Henry: Violent fight in cemetery routs Germans
Battle for ‘Murphy’s’ is short but bloody
By Thomas R. Henry, North American Newspaper Alliance
With U.S. forces in Normandy, France – (July 12, delayed)
It was “Judgment Morning” today at the village churchyard, “Murphy’s Crossroads.”
There were screams of shells and Gabriel’s trumpet as tombstones were knocked down, graves blown open, and an hour’s death rain on a suicide company of German paratroops manning machine guns among 17th-century crosses and through holes punched through church walls.
“Murphy’s” is the soldier pronunciation of the crossroads at La Meauffe, near Saint-Lô, east of the Vire River, where a unit of Missourians and Kansans fought yesterday, ending in one of the briskest fights of the campaign.
Unit is halted
A unit under the command of Lt. Col. Joseph Alexander of Chicago jumped off at dawn yesterday and was halted in midmorning before a hedgehog village (a village whose outer defenses included barbed-wire entanglements).
There was a little church, a moated chateau, and a few farmhouses where the Germans commanded all approaches. There were machine guns behind gravestones, in chateau windows and at road corners.
The crossroads was an elaborate system of dugouts connected by long tunnels.
Caught in hail
“I got six months’ training in two hours,” Capt. Gerald E. O’Connell of Emporia, Kansas, in command of the leading company.
Caught in a death hail of machine-gun fire, the men sought shelter in the ditches. There we were observed from the steeple and pinned down for two or three hours by mortars and German 88s behind La Meauffe.
Machine guns were firing from a brush pile 20 yards ahead. I finally made a flying leap over a hedge and lay with my breath knocked out on the other side. A few minutes later, I crawled back to shelter with the others.
Attack is repulsed
A second attack at noon was repulsed, and all afternoon the men lay in foxholes under a harassing mortar fire. The night was horrible for the troops, half of whom were kept awake constantly expecting a German onslaught.
Relief came this dawn when our artillery poured 1,500 rounds into the crossroads, under which the Germans died or fled. Then the infantry, with Lt. Sidney K. Strong of St. Ignatius, Montana, leading, advanced again under cover of intermittent shelling and chateau grounds. They found the place strewn with dead.
A few prisoners were taken, but most Germans had stolen out in the night, leaving only suicide groups. By noon the place was mopped up.
I never saw before such a Golgotha as “Murphy’s” cemetery after the battle. Tombs were a heap of rubble. Graves, many of them from the 17th century, yawned wide open.
Church is demolished
Dead Germans were strewn in the surrounding fields. Glass artificial flowers were pathetic dust. Wings were clipped on two pink and blue porcelain angels over the grave of two little girls. The old stone church was near complete demolition.
The only object intact was a gilt-crowned, red-robed, life-sized figure of Jesus, on a high pedestal over a bomb-struck altar overlooking the scene with sorrowful eyes.
With Lt. Col. Harry W. Johnson of Alexandria, Virginia, today I went over the scene of yesterday’s battle where artillery landed squarely 10 yards behind a 500-yard line of elaborate dugouts.
The barrage caught the defenders eating a breakfast of macaroni and water. They never knew what hit them. one who was shaving died with his razor in his hand. Another was apparently on his knees at morning prayers.
Twenty ghastly dead boys lay in a row on the edge of a red clover field.
“They look like big wax dolls,” said Col. Johnson in pity.
It has not been long since they played with soldier dolls. Thus, Hitler scrapes the bottom of his manpower barrel.
