Ed & Ray Hersman in WWII - Robert Marks.org

4.1. RELIEVING THE 101ST AIRBORNE DIVISION ATCARENTANEd & Ray Hersman in WWIIartillery. I flopped down behind a tree and then ran to a shell hole. The treeI had just left exploded as a German shell hit it. Fun was over, a man couldget killed very easily, as far as I was concerned, from then on.The leaders of our attack was lieutenant Jacobs, a big brute of a manfond of hand to hand combat and a G.I. I didn’t know. They outran the restof us getting across the swamp and were floating dead in the drainage ditchon the German side of the swamp. This ditch had water in it about waistdeep and was about six feet wide. The bank facing the Germans was aboutseven feet and to shoot at the Germans we had to dig foot holds.The Germans had pulled back from this bank and could not hit us withsmall arms fire. Our men were green. We had seen Jacobs and the G.I. deadand along with making us sick, it frightened us. As a result very few menwould climb the bank and fire at the Germans. I am sure that the very fewthat did used the same reasoning that I used. If the Germans counter-attackus and we are not on line to stop them, they’ll drive us into that open swampand kill us.I couldn’t see a single enemy when I was up on that bank so I fired atthe next hedgerow where I was sure they were. A German tank pulled up onour right flank and although he couldn’t hit the men at the bank, nobodycould cross the swamp and we were for all purposes cut off from the rear.I saw a man cross that swamp stringing wire as calmly as though he wasjust running it for a training exercise. The tank was trying to cut him downwith both machine gun and cannon fire. He wasn’t hit and we had telephonecommunication with the command post for a few minutes.4.1.1 Battle FatigueOne of the first orders that came over the telephone was one to me tellingme to come to the command post and give a situation report and to pointout on a map where the enemy line was.I started back across the swamp with Membresse, another member of mysection. How he got with F Company is beyond me because he started out41