|
|
Caught literally asleep in their beds . . . |
|
|
Moving
forward in a line against automatic weapons and firing continually . . . |
|
|
|
The nazis had taken advantage of an exceptionally dark night to infiltrate into the town approximately one hundred troops who set up machine guns on the main street, pouring lead into everything that moved. Havoc reigned for a few hours before they were repulsed, but the krauts had also learned the dogged "if you don't succeed at first--". They tried again, now with two companies of infantry and two tanks. This time they were convinced, pushed back minus 280 captured and a large number killed or wounded. Laboriously, carefully, the battalion medical aid men led by Capt James Ryan of the 301st Medical Battalion bore their aid station equipment up the steep hill approaching Orenhofen. Mortar shells rained on their vicinity. While the 304th men fought nazis through the streets of the town, litter bearers out to pick, up casualties were subjected to enemy machine gun fire. Litter bearer Mike Turri was bit while carrying a wounded German . . . . . Pfc Joseph Gautraux, ammunition bearer, came upon a group of nazis in the process of, setting up a machine gun near the center of town. Bringing his BAR to his hip, he killed four of the enemy, wounded three more, causing several others to flee. A sniper on a nearby roof tried to test his marksmanship against Gautraux, but Gautraux fired faster and truer. The sniper went crashing to the street . . . . . Daily the Germans were becoming more and more convinced that American marksmanship was not to be trilled with. Like the day three nazi soldiers tried to make freedom on the double. S/Sgt Byrne McCavoy saw them fleeing down a road, calculated their distance at 300 yards, set his M-1 rifle sights and fired. One German fell. He fired again and a second German fell. The third, who proved to be a German officer, stopped and threw up his hands in surrender. "I waited just a little too long to fire that third shot," the sergeant said in disgust . . . . |
||
Sometimes extra help came in strange and monstrous forms . . . |
||
|
By evening of the 5th the enemy had resignedly pulled back its salvageable remnants, giving up approximately five miles of the Kyll riverline including Hosten, Auw, Priest, Speicher and Orenhofen. Combat Team 304 had established the bridgehead against increased resistance and taken 503 prisoners. By now the enemy in the sector was a thoroughly discouraged lot as an incident in Speicher revealed. Capt Paul T. Short had learned from one enemy prisoner that an entire company of krauts was in a nearby valley. Capt Short sent a note via the prisoner dictating to the company to march into Speicher at 1100 the following morning in a column of twos, their weapons empty and slung, a white flag carried by the man at the head of the column. Promptly at 1100 a German column of sixty men marched into town exactly as prescribed. Task Force ONAWAY meanwhile, having been ordered across the Kyll, assembled in the vicinity of Priest, sending elements to reconnoiter all roads to the east. The 3d Battalion 385th Infantry was relieved of its screening mission by the 2d Cavalry Group and assembled in the vicinity of Welschbillig from where it moved to the wooded area east of Speicher two days later. |
||
Infantrymen mount trucks and prepare to join task force . . . |
||
|
Speicher was taken. On the outskirts of town the platoon of 304th men set up a well camouflaged mortar position against a potential counterattack and settled down for the vigil. During the night they heard the clink of cans, the gurgle of water, and the gutterals of German; they realized they were dug in beside an enemy water point. "It was like catching rabbits in a trap," said Cpl Irwin R. Axelrod. "They'd come down in twos and threes for water and we'd let them go about their business until they'd filled their cans. Then we'd snag them." All that night and the next day the platoon lay in wait until a total of some sixty-odd "waterboys" had been dispatched to the rear to drink the bitter brew of a prisoner-of-war cage . . . |
||
