[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.For the action at Brecourt Manor, Compton, Guarnere, and Lorraine received Silver Stars for their role in destroying the German battery that we later discovered was the 6th Battery, 90th German Regimental Artillery.Thirty dead horses in the area confirmed the fact that the battery had been horse-drawn, which was not unusual in the German Army at the time of the war.Bronze Stars were awarded to Toye, Lipton, Malarkey, Ranney, Liebgott, Hendrix, Plesha, Petty and Wynn, all members of our little band.What pleased me most was that every soldier who participated in the assault was duly recognized by senior headquarters.I received the Distinguished Service Cross from Lieutenant General Omar Bradley at a ceremony the following month.Years later, I heard from a junior officer who had come off Utah Beach on the very causeway that had been under fire from the German battery.The officer was the commanding officer of a medical detachment that landed with the fourth wave.Upon landing, this officer found a wounded Captain John Ahearn, the commanding officer of Company C of the 70th Tank Battalion.Ahearn’s tank had been disabled by a land mine.As Ahearn left his tank, he inadvertently stepped on another mine.The medical officer found Ahearn behind a barbed-wire fence, his legs mangled, lying in a mine field, and calling for help.Walking through the mine field, the medic picked up Ahearn, threw him across his shoulders, and carried him to safety.Years later this same medic took time to write me a nice letter in which he admitted that he had always wondered why the artillery fire on the causeway had suddenly stopped so early in the morning.He graciously thanked me and said he would have never made it from the beach had Easy Company not knocked out those guns.That medical officer was Eliot L.Richardson, who later became attorney general in the Nixon administration and who was one of fifteen Americans to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998.Another soldier who noticed that the enemy artillery fire slackened considerably was Sergeant H.G.Nerhood, a platoon sergeant in the 4th Infantry Division, who landed in the second assault wave.Each time he moved his men forward, the artillery fire fell right on top of his platoon.Nerhood’s platoon leader figured there was an enemy forward observer calling down the artillery barrage on his position.He looked in vain to see if he could determine where the observer was hiding.Nerhood recollected, “I just wanted to get the hell out of there.Another barrage came down and my platoon leader was hit.I called for the medic to tend to the lieutenant and ordered the platoon forward.We ran thirty or so yards and the barrage came down again, killing five more men in my platoon.” After another shell exploded so close that it shook the ground on which Nerhood was laying, “Slowly the shelling stopped and we were able to move inland.Later in the day our operations officer told us that some fellows from the parachute infantry had taken out the guns firing on us.”Nerhood seldom discussed the war in his later years, but his grandson persisted until the Normandy veteran finally acquiesced.His grandson recorded the conversation and wrote me in 2005, “My grandfather was on the beach getting his butt kicked.Your men were at the guns, kicking butt and saving his, along with hundreds more.Had you not succeeded, I might not be alive this day to tell you how deeply grateful I am that Easy Company accomplished its mission and saved the lives of a lot of men that day.” H.R.Nerhood and Eliot Richardson were but two soldiers who survived Utah Beach because of the destruction of the Brecourt battery.When we left the field in front of Brecourt Manor, I took my first shot of hard cider.I was thirsty as hell and I needed a lift, and when one of the men made me the offer, I shocked them by accepting.I thought at the time it might slow down my train of thoughts and reactions, but it didn’t.Soon Lieutenant Harry Welsh and Lieutenant Warren Roush came down the road with about thirty more men.I organized them into two platoons and had them stand by until I could direct the armored forces coming from the beach.When the tanks arrived, accompanied by Lewis Nixon, I directed them to the field that had witnessed our baptism of fire.Climbing aboard the lead tank, I pointed out the location of the enemy machine guns to the tank commander.The tankers then swept the hedgerows and the manor house with their.50-caliber and.30-caliber machine guns.Armed with superior firepower, they made quick work of the enemy positions.By mid-afternoon Brecourt was secured and the Germans began withdrawing in the direction of Carentan.For the first time since the action had begun, I took time to reflect upon what Easy Company had accomplished.No longer confined to the trench, I could now walk across the open pasture in front of the manor.I remember very clearly promising myself that someday I would come back and go over this ground when the war was over.As I was making myself that promise, I became conscious that there was somebody behind me.Turning my head to see who was following me, I saw Lipton, with a smile on his face.Probably the same thought was going through his head.Now that the enemy had left the premises, the de Vallavieille family led by Colonel de Vallavieille, a sixty-nine-year-old World War I veteran who had fought at the Marne and Verdun, emerged from Brecourt Manor.Wounded three times during the Great War, Colonel de Vallavieille had already lost two sons to the Germans during the 1940 campaign.Accompanied by his wife and two sons, Michel and Louis, the family was ecstatic at their liberation after four years of living under Nazi occupation.Stepping into the entry of the courtyard, Michel raised his hands over his head, alongside some German soldiers who had remained behind to surrender.Regrettably, an American paratrooper shot Colonel de Vallavieille’s son in the back, either mistaking him for a German soldier or thinking he was a collaborator.Carted off to the nearest aid station, Michel received a blood transfusion and became the first Frenchman evacuated from Utah Beach to England.Michel de Vallavieille not only survived the war, but he later became mayor of Ste.Marie du Mont, as well as the founder of the museum at Utah Beach.He repaid his liberators a hundredfold by honoring their memory.In one of my subsequent visits back to the farm of Louis and Michel de Vallavieille, they asked me if I had seen any civilians in the field on D-Day.I responded, “No,” and they took me to the center of the battlefield and showed me a huge sinkhole, probably forty to fifty feet deep and full of trees and bushes [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]