The Hardin tribune-herald. [volume] (Hardin, Mont.) 1925-1973, 1944-08-31

A solid armor-piercing shell
had gone right through a window
and q man I knew had his
leg cut of. That evening the
other officers took the big steel
slug over to the hospital SO he
would have a souvenir.
When I got to another battalion
command post, later in the day.
they were just ready to move. A ser.
geant had been forward about hall
a mile in a jeep and picked out q
farmhouse. He said it was the clean.
est, incest one he had been in for q
long time.
So we piled into several jeeps and
drove up there. It had been only
about 20 minutes since the sergeant
had left. But when we got to the
new house, it wasn't there.
A shell had hit it in the last 20
minutes and set it afire, and it had
burned to the ground. So we drove
up the road a little farther and
picked out another one. W. had
been there about half an hour when
a shell struck in an orchard so yards
in front Of is.
In a few minutes our litter bear.
ers came past, carrying a captain.
He was the surgeon Of our adjoin.
ing battalion. and he had been look
ing in the orchard for a likely place
to move his frst-aid station. A shell
hit right beside him.
That's the way war is On an after
noon that is tense and full Of might
have-beens for some Of us. and
awful realities for others.
1t just depends on what your num-
Der is. I don't believe in that num-
Der business at all. but in war you
sort Of let your belief hover around
it, for it's about all you have left.
One afternoon I went with our
battalion medics to pick up wounded
men who had been carried back to
some shattered houses just behind
our lines. and to gather some others
right of the battlefield.
The battalion surgeon was Capt.
Lucien Strawn. from Morgantown.
w. Va. He drives his jeep himself
and goes right into the lines with
his aidmen.
We drive forward about a mile in
our two jeeps, so loaded with litter
bearers they were ever riding on
the hood. Finally we had to stor
and wait until a bulldozer filed a
new shell crater in the middle Of the
road. We had gone only about q
hundred yards beyond the crater
when we ran into some infantry.
They stopped US and said:
BE careful where you're 60
ing. The Germans are only 200
yards up the road"
Captain Strawn said he
couldn't get to the wounded
men that way SO he turned
around to try another way. A
side road led of at an angle
from a shattered village we had
just passed through. He decided
to try to get up that road.
But when we got there the road
had a house blown cross it. and II
was blocked. We went forward 9
little on foot and found two deer
bomb craters. also impossible.
So Captain Strawn walked back
to the bulldozer. and asked the
driver if he would 60 ahead of u:
and clear the road. The first thing
the driver asked was. How close t.
the front is it,"
The doctor said, We'll at leas
it isn't any closer than you are right
now" So the dozer driver agreed
to clear the road ahead of US.
While we were waiting a soldier
came over and showed us two egg:
he had just found in the backyard o.
a jumbled house. There wasn't ar
untouched house left standing in the
town, and some Of the houses were
still smoking inside.
At the far edge Of the town We
came to a partly wrecked farm
house that had two Germans in it
one was wounded and the other wa.
just staying with him. We ran oul
jeeps into the yard and the littel
bearers went on across the field.
The doctor took his scissors anc
began cutting his clothes open t.
see II he was wounded anywhere
except in the arm. He wasn't. Blu
ho had hoan Siclc AT his Sfomacl