After Action Report –
Four Hours Before Dawn 15 February 1943
First off, we topped off the fuel in
our jeeps, Kubelwagen, motorcycle, and Truck #4 using our jerry cans,
then drained most of the fuel out of captured Truck #2, to refill our
cans. We took the canvas off all the German trucks except for #4.
We took the Germans own personal canteens they had in their vehicles
plus some more from the cargo, made sure they were full, and put them
into Truck #2.
Meister was talking to Capone about a
shooting contest with their BARs, and looking at the prisoners from
time to time. Thought I heard some reference to William Tell, but
that was just Meister’s dry sense of humor.
Then Meister, Smith, and Capone took
some uniform items off the prisoners, tied the prisoners up, and took
them a ¼ mile away in Truck #2. Meister explained to the prisoners
that he was leaving them there with water, and as long as they stayed
there we would not harm them, or at least so Meister relayed to me.
I stayed back with the rest of the
squad and the other vehicles. We buried 14 of the 16 cases of
ammunition in a soft spot in the bottom of the Wadi, then covered
them over and ran an empty truck over the spot to conceal that we had
buried anything there.
We also consolidated the cargo from
trucks #1 and #3 into truck #4, and again made sure all our vehicles
were topped off using fuel from Trucks #1 and #3. Johnson and Dubois
went over all the vehicles we were taking with us, making sure they
were roadworthy.
Meister, Capone, and Smith returned on
foot. The truck they had been driving got stuck in a ditch on the
way back after they left the prisoners. Apparently afterwards,
Meister and Capone used the distributor cap of the truck as a target
for their shooting competition.
We disabled German trucks #1 and #3,
and loaded the Motorcycle into the back of Truck #4. Crowenshield
jury-rigged the jeep mounted radio into the back of the German truck
and managed to use the antennae from the jeep there too. We then
headed Southwest along the road, in the direction the German convoy
came from in our vehicles as follows:
Kublewagen with .30 Cal MG (Meister,
Smith, and Capone)
Jeep #1 with .50 Cal MG (Lewis, Karas,
Greeley)
Jeep #2 with .30 Cal MG (Mckee,
Despaux)
German Truck #4 (Dubois, Johnson in
cab, Crowenshield in back with radio)
After about a mile and a half we
crossed a causeway over a Wadi. We kept going, following the road.
It was more than an hour later (about an hour before dawn) that
Meister discerned some vehicles stopped in the road ahead of us and
he took a quick left off the road to the East just before the road
took a sharp turn to the right. When he went off the road there was
a four foot drop. I saw the Kubelwagen land hard, but apparently it
was all right because Gus kept on going.
The rest of us followed Gus until we
were about 75 yards off the road, and then I had the vehicles line up
in a row parallel to, and facing the road.
We unloaded the motorcycle &
sidecar from the truck. Crowenshield & Meister changed into
German uniforms. PVT Johnson handed off his captured Beretta 38/42 to
Meister. Then Crowenshield and Meister set off to investigate the
stopped vehicles in the road.
The rest of us took up over-watch
positions in our remaining vehicles, covering the road.
We had significant firepower with three
belt-fed machine guns, including myself on the .50 Cal Browning.
Capone with his BAR, and PVT Johnson with his Bazooka.
Crowenshield and Meister took the sharp
right turn in the road and travelled about 300 yards when they came
up on a line of Italian vehicles pulled over and stopped in the road.
Crowenshield brought the motorcycle to
a screeching halt before they were detected by the Italians, and then
after a caution by Meister that he would do all the talking, they
approached the dismounted Italian Soldier near the last truck in the
line.
The armed Italian Soldier at the rear
of the column signaled them to halt, and he spoke to Meister in
Italian at first. When Meister replied in German, the Italian
switched to a heavily accented, but understandable German.
He asked Meister if he had seen the
rest of their column, and remarked that there was a German MP
checkpoint about four miles ahead of their convoy. He also revealed
that they had come from their supply base at “Sened Bazier”.
Just as Meister was thinking about how to keep the conversation going
and get more information, he heard the noise of vehicles approaching
from the West. Meister glibly said to the Italian that it must be
the rest of their “lost” column. The Italian started waving his
arms and yelling to attract their attention. Meister signaled to
Crowenshield to turn the motorcycle around and take off back down the
road the way they came. As they departed, Meister called out to the
Italian (in German) they would direct the other Italians to them.
I also heard the Italian vehicles
approaching, and “Trooped-my-line” (I started with Capone in the
vehicle on the South end of the line and went from vehicle to vehicle
outlining the plan for the squad).
I would signal to open fire by firing a
flare into the air. Each vehicle was to open fire on its opposite
number in the enemy column. This meant that Capone and Smith, being
in the Kublewagen furthest South would take the lead enemy vehicle.
Greeley, Karas and I in the 1st jeep with the .50 Cal
would take the 2nd enemy vehicle in line. McKee and
Despaux in the 2nd jeep with the .30 cal Browning, would
engage the 3rd enemy vehicle.
Johnson was to dismount from the German
truck leaving Dubois in the cab, and take up a position with the
bazooka. I left it to his judgment on the spot to decide which
target to engage. I barely had time to get back into position behind
my .50 Cal when Crowenshield and Meister again were catalysts
bringing on the action with the enemy.
Crowenshield and Meister went North up
the road to a point where the oncoming Italian column from the West
(from a trail) would intersect with the road. Crowenshield set the
motorcycle in the road to block the Italian column after they had
turned South. Meister prepared to talk to the Commander of the lead
vehicle, but this time the plan didn’t work out as expected.
The Italians came on as expected and
turned South onto the road to rejoin their column, but apparently the
lead vehicle (an enclosed armored scout car) ignored the motorcycle
stopped in the road with Crownenshield sitting on the operators seat
and Gus standing in the road in front of it.
Crowenshield and Meister relayed later
that the armored car never slowed down. Gus had to adroitly leap out
of the way to keep from being run over. Crowenshield’s heart was
in his throat as he had to make a series of rapid and difficult
choices.
He either had to quickly start the
motorcycle and try to get it out of the way, or he could leap to
safety, leaving the motorcycle and sidecar to get crushed by the
armored car.
Crowenshield decided on the former, but
I can imagine what he must have been feeling when he kicked the
starter. Fortunately the engine roared to life, but as the armored
car came bearing down, Crowenshield knew he wasn’t going to get out
of the way in time.
The armored car struck a glancing blow
to the rear wheel of the motorcycle as Crowenshield was pulling it
off the road to the West. Fortunately, the motorcycle remained
operational, and Percy (Puss as Gus called him), pulled it around the
moving Italian column in a wide clockwise circle, so he could get
back on the same side of the road (East side), as the rest of us were
on.
Gus, with submachine gun in hand was
able to get back to the motorcycle and clamber into the sidecar.
Crowenshield drove the motorcycle parallel to the Italian convoy, and
had a good chance to see what was there.
The enclosed armored car in the lead
had a turret with a 20mm magazine fed gun mounted in it. There were
five canvas covered trucks following behind. The ensuing action
revealed that the trucks were filled with troops, but we didn’t
realize that at the until the action was well underway.
The Italian column was moving at a
moderate pace as it approached the sharp right turn in the road. My
squad was ready to take it on, but even as I was considering whether
to engage, Crowenshield fired HIS flare gun into the air. That had
been our pre-determined signal that he would use to let us know where
the enemy was.
Noteable quotes: Crowenshield: “I’m
pissed off, they broke my motorcycle!”
Smith: (when he saw the flare go off
and illuminate the enemy column) “Oh my Gourd !”
Johnson opened fire with the bazooka
first, but his shot missed the moving armored car, and went into the
berm short of it. I attempted to shoot the armored car with the .50
cal, but it was moving too fast, and I missed as well.
Greeley fired his M1 rifle next, and
scored a hit on the driver in truck #2. Meister fired a submachine
gun burst from the sidecar at one of the moving enemy vehicles and
missed.
Despaux fired his .30 cal at the driver
of truck #3 and hit him. Capone fired at truck #1 and missed. Smith
took aim at the driver of truck #1 and hit him.
The rearmost Italian truck (#5)
stopped, and a dozen Italian Soldiers armed with rifles got out.
This did not bode well for us. Crowenshield saw this, and turned his
motorcycle to the left to put some distance between it and the enemy
Soldiers.
I kept firing the .50 cal at the
armored car. I was really worried when that turret started to turn
in our direction. The enemy 20mm was nothing I wanted any part of.
Luckily, as my fire peppered the area of the junction where the
turret met the body of the armored car, the turret stopped moving.
It had jammed!! We were in luck, as it jammed pointing in the
forward position, and unless the armored car turned toward us, the
20mm was useless.
Truck #3 stopped and six plus Italian
Soldiers with rifles dismounted. The odds were looking worse. Truck
#2 started to careen to the left and Greeley said he shot the
assistant driver as the guy was reaching for the wheel to regain
control of the truck. Apparently, Greeley’s shots on both the
driver, and A-driver were good ones, as the truck careened off the
road to the left and flopped over on its side.
Capone fired a BAR burst which peppered
the armored car, but I saw no effect. Smith switched targets to the
soldiers who had dismounted from the rearmost truck, and hit one of
them. Gus was firing at that cluster of soldiers too with his
submachine gun and hit another one.
Johnson took another shot with his
bazooka, which Dubois was loading, and hit the armored car in the
rear hull. There was a “pop” and a flash, and then the crew
bailed out as the armored car clearly had been disabled. Way-to-go
Bernie Johnson!!!
We kept up our fire and Smith says he
hit another Soldier who had dismounted from the last truck. But I
didn’t see any of them go down. Johnson took another shot with the
bazooka at the rearmost truck, and hit it, igniting it into flames.
We started to take rifle fire from the
dismounted Italians. The first few shots were ineffective, as the
enemy were probably shaken and had only just taken up hasty
positions. The bullets from the enemy’s second volley were
striking among our vehicles.
Notable quote: “Those Italian
Carcano rifles are minus to hit. They are not effective.”
Keene: “John Kennedy wouldn’t say
so.”
Despaux took a hit (8) to his right
arm. But he was still able to keep up his firing. Gus sprayed the
group near the last truck again as they widened the range and as the
motorcycle approached the rest of the squad. He said he hit another
one of the Soldiers, but I did not see any of them going down.
Capone put a telling shot into another
Italian Soldier, and I saw that one go down, but I didn’t pay much
attention as the Italian truck #1 had turned in a clockwise direction
so that it was facing West, with its rear pointed right at us. The
tailgate dropped, and the canvas curtain on the back was thrown up by
the occupants, revealing a Breda model 30 machine gun ready to open
fire.
Fortunately Greeley and I reacted
first. I think Greeley missed (a rare occurrence). I struck the
enemy gunner with a round from my .50 cal, and that put him out of
commission.
At this moment I realized that the rest
of the Italian column which Meister and Crowenshield had seen up the
road- had not been idle. They had heard the gunfire, and were
approaching dismounted on our flank from the South.
Although we still had all of our
firepower, and could have given a good account of ourselves, I
realized we had nothing to gain from this fight except killing more
enemy troops. There did not appear to be any supplies we needed, and
we greatly were outnumbered. Despite taking out the enemy armored
car, two trucks, and killing or wounding a 6-8 others, I didn’t
want to risk my men any more than I had already.
With dawn coming soon I gave the signal
to break off the engagement as I got into the driver’s seat of my
jeep and fell in behind the motorcycle headed East. The rest of the
squad was able to successfully disengage without any more casualties
and follow me.
We traveled about 40 minutes. It was
getting light when we came to a nice bigWadi. We drove our little
convoy of vehicles down into it and set about covering them with the
captured German canvas, and our camouflage nets. I treated Despaux’s
wound.
I took my jeep, along with Karas and
Greeley, and Crowenshield and Meister on the motorcycle, and we
retraced our path back and found a good spot where we could
obliterate our tracks to make it less easy should someone try to
follow us.
I was not really surprised that the
Italians did not pursue. We had taken out their armored vehicle and
two of their trucks. They had taken fire from our belt fed machine
guns including the heavy .50 Cal Browning (I am SO glad we had that),
and the bazooka. I am sure they wanted no more part of us.
Upon our return to the rest of the
squad Johnson and Dubois checked the vehicles for damage. I checked
on our ammunition and water. We again, had gotten off lucky with
only one of our own taking a light wound. But now I was concerned
that the enemy was alerted to our presence and would come looking for
us. It was time to hide for the day.
Inventory
Dawn 15 FEB 43
Kublewagen
- 220 rounds remaining in .30 browning
plus five belts of 250 rounds in cans.
- Two full BAR waist belts
- one 384 round can of M1 clipped 30-06
ammo
-12 bazooka rockets
- 3 illumination grenades, 3 smoke
grenades
- two jerry cans of water (German ones)
- two empty water jerry cans (German
ones)
Jeep #1
-50 rounds remaining in .50 browning
plus one belt of 100 in a can.
- Two full BAR waist belts
- one 384 round can of M1 clipped 30-06
ammo
- one crate of hand grenades
- 3 illumination grenades, 3 smoke
grenades
- four jerry cans of water
- two jerry cans of gas
- 1 case of German dry rations (3 days
food for each of us)
Jeep #2
-200 rounds remaining in .30 browning
plus five belts of 250 rounds in cans.
- one 384 round can of M1 clipped 30-06
ammo
- 12 bazooka rockets
- 3 illumination grenades, 3 smoke
grenades
- four jerry cans of water
- two jerry cans of gas
- 1 case of German dry rations (3 days
food for each of us)
German Truck
- bazooka in cab with Johnson and
Dubois
- jeep mounted radio jury rigged by
Crowenshield
- OE 292 antennae
- 8 bazooka rockets
- 3 illumination grenades, 3 smoke
grenades
- 3000 rounds German 8mm rifle ammo in
two crates
- four jerry cans of water
- six jerry cans of gas
- 1 case of German dry rations (3 days
food for each of us); 1 case of medical bandages
- 3 sound phones and wire
- Squad duffle bags
- Picket posts and six spools
concertina wire
- six spools barbed wire, two spools
trip wire, one case trip flares
- German motorcycle and side-car, plus
spare parts, tool kits, and empty GE flare pistol
- German uniform items and spare canvas
- 3 cases of opened topped canteens; 4
cases of mess kits; 1 case of medical compression bandages; 1 junior
medical kit; 1 case of German Schnapps, and 1 small box of cigars.
- Two finely made latched cases, one
case containing a silver utensil service, and the other case a dinner
service for eight
Additionally, each man has his own full
combat load including two days C-rations.
Johnson has the Berretta SMG which had
fired three bursts during the action
Johnson still has his 03-A3 and all the
rifle grenades he was carrying when he joined us
Johnson has custody of the squads
bazooka and three rockets with him
Dubois still has his 03-A3 and all his
rifle grenades and also his tool kits
Lewis still has the U.S. flare pistol
with two flares and a hand-held radio
Crowenshield still has his own radio in
addition to the jeep mounted radio
Meister has one hand-held radio and his
own waist belt of BAR magazines
Despaux has the Sergeant’s Thompson
SMG with six full magazines, plus one in gun
Karas carries a spare waist belt for
the BAR which is Meisters
McKee carries the medical bag, which
has used four of its dice (for Mckee and Despaux)
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