The FReeper Foxhole's TreadHead Tuesday - U.S. Self Propelled Artillery - Sep. 7th, 2004

www.stardestroyer.net ^ | Michael Wong

[SAMWolf]

I'm not even sure about the Walker Bulldog. I know they used American halftracks as German ones. (But then just about every movie does).

You could be right about the Priest, I remember seeing the big German cross on the pulpit, can't remember if it was in Rat Patrol though.

[PsyOp]

From: Cpt. Charles B. MacDonald, Company Commander, 1947.

"The artillery pieces that had heralded our approach appeared in a deep valley to our right behind grey puffs of smoke as they belched their big noise into the spaces beyond."

"[T]hings… were becoming more and more routine. But always there was the deep, fearful dread of the enemy mortar shell that dropped unheralded from the sky, of the artillery round that screeched a fiendish warning as it approached--and the deep dread too of the darkness that would come tonight just as it had come last night and just as it would come the next night and the next. And any night the darkness might release a horde of fanatical German soldiers eager to kill and drive us from our holes and pillboxes, or perhaps a flame-throwing half track spouting its flaming oily death into the deepest recesses of the pillboxes."

"The Nebelwerfer barrage against the road junction was over, and I heard the other companies moving down the highway. Enemy artillery shells whistled so close overhead that the tall fir trees swayed gently from the breeze. We ducked involuntarily, but the big shells were intended for targets well to our rear. An answering barrage from the 99th Division artillery whistled over us, headed in the opposite direction. There seemed always to be a curtain of heavy shells racing above us."

"A round of 88mm fire snapped the top from a fir tree above our heads and fragments sprayed in all directions. There could be no doubt now. The Tigers had arrived."

"An 88mm shell whirred low over our heads and exploded with a crumping noise in the field behind us. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to another day in the Fatherland."

"The civilians in Wonetitz wanted us to withdraw from the town and fire again. They had begged the soldiers not to fight, but the Burgermeister had insisted that they must, and now every house in town had been hit with artillery fire, except ironically, the Burgermeister's.