We
got to another town - I think this one was called Brück. There, again, there was
a repeat except we no longer were carrying the dogfaces. We stopped just inside
the town and Sarge told me to get out and help him check houses. The M8 behind
us did the other side of the street and the others went around to the other
side. Some of them took the back sides of the houses in case some Germans tried
to duck out when we came in the front.
My
job was to talk to civilians to see how much information I could get out of
them. I thought, yeah sure, are they going to want to tell us anything? Boy was
I surprised. Most of them were so happy to see us. We knocked on the doors - we
didn’t bang them open, we knocked politely. They opened the doors promptly,
invited us in like we were guests and said there were no soldiers in the house.
We were supposed to check anyway. They took us on a tour of the basement and
upstairs. These were all two-story houses and had attics. We had to check out
the attic.
This
one lady – she looked like an old woman, but I’m sure she wasn’t as old as she
looked. She was kind of dumpy looking. Anyway, she opened up the door and I was
the one standing at the door with my carbine at ready. She just ignored the
carbine, jumped at me and threw her arms around me and gave me a hug. I thought
she was going to break all my ribs. She was saying that the German soldiers had
left and they had been in the house. Of course, we checked it anyway. Not that
we wanted to call her a liar, but orders are orders.
That’s what we did all the way up the street. It was kind of uneventful. There
obviously had been a lot of fighting in the town, but, fortunately, we didn’t
really take part in the actual combat. The gunner stayed in the M8 watching the
windows to see if anybody would stick a rifle out of the window. He would either
use the 30 or 37 on them.
In
addition to asking about remaining soldiers, Sarge wanted me to ask the people
if there were any eggs. We were not supposed to take them from the houses, but
we supposed it was okay to take them from the yards. A lot of these houses had
chickens running around. We couldn’t get any eggs in Gemund or Munstereifel but
in Brük he spotted some chickens and took off looking for eggs. He found some
and disappeared from view where we couldn’t see him (which he’s not supposed to
do). A couple of minutes later he came back and as he rounded the house, slipped
in the mud and rolled over a couple times as though he had been hit. Thinking
Sarge had been shot, the gunner was looking to see where the shot came from. We
had no idea where it might have come from because we hadn’t seen or heard
anything. The German guns didn’t make as much smoke or muzzle flash like ours
do. We were watching all the buildings, and couldn’t see anything. In the
meantime, Sarge climbed up on the M8 and dropped in through the hole. He said,
“I’ve got a problem.” I thought he meant he’d been hit - that he was wounded.
Sarge had stuffed the side pockets (field jackets have large pockets) with the
eggs he had found. Needless to say, when he rolled over, he now had uncooked
scrambled eggs. He said, “I guess this jacket’s no good.” He took off the jacket
and stuffed it under something hanging on the outside of our M8.
Now
Sarge was sitting there without a jacket. I thought I was plenty warm sitting
down well inside. So I offered my jacket because I was nearly his size. The
other two guys were obviously too small. He looked at me and said, “Are you
trying to brownnose me?”
I
said, “No, sir. I’m just sitting in a lot warmer spot than you are. If you’re
going to risk sticking your head out of that hole for us, I think you should at
least have a jacket on.” He put the jacket on.
I
said, “No eggs.”
He
replied, “No eggs.”
In
these situations little humors can go a long way.
