September-October - Air Defense Artillery

FRO'" 1 THE FIGHTING FRONTS
possible. This
reo
trip he negotiated safely despite small-arms
I It seems pertinent to mention here that the numerous
r parently casual references to "small-arms fire" in this his-
Jr\' must not be minimized. The numbers of AA and inea~trymen
killed by such fire were such as to make smalls
fire anything but a minor nuisance, but since none of
ese men played a commanding part in the primary AT
etion, their names and deeds are omitted.
Special emphasis is placed on the fact that during these
T actions fire from several directions indicated that the
1,~ermanswere steadily drawing closer in an encircling
o\'ement, and yet these untried men continued work in
eir first ground action, setting an example under harassing
re that any battle-hardened
oemulate.
troops would have been proud
( Before Sgt. Davis completed his trip to the "house,"
nder enemy small-arms fire, he was subjected to fire from
. S.. 30 caliber machine guns across the road, manned by
ermans. At the same time, further action interrupted his
rogress when the Tiger Royal tank designated as No. 4
the sketch, fired one round of artillery into the house,
~d followed with a long burst of machine-gun fire. Those
side came out on the double, and ran west past Gun No.
.while the tank turned and cut across an adjacent field.
Inside the battered house Sgt. Davis found a medic
yond help and dying, and an Infantry officer who had
een severely wounded in the abdomen. I-Ie walked to the
oor and yelled for T /5 Kenenth Moore, a Battery medic,
come and help him. Moore and T /5 Jerry Harris crawled
him from near the gun position, and as Moore and Davis
ulled the wounded man out of the house, Harris stood
eadv to cover their removal.
Moore sprinkled sulfa powder throughout the wounded
rea and wrapped a bandage around the officer's waist and
ips to keep his intestines from falling out. Almost before
Ioore's first-aid work was finished, intense fire forced the
A Mark IV, La Gleize.
Signal Corp~
three men to leave the spot in search of cover. They stopped
for a moment en route.
"I don't think we can reach him now," Davis said looking
back in the direction of the wounded officer.
Harris arose to try, but drew such a hail of fire he had to
flatten immediately ~
l\Ioore said nothing, but he looked steadily toward the
man he had just aided, and turned o\'er a few estimations
in his mind. Now, he noted, they seemed to be drawing
fire from three directions, the heaviest from the same hedgerow
that Seamon and Darago had used as a screen from
which to discharge bazookas.
The officer groaned and tried to roll over. This was too
much for j\'Ioore .. Ignoring both the injunctions of Sgt.
Davis and enemy fire, he crawled through a genuine "pindown"
hail to the officer, gave him an injection of morphine,
and slipped a new bandage over his stomach wound. Rolling
the man over on his side, Moore slipped in beside him
so his patient's stomach was against the small of his back .
Then, rolling back to a face-clown position he was able t9
crawl with the lieutenant toward a point of safety.
As he painstakingly inched his wounded burden toward
Gun No.2 position, enemy slugs struck the ground directly
in front of him, and his position was unenviable at best.
However, with the help of a near-bv infantrvman who
switched targets and lined his fire on 'the Ger~ans trying
to get Moore, besides the cover offered by I-Iarris, who
threw a hand grenade at the hedgerow, and Davis, who
opened up with an M-I toward the square house, the medic
managed to move his man to Gun No.2. There, Harris
found a jeep in which he carried the wounded man out of
Stoument to the north.
Moore and Davis stayed at their gun position, where Lt.
McGuire was, as he described it, "in a steadily worsening
position." The Infantry was outnumbered and outgunned,
and would have to fall back to better defenses. To heighten
the "worsening" of events, aU. S. ammo-carrying half-track