Ed & Ray Hersman in WWII - Robert Marks.org

4.8. BACK INTO COMBAT Ed & Ray Hersman in WWIIthe enemy. When a shot is fired, the person shot at “hits the dirt” and theone doing the shooting sees him fall but can’t be sure he actually hit himunless he goes up and looks, which is rarely a safe thing to do.I was sent from the hospital to a “repple-depple”. They gave me newequipment and I was sent back to my old outfit via Omaha Beach. I passedthrough the area which had been bombed and it looked like the craters onthe moon. German tanks, guns and vehicles had been blown all over theplace. I found my old outfit at Vendome, France, 11 and found that a fewchanges had been made.My old section had been brought up to full strength with replacements.Pearson, Stanley, Sgt. Mackey, Williams, Marino (he was back now thatthings were quite), Pardini, and I now made up the section. deGutis hadbeen killed in Normandy, which I forgot to mention.4.7.1 The Silver Star for GallantryI was awarded a Silver Star for gallantry in action, for knocking out theGerman machine guns the day of the breakout. I did not get my stripes backsince Mackey now had that job. See Figures 10.8 on page 124 for the wordingof the citation.4.8 Back into CombatThe battalion was bivouacked in huge caves at Vendome, and since there wasno fighting in the area we goofed around and shot up a lot of ammunition,using German guns which we all had.The division moved from Vendome to the Loire River, south of Orleans. 12I do not remember the name of the town my section was located in on theLoire River. We were on the east bank and the other side was supposedly11 See the map in Figure 4.1 #4.12 See the map in Figure 4.1 #5.55