Combat Duty Begins

While we were engaged in "city fighting", in a town whose name I don't remember, I was hit on the right shin by a sizable piece of white phosphorus from a German WP artillery shell, or mortar bomb! The bomb had hit the edge of a roof, above and in front of me, from which a chunk of WP hit the stone-paved street, bounced in a small arc, and instantly burned through my right OD trouser leg. This made an oval-shaped, bleeding, burns wound on the lower portion of my shin! The pain was so fierce I thought I'd faint, but I instinctively brushed it away as best I could with the butt of my M1 and it didn't stick to my flesh! (Actually, I think that by scraping it away I'd lengthened the scar, which had burnt through the skin almost to the bone? I still have that 3-inch long by ¾- inch wide "souvenir" burn-scar to this day!) One of our medics came along afterwards, pulled up my burnt-through trouser leg, put some kind of powder on it that stopped the pain and bleeding, patched it up with some kind of salve and bandaged it. He was in a great hurry and didn't make a notation of my name and serial number. Afterwards I realized that I'd never even remembered about mentioning a Purple Heart! Later that day I showed that burn on my shin, and the charred, black hole burned into my O.D. trousers, to my Platoon Sgt., asking him to report it to the Battalion Commander directly, instead of telling our Company CO, who hated my "guts" because I was Jewish! He said he'd try. I suppose he'd later forgotten about the Purple Heart I should have received, or maybe the Company CO, who hated me simply for being Jewish refused to allow me that decoration even though I'd deserved it.

(Long after I'd returned to civilian life, and during a vacation trip to Québec, my right foot slipped off a ladder-step while climbing out of a swimming pool, and scraped almost the very same place on my right shin, i.e., where I'd gotten the original WP burn-wound! The sudden pain and bleeding, was an instantaneous reminder of my previous combat duty! )

One morning, while 2nd BN was in reserve, I suddenly realized that I missed the distant telltale sounds made by the 4th Armored Division tanks as they moved relentlessly forward? I stood up in the Jeep and searched the nearby fields with my binoculars and saw that all the tanks within view had stopped moving? They were sitting all over the immediate landscape, with their guns raised up towards the east at about a 25-degree angle? Guess what? The 4th Armored Division had run out of gasoline and became a group of stationary howitzers, at least till the "Red Ball Express", our famous "Go Through Hell" truckers, could catch up to us and deliver more gasoline!!

Also, there was a rumor floating around that at 'that' hour of 'that' day the forward elements, meaning us, of the 89th Infantry Division had advanced farther eastward into Germany than any other American unit !!

Later on, I discovered an electrical laboratory (for developing RADAR?) hidden inside an apparent garage building, with thick brick walls, in Arnstadt? ..or some other town? When I'd looked through the window I recognized electrical power switchboards similar to the electrical power switching equipment I had seen in the CCNY electrical engineering laboratories during my student days before I'd enlisted! I told my Staff Sergeant about the laboratory and he relayed the information to Battalion HQ. Of course, my name was never mentioned in connection with this event even though I had made the discovery!

We discovered an automobile called a "Horch", (was it made in, or near, Horcheim?) which looked like a cross between a Rolls Royce and an old Pierce-Arrow, in the garage of a large private home of some high ranking Nazi, in Arnstadt (?). We knew it was a Nazi political officer's car from the size of his home and because the weight of the car's doors (slamming a door closed was reminiscent of the sound of caused by closing a bank vault!) told us it was armor-plated, i.e., "bulletproof "! We advised our Battalion Commander about it who later sent a GI to drive it back to him!

Some "Ost-arbeiters", literally "East-workers", usually Poles, who were forced into slavery by the Nazi's, told us about a General-Oberst, equivalent to our 4-star (?) model, living in a nearby house. We investigated and found the General-Oberst, sick in bed, in his huge manor house near Arnstadt (?). He was a nobleman judging by the coat-of-arms seen in his manor house. His wife screamed at us when we placed him under arrest, got him up out of bed, made him dress in his uniform and took him with us to 2nd Battalion HQ. I told his wife to stop screaming at us or we'd arrest her too! Especially as she was constantly calling us "Amerikanische schwein"!

As I was passably fluent in German, I was asked to help one of our POW interrogation teams after we captured the city of Gotha. (I wondered how the IPW team members got their job if their command of the German language was so frail?) Later, some of us were attached to the CIC Detachment to search civilian residences, door-to-door, looking for SS troopers who had removed their uniforms and were dressed in civilian clothes. They could usually be identified by their blood type tattooed in their armpit! (This was ordered by Hitler because as "elite" troops the SS men were entitled to top priority medical treatment when wounded! This was one of the conveniences that Hitler provided for us. Another was building the Autobahn so we could move around so quickly and conveniently!)