Maneuvers and mishaps

The aftermath of Operation Tiger, a practice run 6 weeks
before D-Day at Slapton Sands

Various pre-invasion training maneuvers included:¹¹

• Constructing platforms similar to the landing craft that would be used in the invasion, complete with comps, so drivers could practice how to back onto the ramps then drive out into the surf
• Learning how to waterproof the tracks with a rubber substance
• Discovering and disarming booby traps and land mines
• Crawling across obstacle courses as live rounds of ammunition were fired overhead
• Testing gas masks in rooms filled with tear gas
• Boarding an actual LST (landing ship tank), shipping out into the channel and landing in the surf to give drivers a lesson in surfing the half-tracks.
• Practice firing at sleeves towed by airplanes.

The unit was shaping up well, as this passage from The Maverick Outfit attests:

When they first went to an English range they were told by their hosts to be ready when the plane came by and not waste time because gasoline, or “petrol,” was scarce. The plane could not afford to make a run and not have all the guns firing. As it turned out it was the gunners who had to wait for the plane, for as it came by on its first run, there was so much fire power thrown up and the shooting was so accurate, that the sleeve was shot right off the towing line. Then the plane released a second sleeve and a little while later that was shot down. Then the men twiddled their thumbs as the plane landed to get more sleeves. As the men began to realize that their shooting was so good, they also began to realize they were going to be well up front in the big show. This feeling became stronger when, at one of the firing ranges, they were visited by a group of big Army brass. In the midst of them they recognized Lt. Gen. Omar N. Bradley. It was learned many years later that he had personally inspected every outfit that was going to land on D-Day.¹²

Jack remembers seeing Bradley. “He was about 20 yards away from where I was standing,” he says. “And the firing results were just as described. Later we learned they decided which of the two AAA-AW units would go in on Omaha Beach and Utah by the flip of a coin. The one that went in on Omaha was so torn up the Army didn’t even rebuild it.”

As the 474^th completed individual training exercises successfully, it joined other Army and Navy units in a pair of landings called Tiger Exercises. These joint exercises revealed flaws but were costly in lives. Stephen Ambrose in D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II describes what happened:

In the rehearsal for the VII Corps at Utah, Operation Tiger, held on the night of April 27-28 at Slapton Sands, there were some missed schedules resulting in traffic jams and some naval craft arriving late at embarkation points. Much worse, German E-boats slipped through the British destroyer screen and sank two LSTs and damaged six others. Over 749 men were killed and 300 wounded in the explosions or drowned afterward. Lessons were learned that saved lives on D-Day. There had been no rescue craft in the Tiger formation. Naval commanders realized that they would be needed. The men had not been taught how to use their life preservers. After Tiger, they were. It turned out that the British were operating on different radio wavelengths than the Americans, which contributed to the disaster. That was fixed. What could not be so easily fixed was the weather. Visibility had been poor on April 27-28 and the American fighter planes had not shown up.¹³

Although no one from the 474^th was directly involved in the mishap, they were nearby. Captain James Herlihy, commanding officer of C Battery shared this description:

We sailed from Torquay, a resort town on the southern coast of England, on LSTs. I remember being up on the deck the night before the landing, enjoying all the activity and wondering how all of this activity on the water could be kept hidden from all those curious people on the French coast, which really was not all that far off. It must have been about 1 a.m. when I heard a roar of small boat engines. I saw nothing, but then an LST behind us blew up with a roar, and in the glare I saw several 2½ ton trucks rolling end over end into the red haze over the flaming ship. Less than a minute later, the same thing happened to the LST in front of us. The rest of the night was spent waiting for the same things to happen to us, but we landed and took up positions defending the landing area, ammunition dumps and roads leading away from the beach. When the time came for us to be relieved for a new mission inland, our relief had not arrived. I went to the beach master and asked where was D of the 435^th and when would they relieve us and was told, “They won’t be in.” They were on one of the LSTs which had been blown up.¹⁴

“I remember the Tiger exercises, too,” Jack adds. “A German plane woke me up in the middle of the night when he flew real low trying to duck the searchlight.”

The channel voyage on D-Day

The 474^th’s half-tracks left Bridgwater early on the morning of May 8, 1944, and began the all-day ride to the invasion assembly area. They arrived about 5 p.m. and moved into tents that would be their homes for the next few weeks.

Preparation for the invasion stepped up at this point. The half-tracks were waterproofed for their cross-channel journey, guns were made ready, and cartridge belts that had been empty for a year and a half were finally filled. In addition to M-1 rifle ammunition, each man was given two bandoleers, a supply of hand grenades, puke bags, sea-sick pills and toilet paper. The food improved as well, as Jack recalls. “We knew it was getting close when they started giving us steak three meals a day.”

The outfit moved onto LST number 47 in the marshalling area near Dartmouth in the early days of June. For the assault on the beaches, they were attached to the VII Corps of the 1^st Army, under the immediate control of the 11^th AAA group.¹⁵ Capt. Herlihy, who hailed from Beechurst, Long Island, NY, recalled those last few pre-invasion hours:

The plan was for me to precede the battery (with A Battery, as I remember) and reconnoiter for positions before C Battery came in. We rode ot Darmouth with A Battery [Jack’s battery] June 3 and loaded into an English LCT [landing craft tank]…We went up the beautiful Dart River a mile or so and spent a beautiful night at anchor, wondering how much THEY knew. If you remember, for a few days before we left the camp in the marshalling area, Axis Sally kept telling us on the radio that they were waiting for us in France. Naturally, we figured that they already knew what we knew. The next morning we were in an endless column of craft, four wide, that went up and back as far as one could see. Then we spotted similar columns on both flanks. It was staggering and sobering—HOW could THEY miss all this activity?...We had each been issued $4 in French invasion currency, but as the cards and dice came out, the money went from many small piles of $4 each to one or two piles of many, many francs each…At 5:30 a.m. [now June 4] we slipped our moorings and eased down river, passing LST 281, with C Battery aboard but few awake…The countryside was beautiful and soon we met the swell of the channel. Laterthat day we rendezvoused in Torquay with many other craft. The next day [June 5] saw us in the channel, joined now by destroyers, cruisers and battleships…It clouded up rapidly, and a strong wind blew up. Now all the guns were covered up, and the spray reached back to the bridge, all the way astern, as waves broke over the bow. I huddled there with the English lieutenant and wondered what an artilleryman was doing in this clamshell which barely floated even with nobody shooting at us. As the waves grew, water sloshed back and forth on the deck, where the half-tracks were. As the men lined the rails, a trail of mails floated behind us. The thought struck me—if all the ships are like this one the subs need not see us, they could smell our trail. As the day worsened, I felt that practically nobody would be ready for action if it came. I guess the same thought hit others, for an American patrol ship hove to, and an officer yelled over, “D-Day has been postponed 24 hours until 0530 June 6^th.” Several at our rail who were then losing supper volunteered advice on what he could do with his bloody invasion, but he ignored them as if he handled all his invasions this way…At 0430 [June 6] I awoke, put on my shoes and went to the bridge. It was dark, and we were barely moving in a slight swell. But on the horizon, hordes of bombers droned, tremendous bursts of flame and tinted smoke were all over; flack burst and tracers arched all over the sky. It was staggering. Then all the naval craft opened up. You’d see the muzzle flare, the tracer round arch into the coast, a tremendous burst of flame, and finally the roar of the shots would roll across the water. It seemed impossible for life to survive ashore. As dawn came, our fighters strafed targets ashore. We began to head in now, and as we passed in front of a battleship, the old Texas [Ambrose identifies it as the Arizona but Jack remembers it as the Texas, too], she let go a broadside that must have pushed us sideways several feet. Screaming and cursing at their lack of consideration, we inched shoreward. Shore fire must have been effective, for suddenly one of our P-38 twin-hulled fighters dove down and began to lay smoke just off the beach. We could see the enemy tracer creeping up his tail while he held the steady course he had to, in order to make the smoke effective. Finally, he blew up in a tremendous ball of fire, as a second P-38 resumed, and other fighters handled the ack-ack units. We were speechless at the fate of the unknown hero.¹⁶

Col. William A. Stricklen Jr., commanding officer of the 474^th, was nearby in another LCT with his own set of thoughts and concerns as the bombardment continued. He saw a billow of smoke 100 yards away from an LCT that had been hit by German fire. Stricklen helped pull a wounded soldier from the craft out of the water and took him to the dispensary. At 6 a.m., Allied fire subsided and his LCT moved forward again.

Then, about 6,000 yards offshore, Stricklen’s LCT, which carried about 75 people, was hit by enemy fire. Since the colonel had to get to the beach to establish his command post, he stopped a small Navy boat carrying only a crew of two and hitched a ride to shore. They let him out about 75 feet from dry land. At one point he stepped into a shell hole and was submerged, but got out of it. The water was no more than waist high the rest of the way.¹⁷ 


The video included below begins with the channel crossing and ends with the liberation of Paris:

The Utah Beach landing

This passage from The Maverick Outfit best describes what happened next:

A view of Utah Beach from a landing craft on D-Day 

The beach was littered with dead and wounded debris. Stricklen met another soldier and they were proceeding to the sea wall, a concrete structure about 200 yards from the beach. It was over five feet high and paralleled the beach. It was a natural place to establish headquarters. Stricklen and the soldier congratulated each other for getting to shore. The soldier was one and a half yards from the colonel when a piece of shrapnel tore off the soldier’s arm. Stricklen carried his unconscious comrade to an aid station. After, Stricklen set up his command post at the sea wall. He dug a three-and-a-half foot deep foxhole and then excavated an area underneath the sea wall. Stricklen’s units then began arriving. By 8 a.m., 32, or half of the battalion's half-tracks, arrived. The first elements of the battalion ashore on D-Day were reconnaissance parties from A and B Batteries, consisting of the battery commanders and platoon sergeants, who landed from LCVPs [landing craft, vehicle and personnel] At H plus 60 minutes. [The rest of] A and B Batteries landed at H-hour plus four behind the Fourth Infantry Division. They landed with airborne machine gun crews. One platoon of C Battery landed late on D-Day, while the other platoon of C Battery, D Battery and Headquarters Battery landed from LSTs on D plus one.

Jack’s memory varies from this slightly. H-hour was 6:30 a.m., according to Ambrose, so H plus four would have been 10:30 a.m. “I remember something about our particular half-track and 9 a.m.,” Jack says.

Capt. Herlihy picks up from here:

As we approached the shore, I could see GI trucks all over. One, full of jerricans of gasoline, was a roaring fire. It was about 9 a.m. when I saw three bursts in a line about three seconds apart, and admired the clearing of the minefield. But the next burst was in a truck, which went all over the area in pieces, and I had seen my first of many artillery actions in combat. To lighten the load of my jeep in the soft sand, I walked ashore, and although people were all around, I felt alone and naked. Utah Beach was about 300 yards wide, in front of a swamp at least a mile wide, with roads to the interior only eight inches above water.¹⁹

US troops arrive at Utah Beach on D-Day.

Jack adds, “There were some soldiers in foxholes on the beach as we passed by, although they were standing up and not moving, with their helmets tilted forward. There was no lack of incoming mail from the enemy, but it wasn’t landing on the beach next to the ocean. The gun crews kept hidden in the turrets to avoid being hit by enemy fire. To get off the beach, we had to wait until a tank equipped with a bulldozer blade pushed sand up against the wall so that another tank equipped with a 75mm canon could position itself and destroy an anti-tank position nearby; so much for the enemy gun.”

Back to Herlihy:

Although the 4^th Division was by now several miles inland, we were getting considerable artillery fire. We raced for a four-foot sea wall at the crown of the beach, and found that the medics were already lining up dead Americans. I lay beside a tall, dead American and wondered what it was like when he came in. While we enlarged a hole we found, an ammo truck went up near us. We separated then, to look for the 16 gun positions and command posts. Since we had been landed about 1,000 yards south of the intended position, all our beautiful detailed sketches and maps (1 to 5,000 as I remember) were useless. As I roved I found myself all alone, and from the constant diving into holes, I found my carbine jammed with sand. Finally as I passed a tremendous pillbox which had been knocked out by naval gunfire, I heard a noise behind me. It turned out to be a German corpse, dislodged by a burst or by my footsteps, rolling down the side of the pillbox. Collecting my entrails, I moved on.²⁰

Herlihy goes on to say that four Focke-Wulf 190s, German aircraft, strafed them that day. Jack remembers “four came down low and four ended up even lower. One of the pilots bailed out and the paratroopers took out after him.”

If you weren’t a casualty that day, you were witness to many, as Herlihy attests:

On D-Day, about noon, we saw a flight of C-47s head inland a mile or two, and as they slowed for a drop, much 20mm fire burst all over the wings and fuselages of the big, low, lumbering planes. We saw several burn and blow up. Flaming parachutes trailed down as the paratroops tried to escape the massacre. We all cried. As we explored the area inland just behind the swamp, looking for better positions, we followed a dirt road, and at a turn faced a farmhouse. An American squad of 10 or more from the 4^th Division had done the same thing before, but had apparently been mowed down by a machine gun in a window, for they lay in a pile in a ditch next to the road. While I was by the sea wall waiting for Lt. Nevins, a P-47 sputtered overhead in trouble, then flames came from the motor and the pilot bailed out, but his chute never opened. The plane crashed with a great roar and explosion, 75 yards from our command post after turning away at the last minute.²⁰

“I clearly remember the P-47 pilot who was flying very low, his plane’s engine making a very loud noise,” Jack recalls. “He ejected but his chute didn’t open, and both crashed into the swampy flooded area.”

Along about 11 p.m., all of Stricklen’s units had arrived, and not one had been killed. Battalion records for June 7—D-Day Plus One—show another busy day for the boys:

• 9:30 a.m.—B Battery destroyed an enemy plane.
• 10 a.m.—A and B engaged about a half-dozen FW 190s, with A destroying one and B another.
• 6:50 p.m.—A destroyed two Me 109s.
• 6:55 p.m.—B engaged three more and destroyed one.
• 8:35 p.m.—C engaged eight FW 190s in a battle.
• 8:40 p.m.—A hit two out of six FW 190s, while B fought off two more.
• 10 p.m.—A and C engaged eight FW 190s, hitting two of them.

Already the 474^th was gaining a reputation, which would later be confirmed in the Stars and Stripes, a newspaper for soldiers, as “the First in the First.”²¹ 

This video juxtaposes how Utah Beach looks today (including memorials) with actual photos taken on D-Day:

Off the beaches and into the hedgerows

A hedgerow break-through

The Normandy countryside had its beauty and its horror. The ground was hilly and rolling in the western part of the peninsula, with green trees everywhere, not unlike the rich lands of Pennsylvania, from which many of the unit had come. But unlike Pennsylvania, which is generally pleasant in June, the Normandy climate was brisk. On nice days, which were about one in four, the sky was clear, blue and sunny, in spite of a chill. But the rest of the time it was dark, drizzling and windy. Most of the men still wore their winter underwear and sweaters beneath their field jackets.

Both England and Normandy are know for their hedgerows, but there was a difference here, too—one which, according to Ambrose, had not been adequately realized and accounted for in preparations for the invasion. In England, the hedgerows and the fields they enclosed were neatly clipped and cropped. In contrast, the Normandy hedgerows, which protected crops and cattle from ocean winds, were wild and overgrown, and the grass needed cutting.

In most instances, no one could see beyond the field ahead—or about a hundred yards in any direction. In other places, the ground was flooded and swampy with a growth of high, jungle-like grass. The hedgerow itself is a fence made of half earth and half hedge, 3 to 15 feet high or higher. Growing out of the wall of dirt several feet thick were often hedges of bramble, hawthorne, vines and trees.

Winding, narrow Normandy roads were either macadam or gravel and difficult for heavy military traffic, adding to the danger from enemy snipers, who thrived on the hedgerow conditions and harassed the Allies at every bend.

“I, too, remember those hedgerows and small fields, and the many dead cows that stank so much,” Jack says. “Dead enemy soldiers made the smell worse. There were many encounters with enemy planes during the daytime. And, as their inventory of planes kept depleting, they started to fly at night, thereby keeping us from sleeping too soundly.”

American anti-aircraft gunners had an important role to play in the invasion almost immediately.

Ordinarily one would not think of anti-aircraft coming ashore with infantry, but a little bit of everything came ashore, from riflemen to press censors, from combat engineers to chaplains. The ack-ack was given a place in the very early waves because it was felt that the Germans would throw what air strength they had onto the beaches that day. American anti-aircraft was under the command of a general officer, which is a pretty fair indication of how important it was. There was more of a concentration of anti-aircraft guns on the beachhead than was ever concentrated on an equivalent space. The gun positions were plotted on a big wall map in the general’s tent, just as the battle lines were plotted by infantry units. A daily score was kept of the planes shot down; confirmed and probably ones…So far the 474^th underwent five different air raids and engaged a total of 14 enemy aircraft. It received credit for downing seven…The men were quickly learning many things not taught on maneuvers, such as the distinctive “crack” of the German 88, and differences between incoming and outgoing “mail.” They learned to recognize the rising and falling drone of the German airplane motor, and every bomb that was dropped seemed to be aimed right in the middle of the spine…When a gun moved into position, usually in the middle of a field where the view was unobstructed by trees or houses and which afforded what an artillery man would call a good field of fire, some of the crew would begin digging in the track. The gunner would sit in the turret, scanning the skies for any sign of the enemy. Others would dig individual foxholes. Some of the men became quite ingenious at building well-camouflaged holes with roofs to protect the “homeowner” from shrapnel. They would then place twigs and bushes around the hole so it would not be spotted by an infiltrating kraut.²²

On June 25, the 474^th was attached to the 207^th AAA Group to provide automatic weapons defense to the city of Cherbourg. While there were no air attacks, the battalion became involved in ground action because of the fast advance. “In our first position here we discovered a dead American soldier, a medic,” Jack recalls, “lying belly down but headless—only a fragment of the missing part was still attached. It was bad enough seeing dead soldiers for the first time, but this was the first time for this kind of a scene. That scene has stayed with me to this day, and I doubt that I’ll ever be able to forget it.”

Battalion headquarters moved from north of Carentan to five miles southwest of Cherbourg. Meanwhile A Battery made a 61-mile jump from Pont le Abbe to St. Martin Le Greard just south of the city, and a day later three miles farther to a point west of the city near Fort Querqueville. Then, about 3 a.m. on June 28:

T/5 Bolles and PFC Carl Godwin, of Cleveland, OH, both A Battery men, spotted six men walking along the railroad tracks. They slipped the safety off their M-1s and crouching in the underbrush, they waited until the men were within earshot and then shouted out the password, “Wander.” They pulled back the bolts of their Garands. They waited a few seconds and called out again, “Wander.” Bolles and Godwin were anxiously awaiting the proper reply which would be, “Farther.” This was the countersign which, when given, would indicate that the men were friendly. They didn’t want to be trigger-happy and kill Americans. Instead, the men dropped to the ground and began firing on Bolles and Godwin with rifles and burp guns. They returned fire with their M-1s until the rifles jammed and then continued firing with a machine gun until they ran out of ammunition. Then as the enemy persisted, they lobbed hand grenades at the Germans. Still the krauts persisted. Enough of this, thought Godwin and Bolles and they jumped on their M-15s, spun the carriage around and sprayed the Germans with 400 rounds of high-explosive 37mm ammunition. The Germans stopped firing and fled.²³ 

Fort Querqueville surrendered later that morning, around 9 a.m. At the fort, men from the gun crew rounded up 132 Germans, including five officers from the German Army and Air Force. A captured German who spoke broken English later revealed that Bolles and Godwin had stopped a 25-man demolition team on its way into Cherbourg to blow up installations.

July 2, the batteries were moved back closer to the beaches, where it was relatively quiet. A Battery was sent to Houdienville to protect a quartermaster depot. It was during this time—nearly a month after the landing—that the men had their first opportunity to clean up and changes clothes since they left England. Bathing was done in the helmet.

They would take all their old clothes and soak them in a big can of hot water and GI soap, although some simply dipped them in aviation gasoline. This gave them a new, clean set to keep in reserve until the next time they had a chance to take a bath. Usually, they started at the shoulders and washed down as far as possible; then, from the feet, they washed up as far as possible. Lastly, they washed the possible.²⁴

The Fourth of July arrived, but it didn’t seem much like a holiday until the “fireworks” began at twilight.

A rocket sizzled up into the darkening sky and then a machine gun threw up a number of tracers, lighting up the sky. Then one gun after another began firing all along the line. Before it was over, the invasion forces had quite a celebration, winding up with someone shooting down a barrage balloon on the beach. These balloons were known as “Churchill’s Cigars.”²⁵ 

Check out this short clip showing what the hedgerows looked like and how the Allied forces finally broke through them:

On to St. Lo with the VII Corps

Gen. Omar Bradley,
"The Soldier's General"

Gen. Omar Bradley’s plan was to have the VIII Corps move 20 miles down the coast to the cathedral town of Coutances while the VII Corps moved toward St. Lo. With this accomplished, he expected all of his troops to be out of the marshlands and on firm ground where they could launch armor toward Avranches, the entrance to Brittany.

Once again attached to the VII Corps, the 474^th provided its supply line with ack-ack defense and engaged the Luftwaffe in six raids involving nine enemy planes on July 18-19 near St. Jean de Daye. The 474^th received credit for one Cat I and four Cat IIs, with four of them being Me 109s and one a FW 190.

July 15-20 the battalion’s mission was to defend the VII Corps field artillery of the 18^th and 188^th Field Artillery Groups. As the batteries moved toward St. Jean de Daye, they could tell that the 1^st Army was preparing for a big battle, with ordnance depots, hospitals and all manner of supplies spread along either side of the highway. Jack’s battery, A, ended up at La Nicollerie with the 91st Field Artillery.

The buildup they’d seen along the way, they would soon learn, was for a battle referred to as Cobra. Cobra called for a massive air bombardment on a narrow stretch along the Periers-St. Lo highway. Situated near Le Desert, just 3,000 yards way, most of the battalion had front-row seats for the action:

St. Lo

About 9 a.m. some of the men were watching a squadron of P-47s strafe, when they heard a rumble behind them. Turning around they saw three triangular formations of Flying Fortresses, and behind them as far as the eye could see were such formations. They seemed to go all the way back to England, as indeed they did. As the planes droned overhead at 8,000 feet, the men could see the bomb doors open, and then some could see with the naked eye the bombs falling while others watched with field glasses. German shrapnel came up to meet the planes, and the men could hear it whistling down around them as the bombardment went on. It was too entrancing a sight to leave.²⁶ 

The statistics were overwhelming:²⁷

• 1,500 Forts and Liberators led the raid, each carrying 40 to 100 bombs; enough to create 60,000 craters.
• 396 medium and 350 fighter bombs followed with 500-pound general purpose bombs and 260-pound fragmentation bombs.
• Planes bombed the 3.5-mile by 1.5-mile area with 5,000 tons of high-explosive, jellied gasoline and white phosphorous bombs for more than two hours.
• 111 Americans were killed and 490 wounded by “friendly fire” when bombs fell short.

 “I remember that day the American planes dropped the bombs and killed so many American soldiers,” Jack adds. “You never heard such a loud roar when the bombs started down. We didn’t know what to do. We finally ran for a nearby stone farmhouse that was unoccupied, and still we didn’t feel safe.”

From July 28 to July 31, A and B Batteries gave anti-aircraft protection to the 2^nd Armored Command Post, division trains and armored field artillery battalion, and the 62^nd Field Artillery, a 105 outfit. “As the day broke on July 30, hundreds of destroyed vehicles and wagons, innumerable dead horses, and the miscellaneous wreckage of defeat lay scattered over the countryside as the battle of the Cotentin ended,” The Maverick Outfit concludes.²⁸

But it wasn’t over yet. A and B Batteries reverted to battalion control. Some of the men dug in the half-tracks while others prepared foxholes, when just at twilight a lone German plane flew low over the battleground.

As soon as darkness arrived, a second German plane appeared and dropped a series of beautiful flares, which were misleading by their beauty because they always preceded an air raid. Sure enough, within minutes the air was filled with the rumble of many German bombers, and seconds later the dreaded whistle of falling bombs filled the air to be followed by the crash and roar of the explosions. It was like a Fourth of July celebration at the fairgrounds at home, what with the pretty flares and the noise of the explosions, except that everyone had to fight a feeling of panic and desire to get up and run, just run and run and run. But there was no place to run to, except to the nearest foxhole or, if this was filled, to find a little fold in the field. Some panicked and jumped out of the foxhole and ran across the field to a bridge abutment which was made of concrete and afforded more protection. But one couldn’t run as far as he would have liked to, because it was raining death. Most were content to clutch the dirt and didn’t care if several others were on top of him. They didn’t seem heavy…For an hour a dozen bombers combed the area. Through a minor miracle the road cleared of traffic just before the bombing began, and although it was pockmarked by anti-personnel bombs, none of the convoy troops was struck, although A Battery suffered several casualties…And strangely enough, with all their efforts, the Germans missed the bridges.²⁹  

The Three Faces of Jack: Cocky, Determined, Pensive

Although The Maverick Outfit gives the date as July 31, Jack’s Army discharge papers say July 29, and the diary of Dr. Louis Small, who checked the wound the next day, says July 28, this seems to be the same scene Jack describes when he explains how he was wounded. “It was sometime during these events that we were bombed and strafed by enemy planes at night. I was standing behind the half-track while two other fellows were firing at the planes. The Germans had dropped flares, and at times you could catch a reflection on the plane’s body. The enemy dropped several series of anti-personnel bombs, and a small piece of metal made a razor-like cut on my left hand—very superficial. When the medic came around in the morning, he treated it and put me in for a Purple Heart.

“We drove through the area several days later at maybe five miles per hour,” Jack continues, “but the dust hadn’t settled. There were huge craters, wrecked enemy tanks and plenty of junk. A complete elite Panzer division was destroyed. Stories were told of enemy troops walking around without weapons or helmets, wondering where they were.”

From July 20 through Aug. 25, the 474^th’s gun crews engaged the enemy in 11 raids involving 46 planes. Claims were submitted for the destruction of 11 and the possible destruction of six. Officially, the outfit received credit for 5.5 Cat Is and six Cat IIs. While with the 2^nd Armored Division, A and B Batteries had two raids involving seven aircraft, destroying two for sure and two others possibly.³⁰