The following was taken from the 1945 "Blue book" history of the 8th Infantry Division Artillery.Many Thanks to John Culloton for spending the time to enter this file
Greenback landed on Utah Beach, Normandy, on July 4, spent the night in bivouac near ruined Montebourg, and next day became the first element of its combat team to enter combat, supporting the 90th Division from positions between Vindefontaine and Pretot. We were initiated quickly. Before a day had passed, no man of the battalion was unfamiliar with the whine and crash of Jerry’s 88s. by 8 July the 28th Infantry was ready for the attack against La Hay du Puits, and Greenback assumed the mission of direct support which, for the next ten months, it was scarcely ever to lay aside. The Forward Observer and Liaison Sections began a series of tours up front with the infantry which in the course of time, was to make them the oldest and most combat experienced individuals connected with some of the infantry battalions.
On 14 July began an eleven day period of preparation for the push that was to break the German ring of steel around our Normandy bridgehead. From positions at Laulne the 45th watched the bombing of St. Lo and supported the doughs as they spearheaded the VIII Corps attack against the German Ay River defense line, in savage fighting. By the 27th Jerry was fleeing, and we began a period of rapid movement, rolling through Coutances and Avranches out of Normandy and into Brittany, ending up in the beautiful countryside just south of Rennes. Here battlewise and weary, having already lost men both killed and wounded, we took a welcome break and had an opportunity to become acquainted with the very friendly French people of Rennes.
We were soon rolling again. On the 13th we moved to an area near Dinen, and next day Charlie Battery went forward with the Third Battalion, 28th Infantry to clear out a pocket of some 300 Germans, with the FFI reported to be at Cape Frehel, neat St. Malo, on the Channel coast. On the 15th the rest of the battalion joined Charlie here, but to Task Force Ingersoll went all the glory of this fight. As the infantry prepared to attack, Charlie fired a preparation, and the Krauts decided to surrender without a fight.
At once we took off on the hundred-odd mile dash to our new sector of operations, the great French port of Brest. We were told that there were about 15,000 Germans holed up here in the city and harbor area. When we got through counting the last prisoner a month later, we found that there were some 40-odd thousand Krauts, many of them paratroopers and SS troopers, crack troops of the Nazi army led by the fanatical Lt. Gen. Ramcke, conquer of Crete. Greenback arrived on the scene in advance of most of the division and became, with elements of the Sixth Armored Division and the First Battalion, 28th Infantry , part of the famous ‘Brassiere Boys,’ who contained Brest. We set up observation posts in the attics of houses in and near Gousenou and had for the first time in combat really excellent ground observation. From points just north of Gousenou we supported the many bitter and costly attacks that were required to drive Jerry inch by inch back from strong points, such as Hill 88 and the Kergoas sector, every whit as formidable as Siegfried Line defenses. The batteries had at times a ringside view of the struggle, watching the P-47s bomb and strafe Kraut lines day after day. One bomb slipped off its rack in mid-air and almost potted Charlie Battery.
After the fighting at Brest had gone into the mopping up stage we moved seventy miles around the harbor to the Crozon Peninsula to the south. Here Combat Team 28 drew the most difficult mission of the Division, the attack against the high ground of the northern half of the peninsula, including the important airport section. German artillery fire here was the hottest that we had hit to date; it claimed the lives of four Greenback men the first day of the attack. We paid Jerry back at the rate of over 2000 rounds a day. By the 18th Ramcke had surrendered and Brest and its harbor were ours.
After a brief ‘rest’ period we performed a four-day, 700 mile motor march through Rennes, Chartres, Paris, and Sedan to the tiny Duchy of Luxembourg, where CT28 took over from the Fifth Armored Division the defense of a 32,000 yard front along the high ground facing the German border and the Siegfried Line. Because of this broad front, the batteries were scattered widely over northern Luxembourg, comfortably quartered in the homes of the natives. Ammunition was strictly rationed here, so we instituted a system of sniping with 105’s. Long study of the enemy front enabled us to obtain surprise effect with what little ammunition we had. One night about midnight Jerry tried to pull a surprise of his own. An alert guard at Baker Battery noticed a movement about a hundred yards in front of the howitzers and fired. A burp gun made its distinctive reply. There ensued a battle royal in which Baker shot everything it had, including Shell HE. A Kraut patrol consisting of a lieutenant and one man had entered Baker’s preserve, seeking to locate American artillery positions, in this they succeeded admirably, but they did not live to pass on their find.
After six pleasant weeks in Luxembourg, we shoved off one cold November day for the dread Hurtgen Forest, in Germany. Here for almost three months we lived and fought in the same little area in day after day of concentrated misery. The mud, the cold, the tree bursts, the ÒSÓ mines, and the greatest concentration of German artillery that we ever encountered took their steady toll. We find more than ever before; for hour after hour the howitzers boomed away at the maximum allowable rate. One day the battalion fired over 3,000 rounds in this vast artillery duel. And Jerry returned round for round.
In Hurtgen we lived in shack logs and ammunition boxes that we laboriously built and improved through the weeks, or, if we belonged to the forward echelons, in the cellars of Germeter or Vosseneck. The liaison, forward observer, and wire crews of the battalion will never forget these cellars or their experiences up front in Hurtgen. They will remember ‘Dead Man’s Draw,’ the pitifully exposed route north from Vossenack to the position of the First Battalion, 28th Infantry which was carpeted with ÒSÓ mines and which because of enemy observation, could be used only at night. They will remember the vicious counter-attacks, ordered by Field Marshall Model himself, to regain Bergstein from the Third Battalion, 28th Infantry, later awarded the Distinguished Unit citation for its magnificent stand here. They will remember the company command post at Simonskall, to get which they had actually to travel in front of our own front lines. They will remember the days and nights that they spent laying miles and miles of wire which went out in a dozen places at once from intense shell fire. They will remember the ‘Mines Not Cleared Beyond This Point’ signs which they often disregarded. They will remember the feeling of nakedness that any daylight movement out of doors gave rise to. And most of all, they will remember the mud that coated everything and that made movement painfully slow at a time when speed meant the difference between life and death.
On 6 February we left Hurtgen and moved a few miles north to prepare for the coming Roer River crossing operation. From battery positions in Birgel and forward positions in Lendersdorf, on the river’s edge, we sweated out the flood stage of the river and Jerry’s mortar and artillery fire. Charlie had a gun knocked out and a man killed. But at least, on 23 February, came the attack. In its part of the 45-minute preparation, from 0245 to 0330, Greenback fired almost 1,400 rounds and its fires for the rest of the day were so intense that again we passed the 3,000 mark. The river itself was rough. Many of our men with the infantry had to swim for it; some were wounded and one lieutenant was taken prisoner. But once we got rolling on the other side, we advanced in a series of brilliant night attacks and daylight displacements right down the main highway to Cologne and the Rhine.
After a short ‘rest’ period and a relatively inactive period in which we defended the west bank of the Rhine we moved on March 29 across the Rhine and into the so-called Ruhr pocket, In which an estimated quarter million Germans were trapped in the largest double envelopment in history. The fighting here was characterized by extreme mobility, rapid movement, and a series of end-around plays that dazzled the enemy. For the artillery it entailed continuous reconnaissance often with the most advance infantry echelons and sometimes in areas previously unentered by friendly troops. Greenback never functioned more smoothly then now. Three displacement a day were common, and 30 to 45 minutes after the reconnaissance parties took off to look at a new area, the batteries would be in the new position firing. At one time the whole battalion column barreled into a town beyond which the doughs had not yet advanced. The liaison and forward observer people found life equally exciting. In the Wissen area, just after forcing a crossing of the Sieg River, they found themselves time and again counter-attacked and had to call for artillery fire on their own positions to drive off the persistent enemy. For the first time the infantry ran into numbers of Tiger Royal tanks, one of which, at least, Greenback destroyed. By-passed Germans were everywhere. In one position we took 100 Krauts in the immediate battalion area; and in other, 500. On 16 April, from positions around Niedersprockhovel, we fired our last round of the war, for a total of 121,128 combat rounds.
As soon as the Ruhr fight was over, we took over military control of two large areas of the Ruhr Valley, the first around
Attendorn and the second around Hennef. But this was short-lived. At 0355 in the morning of 28 April we began a record breaking, 330-mile, 20 hour practically non-stop march to Graulingen, in the Elbe plain. Now part of the British Second Army, we crossed the Elbe on 1 May and advanced rapidly and without opposition almost to the Baltic Sea. Our last combat position was the little Mecklenburg town of Hoort, into which we rolled on the afternoon of 2 May. As we entered the town from the west, the first large groups of surrendering Germans entered it from the east, and at once we became a battalion of military policemen. On 2 May and the succeeding two days we disarmed, impounded, and processed in excess of 7,000 Germans. including the commander of the Ost See Division. V-E Day found Greenback wearily guarding its prisoner of war enclosure at Hoort9.
In ten months of combat Greenback lost 15 officers and men killed and 126 wounded. Its members were awarded 19 Silver Stars, 88 Bronze Stars and clusters, 26 Air Medals and clusters, and five Solders Medals. It traveled in the neighborhood of 3,000 miles from battery position to battery position and made 80 displacements. It awarded three battlefield commissions and had three of its men taken prisoner by the enemy. It took over 8,000 prisoners. This is a record which few artillery battalions can approach and of which Greenback men are profoundly proud.
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