Joel W. Westbrook
Battalion Operations Officer
1st Battalion, 143rd Infantry

When it was all over and done with, and Mount Castellone was still ours, (First Battalion, 143rd Infantry Regiment, 36th (Texas) Division. Of course, legally, Castellone belongs to neither side other than by title deeds of successful violence.) I told Lt. Mitchell, B Company Commander, to clear out his dead and wounded, to check his communications, and to resupply his mortar ammunition.

"I’ll work out the relief of the 142nd’s Second Battalion, but I do want you to put Baker in where their Easy Company is. For the time being use their same boundaries. Even if you have to short these positions here, put in your strongest platoon over there where they had that heavy ‘thirty’ shooting between the saddle humps. I’ll have Dog put their best heavy team there."

"Yessir, Captain, I see what you mean...see you later, Joel."

Regiment talked to me in the clear on the radio.

At 0630 Greenwich Mean Standard Time, 10 February 1944, I, Battalion Operations Officer, would meet on the crest of Mount Castellone at coordinates 675420, a German Captain, who would be liaison for the removal of their dead. He would not be permitted to come within our position.

Their dead within our position were more than a few. Among them was a major, certainly their battalion commander, who clutched a large rock some 30 to 40 yards down our slope. Beside him was his radio operator.

Our S-2, and all the higher echelon G-2’s, would surely assess this fact—becoming a putrescent fact—as evidence that the German attached great tactical importance to Castellone. We knew, you know, that German doctrine was that line officers plan, train, and direct, and are too valuable to use in combat leading. We compared British doctrine that the line officers lead in combat—that’s all, just lead in combat, while the training is done by the noncommissioned officers, and with the planning and direction by staff. Doubtless this doctrine, of long British tradition, in large part accounted for the losing of the best British seed in World War I. Howsoever, we knew that American officers were expected to do it all ... train and combat lead ... "Frightfully expensive for you chaps," had remarked to me, (on the Rapido River), a lieutenant of Durham Light Infantry.

In that early next morning I met the German captain.

Upon that crest of Castellone (somewhat down his slope as required by the protocol of this particular parley) the German stood as if upon a stage; uniform gray-greenish immaculate—except for his badges of rank and merit and courage—and even, Dear God, a monocle, polished boots. Highly polished boots.

From his tunic he took a silver cigarette case. He offered me a cigarette. I took it, although I did not smoke, and I permitted him to light it for me.

I was in combat coveralls, clean ones that Mitch had loaned to me, and I was shaven by reason of having given up my coffee that morning.

Because neither the German captain nor I had more than marginally each other’s language, we parleyed in French about our business at hand.

There was upon his slope very many of his dead piled up in places that had been intersected by the trajectory of the 142nd’s heavy machine gun firing through the saddle. (This firing defensively through a saddle we had been taught at the Infantry School, Fort Benning, GA, was the ultimate achievement for a heavy machine gunner ... something like "crossing the ‘T’ for a naval person.)

More than a few brave Germans had broken into our position, and then they had been counterattacked to death or flight or surrender.

They laid around our slope, askew with their weapons, and with their jaws broken, skulls crushed, and with their tunics and trousers, and their insignia and personal paraphernalia stained with yesterday’s blood.

Most of all their Kommandant, prone the dead, clutching a large irrelevant cold rock. Beside him his radio operator. The batteries I found to be dead.

Our tired young medics put the dead commander, and his radio operator, and all the other German dead, upon U.S. Army government issue stretchers, and delivered them over the mountain top to their Wehrmacht government issue stretchers.

All of this took all the day, and the wind became colder and colder. However, when I got back to B Co., where I stopped for a little food, I found that Mitch had lined a large cleft in an outcropping with blankets.

So I stayed the night in warmth, and we exchanged our histories of February 10, 1944.

A few days later I was wounded and evacuated back to the General Hospital at Naples. There I was mended so as to be ready in a couple of months for our joining the forces at Anzio for the taking of Rome.