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SCHERPENSEEL
by
Robert F. Kauffman
"D" Co, 36th Armored Infantry Regiment, 3AD
Written in 2004

  The brooding skies of November were busy with swiftly moving clouds that hurried over the hills surrounding the village of Schevenhutte.

Most of our platoon was quartered in a house close by a swimming pool. The pool had been drained and had a layer of wet autumn leaves pasted to its sloping floor. Extending from the house and continuing along most of the one side of the pool was a long roofed porch. Several of us preferred the meager shelter of the porch to the noisy confusion of the house.

On the other side of the pool was a small stream that flowed underneath a bridge and causeway that joined the house to the main roadway. Between the stream and the narrow roadway was an apron of grass where a battery of 155 mm. howitzers stood silently. Our half-tracks were parked at prudent intervals, hugging the base of a steep wooded slope that rose sharply from the roadway.

The living room of the house was the focal point for the activities during those several days of waiting. The room had the odd combination of rather fine furniture that was almost smothered beneath the dreary olive drab clutter of clothing and equipment of an Armored Infantry company. Elegant chairs had field jackets and cartridge belts draped over their backs, with empty canteen covers and entrenching tools dangling from them.

A beautiful sofa strained beneath the weight of several men enjoying its momentary and uncommon comfort. Blanket rolls were stuffed between the legs of chairs and tables, ready to be unfurled at night on any spot large enough to accommodate the body of a man.

An upright piano had its top littered with canteens, mess kits, and discarded K-ration boxes, all conspiring to diminish the dignity of the venerable instrument. A small table was almost obscured by a large box of 10 in 1 rations that had been hastily torn open and already half emptied of its contents. And in the corner were stacked several M-1 rifles with a solitary BAR standing awkwardly among them.

Men stood, sat and squatted, filling every inch of space. Some were drinking coffee or hot chocolate, others were munching on food from the easily accessible 10 in 1 ration box. Simultaneously, there were at least half dozen conversations volleying back and forth, each conversation elbowing its way through the crowded noise of the smoke filled room. All of this bedlam was surrounded by four walls covered with a gaudy, blue and red wallpaper that made the scene an absurd cacophony of sound and color.

The few of us who preferred the lesser shelter of the roofed porch were at least spared some of the consequences of the overcrowded house. We could prepare a meal without having a mess kit kicked across the floor. We could drink a cup of coffee without some errant elbow splashing the hot beverage into our face. It also meant sleeping without fear of being stomped by a combat boot as some sleepy soldier groped his way to the door to attend to a personal emergency. The quiet roofed porch was also ideal for letter writing. Finally, writing letters with substance instead of those perfunctorily scrawled V-mail letters that said little except that we were still alive.

The letters written and the letters received were that sacred umbilical cord to home and sanity that helped us to maintain our mental and spiritual equilibrium. That time of rest also helped to reaffirm our humanity.

One morning I decided to go to the half-track to retrieve something I needed. As I crossed the bridge, I noticed intense activity around the howitzers. Their muzzles were elevated so sharply that it appeared they were preparing some celestial salute rather then firing on some distant target.

By the time I reached the half-track, which was forward of the battery, one of the guns fired, almost lifting me out of my boots. The thunderous reverberations escalated to a deafening roar as the other guns joined in the bombardment.

The firing of the guns was the signal for us to be alerted to prepare to move out. It didn't take long to gather our few pieces of equipment and mount our half-tracks. The sound of shouts as orders were bellowed out filled the intervals between the battery firings.

Within a short time we were making our way through the rubble filled streets of Schevenhutte and soon emerged from the shelter of the rugged hills where we had been waiting. We were greeted with the sound of an enormous, area-wide artillery barrage. Hundreds of other guns were firing in concert with that lonely battery that had awakened us so rudely by the swimming pool. In the distance could be heard the unmistakable resonant sound of the "Long Toms", other artillery pieces, adding their deep throated voices to the choir of misery already inflicting its deadly damage on the waiting German troops.

Above the low overcast skies we could hear the drone of the engines of the heavy bombers. The area sparkled with the aluminum chaff that had been dropped to confuse the enemy Radar in advance of the "heavies".

In the distance, under the low overcast skies, we could see swarms of medium bombers heading for enemy targets. Darting here and there, sometimes disappearing into the cloud cover were American fighter planes free-lancing their way through the skies looking for enemy planes or targets of opportunity.

The snail-like stop and go movement of the column was always frustrating and maddening. Jesting and other conversation within the half-track, after a while began to wear thin. The anticipation, the forebodings and the fears began taking their toll with an uneasy silence descending on the vehicle.
The column finally eased off the roadway and into a large open field, apparently a sugar beet field. The half-tracks began coiling, but within seconds, an artillery barrage of unusual ferocity came slamming in all around us.

My position in the half-track was the responsibility of manning the water cooled 30 caliber machine gun mounted on the left rear of the vehicle. Because of my position on the machine gun, I was also responsible for opening the heavy door at the rear of the 'track'. I was constantly teased about getting the door open quickly in the event of an emergency, since the latch was quite cumbersome. When the artillery barrage came in, I had the door open in a split second, however, that must not have been fast enough since almost everyone bailed out over the sides of the half-track. However, once we hit the ground and began slogging through the mud, there was really no place to go for cover since it was a large, flat, open field.

After the barrage ended and everyone regathered, we were led to a distant hedgerow where we were instructed to dig in. Our platoon leader assigned a new man to me as a partner. He was so new that you could smell him with all of his new gear and equipment. This new partner interrogated me quite thoroughly. When he found out that I had already been wounded in Normandy and had just returned to the unit in mid September, he became painfully subservient.

He insisted that since he had no combat experience at all, it was only fair that he should do the digging in order to pay his dues. Since I was only a PFC, deference of any sort was unheard of. I agreed to the arrangement and he began digging very enthusiastically. While enjoying my new found role as a spectator to this miserable and arduous task, I noticed, after a while that he had run into difficulty, obviously striking a rock. I ordered him to vacate the hole.

Getting down on my hands and knees, I began clawing vigorously at the earth in order to uncover the obstacle. Unfortunately, it was not a rock! Rather, it was a large, shiny, very cylindrical object, in fact, a large unexploded shell. With one fell swoop, we grabbed one armful of equipment and fled the scene, expecting an irruption behind us of Vesuvian proportions at any moment.

Fortunately, at the same time, our platoon leader ordered everyone back to the half-tracks. Our vehicle began churning through the muddy field heading for the narrow opening that led onto the roadway. Behind us we left the eerie circles and scrolls in the mud of what had been a large, orderly field of unharvested sugar beets.

As dusk approached, we could see ahead of us the outline of the village of Werth. We approached the village from its northern edge. As we made a right turn down the village street, we passed a Sherman tank on fire, outlined against the horizon, burning briskly and casting a plume of black smoke into the November air.

Werth was situated on the slope of high ground with a panoramic view overlooking a large open field of pasture and sugar beets. The village of Scherpenseel lay to our right front and the town of Hastenrath lay ahead of us at the distant end of the large, open field.

As we proceeded down the street, our half-tracks were positioned at intervals, one at a time, and our platoon was assigned to houses squad by squad. Pop Waters, our platoon Sergeant, had finished placing the squads and was returning from quite a distance down the street, when suddenly, another heavy artillery barrage came crashing into our position. Shells exploded furiously all along the street.

One moment, before us, we saw Pop Waters, then a shell exploded in the road in front of him and there was nothing but smoke and debris. A split second later Pop emerged through the smoke and debris, not having missed a step, wearing his 'tanker suit', his wool knit cap and carrying his "Tommy Gun". Pop had nothing but contempt for the steel helmet and showed an air of disdain as he continued through the maelstrom of steel, determined that nothing should deter him from his appointed duties.

By this time, darkness had fallen and our squad guard roster for the night had already been made up when the automatic and small arms fire erupted. There was a counter-attack under way. We could barely make out some of the shadowy figures coming up through the cemetery that was located in front of our house. The artillery barrage had probably set the stage for this attack. Everyone was pouring fire from the windows as well as from the half-tracks parked in the street below our second floor position. We saw one man go down. He must have been caught by the slugs from the 50 caliber machine gun mounted in the ring mount of the half-track. His body bounced around pathetically like a rag doll.

The attacking force must have been a small one because the effort was soon broken and our position opposite the cemetery was again secure. And as we settled down for our routine of guard duty and sleeping, one new man who had just joined us from the Air Corps., casually asked where his bed was. We all looked at him in wonderment and with quite some amusement. We simply pointed to the floor and told him to pick his spot. It was as simple as that.

Information as to what was going on was usually sparse and found out piecemeal. We did know that Werth had been taken earlier by Colonel Lovelady's men. In the process of the attack, tanks of I Co. of the 33 Regiment had broken out into the large open field and attacked toward Hastenrath, suffering heavy casualties. The Armored Infantry unit assigned to follow the tanks for some reason, failed to do so. That left the few surviving tanks and their crews isolated near the outer buildings of Scherpenseel and Hastenrath.

It had been rumored during the night that our Company Commander had been ordered to march us through Scherpenseel and then to join the remnant of the attacking force in Hastenrath, which was immediately adjacent to Scherpenseel. It was reported that our C.O. had refused to do so, since there was no knowledge that Scherpenseel had indeed been cleared, which, in fact it was not.

November 17th was a rather dreary, unpleasant day when we left our position in Werth. The Infantry formed up with the tanks and began moving into the attack. There was approximately 500 yards of open ground between the last building in Werth and the first building in Scherpenseel. As soon as the column emerged from the shelter of the buildings of Werth, we were greeted with an unprecedented volume of fire. It seemed to come from all directions; to our right of the roadway was a low ridge that was heavily defended with rifle and automatic weapons and we could hear the muffled sound of mortars behind them.

From our left we could actually see the white hot slugs from guns or tanks throwing direct fire, along with the piercing screams that high velocity guns produced, as they tried to smash our tank force. Incoming artillery shells were sending up spouts of mud and field debris all around us.

Ross Overholt, a good friend of mine, was a few feet behind me in the column. I came to believe that it is true that you don't hear the shell that will get you, because the ground suddenly erupted in an embankment beside us, showering us with cascades of mud. The shell that landed between us was a dud! We just looked at each other with stunned disbelief. The heavy period of rain that had preceded the attack had made the ground so soft that duds were not an altogether unusual occurrence.

In our extremely exposed situation and the intensity of the fire increasing as the column crept slowly along the roadway, the shelter of the buildings ahead was a welcome sight. The tanks would move, then sit and fire both cannon and machine guns, repeating the process over and over again every few yards.

When we finally reached the first building on the right side of the road, a few of us made a dash for the shelter of its walls. Fortunately, we were then sheltered from the fierce small arms and automatic weapons fire that poured on us from the low ridge. We waited in the walled barnyard for awhile during which time the tanks fired ahead of us down the main street of the village.

Some of us made our way slowly into the village, in the rear of the houses and farms along the main street. I entered a building from the rear, which happened to be a bakery. As I ran heavily across the storeroom, sitting on a chair in front of me was a German soldier. As I approached him, he suddenly slid from the chair onto the floor, literally at my feet. It happened that he was already dead, but the movement of my running dislodged him from the chair and caused him to fall. What a terrifying experience that was!

As I left the bakery, diagonally across the street at the intersection of a road that ran to the south, toward the ridge that was so heavily defended, was a small chapel. I ran across the street toward the chapel and was joined by a new man by the name of Joe. We immediately ran to the house adjoining the chapel, and once inside, there was a violent explosion. A tank had pulled up beside the house we were in and fired the cannon. The concussion shook the house so violently that plaster dropped from the ceiling.

Joe and I then proceeded down the left side of the street, house to house. We came to a small bungalow-type. We burst into the front door, cleared the first floor and were shocked by the disarray in which we found the house. Everything was upside down and not because of war damage. Someone had ransacked the house. Dresser drawers were on the floor with the contents scattered about. What was shocking about the sight was that we were the first Americans to enter the house. Therefore, those who had ransacked the house must have been German soldiers who had occupied the village in its defense.

After clearing the downstairs, we immediately ran upstairs. Because of all the artillery fire, all of the windows were blown out. We came to a side window and looked down and there was a German soldier crawling on his hands and knees along a fence. He was no more than twenty feet from us. He must have been crawling to a bunker which was located in the rear of the property. So quickly that I did not have a chance to respond, or interfere, the man with me raised his rifle and shot the German soldier. I was absolutely shocked.

The German soldier was on his hands and knees, completely helpless and with two rifles focused on him. To shoot a man in such a circumstance was, to me, unconscionable. He should have, by all means, been taken prisoner. But this was Joes's first experience in combat and I was not convinced that even that was an acceptable excuse for what had been done. But immediately after he fired that deadly shot, he was exuberant and said that he couldn't wait to write home to his sons and tell them that he shot a German. I thoughtto shoot a helpless man is not an achievement to boast about, especially when I thought of the many times some of us had placed ourselves at the risk to assure taking prisoners.

The entire column came to a halt in front of the house that Joe and I had just cleared and occupied. Joe and I took a position on the second floor at the rear of the house, overlooking the bunker in the garden to the rear of the house. We had been there just a short time when we witnessed an incredible sight. An American medical half-track with the large Red Cross emblazoned on its side and the Red Cross flags fluttering from both fenders, went racing across that deadly open field toward the distant houses of Hastenrath.

There was an eerie lull in the firing in deference to the mission of mercy on which the half-track was embarked. I was overcome with a deep and profound longing that this astonishing moment of quiet would continue. But that was not to be. Sometime later, the half-track emerged from the cover of the buildings with its rescued wounded and that priceless moment of serenity evaporated and the firing resumed.

In front of the house, because of the narrowness of the street, that roadway became a veritable shooting gallery. The tanks hugged the walls of the houses as tightly as possible with only one consolation, and that was, there was no possibility of a flank shot.

A short time later, Joe and I were ordered to join the rest of the men in a house directly across the street, since darkness was setting in and there would be no more forward progress. I thoughthow tragic that we had come such a short distance after all of those hours of deadly combat. How tragic.
This house that we now occupied was the deepest point we had penetrated into the village of Scherpenseel. A space of about forty feet separated us from the next house on the same side of the street.

Behind the house that we now occupied, there was a shed and a machine gun position was set up next to it. There was a small gully that lay between our position and the heavily defended ridge to the rear of our house. In front of our house, giving us no small comfort, sat a Sherman tank.

The guard roster was made up and tension began to rise to a very high pitch. The inevitable shelling began, for a while evenly distributed between both sides, but then the crescendo of our artillery increased and kept up through most of the night with the primary attention given to the ridge behind our house. Some of the shells seemed barely to clear the roof of our house.

Earlier in the evening, Fred Suedemeir and Charles Craig had been doing their assigned tour of guard duty on the machine gun by the shed. After their two hour stint was completed, they were relieved by another team and Fred and Charles came back into the house, into the kitchen where a number of us were huddled.

The scene that then took place was an eruption of unequaled proportions. I have known few men with the temper and the colorful vocabulary that Fred Suedemeir possessed. He must have touched base with every vulgarity ever uttered by human tongue. He circled around that kitchen, livid with rage. No one dared to interrupt him to find the cause for this scalding outburst. He finally delivered himself of the offending matter.

Poor Charles Craig, a big, affable, gentle, scholarly man had committed the unpardonable offense. With tension at the ultimate pitch on that guard post by the machine gun, the noise of the shelling making hearing extremely difficult, Craig had the temerity to eat, or rather chew, on Charms, those multi-colored, square Life Savers. In the immortal, unprintable words of Suedemeir, "Craig kept chompin' on them blankety, blankety, blank Charms, I couldn't hear a blankety, blank thing. Those blankety, blank Germans could have crawled into our hip pockets before we would have heard them."

He swore that he would never again pull guard with Craig, whereupon Craig had the audacity to be completely unrepentant. This sent another torrent of obscenities spiraling toward the ceiling. When in all of history were such a few benign, colored pieces of hard candy cause for such a tidal wave of vitriolic scorn as were unleashed in that kitchen that night in Scherpenseel?

Sometime in the early hours of the morning, Suedemeir asked me to join him on that machine gun post. I immediately emptied my pockets of all Charms and instead, took several sticks of chewing gum and did some of the quietest chewing ever recorded.

As we sat behind the machine gun, the ridge we were facing was still being shelled by our own artillery with unrelenting fury. Straining to hear under those circumstances plays havoc with the nervous system. We were not on guard more than half an hour when heavy firing tore through the night a few yards behind us. There was one of the boldest and most daring counter-attacks I had ever seen taking place right up the main street behind us. The tank in front of the house had a shell in the chamber of the cannon, when somehow, a shot was fired into the barrel and the shell was detonated, causing severe casualties and damaging the tank.

Suedemeir and I were in an impossible dilemmawe couldn't switch the gun toward the street in case there was a coordinated attack coming up out of the gully, which was no more than fifty yards in front of our position. We could do nothing but hold fast to our position, feeling very vulnerable, with our backs to the fierce action taking place in the street, just a few yards to our rear. However, remarkably, one German soldier made it up the street, past a number of our tanks, as far as the Chapel where he was finally cut down. Unfortunately, his body would lie there for days before being removed.

After a tense, unnerving, action-filled night, we again resumed the attack after daylight. As we moved down the street, we passed a house that must have served as an Aid Station. There were a number of bodies of dead German soldiers, all of them bandaged, lying in a neat row in front of the house.

As we approached the lower end of the village of Scherpenseel, the road made a 90 degree turn toward Hastenrath. However, we took a short cut, moving through an orchard to gain the rear of the houses in Hastenrath. The short cut turned out to be quite perilous. There was a knocked out German vehicle midway between the last building of Scherpenseel and the first house of Hastenrath. One at a time we made the dash, first to the shelter of the damaged vehicle, and then, after getting our breath, we would run as quickly as possible to the other side.

Every time someone moved, there were immediately two quick rounds dropped in on the heels of the dashing soldiers. We knew that someone had perfect observation of everything we did. Fortunately, our squad made it across without incident. We then began working our way through the rear of the houses and out-buildings, clearing them as we went.

At this time I had teamed up with a man by the name of Aloyious Kampa. The tanks were also moving up cautiously behind us with sporadic cannon and machine gun fire. Their flank was perilously exposed to the German anti-tank guns located on the ridge to our left front.

Al and I entered one house, cleared the first floor and then dashed upstairs. There were plank type doors to the rooms, and one at a time we cleared the second floor. While we were doing that, we heard men entering the house on the first floor below us. Just as Al and I had finished clearing the rooms upstairs, we began to descend the stairs when there was an ugly explosion in the room at the foot of the stairs. There were a number of men wounded and there was a great deal of excitement and consternation trying to figure out what had happened. Some thought a booby-trap had been sprung, others suspected that one of our tanks might have mistakenly or accidentally fired into the house.

Some of the men went charging out to the tanks, accusing them of having fired, but they all vehemently insisted that they had not fired the shot. Al and I didn't linger, probably still in shock in having missed that awful explosion by a mere few seconds.

We continued advancing with another team, leap-frogging from house to house. We knew that the German troops were no more than a house or two ahead of us.

By this time, we had advanced quite a bit ahead of the tanks and we came to an opening of about 75 feet between houses. Just as we came to the opening, we saw several German soldiers disappear into a low shed diagonally across the street from where we were. Again, this time, only three of us made the dash, one at a time, across the opening, now having certain knowledge as to where, at least, some of the enemy troops were. The three of us, after making that scary dash, threw ourselves down behind a pile of rubble to the rear of a house that had a large gaping hole in the foundation. This opening gave us perfect sight of the shed into which the German soldiers had taken up position.

Al and I immediately began firing into the door and windows of that shed. Since it was in an isolated position, we knew that they could not escape from the shed unobserved. There was still much action behind us, both from small arms and also the tanks firing machine guns and cannon intermittently. The third man with us did not do any firing, instead, he launched into a tirade against Al and me for firing. He said we should stop firing, since by firing we were giving away our position. He had the foolish notion that if we didn't shoot at them, they wouldn't shoot at us.

Al and I insisted that since there were men moving up behind us, we had the responsibility to give them covering fire because we knew exactly where the enemy soldiers were. The argument got altogether nasty as Al and I tried to keep our attention on the shed and at the same time arguing over our shoulders with our bitter antagonist.

There was a wall about seven feet high and about twelve feet long that extended out behind the house, separating it from the adjoining house. Suddenly, two German soldiers appeared from around the wall and stood behind us with their hands raised. I immediately got up and approached the first man who was probably in his mid thirties.

He very nervously pointed to his tunic pocket, indicating that he wanted to retrieve something from it. I nodded my head to him and he proceeded to pull out a wallet from inside his pocket. With an excited laugh, he opened his wallet and began showing me photographs. There is nothing like a family photograph to break down barriers and open the hearts of friend and foe alike. Because of his earnestness and his awful state of fear and also his eager attempt to ingratiate himself to us, I was embarrassed into joining him in this grand tour of his photo collection.

What a picture we made! A German and an American soldier looking at family photographs as he identified his wife and his children. There we both stood on a pile of rubble with the full fury and the din of battle raging around us.

That pleasant, heart-warming moment, that humane interlude, had an unpleasant interruption. During that short space of time, one of our men made an attempt to cross the open space and was immediately shot. This completely confirmed what Al and I had been insisting concerning suppressing fire, but what a price to pay.

After we had been there for quite some time and had now been joined by others, word came up to us that our squad, or rather, the remnant of our squad was to return to the rest of the platoon. We were within, perhaps, 100 yards of the church in Hastenrath, which may have been the boundary between our unit and the 104th, the "Timberwolves" Division.

Because of the heavy resistance, both the 1st Division, or the "Big Red One", on our right and the "Timberwolves", on our left, had difficulty leaving their line of departure, leaving us in a very exposed position.

It was suddenly very gratifying to hear the sound of heavy machine gun fire on our left, indicating that the 104th was making progress as it came storming over the ridge behind us and to our left. It sounded as though every man in the division had a machine gun and every blessed one was in action.
The few of us carefully made our way through the back yards of the houses that we had earlier taken. Since only the one side of the street had been cleared, the trip back was still quite perilous. Crossing the area that was under direct sight of the school house was particularly unnerving.

By this time, it was getting dark and with that, every shadow becomes ominous. We made our way up the street of Scherpenseel and then our squad was taken down the side street directly opposite the chapel. This street led us toward that infamous, heavily defended ridge. The house we were led to was the last house in the village, facing the dangerous ridge.

That ridge was in the area of the 1st Division responsibility and they were still a distance from taking it. But with the 104th to our left rear, and the "Big Red One" to our right rear, we were like a finger pushing into the belly of the enemy; vulnerable on both sides and in front.

Our situation in Scherpenseel was still so tenuous that open movement from Werth to Scherpenseel, or even down the street to our house during daylight hours, was deadly. Between the high ground to the north of the village and the similar high ground to the south of Scherpenseel and adding to that, the excellent observation post the Germans possessed in the Hastenrath school house, absolutely no movement went unnoticed, but was subjected to every form of fire.

Since we had moved into our new position during darkness, we had no idea of the serious nature of our situation. There was a house-barn combination directly across from the house we occupied and for some reason none of our people were positioned there, which seemed to be the logical thing to do for our support and protection, but who were we to remonstrate?

We immediately placed a 30 caliber machine gun in the first floor window. This gave us a field of fire covering the nearest part of the ridge. After dark, there was a tank brought down the street and through a narrow alley way between the last two houses and took a position behind our house where it did absolutely no good. The tankers not on duty occupied the other part of the rather small house. In the front room of the house where the machine gun was located, there was a trap door in the floor leading to the cellar and a very small cellar it was.

Since the second floor was pretty severely damaged, we did not use it for sleeping quarters. The first night we slept in the cellar and the cellar was so small that I decided to sleep in the potato bin. It did not help that I was claustrophobic! The next night, I would have no part of the cellar, so several of us slept on the kitchen floor.

During our first morning in that position, one of the men on the machine gun called to us to come to the window. He pointed to the ridge. There was a German soldier standing upright in his foxhole, stretching, and then he stooped down, picked up his overcoat and in plain sight of all, began to put it on. We were all amazed because he was so clearly outlined against the horizon. The next morning he did the very same thing. However, this time one of our men, who must have been at an upstairs window, shot him. It was such a pathetic sight that we truly hoped he was only wounded.

The evening of the second day we were in that position, we acquired some sorely needed replacements. One of the men, named Wertman came through the door of the kitchen and there were only about three or four words out of his mouth when I recognized the unmistakable Pennsylvania German accent. In fact, he lived about 30 miles from my home. Another man by the name of Burdulis, a decidedly scholarly looking man, a former school teacher and the father of two girls, also joined us. Another man who had joined us, Fred Dorsey, from South Carolina, who unfortunately, could neither read nor write, was part of the large group of the "Scherpenssel Replacements".

Later on, while those of us, who were not on guard duty on the machine gun, sat on the kitchen floor getting acquainted with the new men, the door burst open and in stormed a man like a raging bull. His face was horribly flushed and his eyes were fierce and wild. There was no mistaking that he was terribly drunk. Somehow, along the way he must have acquired some medical alcohol. He was completely deranged and he held his rifle on us, threatening to kill anyone who moved. This terrifying stand-off must have lasted at least fifteen of the longest minutes of our lives. He finally moderated and we were able to talk with him and convince him to lower his rifle. That man survived the war, but how, we can't even begin to imagine.

That was also the night, when for the first time, we were issued sleeping bags. These were merely form-fitting G.I. blankets with a water repellent cover. The top of the sleeping bag covered the head like a hood. My first night in the sleeping bag was a complete nightmare. After crawling into the sleeping bag, I zipped it up and went to sleep. During the night I awakened and didn't know where I was, since somehow I had turned around in the sleeping bag and was facing the rear of the hood. I was seized with my ongoing claustrophobia and had a serious panic attack. No more of the stuff. After that, I folded the hood down and used it as a pillow.

It was the third day when the 1st Division finally came abreast of us and passed beyond us, finally freeing us from the menace of that dreaded ridge. That troublesome piece of real estate that caused us considerable trouble and so many casualties must have looked like Swiss cheese from the air, because of the fearsome artillery bombardment it had sustained.

We had finally been bypassed by both the 104th and the "Big Red One", effectively pinching us out of the action, since we had accomplished our mission of creating the breakthrough. We were finally able to relax somewhat and breathe a little easier. The front had moved so dramatically that they even brought the kitchen forward and placed it in Scherpenseel. It was proof positive that we really had a kitchen, contrary to what we had come to believe. Unfortunately, the kitchen was placed near where the Aid Station had been, with all of the dead bodies.

Life in Scherpenseel now changed dramatically. The tranquility we now enjoyed in Scherpenseel was like an anesthetic. We could now observe life unharried and uninterrupted.

It seemed that the German monsoon season was still in progress. The main street in Scherpenseel, although pockmarked from all of the artillery damage and each hole water-filled, I was able to make some cogent observations. First; it was gratifying to watch all of the traffic now moving up to the battle front, using the very street where you had been among the first to free from the enemy's hold and remembering how foreboding that street looked. You just felt that all of those vehicles were driving down that street through the courtesy of all of your efforts and risk and sacrifice.

The second observation that I made was that I could almost immediately distinguish between the "old men" in the company, as opposed to the new men who had just joined us. When it came to all of those water-filled holes, as the men walked toward the kitchen, it was interesting to note that the old men simply walked right through those water-filled holes, without deviating a step, whereas, the new men, carefully walked around them. What a philosophical story that tells us as to what happens to men who have been in combat.

Life in Scherpenseel took on a whole unreal atmosphere, one that we were completely unused to; this new life was the total province of the "rear echelon".

A good friend of mine, Ross Overholt and I found a chicken in the barnyard across the street, with its feet tied together. We immediately scoured the village for chicken feed. We came across a barrel in a nearby house and "liberated" it. This was not really an act of compassion for the chicken. Rather, we envisioned a fresh chicken dinner. In fact, the chicken became rather attached to us so that it followed us around. It is not altogether flattering to be followed around by a chicken. This dalliance did not last long, because one day the chicken disappeared along with the dream of a chicken dinner. Someone had stolen our dream.

The "tankers" who shared the house with us told us how they longed to get hold of some M-1's since all they had were those wretched "grease guns". Very dutifully, I spent time going over the battlefield and gathered about seven or eight rifles. I carried the kitchen table outside behind the house and set up for the business of cleaning the rifles. I carefully field stripped each one, cleaned them, oiled them and then reassembled each one. I had all the rifles lying on the table for their final checking and for some reason I had walked away. Sometime later, I returned and Ross Overholt came out of the kitchen and was standing in the doorway of the house.

We were engaged in a conversation as I picked up the rifles, one at a time, pulled the bolt back, pulled the trigger, laid it down, picked up the next one and so on, all the while during our conversation. I picked up the last rifle, pulled the bolt back and pulled the trigger and to my horror the gun fired and hit the wall of the house about three feet over Ross's head. What a frightening moment that was! During my absence, for some reason, someone had laid their loaded rifle right along side the ones I had just finished cleaning. What a painful lesson that was.

Our stay in Scherpenseel was becoming quite pleasant and we decided to make things as comfortable as possible. We decided to put the kitchen stove in our kitchen back into service, so we began searching for coal. In the farm house across the street we came across a small pile of the coal briquettes. We transferred the coal to our house and made ourselves comfortable.

Then, the inevitable day came when we were ordered to load up on our half-tracks. The holiday was over. We left Scherpenseel sometime after we had just gotten more new men. It turned out to be a very interesting and informative ride. Those new men could not have joined us at a worse time and place because the battle field around Scherpenseel and Hastenrath was a classic picture of the death and destruction of war.

There were the charred hulks of burned out Sherman tanks, of which there were many. There were the bodies of many German soldiers strewn around the field or in the foxholes they had occupied. Near one knocked out Sherman tank, there was a GI boot nearby with a foot still in it.

There was one new man who had taken a tour of the battlefield and returned very shaken by the number of dead. The man's name was Boyer, from North Carolina and he always spoke through clenched teeth. In his classic southern vernacular, a very frightened man said, "Them dead Germans is so many as piss ants."

In the darkened half-track, one of the men, George Sampson, began regaling us with stories. George turned out to be the consummate story teller. That night George, who to me was a total stranger, began telling about some of his romantic escapades and in the course of his story telling, I found out that George was from Allentown, Pa., just five miles from Emmaus, where I lived. He began talking about a girl named Julie. I was stunned; he was talking about a neighbor girl. Fortunately, his story was completely respectable.

The half-track finally stopped and we were told to dismount and form up. We must have marched about an hour through the darkness. At one point we saw a long piece of white marker tape, indicating a mine field. Sometime later we were told that we had been led on the wrong side of the tape, actually walking through the mine field. How reassuring!

We finally arrived at a compound of some type and this compound was adjacent to a heavily damaged castle; a castle, complete with a moat. The place was a bloody mess with American bodies scattered around. One poor dead GI had his face partially consumed by some pigs that were let loose.

We were in a holding position. There was an upset Panther tank right by one of our guard positions, a real reminder of the presence and power of the enemy. Holding positions might sound uneventful, however, you can never let down your guard. The German soldier is not only a bold soldier, but a very resourceful one.

The position we were guarding was Frenzburg Castle. The place had been defended by the German 3rd Parachute Division and was finally taken by the 9th Infantry Division. One of their men won the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions in crossing the moat to the castle, having breached the main entrance almost single-handed.

There was a rather interesting elderly lady who resided in the main house. She insisted that, in fact and indeed, she was a real German princess. We nodded in agreement, but inwardly, we were not altogether persuaded.

After about two days, we again made the trek through the area of the mine field, but this time on the right side of the tape.

On our way back, we spent the night in Weisweiler, simply stopping along the way and going into the nearest house. What was memorable to me was that we spent the night in a house with the entire front of the house blown out, and there, exposed to all of the elements, was a beautiful grand piano. What a waste.

It was like coming home when we returned to Scherpenseel. Those of us who had participated in taking the village, looked upon it as our own, our very own private oasis.

This time, however, we were located in another house, in fact, the same house where, during our first night in the village, Suedemeir had given his "Command Performance" with his explosive epithets directed at poor Craig.

The time we spent in Scherpenseel, with the arrival of the new men, helped to bind us together as a real fighting unit. It was far better than having men join while the unit is engaged in combat and there is not time, really, to assimilate men properly into a unit. Our next combat mission would be that of men who had come to know and respect and enjoy each other.

It was from those Scherpenseel replacements that I would meet, not only two of the finest men I have known, but also men who would embody all of those great attributes that would carry on and even enhance the reputation of a division that would emblazon its name in the annals of history. Of the men who had joined our squad that night in the Scherpenseel kitchen, three of them would, in the very near future, be killed in action. They were Wertman, Dorsey and Burdulis.

Two of the other men who joined our squad in Scherpenseel, Harry Clark and George Sampson, would distinguish themselves as real combat leaders, each one, after the "Bulge", commanding a squad. George would win the Silver Star for incredible bravery, after I had been wounded at Sterpigny and later he would win the Bronze star for another feat of courage. Harry Clark would also distinguish himself, also winning the Bronze Star, after having been wounded.

Those are the memories and those are the men that made Scherpenseel such an important part of our history.

One cloudy, overcast day, the air was suddenly filled with the sound of high performance engines; fighter planes were out in force. The ceiling was quite low and a German FW-190 came screaming over Hastenrath by itself when a P-38 Lightening dropped through the clouds right behind him and shot him down. The German pilot was able to bail out, but unfortunately, he was dead when he hit the ground. The German plane dove into the ground between the houses of Hastenrath.

What we had witnessed was the German air activity that had spelled the beginning of the "Battle of the Bulge".

It wasn't long before we were in our half-tracks and on our way south to Belgium to write another bloody chapter called "The Battle of the Bulge". Scherpenseel would increasingly become an even more pleasant memory.

END.

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