The 3rd Division, to which Phil was returning, was transferred to the First French Army, relieving the hard-pressed US 36th Division, inheriting a sector 20 miles wide on the perimeter of the Colmar Pocket. It was Anzio in reverse. Some sectors were so thinly held, a foot patrol required three hours to go from one platoon to another.[1]

One of Phil’s men wrote:[2]

There was a fortified farmhouse nearby held by the Germans. Under ordinary circumstances we would not thought of attacking yet but in our desperation to get out of the cold, my squad and I decided to go for it.

At my signal we crouched below and started for the house using shelter we could find. We rushed in with our rifles blazing and machine guns crackling.

Men fell around me, but after a few grenades were thrown through the windows, all became quiet. No prisoners were taken on either side.

We paid a heavy price for the farmhouse. A portion of my squad was missing. But the rest of us felt it was better to lose a few men that for all of us to freeze to death.

As we were sitting around trying to relax, and finally opening cans of rations, I heard loud voices in the next room.

One of the older men was arguing with a new replacement.

As I got up to investigate, a shot rang out. The replacement had shot himself in the toe. He had found his own way out of hell.

He was a healthy young man who had succumbed to battle fatigue.[3]

Everyone has a breaking point in this young soldier had reached his. This was not an isolated case.[2]

~~~~~

Battle fatigue was not the major problem on the front—it was “trench foot.”[4] Stephen Ambrose described the horrors of trench foot:[5]

First a man lost his toenails.

His feet turned white, then purple, finally black. A serious case of trench foot made walking impossible.

Many men lost their toes, some had to have their feet amputated.

If gangrene set in, the doctors had to amputate the lower leg.

It has to be doubted that many men did this deliberately.

A shot in the foot was much quicker, less dangerous, and nearly impossible to prove that it hadn’t been an accident.[5]

Another soldier wrote:[6]

Men wrapped their feet in burlap sacks, when available, but the burlap soaked up the snow, so the boots got soggy, the socks got wet.

Sergeant Lick lost all his toenails but through regular massages and a rotation of his socks he avoided trench foot.

Thousands of others got it.

Trench foot put more men out of action than German 88s, mortars, or machine-gun fire.[6]

During the winter of 1944-45, some 45,000 men had to be pulled out of the front line because of trench foot—the equivalent of three full infantry divisions.[5]

~~~~~

Finally, snowshoes, skis, white snow suits, Goum mule teams[7,8] everything suitable for winter warfare, made its debut. It was better late than never.[2]

~~~~~ 

[1] 3rd Division History.

[2] Soskil, 108-109.

[3] Battle fatigue is a mental and physical response to the stress of combat (also described as an acute behavioral disorganization as a direct result of the trauma of war) and is also known as combat stress reaction or combat fatigue.

[4] Trench foot is a painful condition of the feet caused by long immersion in cold or icy water or mud and marked by blackening and death of surface tissue.

[5] Ambrose, Citizen Soldiers, 260.

[6] Cowdrey, Fighting for Life, 267. Quoted in: Ambrose, Citizen Soldiers, 260.

[7] Attached to the division were four Tabours of Goums: grim-visaged, swarthy, turbaned, “bathrobe-wearing,” silent Berber tribesmen who, as part of the Corps Franc d’Afrique, fought and died for seven months beside their American, French, and British comrades. “Goum” — a word these tribesmen never used in referring to themselves — is an Arabic term meaning “irregular soldier.”

[8] Goumiers were Moroccan soldiers with also many mule packs able to carry mortars and MGs (they later allowed the Allies to pierce the Gustav line in Italy). In 1942, a so-called goum was the equivalent of a company of goumiers (14 French officers and NCOs, 209 Moroccans). A tabor was a grouping 3 infantry goums and 1 command goum (61 French officers and NCOs, 807 Moroccans), a GTM (“Groupement de Tabors marocains”) consisted of 3 tabors and 1 command goum (215 French officers and NCOs, 2727 Moroccans).

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