Jan 14 Surveyed in Mande St Entiene in morning-all houses burned, cows dead everywhere, flattened like pancakes where G.M.C.S. have run over them. Surv. in Long Champs in afternoon. Big battle on a few thousand yds. off. Wounded brought in on jeeps. Prisoners marched in.
Shelton wounded by mortar frag. Shell hit tank front. (See Lu's diagram of where he was when this happened) Got Purple Heart, but only grazed. Punctured 2 tires on C. Car. (Carters).
Cliff Hope: When we didn't go out on survey in the morning, I sawed wood. Two men from the photographic unit downstairs were seriously wounded the day before when they were taking pictures atop tanks in a battle near Foy. One suffered head injuries, and the other, the one who had taken our pictures only the night before, got it in the back.
One day after going out on the Marche road from Bastogne, we came upon Mane St. Etienne, a thoroughly wrecked town. There were 17th Airborne Division units in town. Equipment, ours and the Germans', was strewn about. Cows and sheep were flattened on the road like so many bearskin rugs.
In the afternoon, I was computer with Bliesmer and Anfuso when we went to Longschamps for several shots. We saw numerous destroyed buildings on the lee side of the hill near the edge of town. a company of tank destroyers passed us on the road to La Roche. One of the destroyers stopped on the crest of a hill.
At about the same time a German anti-tank or mortar shell landed on the other side of the road. Shelton got a small shrapnel wound in his back but no one else was hurt. Bricks and shrapnel fell on Captain Carter's command car, flattening two tires. Many planes were flying overhead and the Germans were sending up a lot of flak. Once again we were lucky to have escaped, and I knew it, but at the moment I was thinking more of Elting's luck. He and Kiser were sent to Wideumont to get the command car's tires and, sure enough, he managed to see Christine again. According to his and Kiser's reports, she was really sweet on him. "Well, I guess I can't have everything," I wrote in my diary, "although, I could still really go for the kid."
That day we heard a rumor that the Huns had slaughtered the citizens of Bande. Years later, I learned details concerning the execution. Bande was the village to which we had retreated on 20 December 1944, after we were ordered to abandon our roadblocks at Champlon. Earlier, at the time of the German retreat across Belgium in September, the Belgian resistance movement (Armee Secrete) ambushed German Troops in the nearby St. Hubert forest. On 24 December troops of the second SS Panzer (the Das Reich) Division were in Bande. With them was a group from the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), The security service of the SS. On Christmas Eve, the SD began rounding up male civilians, interrogating them about the Armee Secrete. Then 32 young men, including four seminary students, were shot, one by one. It was then the villagers remembered the vengeful shouts of the Germans as they left in September; "We'll be back!".
Comments
Post a Comment