©2014, John M. Khoury
Chapter 12
Village of St. Remy
We had spent all our time in the forests, driving the Germans back. As we moved through the woods, the enemy would often hit us with 88mm artillery fire. A tree burst would send shrapnel showering down on us. If a shell hit the ground and then exploded, the shrapnel would fly upwards and outwards, which made lying on the ground in a hollow the most protected place to be other than in a dugout, which required a direct hit.
My hearing became so acute that I would dive for the ground in an instant when an artillery shell had a certain sound that said to me, "I'm going to get you this time." I could tell where it was coming from, if it was American or German, and how close it was going to hit. The one I would not hear would be the one that got me. I spent a lot of time hitting the ground, getting up, listening and hitting the ground again. Small arms fire from rifles and machine guns also got my attention and the ground was my refuge until I could tell what and where it was coming from. It became an instantaneous reflex.
On 14 November 1944, the company was attacking the German positions outside St. Remy when artillery and mortar fire came in on us. Hot, jagged shards of steel rained down on us. Some men were wounded. One piece of shrapnel struck my squad leader, Sgt. John Baud, in the back of the neck just below his helmet and he was killed almost instantly. Lapa went over to see him when he heard that he had been hit. He said that blood was all around, and there was nothing anyone could do for him. Baud, the French-American who came back to France, was the first soldier to be killed in Love Company. (He is buried in the American Military Cemetery in Epinal, where his family can visit his grave. He had just missed seeing them two weeks earlier.)
As we emerged from the woods, we crossed an open field toward the town of St. Remy, which was about a quarter mile ahead of us. We could see the church steeple as we advanced in a long skirmish line that stretched out for several hundred yards on a broad front. We continued in the face of rifle and machine gun fire. The enemy also lobbed mortar shells down on us. Some of the rounds could be seen as they descended just prior to detonation, according to Lapa, but I was not interested in looking up.
St. Remy, a small farm village in the Vosges Mountains, was the first town the company entered. There were no civilians to be seen and no Germans anywhere as we came to an intersection of two main streets in the center of town. We were wary of an enemy counterattack or house-to-house fighting. However, they had the intersection zeroed in and before we could dig in, they were shelling us with 88mm artillery fire. We scrambled for cover into the ditches at the sides of the road. Cow dung or horse manure didn't bother us when we hugged Mother Earth. What was a little more filth when you had to dive for cover to save your life?
As I was lying there I could hear, above the noise of the shelling, a voice singing:
"You'd better not laugh when the hearse goes by
For you may be the next to die.
They put you in a wooden box
And cover you over with dirt and rocks
And the worms crawl in and the worms crawl out
In through your eyes and out of your mouth.
They call their friends and their friends' friends too
And they sit on your chin and they chew and they chew.
So-o-o-o-o-o
You'd better not laugh when the hearse goes by
For you may be the next to die."
Some of us threw any handy stones or rocks at the guy who was singing.
When we learned that a German forward artillery observer was directing the cannon fire from the church steeple about 100 yards up the street from us, he was put out of business very quickly and the shelling ended. It was now safe to check for any other enemy resistance, but the village was ours. We had taken our objective.
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