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4-Battle of St. Lô, Bastogne, and the Battle of the Bulge
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Talk about your experience at the battle of St. Lô.
During that battle there was an aid station in our regiment where there had been two medical officers. One of them was badly wounded and one became a psychiatric casualty, so I was told I should go up and take over this organization. Up until then they'd delivered the wounded to our collecting station, and I would patch them up in a better way than that and put them in an ambulance to go back to a hospital. But taking over this aid station was a lot different because it was as far forward as you can get. There we were right just behind the most far forward troops, and our goal was to advance to take the city of St. Lô. It was there that the first time that I really experienced real fire. If you read my book, you'd know that the first mortar shells I encountered seemed to be directed at me. I dove for cover. One of the most impressive things I ever saw, and I'll never forget it, is when the shelling stopped there was one of my aid men standing holding a bottle of plasma that he'd been holding while all that was going on because the plasma was running into a wounded guy. I felt sort of embarrassed that I had ducked for cover, and this guy was standing out, relatively in the open. I learned that in the future I had to do something to show some kind of leadership, to look after the wounded better. You had to learn. It was scary, though, the first time you have a shell explode near you.
What's your most vivid memory from the collecting station?
While I was in the collecting company and out on the battalion aid station, there was a man brought in with a leg badly mangled. I carefully splinted it and dressed it carefully because there was some of the circulation still intact. I remember it well because most people would have given up and say "you can't do anything with this leg." I felt we could so I splinted him and whatnot, and we sent him back. Then I asked the ambulance driver the next day to find out what had happened to this man. I was told that the surgeons in the rear felt that they could save the man's leg. That was one of the first major things I did in the collecting station, and I thought, well boy, that was a good thing to do, because I don't think most people would have thought that they could save that leg. That was one of the kinds of things that I remember from the collecting station. The aid station was different because you didn't have time to do anything elaborate. The main thing was to control a major injury and try and get the guy out before he got wounded again.
Did you ever build any personal relationships with any of the soldiers you treated?
You never had the chance to build a relationship with the soldiers who came in wounded—except if the ones wounded were somebody I knew from before, which happened often enough. It's not like you have somebody in the hospital bed for a while where you get to know them and see them, so you couldn't. On the other hand, the relationship with the solders you work with could become intense. Of course, that's one of the most difficult things for soldiers in any war is that you have a friend that you've been fighting with, eating with, in the same hole with, and he gets killed or badly wounded. It's not easy to handle.
Can you recount one of those stories of losing a battle friend?
I had a remarkable thing with my aid group; it had the best survival rate of any one in the division. We had some guys wounded, but it was amazing that through the worst battles I had none of my aid men killed. I don't know whether it was luck or part of what I was doing with them or whatnot. The most horrible experience I had in that nature was in the battle of Bastogne. I'd set up an aid station there, and a medical officer came up, who had been in one of the hospitals in the rear. He wanted to come up where the action was. I said, "You're crazy. You had a good job, you should have stayed there." He said he wanted to be up. So anyhow, he came along and he spent a couple of days with us until he was assigned to another aid station. Within 24 hours they brought him in to my aid station with a major head injury. I don't know if he survived because at that time we just didn't have any communication back and there was no way I could trace him at the time. It was such a shocking thing because he shouldn't have been there. A lot of people are there with no choice, but this man had a choice.
Can you describe your scariest moment being a combat medic?
The scariest moment was early on when this German SS attack occurred. They surrounded almost a battalion of Americans who turned out to have no medical supplies. They asked for some medical supplies—they were surrounded—and we were supposed to go in and try and get them to relieve these people.
At that time we were unsuccessful to get into them so my jeep driver and I thought maybe we could get medical supplies to them. If you read the book you'd know, but this man was called by the people of my group Gangster because he had driven for rumrunners in New Jersey during Prohibition. He was much older than the rest of the men, but he could drive like crazy and he was my driver. He and I decided we could take medical supplies into these guys who were surrounded by Germans. So we decided that if he found a road—and if we could drive fast enough that we could get through the German lines and into these guys who were surrounded before anyone realized what was going on. So we did. We loaded up my jeep with all the supplies we could get on it, and the two of us drove through the German lines with our supplies. At first I didn't realize what was going on, and when I realized they began to shoot at us. Fortunately we made it through, and that was sort of scary. We did get through, and there were unbelievable number of wounded; we used up all our supplies within a relatively short time. Then about 24 hours later our troops came in, broke through, and relieved us. It was a scary ride. That was fairly early on. Later on I got more cautious.
When your medical company was turned into a combat team, how did your duties change?
I'm not sure if you're talking about my aid group being incorporated into something else. See, I was with this battalion aid group for quite a while, and then later on I was incorporated back into the group which I landed with, which was a collecting company. So there my duties were a bit more professional and less not really acute emergency stuff. So it was much different, and actually much less risky too. The problem with us being in the battalion aid station is that because there was activity and bringing in wounded people in on all of us, that sometimes, the fact that there's activity, the Germans would mistake it for a command post and drop mortar shells on us with the thinking that it must be a command center whereas actually it was an aid station. But the collecting company was just far enough back that it was out of the range of mortars. It was a different kind of a situation there.
Did you have hatred towards the Germans or the people you were fighting against?
I think I must have. By the time we got into this battle—first of all, they were the guys who were killing the people that lived with me. On the other hand, when they began shooting at the Red Cross or that sort of thing, it was either a General or a full Colonel—I forget which—who came around and said, "Look you guys got Red Crosses, but they're shooting at you. You are entitled to carry a weapon." And I was a pretty good shot. I qualified as an expert rifleman. I said, "Look, I don't want to shoot people. I'll take care of them if they get wounded but I don't want to shoot somebody." A lot of the aid men that I was with at that point began to carry a pistol, which up until them was forbidden by the Geneva Convention, but when they shot at our Red Crosses. I am sure I hated the Germans, but I didn't want to be killing them myself.
The other thing is I was really scared of being captured....
Play Movie Note: movie quality on this segment is poor
I had to learn how to not get my unit captured. Geneva Convention or not, I was worried about being captured, being a Jewish soldier and the prisoner of the Germans. I was really scared about that. That was another fear. I think I worried more about that than being wounded.
Were you ever in a position where you were forced to shoot at somebody?
No. Because I'd never carried a weapon. The people around me were shooting but I just didn't want to.
In your book you talked about going to Le Mans. What exactly did you do there?
When we broke out of Normandy, we progressed across France rather rapidly, and Le Mans was one of the cities we stopped at. It hadn't been damaged by the war, whereas St. Lô was devastated. The thing I remember most there was that they have a Cathedral and there was a mass there, celebrating their liberation. It was really quite an impressive thing. I had never been to such a mass before. The people there were thrilled to see us. The French really hated the Germans. When we came they just couldn't do enough. The two first cities we got into were Le Mans and a smaller one called Chateaudun.
What time of the war was that?
This was after St. Lô so that had to be towards the middle of August I guess. The invasion was the 6th of June, so it was a while later that we were in Le Mans and Chateaudun. I think it must have been something like that, August. Then we raced the rest of the way across France with not much opposition.
After Le Mans you went to Bastogne?
Before Bastogne we went into Alsace—which is in Northern France, just as you get close to the German border—and we made good progress to there, but two things held us up. One was that the weather got terrible and so it was muddy. Most of the supplies were sent to an English group who had planned to win the war by going across Germany in the north, starting at Arnheim. So all our supplies were sent there. We stopped even though we were just a little bit into Germany. There was a lot of fighting because we got held up by not having supplies. By not being able to make rapid progress the Germans had a chance to organize a defense line. Then there was bitter fighting in northern France until around Christmas when the Battle of the Bulge came.
Were you at the Battle of the Bulge?
Yes. We were in it.
What was that like? Can you describe it?
We had thought we were going to get a chance to rest. We had no rest from the time we landed in Normandy and we thought that it was bitter, miserable, rainy and snowy. We thought we'd get a chance to rest in city of Metz where we were assigned to a school where we were going to stay over Christmas. We were just beginning to get unpacked. The men were beginning to set up a Christmas tree, and they heard that the Germans had broken through and we were told to pack up and take off again. We were to go to Bastogne to relieve those people who were surrounded at Bastogne. On that Christmas Eve we took off through the snow and traveled as short a route as possible, which often involved crossing small rivers and going through the snow toward Bastogne. It was a miserable time; a lot of people got frostbite.
As we went along that night, which was Christmas Eve, the Germans had broken through the American lines and so they were in disarray. My division was trying to plug up the holes and also to get to Bastogne to relieve those people who were surrounded. We got to a small town and all the people had left because the Germans had taken over the town. The people knew the Germans were coming and didn't want to be there so they left the town and moved to somewhere else. But there was one little light when we got there, and one of my aid men found out that a farmer decided to stay. He had a big fire going, and he'd roasted a pig and baked some bread. I put my aid station in his farm house and after being out in the snow and cold, it really was quite amazing.
Then the wounded, the patients began coming in. Most of them weren't wounded; they had severe frostbite or mild frostbite. I'd been with the ski troops so I knew how to take care of frostbite. While we were there, as it got toward morning, a colonel came along and said, "What are all these men doing here?" and I said, "Sir, they have frostbite." And he said, "Well I need every man I can get. Warm them up and send them back to duty." And I said, "Sir, they'll lose a hand or a foot if you send these men back," and he said, "I'm giving you a direct order; send them back." I said, "I won't do it," or words to that effect. He said, "I'll see that you're court-martialed." If I were court-martialed, they couldn't give me a worse job so I wouldn't send them back. The line officer can't give the doctor an order to do a medical thing. I kept those men with frostbite and later on we evacuated them. They were evacuated the next day—we went ahead but they were evacuated—and later they got purple hearts just like they'd been wounded. They'd been wading across rivers and stuff in freezing weather, and they deserve it. They learned what I'd learned from the ski troops how dangerous severe frostbite can be.
As we approached Bastogne, we were getting closer, but I heard that the 101st were extremely short of medical personnel and supplies. I only heard two weeks ago why, but I'll tell you about that. They were short of almost all medical help, and they'd been holding off the German army—this one division without any heavy artillery or anything. They'd really been holding them off, but they needed desperately some medical help. An officer came by and said, "Anyone in your group would like to volunteer to go with us?" I said, "I'll go and I'll take a couple of my aid men." We got on the outside of the tank with all the medical supplies we could load onto that tank. Then they had two tanks on the side, and they had a tank destroyer gun. There were four tanks and then a jeep leading us on a way that they knew—a way that they thought they could get into the city.
We went through and got into Bastogne. We were welcomed tremendously by the soldiers because most of them hadn't had any medical care. I got very busy with my two aid men, and we worked steadily for about twenty-four hours. Then my division broke through maybe a day later. Last year we found the place where my aid station was. It still has the same sign which is quite interesting. So anyhow, we got to Bastogne. We relieved them, and we thought, "Well now the war will be over," but then a lot of bad things happened after that too.
How big was this aid group before you went with the two aid men to Bastogne?
At that particular point I had just gone back and joined this collecting company. We had some ambulances and I must have had 30 men or so. But it sounded dangerous, and I didn't want to expose those other people to it. They couldn't take a lot of stuff, and they had to be able to move safely. I don't know exactly what, but we couldn't move the whole big unit. It was interesting that a couple of weeks ago I was invited to talk with a couple of veterans who were in Bastogne with 101st Airborne. They had landed before D-Day, and they said when they were going into Bastogne their medical section of the division was captured. That was why they didn't have any medical supplies. I couldn't figure out a whole division why they had so little stuff there. I just found that out; just a couple of weeks ago.
