Ray Hummel decided to get up in one of the farmhouses to get a better view of what was around us. Ray Hummel, Jim McMahon and I went to the farmhouses.
We shot the lock off the back door of the fourth house from the river. It was occupied. The people in it were scared, but did not interfere with us.
Ray and I went up the stairs just inside the back door followed by Jim McMahon. We went to a window overlooking the road at the front of the house that we were surrounded on two sides by floodwaters. We could see where the Merderet and Douve rivers came together, and that we were surrounded on two sides by floodwaters.
We saw three French Renault tanks approaching the houses. The middle tank stopped directly below our window and opened the turret hatch to allow the commander to stand up and look around. While he was surveying the area, I handed Ray a gammon grenade, which he dropped into the tank and knocked it out.
While the other two tanks milled around we quickly left the house and joined our group behind the farmhouses. If the two remaining tanks had pursued us we would have been in great difficulty instead the tanks quickly moved east going away from us.
We soon learned that we could not cross the river to the West and could not cross the floodwaters to the South. There were German machineguns in both directions and no cover for us to let us get near them.
Our only choice was to move east across the hedgerows. As we started out, we were plainly visible so we went two at a time while the rest tried to keep watch on the road.
We made it to the next road, which we discovered led to the causeway going to Chef du Pont. When we got to the last field before the road, we were pinned down by German machinegun and rifle fire. We deployed along the hedgerows in front and behind us. Ray and I dug in near the road on our north side; Dave Jones dug a hole immediately to our rear.
Germans occupied a farmhouse and barn directly in front of us, and we started exchanging fire. In the middle of the firing, we heard American voices shouting for us to cease fire or the Germans would kill them. We stopped firing at the house, but we were still being fired at from the road and Augustus Labate was killed.
Everyone in the group agreed that we would hold out until the end – no one wanted to be taken prisoner. | 
