SKBubba has a piece up that you all should go read, particularly if you favor war with Iraq, as I do.
I continued to dig. Well I tell you, we were under a barrage of what they called them screaming memees, a German artillery piece that they had that was a rocket launched type of thing. We didn't have any such thing as that, but the Germans did. It was fired 15 - 20 rounds just as fast as it could fire. They were like rockets. It screamed and hollered. It made such a noise it would half scare you to death. We were under a barrage of those, so I kept right on digging and got my hole dug except I didn't get it very deep. I just barely got my body below the top of the ground. That was about as far as you could go. It was in an orchard and the ground was hard as a rock. Daylight was coming on us so as soon as daylight came, the Germans really began to pour it on us. Mortars, machine guns. It was one that, well, would scare you half to death, you know. You didn't have that much time to get scared.There was a little tree next to my foxhole that was as big a round as your leg, I guess; and that tree was completely cut down by machine gun fire. When I finally came out of the hole later on, I looked at the tree. It was laying over and was just the stub. It was mowed down right over my head.
But anyway, we held out until maybe 11 or 12:00 in the day and everybody was out of ammunition. An awful lot of the guys had been killed or wounded.
War should always be the recourse of last resort. That doesn't mean that there aren't times when it is necessary, and I do believe that now is such a time, but it shouldn't be entered into eagerly, but soberly and resolutely.
Posted by Rich at November 10, 2002 11:57 AM