More of the History Behind The Story

"Go for Broke"
442nd Regimental Combat Team in the Vosges Mountains, October 1944
(Source)

When I began this story back in June, with this initial post, I didn't really know where the journey would take me, well, "us" to be more accurate. Many of you have been following along since that day. I have to admit, your comments help me fix errors and keep me on the road to the finish. Not to mention the encouragement you provide to keep me at the task.

You might notice that the Brits and the Poles have rather fallen by the wayside as of late. We haven't heard hide nor hair of Sgt Billy Wallace of the Royal Scots Fusiliers since Operation Bluecoat back in August. Then newly promoted 2Lt James Fitzhugh of the 11th Armoured Division hasn't been heard from since August as well. Nor have the Poles of the 1st Polish Armoured Division been spotted since the Battle of Hill 262, also back in August.

There are reasons for those chaps not having been seen in these spaces as of late. (Mind you, they are all alive and well.) The biggest reason for their absence is that when I departed southward for the birth of the newest member of the tribe (who I am visiting with yet again) back in August. I mistakenly left all my notes at home.

A week in Maryland with time to write and none of my notes to hand. So I started a new chapter in this story involving seven German soldiers from Saxony, cut off and left behind after the German disaster in the Falaise Pocket. The survivors of a devastated division who somehow managed to get back to their lines, far away in Belgium. First episode of that was here.

Now we are seeing those fellows again, on top of a hill in the Hürtgen Forest trying to hold the line against men of the U.S. 1st Infantry Division with support starting to show up from the U.S. 3rd Armored Division. (Note that when referring to British units I use the British spelling. That's intentional.) Those Germans (now down to five of the original seven) were embraced by you, the readers, in such a way that I decided to keep them in the tale, to the bitter end if need be.

So we started with two guys from the Big Red One, Bill Brandt and his buddy Jack Wilson, both of whom made it a long ways before Brandt's wounding and subsequent evacuation in early September. Jack Wilson is still with us, he's a sergeant now, but of the two GIs the story opened with, only Jack is left. Of the Germans we met back then, only Horst Mellanthin and Jan Kołodziej are still alive, Mellanthin is in a POW camp in Texas (I didn't mention that before, might be a story in the future). Kołodziej managed to make his way to the 1st Polish Armoured Division using the nom de guerre "Paweł Kowalski." He lives yet.

None of the Brits or Poles involved in this story were directly involved in Operation Market Garden, the big British operation of the fall of 1944. While their units were still fighting the Hun, my mind drifted to the events along the Belgian-German border and the efforts of the U.S. Army to punch into Germany via Aachen and the Hürtgen Forest.

My great-uncle, John Gammell fought in the Battle of the Hürtgen Forest as a member of the 4th Infantry Division. He came ashore shortly after D-Day and fought all the way through France only to have his war end there in the "Green Hell" as it was called by the men who fought there. He survived his wound and lived to a ripe old age.

My Great-Uncle's Helmet
The German bullet scored, but did not penetrate, the liner underneath.
Talk about close calls!

So my mind, and the story went into the Hürtgenwald. Not far away is the Schnee Eifel, an area I've traveled extensively through, the scene for some of the opening stages of the Battle of the Bulge. You can see where this is going, right?

Well, the book writing thing restarted here, based on a story I'd written maybe 30 years ago, just playing around with an idea. A story which wound up somewhere (done with a typewriter, well before computers in the home were a thing), lost to history. I remember bits of it, the story of a German Tiger crew during the Battle of the Bulge. That short series, written over a few weeks in 2017, led to this current series. I've written other fictional bits (which you can find links to here, all of 'em) and occasionally someone would say, "You really need to write a book Sarge."

Yes, but where to find the time? Then this year it hit me, write the book here, on the blog. Sure some readers won't stick around but others might find it interesting enough to attract others. That seems to have happened, blog hits used to average about 500 a day a year or so ago, we're up to a thousand a day. It's somewhat gratifying, okay, it's very gratifying.

Where does it end?

Well this facet of the tale ends in the ruins of Berlin in May of 1945, maybe it will continue in the Pacific, I'm not sure yet. But this has been a lot of fun so far.

Though I try to keep the historical details as close to reality as possible, the Americans of the Big Red One and the Germans of the 275th Infantry Division in this tale are sometimes in places where they weren't historically. They might have been near a place, and I can't say for certain that these two divisions faced each other in combat, but for the purposes of this story, they do. So far valiantly with heroism on both sides.

That's the idea, show the common humanity while trying to tell a rousing story. So far it seems to be working.

While I'm on the road, I don't know if I'll get to another installment, but guaranteed the men of those two outfits shall return, and shortly.

I won't be in Maryland that long, so you shouldn't have long to wait.

I promise.