As the drive advanced, the 30th Infantry continued moving to the north and northeast through France, fighting through and liberating village after village as the season turned to fall. The weather was beginning to get colder.[1]

However, as the 30th Infantry continued to push northward, they met increasingly stiff resistance, hill by hill and mountain by mountain.

Starting in mid-September (and it would continue until the end of October), it rained at least twelve hours a day, which kept the Allied tactical air forces on the ground and allowed the German Army to make massive and unhindered rail and road movements of troops and equipment.

Phil had heard the old military adage that the weather is neutral, but he and his men found out that poor weather favored the defender in almost every category.[2]

Phil wrote his mother:

We are still moving along over here, but we are getting an early fall, and I need a pair of leather gloves bad. Willyou send them to me? I don’t need good ones, but heavyones, please.

France is a beautiful country. So much nicerthan Italy. I don’t ever want to go back to that country if Idon’t have to.

I write Marilyn, but I don’t hear from her very much.Can you call or write her for me?

Still have been doing a lotof thinking about what I want to do after all this is over,and still can’t make up my mind as to what to do. But I hopesoon to have made it up enough.

P.S. We’ve just learned that all of us who were in theD-Day convoy for the southern France landing have earned the Bronze Arrowhead.[3]

The very next day, Phil would get some shocking news from home about Marilyn.[4]

~~~~~

[1] Larimore, At First Light, 144.

[2] Ibid.

[3] The Bronze Arrowhead denoted participation in an amphibious assault landing, combat parachute jump, helicopter assault landing, or combat glider landing by a service member of the United States Army. This was the last time this award was given to amphibious troops in Europe in World War II.

[3] Larimore, At First Light, 144.

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