June 27, 1944-D-Day+21-The Assault (continued)

The squad of nine men soon reached the corner where the German tank had been stopped. This was the point of no return. Here their advance slowed and weapons raised to kill any enemy that happened to come across them. They made themselves small by duck walking and spread out, one man on each side of the alley. At every corner, Arlen would stop and look around the corner, clear. He would wave them on they would hurriedly run to take cover behind the next building. They repeated this process for three blocks till they were starting to run out of houses to hide behind.

The group of soldiers came to a building that had a door at the back, Sgt. Palkovich looked to each man and they knew what he was thinking. He made several hand signals and the men took up their positions. A private was then ordered to kick open the door, Arlen held his breathe, rifle raised poised to shoot anyone on the other side. The private readied himself, exhaled and kicked the door as hard as he could. It swung open and slammed into the wall. He went in, Short was behind him, followed by Palkovich and the rest of the team. Palkovich ordered the squad upstairs to shoot down on their enemy. Being upstairs was becoming a common occurrence for Arlen.

They jogged up the flight of stairs and went for the windows. Below them was a mass of Germans firing down the street. One Kraut looked up and saw the Americans looking down on them with weapons trained. "Alli!" he screamed but he was soon gunned down.

It was a turkey shoot. The Germans were completely unprepared for this and were slaughtered. Short went through three clips shooting at them. Someone threw a grenade, which was a waste. But the Germans retaliated faster then the squad was expecting and a man took a bullet to the chest. They were now taking cover after being exposed for so long; it was surprise that there was only one down so far.

The German response was malicious. A Panzerfaust was launched and slammed into the side of the building. Arlen was thrown back, his ears ringing. He looked to his right and saw the eyes of dead man staring back at him. "Williams is down!" he yelled getting back to his position, shooting down at the Germans. A potatomasher landed next to Sgt. Palkovich who picked it up and threw it back onto the street.

"Keep them from getting inside! Short! Debanardo! Guard the stairwell!" Palkovich ordered. Arlen and Debanardo rushed for the stairs and as they looked down they made out the shadow of a German slowly making his way up. Debanardo grabbed a grenade from his belt, pulled the pin and threw it hard enough to where it bounced off the wall and down the stairs. The grenade exploded, killing the German and hopefully several others.

Both me gripped their rifles tightly waiting for any of them to try and make their way upstairs. Another shell from a Panzerfaust hit the side of the building and the constant gunfire continued. They could be here for a while or not long at all Short thought to himself. He looked to see Palkovich continuing on, firing his carbine while several others lie in pain or still. Soon he firing slowed up, he looked down the street and ordered the remainder to hold their fire. The platoon was making its way up the street. Out of the nine men who were ordered to get behind the Germans, four remained standing. Two were seriously wounded and the other three were dead.

The squad headed down the stairs, carrying the wounded soldiers with them. Short got a glimpse of a fleeing German and chose to ignore it. Right now there were more serious things to attend to. They came out of the building and laid the wounded men in the street. Lt. Thompson came up, congratulated them on their efforts and headed up the street. The four faced each other and all of them let a sigh of relief in unison. A medic came and tended to the wounded. They then turned and jogged to catch up with the rest of the platoon. They were behind schedule and would have to do some catching up. Arlen looked at his watch; it was 7:37 AM. Everything that had transpired so far had done so in practically an hour. He felt as if he was 10 years older and at this rate, he would be a senior citizen before the war was even over.

The platoon met up with Charlie Company and found that they had been hit harder than Short's group. It seems that the escape attempt to the East was merely a diversion and that a whole SS German battalion hit Charlie in force with artillery support. They broke through and were gone but not after taking some serious casualties themselves. Charlie Company's new CO sat on a pile of rubble in disbelief about what had happened. His helmet and weapon were missing; all he had was a .45 with 3 rounds left. He had taken a bit of shrapnel to the face and was slightly bleeding. All around him lay dead American and German soldiers.

When he came to his senses, Lt. Thompson talked to him to obtain any more information. The Captain spoke in four word sentences, "They hit us hard," and "We weren't expecting it" and finally "they went that way." Sgt. Palkovich came back with a peppered helmet with a Captains insignia on it and a sub-machine gun. The Captain took them graciously and thanked Palkovich. He put on his helmet and slung the weapon on his shoulder. When he put them, the Captain completely changed and turned back to his normal state. He suggested that they head for the rendezvous point so that Lt. Thompson could report back with Baker. Lt. Thompson agreed and the Captain called for everyone to move out. They soon would begin the long march to the town's square. Short could see on the Captain's face that he had a lot of explaining to do when he met up with Battalion HQ.

Short walked over to where Debanardo and McDonald were standing, "Can you believe what they have done with our company."

"Yeah we were just talking about that." McDonald said spitting on the ground.

"Well, you can't blame them, they tried," Debanardo said lighting a cigarette, "Now if it was like it was with Captain Miller; we would have stopped those Krauts cold." The three nodded in agreement and got the order to fall in. All three took a glance at the remaining Charlie Company boys. Before today, they were all green and now they had had their baptism of fire. They looked as if they could have cared less for it. The Rangers fell in line and headed in towards the town. It was 8:06 AM on June 27, 1944 and Short got the sure distinction that the war was far from over.