War Stories

JC - What was the 79th’s first order of battle after landing on Utah?

Col. Cross - The 79th was going in to replace the 90th because The 90th had fallen flat on it’s face in combat. They had not been doing very well, so we were moved very rapidly to replace the 90th div. By the time we got in, the war had moved away from Utah beach, so we had to start walking. The first night we went in, we spent the night in an area where the glider tubes had landed, there were crashed gliders all over the place. Kirk and I didn’t remember things the same way. We went in and Kirk said the gliders all had dead bodies in them and that they smelled like hell. But there were no bodies in the gliders. He and I disagreed intensely on that,… he was being very dramatic. But there were no bodies in the gliders because they had all been taken out by then. I went into the gliders myself because I wanted to find a compass, but they had all been stolen. It was the next day when we marched, getting closer to the firing, when one of the funniest things happened to us… we were going by this field on this little French dirt road when all of the sudden all hell broke lose, all the artillery came in and we all hit the dirt. If you ever saw that old Bill Maudlin cartoon with the caption which reads, “I can’t get any lower Willie, me buttons is in the way”, that’s the way we were. Trying to dig a hole to get in, and it wasn’t incoming artillery, it was one of our field artillery battalions firing out, but we didn’t know any better because we had not been in combat before. So we didn’t know the difference between incoming and outgoing artillery. It was with considerable reservation that we got out of our holes and got back on the road to march.

I think it was a couple of days later … one evening we got the word to load up on trucks. We were going some where, we didn’t know where. We were being committed to combat but we didn’t know that until we made it to where we were going. I knew we were getting close because I could see the ricochet of ammunition going through the sky. Then we received orders to unload. We jumped out of the truck and I received further orders to send a squad up this road, next to this little French town, to see if it was occupied or not. I gave [the squad] a radio and said, “When you get into that town let us know if it’s clear. If it is clear, let us know. If it isn’t clear, let us know.” We waited and waited and waited, but they didn’t call. So the squad leader had taken the men in. they had gone into the square of the village, a little square, which is a little park and they had all gone to sleep and had not called us back. Kirk said to me, “I want you to go in there by yourself and find that squad”. I don’t know if Huff ordered him to send me in or who was trying to get me killed but it was either Huff or Kirk. So that’s when, I don’t think I told you before, before we left England, I had gotten a new pair of boots. They were British boots and they had hob-nails on the soles. Hob nails are things that keep you from sliding in the mud. They make noise when you walk on the sidewalk. I was trying to tip toe into this little French town. If you ever tried to tip toe with hob nails on your shoes, you can’t be quiet. I kept thinking, ‘every step I take, I’m dead’. I finally got into this little town and found the squad there sound asleep. I don’t blame them for sleeping because we had been awake for about 72 hours without rest by then.