"Joe, yestiddy ya saved my life an' I swore I'd pay ya back. Here's my last pair of dry socks."
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"Th' krauts ain't followin' ya so good on 'Lili Marlene' tonight, Joe. Ya think maybe somethin' happened to their tenor?" |
"Them rats! Them dirty, cold-blooded, sore-headed, stinkin' Huns! Them atrocity-committin' skunks ..."
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"Go tell th' boys to line up, Joe. We got fruit juice fer breakfast." |
Fresh, spirited American troops, flushed with victory, are bringing in thousands of hungry, ragged, battle-weary prisoners. (News item) |
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War Stories
JC - So, this would have been about 3 weeks after you landed on Utah Beach?
Col. Cross - I think so. At some point we had to replace a division and we had to take the provisions of the division we were replacing. I don’t remember when that occurred exactly. It must have occurred the night before we went into this little French village. I don’t remember the name of the village either but I wish I could. It was somewhere between Utah Beach and Cherbourg.
On the way to Cherbourg, when we were going to take Ft Deroule, that is to say when we were going into the attack to take the top of Ft Deroule, Charlie Corwin’s platoon and my platoon were the only 2 platoons that were going up on top of the fort. While we were up there, I called Kirk and told him that I needed mortar support. He said, “I don’t know where you are.” I said, “Well get your butt up here because we need mortar support now!” He never showed up.
One of the 1st lessons an Infantryman learns is, ‘never bunch up’. Kirk, Martin and JJ Pelletier, 1st platoon leader, were all bunched up when an artillery shell came in and wounded Leffler and Pelletier. Leffler came back eventually, JJ Pelletier never did. Pelletier was in charge of 1st platoon, Charlie Corwin had the 2nd and I had the 3rd platoon. Charlie was on the left and I was on the right while we were going up the hill to the top of the fort. Getting up there was the biggest problem. There were times when you wish you could have just crawled up under your helmet… just get your whole body inside your helmet.
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