The following is an account of three harrowing days I spent as an infantryman during World
War II.  March 13, 1944, our battalion jumped off  for the Siegfried Line in order to gain
access to the German Autobahn for the purpose of giving our armored a direct path to Berlin.   Upon reaching our first objective, we found a pile of toothpicks instead of a forest full of Krauts.  This was due to the massive two hour barrage which our artillery had laid down prior to our arrival.  As for the Germans, they had pulled back and were waiting, licking their chops for our obvious arrival.  Within seconds after we arrived, they started their counter-barrage, inflicting heavy casualties.  We withdrew immediately leaving our dead for grave registration and our surviving wounded to our medics.

As we regrouped and moved forward, we ran into sniper fire.  Being in a heavily wooded area,
we started saturating the trees with gunfire.  And sure enough, many of the snipers started
 falling from their perches and those that remained, realized their inevitable fate and 
climbed down as prisoners.      Further on, we came to a sparsely wooded area and were 
told to dig in.  However, before we could complete the process, the sniping started all 
over again with even more fatalities than the last time.  Our alert BAR man, noticing that 
some of the bushes were not in the same place they were before he ducked for cover, started
 spraying the bushes, and, sure enough,  behind every fallen bush, there was a dead German.
   Following his lead, we started firing at all of the bushes in the area with absolutely
 no intention of takiong any more prisoners alive.  As the old saying goes, "Fool me once,
 shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me."  After taking care of the snipers and digging
 in, we started taking a well-earned breather However, just about the time when my buddy
 and I had completed digging our foxhole, I was called to report to our company commander.
  I was ordered to go back to battalion headquarters to get the overlays for the following
 morning jump-off.  Since I had been on previous patrols and had some prior overlay
 experience, he must have thought that I was the most capable.   I was assigned a backup
 and with that, we were off for to the races.   We started out cautiously, but since
 evening was coming on fast, I must have turned right into a fire break instead of left,
 and in doing so, we ran into a German machine gun nest which greeted us with a hail of
 bullets.  (A fire break is an open aisle between trees which allows access for fighting
 forest fires), I immediately jumped into the draining ditch beside it.  To the best of
 my knowledge, my backup who was behind me, must have done the same.  Upon crawling backward
 and calling his name, I got no response, so I jumped out of the ditch and ran into the woods
 followed by another hail of machine gun bullets.  Fortunately, I wasn't hit so I crawled
 further into the woods until I felt safely distanced from the machine gun nest.
  At this point, I stood up and made my way deeper into the woods.  And to tell the
 truth, at this point, I didn't have a clue as to whether I was going in the right or
 the wrong direction.  But God must have been watching over me because in the remaining
 light of dusk, I saw a column of G.I.'s walking up a hill ahead of me.  What's more, 
when they saw me, they started frantically yelling and waving their arms and, me, thinking
 they were as glad to see me as I was to see them, ran to meet them.  When I got close, I
 saw that they were following a roped line.  Just then, a lieutenant came charging up to
 me, yelling, "You crazy bastard.  Did you know you just ran across a mine field?"  
Well, to make a long story short, he hadn't seen my backup buddy, battalion headquarters
 was at a new location at the bottom of the hill and last but not least, "You're still
 a crazy bastard."


Upon arriving at battalion headquarters, I asked about my lost buddy, but they had no news
 regarding him.  They gave me a blanket and told me to bed down in a corner.  At 1:00 AM,
 they woke me up, assigned me a new backup, gave me the overlays, showed me the telephone
 line I was to follow, and once again, I was off to the races.  We followed the telephone
 line hand over hand, and when we entered line company territory, we found out that my
 company commander had sent out some of our boys to guide us home.  This was a smart thing
 to do because it wouldn't be the first time that a trigger-happy G.I. mistakenly shot at
 a dark shadow moving silently through the woods, thinking he was enemy.  And the last thing
 we needed, was to get some trigger-fingered nut firing at us thinking we were Krauts.
  Finally after delivering the overlays and finding my foxhole, I must confess, I was 
enjoying some renewed optimism.  But not for long, because at first light, the Germans
 started bombarding us with everything they had -- eighty-eights, mortars, screaming meemies,
 you name it.  In fact, it was so bad, that because of the concussion shock that screaming
meemies generate, my buddy and I found ourselves outside of our foxhole crawling back
 in on two occasions.  Well, there you have it.  Three days out of the two-hundred or 
more days I was in combat.  Starting out with a massive German barrage, followed by a run-in
 with tree-climbing snipers, after which another run-in with snipers crawling forward behind
 bushes, and then our journey back for overlays only to run into a German machine gun nest
 and a hail of machine gun bullets, the loss of my backup buddy, running into the woods to
 escape another hail of bullets from the same machine gun nest, finding my way to our
 battalion headquarters but only after walking through a German minefield, getting the
 overlays back to my company commander, after which another massive barrage which blows
 me and my buddy out of our foxhole on two occasions.   But the most important part of 
this account is the fact that I was more stupid and lucky than smart.


                        Joseph Vosbikian