McGlincy: Americans winning Saint-Lô the hard way – with blood
Advance of three hedgerows costly day’s work, but Yanks show they can beat Hitler’s fanatics
By James C. McGlincy, United Press staff writer
Outside Saint-Lô, France – (July 15)
“Advanced three hedgerows.”
That’s the way the message read which reached this command post this afternoon. It summed up the whole bloody battle for Saint-Lô.
In the attack on Saint-Lô, which began Monday, a gain of three hedgerows represents a sizable advance.
This isn’t a spectacular battle. there are no breakthroughs, no end runs, no big bag of prisoners – just a steady fight day after day that is whittling down both sides.
The Germans are being beaten here. But it’s no garden party. It’s a rough show, probably as rough in its way as the initial landings on the toughest beaches on D-Day.
Ceaselessly all week
The outfit attacking Saint-Lô has fought ceaselessly all week. Almost every day it has been the same story – our boys have jumped off in the morning.
They’ve found energy when they thought there was none left. Maybe they’ve had one- or two-hours sleep. Maybe none at all. Maybe they’ve been shelled all night. But in the dawn, they’ve gotten up and started forward gain.
Today was no exception. The boys started forward at 5:15 and by late afternoon they could count a maximum advance of half a mile. I’ve just looked at these boys. They’re tired, their eyes are bloodshot. Their faces are dirty and bearded. And their morale is high.
Having a tough time
But they aren’t kidding themselves. They have been having a tough time and they will be mightily grateful when they can have an end to it.
One of those kids came to Maj. Paul W. Prznarich of Mesa, Arizona, to report this evening. He was Henry H. Noonan of Santa Ana, California. He was just a private but he knew his fighting, this thin kid with the serious eyes and four days growth of whiskers.
He squatted on his heels and told what he’d seen. The Germans had one field covered by a machine-gun set with its muzzle dead level with the ground so that you didn’t have a chance even lying down.
“Do you know how their artillery is spotting us?” he asked.
Periscopes over hedges
“They’ve got periscopes which stick up over the hedges five or ten feet and they can see you every time you stick up your head.”
He told how the boys had been dropping all around him. He shook his head as though he couldn’t quite understand it. In the same tone, he told how he spotted a German in a foxhole.
He said:
I stopped and emptied the whole magazine of a Tommy gun in it. I wasn’t taking any chances. I didn’t wait to see if he was dead. I just ran on.
He wasn’t bragging about killing the German. He told it as matter-of-factly as he told the rest of it. It gives you an idea how tough these boys have gotten up here watching their buddies go down beside them.
Life only a game
They’re fighting some tough babies too. They found a copy of a German paratrooper’s credo on a prisoner. Among platitudes about what a grand and glorious thing it is to die for the Fatherland and Führer, it said: “We parachutists know how to die because life is only a game for us.”
They’re fighting as though they believe that. They’re being pounded by a mighty array of guns which is never silent for a whole minute, but they’ve got the terrain on their side.
One of these days the capture of Saint-Lô is going to be announced and you may be sure that it was won the hard way – with the blood and guts of American kids who have got the stuff to overcome Hitler’s tough young fanatics.