Five Years Five Countries Five Campaigns by Clifford H. Peek Jr

Author:Clifford H. Peek Jr. [Peek, Clifford H. Jr.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781839742316
Google: kzSLzQEACAAJ
Publisher: BURTYRKI Books
Published: 2020-01-15T16:08:47+00:00

IX — Forging the Vosges

“For the rain it raineth every day.”

—Shakespeare

IF BREACHING the German Moselle River line seemed difficult, it soon became dwarfed in our minds by the imposing barrier of the forested Vosges Mountains that lay ahead. Distance measured in miles in our drive up through Southern France was now to be measured in yards. St. Jean du Marche, Lepanges, Herpelmont, Lavaline du Houx, and other French villages at the Vosges foothills soon became familiar landmarks; not merely spots on a map that were sped by on the top of tanks and in trucks and jeeps, but places that were approached on foot, liberated only after overcoming stubborn resistance, and then frequently revisited as we were continually shifted from one section of the front to another, like a tailback trying to pick up yardage by sweeping the ends only to be stopped dead in his tracks by the weight of the opposing team.

For some of us it was a new experience battling it out with the enemy and the terrain yard by yard, but for others it recalled bitter memories of the Italian campaign. The mountains, the mud, and the mine fields were in front of us once again, but, unlike Italy, there was no Rome glittering on the horizon. After one mountain was gained there was nothing ahead but another, always another mountain, higher and more heavily defended than the last. Seldom did our thoughts reach out beyond these confining barriers. Only occasionally did we talk of the Alsace Plain and the Rhine beyond. Even less did the armchair strategists among us discuss the war in broad outlines. Our horizon was a limited one, extending only to the particular valley or forested hill immediately in front of us. More often it stretched only a few hundred yards ahead through a maze of pine trees or to a farmhouse at the edge of a woodline. Ours was an outlook as provincial as the isolated peasants around us, but we were too occupied to be concerned with more than our immediate surroundings. A small strip of land became our sole interest, our life.

We weren’t in the Vosges Mountains long before we realized that the Germans were not our only enemy. Jerry had made an ally of the forested hills and rugged terrain. The high mountain peaks gave him OP’s; the dense forest growth, concealment. Practically every natural advantage was his. It was a terrain friendly to the defender, hostile to the attacker. What defenses nature failed to furnish, Jerry provided for himself. With characteristic efficiency he constructed well dug-in positions. Every rifleman and machine gunner had deep, heavily covered foxholes that looked down on the only lanes of approach open to us. Jerry had always been a master of camouflage, and his dug in positions in the Vosges forests, which made use of every available leaf and pine needle, showed that he had lost none of his technique. Many of us never saw his positions until we were right on top of them, and then it was usually too late.

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