World War II, analyzed!

Incident

Normandy, June 1944

In the Beginning:

My unit, the 821st Tank Destroyer Battalion, landed on Omaha Beech shortly after D-Day after a day-long English Channel voyage on an LST (Landing Ship Tank). Omaha Beech was still being shelled occasionally and was still replete with the detritus of the landing.

We moved up one of the draws, through Formigny, to a field near Longueville. Our vehicles were disbursed along the hedgerow surrounding the field. Only a narrow area along the periphery of the field along the hedgerow had been cleared of mines. We were to spend the night there and were told to dig in. None of us felt like digging foxholes – we felt invulnerable. So we threw our blankets down on the ground near the hedgerow.

Our canons and small arms had been covered with a very heavy grease called Cosmoline to protect them in the event that we had to land in the water. Cosmoline defied removal, it stuck like glue to the weapons and to our fingers. By evening, the removal process was completed. We were ready to take on those Germans!

We dined on “10-in-1 rations”. They were rations for ten men contained in one large carton. The contents were several cans of allegedly edible food, some hardtack biscuits, instant coffee, very dark bittersweet chocolate bars (that I, but no one else, liked) and cigarettes (that was how “they” hooked us). The hardtack biscuits, being inedible, were ignited to heat the coffee – obviously, they would have been a good source of food energy but they made a better fuel.

Night came on. No lights or fires – they would attract mortar or artillery fire. So we bedded down on the ground near the hedgerows and, being exhausted, fell asleep. Shortly, we heard the sound of airplanes and some flares were dropped illuminating the area in an eerie light – any movement on the ground could be seen from the air. No one moved but the bombs fell anyway. How we wished that we had dug foxholes! Instead, we hugged the ground and we prayed (I still believed in a compassionate God at that time). In Army lingo, we were “scared shitless”.

Morning came and, despite the bombing, no one was injured and none of the vehicles were damaged although the center of the field was cratered.

And the evening and the morning were the first day.



Day 2 of our Norman adventure included a march from Longueville through Isigny to a place near the Elle River. We were advised that we would move into position after dark in support of an element of the 29th Infantry Division. In other words, we were going into actual combat.

We had some time to contemplate this before darkness came. We could clearly hear both artillery and small arms fire now. I recall that I sat on the ground leaning against a vehicle wheel contemplating the possibilities awaiting us. I remember looking at the back of my hands and watching the movement of my fingers: Was it possible that this intricate mechanism, me, might soon no longer be? I remembered a line from a war book that I had read: “Death is the common lot of all and the difference between dying today and tomorrow is not much, but we all prefer tomorrow.” Now those words took on real meaning.

As evening came on, tension in the Company was palpable. Everyone felt that moving up was better than this waiting. Finally darkness and we moved into position. The command post (CP) of my platoon was a house; two of our four tank destroyers deployed immediately across the road from the CP and the other two about 100 yards up the road. This time everyone remembered the bombing of the night before and we dug foxholes though no one slept.

Later in the night an enemy patrol probed our line. The whole area exploded with small arms and machine gun firing: tracer bullets streaked across the sky, mortars exploded all around us, the noise was deafening and all of us were scared. One guy with a Thompson submachine gun tripped and, having his hand on the trigger, discharged a burst that just missed my head – I recall that muzzle blast to this day.

Some mortar shells exploded on our position and we heard some yelling close by. Tension was high and everyone fired his weapon in the direction of the yelling. Then things began to quiet down.

When morning came an assessment of the night’s action was made. We had suffered one casualty, a fatality. Apparently, a mortar shell exploded very near the foxhole of Joe S. filling it with smoke. Joe, we surmised, jumped out of his foxhole yelling “Gas”. Being new to combat and trigger happy, when we fired in the direction of the yelling we killed Joe. Our first casualty was as a result of “friendly fire”.


Statistic


“The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.”
(Joseph Stalin)

The tragic death of Joe S. by our “friendly” fire left all of us terribly troubled. Thereafter, events overtook the fact of Joe’s death.

First there was the Morning Report: the document prepared and filed by every US Army unit every morning. The Morning Report filed on the morning after Joe’s death by Company A contained, under the category Killed, Joes’s name, rank and army serial number. Effective with the filing with Battalion of the Morning Report, Joe was no longer a member of our unit, he was detached. The Battalion’s Morning Report, one that was filed with Regimental Headquarters, contained, in addition to Joe’s name, the names of those in Companies B and C who had been killed. And so it went up the line to the highest authority with data on those killed.

The circumstances surrounding Joe’s death or any other death were absorbed in the statistical base. How each death occurred was of no consequence at the “top”. We who were at the “base” might remember but, given the fact that Joe’s death was the first of many deaths to come, the memories tended to fade.

Then there was the Collection Unit. That was the group assigned to pick up the deceased and transport the body back to the graves area. The Collection Unit had a function similar to the supply units: the supply guys loaded their trucks in the rear area and transported the materiel up to the forward area; the Collection Unit loaded their trucks in the forward area and transported their load to the rear area. It was all very simple and systematic.

So the Collection Unit truck appeared with many corpses already stacked in the truck bed. Two GIs grabbed Joe’s dead body, one by the feet and the other by the hands and, reciting 1, 2, 3 while swinging, heaved it on to the truck bed to join the other corpses. Joe now became a member of the Company of the Dead,

So, Joe S. became just a statistic.


Frank Neuwirth