Yank by Ted Ellsworth

Author:Ted Ellsworth [TED ELLSWORTH]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2012-01-27T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Enemy tanks followed by infantry are coming in to St. Genevieve, and we can’t hold them.” We could hear bullets over the radio as a background to the radio operator’s voice.

“You’ve got to hold them. Fight the bastards!” Colonel Murray replied.

From that message on, there was complete radio silence from G Co. in the little village of St. Genevieve on the left flank of the thousand-yard hill. We crawled out of our cramped dugout to the battalion command post in the yard of a ruined stone house, the only building on the hill outside of St. Genevieve. A steady stream of mortar fire was plastering the hill, but the companies were dug in and the shells were falling far over our location. Fifteen minutes later all battalion radio communication was out.

“Ellsworth, get those tanks to G Company.”

We had a platoon of tanks with the battalion, but they had arrived in the night and were going to wait until first light to move in to position. I took Dunaway, my jeep driver, with me and on foot we started in the direction the tanks were harboring. Dunaway stopped me at the edge of a hedgerow, crawled around the end of it, rose up and lunged his bayonet —into the dead body of a horse.

“Don’t frighten me like that, Dunaway.”

“I thought it was a Jerry,” he whispered. “Look at there.”

Two hundred yards from us two red flares were shot toward our C. P., directing light machine gun fire which started immediately.

“Those are Jerries. If they have come this far, they’ve overrun our tanks.” In the vicinity of F Company in the old quarry we heard German burp guns. “This must be serious. We’d better tell the Colonel.”

Murray would not believe me when I said the Nazis were closing in, but he told me to get his blankets. I walked to the dugout and thought perhaps the Colonel was right. Maybe I was frightened down there and didn’t want to look for those tanks of ours. The Germans couldn’t have advanced this quickly since the message from G Company. Coming out of the dugout, I heard idling motors of tanks and loud voices about sixty yards distant. I walked over to them, thinking they were our tanks that had moved when the attack started and were reporting to the battalion Command Post. I wanted to tell the tankers to quiet down or they would give us all away. I wanted to tell them that Jerry was tough and just because they had armor around them was no reason Jerry wouldn’t knock them out. I wanted to tell them I would show them battalion headquarters for which they were searching. Ten yards from the tanks, I stopped. What were our men shouting? The voices were high-pitched and unintelligible. The outline of the tanks were not those of Shermans. But I might be wrong. It was dark.

I woke up. I was surrounded by three Mark IVs and some Jerry foot soldiers. I had walked right among them.

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