This is when the unexpected happens. A salvo of 88mm shells came in directly on top of us. There was no mistaking the high-pitched screech of an incoming 88 and nothing more frightening. They burst in the treetops above us, ripping off the tops and spraying the ground with shrapnel and wood fragments. It was over in seconds, just a half dozen rounds, or maybe fewer.
Nobody counts accurately at such a time.
But the nightmarish result will never be over for me. I had dropped flat, face down at the sound of the incoming barrage. My closest friend and fellow mortarman, Edwin Tarter, had dropped beside me. He groaned once, and I looked over to see that he had been cut almost in half at the waist. There were the terrible and unmistakable screams of the wounded but they were not from Tarter.