James T. Lingg - WWII
Page 14 - Back in the Infantry

We rode into a little village, I don't remember the name but we were told to go back to being Infantry and we had to start being Infantry again.

In this one house, that we searched to make sure there was no enemy, there were some pictures of a little baby. At this moment, I decided "Hey, I've got to have some reason to fight the rest of this war". So I picked up some pictures of this little baby, put them in my shirt and every time I got kind of fed up and couldn't believe I was in something like this I would look at the picture of that little baby and I'd think maybe that little baby would have a chance if I went ahead and did what I was supposed to do.

A number of times, being lead scout and being sent on patrol, we were the first troops in some of these little French towns. Every reception was outstanding. The French would come running out and hand us glasses of wine and glasses of cold Calvados. In many cases, instead of the French coming out, the Germans would shoot at us. We took cover and hoped we wouldn't get hit.

Finally, we battled all the way to Mayenne, France. Actually, we didn't fight a lot of war; everything went along so fast. They had blown the bridges so we crossed underneath a bridge and got to the other side of the Meyenne River. At this point they stopped the Company to let the rest of the people catch up and to get some tanks across the river.

I was on an outpost with Seeds and Bill H. We stayed two days. The third day we were going to get to come back off. We were set up in a hedgerow area that was probably 100 yards. We had direct telephone communications with the Company, telling them what was going on. Each night we would move our telephone lines and everything so, if the enemy cut our lines, we would know he was there with us before he came into our area. One man stayed awake, taking turns all night long observing, making sure the enemy didn't come.

On the third morning, when I should have been going back to the rear, Lt. Jack S. showed up with two men and said he wanted us to go on patrol. I was going back for a breakfast of pancakes; I was so hungry for those pancakes. To this day (1992) I can still remember what those pancakes would have tasted like.

Since we had been observing the ground, the Lt. would use one of our men and two of his, which gave us the Lt. and three soldiers. I was the man the Lt. picked to go with him from the outpost.

When we started out on the patrol, I was the point. Pvt. G. was the man behind me, Lt. S. was next, then behind him was the radioman, PFC P. PFC P. was also the "get-away" man. The job of the "get-away" man was to get back to report to his unit in the event of enemy contact. He had the radio which, I believe, got shot up.

As we moved into the low ground, it got real foggy and we couldn't see more than five or six feet in advance. We couldn't hear any noise. Nothing seemed to be moving. We were going very cautiously down the road. I had no idea of it, but from about three feet off the ground, up maybe two or three feet, you could see for miles underneath the fog. We were walking along, arriving at a cross road position where a patrol from the night before reported they had been down there and back without drawing any fire, there was no sound, so I assumed I was perfectly safe. We were going further.

We were going to take the radio and direct our firing on the enemy with the radio. We had a backpack 300 radio on P's back. We were to take the radio and get behind the lines or in the lines, where we could direct the fire on them.