advance perhaps a mile.
At dusk, I finally arrived at our forward position in Pouilly-sur-Meuse and delivered my message to the officer in charge. While no longer out in the open, the village afforded little protection from the French artillery, which was slamming in a merciless barrage of five or six heavy shells a minute.
That night, I took shelter in the large wine cellar of a fieldstone house, huddled with 20 or 30 soldiers from another unit. The violent shaking of the earth was almost constant as round after round crashed into Pouilly. With a steady rain of dust from the ceiling in the pitch-black darkness, it was hard not to ponder the consequences if the house received a direct hit.
When the artillery fire ceased toward daybreak, I departed the ruined village by the previous day’s route before it became fully light. With no one targeting me on my climb back up the hill toward my unit in Beaumont- en-Argonne, the return trip was far more relaxed. Happening across a fully intact 75-millimeter French artillery round that had failed to detonate because it lacked its explosive charge, I decided to retain it as a souvenir of my baptism of fire and lugged the heavy shell back under my arm.
For my performance in this mission and a series of other assignments, I would subsequently receive the Iron Cross Second Class for bravery on December 10, 1941. Yet, I already felt that I had achieved something greater. If combat can make a man out of a boy in a day, my experience on the hill and in the cellar had made me grow up fast, even if it was only a prelude to what I would endure in the coming years.
The next day, on May 27, the 209th and 220th Regiments made an assault through a wooded area in an attempt to seize the village of Inor, located another mile or so beyond Pouilly-sur-Meuse. With Inor still in French hands at the end of three days of bitter fighting, the 71st Infantry Division relieved our exhausted troops in the eastern portion of the 58th Division’s sector.
Meanwhile, following the evacuation of British and French forces in the north from Dunkirk to England in late May and early June, the entire German Army was reorienting itself toward the south to attack the remaining French forces. On June 5, Germany began the “Battle of France” with a massive offensive. Four days later, our 154th Regiment staged an attack to seize control of the forest at Bois de la Vache (Wood of the Cow), which bounded the main road to the southeast about a mile from Beaumont-en-Argonne.
As we began our advance south, the French artillery again began to fire on us—but this time they were using gas shells. Having trained for just such an eventuality, we hurriedly yanked on our gas masks. Much to our amazement, the shells turned out to be duds. A subsequent examination of these rounds revealed that they had been manufactured by the German company Krupp in 1918 and delivered to the French as war reparations.
Our assault on the Bois de la Vache met further fierce resistance from the North African division and quickly broke down, forcing us to pull back with heavy losses. However, larger developments in the Battle of France soon forced the enemy troops to our front to join in the general French retreat to the south.
By June 11, the way was open for the renewal of our advance.
CAMPAIGNING IN FRANCE
June 11–June 25, 1940
Now the campaign in France progressed more and more rapidly. Our troops and horse-drawn vehicles were constantly on the move as the French steadily retreated before us. During the advance southward it only proved necessary for our infantry and howitzers to deploy into combat formation about three or four times.
Most of these actions turned out to be brief skirmishes lasting less than an hour. They typically began with a sudden barrage from French artillery that forced our infantry to spread out and seek cover. If our infantry encountered significant defensive positions such as entrenched enemy infantry or a French bunker, the regiment would request supporting fire from our heavy weapons company.
The 13th Company would then station our howitzers and ammunition as far forward as possible without coming under fire, generally within a half-mile of the first line. In most cases, our 75-millimeter howitzers were capable of dealing with any problems that arose and the 150-millimeter guns would not be brought into action.
Unless the resistance from the enemy appeared to require sustained support from the heavy guns, the ammunition would not even be unloaded from its carriage. Meanwhile, the horses and the Protzen would retreat to the Tross some miles further back, but remain ready to retrieve the howitzer and ammunition on short notice.
Except when this deployment was very brief, my communications platoon would string the telephone lines between the forward observer at the front and the company’s gun positions, company headquarters, and regimental headquarters in the rear. We also had to maintain the integrity of these lines, which were highly vulnerable to enemy artillery fire.
Due to reports of poisoned wells, we were informed that we could not drink the local water. To quench our thirst, we began hunting for wine in the cellars of homes. At the end of a short search, several soldiers in my communications platoon “liberated” a wooden cask of wine and hauled it outside. Once the heavy barrel had been hoisted up on the rear of a still moving Protze, someone asked aloud, “Now how are we going to get the damned thing open?”
“I have an answer,” a soldier replied, and pulling out his Luger pistol, he fired a round into the cask. With red wine now spurting out through the bullet hole onto the road, dozens of us immediately began taking turns walking behind the barrel to catch the dark stream in our mouths as we continued to march.
Upon my arrival at a church in a small town a little farther south, I heard that two French snipers perched high in the steeple had picked off a number of our troops a few hours earlier. Following the capture of the two French soldiers, many of our troops wanted retribution for the deaths they had caused among our men. As punishment, an officer in our regiment ordered that the snipers be forced to spend a couple of hours kneeling on the concrete steps in front of the church’s altar before being led back to one of our prisoner of war camps.
On June 16, we entered Dun-sur-Meuse about 15 miles south of Beaumont-en-Argonne. The following day, my twentieth birthday, the 58th Infantry Division reached Verdun, a full 20 miles farther south. Up on a hill, a large cemetery from the largest and bloodiest Franco-German battlefield reminded us of the catastrophic cost our fathers had paid in the First World War. Whatever the historical parallels, there could not have been a more stark contrast with the relative ease of our advance after only a month of combat.
The next day, we accomplished another 20-mile march and entered St. Mihiel, where there were more small skirmishes. This progress was achieved despite the increasing numbers of French civilians who jammed the roads to the south as they attempted to flee ahead of our advance.
Forced to the side of the road to permit our passage, the mostly women and children refugees lingered among their horse-driven wagons and cars, crammed with their household possessions. From their despondent faces and blank stares, it was clear that their spirit was crushed. It was impossible to regard such a heartrending scene and not feel pity.
After St. Mihiel, we made our fastest advance to date, covering the 30 miles to Toul in a single day. Finding a position on a ridge overlooking the city, I looked down on Fort St. Michel where a number of French troops were making a stand. Our 150-millimeter and 75-millimeter howitzers soon arrived and went into action with the division’s heavy artillery to pound these fortifications.
In these circumstances, the fire support mission for our heavy guns and the artillery was to prevent the enemy from offering effective resistance or to force them to retreat. If our infantry could move forward under our suppressing fire, it was not necessary to obliterate the target. At the end of a 20-minute barrage, our troops were able to take control of the fort as the French inside either pulled back or surrendered.
Once Toul was occupied, we halted our march. On June 22, word began to filter among us that the French government, realizing that further resistance was futile, had agreed to sign a Waffenstillstand (Armistice) to come into effect on June 25. Despite accomplishing in six weeks what our fathers had failed to achieve in four years of fighting, there was momentary jubilation but no real celebration. If this was war, it was a lot easier than we had imagined.
After a brief stay on the outskirts of Toul, we traveled a short distance to the neighboring Champagne region, where we gladly seized the opportunity to relax in relative luxury for a few days. Since the owners of the abandoned home in which several of us were quartered had obligingly stocked their cellar with a couple of hundred bottles of the region’s dry sparkling wine, we naturally swigged down all we could handle. Indeed, there was so
