Reflections of My Life by JL Byars – page 15

Our first contact with the enemy was around Villiers Fossard.  There is where we found out you either “kill or be killed.”  We also found out our tanks were not equal to the Germans as we were led to believe and their tanks could not be penetrated very easily from the front.  Their large guns left holes in our tanks, which we had been taught were the best.  The only place our tanks could damage or demobilize theirs was from the side.  The American Sherman tanks were faster and more maneuverable, making it less of a problem.  Bazooka Guns were very effective from this point also.

The first few days we saw a lot of dead soldiers and many wounded ones.  You wanted to stop and try to help them, but you had to keep your vehicle moving.  If you did stop, you were a very good target for the enemy.  Some of our men found this out, as they would stop to drink coffee.  You learn quickly to eat and drink on the move.  You can use all the ways in the world to describe a battle, yet it comes no where near the graphic description of a shell that suddenly hits and erupts in a heart sickening crash near by.   Almost any way you looked you would see wounded soldiers and more dead ones than wounded.  Seeing your buddy laying helpless was very heartbreaking, but you had to try to forget and keep moving.

In France the hedgerows had one or two openings to get from one to another.  At each of these openings the Germans had their guns zeroed in and ready to fire at any time necessary.

The Krauts were veterans and good soldiers, but we had no doubt that we were better than them after our first battle at Villiers Fossard.  Our tanks had a blade put on the front of them so we could get through the hedgerows anywhere we needed to.

Our next contact with the Germans was at Pont Hebert.  It was here where we got our baptism of fire.  It gave these well-trained men a sudden shocking plunge into action.  Here we learned there was no glory in combat, that death strikes friend and foe alike.  It was about here we heard that spine-chilling shriek of “incoming mail.”   Hearing our men screaming for help was very bad since I knew a lot of them were killed, and many more wounded.  We pushed on to our objective like veteran soldiers would.  After each town was taken we would reload our ammo supply and gas up our vehicles ready for orders to move to our next point.  Seldom did we have time for a cold shower at this time in the action.