War is dandy..

[Johan Brittz]

Captain Harlo J. "Jack" Sheppard

Normandy, July 10, 1944

These recruits walked up to us, and one of them looked at me and said, "Hey, Mac, what in the hell happened to you?" And the first sergeant said, "Shut your mouth, that's a company commander!" That must have made their day. If a company commander can get looking like that, what's going to happen to them? I still had my combat jacket, and it had bloodstains on it. And my face was bandaged, my hand was bandaged, and I still had the most glorious black eye, you know what a mouse is? I had two of them after that from the concussion.

There's only three unit citations in the 712th. One of them is for the first platoon, C Company. I was with it at the time. And the reason they got it was because the battalion of infantry got it, and their attached units get it, that's the way we got it.

Okay, we take Hill 122. Going down off the hill was another story.

I'm taking this tank to [Lieutenant Jim] Flowers, it's one of his tanks that had been knocked out and we got a replacement for. He only had three tanks, this would give him four.

Going up the hill, it was raining. The Signal Corps had their wires strung alongside the hill, and we had to contact them to come and hold the wires back in case the tanks started slipping, because if a tank slipped into the wires the tracks would just chew up the wires. We got hell for that when somebody else went up there and chewed them up.

We got up on the top of the hill and we were going down towards Flowers when a lieutenant colonel stopped me. I was in a jeep leading the tank, with [sergeant James] Bailey as my driver, and this colonel stopped us. He says, "I need some tanks down there. I've got a battalion that's surrounded by SS and they need tank support but bad."

I said, "Well, let me see if I can get Flowers released." He was down with another battalion, I don't know which.

I called the division commander, and he by voice authorized me, so I called up Flowers, and he came back and joined us. And when I talked to him I said, "There's only three men in the tank, you need a driver and you need a commander, so Bailey will take over as driver and I'll take over as commander, but you are the platoon leader, I'm just another tank in your platoon."

So he says okay. He says, "You follow behind [sergeant Abe] Taylor." So they pulled out in front of me and we pulled along behind them.

Flowers I think fired the machine gun a few times, and all of a sudden we were with this battalion. Then we were given orders that we're going to attack across the road. The road went past a big open field with a hedgerow at the far end. Flowers and K Company of the 358th Infantry Regiment were going to take that hedgerow. Famous last words.

So we pulled up to the road, all in a line, and fired at the hedgerow with the gun and the machine gun, just raked it, and high-explosive, all to hell. So the platoon leader of the infantry gets out there and says, "Let's go!" So we all go, tanks and infantry, the infantry behind the tanks.

We just get across the road, and my tank hits a hog wallow, a mud hole, and tips over. All it would do was that track would just spin, no traction whatsoever. So we were just sitting there.

I had my head out the turret. You always had your head out unless you were being shot at. I had my carbine in my hand, in case I saw something.

About that time, the tanks disappeared over the hedgerow. Then a round came in from the right and hit the gunner's periscope, and blasted straight on through to the other side of the tank. Back in this corner is our little joe, which was our gasoline motor, it was a generator, to keep the battery up. That was shredded. All of the recoil cylinders in the gun had holes punched in them, so the gun couldn't be fired.

The radio, which was in the back of the turret, was full of holes, and it didn't work. So we had no reason for staying in the tank, and [Corporal Louis] Gerrard has his right eye hanging on his cheek, he was in bad shape. He was not unconscious, but he was in extreme pain. He was non compos mentis, I guess you'd put it. So we all got out and got behind the tank, and they were looking after him, and I had, my face was blasted, I was leaking blood all over my face, and we were trying to figure out what to do, and I said, "I'll tell you what. You all stay here and take care of his wounds, and I'll go back across the road, to see if I can get a stretcher and send it back." I did that. But while I was jogging back, my jaw was flopping up and down. I had a piece of shrapnel, how big is your thumb? Can you see the scar right there? It went through and knocked a tooth out, but it stayed right there.

So I pulled it out and put it in my pocket. I was going to keep it, I don't know what ever happened to it. But I found a medic and sent him and a stretcher back up. But before he got there, one of the other guys from the crew found me, he said two German SS men had come up and Bailey started to fight with them, and they killed him. I don't know how, but they killed him. And the other two guys played dead and let the Germans search them and take their watches and so forth, they didn't bother the injured men, I don't think.

I was under the impression at the time that the medics had brought Gerrard back, or I would never have left him. Because that tank was accessible. It was just across the road and you could get to it. Flowers' tank was across the next hedgerow, which was enemy territory. This was no man's land.

Some infantrymen there said, "Hey, didn't you know that they were shooting at you?" They said two rounds, with tracers, went over our heads before the third one hit. I never saw them. Never heard them. And then they said, "Did you see those tanks on fire up ahead?" That's when I first noticed the three columns of smoke.

http://www.sonic.net/~bstone/tanks/kids.html

[maxm2]

Thanks for the story and the url, Johan. What a cruel ordeal the real thing could be.