Munro: Shorty’s ‘Honey’ tank invades Kraut camp
By Ross Munro
With the Canadians in France (UP) – (June 9, delayed)
They had practically written off the “Honey” tank, with its crew, when “Shorty” drove it back into camp.
Only one gun was working, there were bullet holes through some of the lighter armor and the turret and the hull had been scorched with grenade and shell blasts.
But trooper J. C. “Shorty” Mackensie of Rouyn-Noranda, Québec, the driver, climbed from the bow turret with his face smoked as black as a minstrel’s, and told me this story of a wild night foray into German lines on the perimeter of the beachhead.
Roar through main street
He said:
We are way out in front, with our Shermans, making reconnaissance. We come to a town, so we button down our turrets and belt right through the main street wide open, with Jerries bouncing grenades off us.
This sturdy little former miner said that with him in the tank were trooper Harry “Happy” Webb of Welland, Ontario; trooper Wilfred “Bing” Miller of Walkerton, Ontario, and a sergeant who doesn’t want to be named but who fought in tanks in Italy for three months and knows his way around.
Shorty continued:
An 88 opens up on us, so I zigzag our Honey around through a field. The fourth shot is so close it rocks us and the fifth nearly gets us. But we breeze off and whoop down a road.
And there we are, breezing right along, see, when we run right into a Jerry camp. There is a barrier over the road, so I swing Honey around and beat it back, with Jerries leaping out of bushes and ditches to heave grenades at us.
Nazis beaten off
They smack us with machine guns and swarm all around us a couple of times. We beat them off with our guns, but these slowly go out of action and it isn’t very long out of action and it isn’t very long before we have only a revolver and one machine gun left. It looks pretty bad.
Mackenzie said that just about then, it got dark:
So we get outta that tight spot and go off into the fields, flat out, until I guess we’re about half a mile or so from the Jerry camp. Then we decide to bed down alongside the tank for the night – a fellow’s got to sleep sometime.
A German patrol found them a short time later, the trooper related, and the sergeant challenged the Jerries.
He explained:
But there weren’t no answer. We didn’t shoot and they didn’t either. The Jerry patrol commander just stands there with his men behind him and looks, then went away. We thought we were going to get it for sure then, but, instead, we get some sleep.
When it gets light, we come back to our outfit, and were our guys surprised to see us show up! That sure was a night.
Gorrell: Grenades smoke out Nazi nest and paratrooper lets ‘em have it
By Henry T. Gorrell
With U.S. airborne troops, somewhere in France (UP) – (June 10)
They shot one of my mates in the leg. I smoked them out of their nest with grenades and let them have it one by one with phosphorus bombs. The speaker was Pvt. Charles E. McGary of Paducah, Kentucky. He had just exchanged his drenched clothing for a German jacket and a French farmer’s pants.
James H. Talley of Texarkana, Texas, said:
I was deep in the swamp and saw a German sniper sloshing down the road shooting. I bumped him off and then three more came up looking for me with rifles. Then one was hit by shrapnel – the other two plunged into the water and came toward me crying “Kamarad!”
For two hours, the little group of paratroops had been fighting through a backcountry swamp dotted with enemy gun positions. They were equipped with nothing heavier than rifles. Their own naval shrapnel as well as German machine-gun bullets buzzed all around. First, they had stormed an 88mm gun post and annihilated its crew. Then they took on one machine gun next after another, systematically cleaning them out with grenades and knives.
Now wet and muddy, they were resting under some apple trees, cleaning their pistols, bayonets and clothes. They were telling me all about it.
Pvt. Arthur Boyung of Milwaukee said:
In some cases, the Germans were so scared they wouldn’t come out even though they could see we were going to blow them up. We didn’t have time to argue, so the Germans went up with their own guns.
Donald McFarland of Alameda, California, told me he and three other paratroopers rushed one machine-gun nest and killed five Germans without receiving a scratch.
Then, Pvt. Francis M. Jirinee of Springfield, Ohio, held out a German canteen:
I took a sip. It wasn’t water; it was the most powerful applejack I have ever tasted.
“There’s plenty more in that barn back there,” Jirinee said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. He mentioned something about some bodies being there, too.
The little group had started the day as members of several different units. Coming together under the avalanche of shells and shrapnel in the swamp, they had decided to stick it out as buddies the rest of the way.