Accounts - 275th - Don Docken
The following was sent to me by Don Docken by C/275.
Action on Angelsberg
January 1945
On the night of January 5th after we had helped to clear and
recapture all of Philippsbourg, Co. C gathered at the south end of
the town and was ordered to take up new positions on a hill called,
Angelsberg, to close a gap between our Task Force Herren and the
45th division to the east. We noticed that many men were missing,
either killed, wounded or medically evacuated. It had been a costly
victory, but it had prevented the enemy gaining from access to
Niederbronn which opened into the Alsatian Plain. Many friends were
missing and Higley turned to Lt. Holmes and asked, "Where are the
men?" His answer always remained etched in Tom's mind. Buggy simply
said, "Gone Hig, gone!"
The hike up to Angelsberg was long and excruciating. The trail in
the deep snow was ever upward and the temperature hovered around
zero degrees fahrenheit. As the company moved up in single file,
very quiet. The dog-tired soldiers concentrated on putting they were
one foot ahead of the other.
Under any other circumstances it might have a rather beautiful
winter trek -the stillness of the soft, white snow the evergreen
trees standing like sentinels along our path, cool, crisp air
revealing
a star-studded sky. However, we and the did not notice the beauty
since we had haunting memories of our "baptism of fire", and the
realization that many of our friends were missing.
Finally, at the top of a wooded hill we stopped to set up a
perimeter defense and began the inevitable job of digging our
two-man foxholes. As the old saying goes, "If an infantryman thinks
he's going to be in one place for more than five minutes, he digs a
hole."
Up on the hills there was no opportunity to get into the shelter
of a building, even for a short time. The winter cold was relentless
and slowly penetrated to our very bones, even though we wore two
pairs of long underwear, jackets with liners, a wool cap under our
helmets, and two pairs of wool socks, one on our feet and one in our
bosom. We needed to change socks since our rubber boots made our
feet sweat. Whenever there was a lull in the fighting, we tried to
change our socks. Some who neglected to do this, ended up with
"trench foot", an inflammation and swelling that put them out of
action. We ate, slept, and guarded the front line in these little
two-man foxholes, half-covered with logs and branches. We were still
on K-rations and longed for a good warm and tasty meal. Sometimes we
were able to light a small fire in the foxhole to warm our hands and
melt some snow for hot water. This didn't serve to give away our
positions because the Germans knew where we were. At night we would
hear strange "cracking" noises, repeated at certain intervals, back
and forth in front of us, indicating that enemy patrols were out on
night reconnaissance
Cold weather and snow sometimes played havoc with the rifles and
BAR's. Earl Donaldson, armorer of Co. C, relates a very practical
but humorous lesson, "One of my duties as armorer was to go up and
down the front lines and make the guys run a rod with a patch
through the barrel of their gun. Well, it was so damn cold this one
morning that Al Mejia's BAR froze up and would only fire one round
at a time. My instructor in the school back in the states must have
gone through battles in the cold. He told us that should a BAR ever
freeze-up while in action, 'piddle on it'. Al and I did just that,
and it worked."
Reconnaissance patrols were the order of the day up in the hills.
One day five of us went out, with Sgt. Sig Rusley in charge, to find
out where the enemy was located. The only other man I remember was
my friend, Bill Rorabaugh. Moving out along the top of the
snow-ridge, we stopped a few hundred yards out, and Rusley surveyed
the surrounding area with field glasses. The whole place was heavily
wooded making it hard to get any good observation. However, out to
our right we heard voices and sounds of metal and digging. We had
located the enemy. Sliding cautiously down the hill to get visual
contact, we suddenly spotted a few German soldiers to our left
walking nonchalantly at the bottom of the valley right in front of
us. They must have been coming back from their nightly outpost. We
froze in place, undetected, watching them pass by in their long,
grey-green overcoats, their blanket rolls on their back, and wearing
the familiar, green duck-billed caps. As they were moving by, Rusley
blazed away with his carbine and others followed, even though we
were on a reconnaissance patrol. A couple of Germans fell and the
rest scattered. No fire was returned, and we immediately withdrew
before the main forces came from the right. We got back safely to
our positions and reported the location of the enemy.
Related
General Orders - 275th Honor Roll
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