James T. Lingg - WWII
Page 11 - Moving on to Forest Cerisy

The Second Battalion had moved to our Battalion on the morning of the 7th, had advanced down the St. Laurent Road and had been stopped a half-mile short of Formigny. There was strong resistance from the machine gun nests and they made no progress for the rest of the day. This left the 18^th Infantry in Egranville exposed to attack from the rear.

At nightfall, on June 7th, we were still blocked. The 26^th had not been able to reach its objectives. In fact, we really hadn't even been turned loose to reach any objective at this point.

We were still down in the Formigny-Trevieres area. There was sufficient force of enemy down there so we weren't going anywhere for a while.

On the morning of the 8^th, the enemy still contained us and blocked us at Formigny but our people had decided now they were going to turn the First Division's zone a little bit and let the 26^th Infantry go after it's D-Day objective in the Tour-en-Bessin area. We had a little problem getting there because we hadn't been released on our line until 8 o'clock. The 2^nd Battalion requested air support and we were getting ready to attack through Tour-en-Bessin.

When we got the air attack, we moved through. It was rather a flat attack. There was noting much left in the town. We were slow in getting there because we were held up north of Formigny all morning pending arrival of the 115^th Infantry, which took a pretty good time getting to us.

We were turned loose on an objective called Ste. Anne, which was just beyond Tour-en-Bessin. We reached the 2^nd Battalion position and jumped off about midnight. We moved through Tour-en-Bessin in two files, one on each side of the road and there were 6 tanks in the column with us. The Battalion Commander directed the tanks where to fire. Light resistance was brushed aside and we reached Ste. Anne about 1:30 a.m. and contacted the enemy patrols retreating to the east.

At this point, we stopped and set up positions. In the early hours of June 9^th, we had a terrific action. We had been set up with the enemy behind us more than out in front of us. We had friendly troops across the road from us and we were shooting into each other. The counter-attack happened right at Company L, just north of the village, Company I faced east and Company K to the south.

A light rain began to fall and visibility got real bad. About 3:00 or 3:30 a.m. the enemy blundered into our lines when they started coming through in a column down our road and through the ditches that we were attempting to defend from.

What happened was a wild fire fight at close range with both sides hampered by surprises and confusion. It got so bad right off the bat that I decided there wasn't any sense in me shooting at the other guy across the road or him shooting at me, so I sat down in the bottom of the ditch that I was in and just let the war go along on both sided. I don't know if I was being smart of if I was scared. I was scared. Seeds was there with me. At one time I even thought about "Let's get the hell out of here and go back to the beach". Seeds talked me out of this wild idea and, of course, that would be desertion and you just don't do that. By the time it settled down a little and we got back up, most of everything had got by. We got into a little bit of the tail end of the fight but it was daylight by the time we were involved.

By 6:30 a.m. the Battalion had restored our positions and had taken about 125 prisoners who were testifying how accurate our Artillery was. I think I should explain one thing, the way they had us facing at Ste. Anne, we had the enemy coming through from behind us instead of in front of us. They were coming across fields, through hedgerows and everything so we didn't have a front line, per se, we had the enemy on all sides and I think that was another thing that put me and Seeds down in the ditch. I don't remember what occurred completely.

I believe it was during this battle that Co. I lost a great Company Commander, Capt. John M. Semanchyk. I later learned of this through his sister who contacted me after my name appeared in the Bridgehead Sentinel, Society of the First Infantry Division paper, requesting my comrades contact me. We met Anne and Ted Hritzko in Pittsburgh, PA during the July 1993 1^st Infantry Division reunion.

While we were in this ditch, a wounded German soldier came down the road calling "Comrade, comrade". No one was listening to him so we grabbed him into the ditch with us. He was our prisoner.

From Ste. Anne we moved across on different roads and got ready for a jump-off aimed at Dodigny and a little town named Agy on the same highway. We were attacking with the 2^nd and 3^rd Battalions abreast at that point. About 9:30 or 9:40 p.m., the 3^rd Battalion reached its objective at Agy and the 2^nd Battalion got to Dodigny at about 1:50 a.m. so we had those objectives and held them.