Ed & Ray Hersman in WWII - Robert Marks.org

4.11. SIEGFRIED LINE Ed & Ray Hersman in WWIIheard something walking on top of the O.P.Stanley would not open the trap door and see what it was. I was afraidas well, but I knew if a German opened that door and threw in a grenadewe were dead. Very slowly and cautiously I opened the door. I stuck myhead out into the pitch black night and couldn’t see a thing. I listened andlistened but didn’t hear a sound except a light breeze blowing. In retrospectI believe it was a deer on top the O.P. since the forest was full of them.An armored artillery unit which was in combat for the first time set upan O.P. a few hundred yards on our left. They were extremely careless, theGermans saw them, shelled them and knocked out two of their halftracks. 22One day one of our trip detonators went off. I scouted out to see what hadset it off and saw one of the artillery officers looking all around to see who”shot” him. I went to him and guided him around the wires, and warnedhim about running around in that forest by himself.We couldn’t hear German activity from our O.P. and decided to man itonly during daytime. We would use a Jeep to get to the O.P. and back,leaving at dusk and arriving at dawn.Four of us would go in, one man on the machine gun, two with their gunsin the ready to fire position.One day the Jeep didn’t reach us at dusk and we could hear an engineracing in the distance and concluded he was stuck in the mud. The roadwe used was just a fire break in the forest. The forest was made up almostentirely of pine trees and even in daytime was dark. We decided to walk out.We formed a regular three man patrol position and with guns at the full alertposition walked out. This position insures that each man is covered by firefrom the front or flanks by the other men. We came to our Jeep at the edgeof the forest, helped get him out of the mud and went to the C.P.The next morning at dawn we boarded the Jeep and went back to theO.P. At the edge of the woods we noticed a truck full of men and two halftracks from the armored artillery outfit. They fell in behind us and followed22 See Figure 4.9 on page 64.65