Don Bennett's War - Chapter 17

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Don Bennett's War

Chapter 17 - The ‘B.A.R.’ man

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It was getting dark now and we spent a very jittery and sleepless night in a small group of battered stone houses at the base of the hill. There was sporadic gun fire and our mortars kept firing in the direction of the retreating Germans. Three of us spent most of the night guarding one house with only part of its walls standing. Believe me, we kept our eyes glued in the direction of the retreating jerrys.

In the morning we started moving out in the direction they had retreated. When we came to the crest of the hill, we saw two Germans lying still. We poked one and when we saw he was dead we passed on. We had only gone a few yards when shots rang out. One of our officers became suspicious about the second German and when he got close to him, the "dead" German came to life. There was an exchange of shots and the German was now definitely dead.
We moved forward in the rain and murky skies, and about eleven we spotted some Germans crossing a field on our left. The first platoon opened fire on them but they escaped into the woods. A few minutes later four enemy were seen running across a field two hundred yards to our right. The rifleman of our squad started firing at them (we didn't want them to escape to their lines and give away our position, etc.), but missed them. I turned my B.A.R. on them, they fell, and my reputation as B.A.R. man was made. A man went out to where the Germans lay and came back with the report that they were done for. We moved forward to a farmhouse and while the others dried out by the fire, the second platoon commander took a patrol, including a B.A.R. man (me) on a reconnaissance mission to look for the Germans we had seen but we came back empty handed.
We soon had to move on again, but we felt better with dry socks on, and our bellies full of the dark heavy bread and canned fruit we had found in the house. While we were moving along through the dirt roads, farms, and woods, our rear officer caught sight of some suspicious action in the woods on our left and called back a B.A.R. man to cover the area. Who went back - me, with the well wishes of my platoon whose confidence I had. Nothing happened and it looked like whoever was there had left, so we again moved on.

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