Artillery attack on German Soldiers

I was in (inaudible), that’s where I got wounded. But in (inaudible), we set up a barrage of heavy, the heaviest we got. There was nothing heavier. There was nothing heavier, I should say, on the globe of the earth. They were just big, long 9.11s, our artillery set-up. We manned a bridge there, which another field company built. We come to that bridge and we manned it, looked after it. That, on both sides of the bridge, for at least one mile, was our heavy artillery and it was heavy. When they banged, I’ll tell you what happened. They drove around with a jeep, the artillery guys. And a Colonel came by with two officers, “Got ear plugs? ” “Well, we got some somewhere around.” “You’ll get some. If you haven’t got ‘em, we’ll get some. Plug your ears. At 9 - 9 - 9, at nine in the morning, nine after nine and nine seconds, you’ll see the biggest barrage you’ve ever seen in Europe.” When they opened up on the forest, a lot of things happened. Well, I’ll tell you, the noise was something else, to hear all that. And the flack and flames that came out of that, out of the 9.11s and 5.9s, Holy Christ. It was something to see. It was ...OK, about three in the afternoon, these poor Germans came out of the bush. They were either 16-years old, or 70, either too old, or too young. And our paratroopers were in there bringing them out. That was one time I seen German soldiers face to face. We had to put them in trucks, you know, and then in a compound. That was one time I felt sorry for the German soldier.Interviewer: Why? I thought, I thought the banging was too much. Too much artillery went in there. But it was something like we got in February, you know. But it was a little heavier than that.