Read Online If You Survive by George Wilson - Free Book Online

head wound and resumed command of the first platoon. I had the second platoon, and Lieutenant Blume had the third platoon. A Lieutenant Lloyd was brought up to lead the weapons platoon.
    Platoon Sergeant Reid was back with me, although I don’t know where he had been, and Sergeant Anders was returned from special patrol work. The newly minted Sergeant Phearson had survived and was still with us. We received enough replacements to bring the platoon back up to forty men. With the sergeants and about four other men, plus myself, we now had eight experienced men. All the rest were green recruits.
    Meanwhile, Patton’s Third Army stormed through the gap and raced wildly in three different directions: westwardtoward the great port city of Brest; in a northerly circle to help trap two German armies; and straight east to the Seine near Paris.
    Our rest and replacement period was a short two days. We were moved along the route toward Saint Pois and assigned to clear up some pockets of German resistance and defend against possible penetration by the enemy.
    One night, as we took up defensive positions along a ridge facing east toward no-man’s-land, I felt very vulnerable because our men had to dig in so far apart. I checked my platoon area several times during the night and found several errors the new men were making. One stands out as a major error to this day. I found one man sitting on top of a hedgerow with no cover around him. He stood out vividly long before I got near him. I showed him how to take advantage of a big tree and its shadow, which was only ten feet from his exposed position. I told him to think and thus avoid giving a Jerry an easy opportunity to kill him.
    Our next objective was the village of Saint Pois. As we approached along the road, in an attempt to make the Jerries take cover and thus lose some of their advantage, our artillery began to lay down a barrage on both the village of Saint Pois and the ridge behind it. The infantry then started to move up. Our company was not in the lead this time, so we missed the fighting, but we did catch some incoming artillery. Also, one of our jeeps ran over a big antitank mine and was destroyed.
    When we got into Saint Pois our company was ordered to go house-to-house on the right side of the road. We took only a few prisoners, for most of the Germans had withdrawn.
    Much to the delight of our men, we did find quite a bit of hard cider. Because of impurities in the drinking water, native Frenchmen do not drink water unless it is boiled. Instead, they settle for wine or cider. After two weeks ofsteady fighting, our men were glad enough to have a taste of it. The cider barrels we came across were used as reservoirs, lying on their sides. They measured eight feet in height and twelve feet in length and almost filled the small barn that stored them.
    My platoon had one casualty in Saint Pois, Sergeant James “Chick” Reid, who was hit in the upper thigh by a rifle bullet. Sergeant Otha Anders moved up to platoon sergeant.
    We continued our advance in the wake of Patton’s Third Army. Near Mortain, the Germans were making a desperate attempt to break our line behind Patton’s tanks and cut his supply lines. Here they ran into the Thirtieth Infantry Division, which at one point was using its artillery like rifles, firing low-level point-blank shots at German tanks and infantry.
    Artillery fired in a direct line instead of a long arc is very effective. When the enemy is close enough to fire in this manner the gunners can usually see the targets, and this allows them to fire directly into the mass or at tanks. All that shrapnel really tears up the enemy. Of course, it also gives the Germans a good chance to knock out your guns—and their crews as well, if they can get in close enough. The enemy can see the artillery and direct all kinds of fire on the guns. It takes a lot of guts for the artillery crew to man their pieces when in such exposed positions. The exposure often