Chapter 17 - Somebody Yell, "Duck!"

One I would like to tell was about the time the three of us went into this fairly large German City, or town, and I don't remember the name of it. It was supposed to have been captured and secured by the infantry, but when we got there the infantry had gone on and the only people there were civilians. Upon checking with headquarters we were told to stay there and set up an 0P. We scouted around and found an old two storied railroad station overlooking the next town, which was supposed to contain hostile forces. It looked like a good location for an OP. So we moved in and "Breck" called in for one round to be fired on the next town so we could establish a checkpoint. The one round landed just where we wanted it and he asked to follow with battery one round for effect. Five of them went just where we asked but the sixth round just cleared the station and landed in the station yard, throwing dirt on our jeep and breaking windows in the station house, and scaring hell out of the three of us.

One of the men back at one gun had misunderstood the elevation command, and had set it too low. This thing was always dreaded by forward observers, and as far as I can remember, that was the only time it ever happened to me. That night after being reinforced with a little confiscated joy juice, we decided we would go down and strafe the next town with our machine gun. We went to the outskirts of town and fired our 30 caliber a few belts at the town before turning in. The next day the infantry captured 700 krauts in that town.

Of course most heavy resistance had about ended by now, and many of the German soldiers were anxious to surrender at this time, especially to the Americans, since they realized they would get much better treatment from the Americans than they would from the Russians. One infantryman stuck his head in a basement door and was confronted with over six hundred German troops wanting to surrender. They had already stacked their weapons in the Burgermeister's office, and were just waiting for someone to surrender to.