A Company Embattled

Letter from Clarence R. Saccardi, Esq, of Fairfax, Virginia a survivor of E Company 2^nd Battalion, 345^th Infantry, dated October 5, 1991 to James Hugh Powers

Dear Mr. Powers:

I recently saw your name in the September, 1991 edition of the Golden Acorn, the 87th Division Association publication. It was indicated that you are the brother of Peter Powers, who was a sergeant in Company E, 345^th Infantry, 87^th Division, and killed in action on December 17, 1944

Age diminishes some things, but one thing that it does not diminish is the memory of a fine fellow like Pete. Everyone liked Pete. He approached all tasks with a cheerfulness and determination that was unmatched. He was the only one the ASTP guys that I knew that made buck sergeant before we went overseas. My squad leader, Larry Reichart, thought the world of Pete, and his endorsement plus that of our Platoon Sergeant, Hank Compton, resulted in Pete’s stripes. I will never forget the laugh that he had, that of someone who put everything into each effort. This sounds a bit overdone, but it isn’t.

Pete enjoyed the admiration of his peers and he was a natural leader.

Pete’s best friend was Blaine Littell. Blaine’s father was the editor of the Reader’s Digest, and he was a direct descendant of James G. Blaine, an unsuccessful candidate for President of the United States. Blaine lucked out unintentionally. He contracted pneumonia in England and was not in E Company when we had our baptism of fire.

Blaine had such poor eyesight I wondered why they put him in a rifle company anyway. So, when he arrived from England after recovering from his illness, they put him in as a clerk in the Headquarters Company of the Second Battalion, a much safer job. This I discovered when I called Blaine in New York, and he came down one evening to attend the first reunion of the 87^th Division Association at the New Yorker Hotel in 1950.

So, it was from Blaine that I learned for the first time of Pete’s death in action on the same day that I was wounded and captured. I hadn’t had any contact with anyone from E Company in the intervening years, and one reason that I went to the reunion was to find out what the hell had happened on the day that we got clobbered. That was a bad day for E Company. It was in a deep forest on the German/French border on the way towards Saarbrucken. We replaced a unit that had lost contact with the enemy, and it was a “meeting engagement.” The enemy was Panzer Grenadier, armored infantry, with tank support and combat experience aplenty. We had neither.

Actually, both E and F companies were ordered to protect an uncovered flank that constituted a real danger to the whole battalion. Our company commander, First Lt. Joseph T. Lennon of New York City, lost his leg that day, as did our First Sergeant Jones. Both shared the same foxhole and were victims of our own artillery’s short rounds.

The F Company commander was killed. The battalion executive officer was wounded. Between the work of German machine guns, tree snipers, and the short rounds from our own artillery, we lost half of our men in E Company within the first one and one-half hours of the firefight. It was told to me that Pete was the victim of a tree sniper.

I was a bazooka man. We had recently beefed up our firepower to emulate what the Marine Infantry was doing in another theater of war. When called forward by the company commander, I responded. I saw Sergeant Compton involved in a firefight with a BAR that he had taken from someone, directly engaging the machine gunner that wounded me. The BAR had an extremely low rate of fire. The MG43 fired at the rate of 1,000 rounds per minute. Anyone having the guts to do that, should have received a medal on the spot.

Later Sgt. Compton got a Silver Star for a different action, and based on his ability was later given a battlefield commission. My whole belly was opened up from left to right by the MG43, my femoral nerve in the right leg severed, and my right hip broken. If ambulatory I would have beaten a hasty retreat like everyone else. Fortunately my intestines had not been hit, but nobody knew that. A couple of days later our unit returned only to find my rifle, but no trace of me. I quit yelling for a medic. Each outcry brought on only a new burst of machine gun fire in their attempt to put me out of my misery. Our own mortar counter-fire did not help at all. I was convinced that our guys couldn’t hit a barn, would miss the machine gun next, and hit me instead. I was lucky. True to form, they hit nothing.

After the mortar fire stopped, out of the machine gun next came the gunner and his assistant. It is not often that you get to meet first hand the guy that just shot you. I did. They both had machine gun pistols on the ready and I thought it was goodbye forever. They had both been drinking, and offered me a pull of schnapps. Exactly the last thing that I wanted. They took my hand grenade from my raincoat collar, took the leather gloves that my brother, an Army doctor, had given me in England before we shipped out, took my switch blade knife, but I talked them out of taking my watch, saying that my mother had given it to me.

Then we got into our pidgin English/German attempt at conversation. They told me that Christmas was coming in one week. That I knew. One guy showed me pictures of his family. I guess trying to show that he was not all bad, just doing his job, as I was attempting (unsuccessfully) to do mine. He had a Catholic Holy picture with him and when I kissed that, I guess the Lord responded. It appeared that they were both Catholic, and although an “Ami” enemy, I was still a fellow Catholic, and that counted for some Christian charity, especially a week before Christmas. I sure am glad that they did not know how poor a practicing Catholic I was then.

They carried me sitting on a rift to a half-track. The half-track carried me back to an aid station. The German medic inside gave me a cold cup of coffee and a shot of morphine. Enemy or not, it so relieved the pain, I could have kissed him. I woke up that night on a pallet on the floor, inside a building, but outside of a field hospital operating room, with medics and wounded coming and going and being carried on litters. Nothing personal, I was being written off as having a mortal belly wound, as did the German medics involving serious head and belly wounds, German or American.

To my surprise and right over me appeared my platoon commander, Lt. Smithwick, who it appeared had also been captured and had suffered a wound in his left arm that had passed between the bones without breaking them. Lt. Smithwick raised holy hell then and there and insisted that I be treated. The doctor told me to breathe deeply as they put the rubber mask over me and I woke up the next day in a room with a bunch of Krauts.

To make a long story longer, I didn’t get any water for two days, or food for five, since they thought my intestines had been punctured. I finally convinced them that I would take responsibility for my intestines, and I was given nourishment. I was moved to a regular German military hospital in Neustadt, where I encountered Lt. Smithwick again. There were about a dozen of us in one large room on the third floor of a former girl’s school. During each air raid, they locked us in, and went downstairs to the shelters, probably figuring poetic justice if we got hit. Lt. Smithwick tried to escape three times, and they were plenty pissed off.

I remember one incident during a low-level daylight raid by French flown P-47s when we started to cheer before the Kraut medics had left the room, and it seemed to amuse them, like we were involved in a football game rather than the more serious business of war. After a month at Neustadt, the honeymoon was over. I got transported via ambulance and German hospital train to the east bank of Rhine at Heppenheim, outside of Mannheim, where there was a regular POW hospital for over 2,000 POWs. No head, no medicine, no bandages, plenty of lice, practically no food. We were liberated by the 3^rd Division on March 27, 1945. I weighed 120 pounds and had lost 45.

General Devers personally came to the hospital and ordered the 150 or so American prisoners to be flown to Paris and to be in clean sheets by Easter. We were and I couldn’t have been happier when the war ended from E Company, 345 Infantry. There about 40 members of the 87^th Division Association from E Company, 345^th. In Chicago in 1989, there were only six of us. Only two did I know. Sgt. Brantner from North Carolina and Pfc. Hennessey from New Jersey. One good reason for that is even though half of the company survived December 17^th, the company received 60 percent casualties in the crossings of the Rhine and Moselle rivers in March, 1945.

I lost my best friend from high school, Roosevelt High in Washington, DC. Jimmy Lord was his name and we enlisted in the ERC ASTP program together. He was killed in action with the Big Red One, the US Army First Division.

I don’t always say my prayers at night, but when I do and mention all my family members who have passed, I always mention Peter Powers and Jimmy Lord also, but am sure that when they approached St. Peter that they were waived right in without a check of their credentials and were assured that their reputations had preceded them, no record check was necessary. It always gives me a laugh to see who has this medal or that, or who were the heroes.

The heroes were the guys who didn’t come back and gave everything that they had for their country.

Peter Powers was a hero. Jimmy Lord was a hero. The rest of us just had dangerous experiences.

Clarence R. Saccardi

Formerly Pvt Saccardi

Second Platoon

E Company

345 Infantry

87^th Division

Born June 15, 1925

Died March 23, 2006

Buried in Arlington National Cemetery

Lynn Davis “Buck” Compton December 31, 1921 – February 25, 2012) He served with the L. During os Angeles Police Department, he was a commissioned officerwith Easy Company, 2^ndBattalion,506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, in the 101st Airborne Divisionof the United States Army. Buck was portrayed in the HBOminiseries Band of Brothers .