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Going Through Belgium - September 1944
by
Fred R. Harman
Battery A, 67th FA Bn, 3rd Armored Division
Written in 2012 from personal combat journal
notes of 1944-45
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Our unit had been traveling in a northeasterly
direction through northern France when we got orders to go almost
directly north. We went through Maubeuge, France, which is just
south of the border between France and Belgium. We crossed the
border and almost immediately were stopped by a Volkswagon Beetle
with hand-painted white stars on it. As we prepared to stop,
five or six Belgium civilian "Freedom Fighters" got
out of the car and greeted us with bottles of liquor with the
idea that we had to stop and have a drink with them as our welcome
to Belgium. There was drinking and hand-shaking all around. They
then got back into their car, moved it off the road and let us
proceed. I expect they repeated that performance many times that
day as other units crossed into Belgium.
We proceeded north in Belgium toward the town of Mons. We put
the battery into a firing position and soon found ourselves in
the midst of a lot of German troops. I began to give firing orders
to take targets under fire as my Chiefs of Section started calling
in with additional targets that they could see and I quickly
had six guns firing in six different directions under the command
of their Chief of Section. (For those not familiar with the organization
of an armored division field artillery battery, we had six self-propelled
105mm howitzers, each with a crew of ten men consisting of a
chief of section, a driver, a gunner, and seven cannoneers. I
might add, too, that by the time we got into Belgium, we never
had full crews on any gun because of combat casualties.)
Under the circumstances, I did not have a lot to do except to
observe what was going on. We were not getting any return fire
from the Germans, and some white flags began to appear, so I
gave the command, "Cease Fire". We had been firing
at a column of horse-drawn wagons, a few motor vehicles, and
many foot troops. Soon we got a lot of surrendering Germans.
Nearly all of them turned out to be Volks-troops, (The Peoples
Army) made up of the very old and the very young who were on
their way to man the pillboxes and other fortifications of the
Siegfried Line in Germany. They had little will to fight and
seemed to be glad to surrender. They were herded into open fields
and into make-shift POW enclosures made of wooden stakes and
Engineer tape (a white woven cotton tape about half of an inch
wide). They seemed to be content sitting on the ground waiting
to see what was going to happen next. What happened was that
the MPs came up with 2 and 1/2 ton 6x6s with 1 ton trailers and
hauled them to the rear 100 at a time, 70 standing in the bed
of the truck and 30 in the trailer. Our Division took about 8000
prisoners at Mons which made our job of getting through the Siegfried
line much easier a little over a week later.
Our route across Belgium took us from Mons through Charleroi,
Namur, Huy, Liege, Verviers, and Eupen as we headed for the German
border. In every town people lined both sides of the street,
shaking our hands and wanting to talk to us, usually in French,
broken English, sign language or a combination of all three.
In one town a young man in civilian clothes approached us speaking
perfect English. It turned out he was an American air crew member
who had been shot down, hidden by the Belgians, had been clothed
and given fake papers which identified him as deaf and dumb.
We offered to take him with us and get him started back to his
unit. He said, "Nothing doing. I've been here 15 months,
this is liberation day and I'm staying here until the party is
over." With that he disappeared into the crowd and was gone.
Food was scarce in the larger towns, but this was September and
local fruit was available and we saw people drag crates of apples
out of grocery stores and pass them out to us as we went along.
Bottles of wine were also common gifts.
Belgium was not a continuous town. We were often in the rural
areas where we were welcomed. One morning when we were just getting
moving on the road, a little girl, perhaps nine or ten years
old, climbed up on the side of my halftrack, reaching up to me
as if to hand me something. It was a very old hand-made religious
medal on a hand-made chain, probably one of her most prized possessions.
I tried to give it back to her, but we were moving, she had jumped
off and was gone.
On another occasion, when we were in the country we had one gun
out of service because of a mechanical problem and the motor
section was towing it with our maintenance tank. The gun crew
had hitched rides on other vehicles so there was no one in the
disabled vehicle. It had rained during the night and the tarred
road was slick. When the two tanks, with a combined weight of
something in excess of fifty tons, came to a small but rather
steep hill, the weight was too much for the lead tank to hold
back and both vehicles began to act like a bob sled sliding down
the hill out of control. Our Dispatcher was in the side turret
and bailed out, falling as he hit the road. A couple of farm
women who were nearby picked him up and took him into a house
and started pouring coffee down him.
Meanwhile, the tank diver stuck his hand out his small driver's
window trying to motion for people to get back from the road.
They hadn't seen him before and began to lean over toward the
center of the road to wave back at him. About that time the whole
rig left the road, went through a low stone wall and crunched
into the front of a farmhouse, stopping part way into the farmer's
living room. The farmer had been in the back of the house and
came running to see what happened only to find the front end
of a tank where his front wall used to be. He hollered, "American"
and ran toward the back of the house. The Motor Sergeant, who
had been in the top turret didn't know if he was running to get
a gun or just what. Presently the farmer reappeared with a bottle
and a handful of glasses and proceeded to pour a drink for everybody.
In one of the larger towns the column was stopped . The street
was crowded with people walking around shacking hands with all
of us. We were stopped in front of a butcher shop. The store
had empty meat hooks and very little merchandise. A man, who
turned out to be the store owner, came out to me with a camera,
and with elaborate sign language wanted me to come with him and
stand in front of his store window that had his name painted
on it so he could take a picture. When I got in the right spot
and as he backed up with his camera, it seemed as if all the
girls on the block saw what was happening and wanted to get into
the picture, too. I would liked to see the picture he got because
I doubt very much if I was visible at all.
Many of the country roads were not paved and became very dusty
as the tank tracks chewed up the dirt. We had been on this kind
of road all day. When the column stopped. we were right in front
of a very run-down small house that looked as if it might fall
down at any minute. A little old lady came out and looked at
us. We were so covered with dust that our O.D. uniforms looked
more like we were wearing khakis. We were dust from head to foot.
She turned around and went back into the house. Pretty soon she
came back carrying a large china basin of water and had pretty
needle-work decorated hand towels draped over both arms. With
sign language, she invited us to wash off the dust and dry ourselves
with the fancy hand towels, apologizing all the while for not
having soap to offer us. We did wash our faces and hands but
didn't use her pretty hand towels. We also dug around in our
boxes of ten-in-one rations,which contained bars of soap, and
she did have some soap when we left.
One of the largest towns we went through was Liege. The crowds
were huge. They knew we were coming and had prepared for a big
celebration. They had even printed up a tabloid-sized newspaper
which they passed out as we went through.
From what I have written, it may sound as if our time in Belgium
was one big parade, and to some extent there is quite a bit of
truth to that conclusion, but the war was still going on. The
Germans were putting up resistance and we were firing our guns,
but towns did not seem to be heavily defended, probably because
the Germans were more interested in getting back into Germany
than they were in trying to defend some town in Belgium. We had
entered Belgium on September 2nd or 3rd and crossed the border
into Germany on September 12th. |
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