Gorrell: ‘It’s hell down there,’ parachuting chaplain says of Carentan fight
Parson praises accuracy of our artillery as it wipes out cluster of German pillboxes
By Henry T. Gorrell
The following dispatch inaugurated the first direct transmission of news from France to the United States since the invasion.
With U.S. assault troops, Carentan, France (UP) – (June 12, delayed)
The parachuting parson and I were watching the fighting in the outskirts of Carentan.
Chaplain Raymond Hall said:
It’s hell down there; I know because I’ve been with those kids for several hours.
We lay on our stomachs at an advanced observation post and watched the artillery go after a cluster of German pillboxes which had been pinning the American boys down in gutters. Two panting runners were giving the colonel the position of the German posts.
The colonel barked the orders into the radio. We heard his sing-song “okay, fire!” then, “on the way.” The shells went over with a freight train rush. We watched the German pillboxes disappear in clouds and dust, with flashes of vivid red flame.
The parson whispered:
Thank God for that one. That had to be placed just right because otherwise it would have hit our kids lying out there in the gutters.
Landed on D-Day
The parson knows his fighting, because he has been in the thick of it since he parachuted down on D-Day. Doctors and stretcher-bearers told me later he had stayed in the frontline, holding shattered arms and legs, injecting morphine and adjusting splints under fire.
Just then, Lt. Jack A. Borchert came in for a personal report because his portable radio had been knocked out. He gave a closeup description of the parson’s “hell.”
He said:
We were in the leading assault company. We crossed three of the four bridges and were making good progress. But then the Germans rallied, reoccupied prepared positions and began to counterattack with bayonets and grenades. I haven’t seen many of my outfit since the last time they hit us.
Raked by mortars
Another liaison officer, Lt. Robert Dixon, said:
They pinned us down with mortars and 88s in the narrowest front. I fought in water up to my hips and then crawled to the forward command post. I mean, I half-walked, half-crawled because if I’d gotten down on my belly, I’d have drowned. Men were falling all around me. I don’t know why I wasn’t shot.
The fighting around Carentan spared neither beast nor man. Through field glasses, I saw cows, mules and horses fall with men in khaki and field gray.
I moved along to a first-aid post where I found the men still able to joke after being pinned down for hours in the swamps.
The wounded came in with teeth chattering, drenched to the skin. First-aiders held cigarettes to their teeth while their blood-soaked clothing was cut away from the wounds. For some, it was the last cigarette. They just puffed silently, shut their eyes and died before me.
Among the first-aid men with whom I talked and who had been out under fire for many hours was H. P. Taylor of Brentwood, Long Island. Taylor is a denial technician, but he volunteered as a stretcher-bearer because heavy casualties created a sudden need for bearers.