My father, Robert Sage, was born in 1919 and was drafted into the U.S. Army out of college at the beginning of 1942. He served "for the duration" and was mustered out in 1946. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge.
He delivered messages between battlefield commanders and front-line officers. He credits having survived so long amid fierce fighting to his assignment as a messenger. His job was not direct engagement with the enemy. It was to get the message delivered, and to do that he needed to avoid the enemy and stay alive.
 |
| Robert and Anne Sage, 1944. Married, and just before he shipped out to go to England and then over to combat in Germany. |
When he turned 80 he began dictating his memories to me. His four years in the army constituted about 30% of his 319-page memoir. Today's post is the story of one night and one message.
Memory by Robert Sage
Delivering a message to Company F
Our convoy pulled to a stop in an apple orchard in the vicinity of St. Aens in France. We were told to put up pup tents. It was raining. Corporal Charles Montgomery from Kentucky was my logical partner, as we were both to be runners or messengers. We fastened our shelter halves together, spread out our sleeping bags, and crawled in.
A rifle shot rang out. A sergeant a hundred yards or so away had sat up in his tent, probably to light a cigarette. The round went through his back, piercing his heart. The next day Sgt. Sullivan moved us to a less populated area. The rain continued. We discovered that the wet canvas became almost air tight, and a lighted candle kept it cozy warm inside. My first letter to Anne from France requested candles.
From the apple orchard we moved to Metz. Several German forts had been bypassed here but still held German troops. One of these forts surrendered to our 345th Regiment. We moved into a walled area. About half of our battalion was crowded into a roofed area. I needed a latrine break. Behind me I saw a large window with a wood covering, secured by a two-by-six crossbar. I lifted the bar, opened the door-like cover, and stepped out into the darkness. What a relief, I thought, as I reentered the dimly lit area.
An officer was talking on a bullhorn. He was saying, “And just last night a soldier went out that window,” pointing in my direction. “His throat was cut.” A shot rang out. Someone had dropped an M-1 rifle; it had discharged. Another soldier was dead.
Sgt. Sullivan said, “You and Montgomery are to take the O-Two-Hundred to O-Four-Hundred guard duty.” The yard inside that walled area was so dark that one could not see a person standing four feet away. We held hands to keep from bumping into each other. In my right hand I held my trench knife, feeling that the rifle on my shoulder would be useless.
The next day we moved up to Nancy, France. That night we learned what it was like to experience incoming artillery fire. I slept on the floor of a partially destroyed building. The floor was at the same level as the street. Several rounds hit in the street outside. The shrapnel went up, hitting the walls above us.Pfc. Moss appeared. It was after midnight, and pitch dark. He led me to a tent inside a larger tent. It was Second Battalion headquarters. Sgt. Major Jones handed me a piece of paper. “Take this to Captain Dahlke, F Company.”
I stood looking at him. “Where is F Company? Have you seen how dark it is out there? I wouldn’t be able to find my jeep, much less drive it anywhere.”
“Then walk. It should be no more than a mile or so.” He picked up a compass with a luminous dial. “Come with me.” After a time he said, “F Company should be in that direction.” The guns behind us fired. “And I can assume the Jerries are in that direction,” he added, pointing in the direction that it appeared the guns had fired, but it didn’t matter since we were both blinded by the flash of light.
I walked slowly in the direction I assumed would be about halfway between the front, as determined by our gunfire, and our position. F Company would be somewhere ahead of us.
After walking for some time I heard muffled voices, then the click of a rifle safety. I dropped to my hands and knees. “Who goes there!” a voice rang out. My throat was closing.
“Abbott,” came out in almost a squeak.“That’s not the fucking password we got,” a voice seemed to be asking a buddy. I was now flat on the ground.
“Hell no, it’s—”
“Shut up!”
“He doesn’t sound like a Jerry to me.”
Now I knew. I had walked into the lines of the division we were to relieve, the Yankee Division. “I’m from the 87th. We are your relief,” I said.
I got back to my feet and walked quietly away. Again, I heard safeties click, and a voice asking, “Did you hear anything?” I stood quietly for several minutes before moving on.
I came to a stream. I stepped in. The water was cold. I had no idea how wide and deep it would be. As I stepped in further it became near knee deep and fast moving. I knew I was on a riffle. I had fished many riffles in the Rogue River, and knew the general contour they took. When I stepped into the still water that went over my knees, I knew the bank was close. I felt the limb of a tree and followed it up the bank.
Now I could see the outline of a large building. Then a voice. “Who goes there?”
“Abbott.”
“Costello,” came back.
“What’s your company?” I asked.
“F.”
“Do you know where Captain Dahlke is?”
“Right here in this barn,” was the answer. He called for someone.
I was led through the darkness over loose hay. He stopped. “Captain?”
“Yes.”
“Guy’s here with a message.” A hand reached out from the darkness and took the message. I saw a dim light at the edges of a canvas, and then it went out.
“What’s your name?”
“Corporal Sage,” I answered.
I turned and began the return trip, guided by the flashes from the firing guns. I had been told how to make the return trip over a bridge. It was a longer route, and daylight was starting to break by the time I returned to the spot where my pup tent had been. I threw away the wet socks and put on a dry pair that I had in my pack.
 |
| 1945. Germany had surrendered. My father posed upon a pile of German rifles. |
 |
| Survived and victorious. My father is second from the left, standing. |
[Note: To get daily home delivery of this blog go to https://petersage.substack.com Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]
5 comments:
I have immense respect for the World War 2 generation. They are the Greatest Generation ever. They saved the world, and destroyed the real Nazis (and Hitler). They survived the Depression, and they built this country into the powerhouse it is today.
Peter's father was only 26 years old in his last Army photo. That's a punk-kid in today's world, but his father had just saved Europe from evil. I'm in awe.
If anyone reads this and wishes that they, too, could be a war hero, I highly recommend reading "With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa" by Eugene Sledge. Generally regarded as the greatest account of combat as seen through the eyes of a crunchie, or lowly soldier. This masterful work reveals the true horror of combat; its pornographic dehumanization of all thrown into its maw. Peter's generation is, really, the luckiest generation, in that so few had to face such slaughter.
Ah yes, the last war we had good reason to fight – an epic battle against authoritarian populism. Now we’re fighting it at home.
The difference is that back then, people sacrificed for the common good. Everything was rationed – coffee, meat, dairy…even gas. Now people whine about the cost of filling their 40-foot RVs, and we’re passing on the outrageous cost of our self-indulgence – the national debt and wholesale destruction of our environment – to our offspring. They may come up with a name for us, but I doubt it will be anything like “The Greatest Generation.”
My stepfather lied about his age to enlist in 1944. He was 17. He was training as a paratrooper. While on leave after basic training, he got into a motorcycle accident, so, he missed the D Day invasion of Normandy. On Sept 17, 1944, PFC Robert Burdick dropped into The Netherlands in Operation Market Garden. The entire operation had been designed by British Field Marshall Montgomery and had been promoted by PM Winston Churchill to stop the German V2 rockets that were raining down on London from their launching sites in Holland, and to capture the bridges over the Rhine, so as to beat the Soviet armies to Berlin. What the 82nd Airborne Division, under General Gavin, did not know, as they dropped into Groesbeek, was that a German Panzer division was on R&R just up the road in Nimwegen, where they were heading to take the bridge over the Waal River. So the 82nd hiked into a hornet’s nest of elite German troops. And the British troops who had jumped into the towns to the North also experienced heavy casualties. Aside from the faulty intelligence on the allied side, the operation could only be successful if everything went as planned, and in war, very little goes as planned. Robert describes spending days holed up under a bridge under withering German fire.
On Sept 17, 2014, my wife and I visited The Netherlands to honor the 70th Anniversary of Robert’s first action in the 82nd. When we arrived in Nimwegen we had no idea what to expect. My wife had been unable to find anything on the internet about any commemorations. But when we arrived at the foot of the hill overlooking the Waal, where Robert, now gone, had told us was the battle site, before us were young Dutch men dressed in American GI uniforms among old army jeeps, tents and parachutes strewn on the ground. Laurie walked up to a young man and said “You are wearing my father’s uniform.” Every one of the re-enactors came over to Laurie and shook her hand and thanked her for her father’s bravery. Even though the operation was a military failure, seeing thousands of Americans and Brits parachuting into their county after nearly 5 years of Nazi tyranny brought great hope to the Dutch people. When we were in Amsterdam, when people found out about Laurie’s father’s experience, they would shake Laurie’s hand and express their thanks. 70 years later, new generations of Hollanders still appreciated America’s role in liberating Europe, which Hitler had turned into a slave labor camp.
Laurie’s uncle had been in a cavalry division, and unlike his brother Robert, he went to reunions and stayed in touch with his comrades from his tank battalion after the war. When Laurie asked her dad why he didn’t stay in touch with his fellow soldiers too, he said that was because he had moved around a lot and hadn’t stayed with the same guys. What he was really saying was that his units had experienced such significant losses that they no longer existed, so he moved on to new ones.
Robert Burdick never got into an airplane again. Once he was asked, “Bob, why are you afraid to get in a plane? For goodness sakes, you jumped into Europe in 1944!” Bob replied; “I never jumped. I was pushed.”
Great stories, Peter and Art.
This past summer I read George Orwell’s wartime diaries in the run up to England’s engagement in the war. It was not a certain thing. It was a very uncertain thing.
Two brief quotes”
“Towards the government I feel no scruples and would dodge paying the tax if I could. Yet I would give my life for England readily enough, if I thought it necessary. No one is patriotic about taxes.”
“One feature of the Nazi conquest of France was the astonishing defections among the intelligentsia, including some of the left-wing political intelligentsia. The intelligentsia are the people who squeal loudest against Fascism, and yet a respectable proportion of them collapse into defeatism when the pinch comes.”
Post a Comment