E-3073
The Last Battle
by
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The morning overcast had given way to mid-afternoon patches of blue sky when Sarge walked up to my foxhole and said to follow him. A short distance down the line we picked up another man and then continued on to Corporal Parker's foxhole, where we all stopped. Sarge looked at Parker. "You three are goin' on a recon patrol tonight." "Yeah?" Parker wasn't enthusiastic. The other man, John Steinmacher, said nothing. I made no comment, but a patrol was something that I could do without because I considered them to be just "looking for trouble." "The Krauts have got an artillery battery over on the far hill that's been hittin' too near the battalion CP, so you're goin' to shoot some compass azimuths on their muzzle flashes from as far forward as you can get." "S---!" (Parker's enthusiasm again.) "They got an outpost out there? How far to their lines?" "Don't know. You'll have to find out." "S---! Yeah---well." Parker looked at me. "How are you with a compass?" "I used one once in basic." "I'll do it," Steinmacher said laconically, reaching out to take the lensatic compass that Sarge had handed to Parker. "Are we going out on an azimuth?" Sarge looked at Parker, then at Steinmacher. "Yeah. Two hundred seventy degrees---straight out from here," pointing directly across the field. Then looking at Parker again, "Leave at 0200 and be back by 0400. Get out as far as you can, and try to get a line on those damn guns." "Umm." Parker was at his noncommittal best. Then, looking at the two of us, "Meet at my foxhole at 0145. You guys got watches?" We did not. "O.K., then I'll come and get you.
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About the Book
This memoir is both for those who remember World II, and those to whom it is only history. Through the eyes of a teenage boy, comes a sensitive and detailed picture of life on the home front and death on the battlefield, during those tumultuous years from 1939 to 1945. With emotional honesty, the narrative follows the author from toy soldiers in Iowa to basic training in Texas, through bloody battles in France to Hitler’s Bavarian retreat at Berchtesgaden. Life and death become intimate and real throughout the dramatic transition from boyhood to manhood.
About the Author
The author was born in Iowa, and was fourteen years old when World War II broke out in Europe. At age eighteen he enlisted in the Army, and after basic training in Texas, he was shipped to England, arriving a month before D-Day. As an infantry rifleman, he was wounded twice, and was awarded two purple hearts, the bronze star, and the Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest award for valor.
Educated as a chemist after the war, he worked thirty years as a scientist in the industry before retiring with his wife in 1986 to Arizona, where they currently reside. In their extensive travels, they have returned twice to many of the towns, fields, and hedgerows described in this memoir.