Reflections of My Life by JL Byars – page 19

It was September 1944 and we were getting close to the Siegfried Line, and the resistance was a lot worse.  It is hard to explain what the Siegfried Line is.  There are concrete piers about 3 or 4 feet tall above the ground and about 2 or 3 feet below, with barbwire and cable all though the piers.  These piers were about 3 feet apart and about 15 feet wide. It was very hard to get though while we were under heavy artillery fire all the time.  One of our company tanks was the first unit through.

To do this, the tank had to use a blade on the front and push dirt up and cover the concrete piers and drive over them.  They became entangled in the barbed wire and cable and the crew had to get out of the tank, under fire, and cut the cable away.  Somehow, they were able to do this, and other tanks followed them across.

To protect the Siegfried Line, the Germans had concrete pillboxes (much like bomb shelters) all along the side.  In these were men with bazookas and machine guns.  There was only one opening to these concrete boxes.  We would ask them to give up or suffer the consequences and when they would not give up, we had no choice but to drop the dozier blade (that was built for the hedgerow battles) and seal up the entrance.  Again, it was “kill or be killed” and we had to push on.  Several people have remarked that they would not do that, but they have not been in our position.  The army had programmed us to do what we had to do to stay alive.  The Siegfried Line was long, but after we broke through, the fighting let up some.  There were a few days we would make fifty miles and one day we made one hundred miles.

After we made several days of long runs, we got ahead of our supplies and got low on drinking water, gasoline and ammunition.  It was while we were waiting on supplies, that we could hear German soldiers talking on the other side of a high wall separating us.  That is how close we were to the enemy!

We now had restocked our supply of water, food, gasoline and ammo and were ready to move out again.  About this time we received word that the Germans had penetrated our lines with great force.  We got orders to move out at once.  We drove all night, all day and the next day and well into the next night, to get to the location we were to protect and to get ready for a counter attack.  When we arrived the French soldiers told us they would be on guard for us the rest of the night.  The snow was one to two feet deep, so we took out our shovels and dug a hole in the snow, large enough for our bed rolls, and we went to bed.  You can sleep anywhere when you are as tired as we were.