ON HILL 317 the position was precarious-no food, ammunition running low, and worst of all, the radio batteries were dying. Sergeant Sasser retrieved discarded batteries and set them out on rocks. The sun restored some life. He switched batteries several times a day, restoring one set while using another. Even so, by the end of the fourth day, it was doubtful that he could keep them going.
The GIs had long since cleaned out the chicken coops and rabbit pens around the half-dozen farms on the hill, along with the fruit and vegetable cellars, and were eating raw vegetables gathered from the gardens-when they got anything to eat. Medical supplies had long since run out. After the fourth day Weiss reported, “We could see no end.” Incoming radio messages told the 2nd Battalion to hold on, help was coming. But when?
Lieutenant Ralph Kerley commanded E Company of the 2nd. After four days and nights of fighting, he was exhausted, discombobulated, but he kept at his work. At midmorning of the fifth day, studying the panorama below him through binoculars, he spotted a German mortar crew served by a half-dozen men.
“Sergeant,” he called out to the leader of his own mortar team, “how many rounds do you have left?” “One, sir.”
Kerley paused, thought about what relief it would bring if he could put that mortar out of action, thought about the danger he would be in if he was out of shells. “Do you think you can hit the son of a bitch?”
“Yes, sir. I reckon I can.”
“Then blow his ass off.”
The sergeant gathered up his crew and brought the 60-mm mortar assembly forward. Kerley watched the enemy mortar crew loafing, lying around, sunbathing, laughing. Occasionally one man would stroll back into the bushes and emerge with a shell, drop it down the tube, and shortly thereafter the shell would explode to the right or left, showering Kerley with rocks and dirt.
Kerley studied his map, turned to the sergeant, pointed, and said, “Put it right here.”
The sergeant made his own survey with his binoculars. A private, his M-l slung across his back, clutched the sole remaining mortar shell for dear life against his belly. Kerley and the sergeant talked quietly about wind, distance, elevation, made adjustments on the elevating screw. One last consultation, one minor adjustment.
Satisfied, the sergeant turned to the rifleman with the mortar shell. The private stretched his hands out to the sergeant as if passing off a newborn baby. The sergeant took the shell, kissed it, dropped it in, ducked, and called out, “On the way.” Kerley steadied his glasses, peering intently, holding his breath.
Klaboom! The shell exploded less than ten metres from the enemy mortar team. Two of the men leapt up and dashed away. Two others grabbed their mortar and ran. Kerley started breathing again. “Nice work, Sergeant,” he called out.
ON AUGUST 11 Kluge finally got Hitler’s permission to break off the attack at Mortain and begin the retreat through the Falaise gap. It was a momentous, if inevitable, decision, because once the retreat began, there was no place to stop, turn, and defend short of the Siegfried Line at the German border. The line of the Seine could not be defended: there were too many bends in the river, too many potential crossing places to defend. Once the retreat began, the Battle of France had been won.
At 1430 on the fifth day of the siege of Hill 317, August 12, the 35th Division broke through the German lines and relieved the 2nd Battalion on Hill 317. Of the 700 GIs on the hill, some 300 were dead (including Sergeant Corn) or wounded. Lieutenant Weiss had called in 193 fire missions while the battalion had been surrounded. After eating and getting some sleep, he wrote his after action report on a typewriter, hunting and pecking. It was ten pages long. Summing up what he had learned from his five-day ordeal, Weiss wrote: “Although quite often beat back and silenced, at the slightest carelessness in exposing ourselves thereafter, the enemy would strike back at us. He doesn’t quit. His aggressiveness demands a twenty-four-hour observation.”
Then Weiss wrote a letter to his father: “Not much to write about from here.”