WWII, a Description of One Day of Combat and Its Aftermath

In early February 1945 I joined Company A, 254^th Regiment of the 63'^d Infantry Division as an infantry replacement after an uneventful Atlantic crossing on the Queen Mary with some 17,000 other scared young replacements. The huge liner was unescorted and did not zigzag, depending on her speed to outrun German submarines. There were not enough of the six-tiered bunks to accommodate the troops so we slept every other night on the deck. The weather was mild and resting on the deck gave us an opportunity to talk of our homes, families and our fear for the uncertain future. Many of us, including me, had not completed basic training. I was just twenty; most of my companions were younger.

We debarked at Greenock in Scotland and were quickly herded onto a troop train bound for Portsmouth, England. The train stopped frequently at main train stations where we were greeted by teams of smiling British women who served us with tea and pastries gleaned, I suppose, from their meager wartime rations.

After two days of a cold, rain soaked tent camp outside Portsmouth we marched to the harbor and boarded landing craft designed to carry tanks for the Channel crossing. There was no cover for the men, We were exposed to heavy rain and the spray from a choppy sea for several hours. Soaked and seasick we finally arrived at Le Havre. The docks at Le Havre had served as German submarine pens and had been repeatedly bombed by the Allied Air Forces. The devastation was complete huge concrete slabs tilted and thrown about like dominoes, steel girders blackened and twisted, all of the buildings razed. Many of the bombs had missed their target and landed in the town causing huge civilian casualties. This was our introduction to the indiscriminate ferocity of war.

We were marched through the ruined town carrying our heavy duffel bags, watched by a few sullen and hostile people remaining in the streets, and crowded aboard another troop train that traveled behind the lines, dropping off replacement troops for the combat divisions as they were needed. We were fortunate; the train consisted of standard French passenger ears with separate compartments connected by a narrow corridor. We were spared the indignity of

transportation in the infamous 40 and 8 cattle cars of the first World War. My father, in the British Army in that conflict, recalled the claustrophobia and stench of those cars with the nominal capacity of eight cows or forty men. He had enlisted in the cavalry at the beginning of the war and, as trench warfare developed, had spent almost two years in the infantry. He was so badly wounded in the second battle of Ypres in

1915 that he was invalided Brian Keller, taken in

the summer '1945

out. My older brother Ken, with the 7 Armored Division, was wounded in the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. My rough estimate of my chances were that in one month of infantry combat, I would have one chance in five of being killed and three chances in five of being wounded. I had no illusions.

I later learned that the division that I would join subsequently had been transported from Marseilles to the Vosges Mountains, a distance of about three hundred miles, in 40 and 8s. They were locked in without food, water or latrines for the entire journey. The officers and men were furious at the French for this despicable treatment of their liberators.

The train chugged slowly southwards, stopping occasionally for the men to relieve themselves beside the tracks. Twice a day, K rations and water were handed out at the stops. The number of troops dwindled as men were withdrawn to replace casualties in the combat units that we were passing. Men tried to sleep in the corridors and baggage racks. The boom of heavy artillery could be heard day and night, adding to the dread and uncertainty of those remaining on the train. The ball of fear in my gut grew until I could barely eat or talk.

I was finally ordered off the train at Sarreguemines, a frontier town in Lorraine about twenty miles south of Saarbrucken, trucked to a replacement depot in a gloomy old German barracks, issued an Ml Garand rifle covered in cosmoline grease and told to clean it. The next day, by truck and foot, I reached Able Company. The dreadful, lonely, impersonal replacement system had done its work and efficiently deposited me into the meat grinder of war that my father had described. I was no longer "alone and afraid in a world I never made" the fear remained but I was

no longer alone. I quickly made friends with Pfc. Paul Celendano, a mortar-man, Sgt. Sol. Bernstein, the leader of the machine gun section and Herb Schneiderman, the Company Commander's runner. Upon joining the company I was assigned to the 60mm. Mortar section as a runner. My job was to relay messages between the mortar section and the rifle platoons and the heavy machine gun section. This task was sometimes accomplished by walkie-talkie radio but usually by simply running from one unit to another with the messages under fire while everyone else was taking cover.

During the battle for the Colmar pocket in January, A Company had suffered severe casualties and was reduced to about one hundred and twenty line troops from the full strength of about two hundred and fifty. Replacements were welcomed and immediately instructed in those grim realities of infantry combat not taught in basic training. We learned to pull the pin on a grenade, count to two and then throw it on the premise that the remaining two seconds before the explosion did not provide the Germans enough time to throw the grenade back. We also learned to watch for and recognize plastic "Schu" mines designed to blow off a foot, S mines which leapt into the air to spray the surroundings with ball bearing sized pellets and trip wires attached to booby traps. Most feared of all the German weapons was the 88mm. Antiaircraft gun that the Germans had adapted to ground warfare using both armor piercing and high explosive, antipersonnel shells. Unlike other artillery and mortar rounds, the 88 gave no incoming warning sounds its velocity was so high that the sound reached your ears after the round had reached its target. The Germans would zero in an 88 on a street corner or other feature that the oncoming troops had to pass then use the artillery piece like a sniper with his rifle, picking off individuals negotiating the obstacle.

A Company was head by Captain Raymond Restani, a tall, gaunt figure, who was pointed out to me by my buddies. Officers and Non-coms wore no insignia of their_. rank except for a barely discernible stencil mark on their helmets because the German tactic was to pick off the leaders first. Restani seemed remote and burdened down by his responsibilities. I thought he was at least forty years old in fact he was in his early twenties. Staff Sergeant Ralph Morales, who knew Restani well, described him in a memoir as follows "Captain Raymond Restani joined our company in early February. 1945. He was a tall, very thin, hawk-faced man who kept very much to himself, spoke little but when he did it was in a soft voice with authority. His demeanor reflected an equanimity that arose from a disciplined composure, an equanimity that seemed to

Text Box: stem from deep reflection. Though I was unable to draw close to Captain Restani he nonetheless impressed me as a man with an incisive mind who was forever sure of himself, who arrived at decisions through calculated reasoning and who was deliberate in his moves. In short, a strategist.

He walked taking lengthy but slow well-modulated strides, his revolver holster swinging limply from an almost hipiess torso. This man was formed to walk and he strode with a true infantryman's grace.

Yet this facade of calmness yielded finally to the pressures of deciding the fate of human lives through his decisions. I recall the nervous, frail structure of this man towards the end, whose speech was barely audible through fatigue and who, like most of us, became almost listless finally yielding to the weight of his responsibilities. Still, however, we trusted in his decisions."

The Company was bivouacked in mud filled dugouts left by the retreating Germans in a forested area called the flinterwald. The dugouts were holes in the soggy ground, about ten feet by ten feet square with a roof of heavy timbers requisitioned from a neighboring village. The ceiling was about five feet from the mud floor so that the GIs could lie down and not stand. up straight. It rained constantly. Within a few days we all had severe colds and fevers but the rule was that a temperature of one hundred and two or more was required before a soldier was sent to the Battalion Aid Station.

We spent our time zeroing our 60mm mortars on structures in the valley below, patrolling at night with great care because of the mines and repetitive guard duty of two hours on and four hours off. The first time I ventured from the dugout to relieve myself I was horrified to see that my butt was a few inches from the prongs of an "S" mine. This called fora hasty elimination and a very careful retreat to the dugout.

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# ! e a The Hill

An intriguing target for our mortars was an outhouse close to a farm building occupied by the Germans. We fired very few mortar shells because that action would draw heavy retaliatory fire from the heavily armed and well dug in enemy. One morning we observed a burly German soldier leave the farm building and enter the outhouse. We decided to launch one mortar shell. To our great surprise the aim was perfect and the outhouse was blown to pieces a moment of great jubilation. The mortar crew was congratulated with remarks such as "You sure blew the out of him!" Then someone said "Poor bastard!" and we fell silent.

Across the heavily mined valley below the dugouts there was a river and town, both called Eschringen. The nearest major town was Ensheim. German troops were dug in, prepared to defend this strategic valley just a few miles to the west of the Siegfried Line.

We were instructed to discard our bayonets, gas masks, sleeping bags and packs. Government issue raincoats were also thrown away because they restricted movement and condensed sweat inside was worse than rain on the outside. We were being prepared for a race to beat the Russians to the Danube once the Siegfried line had been breached.

Our uniforms consisted of long wool underwear, olive drab wool pants and shirts, web belts, field jackets, combat boots, helmet liner and steel helmet. Our feet were constantly wet. To prevent trench foot we carried two pairs of socks, one pair on our feet and the other inside our shirts next to our hearts in order to dry. Our equipment consisted of our weapon, usually an Ml Garand rifle, a canteen and cup, an entrenching tool, grenades and all the ammunition we could carry in our belts and in bandoliers slung across our shoulders like Mexican bandits, a first aid kit consisting of a packet of sulfa powder and an emergency ration consisting of a chocolate bar. In the large pockets of our field jackets we had a toothbrush, C or K rations packets, items of food such as onions that we scrounged from the villagers and other personal items nestled among the grenades. In addition, mortar men carried their mortars, mortar sights and mortar rounds, weighing as much as forty pounds.

In early March, every man in the division received a bellicose letter from the Division Commander that told us "we had received the honor to lead the attack against the Siegfried line for the Seventh Army." This news was not received with great joy. In fact, the Regiment spearheaded the attack and was the first American unit to penetrate the line. The race to the Danube was on. The First battalion including Companies A, B, C and D,

were awarded a Presidential Unit Citation for extraordinary heroism in this action.

The conditions of combat during the last few weeks of the war in Southern Germany, following the breach of the Siegfried Line, were fluid. The Germans were in retreat and unable to organize massive resistance. Nevertheless, they defended almost every little town and resisted every river crossing with a mixture of experienced troops, fanatica SS men and whomever could be mustered in the neighborhood, from the local captain Raymond Restoni, A 254 postman to fourteen-year old youths. The rural, hilly, heavily wooded terrain was ideal for defense. Each objective had to be taken by infantry assault only rarely with armored support. On. the one occasion when we called for air support the P47 Thunderbolt sent to help us strafed our position. Fortunately the pilot's aim was poor. The Germans often inflicted severe casualties and then most of them readily surrendered, secure in the belief that they would receive better treatment from the Americans than the Russians.

Usually, the Company operated as a single unit, attacking and capturing one, two or three villages or small towns each day. Frequently we liberated small slave labor camps and hundreds of forced laborers of a dozen nationalities. Sometimes, when lucky, we slept in captured houses but most of the time we slept on the ground without blankets. The nights were often frosty and rainy. We covered as much as fifteen miles a day on foot. The Company kitchen only once caught up with us to serve a hot meal so we ate packaged C and K rations and eggs and onions scrounged from the farmhouses. The first German phrase we learned was "Gutentag! Haben Sie Eier" (Good day, do you have any eggs). We were filthy, unshaven and worn down by persistent severe diarrhea know as the "_______ " or the "GIs." We were taken off the line for a few hours on one blessed day for a huge, assembly line shower, doused from head to toe with DDT powder and issued clean underwear. Some times we were unable to evacuate our casualties because darkness had fallen and it was impossible to carry them back to the Battalion Aid Station. Some of them died overnight.

Morale was good because we were winning and taking ground at a rapid rate but the constant danger and fatigue gradually sapped our spirits. I think every man had some preconception of how he Would die mine was that I would be shot right between the eyes. I could almost feel the shattering impact of the bullet and bad to

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The Hill . continued from page 9

beat down this terror before every engagement. This fear and the additional burden of responsibility carried by the officers was vividly described in a letter written in July 1945 by Lieutenant Wm. H. Ekberg, one of the rifle platoon leaders.

"The attack phase of combat is the most dangerous, the most interesting and the most nerve wracking. Before the attack I was usually much to busy to think about anything especially what was going to happen to us? It was always just before the jump off that all the thinking was done. All of a sudden it hits like a kick in the stomach. A million thoughts run through my mind or rather they were questions, will I get it today, where will they fire on us, who will get it today and how badly, but the main one, the one that would come again and again was, will I crack? Will the guys see just how scared I really was? The order for the move would come and off we would go. The scouts in front moving as in a trance, kinda hunched over as if expecting to be hit at any time...Then the initial burst of fire, everyone hit the ground, then the terror of being killed welled up inside of me, a blind, unreasoning terror that made me want to find a hole and hide.. Instinctively I would look to the right and left for escape, protection, what have you. Then I would see it, they were looking to me for guidance, they were waiting for me to give a command, to do something. Then another fear would assail me. Would they see the terror in my eyes, would they comprehend the fear that cramped my stomach, choked my breath and tied my tongue? In that few seconds the old adage of the platoon leader would come back do something even if it is wrong! But what to do? The textbook said fire and maneuver, that meant machine guns forward and the support squad to the left 'cause we were always on the left and that was the only flank open for maneuver. Just a few steps and it. made all the difference in the world. To have someone in front of you was enough to give the illusion of safety and that's all I needed. Then the first surrender and the crack of the enemy. The first foothold on the town and the cleanup. Then the relaxing of tight muscles and the setting up of the defense. Then the routine all over again sweating it out, when will we have to move out again, how long before we would be relieved, when will I get it?"

Ingelfingen sits in a deep valley formed by the Kocher River. The battalion encountered little resistance capturing the town; it had been bombed and shelled severely. German bodies littered the streets. Across the river, on the south bank is a very steep hill from which the Germans could observe and command the area for miles. They concealed 88mm. Artillery, mortars and

heavy machine guns at the summit all zeroed^'inon the only bridge across the river. On the slope, hidden by bushes and small buildings, German infantry were dug in. On April 11, 1945 Able Company was ordered to capture the hill.

The last span of the stone bridge had been blown up but was it possible for one or two men at a time to scramble across the rubble knee deep in water? The first two men of Company A crossed safely then the Germans opened fire. The water was lashed to foam by small arms fire, direct hits by 88s pulverized the remaining stonework and mortar shells exploded all around sending lethal shrapnel in all directions. From then on, each man crossing was risking his life.

A few at a time, at irregular intervals, the rest of Company A crossed the bridge. The intense fire did not slacken. I remember, when my turn came, I slung my rifle over my shoulder, hitched up my load of 60 mm. Mortar shells and moved forward, focusing entirely on the placement of my feet on the slippery stones. At times like this, faced with the high probability of death or injury, a soldier assumes a peculiarly detached attitude to the danger and concentrates on moving ahead. I crossed to the muddy bank, trying to ignore the concussions, the air ripped by passing bullets, the pattering of shrapnel on my helmet and finally found cover in a muddy ditch. The fear gripped me and I hugged the ground like a lover, as closely as I could and wished that I could climb bodily into my helmet.

Able Company suffered several casualties crossing the river. As the rifle platoons organized on the bank for the assault on the hill the enemy small arms fire intensified. Mortar fire fell directly on the assembling troops. Captain Raymond Restani, the company commander, was blown off his feet by the explosion of a mortar shell but rose and directed his men forward to a small gully, a few feet deep that offered some protection. The riflemen, accompanied by the machine gun section traversed the hill, rooting out the defenders as they climbed.

For some reason, our heavy mortars and artillery did not fire in support of the advancing troops, The withering German fire from the crest of the hill was unopposed.

The Mortar Section, unable to fire in support of the riflemen because of the close range and there being no discernible targets, started up the hill as part of the skirmish line. We were dead tired. Carrying the mortars and heavy mortar ammunition we stumbled ahead. Rifle bullets and occasional bursts of machine gun fire fell around us but none of us were hit. The rest of the Company were out of sight to our left and right concealed by trees and bushes although we could hear their heavy firing and occasional grenade explosions.

We struggled up the hill, alternately hitting the ground and rushing forward, firing our M1 Garand rifles from the hip every place that might conceal an enemy. About half way up the hill our small group came upon a summer cottage with a sun room enclosed on three sides by large windows. We entered cautiously, expecting to find concealed German soldiers or booby traps. No soldiers were there but in a cot in the sun room was a young woman, lying on her back with covers pulled up to her neck. She was beautiful and her blonde hair framed her face in the bright spring sunlight. She did not move; she was dead. We pulled the covers down to find that she was naked and had been shot under her left breast with a small caliber weapon, There were no powder burns and no sign of a weapon. We covered her and left, wondering who had killed her and why. Was it a spurned lover or was it a case of "Godderdammerung" our cause is lost therefore everyone must die.

The infantry technique, developed by experience, for attacking a concealed enemy involved each rifleman advancing to whatever cover he could find while being covered by the fire of his buddies and, when possible, by fire from the 60mm mortars and heavy machine guns. Thus, incrementally, we advanced without exposing a number of targets to the enemy and maintained a curtain of fire to keep the enemies heads down. When we reached within grenade throwing distance of the enemy, about fifty feet, we threw grenades and, immediately after the explosions, the group charged yelling "Aha, San Antone!" This aggressive behavior always seemed to unnerve the Germans. Nobody in the company could explain where the San Antone battle cry had come from. The Division was not organized in or trained in Texas.

The hill at Ingelfingen offered very little cover. The spring grass and flowers were only ankle deep, the incline was steep. When we took cover, we found it very difficult to fire uphill from the prone position. Our loads of mortars and ammunition further hampered us. We struggled upwards for several hours before our small group came close to the crest of the hill. At that time, we heard the explosions of 81mm mortar rounds on the crest we finally had some artillery support. As we struggled to regain our breath the German fire slackened and then ceased.

After a few minutes, Pfc. Herb Schneiderman, whose former assignment as a scout was the most dangerous in the infantry, joined us. Herb is a short man with a commanding voice. Furthermore be spoke German and now acted as Captain Restani's liaison and messenger. When the occasion demanded it, he would shout in a booming voice to the German trops "Kommen Sie bier mit der Hande hoch! (Come here

with your hands up). Tall and sometimes arrogant Germans would surrender meekly to this short Jewish man, a source of great satisfaction to us.

Herb looked in total shock. Captain Restani had sent him down the hill, after the 81mm mortar fire had finally started to support us, to order D Company to shift the fire to the left. The incoming rounds were falling dangerously close to our own troops. On his way down, Herbie had to avoid several groups of Germans who had infiltrated our rear. When he reached D Company he was so exhausted and unnerved that he forgot his instructions. Fortunately, he guessed correctly and the mortar fire was shifted to the left.

Herb's recollection of finding Sol is "A few of us had just arrived from climbing a small incline. Immediately, we came upon two GI's lying wounded. One, a man named Munger, was rolling around and screaming in pain. The other man was Sol. He lay there quietly, looking up at us blankly, perhaps in shock. Taking in the rest of the scene, we heard this white haired man about forty years old, stocky, red-faced. He wore a large white "Crusader" style top emblazoned with a big red cross. He was on his knees, punching the ground with one fist and half weeping and half shouting for all the violence around him a German Sanitatsmann (equivalent to a medic).Abit later I came across Sgt. Larry McGowan. I told him about Sol. McGowan sat down against a nearby tree and began sobbing, his face in his hands. He sobbed. I don't recall anything he said but he was taking the sad news hard. He was mortally wounded the next afternoon, while we were storming yet another hamlet on a hill."

Bernstein was in charge of the machine gun section of our platoon. He was well-built, handsome and possessed self-confidence and steadiness under fire well beyond his, perhaps, twenty years. All of us liked and respected him and considered him invulnerable. I had a special bond with him because he, like me, had volunteered to the army from college where we were safe from the draft he, a pre-med student at NYU and I, an engineering student at Columbia. Previously, as a timid fourteen year old immigrant from England in 1939, thrust into the hurly burly of a New York high school, I had felt abandoned. The Jewish kids rescued me even though I was a goy. They supported me, welcomed me into their homes, introduced me to the cultural life of the city and gave me friendship. Sol was from this group of kindly Brooklyn Jews.

While we were trying to assimilate the news of Sol's death there was a rustling in some nearby bushes. We heard voices shouting "Kamerald! Kamerad!." Three German soldiers emerged with their hands raised above their heads. We made them throw away their helmets and checked them for weapons. They smiled

ingratiatingly and immediately asked for cigarettes. The sheer effrontery of this request in the light of the recent and completely unnecessary slaughter of our comrades astonished and angered us. My friend Paul Celendano and I were infuriated. For the only time in my life I wanted to kill in cold blood. I pointed my rifle at them and was ready to fire but somehow restrained the impulse. The "Krauts" were sent unescorted and unharmed to the rear.

Able Company continued to fight through Southern Germany, day after day, taking heavy casualties. On April 25^th, under heavy fire, the Company attacked across another bridge at Leipheim on the Danube. The bridge was a 250-foot long concrete structure. Fearing that the bridge had been mind, the supporting tanks were ordered not to cross. The first platoon, reduced to about twenty men, raced across the span under heavy machine gun and sniper fire, ripping out wires as they ran. They reached the farther bank safely and then the Germans blew the bridge. The rest of the Company crossed after combat engineers prepared a pathway across the wreckage. Able Company had secured a bridgehead on the Danube for the Seventh Army but was temporarily isolated from support until the bridge could be repaired. After capturing the town and setting up defensive positions A Company, reinforced by B Company, waited for a counterattack. Just after nightfall, the Germans stormed the town at several points. They were repulsed, suffering enormous casualties.

The next day, the bone weary men of Able Company were relieved, withdrawn from the line, loaded on the workhorse 6X6 trucks and taken to garrison the lovely, undamaged medieval town of Rothenburg. The war in Germany ended on May 7, 1945.

THE AFTERMATH

Following the Japanese surrender on August 14, 1945 the 63" Infantry Division was demobilized and those who did not qualify in length of service to return home were assigned to various service units in occupation. I was assigned to the 52" Ordnance Group and assumed the durties of Information and Education Officer; an elevated title for a mere Private First Class and granted -to me, I presume, on the basis that I was a college boy. This was good duty. In addition to arranging an occasional lecture, my buddies and I put out a weekly newspaper called "The Echelon." We did all the reporting, original writing, photography and artwork. We found an old linotype machine in neighboring Mannheim and liberated a supply of fine paper for the weekly run. We had our own Jeep and press passes that permitted us to wander anywhere in the American Zone, including Berlin.

For the issue of the Echelon of January 14, 1946, I

wrote a poem entitled "Thoughts on the Hill at Ingelfingen." For a long time I had been thinking of the waste of human life and human potential caused by the fanatical German resistance in the last months of the war. None of us could understand the point of unnecessarily killing thousands of GIs in the name of a hopelessly lost cause. Furthermore, we could not grasp the honor involved in taking a fairly safe defensive position in order to slaughter attacking Americans, then surrendering before the danger became too imminent with the expectation of good treatment from those whom they had been trying to kill. Perhaps the overdeveloped German respect for authority caused them to carry out their orders and having done so by killing some Americans, they believed that they could surrender with honor. The death of Sla Bernstein exemplified this anomaly to me and became the focus of the poem.

Not being confident of my abilities as a poet, I discussed the poem with my buddies and we decided to print it without an attribution.

I was discharged in July of 1946 and returned to Columbia College. I tried to put the war behind me, joined no veteran's organization and did not maintain contact with any of my army friends.

In 1993, I received a letter from Herb Schneiderman, then a journalist in Washington DC, who had kept in contact with Captain Restani (now Colonel Retired). Col. Restani had sent a Zerox of the poem to Herb asking peremptorily "Who wrote this poem the author obviously was with us at Ingelfingen." He had chanced upon a copy while in occupation in Berlin in 1946 and had wondered who had written it. Upon retiring Col. Restani decided to trace the unknown poet and wrote Herb asking for his help. Herb wrote that he cried after reading the poem. Although the poem had no author listed, Herb spotted my name on an adjoining column. His letter reached me through the Columbia College Alumni Bureau.

I was happy to receive a letter from an old buddy ad I too was reduced to tears on reading the poem. Long suppressed and bitter memories returned to me. I puzzled over the poem for several days before I came to the sudden and jolting realization that I was the author. This memory also had been buried in my unconscious.

Since that time I have been in contact with Colonel Restani, Herb Schneiderman and Paul Celendano all are retired but in fair health. I have joined the 63`^' Division Association that, in spite of continuing mortality, still has a thriving membership.

Colonel Restani has supplied me with many details about the battle for the hill at Ingelfingen. The company casualty report for that day reported three dead and thirteen wounded a low figure considering y

36 -- May 2006 the intensity of the enemy resistance by not low in view of the fact that similar casualty numbers continued day after day until the under-strength company was withdrawn from combat. The next day, with the help of B Company, a large German counterattack was repulsed but with several more of our troops Willed and wounded.

Text Box: Among the memorabilia from Colonel Restani was a copy of a letter from 1" Lieutenant Elmer S. McKee, the Battalion Oerations Officer to his wife, written on October 8, 1945, in which he described the battle. McKee wrote that P Company had their 81mm mortars in position at Ingelfingen to give support to A Company. However, in order for mortars and artillery to fire in support there must be a forward observer with the rifle company. McKee discovered the forward observer assigned to A Company skulking in Ingelfingen while the

company stormed the hill. Furious, McKee ordered this lieutenant to Brian Keller and his wife, Carlene, taken in 2004

joinACompany. Ironically, as he ascended the hill he was captured and disarmed by three German stragglers. He spoke enough German to convince his captors that they were surrounded and that they would be well treated if they surrendered. Upon reaching Captain Restani, he delivered his captors and then passed out in a dead faint. This lieutenant was later assigned to non-combat duty.

McKee's letter explained why A Company received no mortar or artillery support until very late in the battle. Perhaps the casualties would have been lighter if this forward observer had not been derelict in his duties. Perhaps Sol Bernstein would be alive.

Every man I have contacted or whose letters I have read, had a different perspective of this single day of combat on the hill above Ingelfingen. It is like a piece of pottery that has been shattered into many pieces; each participant has his shard of memory, we cannot reassemble the whole but each shard represents a sharp and bitter experience. My memory of the events is summed up in the poem.

(Editors note: A version of this memoir was published in the March 2005 issue of World War II Magazine under the title of "Slaughter at Ingelfingen. ')

Thoughts on the Hill at Ingelfingen

Able Company took the hill, across the river and the wrecked bridge.

The cost was not great in the mathematics of war...

Eighty eights, six per minute, rearranged the debris spanning the stream.

We scuttled across with careful timing hoping the Germans would not change their timetable of death.

60, 81 and 105, prepared our way.

The hill seemed unaffected by their petty fury.

It was too big and too old...................................................................

Ack Ack burst over our heads as on the other side of the river we started to climb.

The water lashed by the German fire, as if by a Spring rain. Unseen, unnumbered the enemy filled the air with a lace of fire

We walked, it was too steep to run.

Firing in blind rage at the target no more distinct than a direction.

The mortarmen with fifty pounds on their backs not caring about the enemy.

Intent only on getting to the summit so that they could fire back.

There is joy and release from terrible frustration in firing back.

Anger arises out of the futility and tiredness only when the soldier must take it without dishing it out.

Then he forgets his fear and becomes truly brave.

To be pinned down is to know the hopelessness of frustration.

And out of it comes anger..............................................................

Conscious only of our straining hearts and grinding pain in back and legs.

We reach the summit.

And knew..........................................................................................

An Infantry Company in combat is a single being. When one member is hurt the others feel the pain.. Bernie was dead, we knew yet were unsure.

We dared not trust our fraternal instinct.

No one told us........ But we knew .................................................

Then those who had been with him spoke softly.

In lifeless voices.

A burst of machine-gun slugs in the belly.

He said no word...what was there to say if he had been able? "Farewell Kind World"

Celly rested on a log and sobbed.

He had known Bernie in school... knew his mother. We left him alone with his grief

Bernie was a Jewish boy from Brooklyn.

AGCT score high.

Planned to be a doctor.

Had a full life.

Wanted more....................................................................................

The cost was small in the mathematics of war.

The cost in human possibilities great. Doctor....service....life....living.

Gone with the pressure of a finger.

Brian Keller

January 14, 1946