Issue 8.13
Experiences of, and witnessed by, David Owen who is currently a greeter at the Hurricane Wal-Mart store.
During the last days of August, 1944, the Americans were still trying to dislodge and push back the Germans from France. A tough nut to crack was the fortress of Brest. The fort was a cluster of large pillboxes build of rounded four foot thick concrete and steel and were surrounded by smaller protective pillboxes. Each was stocked with plenty of ammunition and food. The area around them was devoid of vegetation or anything that could limit their machine gun or cannon field of fire. Each pill box protected the others. Americans high explosive shelling could not penetrate the four foot thick rounded placements. There was a Captain “Ace” Parker, a member of the 5th. Ranger Battalion somehow gained entrance to one of the German pillboxes in the dead of night. He found himself face to face with the German commander. Ace had a live grenade in his hand so he held it against the German’s belly and threatened to pull the pin. Of course all those in the pill box including Ace would be killed. The German had no way of determining if Ace would actually pull the pin, but he decided that discretion would prevail. Ace captured one pillbox on the periphery so now there were only one dozen or more left. Germans were shooting at
Americans and Americans were shooting at Germans and after a while this business got tiresome. The Rangers could crawl only so close to a pillbox, both sides during daylight kept shooting at each other. Ace Parker and George Eldin came up with the idea to take a five gallon can of gasoline partly full and add some motor oil into the can. They planned to pour the stuff down the air intake during the middle of night and at the same time drop a shaped charge also into the air intake. The air intake was a camouflaged vent on the side of the pillbox. This job required that the patrol be very, very quiet. Any clinking noise would alert the Germans and that would be all she wrote. Every Ranger is a volunteer but when this activity was offered, no one volunteered. The guys were thinking this was suicidal. No one in D Company volunteered so the job was given to E Company, Jimmy Green’s Company. Jimmy Green said he could get a few men to help him. He only needed a few men to help him carry the cans and the shaped charge. The shaped charge which was Jim’s idea was an additional incentive for the Germans to surrender. This came down as a V and sent a thousand explosives all the way around a circle. The Rangers ran as they counted the seconds and the hit the dirt flat as the explosive went off. That explosion was awesome. The explosion came at about 10PMand lit the sky for 40 minutes. Everyman on the patrol returned safely.
The next morning the Germans all surrendered. The rest of the Germans lost their nerve. They believed we had some new special secret device. In spite of the success of Jim Green’s patrol, Battalion Brass probably would not put another group to do this tactic because of the extreme danger. At the end of the battle, the Free French added a bit of humor by pretending to be conquering soldiers. They pulled their guns and uniforms out of hiding and put them on. They marched through the city of Brest to band music, making believe they had been part of the battle and victory. The French people loved it and cheered enthusiastically.