Ernest Albert (Andy) Andrews - A Machine Gunners War: From Normandy to Victory with the 1st Infantry Division in World War II

Published in the United States of America and Great Britain in 2022 by

CASEMATE PUBLISHERS

1950 Lawrence Road, Havertown, PA 19083, USA

and

The Old Music Hall, 106108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JE, UK

Copyright 2022 Al Andrews and David B. Hurt

Hardback Edition: ISBN 978-1-63624-104-3

Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-63624-105-0

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

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Contents

Preface

When I look back on the more than one hundred public talks I have given about my experience as a machine gunner in World War II, it is children who have provided my most appreciative audiences.

After speaking to a class of elementary school students, I received a number of thank-you letters from the kids.

Dear Mr. Andrews, Thank you for coming to our fourth grade class today. If you had not come, I very probably would have made an F on my history test, one wrote.

A young girl expressed a more profound sentiment.

Dear Mr. Andrews, Your talk was so cool. I am so glad you are alive. My daddy said that most veterans your age are already dead.

Naturally, I drew great encouragement from her kind words.

Whether speaking to children, university students, civic clubs, or senior citizens, I never cease to be amazed at the heartfelt reaction. It is a response that reflects the abiding gratitude and deep respect that Americans continue to feel for all those who served in World War II, especially toward those who sacrificed their lives. With so many veterans of that conflict now passing away, my friends of historical bent have convinced me to put my account of the war in writing so that it would not be lost to future generations.

My story is that of a Signal Mountain, Tennessee boy. Upon finishing my senior year at Central High School in Chattanooga in the summer of 1943, I practically stepped off the graduation platform and into the back of an Army truck. The small convoy of trucks delivered 250 of my fellow high school graduates and me to the induction center at nearby Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, where we raised our right hand and were sworn into the U.S. Army.

Following the completion of our training at Fort McClellan, Alabama, and Bridport, England, my war began on D-Day, June 6, 1944, when I landed on Omaha Beach in German-occupied France as part of the Allied invasion. Serving in the second machine-gun squad, second section, second platoon, H Company, 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, I was engaged in the terrible fighting that stretched from the invasion of France until the end of the war in Czechoslovakia in early May 1945.

The resulting memoir does not present a broad chronicle of the war, but rather my own small window on the events of that time. Indeed, a battle that merits only a passing sentence in a history of the 1st Infantry Division may fill an entire chapter in this book. My account of the war will have much in common with the millions of other GIs (Government Issues, slang for American soldiers) who went off to fight, except that it tells my own unique story.

The reader will find no reports of spectacular feats or heroic actions on my part, just an effort to describe the war as I personally witnessed and experienced it. Even after the passage of seven decades, my days as a soldier are almost as fresh to me as if they had taken place last week. Indeed, those intense moments in combat remain as vivid and terrifying for me now as they were at the time.

While part of me seeks to stay as far away from the horrors of the battlefield as possible, the war forces itself back into my consciousness again and again. Memories from the war do not haunt me, but they do often fill my thoughts and flash uninvited through my mind.

Grinding physical exhaustion. Dust, mud, rain, ice, snow, and cold. Constant orders to attack no matter the weather. Slogging forward with the heavy machine-gun tripod slung over my aching shoulders. Sinking into freezing mud as I catnapped in a foxhole. Forever trying to wipe mud from my eyeglasses. Pitying the wars destitute and homeless refugees and the sick and starving little children with beautiful sunken eyes in pain-racked faces.

Sudden firefights. Muzzle flashes from enemy rifles aimed at my machine-gun position, knowing my devastating weapon makes me their target. Bullets buzzing by my head and snapping off the twigs and small branches around me. Shooting my .45 pistol at German soldiers from pointblank range.

The dreadful metallic creaking of an approaching enemy panzer. The swoosh of an incoming German mortar round. A deafening explosion yards from my position. The shrill whine of incoming artillery shells. Their earth-shaking and air-convulsing detonations that fling lethal shrapnel and mud in every direction. The gut-wrenching cries of the wounded in the midst of night combat.

When remembering battles where so many soldiers crouching or running along beside me at one moment were killed by bullets or shrapnel in the next, I remain amazed at the countless times God spared my life. In reliving the brutal fighting in the Hrtgen and Battle of the Bulge, where I survived with only wounds while thousands of other men were slaughtered, I recall my constant prayers, pleading over and over to God to give me the physical strength to endure, to keep me in His protection, and to let His will be done with my life.

At the end of firefights so fierce that my entire concentration had been on killing the enemy, I always took time to thank God for my survival. With my eyes blurred by tears, I also prayed for the mothers, dads, wives, and sweethearts of those men who had just fallen before my machine gun.

My war story is first and foremost a testimony of how God in His grace held me close to Him from my wars beginning in Normandy on D-Day to its longed-for end in Czechoslovakia on VE-Day. Other guys claimed to possess some lucky token, but my lucky piece was the Lord, and I trusted Him to protect me. He blessed me with a long, full life that so many other boys from that time never got the chance to know.

This memoir is dedicated to the memory of my friends and my buddies as well as all those Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice during the war and cannot tell their stories. By sharing my own account, I hope to bring a little greater understanding of that war in which they gave their lives and thus honor their memory.

On a more personal level, I wish to dedicate this book to the memory of my late wife, and love of my life, Hellon Andrews. My more than 50 years with her were a celebration of the peace and freedom for which we fought and so many fell.

In a larger sense, I leave this memoir as my testament to the younger generation and all the future generations of Americans yet unborn. In sharing my combat experiences, it is my fervent prayer that they may never know war firsthand.