Chapter 15 - Hinderhausen and Battery C

I mentioned Hinderhausen in the above paragraph. Now I want to tell about the things that happened there. I believe we went into firing position here on December 19th and for a change I was back at the firing battery, and not forward observing. It seems to me that Gen. Bruce Clark and the 7th Armored division was now running the show, and I'm not sure where our OP's were at this time. We had our guns in position in what seemed to be an old pasture, and our perimeter guard positions were fox holes at the four corners something like eight hundred yards or more from the big guns, one outpost was almost in the yard of what seemed like an abandoned house, the next one over was in the yard of an occupied house.

An old Belgium man his wife and son lived there, they pretended to be on our side, but who could tell, I never felt safe turning my back to any of them. Even though they told a good story, a lot of Belgium homes had pictures of Nazi soldiers hanging on the wall. Their story was that the Germans drafted their sons against their will. Which could more than likely have been true.

The other two guard outposts were in a wooded area along an old roadbed, that circled around the gun area. We had 50 caliber machine guns at each outpost and a large fox hole dug behind them. Someone had hooked several ammunition belts together at each gun, and stacked the ammunition in such a way that it would feed continually into the gun. This would enable one man to fire this gun so rapidly that he could literally burn the barrel off.

The night of the 20th I along with two more, whom I can't remember, were assigned guard at the outpost nearest the abandoned house. Sometime in the wee hours of the night Sal my good friend, and faithful jeep driver came up to the outpost and very quietly woke me up. It had been my turn to stay awake and I was so sleepy that I had dozed off. I'm sure Sal did not report this, or there would have been a lot of hell raised.

The 21st day of December will be to most all C Battery members, a day forever etched in their memory. The same could probably be said for the entire battalion. We were running real low on 105 mm ammunition and were restricted in the amount of firing we could do. We were also told by our officers that we were surrounded and cut off from the roads leading to the rear by the enemy. The one route that might possibly be open to us was being secured by the 82nd Airborne, but the ground was too soft on the road to accommodate our heavy vehicles.

Things did not look good for the future of the 275th at that time. I was located at the outpost inside the farmhouse yard that day, and at 1600 hours the battery kitchen began serving the first hot meal we had had in several days. The perimeter guards left one man at each outpost and the other two returned to the kitchen truck for supper. Just about the time that we were being served, small arms fire broke out at the outpost by the abandoned (or so we thought) house. The man left on that gun was a Pvt. Willard L. Biggs. I understand he had been watching these enemy troops coming down a small road for some time. He had informed the fire-control people about this over his field telephone. He insisted that they were enemy troops but Battalion CQ had informed us that there were no enemy in that direction and they must be refugees.

While fire-control people were telling Biggs to be sure they were enemy troops, (Our fire control officer and Battery Exec. was Lt. Jules J. Reynaud (Bloomfield New Jersey) a tough, no-nonsense little officer whom most of us were afraid of. I really don't know why). Biggs laid down his telephone and began firing. He didn't seem to release the trigger at all and that gun was really roaring, for what seemed like a long time, and then suddenly went silent the Germans had silenced Pvt. Biggs forever. But did they ever pay a price? I didn't see but was told krauts were stacked up everywhere around that machine gun.

The next thing we saw was what looked like SS troopers advancing across the open field from that direction, with burp guns (Automatic Machine Pistols) blazing, shooting from the hip and trotting along at a leisurely pace. I don't know how many but it seemed like a lot of them. Everybody in C Battery began shooting at them and they were falling like flys. None of them ever got to our big guns which we were told was their objective, to knock out those terrible death dealing artillery pieces. They had been parachuted in behind our lines to do this job.

While this attack was going on Headquarters Battery sent two of its M4 Sherman observation tanks and the Germans knocked one of them out with one of our own Bazooka's which they had captured. I believe one or two men were killed and several injured in those tanks. C Battery itself only lost the one man that day.

I remember early in the afternoon someone came into the battery with all the cigarettes any of us wanted, which at that time was quite a treat, since we had been doing without for a while. Also my good friend Joe Baker (Rogersville Tenn.) rejoined the battery that afternoon, He had been missing since the 16th and had been through a terrible ordeal, being captured and getting away several times. His physical appearance told that he had been through hell backwards, and after hearing his incredible story, I'd say it was worse than that.

Sometime during the attack General Clark received word of it and sent orders to hold at all costs, and he would send up six light tanks to help repulse the attack. The tanks arrived and lined up. Then the tank commander refused to advance without infantry support for protection. Frankly, in my opinion, the attack was already stopped, or blunted at this point but who knew what would happen under cover of darkness.

First Sgt. King came around and volunteered anyone he could find, including me, to be infantry and gather around and protect those light tanks. These tanks only carried 37MM guns but they packed quite a wallop. We turned an M7 tank and fired several shells into the house and tree line along side of it The old house exploded as if it contained explosives which it probably did. After this we accompanied these light tanks and fired our small arms in unison, as did the tanks, and went up to the burning house. I'm not sure until this day whether we drew any enemy fire at this time, but we did rescue the wounded tank driver from our tank, but I believe he later died.

Along about the time this incident was subsiding it began snowing, and turning bitterly cold. The weather was unpleasant during the night but the good part was, the ground was freezing as hard as a brick and everyone figured we'll get away from here tomorrow.

The next morning I left bright and early and I don't remember who was with me or why we left so early. The battery waited until up in the morning to leave and I heard about an incident that happened in the battery area, which proves again that the 275th was made up of a lot of unusually brave and good men.

A wounded German kept yelling to the battery area that he was wounded, and that he had one of our men, also wounded, with him. It sounded like a trick to get someone into the open so they could shoot them, but on the chance that the Kraut was telling the truth. The oldest man in the outfit, known as Pop Hensley, laid down his gun raised his arms over his head, and announced in his best voice that he was coming to get him, and it turned out to be the truth, and he rescued the two men, one a friend and one an enemy. This took lots of guts to walk out there defenseless not knowing if at any second you would get your head blown off, or at best, be captured and held prisoner.

My memory is a little foggy about what happened at this time, but I believe Lt. Dean and I went up to the 82nd Airborne CP and directed some fire for them.