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Don Bennett's War

Chapter 14 - First Casualty

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We were pretty hungry by this time, having eaten the only rations we could carry with us and being too far in front of our supplies to get anything from them There was a little garden about 50 yards in front of us, so to satisfy our hunger one of us would occasionally dash out and get some of the few remaining plants in the garden. Those raw rutabagas and cabbages were very tasty.

About four o'clock in the afternoon, our squad sergeant called us together to tell us about when and where the outpost guard was to be, and where. We then violated a lesson we learned all during training, and a lesson very seldom violated thereafter - that of a group of men bunching together. We just had our guard problem straightened out when Wham! Wham! Wham! The enemy had let us have three well placed artillery shells. One hit very close to us, close enough to shake us and momentarily shock us. My feet headed toward my foxhole but my body didn't move. In my mind, my feet were moving but they actually weren't. When the moment of shock was off, I made the thirty feet to my hole in two seconds. In one movement I jumped into my hole, right through my camouflage, and rammed my head into the hole at the end of my hole. I then prayed, "Please God, don't let them hit me" over and over again in a scared, hysterical voice. I heard someone yelling for "medic", so I knew someone was hit. The shelling seemed over, so we got out of our holes to find that our platoon sergeant was seriously wounded in the chest and a mortar man for the weapons platoon wounded in the arm. We had our first of many casualties.

 

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