Past Paris and nearing Belgium

Jack at Belleau Wood, the site
of a major WWI battle.

Although some of the men may have taken a detour to Paris on the sly, the 474^th officially bypassed the capital city, still following the VII Corps as it drove northeast from Melun to Meaux on the Marne River. “There was a canal in Meaux that flowed toward Paris, and our gun section was positioned alongside it,” Jack says. “Some Frenchmen were fishing in the canal, but with little success. I suggested to them that I use some TNT to stun the fish and bring them to the top. I did, and a lot of French people ate very well that day.”

The battalion continued moving along with the 1^st Army, away from Paris but along the route of World War I battles. On the way from Meaux to Soisson, it passed Chateau Thierry, Compiegne and cemeteries from WWI. “We were positioned at the edge of Soisson when someone started a rumor that enemy soldiers were in the tower of the old church near the middle of town,” Jack says. “Everybody and his brother were firing at the tower. When the firing finally stopped, it was discovered there were no enemy soldiers in the church. I think several civilians were killed and not a few wounded, though.”

By Sept. 1, the entire battalion ended up near Hirson, just a few miles from France's border with Belgium. On Sept. 2, shortly after dawn, A Battery spotted its first buzz bombs in the east, traveling west toward England at speeds of 200 to 250 mph. “At first we shot at them,” Jack says. “But if you knocked them down they could do a lot of damage, and they did. It wasn’t too long before we were told not to shoot at them."

Mookie, the littlest Ack-Ack gunner.

Somewhere near the Belgian border, a woman who’d been keeping company with a German officer who’d fled gave the officer’s dog to Jack’s gun crew. The Pomeranian, named Mookie, would stay with them through the remainder of the war, and she and her puppies would go back to the states with various members of the battalion.