Satan's Gift

Satan’s Gift

Sergeant Ben Taylor

(As told to and edited by his first cousin)

Earl Stubbs

This is an account of former United States Army Technical Sergeant Benjamin Weatherby Taylor’s experiences during World War II. Sergeant Taylor fought during campaigns in Normandy, Northern France, Belgium, Rhineland, Ardennes-Alsace, and his combat ended in Czechoslovakia. Sergeant Taylor related his recollections to his first cousin, Earl Stubbs, in June of the year 2000. Ben was born B. W. Taylor in the Bradfield’s Chapel Community of Morris County near Daingerfield, Texas on December 4, 1917. 

Ben was drafted into the military and inducted on March 7, 1942. He, along with the other members of the 90^th Infantry Division, spent the next 27 months preparing for the landing at Utah Beach on June 7, 1944.

During the induction process, authorities would not accept the initials B. W. as his name. He was forced to use his father’s name, Benjamin Weatherby Taylor, for military purposes and does so to this day. His country awarded Sergeant Taylor a Good Conduct Medal, a Bronze Arrowhead, a Purple Heart, a Bronze Star, five Battle Stars, and a Silver Star.

These events occurred almost 60 years ago. Consequently, this is not intended as a work of academic history but to honor this warrior who contributed so much to his country and to his family…ES  

Training

Texas/Louisiana

After being drafted, I reported for duty on March 6, 1942. I had to pass the physical before being inducted on March 7, 1942.  If you didn’t pass your physical, you went back home.

The reason I was late being drafted was because I worked my Daddy’s farm and was necessary to its operation. Then the need for soldiers became greater and the rules changed. I was 26-years-old when drafted and was the oldest member of my group of draftees. Many of them were from Morris and surrounding counties. Sam Black was from Morris County. The Black family had three boys in the military at that time. Roland Lyle was another fellow I remember. He was from south of Daingerfield, the county seat of Morris County. Lyle got out on a medical discharge. He never went across. Clyde Polland, a boy from Daingerfield, was another. When he went in for his physical, the sergeant ask him who sent him. He said local Selective Service Board 42. The sergeant told him he was going home. He had asthma and emphysema and could not have made a soldier.  

They split us up after basic training in Mineral Wells, Texas. Some from our outfit went to California. Sam Black was one. Some went to the Air Corps. I was sent to Camp Barkeley in Abilene, Texas and by that time I didn’t know anyone in my group. Later on, I ran into a man from Mt. Pleasant, Texas, in Titus County. His name was Dick Langston. We served in the same platoon all the way through. Dick passed away a few years ago.

We spent about two years in Camp Barkeley. I was in a heavy weapons company that included mortars and machine guns. I fired a mortar. I was in the 90th Division, which was called the Texas/Oklahoma Division, but boys from other states were in there as well. We wore a shoulder patch with a red T/O.

We had three regiments in the division, and I was in the 358th.  I was in the first battalion of company D and the third platoon. A platoon consisted of six squads of 50 or 60 soldiers. Company D had about 250 men. There was two rifle platoons. There was a machine gun platoon and a heavy weapons platoon, which consisted of 81 mm mortars. There was an anti-tank platoon, which guarded the First Battalion Headquarters. I was in the Heavy Weapons Platoon. Sometimes we were on the front line as forward observers. Sometime our mortar positions were as much as a quarter of a mile behind the lines.

In addition to Ranger Training, our Division trained for jungle warfare, mountain warfare, and desert warfare. We crawled in the mud, water, and barbed wire. We had to cross on our backs under the barbed wire. We crawled through muddy culverts and swung across a creek on a rope with our combat pack.

Once we were out in the field on the Hanker’s Ranch near Abilene, Texas. I developed an abscessed tooth, and they took me to the hospital in town. They didn’t just pull one tooth. They pulled two teeth, and they wouldn’t stop bleeding. I had no way back to my outfit, so I hitched a ride with a kitchen truck. They took me back to Camp Barkeley but I was still eight miles from my platoon. They were in need of guards at the camp, and I was assigned to guard duty with my bleeding teeth. I spent two days and nights on guard duty, mostly in the rain, before I could get back to my outfit. When I finally got back, I found out I was AWOL. However, when I explained my predicament, I was taken off.

We were in training with the 45th Infantry Division when they were about to ship out for the invasion of Sicily. The Officers asked for volunteers to join the 45th. A little guy from Greenville, Texas, named Pemberton, volunteered to go. He looked very young. Many that went with the 45th got battlefield commissions. One of the Sergeants in our outfit was given a battlefield commission during the European campaign. He made Captain. Another sergeant made Lieutenant Colonel after going to Officer Candidate School in Fort Benning, Georgia.

We never knew who was a saboteur. There were times when I was on leave in Abilene that people would ask how many soldiers were at the Camp but I would never tell them.

Another time at Camp Barkeley, I was assigned as CQ which was in charge of headquarters. The job was mostly answering the phone. Officers came in and out. During my time as CQ, a solder was AWOL and had been caught. A captain ordered me to have the soldier at headquarters at 8:15 the next morning. That night I was pulled off the CQ job. I informed my replacement to carry out the order of the captain. Unfortunately, he forgot to deliver the deserter. He came to get me the next morning, as I was standing for roll call. He said he was sorry about forgetting, and that the captain wanted to see me at headquarters.

I was pretty green and didn’t know how to protect myself in the army at that time. The captain really chewed me out for dereliction of duty and offered me a choice between a court martial or company punishment. I chose company punishment, which consisted of reporting three times for three days. It didn’t bother me at all. Unfortunately, the soldier who forgot his order lost his life early in the war, and the captain involved received serious wounds.

Once, during our final training, we were on a firing problem with our mortars. We had three mortars in the platoon. We had a number one gunner, a number two gunner, and a number three gunner for each mortar. They all trained for the same things but each had a special job. The number one gunner was responsible for the gun sight. The number two gunner checks out the bipod. The number three man checks out the stove pipe or barrel of the mortar.

The target was a square made of boards about 1,000 yards down range. After we got the mortar set up, our Lieutenant came around to inspect the position. The Lieutenant told us we would be next to fire, and then he noticed that we didn’t have a gun sight. Unfortunately, the number one gunner forgot the gun sight and had left it in camp. Then he looked at me and ask, “Taylor. How are you all going to fire this weapon?” I answered, “Sir, we are going to fire it in degrees of turns of elevation and turns of traverse.?” The Lieutenant said, “You had better be good.”

We figured out how many turns we needed to get there in that short length of time. I asked my sergeant how far he thought it was to the target. He suggested that we start off at 1,000 yards. I suggested that we make turns all the way down to the bottom and then back a few turns. I made sure that the weapon was sturdy.

We were allowed three shots with dummy shells. We fired the first shot and it was long. We made a few more turns on the second shot which fell short. No other team had hit the target even with gun sights. I made our last adjustment and ordered the firing. The shell hit the target and knocked it down. We were supposed to be experts on the mortar and I guess we were.   

We moved from Camp Barkeley and went to Louisiana for two months of maneuvers.  We were close to Leesville. It rained a lot and the water got high. We almost had to swim out. Then we came back to Barkeley in either November or December and the contractors had built us some new huts. We previously had those six man huts with a tent top. They took several of them and put them together into barracks. The whole platoon could stay in one barrack.

There was a man named Frank J. Westmoreland in our Company. During maneuvers, he and several other guys from the six squads formed a group and called themselves the seventh squad. Westmoreland was the section sergeant. He and the other members of the seventh squad would go build a fire and send other soldiers to a nearby farmhouse to get eggs. Then they would make egg and pickle sandwiches and sell them. I bought them when I had the money.

Once during training we had a tactical problem with no fire and no smoke. Lieutenant Wise was a tall man and I saw him coming across the field. I knew what he was there for. The seventh squad had slipped off and built a fire to boil eggs. As he walked by me he said, “Taylor, what is that fire doing down there. This is supposed to be a tactical problem.” I denied any knowledge of the fire. He said, “Go down there and put it out.” The seventh squad had run back into the woods and hid behind a log. I put the fire out as ordered and when the seventh squad came out of hiding I told them what had happened. Nobody complained about me putting out the fire.

Frank was a fairly fast talker. Later in Europe we would roll out telephone lines to our forward observations posts from the gun positions so that we could communicate. I was on one end and Frank was on the other. Someone tapped into our line and said, “You might as well surrender. The rest of your outfit has already surrendered.” I said, “Listen fellow, if you want to fight just get started.” At first I thought it was the enemy. Then I started to listen carefully and it sounded like somebody in my outfit. Finally, I figured out it was Frank B. Westmoreland. He was always making jokes.

Later, in Europe, Frank P. Westmoreland knocked out a Tiger Tank with an M1 rifle and captured the crew. After that, they sent him back home to train other men.  

One of my closest buddies was a guy named Yandel . Another was Bill Dotson from Oklahoma. They were cousins.

Training

California/Arizona

In September we went to Camp Granite in the Needles, California area for desert training. We traveled by truck convoy to California. The temperature would get up to 110 or 120 during the daytime. At night it would go down to about 40.  There was not much vegetation in the desert but we broke off some switches for our little stoves. There was six men to a tent. We went to bed without any fire and saved our kindling for the next morning. We went to bed with two blankets under us and one on top. At about 10:00 pm, we would have to get up and use two blankets on top  We nearly froze to death.

While we were out West, we went to Arizona for mountain training. During that winter, the coal miners went on strike and we had no way to heat water. We were never able to take a bath.  All of our water came out of canals from the Colorado River in California.

Once I was carrying a 45 pound mortar base plate. About half of our crew was on kitchen KP. As a result, I had to carry a bunch of extra heavy equipment. About the time we got to where we thought the kitchen was going to be, we were just about exhausted. I tripped and fell. The base plate fell on my shoulder. I could hardly walk for about three weeks. I was sent to the aid station for a rubdown twice a day. During the third week they sent me to the evacuation hospital. There was a picnic table and a sergeant told me to crawl up on the table. He poked around on my shoulder asking me if it hurt. I told him no that my injury was on the inside not on the outside. He said not to worry, I had just taken a little cold.

Training

New Jersey

We left California on the 28th of December after about four months of training and went to Ft. Dix, New Jersey. While we were there about two feet of snow fell. While we were in Fort Dix waiting to ship out, we had to take gas training. My gas mask was faulty, and I got gassed during training. I did okay with the tear gas. It was hard but I managed to stay the five minutes. After we were allowed to breath a while, we were sent to a tent that had the real gas in it. It caused me problems for about two months. I felt like I had pneumonia.  My left lung is still weak. I don’t know how I got over that. I guess the true faith. I never did go to the doctor. I always stayed on my job. I had yellow jaundice overseas. They gave me a volunteer chance to go back to the hospital and be treated. About half did. I didn’t go. I wanted to stay with my buddies. I made it anyway.

We had to pull a parade in front of General George C. Marshall in the snow. The parade ground was not level so we were sliding around while we were trying to march. I told my buddies that we would not pass the review. But we did and we were ready to go overseas. 

Then, we left Ft. Dix for England on the ship John Erickson. After three days, we had to turn around and come back to port because of engine trouble. We stayed three more days on the ship while it was repaired. We were not allowed to leave.

After the repairs were completed we had to wait for another convoy. The German Wolf Pack submarines were thick and there was security in numbers. We had to go around by Northern Ireland before we landed in Liverpool, England, on Easter Sunday, 1944. The crossing took 18 days.

England

I first saw General George S. Patton in England. When we were told that we were going to hear our new Third Army Commander, you could have dropped a pin and heard it hit. We had on our combat gear when we heard him speak. He said that we were about to go to France. We were not going over there to visit. We were not going to play. We were not going to take their food. We were not going over there to fraternize. By God, we were going over there to kill Germans. When we finish, those of you who are living can go back home. He didn’t speak very long. That was very near the time we sailed for Normandy.

We moved to a British line of fortifications close to a port. I never did know exactly where. There was a British barracks on a hill. The bombs fell nearly every night. I don’t know if they were flying bombs, long range artillery, or just bombs. We boarded the ship on the day before we shipped out.   

Combat

Utah Beach in Normandy

Our battalion boarded the Queen Mary for the channel crossing. We had to be at a certain place in the channel before the tide went down, or we would have foundered. We could see some ships leaning over a bit because they were sitting on the bottom. One ship hit a mine, and the soldiers had to land without weapons.

The first wave landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day. We landed at Utah Beach the second day. We climbed down the ropes on the side of the Queen Mary into the landing crafts.  The landing crafts took us as close to shore as possible. When we left the barge, the water was about chest deep. The man in front of me was carrying the tube to the mortar. He stepped off the barge and into a shell hole. He went underwater and came up without the tube. No one said a word. He took a breath, dove like a dew dapper duck, and came up with the tube. Then he walked out on the beach.

The weather was cool and the beach was calm. The Germans didn’t know we were coming, but we quickly ran into static.  A German unit was on maneuvers in the area and began shelling our positions on the first day. The training stopped and the war began.

That first night, our leaders told us the Germans had left suicide men behind with razors. They were going to hide in clumps of bushes and wait until we were asleep. They caught one about 30 yards from my foxhole. No more sleeping. I hardly slept for two weeks. I fell asleep once during the day and dreamed I was home with my parents, brother, and sisters. It was a wonderful dream until the enemy sent in a barrage of artillery and spoiled it all. It was like going from one world to another.

Combat

The Hedgerows of the Cotentin

Another incident happened during this time when the sergeant told me to go back and find the ammunition dump and check on our ammo supply. We were about five miles from the beach. The vegetation was heavy with a lot of little bushes. I looked and looked but couldn’t find the ammo dump. I went back to our position and just as I got there the Germans threw in an artillery barrage. I headed for my foxhole but a big old guy from Arkansas named Elsy Johnson beat me to it. I was out of luck until I noticed a muddy bank three or four feet high with a mud hole behind it. I jumped into the mud hole only to find that it had no bottom. It was a well so I just put my head underwater until the barrage let up. I never did touch the bottom. I got out and started to my foxhole and another barrage started. I dove back into the well and waited out the second barrage. When I could finally get out I was soaked and freezing to death. I started to shake from the cold and went back to the aid station to get some dry clothes. They found me a pair of blood soaked pants. Then the medics gave me a tablet that knocked me out and I got a good night’s sleep. I wore those bloody pants for a week. They were officer’s clothes I think.

After things had settled down, I asked Elsy why he got my foxhole and he said because someone else was in his. He came up to me later and said, “Taylor, I want to show you something.” His helmet had two holes in it about two inches from the top. A piece of shrapnel had entered one side, hugged the helmet liner, and came out the other side. It should have gone right through his head but it didn’t. A miracle.

Sometimes we would stay in the same foxhole for two or three days and then we would move up. There was some rain but not a lot. We were not supposed to drink any water out of the local wells. There were lots of little apples in France and we often had to get moisture out of those apples until the water reached us.

Our first objective was about ten miles from shore. It was hill 122. A spotter could see the ships in the English Channel from the top of that hill on a clear day. We began moving from hedgerow to hedgerow. France was made up of hedgerows and so was part of Germany. The hedgerows were around small pastures and fields. Sometime we could see through them and sometimes not. We had to deal with the hedgerows all the way across Normandy. We never really knew which were defended and which were not. Sometimes we had to go up the side of a hedgerow to avoid crossing an open field.

We reached to about 500 yards from the top of hill 122. Some soldiers continued to advance as we set up our mortars. I got on the telephone and hooked up with our sergeant at the forward observation post.

There was an enemy observer in an old building out there in the woods. He directed in three shells. The first one landed in the bank right in front of me and knocked dirt all over me. I told the forward men over the phone to start digging in. Another German shell landed right in the middle of our guns and blew out a four foot hole. The mortar fell in the hole. Comillio Gonzalez was laying down in the hole on his back yelling for help. A jeep just happened by and I called for help to get him out of the hole and back to the aid station. That jeep being there was another miracle.

Bill Dotson lay on the side of the shell hole with a piece of shrapnel through his wrist. He passed out on me and I took out my handkerchief, used water out of my canteen, and wiped his face with it. I thought he might be dead but he came to. Then I began to put a tourniquet on his arm. I took out my handkerchief and wrapped it around his arm. We were always taught to use our spoon to tighten the handkerchief but my spoon would not slide in the wet knot. The trainers didn’t tell me you couldn’t slide a G.I. spoon through a wet handkerchief. I bruised his arm and finally got the spoon in but he was still bleeding. I told him to put his thumb over the hole and get on the jeep so that they could get him help.  Both men are still living. That’s another miracle. Soon a Sergeant came by and told us that they had taken care of the German observer.

When it came time to advance to the top of the hill, our Sergeant told us to be careful to watch on both sides and behind us because the Germans had dug their foxholes on the downward slope of the hill and some were still there. All I had was an M1 rifle. I lost two rifles over there and two mortars. We lost one mortar taking hill 122.  We went to the top of the hill but the Germans had captured some of our tanks and turned them on us. One soldier named Daugherty got both arms shot off. 

After we took hill 122, we came across a place called the Isle of the White Witches. The White Witches were snow troops in white uniforms and some of the vehicles were white. There was only one road into the area. Two companies went down the road and we had orders to move up.  There was only one way to get in there from our side and our battalion commander was moving up and when he got about two companies in there, the Germans waylaid them. The Germans had tanks in there. Our boys were in an old road bed and the Germans were mowing them down. We were just about to follow them.

That night one of our boys escaped the trap by crawling in the mud through a slew by the side of the road. When they reached our lines, they told us that Major Ahern had surrendered the battalion. Of course, the Major thought he had to do it. Apparently, Major Ahern had not sent patrols out ahead of his troops. If he had done that, he might not have walked into the trap.  Another guy named Burt made it back and said he threw a white phosphorous grenade into the Germans and escaped. Burt was lucky that time but not so lucky later on.

A lot of German soldiers surrendered. Usually when they did, they came out with white flags. Once about 200 men near our position wanted to come out. Some were wounded and some just wanted to surrender. Our regimental Chaplain always stayed with our battalion. He was Chaplain Hamilton from Ft. Worth, Texas. He was a heavy set fellow. The officer asked for volunteers to collect the prisoners. Chaplain Hamilton volunteered, took some Red Cross Ambulances into the German position, and brought back the wounded Germans. Other prisoners followed them out and pitched their weapons into a pile. We took a 1.5 ton truck full of weapons.  On the first day we surrounded the Germans, there was an old grey horse pulling a buggy going around in circles. The next day, the old horse was still going around in circles. When Chaplain Hamilton went down there to bring out the German wounded, he turned the horse loose. The Chaplain died about five years ago. I never did know whether they gave him a presidential citation for that or not but they should have.

During this time we were in our foxholes in a strawberry field just before we were going to take St. Lo. We were waiting for the Eighth Air Force to bomb the town. We waited and waited and finally, the field commander told us to just go ahead and take the town without the bombs. We got in there about dusk dark and then the Air Force came over and dropped about six bombs in the strawberry field where we had just left. We quickly shot some identification flares and they stopped bombing immediately. That particular wing of the Eighth Air Force was temporarily grounded for making that mistake. I saw three or four bombers fall out of the sky.

A vet here in Greenville was a bombardier in that Wing. His name is Bob Sheaffer. I met him in downtown Greenville one day and asked him if he remembered the incident. He did. I can’t blame the Air Force people. Lots of mistakes were made and I won’t cast the first stone.

(2400 planes took part in the saturation and napalm bombing of St. Lo. 111 Allied soldiers were killed and 490 wounded by friendly fire. ES)

One day we were dug in our positions. I dug my foxhole in an apple orchard. The Germans threw in a phosphorous shell and several soldiers yelled gas. The officers didn’t like to carry their gas masks so one yelled, “No, no, it can’t be because I don’t have a gas mask.” He wasn’t trying to be funny. Fortunately, it was only smoke.

We had suffered heavy casualties and we received some reinforcements at that time. One of them was my future wife’s brother. I didn’t know either of them but he was in my battalion. His name was Jesse Smith. He had a brother named D. Smith in the service at the same time.

They brought the new people together and gave them a lecture about not picking up things that might be mined. They could look around but were warned not to touch anything. There were some houses across the road and some of the new replacements wanted to go over to take a look. I went with them and soon one of the new guys ask what a shiny object was. I told him not to pick up anything that it might be booby trapped. His curiosity got the better of him. He picked up the shiny object and shook it. It blew his hand off. The lecture had been about 30 minutes ago. He was sent to the hospital. His training was wasted.

Combat

Then we got behind the German Seventh Army and met a French Moroccan tank unit near the Seine River. We were told that we had friendly troops on our right after the breakout but they weren’t. We didn’t meet any friendly troops until we met the French Moroccans. The word was that the Moroccan Troops were highly trained. We crossed the river, made the breakthrough, and ran off from General Patton for a couple of days. We made 140 miles in three days.  When we first landed I was attached to General Omar Bradley’s First Army and we spearheaded for his army for several weeks. After we broke out at St. Lo, we got into General Patton’s Third Army officially on August 1, 1944. 

That is where we beat the German Seventh Army. We were up on a hill behind the Germans and the British were on our left. The French were on our right. We bottled up the Germans in the Falaise pocket and most couldn’t get out. Some made a breakthrough and got out.

One day as we were advancing, we passed a long car with a cloth top sitting by the side of the road. Our officers told us that it belonged to Field Marshall Rommel but I can’t be sure. About this time a German plane released what everyone thought was a bomb. I yelled hit the deck but the bomb just bounced around and turned out to be a belly tank.

We had to deal with German aircraft. Sometimes they would shoot and sometimes not. We always dove for our foxholes when one came over. We were in hedgerows during the early part of the invasion and we didn’t think anyone could see us from the air. Two planes came over. At first I thought one was a P-47. I raised up and waved. When they saw us, they banked the plane and there was the swastika. I knew I had made a mistake.  I said, “Boys, they are going to be back soon.” But they didn’t. I guess they were out of ammo.

The 90th Division did not actually liberate Paris. Eisenhower allowed the French unit to do that for political reasons. However, we marched through Paris on our way to the new front. We went right by the Eiffel Tower and crossed the River Seine.  

In the area of Northern France as we were approaching the Rhine, the officers told us that retreating Germans were hiding weapons so that they could infiltrate back and attack from the rear. We were ordered to search out any likely hiding places. I had a nose for hidden weapons.

Once we were searching a farm and found some guns hidden in the barn. There was another small outbuilding which was used for storing smaller farm implements. There was a horse drawn hay rake stored against a wall in the building. I noticed that the ground looked like it had been smoothed over under the rake. I told my men to pull the hay rake out of the building. We only had to dig about eight inches before we found a box of rifles.

Later, we set up a command post in a farmhouse. There was a small garden near the house. I was looking around a bit when I noticed that the surface of part of the garden was different. I investigated and found a satchel of military maps. Even today, I don’t know if the guns and maps were hidden by the Germans or the French.  

    

Taking prisoners was not an easy thing to do. Sometimes, Germans would want to surrender and would come out with their hands up. Then other Germans would open up on the men who went out to take charge of the prisoners. Once, we were approaching some barracks and was in a heavy fire fight. We were walking through some woods. (I didn’t see this but I passed the barracks a few minutes later.) The Germans held up a white flag to surrender. Our soldiers started walking across open ground to take charge of them and the Germans opened up again. They hit one of our older soldiers. Our guys started shooting their M1’s from the hip and proceeded to kill all of the Germans. It was over by the time we got around the corner.

The commanding officer came up and asked for some prisoners for interrogation. The sergeant said, “Sir, there are no prisoners.” The officer said, “Do you mean with all of that shooting, you don’t have any prisoners?” The sergeant repeated, “Sir, there are no prisoners.” The officer started to walk away then he turned and said, “That’s the way I like to see it.”

It was during this time that a tank was crossing a small river on a log bridge. About half way across, the bridge gave way the the tank fell about ten feet into the river. It buried nose down in the water. I don’t know what happened to that tank. It was not always a good idea to be around a tank. They drew a lot of fire and a soldier wants to keep a low profile.    
        

Soon the first aid men took out our wounded Captain Jackson and another wounded soldier who was a former deserter. He ran off while we were in the states and the sergeant had to go find him. That was the way it worked. If a man ran off, his sergeant was deputized and he had to go get him. He would take another solder with him and the sheriff would hold the deserter until they got there. The wounded solder was an ex convict from Missouri. As they were taking him out, he said, “Boys, give them heck. I won’t be back.” When the former deserter got back to the aid station, he wanted to know if the bullet was German or American. He was afraid an American had shot him in the back.  

Sometimes we would stay in the same foxhole for two or three days and then we would move up. There was some rain but not a lot. We were not supposed to drink any water out of the local wells. There were lots of little apples in France and we often had to get moisture out of those apples until the water reached us.

Combat

The Maginot Line

There were many instances of bravery. One outfit was in a crossfire across the Moselle River. They had a Colonel who drank a little but was more like a regular soldier than most officers. He ordered the troops on our side of the Moselle River to lay down covering fire and he swam across, rounded up the men on the other side, and led them back across the river. His superiors tried to take away his commission for doing that.  They told him he was not supposed to do things like that. He was supposed to send somebody else to do things like that. He told his superiors that he only went because he needed the information the other men had. I think he did it to save the men.

I often had a hard time getting things done but I always got it done. We crossed the Moselle River to take Fort Koenigsmacher. It was the most important element in the Metz Fortress. We went to the left of Metz. Another Battalion was on our left and another was in reserve. Our Battalion had to cross at night in boats, one squad to a boat. There was a gun turret in the Fort which covered the river. The plan was for our combat engineers to set off satchel charges, throw them in the Fort, and put the gun placement out of action. Everyone got across except my squad. They failed to send the boat back for us. We were left in an open pasture beside the river. We had to get across before daylight or be sitting ducks for the German artillery from the high ground.

We had the radio on our side of the river. I asked the radio operator if he was talking to the sergeant. He said yes, so I asked to talk to the sergeant. I said, “Sergeant, why don’t you send a boat back for us so that we can get across this river?” He said, “I can’t. I’ve go to go with the captain to the company Command Post.” I said, “As soon as it gets daylight, they are going to plaster this side of the river. We are going to do something soon.” He said, “Wait until I talk to the Captain.” I waited and soon he came back on. He said, “The Captain said they are putting a pontoon bridge in about a half mile down the river. They are building the bridge in the dark and should be about finished. You can cross there.” I told our guys to move out and not to waste any time.

As we got about half way to the bridge, the Germans dropped the first shell on the river bank where we had been standing. Then they landed one near us and then one way over us. We made it to the bridge but they lacked about two more sections to complete the bridge. They said it would take about 30 minutes. When it was finished, we crossed. I told the boys not to walk in the trails and to walk single file so as to avoid mines. We didn’t stop until we reached our outfit which was right under the muzzle of that gun turret.

There was a large tunnel under the Fort to bring in railroad cars or mules to deliver supplies and ammunition. After we threw the satchel charges in the Fort, about 200 of the enemy tried to escape through the tunnel. They threw their weapons away and one of our Battalions captured them all without firing a shot. They got a Presidential Citation. We lost a couple of men taking the Fort and we got nothing. The entire Regiment should have shared in the citations.

The Germans had barracks inside the fort near the guns. The guns themselves were in high turrets. After we got in I noticed that there didn’t seem to be much of a ladder to climb up there. I don’t know how they got up to shoot the guns. There were tunnels going from one fort to another. I found some canned food where the tunnels intersected. I think it was horsemeat

One of our casualties in this battle was the soldier named Burt who escaped the German trap in the Cherbourg Peninsula. He was machined gunned and had numerous wounds. The medics were told not to give him any water because of the kinds of wounds he had received. As they were boating him across the Moselle, he dipped a handful of water and drank it. Then he died.

One night while we were in the Metz area, I was on guard duty. During the wee hours of the morning I saw a white, ghost-like apparition. It would come every so often. I was determined to find out what it was and when it got daylight, I investigated. It was a pile of rotten potatoes giving off some kind of gas. You never know what you are going to run into during wartime.

The Battalion interrogator was from Belgium. At one time he was in the German Army. He didn’t like Hitler so he made his way to England and became an asset for the Allies. He had a trick he played on the soldiers he was interrogating. Whatever rank they held, he would assume the same rank. He kept a set of insignia for each rank and changed them when needed. A German soldier would refuse to speak with anyone under their rank.  

Once when we pulled back for a little breather, our leaders decided that we weren’t getting enough exercise so they had us lay down our packs so we could do some calisthenics. I was carrying a 45 side arm and an M1 rifle. An ammunition carrier was next to me and he was carrying a carbine rifle. After we finished the calisthenics, he dropped his carbine and it went off, hit the gas chamber on my M1, and then the bullet went through the elbow of another solder and came out his face. The wounded soldier’s name was Cashmere. He was severely wounded but lived through it. My rifle was ruined.

I once did some poetry for the Stars and Stripes. Any soldier who wanted to compose a piece and put it in the Stars and Stripes could do so. I can’t remember all of it but here is some of it:

It was in the month of early June.

When our ship anchored to the ocean’s tune.

Off the rope and into the barge.

Towards the shore we pushed hard.

Contact with Jerry was made.

Then the digging of the spade.

The war of Europe was on.

I wrote this in October of 1944. We were on the front for 90 days and finally we got a breathing spell. I used to compose a lot of stuff. I wrote some songs, but I didn’t publish them.

Combat

The Siegfried Line

When we moved through the Siegfried Line, we ran into the Screaming Mimis. Those were the rockets with sirens on them. It would make the hair stand up on your head.

We crossed the Rhine at the western edge of Cologne. We found one bridge that we could use. Just before we crossed, we took a small town. There were two little roads that entered the town. They joined and made a circle in the town. Then one road led out of the town. We took the town one evening. My future wife’s brother was in the same regiment but was in the anti-tank platoon.

There was about 150 Germans hidden in the woods and we passed them by. We didn’t know they were there. It was about 10:00 pm and it was dark. We had our guns pointed toward the Rhine. The next morning, the Germans attacked from the rear. The only American killed was my future wife’s brother. He was on an anti-tank gun.

The Germans had a Tiger Tank leading about five half-tracks filled with infantry. They had Red Cross markings. The Tiger Tank came around to our position and shot at my buddy, Dick Langston, from Mt. Pleasant. The shot hit the side of the building. Bricks fell on my buddy and knocked his helmet off. He put it back on and kept fighting. We were pinned down in the garden by the tank but we had a shooting battle with them. I told the men that it was every man for himself. There was an iron fence around the garden and if we tried to go over the fence, we would get shot and if we stayed in the garden, we had to deal with the tank. About that time, the Tiger Tank came around the building about 20 feet from me. I didn’t have anything that would knock it out.

One of the half-tracks started down the road. We had a bazooka team behind a building on our left and they knocked out the half-track. The whole thing only lasted about 20 minutes. I stepped through a window on the back of the building about the same time a German soldier came in the front door and was shot by one of ours. We went back outside and I went around to the anti-tank bazooka team that had knocked out the half-track. There were two enemy soldiers dying and the half track was on fire. Since the half-track blocked the road, we captured the rest of the half-tracks and the Tiger Tank as well. We got the whole bunch.

We went on up and took the buildings and one of them was a bank. On the second floor of the bank were bedrooms. I was the forward observer and we needed for the radio antenna to be clear of any obstruction. We took the radio to the second floor so the antenna could stick out the window. It was dark by then and the Lieutenant hit the bed and informed us that he was going to sleep.

During the night, the Germans counterattacked. Since we were already zeroed in on the road, I called for creeping fire with the mortars. I told them to be sure that the gun settings were accurate since the Germans were right on us. They were ready to take the buildings we were in. I creeped the fire until shrapnel was hitting our building. I knew I couldn’t call our fire in any closer so I reversed the creeping. That broke the back of the counterattack and things got quiet again. The next morning we went out to check the situation. We found a wounded German crawling down the road and we captured him.  

We fought the SS. They wore a brown uniform and many of them were very young. They were probably Hitler Youth. Some were 15 or 16 years old. Some even younger were left behind as rear guard to hold us back. We captured some kids who were no more than 10 years old.  

When the Germans broke out in the Battle of the Bulge, we had just crossed the Saar River at Dilligen, Germany. That was a manufacturing and meat packing town. We didn’t have a bridge over the river but we got across. When I crossed the river I had a high fever and a heavy cold. We stayed over there from the 8th of December to the 16th of December without a bridge. The river flooded and snow got over three feet deep. The creeks were frozen. The roads were frozen but that was to our advantage. The German had mined the roads heavily but they didn’t work because of the ice.  We went down one road that winter on jeeps because we were out of ammunition. The combat engineers took out 40 mines after we used the road. That was the coldest winter there in 50 years. Most of the time we were sleeping in our foxholes but we would get inside when we could find a place.

One soldier named John Smith got furloughed back to the states to see his family. He told me and some more guys, “I already have my shipping orders but I am afraid I am not going to get to use them. I sure do hate to cross this river.” John was a nice looking fellow who resembled Randolf Scott.

After we crossed the Saar River, the major problem was a pillbox that was giving us trouble. One of our tank destroyers found a spot in a saddle between two hills. The range was perfect and we knocked out the pillbox. A few German soldiers lived through the barrage and were able to escape.

Next we took a group of farm building on the edge of town. A few of us stayed in a house that night. Me, John Smith, and another guy was in the bedroom next to the kitchen. I sat down with my back against the wall. Another guy was sitting on the bed. John Smith was leaning with his back against a chest of drawers. A German sneaked up to the house and opened fire through the window with a burp gun. I heard John Smith fall. He didn’t answer when I called his name. There was a medic in the kitchen and I told him that John Smith was hit. It was pitch dark and we were not allowed lights. The medic crawled in and checked him over with a little red flashlight but could not find any blood or any wound. The only thing that made sense was that he was shot in his open mouth or maybe had a heart attack. Also, the Germans were using wooden bullets that splintered. He could have been hit with one of those.   

Eight days and nights we held our side of the river with no bridge. The combat engineers threw a rope bridge from one high point to another and that was our only way across the River. Every night we had to go right by a pillbox to get food and ammunition that had been brought from the other side of the river over the rope bridge. We fired our weapons during the day and then worked all night carrying our dead and wounded down to the river and bringing supplies and ammunition back. I worked a litter every night and was put in charge of the transportation because I was the only one who could find my way in the dark. Only once did I know that my litter carried a live soldier and he died before crossing the river. He had been machine gunned.  

On the way to the pick-up point was a stream. Sometimes the water was under your arms but it might be over your head. After the third night of transporting people by litter, I told my sergeant that when he chose my helpers to pick tall men so that they could cross the stream. When we would get to the stream crossing, I would stop and get on the back of the litter. The person’s head went first. When my helper felt the bank on the other side, I would push him on up the bank. When he reached firm ground, he would pull me up. One night we made 13 trips. Each round trip was about a half mile over rough ground. We never knew if our load was wounded or dead so we had to keep them out of the water. Even the wounded were given pills to knock them out for the trip. That didn’t leave much time for me to sleep. I was like a walking corpse and so was everyone else.

The Battle of the Bulge was not going well so we got orders to pull back and defend Belgium.

When it came time to leave our positions, our mortar was so hot we couldn’t take it down. We took the gun sight off and left it behind. We had managed to get two tanks across the river and had to set them on fire and leave them behind. We evacuated over the rope bridge single file. We had to be very careful not to shake the bridge or we would have all fallen into the river. We were all decorated with a Bronze Star for heroic service for the Dilligen, Germany combat.

We fought a lot at night. Half the time we didn’t know where we were. After we went back across the Saar River and set up defensive positions we found a pillbox nearby. After dark our objective was to take some men and one mortar and attempt to capture the Germans in the pillbox. I went with the mortar. I don’t know why since I couldn’t see to fire it. As we were making our way to the pillbox, one soldier tripped a mine. He was wounded. Then we captured the pillbox.

One time in Germany, we came upon a house sitting atop a hill. It became the company command post. We put the radio in there. The radiomen swap out because the 300 radio is heavy and difficult to carry. A German civilian kept hanging around the area. Someone called him to lunch but he didn’t go. While no one was paying attention, the old German sneaked inside the building and stabbed the radioman in the back with a pocket knife. The young radioman was not disabled so he took the knife away from the old man and called for help. An MP Jeep drove up and they arrested the German. If the German had just behaved himself, he would have had no trouble.

While we were still in our defensive positions, my Captain sent word that he was taking me to Paris for Christmas.  That was on the 23rd of December, 1944. I sent word back that I would just stay with my buddies on the front. He sent word back that I was ordered to report for the trip to Paris so I reported. We were on the front for 90 days before being relieved.

We were put on a truck and driven to a tent camp where we would spend the first night.  As we were putting up our gear, we were told that we were going back to the front. They said that the Germans had dropped a bunch of paratroopers in France. We got ready to go back to the front and then they told us that the trip to Paris was on again.

We got to Paris the next day about 1:00 pm. They put us in a nice hotel and we got a nice bath for the first time in a long time. About bed time, we heard machine guns firing. Of course we hit the floor. I looked at one of my buddies and said, “I thought we were getting a break from the war. I thought we were 200 miles from the front.” We didn’t know there was a 9:00 pm curfew in Paris and if you were out after that you got shot.

We had a good night’s sleep in a nice bed. I didn’t even get out on the streets of Paris. The next morning, we were scheduled to return to the front without Christmas dinner but one of the Red Cross ladies convinced the convoy commander to wait until 1:00 pm before leaving so that we could get Christmas dinner. We had dinner with a large group of war orphans.

We were mostly farm boys and knew nothing about how the French ate their food. The waiters brought out dessert and we set it aside and waited for the real food. We waited and waited. Finally, a waitress told us that we were supposed to eat the dessert first in France. It didn’t take us long to eat the dessert. Then they brought the real food.

Combat

The Battle of the Bulge

When we returned to the front, We relieved the 36th Division and moved to an attack position less than a mile from Belgium. They had been trying to retake Belgium for over a week. We were in Bastoygn, Belgium in three days and relieved the paratroopers there. The ground was frozen down to about eight inches but we had to dig in to keep from freezing and to avoid the artillery.

One night we were going to take a small town after dark. We had one company on one side of the road and another company on the other side. A German horseman started coming down the road toward us. We were instructed to be very quiet and allow him to proceed. The guys in the other company must not have heard the order because they opened fire and they were shooting at us as well as the German. I had on a pair of army gloves and one of the bullets ripped a hole in my glove and creased my thumb. That was close. We had to be careful not to get shot by our own soldiers. Even though our leaders had information, there were still situations that came up where people were in the wrong place and shooting at the wrong people.

We were about a mile from Reichsdorf one night. The road ran for about a half mile up to the top of a hill. I was sent up as a forward observer and the guns were left in town. About half way up, a German machine gun nest pinned us down.  We were all on our bellies and I was next to the radio man. He inched over toward me and I inched over toward me until I could reach the radio. I told the gunners to fire a couple of rounds so that we could zero in on the machine gun nest. They fired a couple of rounds and I gave them firing orders. They knocked out the machine gun.

After we took a building at the top of the hill we learned that it was a bank. In peacetime people lived above the bank so there were beds. We found bales of 100,000 German Marks but we couldn’t spend them. They were made during Hitler’s time. I brought six home with me but I lost them.  

After we captured the town, I was on guard on an outpost. We were warned that an enemy patrol would be coming that night. The other guard was a guy named Clampett. He had a terrible smoker’s cough. I would have rather stood guard by myself. After we were in our position in the woods, he coughed constantly. I told him that if he didn’t control his coughing, the Germans would spot us right away and go around us. And sure enough, they did. When they entered the town, another set of guards halted them. The Germans shot the gun out of the guards hand and got on through. Their presence was known so everybody was on the lookout for the infiltrators. The next morning they were found and captured.     

We went through the Ardennes Forest and the Bavarian Mountains. We went around Frankfort and Cologne. When we reached Cologne, we approached from the North and only found one bridge in our sector that wasn’t blown. We were about five miles from Cologne and I went down to this bridge. The city was bombed to pieces. We walked across the bridge and could still hear artillery shells exploding in the distance.

We bypassed Berlin because Roosevelt and Churchill had agreed to let the Russians take it. The Germans had been to the gates of Stalingrad and the Russians wanted revenge. That was a mistake. We should have taken it ourselves. Later on it was divided into sections and the Berlin wall was built.

Combat 

Austria

When we reached Austria, there was a place called the Eagles Lair which had been Hitler’s secret headquarters. We called it the Crow’s Nest. When we were in the area, many of the men were transported up to the place so that they could see it. I cared nothing about seeing anything that Hitler had so I didn’t choose to go. Hitler was from Austria. A few months back a Nazi was elected to parliament in Austria.

Combat

Czechoslovakia

Just before we reached Czechoslovakia, we were moving up an overgrown country road and we were in a column. Normally, we would spread out but this time we were in a column and we were stopped for some reason. A jeep came up the road and stopped about 10 feet away. It was General Patton. He had on his pearl handled pistols. He asked why the column was stopped. The soldier told him he didn’t know. The General said he would Goddamned sure find out and ordered his driver to continue. We were on the move in about five minutes. Soon the General came back down the road. 

After we crossed over into Czechoslovakia, we were going up a road there and a machine gun jeep pulling an ammunition trailer passed us and started around a curve in the road. The jeep held about six machine gunners. We often used jeeps to move our mortars and ammunition. They ran over an anti-tank mine and it cut the jeep in half. The wheels were blown off and the trailer was blown loose. It fell in the hole made by the explosion. The men were blown into pieces. I knew the driver. His name was Simons. He told me earlier that his Daddy was in the First World War and was killed on the last day of the war. Simon told me that he knew if he made it until the last day, he would be killed. He didn’t make it until the last day.

A little later we were waiting for orders. There was a farm house nearby and some of our guys heard hens cackling. When the hens would cackle, a soldier would head for the hen house and get the egg. The Czechs depended on the eggs for their food so when the hens cackled, they ran to the hen house before the soldiers could get there.

We met the Russians in Czechoslovakia close to Plzein. We took a general merchandise store there. The store was filled with clothes and shoes. It was a nice store and had a large picture of Hitler on a high wall. One of the rifle companies had freed a Russian who appeared to be about 17 or 18 years old. He stayed with them until the war was over. The Russian soldier was a husky man and the bottoms were worn off his shoes. They asked him now that the war was over, what was he going to do? He said, “I am Ruskie. I go back to Russia.”  They told him that before he left, he could get some nice clothes. He nodded his head but before he got any clothes, he scaled the wall and took down every Hitler picture in the building. Then he got a pair of shoes, new clothes, and headed out the door.

There were some White Russians trapped between the Russian lines and ours with their horses and buggies. Nobody wanted them. We wouldn’t let them through and they were afraid to go back to Russia. If the Reds got them, they were sent to Siberia.  

There were many battlefield commissions. We lost all of our officers early in the campaign. Just before we left for Europe, a bunch of staff sergeants were added to our ranks. Many of them became officers as our regular officers were killed or wounded. One in our platoon led us and was given a battlefield commission. I became platoon leader during our time in the Army of Occupation.

Army of Occupation

During camp in the Army of Occupation, our platoon was housed quite a ways from the parade ground. We had to run in order to get there for morning roll call. Most of the outfits were housed right around the square and they were ready before we were even notified. I complained to some of the officers but nothing changed. We had to run for roll call for about three months.

During this period while we were in the Army of Occupation, we were issued cigarettes about twice each month. We had a ration card for cigarettes and other things. We would put our stuff in our barracks and go to lunch on those days. When we returned, the cigarettes would be gone. We noticed that two guys never showed up for lunch on those days so we started watching them. We followed them and found out that they were selling the cigarettes on the black market not more than a block up the street. There was a German couple and an Italian couple living there who bought the cigarettes.

I served in the Army of Occupation after the war and one of the most difficult things I ever had to encounter occurred then. We were in Germany and we were guarding a hospital. It contained wounded German Soldiers. It was more or less a convalescent home.

Even though I was a non-com, I had to stand guard duty. One of us was on the gate and the other was near the front door. The officers inspected us every day. One day a sergeant gave me an oral order that no one was to enter or leave without a pass. A woman passed out of the building without a pass and the guard at the front door didn’t stop her. When she got to the outside gate, she was going to walk right out. I challenged her and told her she needed a pass to leave. She couldn’t understand what I said. Then the other guard ask me what was the trouble. I told him anyone who came in or left needed a pass. The woman tried to leave again and I fixed bayonet with the intention of stopping her. I didn’t want to shoot her but orders were orders. She finally began to back up a bit. Then the German Commandant sent a pass out for her to leave. I looked at the pass which was in German and it didn’t mean a thing to me but I allowed her to leave. The standing order for everyone to have a pass was quickly canceled.

One of our outfit spoke Czech. We were approached by a couple of Czech girls, and they made us an offer. They agreed to make a rhubarb cake if we would furnish the sugar. Sugar was hard to come by, but we arranged to get our hands on some and enjoyed the cake.

We eventually lost about twenty-five percent of our company. During the early part of the war, several of our officers and men, including my number one and number two gunners, were wounded and sent back to a hospital. After they recuperated, number one, Bill Dotson, came back to the platoon but number two, Camillio Gonzalez, was sent back to the states on a plane.  The plane never made it home. All aboard were missing over the Atlantic. They started to send me back by plane but decided that too many were going down. I am grateful for that.

We went home on the ship New York Victory. It was laying on it’s side in the English Channel and we had to wait for the high tide to board. That was the longest wait of my life. We boarded and then went out before the tide went down. It took us eight days to reach New York Harbor where a tugboat with a band met us. We went up the Hudson River to Camp Shanks. Everyone who had a weapon had to register it with the customs agent.   

Legacy

These days I sleep no more than two or three hours a night. I relive those days in my mind and can’t sleep. I can’t get if off my mind. When I was raising a family, I got away from it for awhile but it came back. I think about men right beside me getting killed, explosions, fighting at night, the cold, the wet, and even going without a weapon in a combat zone. But the United States is still free so I guess it was worth it.

*****

The United States Army awarded Sergeant Benjamin Weatherby Taylor an Honorable Discharge on October 23, 1945 at Camp Chaffee Arkansas. He subsequently married, produced a substantial family, and spent the majority of his life working as a carpenter in Greenville, Texas, where he still resides at this time.

The horror of World War II, or any war, represents Satan's gift to mankind. Deliberately taking the lives of fellow humans for the sake of power and greed can only originate from the darkest angel and perpetrate through his misguided minions on earth...ES