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FIGHTING 69TH INFANTRY
DIVISION
VOLUME 57, NO.2
JANUARY - FEBRUARY - MARCH - APRIL 2004
Edwin G. Lansford Writes
Headquarters Company, 271st Infantry
[...]
Embermenil, Alsace, France
The 44th Division first went on line about 15 km east of
Luneville at Embermenil. The I&R Platoon occupied the basements
of shelled-out houses in the village. My squad occupied the
first building back toward Luneville from a crossroads in the
center of town. The village church - a large stone structure was
on the corner on our side of the street beyond the cross-street,
then a vacant lot, and then our house. Due to our inexperience
in such matters, we had picked a hot-spot, since the German
military always recorded the coordinates of all road
intersections and churches. The Germans customarily used the
church steeples for observation posts, and assumed that the
American army would too, so that was where the Germans usually
aimed their artillery.
Our house was a two-storied frame building, stuccoed, with a red
tile roof and a concrete ground floor. The basement was fairly
safe, but noisy at night. Some nights it seemed like an 88 came
in about every 15 minutes and struck our house. The sounds
always woke me up with the following sounds of violent
destruction:
1) The sudden brief roar of the shell
2) The concussion
3) Sounds of shrapnel, plaster and other debris crashing against
the upstairs walls
4) Chunks of plaster, etc. bouncing down the wooden stairs from
the second floor
5) Brief silence
6) A scraping sound, almost instantly turning into a roar louder
then the explosion as tiles dislodged by the blast began sliding
over the remaining tiles
7) A loud clattering as the dislodged tiles shattered in the
street outside.
8) Silent thoughts of the senseless, systematic destruction of
some Alsation family's home.
9) Back to sleep 'til the next shell came in.
We had carried beds and mattresses to our basement to sleep on,
so we were quite comfortable until the weather turned wet. Then,
with many tiles missing from the roof, the basement began
accumulating water. Soon we had two or three inches of water on
the basement floor, and were forced to lay boards on top of
blocks in order to move around. We also set our beds on blocks
so that the bedding would not get watersoaked. Outside, heavy
traffic had turned the unpaved street into a virtual river of
oozing mud flowing ever so slowly back toward Luneville.
One clear day while I was standing in the street a Messerschmidt
flew over the town from the rear with its machine guns
chattering. Everyone was so surprised that we only watched in
amazement as it passed overhead. That was the only time that I
remember our unit being strafed. A few minutes later it came
back strafing in the opposite direction and several of us shot
at it. I was only carrying a carbine at the time, but I fired
several rounds it was so near. Brownie opened up with our 50
cal. from the jeep it was mounted on. Somebody's shots did take
effect, because we learned later that the pilot had bailed out
and had been taken prisoner in the adjacent 114th area. We also
heard that the pilot went to the rear without his boots because
some infantryman took a liking to them.
The line companies, meanwhile, relieved units of the 79th
Division which had been occupying trenches left over from WWI.
My squad joined them after a few days to establish an
observation post (daytime) and listening post (night-time). When
I learned that the unit we joined was part of C Company, I
immediately asked where Davis (Dodson Davis from Charlotte, NC)
was since we had become friends in ASTP at St. Louis University
and had planned to continue our friendship after the war. I was
shocked and saddened to learn that he had been killed the very
first night, before his unit ever got to the trenches.
The observation post was a complete bust: That section of trench
was down in a hollow grown up with trees, so observation was
severely limited. I spent the afternoon trying to dig a foxhole
with my mess-kit lid in the side of the trench. We were told
that the Germans had attacked that section the night before and
driven C Company out, then they had counterattacked and taken
the section back again, including one severely wounded German
who cried for water. I don't think anyone ever gave him any.
We were also told that the Germans had shelled them all night
before, and the informer was dismayed because the shelling had
seemed to come from the rear. The listening post that night was
also a complete bust. All we could here all night long was the
screaming of shells coming in from the rear and exploding about
50 yards or so in front of our positions. The shrapnel sounded
especially ugly; some pieces buzzing, some pieces making
whirring sounds, some zinging, and most of them either thudding
to the ground or whacking into trees. The sounds would have been
reassuring instead of frightening if we had only realized that
the shelling was friendly, protective fire from our own
artillery instead of enemy fire.
The next morning our squad moved to another section of trench in
a different area, and we spent the remainder of that day and
that night in a dugout also left over from WWI. Needless to say,
I rested much better that second night. In the trench near that
dugout was an American helmet, and curiosity prompted me to ask
about the owner, whereupon I was informed of the following
series of events: The former owner of the helmet had been a
young kid who had repeatedly, morning after morning, climbed out
of the trench and stood up in plain sight of the enemy, shouting
insults and challenges at the Germans, disregarding pleas from
the other men to get back down into the trench. That foolish
show of bravado had continued for several mornings without
incident until one fateful morning when the Germans fired a
single machine-gun burst dead-center. The poor kid was killed
instantly. There is no telling how many other casualties also
happened to green, inexperienced troops before any of them
learned that none of u s were immortal.
Several years after the war, my wife Sue and I were on a tour
with other 324th veterans and their wives, and although
Embermenil had not been scheduled on our tour, we had called the
mayor from Strassbourg the night before and took a side trip
back to the town. Much to our surprise, the entire town, men,
women, school children, and all were waiting to receive us when
our bus arrived. The people held a lovely reception in the town
hall for our group, serving champagne, cakes and cookies. The
ladies must have spent much of the night preparing for us. Next
door to the town hall stood a new church building, smaller than
the huge stone building that I remembered, neat and clean, but
without a steeple, which the towns people had not yet been able
to afford. Our group took a collection to apply toward the
steeple. In 1993, Sue and I returned on our own, and saw that
the church had added a tall tower to the building, with clocks
in each side of the tower which we could see from quite a
distance away. In 2000, my son Jim and I returned again, and
this time they had added a tall steeple to the tower, so finally,
after fifty-five years, the building had been completed. |
