Taught to Kill: An American Boy's War from the Ardennes to Berlin

My Longest Day

My Longest Day z Iwas outpost guard in a foxhole that was the nearest thing to a home I had experienced since we had been committed to our first infantry attack a few days earlier. The Germans must have thought our untested infantry division was crazy. We launched our attack three days before December 16, 1944 when they threw their entire might against the Allies in World War II’s last great German counteroffensive. A scant few miles from us, Nazi armor and infantrymen were pouring into Belgium. At this point, all we knew about the Battle of the Bulge was that we had express orders to hold our one corner of the big pocket, forbidden to surrender our now strategically vital village under any circumstance. Our bedraggled little town had long ago been vacated by its residents . Most, if not all, of the livestock from the rural village had been killed in earlier battles. The rest had simply starved and frozen in their stalls and stanchions. Our battle booty was a few streets of ruins—an occasional room intact, but mostly homes reduced by explosives to a few walls, fewer roofs, and cellars that offered protection for attacker or defender. Grim as were orders to hold at all costs, the prospect of attacking up the long, open slope to the next village in front of us was even more dismal—suicidal, we all agreed, based on the pasting we had taken coming down through the opposite open fields to 33 34 Taught to Kill our objective. To the rear lay that earlier attack route, sloping back up toward the woods and our LD. Visible from both hilltops, at the base of the two slopes, was our snow-clad fish bowl of beat-up houses. The enemy picked at us relentlessly with 88s, mortars, and sniper fire. Since the field to our rear was heavily salted with hostile mines, and under enemy surveillance, securing food, ammunition , clothing, and replacements for our casualties was difficult and often lethal. Maybe we’d been there a week. Time had lost its measure in terms of days. Whatever the exact day-count, I could not believe my fate nor really comprehend what had happened. Illogical or unfair as were many circumstances thrust on me by Army life, I had usually been able to unravel some sort of rationale for what had happened. But this was crazy! No one had prepared us to be part of a mass slaughter. I felt used, violated by the Army that had fed, clothed, and cared for me thus far. Where the hell was relief, or maybe a little sympathy? There was to be neither for well over a month. And even then, no sympathy. Gradually, the events of the first day under fire came back to me. If I had attempted to describe what happened right after that terrible day, or really, any earlier than several days later, I would have simply shaken my head, unable to put in words what had befallen us. More violence and death had been unexpectedly compressed into a few moments and hours than any of us had imagined could occur in a lifetime. I had been terrified that first morning, starting down the forbidding slope from the high ground now to our rear. We had not even reached the farm fence a few yards from the crest when the first heavy dose of enemy shelling and machine-gun fire caused us to drop flat and shed onto the snowy crust bulky overcoats, field packs, gas masks, most personal possessions, blankets, everything . Stripped down to our field jackets in the bitter cold, most of us kept our woolen gloves, and thanks to a training reflex, our weapons and ammo. We did not need to be told to hold onto and wear our steel helmets. We had ‘‘hit the ground’’ during training; we now learned and yearned to hug it. Like everyone but our gunners, we mortarmen each carried My Longest Day 35 into battle a dozen three-pound 60mm mortar shells in a canvas bib. As enemy shells struck, the bibs simply wouldn’t let us lie flat enough when we hit the ground. So we twisted the two canvas carrying loops into a single supporting strand, and carried the load with one hand, or over one shoulder, just as we had coming up the hill into position the...