Hawaii - James Michener [540]
The Triple Two's and the Texans moved forward with calculating efficiency until they had the Germans in what appeared to be a final rout. Lieutenant Sakagawa kept urging his men to rip the straggling German units with one effective spur: "Remember what they did to us at Cassino." Hundreds of bewildered Germans surrendered to him, asking pitifully, "Have the Japanese finally turned against us too? Like the Italians?" To such questions Goro replied without emotion: "We're Americans. Move through and back." But if he kept his hard face a mask of indifference, secretly he trembled with joy whenever he accepted the surrender of units from Hitler's master race. It was understandable, therefore, that Goro Sakagawa, like his superiors, interpreted the Vosges campaign as the beginning of the end for Hitler. But this was a sad miscalculation, for if the young, untrained Nazi troops sometime faltered, their clever Prussian generals did not. They were now charged with defending the German homeland, and from his epic success at Monte Cassino, Colonel Sep Seigl, now General Seigl, had arrived at the Vosges to organize resistance at that natural bastion. Therefore, if he allowed his rag-tag troops to surrender in panic to the Triple Two's, it was for a reason; and in late October of 1944 this reason became apparent, for on the twenty-fourth of that month General Seigl's troops appeared to collapse in a general rout, retreating helter-skelter through the difficult Vosges terrain; and in so doing they enticed the battle-hungry Texans to rush after them, moving far ahead of American tanks and into the neatest trap of the war.
General Seigl announced the springing of his trap with a gigantic barrage of fire that sealed the bewildered Texans into a pocket of mountains. "We will shoot them off one by one," Seigl ordered, moving his troops forward. "We'll show the Americans what it means to invade German soil." And he swung his prearranged guns into position and began pumping high explosives at the Texan camp. There without food or water or adequate ammunition, the gallant Texans dug in and watched the rim of fire creep constantly closer.
At this point an American journalist coined the phrase the "Lost Battalion," and in Texas radios were kept tuned around the clock. Whole villages listened to agonizing details as the sons of that proud state prepared to die as bravely as their circumstances would permit. A sob echoed across the prairies, and Texans began to shout, "Get our boys out of there! For Christsake, do something!"
Thus what had been intended as respite for the Triple Two suddenly became the dramatic high point of the war. A personal messenger from the Senate warned the Pentagon: "Get those Texans out of there or else." The Pentagon radioed SHAEF: "Effect rescue immediately. Top priority white." SHAEF advised headquarters in Paris, and they wirelessed General McLarney, at the edge of the Vosges. It was he who told Colonel Mark Whipple, "You will penetrate the German ring of firepower and rescue those men. from Texas." Lest there be any misunderstanding, another general flew in from Paris, red-faced and bitter, and he said, "We're going to be crucified if we let those boys die. Get them, goddamn it, get them."
Colonel Whipple summoned Lieutenant Goro Sakagawa and said, "You've got to go up that ridge, Goro. You mustn't come back without them."
"We'll bring 'em out," Goro replied.
As he was about to depart, Mark Whipple took his hand and shook it with that quiet passion that soldiers know on the eve of battle. "This is the end of our road, Goro. The President himself has ordered this one. Win this time, and you win your war."
It was a murderous, hellish mission. A heavy fog enveloped the freezing Vosges Mountains, and no man could look ahead more than fifteen feet. As Baker Company filed into the pre-dawn gloom, each Japanese had to hold onto the field pack of the boy in front, for only in this manner could the unit