Combat Duty Begins

Another time, after we had departed from the battle of Worms, the left front wheel of our AT truck ran over a land mine! The instantly-ensuing explosion blew the wheel off, tore up the left side of the cab and engine compartment, tore our 50 cal. machine gun off its ring mount, and threw the left front of the truck into the air with all of us in the back being thrown out onto different locations on the ground behind and to the right of the truck. Luckily the truck had not completely turned over but the front had been thrown into the air, and I guess being somewhat anchored by the 3000-lb AT gun behind it, smashed back down upon the road in a jackknifed position relative to the axis of the gun. I realized I'd been unconscious on the ground when the Corporal, who'd been in back of the truck with us, poured some of his canteen water in my face and I came to. He shouted for me to come help him with our driver, who had been badly wounded! The Corporal knew I'd been a pre-Med student at UC and wrongly thought I would be more useful in helping the driver than anyone else available as no real medics were nearby! The driver was lying on his back, in a daze, but not quite unconscious, by the side of the road, while his intestines were protruding about 7, or 8, inches outward, and downward, from his abdominal wall, through a wide horizontal gash all the way across his body, through his "Ike" jacket, shirt, underclothes, etc., with blood steadily running out of the gash onto his pants, and thence to the ground! Not knowing what else to do, I immediately pushed his intestines back inside with both my hands as tightly as I could and told the Corporal to quickly use the 2 long bandages in his first aid kit together and wrap them completely around and under (luckily the CPL was a big, husky fellow from Chilicothe, Ohio) the driver's body, including his clothes, and over my hands which were still pressing on him, tucking the bandage ends underneath (as he couldn't find the safety pins that were supposed to be in the packet). The CPL complained about the mud on my hands and that it would cause infection? I immediately replied it's better that the driver be alive with dirty intestines than bleed to death with clean ones! With my hands still in place holding in his intestines, I then told the Corporal to take the 2 bandages out of the first aid packet on my pistol belt this time and to wrap these second bandages all around at a little lower level this time under the palms of my hands, and give me a chance to remove my hands, which were becoming numb, from under the first bandages, by not covering my hands with this second bandage layer. Although it seemed like "forever", the whole operation took less than about 10 minutes and throughout the whole procedure I could feel my adrenaline-driven pulse pounding in my head! Our Squad Leader, who although he'd been sitting on the passenger side of the truck and was also thrown out, was not hurt except for some bruises, had gone to fetch the medics who were riding somewhere further back in the convoy, and had split off at a previous intersection following a line company truck, and now about 5 minutes after our bandaging job was completed, returned with 2 of them in a Jeep! And as if our little roadside 'picnic' wasn't bad enough the Medics told us we'd taken the wrong fork in the road and that we were located behind, or very close, to German positions! They quickly gave our driver a "shot" for pain, congratulated us on a job well done, took him away on a stretcher and put him onto the Jeep they had arrived in. As our truck was undriveable, we left it and the 57mm gun, we grabbed whatever duffel bags, field packs, rifles, ammunition bandoliers, etc., that we could and followed the Jeep back up the road we'd originally come down on, running in double-time, to get the hell out of there before a German howitzer shell or mortar bomb could catch us!!

I saw one of the medics a couple of days later and he jokingly asked if I wanted a job in his group? I replied that I barely had enough "guts" to be an infantryman, so I surely didn't have enough to be a medic! Besides, my only contribution to that day's first aid event was trying to hold the driver's intestines "in place" while trying to keep myself from vomiting!

Later on, I took off my helmet and noticed a large dent in its top, a sort of crack in the liner and felt a bump on my head. I thought to myself that whatever had caused that large dent had caused me to be knocked out after the mine had exploded! Although, we never saw our driver again after he'd been taken away, he must have asked an Army nurse, or a Red Cross person, at the hospital, probably in France, to write to his wife at home because she wrote a very thankful letter to our Platoon Sergeant at AT Platoon, HQ Co., 2nd Battalion, 355th Infantry, mentioning both the Corporal and myself, "Brandy" (which was my nickname while I was in the 89th Division) and thanking us for saving his life. Her letter made us feel very appreciated! Our Platoon Sergeant told us he was very proud of us!

We never saw our 1½-ton truck and 57mm gun again after the land mine damage. I guess our 57mm gun was retired for the duration? A couple of the other men in our squad had suffered some minor bone fractures and were taken away by the medics after we rejoined a line company truck. Most of the members of our AT squad were assigned to the line companies as "bazooka" (antitank-rocket launcher) men. One other man and myself were transferred to the Combat Intelligence and Reconnaissance Section as scout-observers. Was this, for us, the proverbial move "from the frying pan to the fire"?