Citizen Soldiers_ The U.S. Army from the - Stephen E. Ambrose [51]
A little blonde girl dashed out of a house down the street. Later James recalled the red ribbons in her hair. He held his fire. The girl pointed quickly at the I&R position and ran back inside. James tightened his finger on the trigger. In that split second the German officer shouted an order and dove into the ditch. So did his men, on each side of the road.
The ambush ruined, the firefight began. Through the morning, Bouck's men had the Germans pinned down. Without armoured support the German infantry couldn't fire with much effect on the men in the foxholes. By noon the I&R had taken casualties, but no fatalities. Private James kept screaming at Bouck to bring in artillery. Bouck in turn was screaming over the radio. Battalion replied that there were no guns available.
"What shall we do then?" Bouck demanded.
"Hold at all costs."
A second later a bullet hit and destroyed the radio Bouck had been holding. He was unhurt and passed on the order to hold.
Private James was amazed at the German tactics. Their paratroopers kept coming straight down the road, easy targets. "Whoever's ordering that attack," James said, "must be frantic. Nobody in his right mind would send troops into something like this without more fire support." He kept firing his BAR. Germans kept coming. He felt a certain sickness as he cut down the tall, good-looking "kids." The range was so close James could see their faces. He tried to imagine himself firing at movement, not at men.
As the Germans, despite their losses, threatened to overrun the position, James dashed to the jeep and got behind the .50-calibre. Three Germans crawled up close enough to toss grenades at Private Risto Milosevich. Unable to swing the .50-calibre fast enough, James brought up the submachine gun slung around his neck and cut the three Germans down.
By midafternoon there were 400 to 500 bodies in front of the I&R
platoon. Only one American had been killed, although half of the eighteen men were wounded. There was a lull. Bouck said to James, "I want you to take the men who want to go and get out."
"Are you coming?"
"No. I have orders to hold at all costs. I'm staying."
"Then we'll all stay."
An hour later they were both wounded, the platoon out of ammunition. They surrendered and were taken into a cafe set up as a first-aid post. James thought he was dying. He thought of the mothers of the boys he had mowed down and of his own mother. He passed out, was treated by a German doctor. When he came to, a German officer tried to interrogate him but gave it up, leaned over James's stretcher, and whispered in English, "Ami, you and your comrades are brave men."
At midnight the cuckoo clock in the cafe struck. Lieutenant Lyie Bouck, on his stretcher on the floor, turned twenty-one years old. "What a hell of a way to become a man," he mumbled to himself.
BOUCK AND his men had successfully blocked the Lanzerath road against a full strength German battalion for a day, inflicting catastrophic casualties of more than l50 per cent. Such heroism and combat effectiveness could hardly be equalled. But in many ways the I&R
platoon's experience was typical.
In the 99th Division alone there were any number of junior officers, NCOs, and enlisted men who, although new to combat, stood to their guns, to the dismay of the Germans. At Losheimergraben railroad station Captain Neil Brown's Company L, 394th Infantry, held through the day. At one point, when a Tiger tank appeared. Lieutenant Dewey Flankers ran up to it and launched an antitank grenade up the bore of the cannon before it could fire. Scores of unrecorded actions were taken independently, as communication between platoons was poor, between companies and regimental headquarters nonexistent.
All along the front, from Monschau to the north down to Echternach