Doughboys' Beachhead

With the men at the Nettuno beachhead (see map) was TIME Correspondent Will Lang. Of the local, intermittent fighting in the first days, he cabled:

I joined a battalion moving up for the first attack at dawn. We turned left at the first intersection and passed three huge silhouettes by the roadside. "Tanks. That's good. As long as they stay away from our doughfoots," someone muttered.

We crossed a bridge. E and G Companies were somewhere ahead of us, trying to find something resembling the German line. It was quiet as a graveyard, yet miles ahead apprehensive Germans began shooting up flares--green, red and a few white.

Shortly before dawn the battalion commander, burly Lieut. Colonel John Toffey, stopped his men at an abandoned farmhouse and set up his command post there. The medics took over the crude workshop, and began unpacking packages and plasma bottles in the dark. The Colonel ordered most of the men into the long, smelly stable for safety, but sat himself down at the rear of the building with a portable radio.

"We're Making Money." Light was just sneaking over the horizon; a rooster crowed overhead. Toffey was radio-talking to the regimental commander, Lieut. Colonel Ashton Manhart, when a spatter of machine-gun and rifle fire broke out. "We're starting to make some money now," calmly said Toffey over the radio.

There was a quick deafening scream, then a shell exploded a few feet away from the farmhouse. Dirt splattered through the stable windows on to the doughboys lying in the straw and manure inside. Another shell tore open the black soil near by. Four bundles of feathers fluttered from the hen house down to the ground. "If all they get is chickens, we've got a good day ahead," 'said Toffey. Three more explosions within 25 yards shook the house and stable. A wide-eyed replacement raised his head from the floor and gasped: "Them's bombs!"

Small-arms fire roared just ahead. I looked down the road. Our three tanks were snuggled close to a building just 100 yards away. Across the road, doughboys were crawling over the grassy meadow toward another group of houses, with bullets kicking up dust about them. Germans in the red houses were raining fire on those unprotected infantrymen. Here and there forms lay on their backs, not moving at all.

"All Right, Benny." Someone rocketed a bazooka shell into the last of the red houses and flames belched upward. One of the tanks poked its nose around the corner and fired shells directly into the flames. A series of crunching explosions sent the tank backward, as the enemy gun beaded on our area again.

Back of the command post Colonel Toffey still sat on a tin bucket talking over the radio. "All right, Benny, all right," he said to Lieut. Benny Reece, one of the advanced unit commanders. "We're doing what we can. Don't get excited. Got many casualties? We'll try to get litter bearers up as soon as possible." Several Spitfires chased two German fighter-bombers which had just raided the beach. "The bastards," snorted Toffey.

The operations officer, Captain Philip Rognile, took over the radio. "Frogs, frogs. I say frogs. All right, stupid, I mean tanks," he yelled at someone at the other end. A leather-faced farmer from Tennessee, Sergeant Robert Riggina, chimed in dryly, "Them tanks is all right. F Company woulda been kilt or captured yesterday if them tanks hadn't come up."

Captain Russell Comrie directed the fire of his mortar company on some of the enemy's red houses. Far down the road we could see a solitary German impudently walking to the road. "Five rounds now--drop 'em in," yelled Comrie over the telephone. Black smoke puffed all around the red houses. The German threw himself to the ground. "The last one got a machine-gun nest," Comrie whooped. "Shoot five more rounds."

Krauts in Flight. Two of the following rounds dropped square on the buildings. As the smoke cleared, we could see five Germans running into the open field. Another brace of shells dropped square into their midst.

A German high-velocity gun began slinging shells our way again. Toffey stood in the stable door watching the shells land about 100 yards away. "We'll get some artillery on those Krauts if we locate them," he said. He looked to his left and saw Sergeant James Clements with his shirt off and lathering his face. "Look," said Toffey, "Clements picks this quiet time to shave." He grinned tiredly, and took the radio receiver. "Look, Benny," he said, "don't get excited. We just killed you some Krauts and we'll kill you some more as soon as you tell us where they are."

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