Only then did Lipton feel the pain in his crotch. He reached down for a feel, and his left hand came away bloody.
“Talbert, I may be hit bad,” he said. Talbert slit his pants leg with his knife, took a look, and said, “You’re O.K.”
“What a relief that was,” Lipton remembered. The two shell fragments had gone into the top of his leg and
“missed everything important.”
Talbert threw Lipton over his shoulder and carried him to the aid station. The medics gave Lipton a shot of morphine and bandaged him up.
Malarkey recalled that during “this tremendous period of fire I could hear someone reciting a Hail Mary. I glanced up and saw Father John Maloney holding his rosary and walking down the center of the road to administer last rites to the dying at the road juncture.” (Maloney was awarded the DSC.)
Winters got hit, by a ricochet bullet that went through his boot and into his leg. He stayed in action long enough to check the ammunition supply and consult with Welsh (who tried to remove the bullet with his knife but gave it up) to set up a defensive position in the event of a counterattack.
By this time it was 0700, and the area was secured. F Company, meanwhile, had hooked up with the 327th.
Carentan had been captured. Lieutenant Colonel Strayer came into town, where he met the commander of the 3rd Battalion of the 327th. They went into a wine shop and opened a bottle to drink to the victory.
Winters went back to the battalion aid station. Ten of his men were there, receiving first aid. A doctor poked around Winters’ leg with a tweezers, pulled the bullet, cleaned out the wound, put some sulfa powder on it, and a bandage.
Winters circulated among the wounded. One of them was Pvt. Albert Blithe.
“How’re you doing, Blithe? What’s the matter?”
“I can’t see, sir. I can’t see.”
“Take it easy, relax. You’ve got a ticket out of here, we’ll get you out of here in a hurry. You’ll be going back to England. You’ll be O.K. Relax,” Winters said, and started to move on.
Blithe began to get up. “Take it easy,” Winters told him. “Stay still.”
“I can see, I can see, sir! I can see you!”
Blithe got up and rejoined the company. “Never saw anything like it,” Winters said. “He was that scared he blacked out. Spooky. This kid just completely could not see, and all he needed was somebody to talk to him for a minute and calm him down.”
The Germans were certain to counterattack, and it was sure to come from the southwest, down the road Easy had followed into town. Terrain dictated the axis of the advance; a peninsula of high ground led into Carentan from that direction. To the north, beyond the railroad track, was flooded ground, as also to the south of the road. General Taylor decided to push out several kilometers to the west and set up a defensive position on the high ground.
Winters got his orders. Easy would be on the far right, alongside the railroad track. He checked for ammunition.
Leo Boyle and some others from 1st platoon found and “liberated” a two-wheel farm cart loaded with ammunition, and brought it to the barn on the edge of town that was serving as the aid station. As Boyle was preparing to bring it forward, he heard the cry, “Enemy tank!”
“I looked cautiously out of the doorway and saw the vague outline of a turret of a tank in a hedgerow a few yards away. Before I could react, a bullet from the machine-gun in the tank penetrated my left leg above the knee and knocked
me to the ground.” Boyle was taken by truck back to Utah Beach, for evacuation to England. Along the way, “we met Captain Sobel who was ferrying supplies to the front by jeep.”
Bazooka fire drove the tank off. Winters got the company reorganized and pushed off to the southwest, alongside the railroad track. The company moved 3 kilometers without significant resistance. Winters set up a defensive position behind a hedgerow.
The Germans were directly in front, behind the next hedgerow, laying down harassing fire. Anyone who moved drew aimed fire. As the light faded, the company received a resupply of food and ammunition and settled in for the evening. Winters got orders from battalion to jump off on an attack at first light, 0530.