The
next day we took off in formation with about a half dozen or so dogfaces* on our
top deck. This one guy kept putting his muddy boots through the hatch in my
face. Finally, after I had complained several times without success, Sarge
‘corrected’ his attitude.
We
took off through a bunch of woods following some tank tracks (they were our own
tanks), and crossed a river courtesy of the Combat Engineers. I understood that
we were going to take a town. It turned out to be Gemund. We went clear around
the town to the south side and then we sat there for a while. We could hear
fighting going on – our guys were in there taking it.
Finally, we got the order to move in. As we entered the town the infantry boys
jumped off and we very slowly entered the town. The purpose was to check out all
the houses on the left side of the street that we were on. The streets were
doggone narrow I tell you!
That
was my introduction to, should I say, World War II. This just about wiped out
most of the day - going house-to-house takes a lot of time. You have to do it
carefully. That night we bivouacked by some kind of a railroad track. I really
don’t know what it was or where we were other than we were well east of Gemund.
*frequently used term for infantry soldiers
