Gunslinger

In the lead Somerville got to the road first and leaped on onto it. Only a few feet away from him, directly in front, was a German sentry with his head down, ducking the fire from the machine guns. To his right, Somerville could see out of the corner of his eye a solid mass of men, more than 100, packed together and lying down at the juncture of the dike and the road. They too had their heads down to duck under the machine gun fire. They were all wearing their long winter overcoats and had their backpacks on. Every single one of them was facing the dike and he was behind them. They were only 15 metres away.

Somerville wheeled and dropped back to the west side of the road, and lobbed a hand grenade over toward the lone sentry. Simultaneously, the sentry lobbed a potato-masher back at him. Somerville realized belatedly, and cursed his stupidity, but he had thrown the grenade without removing the pin.

Before the potato-masher could go off, Somerville jumped back up on the road. The sentry was hunched down with his head in his arms, waiting for Somerville’s grenade to go off. He was only 3 yards away. Somerville shot him with his M1. The shot started the entire company and the SS troops started to rise and turn towards Somerville, en masse. Somerville pivoted to his right and fired into the solid mass. He emptied the first clip on his rifle, still standing in the middle of the road, and put in a second clip.

Germans fell, and others began aiming their rifles at Somerville. Other started running away from him. All their movements were awkward, hampered by their long overcoats. Somerville dropped back to the west side of the road. Looking to his right he could see Butler running crouched over leading his column. They were still 10 metres from the road. Kennedy’s column on the left was 20 metres short of the road, help up by some wires running across the field.

Somerville put in a third clip and started popping up, taking a shot or two, then dropping back down. The Germans were running away as best they could when the other American columns reached the road.
“Fire at will!”, Somerville called out. It was like a duck shoot as the Germans were feeling. To Dana it was almost like shooting the ducks on a carnival game.

A bunch of Germans were cut off – hiding in some tall weeds. Murphy spotted them and once they realized they were surrounded they came out. There were 11 of them. Husky and hard-nosed they claimed they were Polish. Murphy relieved them of their weapons and motioned them to the rear.

Kennedy saw more German soldiers about 100 yards away, pouring over the dike from the south side; a previously unnoticed SS company.
“It’s a whole other company!”, he cried out unnecessarily.
“No shit!”, Brian responded. They joined their retreating comrades in a dash to the east, away from E Company’s fire. This just made the target bigger. Ryan had brought the machine guns forward by this time, and Private Delinsky set his up and began putting long distance fire on the routed German troops.

Somerville got on the radio and called for artillery. British guns began pounding away at the main force of retreating Germans. Somerville wanted to push to the river on his road, to cut off the Germans at the river, but thirty five men against the 150 or so surviving Germans was not good odds. He got on the radio again to 2nd Battalion HQ for support. HQ promised to send a platoon from F Company.

Waiting for reinforcements, Somerville made a head count and reorganized. He had one man dead and four wounded. 11 Germans had surrendered Lister, slightly wounded in the arm was a walking casualty. Somerville ordered him to take the prisoners back to Battalion CO and then get himself tended by Doc Brouchard.

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The ferry crossing the Germans had used to get over, and would now need to get back to, was at the end of the road E Company was on. Somerville wanted to get there before they did. When the platoon from F Company arrived, bringing more ammunition, Somerville redistributed the ammo and then gave his orders. He set up a base of fire with half of the sixty or so men under his command, then had the other half move forward 100 metres, stop and set up its own base of fire, and leapfrog the first group down the road. He intended to repeat the manoeuvre the full 600 or so metres to the river.

About 200 metres short of the river, Somerville’s unit reached some factory buildings. German artillery had started to work, and the SS troops, desperate to get back to the ferry, mounted a seventy five man attack on the right rear flank of the Americans. Somerville realized that he had over-reached and it was time to withdraw to fight another day. The unit leapfrogged in reverse back to the dike. Just as the last man, who happened to be Brian, got over the dike, the Germans cut loose with a terrific concentration of artillery fire on the point where the road crossed the dike. They had it zeroed perfectly. The airborne group scattered right and left, but not before suffering many casualties. Somerville grabbed the radio and advised battalion HQ to send medics and ambulances. Doc Stanley came on and wanted to know how many casualties.
“Two dozen baseball teams”, Somerville replied. Stanley knew nothing about sports, and asked Somerville to put into clear language.
“Get the hell off the radio so I can get some more artillery support”, Somerville shouted back, “or we’ll need enough for three baseball teams.”

Just at that moment, Private Lodden heard some mortars coming and realized that they were going to be close. He wasn’t moving too fast, as he was exhausted and not entirely recovered from an injury he had sustained in Normandy. He pitched forward on the dike and a shell hit just behind him and tore into his left leg from the hip to the knee. Just before he lost consciousness, Brian told him he would be taken care of. Pagliaro and Dana cut his pants leg off and sprinkled sulfa powder on the wound. They gave him morphine and got stretcher bears to carry him to the rear.