We went on through and didn't have much trouble. Capt. Dress had been hit in the leg so he had to fall out. G Company reported they had lost 30 men. They were hit aw fully hard. We walked out in a field by a house and. was looking over boundaries for positions in which the platoons would go in. All of a sudden we saw a German standing about 20 yards from us. Sgt. Kumler fired his tommy-gun and he threw up his hands. We took about 7 prisoners from one dug-out. They also had a German 88 set up in position. If that German had opened up with an automatic weapon he could have killed all the officers in. the company. We were standing right out in the open. We moved out again that same day to a position where we were supposed to attack hill 95. At this time the men were getting pretty tired.
Went into position at a road junction and it was a pretty hot spot. We received a lot of artillery fire and also machine gun fire. The next day was the 4th of' July and we knew there would be plenty of fire works when we attacked the hill. I was given the mission to form 3 points and lead the attack for the company. One on the right, one on the left and one in the center. I stayed with the one in the center. We started to move and halted because I Company was held up.
Around noon word came around that they were going to lay artillery fire on the enemy position and we would advance under it. Man! what a. terrific barrage that turned out to be. We started to advance and had to go across an open field. The Germans opened up with machine gums and mowed the men down like flies. I heard someone yell from the rear to keep going because if the artillery lifted they would get us all. We kept going and finally halted when word was passed up that no one was following us. Sgt, Medfort
[Medford], our operations Sgt. had been killed. Two of my men drug Sgt
[Duane?] Morris out of the field under fire and brought him to cover along a hedge-row. They were Pvt. Dougherty and Corp, Olson. I put both of them in for a Bronze Star and they got it.
At this time we had taken cover along a little hedge-row and were holding up. There were 33 of' us in all and I was the only officer. I sent two men back a little way to see if they could contact anyone. They came back and said that there was no one in the rear. Couldn't imagine what had happened to the BN. Thought maybe they had all been killed. I looked around at the men and they had that look on their faces as if to say "you're in command, what are you going to do to get us out?" We were isolated and couldn't go forward because the Germans had machine guns set up there. We couldn’t go to the rear or the left because that was also covered by machine guns. Later we found out the Jerries had the whole area covered by 30 machine-guns so you can imagine the tough spot we were in.
I thought about going to the right and just then the Germans started pouring in timed artillery fire. It was a terrific barrage and pulverized the ground, I knew we had to do something quick because the Jerries would seen start firing mortars and would have gotten us all. Finally I told the men to follow and I started going down a hedge row that was full of water. We didn't mind getting in the water because we knew we had to get out and do it quick. All along the hedge row was a solid line of dead and wounded of the 2nd BN. that had gone through there, As I went along the wounded kept cautioning me to stay down because most of the men were in the same position when they were hit. We started crawling on our stomachs than I stopped to talk to one wounded man and he asked me if I would cut some weeds that were preventing him from stretching his legs, I cut them and helped him to straighten out his leg, Word passed up to hurry because they were laying in mortar fire. Guess we got out just in time. We kept going a good distance, about 2 miles I would say, and came out on a road where there were some of our tank destroyers, I knew we were safe then. Checked up the men and found we had only lost one man. He was also a man in my platoon and one swell fellow." His name was Swedson
(Svendson) and he was hit in the neck when he turned around. He died instantly, the men told me.
- 9 - | 
