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Ed Boccafogli: I always say the fortunate part of the Depression was that it toughened that era of kids. They were brought up in adversity. They’d go to school with holes in their shoes, patched up clothes. They didn’t have the food like they have today. They eat too god darn much pizza. People lived on corn meal and potatoes during the Depression.
These are the kids that ended up being the tough soldiers that we had.
It’s very sad, now that I look back, at all the guys that died. Go back to Holland, I lost one kid there. I put him in for a decoration. If it wasn’t for him quite a few of us would have been killed. He set the barn on fire. The Germans had gotten into it, and we had nothing but a quarter of a mile of slightly inclined [land] going back with nothing but haystacks. There was no way of getting out of there, and he broke it up.
My wife and I were over in Europe, and we went to the cemetery to find his grave. We had to leave him there, in Weiler, when we pulled out. We felt him for a pulse, and he was dead.
We went to the graveyard, and I asked at the office, "A fellow named Ellerbush is supposed to be in the cemetery, a kid from Kansas." So he looks in the book. He says, "No name here. If he was killed, he isn’t here."
Then when we were ready to leave he came out and said, "Pardon me, sir, there are some late entries." So he went to another office and got the book. He said, "There he is." They had built a wall, and had the names of all those that were found. Some of them were found buried, and they didn’t know who they belonged to, because some of them were buried with the Germans and later on they found out it was an American, and there [his name] was on the wall. It made me feel better.
Aaron Elson: Let me go back to this [reading from the transcript of Boccafogli’s taping session for the Eisenhower Center]. "We had quite a confused mess. We had men from the 505 PIR and we had men from the 101st Airborne Division mixed in with us. So we dug in the positions there and tried to hold Hill 30. We had several attacks later in the day and there was quite a bit of shelling coming in on us. That night, they attacked us from two sides. The next day they attacked from three sides. Each time we’d throw them back. The artillery was bad, because it was coming in and we were getting casualties more from the artillery."
Ed Boccafogli: Our own artillery, coming in from the coast. They were shooting big stuff in, and the stuff would come overhead. A lot of it would land on top of us, and then go down into the valley there. That helped break up the attacks, but it also gave us quite a bit of agita. It’s terrible when that big stuff comes in from the coast.
Aaron Elson: I’ve been told they sounded like freight trains.
Ed Boccafogli: Oh yeah. Christ, in Holland, I’ll never forget. They must have had the Big Berthas because when they would come in, you’d hear ‘brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr’ way high up in the stratosphere. And you’re in a hole, half sitting in water. And then all of a sudden "BOOOM!!" Then it settled down. It seemed like we were floating on the water. Damn hole. You’d be in there and you’d hear plop-plop-plop-plop-plop, big blobs of crap and mud, trees coming down. This stuff would blow in the air and come down at you like cow flops. And then the hole would partially cave in. There were dozens of holes like that, all through the area. And then at night, if you had to take a poop you had to crawl over into the edge of those holes. You couldn’t go down too far because they’d fill up with water. They were as big as this room, as this house.
Aaron Elson: [reading]. "It seemed that most of the heavy fighting was to the north of us at La Fiere Bridge. There was another unit there, and they were in some battle, because day and night you could see the flashes in the sky. It was like the Fourth of July.
"Eventually our troopers did take the bridge. Later on, I think it was the fourth day, one of the regiments of the 9th Division finally reached us, and that took a lot of pressure off us. We were organized to start to push south, and we headed down to another bridge crossing."
Ed Boccafogli: I can still see the town on the other side. And there, too, we got shelled from the coast. And a lot of them landed on us. I mean big stuff. You could hear them screeching through the atmosphere. They come in, and we’re over here waiting to cross, and they’re hitting the village on the other side. They blew that village to pieces.
We were more afraid of that than we were of the Germans. That’s why in Desert Storm when those poor Arabs got bombed over there, I wouldn’t have wanted to be in their shoes for nothing. They were ready to surrender. There’s nothing like a devastating bombardment. Your nerves get shattered. You can’t stop shaking. People don’t understand that. You see the movies and they get bombed. A guy says, "Yeah, all right, well, let’s see, we’ll open a can of Spam." Like it’s almost a joke.
Aaron Elson: What is it like when you hear the shells?
Ed Boccafogli: You’re shaking. In Holland we got hit so bad when we crossed the Nedercanal, the Neder Rhine. See, you’ve got two parts of the Rhine there. You’ve got the one up at Eindhoven and the one at Arnheim. Arnheim was where the British went and were wiped out.
We finally crossed over and we were going up to relieve them, and that’s it. We stopped at Lint – Lint or Alst. And then the Germans started shelling us. They even hit the bridge. And this stuff would come in, big, heavy stuff, and all Holland would just pick up and come down. And you’re shaking. You can’t stop shaking. You’re safe in that foxhole. That shell’s got to come in to kill you. Or come close enough to bury you alive. But your nerves get shattered, and you’re squatted down in there like this [bringing his knees up to his chest]. Because you’re in the water, if you go down further you drown. And the ground is above you. Usually you’d dig buddy holes, in other words two guys in a hole. And there was Moline, a big Swede who was with me. And he’s in there shaking; you can’t stop. Your knees hurt, and the tension is so high you want to stand up to relieve that tension, but you can’t because your head would be above, and the shrapnel would cut you right in half.
I said to Moline, "I can’t take much more." And he said, "Me neither." He says, "I’m gonna crack up."
I said, "I’m gonna crack up before you."
You go hours with shelling like that. We were in an orchard, a beautiful orchard, whatever they were apple, pear trees. And then when it finally lets up, you look out, and you could swear a giant lawnmower came over there and just cut it clean. There wasn’t one tree that wasn’t just cut to pieces. And all that time I don’t think we lost two or three men, because it had to get in the hole to actually kill you. The holes would cave in on you, and they’d just throw the dirt out. But even when it got bad, you’d dig down there and poop right in the hole, throw some mud on it. Miserable. Then your legs itch, because you’re in there for weeks, and you didn’t take a bath or nothing. There’s mud and everything and your skin starts to itch. Especially where your clothes are tight.
It’s hard to describe. I’ll tell you, boy, the mind just cracks.
Aaron Elson: Did you see anybody get combat fatigue?
Ed Boccafogli: Oh yeah. In Weiler we had one. I was on a patrol. I was always the lead scout. They used me and this Mexican kid as the lead scout, all the time.
We went down off the high ground, Bergendahl, which is high ground, a hundred feet higher than anything around. That’s a mountain in Holland. We went down through the gullies, and into Weiler.
We didn’t know at the time that that was German territory. So they decided to occupy Weiler, a small village on the Donhoevel Road, which comes from Bergendahl and goes all the way down to Groesbeck, which the 504th had taken. And then beyond Weiler was a big forest. And they were afraid that there was armor in there.
So me and Lieutenant Glein and the Mexican kid, we go down through the gullies, get into the town, walk around the town. There wasn’t a thing. When you don’t hear a cat, a dog, or see a civilian, you know that’s occupied. Because people, the first thing they do is take their pets and disappear. They go in the cellar, they go anyplace, hide, or leave the village.
We went in the village and said Jesus, nothing in there. Went all around. At the edge of the town it dropped off another 30 or 40 feet down into a swamp. From there you could see all the way to the bridge at Arnheim, about eight miles away.
We came all the way around the edge, and went in a couple of buildings, looked inside. In one building there was some German gear. And it’s strange, because they don’t leave and leave their gear. And then I’m thinking, back in Normandy, I was in a similar situation. I started getting butterflies. We figured there’s something wrong in this town.
Still, we went around, went all the way down, came all the way back. Then we headed back up to the hill, and reported the town was not occupied.
They radioed back, and I guess headquarters says, "Okay, move Company B down there and occupy it." So just before dark, we moved down to the first part of the town. It was a whole town, but there was a double apron barbed wire fence, and a trolley line and a road. So we figured that’s Weiler, and this must be another town.
Then we dug in and set up a roadblock, because the road coming from the one end was where the Germans were. I dug a hole. We set up weapons. And there was a pile of railroad ties. So we just pushed them up nice, and dug a hole, figured what a beautiful parapet. The bullets come and it’d stop them. I dig down. The ground was real soft, and all of a sudden I hit a glass jar. I said, "Sonofabitch, I’ve got to get cut," and I’m taking and throwing the jar out the side. I look, and I see money. So I clean around nice, and I pull this big jar out. It’s full of money. I took all the money, gelders, kroners, what the hell. I figured this money is worthless now, the country’s invaded. That’s how stupid I was. I took all that money, rolled it up in a big roll, stuck it in my pocket, and took all the coins and filled them in my steel helmet. Then I said, "What the hell am I gonna do with this?" So I called the guys over and gave them some money. I got rid of it. I had these two big wads of paper money.
Then orders come to pull out and move to the other end of the town. So I left the foxhole there.
When I went back [a few years ago] I wanted to go and see that farmhouse, but I figured the people would take me and throw me in jail for stealing that money.
We move to the other end of the town, and we set up where it dropped off. I’d taken a grenade – there was a sunken road going down to the lower part of the town, there was a big field over here and there was a road coming out of the forest. I had a 57 Bofur lined up with the road.
Aaron Elson: A 57 what?
Ed Boccafogli: Bofur. That’s like a 57-millimeter antitank gun, with machine gun ammo. Beyond that, I don’t know. All I know is you fire them, they do damage.
So I get out on this open spot to see the flank, because we couldn’t see down below. I told this one kid to dig in over there where he could see. I took a grenade, and I took some string out of one of the buildings, and I put the grenade with the pin anchored to the string. I figured anything coming up in the dark is gonna trip it, the grenade would go off, and it’s a warning. Also, nail the guy who’s coming up.
It got dark. Everything’s quiet. I figure, well, I’m on a corner and I had a grenade launcher. So I put my grenade launcher on, with the grenade on top. And I sat there nice and comfortable, looking at the road.
Comes dawn, it’s all like a mist, a heavy mist, just starting to clear to where you could see. All of a sudden, "whirrrrrr," there’s a motor coming. A truck comes out of the mist, coming right straight toward us. A German truck with troops.
Evidently they didn’t know we were there, and they thought it was still their troops occupying the town. There were Germans in there. They had gone into the church and hid when we moved in. This we figured out later.
In the meantime, everybody’s asleep. It’s a nice morning, the fog, everything quiet. I hear this motor coming. So I anchor my rifle, and fire the grenade. "Poom!" It falls short, by about 20 feet.
He put the brakes on, and he stopped. The guys woke up when they heard the explosion and opened up. They hit the cab of the truck. Germans were spilling out. Everybody opened up, machine guns, everything. We must have got at least half a dozen, a couple of them escaped. Blew the truck apart.
Then we start getting fire. They must have realized what happened when they heard all the shooting, and they started shelling us. And they were hitting everything in the town.
Then they started coming across the open ground, but there are a lot of culverts. You could see them come through the ditches and then they’d jump the culverts where the little farm roads were. We were picking them off left and right. And me, I’ve got the M-1, and I couldn’t fire. It jammed on me. When I fired that rifle grenade, the thing ruptured inside. I couldn’t open it up. I had cut my hand all open trying to get it unjammed.
I’m running around the town trying to get this damn thing open. In the meantime everybody’s opening up, and the Germans pull a full-scale attack. They come from all over.
I run over towards the church. I get over by the church, and there’s Evans – the kid Evans, he was a sergeant – and a lieutenant.
By then orders had come to pull back onto the other side of the road because we were outnumbered. I don’t think we had a hundred men there, and they pulled a full-scale attack.
I got over by the church, and as I’m by the church, two Germans came around a corner and were looking straight at me. Now they could have killed me. I’m up against the parapets on the side of the church. I’m jammed up against there and I’m shaking. I couldn’t breathe, that’s how scared I was. And I’m looking at them. And one of them’s looking at me, he could see part of me. And he’s saying something – now, whether he saw me or saw the other kid, Evans, I don’t know. Evans was behind a tree and the lieutenant was a little further over. I don’t think they could see them. And he’s saying something I couldn’t understand. He’s not saying "Hande-ho," but what he was saying I didn’t know. I was so scared. I put my gun down on the ground, my hand was bleeding all over from trying to pull that damn lever. And I stood up on top of the lever – this is all in a second I did this – Rrrrrrr, I jammed, and "Poom!" It ejected the shell. And I took the rifle up, I emptied the whole clip, and I nailed one of them. The other one, as he went around the corner, I saw him fall. There were three of them altogether. Two of them came out, but one went back.
Then I started running. Evans and the lieutenant started running. We were the last ones out of that part of the village. We go across an open field. There’s a fence, and the fence comes to the Donhoevel Road. At the Donhoevel Road there’s a trolley line, and a double apron barbed wire fence. That’s why we thought the barbed wire fence was a border. But it wasn’t. And the fence goes right up to a barn. We ran across, bullets flying in all directions. It’s a miracle we didn’t get hit. All three of us go in through the goddarn barn, and then we went over a stone wall on the other side of the road.
I went over the wall. Believe me, I didn’t breathe once, from after I shot until I got to there. And I think my heart even stopped. That’s how fast I was running, how scared I was. I got over that wall and "Aaaaahhhh, Aaaahhhh" [heaving sounds], finally I started breathing.
I stood there a minute, and there was Mackey. Mackey, my friend, he was over on the side. He came over to see how I was. Man, my heart was stopped.
And then I had this kid Ellerbush; that’s who I mentioned. The Germans got into the barn, and all along the line there, everything opened up. All our guns were opened up. It was one of the most brutal battles we had. And Ellerbush crawled out in the open. He had the bazooka, and he fired into the barn. The first one didn’t do anything.
He loaded up again, and fired. In the meantime he crawled way out in the open, and he got hit through the side.
The barn caught fire. And at the same time, the British reached us. They’re up on the high ground. These are British tanks. And they’re firing down into the town on us. They’re hitting the buildings, they’re hitting the stone walls. The walls are made out of stone and mortar. God darn bricks, stones and everything are coming down on top of us. So the Germans are shooting at us, the barn is on fire. The flames must have gone two hundred feet in the air. The Germans spilled out. As they’re spilling out the guys are shooting and knocking them down, and I’m yelling, "Don’t kill ’em! Don’t kill ’em! We want to get prisoners." Then we motioned them to come in, and so we took quite a few prisoners.
Aaron Elson: And the British were shooting at you?
Ed Boccafogli: The British are on the hill shooting at us. Our radio operator went crazy. We’re on different frequencies. He was at the other end, where the captain was. They say he tried to get them. He couldn’t get them, and he felt a responsibility. He started going across the open ground, to go up on the hill to try to tell them. "Boom!" They nailed him out in the field, killed him. Finally, after about an hour or so the British must have realized somehow that we were in the town and they were shooting at us. Then the tank firing let up. But the Germans and us were still firing back and forth.
This was late in the afternoon. Now we had to get out of that town. There was no way we could hold it. We were outnumbered like 20 to 1. There was only one solution. Get the hell up to the high ground.
So orders came to activate all the mortar ammunition, pull the pins and leave it all there. And I went over. Ellerbush got hit. He was stone cold, and we had to leave his body there. But if he didn’t hit that barn, the Germans would have crossed that road and got behind us.
As it started to get dark, we got the German prisoners to carry the wounded. The walking wounded walked, and other guys we’d put on doors, ladders, anything we could get. Oh, cowardice, that’s what I wanted to bring out. This one kid, Sergeant Vento, a good sergeant up until that point, left his whole squad. And they found him underneath the crawl space, because there are no cellars over there. He was down there shaking like a dog with the tail between his legs. He was broken down, and we transferred him out to supplies later on.
At the time I had nothing but contempt for him. But then later on I thought, how many men used every method not to be there. At least this guy went his full measure. He went through Normandy, all the way to there, and then all of a sudden something just went "Poom!" That’s it. Battle fatigue, whatever you call it. Later on I had compassion for him. But he left his squad, and most of them were either killed or taken prisoner.
Aaron Elson: Is this many years later?
Ed Boccafogli: No, it was while we were still in England. You start to think. And then we had the young punks come in. We’re in Germany as occupation troops, and the young punks had never even seen an enemy. "Hey, ya goddamn Kraut." An old man. This old man could be his grandfather. "Get out of here ya goddamn Kraut." They act nasty to people. We’d go to the mess hall. We had the three garbage cans where we’d put the edible, non-edible. You’d see an old lady there with gray hair, a little kid over there with a bucket waiting to get something. You’re not supposed to fraternize or give them nothing. What, are you kidding? All of us would say, "Hey, Hans. Come over here, Fritz." We’d call the woman over, give her whatever we saved – a potato or something. Then you think, it could be my mother. The suffering these people went through.
But anyway, that guy left his squad, and as dark got in, with phosphorous shells we started setting all the haystacks on fire. We went back with these ladders, and the Germans carried them, too. The prisoners carried the ladders with our wounded. We went in a long file, up the hill, till we finally got to the high ground.
Then for two days they attacked us with everything. They never dislodged us from the high ground. That was it, we stopped them dead. There were a lot of German casualties; they just couldn’t take the hill. Then we pulled out after the British finally reached us and stabilized everything. But of those tanks that were shooting at us, every one of them was knocked out by German 88s. As they came up on the knoll, they’d nail them like clay pigeons.
Aaron Elson: Which tanks were these?
Ed Boccafogli: The British tanks. I think they lost seven of them, they all got knocked out. Those 88s were accurate, like rifle fire.
Then we moved across the river there, the same thing. The British, they got so far, and then they refused to go any further. Poor bastards up there. The British bastards up in Arnheim. That’s it, they were lost. The ones that finally got back looked like they had gone through hell. Their eyes were coming out of their head. Out of 10,000 men that were dropped into Arnheim, they lost 8,200 men.
Aaron Elson: Tell me about when you were wounded.
Ed Boccafogli: After Baupte finally fell. Baupte was bad. They were shooting antitank shells. They were coming right through the trees. There’s nothing like an antitank shell, which is armor piercing. When it hits a tree it ricochets. That’s worse than shrapnel. That thing is slapping trees and ricocheting and it doesn’t explode unless it hits point blank. Boy, that was the weirdest sound.
Then we pulled out, and I was put ahead, Hernandez and myself, as head scouts. We were moving along this dirt road, and they said they spotted a large body of Germans from the air. Another company, a quarter of a mile away, was moving forward, trying to see if we could contact and flank them.
I’m going along this dirt road. All of a sudden the road drops off on the side of the hill and goes down, then levels off, and there’s farmhouses. And they opened fire on us. Well, my job was done. I drew fire. I hit the ground. And the next squad deploys immediately and opens fire. I can’t fire back. If I stand there, the second shot’s gonna get me for sure. So I hit the ground and let the squad take care of it.
Now two Polish soldiers come out with their hands up. "Me Polski! Me Polski!" That was bad, because up ahead was the main body of Germans, or enemy. The enemy had everything there. They had Poles, they even had Russians that were taken prisoner and were put up in the front as soldiers. Now they heard the shooting, so they knew that there’s a movement coming towards them.
We took the two prisoners. The old man, Millsaps, says, "Okay, move ahead." So I go ahead. We’re two hundred yards ahead of the main body, one on each side of the road. We’re going along, and we come to thicker brush, and then thicker woods. On the side it was low ground and fields up above. So as we’re coming in I hear a high-pitched screech. I stop, put my hand up, and move over to a wall. I look and see a farmhouse inside the walls, like a chalet, and another building. So I stop. The old man comes running up and says, "What’s up?"
I told him what I heard. I said, "It sounds either like a woman screaming or a high-pitched voice yelling."
He said, "You and Hernandez take off on the right flank." He called up Thomas and another kid and said, "Skirt those buildings and keep going." That scream was the angel on my shoulder. The old man must have thought I was starting to get jittery. So we go off about a hundred yards to the right flank of the column, as side riders. We’re going along, going along, maybe another six hundred yards. The two scouts ran right smack into the German positions, and instead of waiting, to let the main body come forward, one of the Germans opened up and killed both of them.
Then the company deployed, and the firing started.
We had some battles that were brutal, but this one was unbelievable. There must have been thirty or forty machine guns going at any one time. Bullets were cutting everything apart. Mortars were coming in.
We’re out on a flank, and I’m trying to work my way back in. I work over to a hedgerow. I get to this dirt bank, and I climb up, trying to see ahead, and I look out and I see something shine, and I open up. Next thing I know, "Poom!" The dirt flies up against me. I get down. Crawl away from there. Climb up on the bank again, and look, look, look. I’m next to a tree. I’m looking, looking, and see something out there like brush moving. I open up. Then, "Pow!" The bark and everything flies off the tree. I figure this guy can see me. I didn’t know where it was coming from. I go down the third time. I get up again. I get down in the brush. I fire two or three rounds. The next thing I know, "Pwwaaangg!" That was it. I got nailed beautiful. The bullet came from the right. The bullet went through the stock [of my gun], through my first aid packet, and tore my arm.
I’m laying on my back with my arm under me. I’d rolled off the bank and passed out. Then I start to come to, and I figure I’m dead. All I see is clouds, like a mist, and I figure I’m going to heaven. Then I started to feel pain, and in the tree above me I could see the leaves start to form. I said, "Holy Christ, I’m still here." Then I hear machine guns going. Everything comes back, and I think I must have been hit in the face. I’m numb from [the top of my head] down. I had one pain all through my body. I didn’t know where I was hit.
Finally I look and I see the blood squirting out. My arm is under me. And I thought, "Jesus, they blew my arm off." I rolled over, finally got my arm out, stuck my hand in and squeezed the blood into the hole.
Hernandez came over. In the meantime, I’m going into shock because of all this blood I’m losing. "Ahh," he says, "You’re okay." He takes my canteen and he gives me a drink, and I’d milked a cow just before, and I got some milk. The milk was sour. I spit it out. Just like Jesus Christ on the cross, they give him vinegar. So he gives me some of his water. Then he takes off and he gets hit in the shoulder.
Then I got a handkerchief and put a tourniquet as tight as I could get it around there. I worked my way over to where the kid from Peoria … what the hell is his name? I used to call it the whiskey capital of the world, Peoria, Illinois. I get over to him. He had the machine gun. The machine gun was firing so much that it was squealing. The bullets were squealing trying to get out. That’s how hot the barrel was.
And then I went crazy. I had a luger, and I started firing, going from hedgerow to hedgerow. The old man’s yelling at me to get the hell out of there, and I refuse. I went berserk. I started going after the Germans through the hedgerows. Finally they got me and they calmed me down and made me go back.
I got the Bronze Star, because when I went back I told Captain Taylor, he was back where the mortars were, I said, "You’ve got to come in closer. You’re firing way the hell beyond." So they brought the mortars in and started pounding them. And then eventually, after about twenty more minutes, the fighting broke off. The Germans pulled out and we pulled out. It was too big. We hit a tremendous force there. We lost a lot of men. I think that day alone, I was one of them, but we must have lost fifteen to twenty men right there.
Aaron Elson: Where did you get the luger that you were firing?
Ed Boccafogli: Someplace between there and Baupte. We’d gotten in a fight and there was a dead German officer. I took the luger off of him. The luger had blood on it, and I cleaned it off. I always thought that was a curse. I should have never taken that gun. I took it off a dead body. These things hit you later on, when you look back. When I got wounded and was being evacuated, I gave that luger to somebody. Then I found out he was killed.
Don’t touch the dead. We had one fellow, he had every kind of trinket you could imagine off dead bodies. He was a ghoul. He’d cut the finger off a dead body to get the ring off. He didn’t give a damn.
Aaron Elson: He survived?
Ed Boccafogli: Yeah. He came to a reunion. We used to call him the Ghoul. A dead German … he’d take the arm and cut off a watch.
Aaron Elson: I guess that happened a lot.
Ed Boccafogli: The Russians did that to the Germans, because the Russians were a lot of peasant people, and the Germans were more advanced. They all had watches. And the first thing they do is go for the watch, take it off the dead German. Rings and watches.
Aaron Elson: Towards the end of the war, were you with them when they entered any concentration camps?
Ed Boccafogli: No. We were stationed at Frankfurt, Germany, as honor guard, the 508th.. I pulled sergeant of the guard at SHAEF [Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Forces]. Two times. You had all the dignitaries there, and you were shaking in your boots because you had to march around and come in front, with the parade and everything, and salute. It was quite a show. I was even in Eisenhower’s office, and I was in the war room with the officer of the day. All plush rugs. Maps all over the wall, the Pacific and everything. I got in there because I was sergeant of the guard with the officer of the day. Otherwise I’d have never gotten in there.
My wife and I are going back in June [1994] to Normandy. That’ll be the last hurrah. I’m going to pay tribute, visit all the graves, the cemeteries, in Belgium. There are a few of us. I don’t know how many men from my company are going. Some of them can’t afford it, and some of them are too old now. A lot of them have died. We’ve lost 11 men since the last newsletter. They’re dying left and right now.
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Contents
Chapter 2, Man
Overboard