"A Hell of a Nerve"

Mortain was a critical spot (see above). There the Germans had thrown four armored divisions into desperate counterattack. The object: to pierce the narrow waist of the U.S. corridor from Normandy, thus split the Allied front. One U.S. division, new to combat when it landed in France, took the brunt of the Panzer blow, recoiled, then stood and slugged.

On an ear-shaped hill, bypassed in the Germans' thrust, was one of the division's battalions. It was in a fine position and in a bad way: it held a prized spot for directing artillery fire, and it was surrounded, raked by German shells. It had many wounded, and no medical supplies, but food and ammunition were dropped by planes.

By the third day the battalion's plight seemed hopeless. Up the hill, under a white flag, came a shiny-booted SS officer. His ultimatum to the battalion's gaunt, lanky, black-bearded commander, Captain R. A. Kerley: surrender by 8 o'clock that night, or be destroyed--totally. Texan Kerley's reply: "Go to hell." Then he amplified: "I will surrender when every one of our bullets has been fired and every one of our bayonets is sticking in a German belly." '

Salvos of Mercy. The hillside took an awful going-over that day & night. There were many more wounded. U.S. shells also began to fall plunk in the battalion's lines. But the big 155-mm. projectiles did not explode. They were salvos of mercy: smoke shells stripped of powder, cotton-packed with sulfas, plasma, morphine.

After five and a half days the Germans retired. Captain Kerley's outfit spotted a long line of tanks and guns moving out, radioed the range. This time U.S. shells were merciless. The lost battalion could report: "Total destruction." By night Americans were back in Mortain, and a rescue battalion had worked itself up the hillside. The regiment's colonel heard then of Kerley's talk with the SS officer.

Said an officer: "You had a hell of a nerve to tell the Germans that."

Said Captain Kerley: "They had a hell of a nerve to put a proposition like that up to me."

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