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BRODY HAND (5 of 7) |
So the next morning I took my squad and we went back to the
Frenchman's house. Bob Nobles went in to get what ever he could get
to cook with and we could eat. While he was inside, we were waiting
across from the house behind a brick, or stone, fence that was about
three feet high or so. Here comes a German walking along, strolling
along like it was a Sunday day and he had nothing to do. When he got
up there next to us, I stepped out and put my Thompson on him and
motioned him over to the gate. So he willing went over. The boys
behind the wall tied him up and set him down. We were still waiting.
It seemed like it was forever, but it wasn't that long, of course.
Here comes another German walking down the road. He walks right up,
and I step out, and collect him, put him behind the wall, and they
tie him. Before it was over with, we had three Germans, tied up. We
had nothing to do with them, but keep them and carry them along with
us. We didn't know what we were going to do if they kept coming
along. We didn't have enough people to hold them down. They were out
hunting goodies, too, I suppose. That's all that showed up and we
waited a good while there, watching the little French cottage. By
this time Bob Nobles had finally gotten his stuff together from the
Frenchman, so we went back to where the rest of the gang was staying
in the chateau.
We gave them the groceries and stuff that we had, and reported to
the Lieutenant that we had three prisoners. He said, "All right,
take care of them."
I told him that I didn't know what we were going to do with them. We
couldn't keep them.
He said, "Yeah, we'll just have to keep them. We can't just go out
and shoot them down in cold blood. We can't do that. We'll just
carry them with us."
The prisoners were interrogated to find out where the rest of the
Germans were. Which we found out were all around us. We knew that
already, so we didn't learn a great deal from them. But it turned
out that they probably saved our lives.
The next day out, probably June 9th, I told Sergeant Phillips where
we'd been and that we'd mined the bridge and that we were going to
blow the bridge, but we hadn't gotten to it. We just didn't get it
done. He wanted to know where it was. I told him that it was back
north so many miles.
He said, "Well, we have to get a boat. We have to get everybody
across."
"Well," I said, "The only people I know of that you can talk with,
to find out anything, is the Frenchman that's up there by the
bridge, because we've already been up there."
He says, "Well, you can take us back up that way."
I said, "Oh, yeah, I sure will. We'll go up there."
We all got out the next day and took off up there. So there we were,
back to the causeway where we had been for the last two or three
days, the same place as before. There was a two-story building with
a barn, right on the edge of the river. It was at the end of one
road or the junction of another road that was L shaped.
In the meantime the Lieutenant had posted people all the way around.
My squad was in back of the building, just inside what would
probably be a fence round the old building. Some of them went in the
barn, some of them up the road. It was getting dark, misty, and
raining. We were there probably a couple of hours or so when all of
a sudden we heard somebody shooting. The group of men came in and
said that they didn't kill everybody, one of the men had gotten
away. They said, "Well the cat's out of the bag now. Won't be long
and they'll be back up here with plenty of help."
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