Page 120 - Anthology

10 Mountain Division Medics in 1945 1
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10 Mountain Division Aid Station on slope of Mt. Belvedere
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The station was supposed to be in a nearby village. Before we got the Sergeant to the station, we
encountered a bunch of walking wounded. We were in an opening and while we were tending to our
wounded, mortar fire came in on us. I took shrapnel in my leg during that round of mortar firing. A short
time later another piece of shrapnel hit my knee and about a dozen or so pieces of shrapnel went into my
boot and into my foot. We got closer to the village and thought we were safe. But, in came artillery fire.
It just got dirt all over us. We made it into the village where we thought the aid station was; it was not
there.

My foot was hurting so bad that I couldn’t carry the litter any more. We had no idea where the aid station
was located. It was about two in the morning. I told the others to go find the aid station and that I would
stay with the Sergeant. We didn’t go inside any buildings; we were told to never do that because they
were more than likely booby trapped. It was cold; in the single digits for sure.

We could hear American and German machine guns firing dueling back and forth. There was a distinct
difference to the sounds from the American and German weapons. No one ever came back for us.
When it got daylight, I saw some Americans going through a field. I started yelling, they heard and saw
me; they came up to us. Lucky for us, they had a radio. They radioed our coordinates and a weasel
vehicle came up to get us. A weasel is a half-track type of vehicle.