Patrolling the front

Courtesy Photo | An American GI in the January cold (courtesy photo).  

FORT HUACHUCA, ARIZONA, UNITED STATES

01.30.2023

Courtesy Story

U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence

by Michael E. Bigelow, INSCOM Command Historian

During January 1945, the soldiers of the 78th Infantry Division aggressively patrolled enemy lines near the town of Kesternich just over the Belgian-German border. The postwar divisional history, Lightning: The History of the 78th Infantry Division offers this description of those patrols:

Those patrols around Kesternich were a combination of early Indian fighting and a bad ghost story. A small group of men would leave their foxholes and slip away from their lines to find out where the Germans were and what they were doing.

It was just a few steps into the black unknown, where every moving thing might be an enemy. Small sounds, scuffing of feet, labored breathing, shadows moving beside them, told each man that he was still with his patrol. The sergeant in the lead would stop, crouch low, and the men could close in.

"What's that up ahead?" the sergeant would ask hoarsely. Each man would strain his eyes trying to see whether it was a tree, a pile of earth or a man. Then they would move out again, not quite ready to trust their eyes but having to keep moving. Coming closer to the object they would see that it was just a stump, a stump about the size of a man. Some of them would touch it as they passed, to reassure themselves.

Sometimes a patrol would go out several hundred yards and lie in wait until whispers in German and the clumping of boots told them that a German patrol was coming.

Bayonets were pulled from scabbards. Bodies tensed as the men shivered. The German patrol continued on its route. Suddenly a startled exclamation, "Ach! Gott!" Then the trip back to the company's line with a few extra dark shapes added to the group—prisoners for interrogation.

Some of these patrols did not return. Some were lucky. Some were captured. This was exhausting, difficult work in which the actions of each man might determine the future of every member of the patrol.

• Date Taken: 01.30.2023
• Date Posted: 01.30.2023 15:42
• Story ID: 437473
• Location: FORT HUACHUCA, ARIZONA, US