R. K. Doughty
141st Infantry

During those first days of the assault on Salerno when, as the Generals tell it, the 36th Division was being "blooded," many lessons not taught at the Infantry School at Ft. Benning or at the Command and General Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth were being learned the hard way.

At one juncture, the Division had been strung out over a wide defensive area with radio voices from Berlin practically exultant over the next German move that would drive a wedge, it was claimed, between the Sele and Calore Rivers and result in the demise of the 36th.

At that moment, the 141st Headquarters with part of one battalion and the Service Company were alongside the 56th (Black Cat) Division of the British 10th Corps. The rest of the 36th Division was fighting in similar disjointed elements along the front to the south. Unity of command had yet to be appreciated by some high rankers.

On a particularly nice day, when pounding of the British 25-pounders, as some of their artillery was called, had eased off near the shoreline behind us, and the tanks of the Royal Scots Greys, massed hub-to-hub in extension of the artillery positions, were silent, a handsome British Brigadier strolled into the wooded gully where the 141st’s command tents were pitched. Someone highballed him and he responded by bringing a riding crop to his garrison cap visor. He was most unassuming and the prototype of a young, reserved and confident general officer.

Shortly he had assembled some of the headquarters’ staff around him on a grassy knoll where he sat down and announced that he was with the British 56th to which our cut-up unit was momentarily attached for operations. He had heard, he said, the broadcasts from Berlin and thinking that they could have had an unsettling effect on our morale, decided to pay us a visit. He asked us to sit down and talk with him, which we did.

We discussed the situation confronting us and he answered a number of questions about hostile reinforcements and capabilities. He suddenly asked for the Regimental Intelligence Officer and I responded.

"Where are your OP’s?" he asked.

"We only have one," I said, "and that’s in a pigeon loft in a poor position because of the undergrowth and trees of the area."

"Would you mind coming with me?" he asked and there was no doubt in his tone that, though we were in different armies, I had just received a polite order.

We moved toward our forward positions, going around a fenced plot where a couple of water buffalo, running loose, had given our foragers problems when they tried to "liberate" some beautiful looking muskmelons growing there. As we approached our front line, I cautioned him and he used the cover of trees and boulders well as we moved to a spot from which, beyond an open field, we could see the general lines held by the Germans. On a slight rise at the edge of the field stood a cement silo.

"That’s where your OP should be!" he said in a low tone, pointing at the silo.

"It wouldn’t last two minutes, there," I replied.

He looked at me for a long moment and then gave me a short order: "Follow me!" We returned to the 141st Hq. where he asked for transportation and shortly he and I were being driven in a jeep over a newly built, but boggy, road that ran past the 25-pounders and tanks to his headquarters. There he did some telephoning and then, putting on the pie-plate helmet the British wore, with its camouflage netting showing signs of hard use, he strode toward the British front lines. He also fastened a web belt and holstered revolver around his waist. It was getting on toward evening at the time and I began to worry some as we passed gun emplacements and then, in tall grass, an outpost line where he engaged in a whispered conversation with someone concealed from my view who had challenged him.

We proceeded through a swale where reeds and high grass concealed all but our heads and shoulders. I had noted an Italian farm house in the distance as we passed the outpost line and shortly, as our route of approach changed in the swampy going, I could make out another silo, beyond a barn. It seemed to me then, that we were very close to the German lines and in all likelihood within small arms range of enemy positions. I was also fairly certain that I had encountered a mad Englishman!

As we neared the barnyard, which was fenced in with split railings, I saw six or eight British soldiers chasing a cow around the enclosure and laughing and shouting to milk her, a procedure she was having no part of, as a well placed kick here, and a tossed horn, there, sent a couple of them sprawling to the great enjoyment, not only of those trying to hold her but also of another contingent of men high in an opening in the silo watching the entertainment.

The Brigadier, who had said nothing to me from the time he’d ordered me to follow him, turned to me with a serious look on his face and said, "Get the idea?" I knew, of course, that he was referring to the location of the OP and nodded. As I turned to look back toward the British lines, I could better understand the Brigadier’s timing in making the trip with me to the OP. The sun, low down, shone directly in my eyes and for all practical purposes blinded, from the observation of those Germans who might have threatened our safety, the route we had followed.

I was quite ready to make the return trip at that moment but the Brigadier had only started his "lesson learned in combat." He proceeded to the silo base and started up an iron ladder that was permanently attached to the silo on the enemy’s side of the structure! Again, there came that terse, "Follow me!"

He gained the platform at the opening near the top and I started to climb. About halfway up a shell had penetrated the side of the cement silo taking out two feet of one side of the ladder and two of the iron rungs. It had obviously been an armor-piercing shell for it had gone straight through to the interior of the silo so that the main damage had been to the ladder. It simply meant to me that I was the bull’s eye on a direct-laying gun target, a thought that spurred me to bridge the ladder’s gap with some extra-curricular calisthenics.

Once on the platform, I was introduced to the artillerymen at work there among whom were several radio operators and observers. They were busy bringing fire to bear on distant enemy traffic along one of Mussolini’s main highways. As a hit was registered on a vehicle it was greeted with loud shouts and much shoulder slapping. My own inclination was to keep as quiet as hell!

It was a frightening experience and the thought occurred to me that some of the telephoning the Brigadier had done before we left his bailiwick had set up this apparent disregard for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to impress a greenhorn. It worked!

At the same time, as the Brigadier talked to me while we sat at the outer edge of the platform built for the observers, it made more sense to do what they were doing in challenging the enemy than to sit, blindly, awaiting hostile moves.

"There is never an excuse for failure to establish proper observation in combat," the Brigadier said as we watched the landscape fade into dusk. "Sometimes it can be used as a means of attracting hostile patrols and either taking them prisoner or killing them," he went on. "We arrange surprises for Jerry every night around this place; he’s learning pretty much to leave us alone."

I gathered that the British used special troops to set ambushes around the isolated OP each night and that they had been successful in warding off all efforts by the enemy to dislodge the installation that was giving them so much trouble.

"You shouldn’t always take the most advantageous OP site," the Brigadier said, "particularly if there are two other positions that will give you the same or better results, while attracting less attention from Jerry. However, you should put a dummy position in the best spot, assuming there are others available, but don’t overdo the dummy paraphernalia. Just put one pretty good sized rock on top of another, or move a log into a strategic position. German observers notice the little signs and, if you fool them, they’ll waste a lot of ammunition on dummies. If a dummy position gets knocked about by artillery, be sure to replace it during the night to sustain the illusion that it’s still in use. Obviously you should keep your active OPs out of range of stray shells aimed at the dummy."

The Brigadier talked of the need to risk the few in OPs to save the many, exactly as patrols are used in combat for the same purpose. "The nearer you can get to the enemy, the better," he added. "Sometimes, hearing them at night is as important as seeing what they’re up to during the day."

I had begun to think that we’d be here all night when he started down the ladder. I followed and we were soon on our way back to his front lines. After a sharp challenge, accompanied by the rattle of a rifle bolt at the outpost line and again, at the main line, we reached his headquarters. I ate with the officers of his mess before returning to the 141st’s Hq.

That night we put the first two, of eight, teams that eventually occupied the place, into the silo on our front. From a position near its top where there was an opening like that of the one I had visited the evening before, observers could see all approaches to our lines. It was a good lesson for even though the silo stood alone on a rise at the edge of a field it was not targeted by the Germans at any time. This was as much attributable to the discipline of the observation teams as to the obvious German disbelief that green troops would make use of such an exposed structure.

I would hestitate to say how many times during the war the Brigadier’s object lesson paid dividends. The most memorable occasion occurred late in the war at Riquewihr, Alsace, in December 1944. There, as we were about to close on the Rhine River, the Alsace Plain flooded. The 36th Division was spread out over a 12 or 13 mile front, running from Selestate parallel to the Ill River south to Ostheim and then, in a semicircle to the west to Riquewihr. Its position was made extremely vulnerable by the fact that the French Forces had been unable to close in on the Division’s right flank.

The 141st Infantry on the right flank was wide open to an enveloping attack which, if successful, would have exposed all other Division units to attack from the rear with no place to maneuver due to the flooding. Meanwhile, because of the high water, the French Corps to which the 36th had been attached, changed its objective from one aimed at the Rhine to one directed toward Colmar. This meant attacking south along the rugged eastern foothills of the Vosges Mountains.

There was considerable difference of opinion in the Intelligence echelons as to the German Army’s capabilities and intentions. Several OPs established along the 141st regimental front by the battalions and the I and R Platoon were offering clues that were either not acceptable or were considered unimportant by those above the fighting level, although such evidence was mounting daily. While the more remote headquarters were supporting views that the German Army would shortly pull behind the Rhine barrier for a final defense of Germany, the reports emanating from the 141st, showed that trucks, heard at night by our OP operators, were entering the Colmar Pocket fully loaded and were leaving fast and empty. It wasn’t too difficult, I felt, to reason that the Germans were reinforcing the Colmar positions and would fight hard to hold them.

As things turned out, our attack toward Colmar was nipped in the bud, as the saying goes, by a strong German attack against our extended position. After months and years of combat, as any veteran will tell you, a sixth sense serves as a warning device when the stuff is about to hit the fan. My sixth sense was working overtime simply because I knew the Germans were reinforcing heavily, while higher echelons, to which I was reporting, were marching to different drums. On the night before the Germans struck, I had been asleep for an hour or so, after talking on the telephone with Pfc. Charlie Lane, who was manning one of the OPs on the front. Whereas he had signaled a lot of vehicular activity night after night, I found it a bad omen to learn that there was practically no such activity that night. This could be it! I warned him to be on the qui vive and signed off.

Something had been gnawing at my subconscious sufficiently to waken me. I was in a wine cellar in Riquewihr and I suddenly realized that we had left an important part of our defenses to chance. Even though I had included in a written intelligence estimate to Division that the most likely action to be taken by the German Army against the 141st Infantry was a strike against our right flank, I had not guarded against the possibility of its being a wide and deep envelopment that would hit, without warning, well to the rear of our forward lines.