Paul E. Lambert's Story                   

Forward

     There are untold thousands and thousands of stories about World
War ll, each soldier that took part in that war, had a story, their own
private story, many of these soldiers are dead and their stories will
never be told.

    When the war ended, the last thing an ex Gl wanted to do, was talk
about the war, so he put away his uniform, his discharge and his
medals, if he had any, and tried to get his life back in gear, his story
was pushed way back into his mind and many times never brought
forth again.

 You can go to the movies or rent a tape and see war movies with
their hero's, but you will never see a story that shows what these men
individually, endured. Each one is unique and different,

   ln some cases, when the veteran reaches an older age and is not so
involved in surviving the needs of this world to live and raise a
family, he might in some way, or for some reason be prompted to
start recalling his experiences in the war. And maybe write them
down for his children to have as a part of his life they knew nothing
about.

lt is very sad that so many stories of the young men, who proudly
served their country in this great conflict, and survived the war
Have taken their stories to their graves, it is also even sadder that
The young men who gave their lives fighting for their country, never
ever had a chance to tell their story. l knew quite a few who died
either in my arms or right beside me, that could have told very
Exciting and proud story of their experiences, but no one except those
who were with them, will ever know, and that's sad, lt is with great
pride and Humbleness that through the grace of God l still have the
clear memory and the ability to write my story, just as it was, for my
children and good friends, who care to have it

Paul E. Lambert

 The Beginning

This story is being written because I have been asked to write it while I still can remember; well I remember very clearly everything that is written here and more, lt would be impossible for me to write about every event. I was involved in and all the details, it would take a novel to do that, so I have condensed it to the three events and some of the places I fought and went through.

This is a true story, nothing is added or left out, that didn't actually happen. It is written in first person,  I, Paul E. Lambert is the person who is writing his experiences. My memory of what is written is very clear, only the dates are not vividly remembered, unless it was something very special, I will begin the story in England, just a day or two before embarking for France, the City was Southampton, we were not allowed to leave the camp we were in and when the day came to leave for France, we went by trucks to the port and boarded small vessels.

They each held maybe two companies each, the part of the English Channel we were crossing was known to be very rough. Sailors from India operated the vessel,  I think it was also a vessel belonging to India.

We took off after awhile and soon got into rough water, the guys started to get sea sick, they were all over the decks and hanging over the railings, vomiting, I was a little amused, not because they were sick but because I felt smug, I had been raised on the river in Pennsylvania and was in the water most of the summer, riding the waves from steam boats that traveled up and down the river all day long, so I never thought I` d get sick. I was grossly mistaken, my company was billeted down in the hold and I was assigned to go to the upper deck and get our dinner, which was
boiled meat and potato’s. I climbed up the ladder to the kitchen deck, I don’t remember which deck it was but I got to the kitchen and was given a bucket of boiled meat and potatoes. There were still guys lying all over, sick and vomiting and moaning. I got about halfway back to my outfit when I started to feel sick, then it hit me full force, I just puked all over wherever I was, couldn’t control it,

I cannot think of anything that is worse than being sea sick, I somehow made it back to the hold but no one was feeling like eating, especially boiled meat and potatoes Not long enough after getting seasick, at least it didn’t seem long, we reached our destination. I don’t remember how long that trip over the Channel took, it was too miserable. Anyway we reached LeHavre France, the fighting had moved inland some and there was just some shelling. We climbed down the rope ladder on the side of the vessel and got into the landing craft and headed for shore, still sick and not caring much what happened, we waded to shore from the landing craft and made it to the city, which was pretty clear. It was dark and we got billeted in a building somewhere in the city. I remember being so tired and droopy that I just took of my gear and lay down on the floor. I was hearing a weird sound from overhead and was told they were German Buzz Bombs. The Buzz Bombs were Rockets without any method of guidance, and were just aimed toward London. The launched them every night and some city or village in England got blitzed.

The next morning we were put on a train, French Freight Cars, they were marked 40 Hommes or 8 Chaveax that meant 40 men or 8 horses. We knew we were headed for the front lines. The train took off and I don’t remember how long we traveled but we stopped somewhere at some rear headquarters and got off there. We were replacements, we no longer were considered a company, we were just individual replacements to be sent where we were most needed. The 28* Division had been assigned the task of driving the Germans out of the Huertgen Forest
In order to anchor the First Army’s right flank on the high ground of a town called Schmidt. Whoever controlled Schmidt, controlled the Rohr river dams.

When the men of the 28th entered the forest, they saw nothing but artillery stripped trees, mounds of unearthed mines along muddy almost impassable firebreaks, and trails and mine craters by the hundreds and bloated bodies of dead men who they had come to relieve. The Germans were very stubbornly resistant; they had orders directly from Hitler not to let the Allies get past that forest to Schmidt. The 28th was sustaining heavy losses, this is where I came into the story.

When I reported to the headquarters, I was immediately assigned to the ll0th regiment, company "B” Machine gun squad, my MO was 604 (Method of operation) as a trained Machine Gunner, l was assigned the position of Assistant gunner, the previous one had just been killed the day before. I was taken up to the front lines and turned over to the lieutenant, who immediately sent me to the squad I was to be in, there was a slight lull in the fighting then, but it didn’t last long, all at once, it sounded like a giant 4th of July celebration but this was for real, all hell broke loose and I was scared as hell for awhile, but I did what I had to do and soon it was over my sacredness and was only interested in doing my job well. I found out that being scared could get you killed much faster. It was wet and very cold, you just had to forget about being cold, altogether there ha been 120,000 men that had fought in this dense forest, 24,000 had either been killed, captured or wounded or suffered from combat fatigue, it was a lousy place to be.

We would use all our firepower including artillery and. mortars and we would move up maybe 50 yards, then we would get set again and make another try for another 50 yards, sometimes we even lost a few, but this went on and on it seemed like forever. Five days after I had joined them, my new buddy the head Machine gunner was killed by a mortar. That made me the new head machine gunner, every one moved up one position, in each group, there was the Gunner, the assistant gunner and two ammunition bearers,

I carried the gun and a belt of ammo, (250 rounds) and the assistant gunner carried the tripod and one belt of rounds, each - ammo bearer carried two boxes of ammo with 250 rounds in each box and as we used it, they would run back and get more. Being the gunner was not hard for me because I had plenty of training and knew the rules of staying alive which didn’t guarantee anything but it cut down the odds of getting killed. ( I had a little Catholic Missal that I kept next to my heart at all times, and read it very often) Every time we were headed for a new attack somewhere, the Catholic Chaplin would call all the Catholic guys together and give us the "Last Rights" (general Absolution) we would all look at each other and wonder who would be missing at the next one, and there always was about half missing, but new faces, took their place. I was a veteran by now, I had lived more than 3 times my estimated life span as a machine gunner and I always felt so sad for these new guys going into their first combat, You could tell they were scared by the way they looked and the questions they asked, I sure would have been lost without my Missal, that's all I had to depend on, according to statistics, my life span as a machine gunner was over, So I turned myself over to God.

We had to get this forest cleared so we could move on with our tanks to the town of Schmidt, but the Germans were resisting very heavily. On one attack, I had a foxhole dug for my machine gun so I could protect the left flank of the riflemen as they moved up, all at once, a mortar hit in front of my foxhole about 25 yards away. Instinctively, I got out of that foxhole in one second flat and no sooner than I did, a mortar hit right smack into the foxhole, killing the assistant gunner and twisting my gun like a pretzel, I have a picture of it, fortunately there was an army photographer around that day taking pictures, several of which I have. I had met him earlier and made friends with him being as I was also a photographer in civilian life. I got the pictures from him later.

The battles continued with heavy casualties on each side, finally we were able to drive the Germans out of the forest and were ready to move on to Schmidt, but the trail out of forest along a ridge Above the Little Kall river, was too narrow the tanks couldn’t get down it, even the engineers were afraid to use explosives to widen the trail because it was taking a chance on blowing the whole side of the ridge away One tank finally made it.

Our attack began soon after, but our three regiments got split up by the Germans and we were unable to protect the flank of the First and Ninth Armies, our l09th regiment ran into dense antipersonnel mine fields, they could not find a path through the Mine fields and soldiers were being blown right and left, all you could hear was cries of "Medic", "Medic" but as soon as the Medics tried to help them the Germans opened up with machine guns an mortars, when the engineers tried to clear the mine fields, the Germans opened up on them too.

The lI0th regiment, my outfit ran into the Siegfried Line. Pill boxes guarding the forest covered road junctions, this became a real battlefield, I will never forget this place it looked like the devil designed it, it was a debris littered jungle with yellow gashes on all the tree trunks and dripping branches from the shells and the macabre light filtering in through the trees.

This was a real battlefield. We were no further apart from the Germans than you could throw a grenade. No sooner than one group started an attack and rise from their fox holes than a rain of machine gun and mortar fire would bring them down to to earth. Squads and platoons got lost. Mortar shells landed amid assault teams carrying high explosives and blew up the men. Arms and legs flying all over, headless torsos all around and unfailing rattle of machine guns ripped through the trees when anybody showed his head from either side. And the worst thing was you couldn’t hide from them, the tree bursts, shells would hit the tops of the trees and the fragments would burst in deadly rain on the men below, had it not been for the ll2nd regiment being in the center and making a drive on Schmidt, there would not have been much encouragement in the 28th Division. We did manage to get into Vossenack but we were so short of men from the recent battle and the men were so tired and combat fatigued, including myself.

The next morning everything was very quiet compared to the past when the Germans started shelling at dawn, we were all nervous about this, it didn’t feel i right, suddenly it happened, a German machine gun with its frightening sound opened fire. There was an agonizing scream and it was quiet again for about a half-hour, then The German artillery started shelling with punishing accuracy, tanks were put out of commission and the few men we had left suddenly couldn’t stand it anymore and grabbed for their equipment and panic stricken, headed for where
they thought the rear was, totally ignoring the officers commands. It was a very I demoralizing scene fortunately enough of us stayed with the officers and were able to build a new line at the center of the village (Vossenack), luckily the Germans ii did not pursue the panicked men who retreated and we were able to join up with the remnants of the I09th and the I I2th in a town called Kommerscheidt to try again to take Schmidt.

To Part Two