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Night Vigil. At 9:30 Captain Alan Morehouse, once a schoolteacher in Darien, Conn., led 90 men of K Company out on the road and headed over the slope of our hill down into a ravine and up toward another hill in front of Troina.
The men bunched up on a hillside before the culvert and each one paused to get at a distance from the man ahead of him.
There was a dim crescent moon overhead, shrouded by wisps of clouds. As the soldiers paused in the column, I said to them: "How you doin'?" A big fellow sighed and answered: "This is tough. Can't sleep in nighttime for moving. Can't sleep in daytime for shelling." Around midnight, Horner took his unit out of the culvert and moved farther uphill, preparing to follow Morehouse if he was successful. We had not been long in our new spot, and had just set up our own telephone and radios, when a voice called us and said that a shell had landed squarely in the middle of the culvert we had just left. The Dawn Attack. We sort of fitfully dozed for a while. At 5 o'clock the snapping of rifle bullets coming across our slope woke me and I heard Chuck talking to Morehouse on the phone.
Morehouse was nowhere near the top of his hill objective, and suddenly we realized that another daytime fight was in progress. The news shook us a bit and Chuck's voice was irritable as he said: "Move out, goddamit. Get that machine gun before it gets light or they'll be on us again." Half an hour passed .during which dawn crept over the hills. Morehouse again reported that he had made no progress, and again Chuck Horner spoke to him: "Listen, Al, you got 90 rifles and machine guns. You going to let one machine gun hold you up? We're not getting anywhere by not moving. We'll be here another year at this rate. Why can't you get 'em going? Open up with every rifleman. They can't hit every man there." We started walking directly up the road until we came to a narrow pass at the very top of the hill and looked out at the battle scene below us. On our right was a high long ridge that led straight up to Troina.
Lieutenant Robert Cutler was about to lead our L Company in an assault on the lower slopes of this ridge. On our left was another hill, half green where grape vineyards had been planted and half yellow where wheat was planted. Up this slope Morehouse and K Company were now attacking, and we could see their red tracer bullets shooting very prettily into the green of the grape vines. Thrush! Wham! a shell with terrific velocity flew over our heads through the pass.