Don Bennett's War - Chapter 19

Don Bennett's War

Chapter 19 - German fast retreat

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As we moved on up the narrow road, we ran across much equipment which had been discarded in their retreat. We even found bicycles abandoned at the side of the road. While moving cautiously up the road, we heard a sound up on the hill on our right. We looked up and saw a German coming down toward us. Lundeen and another man quickly turned and shot at him and he went down. I was all ready to make sure he stayed down when he yelled out and our platoon leader told me to hold it. Lundeen and I were told to go up and get him. Lundeen looked him over and removed the many stick hand grenades with which he was going to heave at us. I covered him while Lundeen stripped him of all arms. He was a walking arsenal. He was wounded fairly bad so we called a medic and moved on. We moved on about a hundred yards along the crest of the hill about 200 feet above the long narrow valley below, and came to a turn in the valley. We could hear the machine guns (firing at such a fast rate that they sounded like a burp) up ahead, aiming at the hill we were about to round. We waited for a few minutes below the crest and just before the side of the hill turned to get organized. We got up and slowly walked over the hill, expecting at any time to see machine gun bullets coming at us. I could almost feel the bullets going through me and chickened a little and lagged behind a little. At a prompting from the platoon officer, I said a little prayer, got up a little more courage, and moved on with the rest. We rounded the hill, but the Germans had pulled out. A few minutes later we saw them setting up a defense down on the edge of the valley 1000 yards away. We sent back for the mortars to come up, but they took so long we started to go after them ourselves. It was an ideal target for mortars. A few of the boys took long pot shots at them with their rifles, but did no good. We moved down to the valley and advanced to where we had last seen the Krauts. We just got to where they were and found they had moved out again. At that time, our mortars went into action and shelled the location where the Krauts used to be and where we just about were. A few minutes later machine gun bullets began to hit all around us. The Germans had either moved across the valley, or there was already a defense set up for them by another unit. Anyhow, they had tricked us, and we decided that the machine guns and mortars made it an unhealthy spot and we took off up the hill.

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