The History Of The 29th In Real Life part 1

H
EDGEROWS -- high earthen walls, topped with brush, trees and briar -- lined every field and orchard of the picturesque Normandy countryside. Behind these barriers the Germans huddled and waited.

This was the battle ground facing the 29th Infantry Division after it labored from the Omaha beachhead and captured Isigny June 9, 1944. Next day, the 115th Inf. Regt. pushed across the Elle River in the Columbieres-Briqueville sector. St. Clair-sur-l'Elle and Couvains fell to the 116th Inf. Regt.

The fighting was tough and brutal, a battle of cunning and sheer guts, of bayonets and hand grenades, of men making quick dashes across open fields, hiding from a watchful enemy. Doughs seldom knew who was on their flanks, often dug foxholes a few feet from Kraut-held hedgerows.

Advances were measured in hedgerows -- four one day, five the next. The enemy employed every conceivable delaying tactic. The few soft spots in the Nazi defenses were difficult to locate. As the offensive halted at night, the men would dig, mole-like, into the sides of the earthen walls. Hot chow, mail and The Stars and Stripes would be brought up from the rear. The bitter fighting would be resumed next morning. Slowly, the Blue and Gray Division drove toward St. Lo.

Turning to the south, the 29th gained the high ground three miles north of St. Lo, June 17. With the enemy on three sides, this salient absorbed deadly artillery pounding, became known as "Purple Heart Hill." Four counter-attacks were beaten off during the three weeks the division held the ground.

As the all-out drive for St. Lo roared forward July 11, the 116th ripped ahead, cutting the important

St. Lo-Bayeux road and occupying high round south of Martinville. Simultaneously, the 115th swung wide around Ste. Croix de St. Lo and gained the dominating terrain. The 175th Inf. Regt. attacked in the east of the division sector.

Task Force C charged into St. Lo July 18, seizing the city by nightfall after rugged house-to-house fighting. Brig. Gen. Norman D. Cota, task force commander, was wounded in the action.

As his troops prepared to attack the city, Maj. Thomas D. Howie, Staunton, Va., commanding 3rd Bn., 116th, told the men. "You'll see me in St. Lo!" Killed as he led the battalion forward, the major's body was carried into the city by the first men to enter and placed on a flag draped bier in the main square. Poet Joseph Auslander immortalized the action in the poem, Incident at St. Lo:

They rode him in, propped straight and proud and tall,
Through St. Lo's gates... He told the lads he led
That they would be the first at St. Lo's fall--
But that was yesterday... and he was dead:
Some sniper put a bullet through his head,
And he slumped in a meadow near a wall;
And there was nothing further to be said;


Nothing to say... nothing to say at all.
Ride, soldier, in your dusty, dizzy jeep,
Grander than Caesar's chariot! O ride
Into the town they took for you to keep
Dead captain of their glory and their pride!
Ride through our hearts forever, through our tears,
More splendid than the hero hedged with spears!