (Ivy) Division for decades. Perhaps it’s a release for me, although nothing can erase the memories. Or maybe it’s a tribute to the fine men I saw die among those bloody hedgerows. Maybe it’s because of some that lived, men like Eddie Wolfe, my platoon sergeant and the bravest man I’ve known. Whatever, a few excerpts from that book will be posted here from time to time. Here's the first:
PRELUDE TO WAR
As boys growing up during the Great Depression we were self-reliant by necessity. We were aware of the problems troubling the grownups, of course. We knew about the Okies, the dust bowl, the breadlines, the railroad hoboes, the shantytowns called Hoovervilles. We knew that jobs were scarce, that even those fortunate enough to have one made little money and few among them enjoyed a sense of security. Many years later several fathers of boys I had known at that time told stories of tramping the streets of Akron all day in a vain search for work, of coming home tired and hungry, then pretending to have no appetite so that what little food there was could go to the children.
For them it was hell. For those of us too young to remember any other way of life it was as normal as breathing in and breathing out. The one thing we didn’t know was prosperity, something we were told was just around the corner. In retrospect I believe we were better off in many ways than kids growing up under more affluent conditions. We learned to improvise and to make do with what we had. At the time it seemed like all that we needed, and it was.
We played with coverless baseballs wrapped in friction tape, bats held together with wood screws and more tape. We shared dime store fielders’ gloves or played barehanded. We combed the streets and alleys and vacant lots for empty soda pop bottles, then if we were lucky in the hunt took them to the corner store to collect the deposit. We saved nearly everything we found. A discarded two-by-four, an orange crate and a worn out pair of roller skates could be fashioned into a fine scooter. Large cardboard boxes and scrap lumber became a clubhouse furnished with three legged chairs and more orange crates. Nearly everyone had a ball of tinfoil and another of string and both grew steadily larger.
Omar Bradley later wrote that the Battle of Mortain was his most critical decision of the entire war and the generals of the German High Command felt that Mortain and the loss of the Remagen Bridge were the two critical operations that led to their defeat in the west.
But to us as we jumped off on the first day it was just one more attack launched against Germans entrenched on a high ridge. Already the 1st Battalion, which attacked toward Mortain at the same time, was pinned down by artillery fire from the high ground ahead.
We lost men even before reaching the Line of Departure at the base of the ridge. The artillery, rocket and mortar fire was unrelenting and the soggy ground we had to cross offered nothing in the way of cover. The ear-splitting explosions all around and the howling of the Screaming Meemies made a preacher’s threat of Hell seem laughable. Swift movement was impossible so it was like a bad dream in which you are trying to run but cannot because your feet are bogged down in a sticky morass.
In writing of battles long past, historians seldom seem to grasp what it was that led men to act as they did. In that first attack at Mortain there was no thought of taking an objective or gaining a victory. All that mattered was getting out from under that horrific barrage. The only way of doing so was to get so close to the German infantry that it would either be lifted or be falling to the rear. The Germans had the advantage of cover in prepared positions, we had the advantage of fear-driven desire to get close to them and stay close to them. Adrenaline was pumping at peak levels.
The result was a brutal firefight, but now we could return shot for shot and that was far better than being defenseless against the barrage we had come through. Fire and movement — fire at the enemy, and if you can’t see him then empty a clip at the place where you think he is. Move ahead, fire and then move again. Act and react by instinct and experience, rarely by deliberate thought. Once a battle reaches that point the advantage begins to swing in favor of those on the attack. It doesn’t matter what armies are involved or what war they are fighting, the defenders want to hold their ground but try to avoid a hand-to-hand fight. The men coming at them are past the point of thinking or they would stop in a safe position. Instead they have attained a state of frenzy that has made wild animals of them.
. . .It was an assembly line operation, this job of filling a cemetery. Half a dozen crews of prisoners were busy digging graves. Off to their right was a truck, a six-by-six like those in our convoy. Bodies were stacked high in back, just thrown haphazardly onto the pile. Some were badly mutilated or missing a limb or two, even a head. Others showed no sign of a wound although one was hidden somewhere.
The truck was the starting point. Two Germans stood by the tailgate waiting for a signal from one of the Graves Registration men kneeling nearby with clipboards in hand. When one finished processing a body he would gesture to the Germans, who then would grasp the nearest dead man wherever it happened to be handiest – by an arm, a leg, a head. They would pull the body from the truck, then turn it loose and let it hit the ground. After taking hold of it again they would drag it through the dirt to the waiting American.
The Graves Registration man would remove one of the two dog tags from a chain around the dead soldier’s neck. After searching through the sheets of paper on his clipboard he would place a checkmark beside the proper name, then tack the dog tag to a white wooden cross or Star of David taken from nearby stacks.
That accomplished, he would hand the grave marker to a prisoner in charge of another crew. Again the body was dragged across the ground to a place where mattress covers were piled high. The body was then stuffed inside one of them. The mattress cover was hauled over the ground to the first of the waiting graves. There it was shoved or kicked into the open hole and another crew of Germans with shovels began covering it with dirt. When they were finished the cross or star was planted on top and the job on that man was complete.
On and on it went, this grim, impersonal ending for men who a month earlier had been wondering when the invasion would take place and what it might hold in store for them.
Another truckload of bodies arrived as we watched. Parked beside the one already there was a small red pickup truck commandeered from a Norman farmer. It seemed out of place there among the drab shades of brown, green, gray and black.
There was a reason for its presence, however. When the body of one young soldier was pulled from the stack it was clad in a German uniform. Field gray it was called, but when seen from even a short distance the color was little different than that of the green fatigues we wore. The prisoners knew what to do when they came upon one of their own. One took the body by the feet, the other gripped it under the arms and together they pitched it into the back of the pickup truck. The youthful German’s long blonde hair fluttered outward until the body landed on the bare metal surface with a fearful clatter. Now it was ready for its trip to another graveyard where the crosses were black.
So equality was achieved. American or German, it mattered not. Neither was afforded even a modicum of dignity in death. All that differentiated one from the other were the fields in which they would be buried. . .
. . .After studying the field we were going to cross I dropped back down behind the hedgerow and looked to the left, the direction from which the order to move out would come. Rather than being near the center of the platoon as he normally would have been, John Morgan was not far from me. Beside him was Baker, the new lieutenant. As he had been told to do, he was sticking close to Morgan but staying out of the way. It would be his first frontal attack.
The order came in its usual form: “OK, G Company, let’s go! Up and at ‘em, G Company, up and at ‘em!” A staff officer up from the rear varied it by crying, “Up and at ‘em, 2nd Battalion, let’s go!”
Into the valley of death, into the mouth of hell. . .let’s go. And once again we did so, and for the last time John Morgan was calling out, “Follow me!”
I wanted to either cross that field as quickly as possible or else become aware that it couldn’t be done, but the weight of the radio caused me to slowly fall behind. Little Lieutenant Baker was doing his best to keep pace with Morgan’s long strides. He could not, so he gradually dropped back until he was only about ten yards ahead of me.
The Germans opened fire as soon as we appeared, but it wasn’t until I was halfway across the field that I saw movement directly ahead at the top of their hedgerow. Only then did I realize that all the while the long gun on a German tank had been extending out into the field. Now its deadly snout was moving to zero in on a target.
There was no time to shout a warning before the gun fired. The shell tore off Morgan’s right leg at the hip. The leg flew upward, slowly turning end over end until it settled among the branches of an apple tree.
Lieutenant Baker, following faithfully behind, took the full force of the explosion. As I ran past and looked toward him he was sitting with legs outstretched, a disbelieving half smile on his face as he stared down at red empty space where his internal organs had been.
Then as I ran past Morgan he murmured his final words, “Oh, my God.”. . .
