Two Foes to Fight

By R. Brownlee Welsh

In spite of having a stone bridge blow up in your face and an eighty-eight shell whizz by your ear as leader of an Armored Task Force consisting of Light tanks, Mediun tanks, half tracks and trucks full of Infantry, halfway across Germany; or leader of the Battalion Tiger Patrol in the Battle of the Bulge, conducting nightly missions going being the lines in the bunkered Dragon's Teeth, looking for prisoners, only to start a fire fight, setting off Hitler's Final Protective Line in the middle of the night; nothing was more intimidating than the 87th Infantry Division's first attack relieving the 26th Infantry Division in the Saar valley, where dead bodies of this outfit, still in their overcoats, were strewn out all over the slope where we were to attack.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
• Release date: Jul 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9781489747167

R. Brownlee Welsh

R. Brownlee Welsh was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma and raised in Tulsa. In 1939, the family moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. Mr. Welsh, known as Bob to all friends, became interested in photography, acted in several school plays, and began taking photographs. After graduation he enrolled in Davidson College, where he joined the Beta Theta Pi fraternity, was active in sports, photography, and R.O.T.C. Tests indicated aptitudes in engineering, law and art. After service with the 87th Infantry Division during WW2 in Germany, which is recounted in his memoirs, "Two Foes to Fight," he married Marie-Luise Osmers of Hamburg and Regensburg. They have three children and five grandchildren and one great-grandaughter. Mr. Welsh had a career as a portrait photographer with a studio in Charlotte.

Book preview

Copyright © 2023 R. Brownlee Welsh.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

LifeRich Publishing is a registered trademark of

The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc.

LifeRich Publishing

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.liferichpublishing.com

844-686-9607

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are

models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-4897-4715-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-4714-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-4716-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023906275

LifeRich Publishing rev. date: 07/19/2023

CONTENTS

Preface

Siegfried Pillbox

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 1932

Fort Bragg: Induction

Camp Wheeler: Basic Training

Mississippi State

Fort Benning: Officer Candidate School

Fort Jackson

Debarkation

Knutsford, England

The Channel

Red Ball Express

March to the Front

Obergailbach

Neidergailbach

Gersheim

Missing in Action

The Bulge

Tiger Patrol

Tiger Patrol at Bloody Crossroads

Luxembourg

Echternach

The Phone

Phonomania

Observation Post Kaput

St. Hubert

The Ardennes

Chapter 1 January 12, 1945

Back to the Infantry

The Cavalry

The Siegfried Line

The Rhineland

The Battle for Central Germany

The Shermans

The Heavy Weapons Company

The Light Tanks

The Tank Destroyer Battalion

Leave to Cannes

Redeployment

Operation Paperclip

The Reserves

PREFACE

Fifty years after the victory in Europe my wife called me from the bathroom at 7:00 o’clock in the morning saying I had a phone call from Billings, Montana. It was Jim Shaw, one of my rifle platoon, saying he was my runner back in the Saar Valley and began reminiscing about our experiences during our first engagements of the 87th Infantry Division of Patton’s Third Army. After playing the do you remember so and so he then astounded me with the announcement that our platoon sergeant Les Gibbons, had threatened to shoot me.

No one knew from one second of the next whether he would be killed, wounded, or just scarcely missed. In every war the seems to be a cleansing effect in spite of the carnage and a new beginning falls to mankind, only to be repeated over and over again.

This treatise is but another recounting of history with possibly a way to give some tribute to those who were felled. A monument would not be big enough nor a hymn sufficiently powerful enough to symbolize their valor and their remembrance.

On recounting any successes and failures during my war I had realized that the primary goal of any commander is to Remember The Mission. I, myself had succeeded in very few.

Names long forgotten and battles long repressed were recalled to the point that notes were taken attempting to analyze such an astounding announcement that even one of my own was an enemy. It’s like the Nazis weren’t enough to battle. I had Two Foes to Fight.

Bob Welsh

SIEGFRIED PILLBOX

Hey Bobby, I can’t see in here! yelled Tommy from the back of the cave that we kids had been digging for a week. Let’s go up to the corner where they’re fixin’ the road and swipe a smudge pot tonight.

He was referring to one of those smoky, coal-oil-filled, bowling ball-shaped pots that lined a highway under repair on the roadway in the old days.

Great idea, but it’d be smelly in here in a minute. It’s too bad Mother made us quit playing with those rubber guns we had to fight Butch and his gang who were always attacking us. Now we don’t have any protection. I just hope they don’t want to block off this entrance while we’re in here, I replied.

It was a lot of fun putting our play money in my sister Jean’s bank, in our garage, then going in with our rubber guns to hold it up and make our getaway. This is a good hideout, but being in this dark ole hole is scary.

I was now Second Lieutenant Robert Welsh on night patrol with the mission of capturing a German prisoner from amongst the snowy bunkers of the Siegfried Line, and I wished I were back in those carefree days of playing in a cave and only shooting rubber guns with my pals. Now I was engaged in a deadly exercise of determination and will to survive.

Our division had joined the Third Army in December and was initially positioned down in the Saar Valley just a couple of weeks before Hitler had launched this famed effort through the Ardennes, making what was to be called the Bulge. I had left the rest of the patrol back in the ditch alongside the Dragon’s Teeth and was scouting alone for some German guards. I would then go back and bring them up.

This, for weeks, had been an arduous task, for instead of capturing any, we had always ended up in a firefight. There shouldn’t be a repeat of the German offensive as of last month, but whatever was going on, HQ wanted to know about it. Right now. The Bulge created by the surprise attack back in December through the Ardennes had been closed back to the West Wall, where it started a month ago.

I just knew that my fraternity brother at Davidson, Crawford Wheeler, had been killed or captured when the main thrust of the surprise attack went right through the area occupied by his 106th Division. We had been bunkmates all through basic training and OCS.

The Americans and British were now to push to the Rhine River and end Hitler’s dream of a Thousand-Year Reich. To do that, he was in Africa searching for God’s Ark and had stumbled upon a UFO base in Antarctica. He was attempting to copy their technique.

The trouble was that our own artillery was shelling this line of bunkers I was now scouting, with the barrage figured to be in this vicinity pretty soon, and there was absolutely no cover to take except inside a bunker. I would be right out in the open. I couldn’t imagine any guards being out in this melee.

But this wasn’t sporadic shelling, one here and one there. This was a lazy artillery man’s way of just following orders to shell the line. One after another of left-click and fire. Anybody could tell when the next round would be coming in on their position and just take cover, so I just ignored it for the time being. Furthermore, this patrol has been useless for no Kraut in his right mind would be out on guard tonight. It was a dark, dark night, even though the snow reflected any possible light, thus magnifying it only a little.

Suddenly it seemed a shell was due on my position in a few seconds and the only cover was inside a bunker. I had accidentally run across a narrow-gauge rail track and was following it right up to a bunker silhouetted against the skyline. I had arrived at its steel door just as a shell’s whirring round indicated it would be landing right on top of me.

I had only a second to decide whether to duck inside with the Germans or take my chances that the shell would explode on the other side of this bunker. Hitting the ground was out of the question. The terrain was too flat.

Capture or fight inside—or death outside? One or the other.

I tried the door, it opened, and I jumped inside.

As I slammed the door, KARUMPPPFFF!, the earth shook with a resounding concussion as the big shell ripped in the snow nearby, spraying the wall of my sanctuary with shrapnel and slush.

There I was, standing in the middle of a completely blacked-out German bunker.

Strangely there was no light at all. So I just planted myself in a challenging half crouched position with my carbine projecting from the hip, feet set apart twisting in the darkness, sweeping from right to left, ready to shoot.

I was holding my breath with the hair standing up on the back of my neck, waiting to hear a challenge in German, a halloo, or some snoring or at least breathing.

Now I wished I had one of the new automatic firing carbines like our first sergeant was sporting around back in Luxembourg, and a vision of those seven-shot automatic rubber guns we made as kids flashed through my mind. There was no light in here, not even a smudge pot.

As I swiveled my body around as if I were spraying, I thought better of firing at nothingness and just waited.

I am getting hysterical, I said to myself.

Soon my breath started coming in short bursts of fear even though there were no sounds or movement at all, especially after all that racket I made coming in. Two minutes or two seconds went by. How many?

Then I begin to realize there was no one else in this bunker but me. Nothing but complete and total, dead silence.

Finally, I figured this must be an ammo bunker since those tracks leading up to it would be necessary for carts carrying the weight of those big shells.

My imagination had overcome me. My anxiety fell with a great big sigh. This was pure hell. Now I know what hell is like. Hell is nothing but a big black hole like the one I was in.

They say nothing survives in those great, big celestial black holes that will stretch one out into nothingness if they don’t make it to heaven.

OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA, 1932

Mother was so nice the day Butch’s bullies came back to harass us some more with their rubber guns. She relented about those guns being dangerous and being able to put your eye out.

In a determined manner and out of sync with her usual set ways, she suddenly declared, Bobby, get in the car with me and we’ll go to the filling station and get some inner tubes to cut up for your guns.

That was President Roosevelt’s attitude toward the Nazis. Hitler was a bully, and the United Sates was going to do something about it, which was entirely contradictory to Chamberlain’s appeasement policy toward Hitler at Munich.

But it wasn’t that simple. History would probably show manipulation and machinations all along the way. The world was struggling to get out of the Depression, and one way to boost the economy was to start a war. Roosevelt had gradually maneuvered Congress with promotions to help Britain, and by practically setting up the Japs to attack Pearl Harbor; swaying the public and Congress was no problem. Quoting Thoreau, he declared, There’s nothing to fear but fear itself.

If Roosevelt knew about the Jewish concentration camps, the American public wasn’t informed. If the president knew the Japs were going to attack Pearl Harbor, no one else did. It was just like the Twin Towers and Benghazi on the nine-elevens: supposedly surprise attacks with no defensive scramble.

Our counterintelligence was lacking, ignored it, or needed this excuse for war to aid Britain.

Mother even let us use her best scissors to cut the tubes into rubber strips to stretch over the nozzle, clipping into a clothespin on the back of the grip of our single shot pistols. Then for the repeater rifles everybody in the gang started looping the strips together to fit in the notches cut into the barrel over the string, which when pulled would release as many in a burst as desired. When Butch saw us coming, they just took off; not wanting to have us put their eyes out.

I am an Okie from Muskogee, but Dad was transferred to Tulsa, and then to Charlotte, North Carolina, where he was made manager of the Travelers Insurance Company in North and South Carolina in my final year of high school.

FORT BRAGG: INDUCTION

Yes, it had been only a year and a half ago when this man’s army dragged him out of Davidson College, with its college deferment ROTC program. This was training and college combined, usually till graduation. But we had been called up after our junior year and were headed for Basic Training.

There were plenty of other Davidson guys headed to Fort Bragg on this bus with their orders to report. As usual I had left mine at home, but it only took the MPs one minute at the gate to let me in. They needed recruits.

From then on it was physicals, mentals, psychiatric and sexual preference interrogations, where the psychiatrist just asked one about girls, when he could have asked which sex we dream of. Then there was the usual routine harassment and general decline of moral for a week before beginning Basic Training, during which we were given a week’s furlough to go back home.

Our Jewish First Sergeant seemed to be always calling me to his office. Rrrobert B. Velch, report to the orderly room! And friends inducted at the same time with me, like Frosty Darnell, have never forgotten the repeat of the loudspeaker call every time we meet or even with a phone call.

I went back to Charlotte with a skinned head and tailored uniform. It was already a lot different from that sloppy wrinkled ROTC uniform with a key chain hanging from a belt-loop, un-shined civilian shoes, and a sloppy cap on the back of my head.

ROTC.jpg

Mother was sitting on the top step of the front porch one day and asked, What does that word, K.P. stand for?

Why those are the initials for Kitchen Police, meaning I am one of those in charge of keeping the kitchen clean, all the utensils hanging up orderly, helping prepare the meals, but mostly washing dishes after chow.

You’ve seen Wallace Beery in the movies sitting down to peel a wash tub full of potatoes. Well, I do that, as well as clean all the pots and pans.

I got up, standing on the sidewalk in front of her and grabbing an imaginary long handled brush off the wall I described, Look, I stand in the middle of this huge pot they boil the potatoes in, and while another guy squirts water at the insides, I go up and down like this to get them clean. Then I hung up the broom.

There was a dead silence for about two seconds.

"Mother, you ought to see us in this skirmish line every day where everybody forms a line across the parade ground and slowly start walking to the other side, like bird dogs on the scent, looking down as if we are searching for lost money.

Guess what we’re trying to find? I waited. No answer.

Cigarette butts, I declared. Let me show you what one is supposed to do with his cigarette when it’s finally burning his fingers.

It’s called ‘field stripping’.

See this Lucky Strike? I take the butt, tear it a little on the edge and start peeling it back all the way till the remaining tobacco falls to the ground. Then I wad the paper up in a little ball and flip it into the wild blue. No butt to pick up.

But most of the guys haven’t been trained properly. They still flip away a burning cigarette to start some forest fire, or worse, make us line up every morning to pick it up if it doesn’t burn out.

I wish you had let me go into the Air Force, so I could fly around in a P-47 like DeWitt Austin. Last time I went to town I talked to him before going into the S&W cafeteria next to the Ed Mellon Co. You ought to see how good he looks and I wouldn’t have to walk all over South Carolina or Georgia.

Our stints together in high school included driving around in his mother’s new Studebaker and getting arrested! He was operating everything but the gas pedal. How stupid was this? His mother, Allie, and mine were good friends, especially when it came to playing bridge.

DeWitt secretly married his high school sweetheart, which was annulled, and then several others, before finally settling down with the prettiest one of all, Betty.

But mother replied with finality, I told you those airplanes are too dangerous.

CAMP WHEELER: BASIC TRAINING

ROTC (we called it Row-T’ See), covering many facets of warfare, just skimming the surface had been a good start back at Davidson and I was on the rifle team. After the Fort Bragg induction center with shaved head there was the unforgettable train ride to Camp Wheeler Georgia, cinders flying in the windows, waiting on the sidelines for other traffic to pass, but finally making the two-hour trip in a day.

After being assigned to the Anti-Tank company, once again we went through physicals, which I thoroughly detested. One of our group had flunked because of low blood pressure, but mine was always too high. I had fainted while standing in line, and fell stark naked on the cold floor my freshman year at Davidson. I knew it was just psychological and was always allowed to wait a minute before re-taking it in order to pass.

What was the matter with me? My best friend Frank Mebane was 4-F with a heart condition. I could get a desk job. What was driving me on to go get killed?

FRIGHT! My biggest fear was being scared. This had compounded itself into a situation. Many of the guys would forget their names or serial numbers during inspection and I knew I would too but never was asked. I wondered what was going on,