My First Duty as a Combat Soldier
December, 1944

When we were rushed up as regiments from Marseilles, the first assignment for the 275th was to guard the west bank of the Rhine north of Strasbourg. A few weeks previous, we had been on the friendly, red-clay ground of Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, and now we were on the hostile, black soil of France to stem the tide of any attempted Rhine crossing by the Germans. It was just a few days before the beginning of the new year.

My first duty was to be a part of a two-man night outpost at the base of the dike along the river. We were simply a listening and watching post to detect and report any enemy movement across the Rhine and over the dike. Every half-hour we reported back to company headquarters by a field telephone which had been strung out to our forward position. In the dark of the night it was very lonely, movement in the trees and and we began to see all kinds of shapes and bushes. By phone we asked the company headquarters which was several hundred yards to our rear, "What do we do if we see an enemy force coming over the dike?" The answer was, "Be sure to telephone the warning and then do your best to infiltrate back to friendly lines." Right then and there the meaning of the word "expendable" was made crystal clear. It was a long night of watching and waiting, but fortunately it was quiet in no-man's land; and we gratefully crawled into our sacks the next morning for a well-deserved rest.