(3 of 6)
We turned tail and ran downhill and again a shot whistled over our heads with terrible speed. There was no approaching whine to it like an ordinary shell"just a madly swift thrush and then a crash as the shell exploded. "That's tanks!" cried someone. Hurriedly, Chuck Horner ordered a mortar barrage. The order had scarcely been given when over our heads there was a musical singing noise like the sound flocks of Peking pigeons make when the Chinese tie whistles to their tails. Wooo, woooo, wooo. A line of smoke was spouting along the whole top of the ridge among the green grape vines, making both them and the yellow wheat dirty. From the midst of the flames and smoke we saw figures running downhill toward us. "They've got their hands up," yelled Whitehead, and then we saw 16 of them running madly toward a grey stone hovel halfway up the hill. To one side of the stone house an American soldier sat on a rock almost nonchalantly holding his rifle on the running men. Those queerly quick tank missiles again shot over our heads, and again we retreated. It was not pleasant to go back & forth around that ledge, for at the top of it, facing downhill in the direction we had attacked three nights previously, was a German machine-gun post, and in it a dead German soldier. He was on his knees, his body hunched forward in a tense position, as he had been in the act of firing when he was hit. He was headless, and there was a bloody stump sticking up from his shoulders that was his neck. Whitehead and I knelt behind some stones. Soldiers of the reserve company lying about began talking among themselves. A voice said: "I'd like to go back and see cows for the rest of my life." Another voice said:
"You know that malted milk"the hard, cold kind?"
"You're knockin' yourself out with that kind of talk," said a third voice. A fourth one said: "So the woman took me in her yard, and she and the kids filled up a wooden tub with water and then, while I was taking a bath, they washed my clothes." His words were muffled in a heavy clatter of machine-gun fire. Throughout the rest of the morning there was fierce struggle to beat off the German attack with our artillery. Coordination between artillery and infantry observers was difficult, but word came back that the Germans had started to run out of a gully.
"Come on, pour it in there, and we'll chase them as they go," said Horner over the phone. Our men began to go forward.
Out on a ledge, I saw them trying to work themselves up the opposite slope that led directly into Troina. It was an eerie sensation to watch through an artillery telescope the movement and deployment of these small groups of men. We could see the enemy's position and many things our men could not see. There was a dark patch of burnt wheat through which ran a ditch"a perfect sort of defensive trench where the Germans lay concealed from our men coming up the slope toward them.