Memories of Lawrence P. Belmont, A Battery — Part VI More of Lawrence's Memories of Normandy are Here! What was it like inland? "Well, we first bivouaced in some fields directly behind Omaha Beach, in some foxholes. They were covered with tree limbs and had some dirt over the top of the limbs. There was just enough room to get in. I guess these holes had been dug by GIs who'd arrived before us. This was around the 18th and 19th of June. There was a lot of shelling and I was scared. I couldn't tell if it was me shaking or the ground shaking. I learned to keep my M-1 close, and all during the war I always wore two bandoliers full of ammo in addition to a full cartridge belt. Later, I learned there was an airfield being set up just a few hundred yards away at St. Laurent-sur-Mer, which was soon handling P-38s and observation planes. We were just hanging around waiting for our equipment to arrive. Later, when we got all our stuff, we would set up AAA defense of that field." "We didn't have bread or nothing for one or two weeks. Just C-rations and these hard chocolate bars, called D bars. Boy, they were tough. I think they issued us either three or six of these things when we left England. Until all our equipment got there, we were just hanging around. We decided to build a shower, so we scrounged around for a drop tank from a fighter plane, found one, and borrowed a burner from one of our stoves. There were wing tanks from airplanes all over the place. We found some wood, wire, and some canvas shelter halves, and sooner than anyone thought, we were taking hot showers practically on top of the German lines. After nearly two weeks of waiting, our trucks, lights, and other equipment started to arrive and the batteries began to move out to different towns in the area. St. Mere Eglise, Carentan, Blosville. It must have been at least 10 or 12 days before I was able to set up a field kitchen, near Blosville, which was about 2 or three miles south of St. Mere Eglise on the road to Cherbourg. To give you an idea of what it was like cooking in the field, I had to set up about 15 feet away from a deuce-and-a-half with a .50-caliber machine gun on it. There was no mess hall or anything like that, but we did have a kitchen (fly) tent usually. The German army just had a field pot, called an "Un Tub," that was transported around on a horse-drawn wagon. They built a fire under the tub to heat the food. I can remember making hot cakes every morning for breakfast. I had to feed about 15 or 20 guys seven days a weeks from 0400 hours in the morning to 2000 hours at night. I had to do everything. We had gas-powered field ranges called M-1937 gas ranges. You could cook and bake everything in them, but they were hard to keep running because we were supposed to use white gas and we used regular gas, and every night ater supper we had to ream out the burners or else they would clog up. We had a tire pump to put 60 pounds of pressure in them to get them started." "The batteries were closer together in Normandy since the area under Allied control was pretty small through the month of June. After the breakout, the batteries were separated by up to 50 miles sometimes." "I can remember Carentan very vividly. Carentan was a very important town because of all the roads that went through there. Plus there were three bridges over the Douve and Merderet Rivers that allowed us to shuttle between Omaha and Utah, and to get to St. Mere Eglise. We were crossing one of those bridges, a stone bridge I think, when the Germans started to shell the whole area. We were on our way back to Blosville, just south of St. Mere Eglise, from the Omaha area. We'd heard a lot about Carentan for this very reason, none of it good. It was a popular target and the barrages were so frequent that one invariably started as soon as a vehicle started across. Well, on this day, everybody ran for cover and just as the truck I was on crossed, I saw this MP run and dive into a shell crater. A split second after he jumped in, a goddamn 88 round followed him right in the hole and exploded. I couldn't believe my eyes. When I passed through later, the MPs were still there, directing traffic despite the artillery. I wonder if those guys ever got a decoration for staying on those goddamed bridges." The "Bailey" bridge north of Carentan (known as "Tucker Bridge") that was infamous for being knocked out by German artillery as fast as U. S. engineers could repair it. Major John Tucker of the Army Engineers became frustrated by the German's continual bombardment of the bridge that his engineers were constructing. In an effort to encourage his 148th Engineer Battalion to continue to work under hostile fire, Major Tucker moved to the bridge during a German barrage, and was killed. The battalion would continue its work on the bridge under constant mortar, artillery, and small-arms fire. When completed, it was the first fixed bridge at Carentan and was named after Major Tucker. Drivers had one motto when they had to go through Carentan during June 1944: "Drive like Hell!" "Carentan was always under fire in June — the Krauts had all those bridges zeroed in with their 88s. (Webmaster's Note: In fact, every half hour at night the Germans shelled one of the bridges, destroying the temporary plank surface; the engineers would restore the planks every half-hour so the bridge was passable for about seven minutes every hour!) Another time we were driving through on the N13 which continued on to St. Mere Eglise and Cherbourg after a barrage and we saw this French woman with a wheelbarrow. In it there was a headless body of a man. I supposed it was her husband. Many buildings were burning and the whole place just looked like Hell. All during our stay in this area, the Germans would knock out the bridges at Carentan as fast as the engineers could rebuild them. The nearby fields were always being searched for artillery spotters and wires that were being used for field phones between spotters and the German artillery. The fire was too accurate for them not to have a few pairs of eyes close by." Another view of Tucker Bridge. The bridge was on the main supply road north to St. Mere Eglise. "It was shelled at 10, 2, and 4," according to veterans of the 330th Infantry Regiment, 83rd Infantry Division, which relieved the 101st Airborne in the area after landing at Omaha Beach on June 23. (Photo courtesy Donna Stahl Larson.) "A Battery set up a camp near an apple orchard between Carentan and St. Mere Eglise. I remember when we first drove in on the road to the site, I saw a dead paratrooper hanging in an apple tree. I wished we could just kept driving, but we stopped. He had the famous 101st Screaming Eagle patch on his shoulder and an air mail letter in his pocket. I can see him right now as clear as that day. He was gone the next time I passed by, but his parachute was still there. I cut some of the cloth off and cut it up into tiny squares, which I still must have someplace. I think this place was called Blosville; it was about a mile past that goddamed bridge at Carentan. The Germans had flooded the whole area around there to discourage paratrooper landings. There was a big farmhouse nearby, with a big barn. There was another road that went left near where we were (possibly Route D971); it was well traveled and I used to see all kinds of AAA half-tracks and armor going up it all the time. The first thing we had to do was dig a big entrenchment and sand-bag it for A Battery headquarters. There were five or so guys doing this. It was for Capt. McGrew's command post, and I don't mind telling you that I remember feeling like telling him to dig his own shittin' hole. I might have too. But it was peaceful there for the first few nights. We were off the main road, down a dirt track, about 100 yards from that farm, and surrounded by hedgerows. Now let me tell you about these hedgerows. When you were defending, they were your best friend. If you were attacking, they were a bitch. They were as tall as some trees and as thick as a tank. We would watch star shells explode at night, and you could hear small arms fire all the time. I remember feeling a little scared, because I knew it wasn't going to be this easy for too much longer." "In Normandy that first month or so, our AA guns where shooting down so many Allied aircraft that they had to issue orders that you couldn't fire on any aircraft after 2300 hours. We were on double wartime savings time and it didn't get dark until 2300 hours. I think that was also called British Double Summer Time or something. They ended up grounding Allied planes from 2300 to 0400 hours every day. Sure, we'd been trained to identify aircraft, but at night, when those lights locked on to a target it was a case of "shoot first, ask questions later." Every day in training at Camp Davis we studied picture cards of all the airplanes and we had to identify whether they were American, British, or German. So much for that." "At night if you had guard duty if you heard or saw anything move, you'd fire your M-1 at it — a lot of GIs got killed by other GI's; everyone was trigger-happy. One day, a 155-mm artillery outfit moved in right next to us. They had the big howitzers called the Long Toms. They were only there four or five days and boy was I glad when they moved out since they were a prime target for German counter-fire. Those artillery boys were always eating steak from killing the French farmers' cows. They said that the cows were killed by mines when asked, but believe me they were killing them for the meat. Most all of the fields around there had cows in them; the hedgerows acted as fences." "Next, we moved up to Cherbourg right after the Germans surrendered. We moved into some old fort, which was really damp and musty. I can't remember the name. We didn't like staying inside so much because of the awful smell, so we used to sit outside. I had a field range set up in one of the rooms in the fort and you could hardly breathe when that thing was going. We had to take it out because the air inside was so bad to start with and the fumes from the gas burner made it worse. We were up on this point and could see the harbor, which was a shambles. We used to watch PT boats out in the channel. Some guys got sick up there, which was a dangerous thing because of the way the Army was restocking combat outfits. If you went on sick call, you might not ever see your outfit again because – unless your first sergeant knew you were being discharged – when you got out they'd just send you to a Repo Depot and you'd end up in the infantry. This happened to a bunch of guys I knew from other outfits, but the 225th was pretty good about taking care of its own." PT-513 (of Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron 35) slices through the waters of the English Channel off Cherbourg, June 1944. "During this time, the Night Fighter squadrons and the Automatic Weapons units were starting to fight over us. We were the only searchlight battalion in Normandy at the time and would be for a while longer. The night fighters needed us to guide them back to base in the darkness and the AW guys needed us to illuminate their targets. The AW battalions had the quad .50-caliber machine guns mounted on their half-tracks or towed on trailers. They packed a wallop and everyone called them 'meat choppers.' " Where did you head after the big breakout? We moved into Brittany. Went through places pretty quickly. We stayed longest at Vannes, but it still was only a little while and then we headed west again. We were attached to some AAA brigade that was being used by both the air corps and the army, so we were getting split up all the time. The only consistent thing was our relationship with two night fighter outfits: the 422nd and 425th. Wherever they went, a battery from the 225th went to provide airstrip defense and to provide homing beacons at night. They flew P-61s, which were fixed up with airborne interception radar, but as far as getting home to the right airfield, they depended on our lights many, many times." "When we got to Coloummiers, I ran into a guy a knew from my hometown, Richard Rutherford, who I graduated with. He was a mechanic on some A-20 Havocs that were operating out of there. I remember an old Frenchman there who raised rabbits. I used to liberate lettuce from our mess for him so he could feed them." "We moved to Etain, France next. I remember riding in a three-quarter ton weapons carrier. We didn't go through Verdun, but went to Sedan and followed a river through Belgium. We stayed there for about three months. The big reason we were there so long was the Battle of the Bulge. When the Germans attacked, everything stopped. And even after that Patton was having a helluva time busting through the Saar. There were no new airfields closer to Germany to occupy, so the Ninth Air Force had to continue operating from their fields in France and Belgium. Etain was in France, and that's where we were when the Germans counter-attacked. Since it was gonna be a long stay, we finally got tents to live in, the big pyramid types. And Etain was one of the muddiest places I'd been in. We were camped out in an old stone quarry near the airstrip. Since Normandy, we'd been sleeping anywhere we could, usually in a hole. We were pretty close to the Fatherland, so what was left of the Luftwaffe started hitting all of our airfields pretty regulary, though not in force. We used to get strafed every once in a while. One tent was actually hit and full of holes. Another time, a damaged P-47 was limping in and right behind him was a German plane which we hadn't seen. By the time we could get our guns on him, he'd strafed us, dropped some bombs (which missed), and high-tailed it back to the Third Reich. While at Etain, I had this awful toothache, and the battalion's mobile dentist (nick-named the "Rolling Molar") was somewhere else (I actually never even knew we had one), so I had to go to Verdun to the general hospital to get the tooth pulled. This was the first time I ever had to go to a dentist in my life! While I was I gone, the battalion shot down a couple of female Luftwaffe pilots! " "Around August or September 1944 we were notified about the new German jets. The one we heard the most about was the Messerschmitt Me262. It was so fast you could hardly see it go by. We were in France or southern Belgium one day when I saw my first jet. You looked up and it was out of sight because it was so fast. We got circular talking about it. We just couldn't believe it! We also heard about the buzz bombs. We didn't see any, but we heard that you could tell if one was coming since they made a lot of noise. I think the 226th and 231st Searchlight Battalions were up north and might have seen more of those." "I was doing a lot of cooking during the Bulge, but I got sick of it pretty quick and told the Captain to 'take this job and shove it' . When you're cooking and you're the only one, you don't get any days off. Well, I pulled a lot of guard duty for my outburst. At some point, I was busted from Tech-5 to Private. I can't remember when, but it was around this time. I remember hearing around December 18 that they didn't know just how big the German breakthrough was. Bradley and Eisenhower screwed up not to have more divisions in that area. Just the day before the Germans busted through, the 2nd Division was replaced by the 106th. They hadn't seen any action. They were all green troops. If it wasn't for the 110th Regiment of the 28th Division, the Germans would probably had better results. They delayed the Germans and screwed up their whole timetable. One day, I was ordered to go with the mail clerk to deliver mail to the other platoons. We grabbed a weapons carrier and I took a Thompson and we left Sedan, France (where the 9th Armored Division was being refitted) and headed to Florennes, Belgium, where A Battery's 2nd Platoon was. I remember going through Charleroi, too. We drove on this road that followed the Meuse River, which had a lot of curves. MPs stopped us every five miles or so and asked us questions to make sure we weren't German infiltrators. Like who which Hollywood star was married to who, and who did such-and-such a baseball player play for. I remember feeling sorry for those MPs. A lot of them were by themselves at a crossroads out in the middle of nowhere. On the way back, I saw large open trucks of infantry being deployed in the woods all the way down along the Meuse. There was about 50 GIs on these semi-trailers, with no cover from the weather. All of them were green. I never saw so many troops in my life. Every place we went through was full of men heading north to plug the hole the krauts had punched in our lines."

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