Three stories of Daniel R. Shine

"Freedom: We cherish and abuse it. As Americans, we all enjoy our freedom, but relatively few
of us have been called upon to defend it with our bodies and our lives. Seldom do we stop to
think about the contributions and sacrifices of those Americans who have fought in past wars.

This, then, is intended to remind us of those unwarlike warriors who have fought under our
nation's flag in the name of freedom. Further, it asks us to recall the contributions of those gentle
infantrymen among them. Men like my dad."  (-Dan Shine)

A Different Kind of Christmas (Grandmenil, Belgium, december 25, 1944)
Frozen Hell (Near Salmchateau, Belgium, January 14, 1945)
Bloody Ridge (Salmchateau, Belgium, January 16, 1945)
Bronze Star (Appenwihr, France, February 1, 1945)



A Different Kind of Christmas

Near Grandmenil, Belgium
December 25, 1944
Just after midnight...

Twenty year old Private Daniel R. "Bob" Shine squatted in a roadside ditch in knee-deep icy
water, clutching his M-1 rifle; there was nowhere to go.

Moments before, he'd been advancing eastward with his rifle Company in near total blackness.
From around a bend in the dirt road had come three tanks. As the tanks got closer, the G.I.'s had
realized that they were facing German Tigers. The soldiers on the right had climbed an
embankment and sought cover behind rocks and trees; for those on the left, the only available
cover was a drainage ditch covered with ice. As they jumped into the ditch, the ice broke,
soaking them.

Closer and closer came the Tigers. Just as the lead tank had almost reached Shine, one of the
G.I.'s on the embankment panicked and began firing his rifle at it. The tank came to a sudden
stop just an arm's length from Shine; the turret began to traverse toward the slope as the tank
started to fire its cannon and rake the American positions with machine gun fire. Shine looked
around; there was nowhere to escape to. He could only continue to squat in the muddy water
and
hope for deliverance--or a quick end. The combined noise of the tank's engine, cannon and
machine guns was almost deafening; in the distance he began to hear the screaming of the
wounded infantrymen.

In moments, the column of tanks began to advance again. What now? Would there be German
infantry following? Shine thought of the previous Christmas he had spent at home with his
family in Connecticut, and suddenly felt lonely and forsaken; would this be a slaughter? To his
young eyes, the situation appeared hopeless.

Their landing in Europe hadn't been a dramatic one; Item Company, 289th Infantry had come to
France on a troop ship, and docked at Le Havre. Their division, the 75th, was one of many that
had been hastily formed for the final big push the Allies would make into Germany. The weeks
that had followed their landing had been filled with long, monotonous autumn days, bivouacked
in a muddy French meadow.

Then, on Christmas eve, without warning they had been loaded onto roofless semi-trailers.
Packed too close to do anything but stand, the infantrymen had watched in amazement as their
trucks roared eastward for four hours through the cold night, down the narrow dirt roads of
France and then Belgium.

No one had told them what to expect; they had no idea of the massive German penetration of the
Allied lines that was taking place. German tanks and infantry had, in a surprise attack, created a
huge "bulge" in the American lines in the Belgian forest known as the Ardennes. The Battle of
the Bulge had not even been named yet; but it was to be a widespread and bloody conflict, as
Nazi Germany fanatically attempted a last breakthrough and the Allies fought desperately to
hold onto their positions.

Shine estimated that they were speeding along the dirt road at about sixty miles per hour. Other
vehicles on the road tried to make way for the convoy of trucks which were traveling through the
darkness without the aid of headlights. If another vehicle failed to clear a wide enough path, it
was smashed out of the way by the semis, which never even slowed down. The realization
began to grow within Shine that something was seriously wrong wherever they were headed, and that
they would be expected to help make it right.

The Allied generals had ordered the 75th to move up and relieve the 3rd Armored division.
Outside of Grandmenil, the men of Item Company disembarked from their trucks and set out on
foot toward the village. As they advanced, they were met by elements of the 3rd, who were
retiring from the field.

"What's up this road?"

"Nothing. All clear!" Item Company moved forward, reassured. They advanced in two files,
one along each shoulder of the road. Down the center of the road came the 3rd, who were
pulling back to regroup. Shine's company passed troops moving toward the rear on foot, along with a
number of Sherman Tanks, jeeps and halftracks. Some time after the last of the 3rd had passed
through them, they saw three more tanks approaching, and hadn't recognized them as the enemy
until it was too late.

It was almost 0100 hours, and Shine continued to crouch in the ditch. The Tiger had stopped
firing now, and had begun to move toward their rear. When the Tiger was about 100 yards
away, an American bazooka team fired one round into its radiator, disabling the tank. The other two
tank crews, seeing the flash and the disabled tank blocking the road, turned and made for the safety of
their own lines. The threat eliminated, Item Company re-formed on the dirt road and continued
their march on Grandmenil. Shine's boots and wool trousers were now soaked, and would remain so for many days.

The tank   (actually a Panther V) destroyed by Corporal Weigand of King Company, following Item Company up the dirt road.  The corporal was killed in action in the fighting at Grandmenil. (Click on images to enlarge)

Throughout the early morning hours, the infantrymen marched up the snowy dirt road, through
the forests of the Ardennes, and onward toward Grandmenil. Shine and his squad led the
advance, marching warily forward with their rifles poised and ready for instant action. With the
moon and starlight obscured by the heavy overcast, it would be nearly impossible to spot a
dug-in enemy until they were almost on top of him. Such were their fears as they emerged from
the sheltering woods and entered the fields surrounding Grandmenil.

The M-1 "Garand" rifles the infantrymen carried were a familiar burden on these marches. They
weighed almost ten pounds, and quickly sapped the strength in the soldiers' arms. But the G.I.s
loved their M-1s for their awesome firepower and deadly accuracy. The M-1's 30-'06 cartridges
could propel a copper-jacketed slug through a tree and drop an enemy soldier hiding behind it, if
such was necessary. To be among a rifle company firing M-1s in battle was truly a deafening
experience.

At dawn on Christmas day, Item Company waited at the edge of Grandmenil, a village so small
that it could be crossed by foot in less than five minutes--unless, of course the village was filled
with waiting German soldiers--and it was. The task of liberating the village had fallen upon the
Americans' young shoulders. As the soldiers waited for the order to attack, the Germans began
an artillery barrage of their positions.

Item Company was to attack the village with the support of Sherman tanks. Two of Shine's
friends huddled behind one of the tanks, seeking shelter from the German small arms fire that
had just begun. As Shine watched, a shell landed and exploded near to the two and flung their
bodies against the tank. They were killed instantly; there were almost no visible wounds, but the
concussion from the explosion left the two dead Americans looking like lumps of bread dough
thrown and flattened against a wall.

The Americans commenced their attack. The Sherman tanks advanced up the village streets
first, firing their cannons point-blank into the occupied houses of Grandmenil. Then the riflemen
followed. First they threw hand grenades into the houses; immediately after the explosions, they
sprayed the insides of the houses with rifle fire, and then entered.

Shine and another young soldier entered one house. Inside the house, a dazed German reached
for his gun. There was no time to ask him to surrender; the soldier with Shine quickly raised his
Colt automatic pistol and fired. The .45 caliber bullet hit the German soldier squarely in the
forehead, and the top of his head was blown completely off.

The Germans fought desperately; the Americans were forced to take Grandmenil one house at a
time. As Christmas day progressed, many young Americans and Germans made the ultimate
sacrifice for their countries.

At day's end, Item Company had driven the Germans from Grandmenil, and had dug their
foxholes in a defensive line along the edge of town. Twenty four hours earlier, none of them had
ever seen battle; now they were veterans.

Christmas night would be another cold, cloudy night with temperatures below twenty degrees.
The winter of 1944-45 would be remembered as the coldest winter in forty years, and the men of
the 75th spent most of it outside, with frozen feet. As he settled down for his first sleep in two
days, Shine became aware again of his feet, which were painfully cold. Funny, but he hadn't
noticed them all day.

Behind him, Grandmenil's ruins smouldered and burned. Shine thought of his grandmother's
hometown of Zell, in Germany's Moselle valley fifty miles to their east. He couldn't help but
wonder if he had been fighting against any of his German cousins that day, or if he would face
them on some future day.

They couldn't use their sleeping bags that night--"Purple Heart Bags" they were called. If the
Germans counterattacked during the night, the Americans could be bayoneted in their bags
before they could free themselves and reach for their weapons. So Shine and the rest of Item
Company lay in the frozen earth, with their frozen feet and shivered themselves into a fitful
sleep. A sleep filled with thoughts of those whom they had killed, and those friends who would
never be going home; friends who now lay frozen on the snowy ground of Grandmenil.

And meanwhile, back at home, choirs were singing of Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men.

America! Christmas! As he drifted off to sleep, Shine wondered if he would ever see home
again; indeed he wondered if he would live to see another Christmas.

Frozen Hell

Near Salmchateau, Belgium
1500 hours January 14, 1945

A young soldier cautiously approached Item Company's line of snowy foxholes as the afternoon
sky began to darken. To the men nearby he looked like a rookie; he was clearly timid about
entering this place of death and destruction. His uniform was still almost spotless. No doubt
he'd been eating hot "C" rations and sleeping under cover right up until now.

They observed him casually. A battle veteran could usually tell whether a new man would crack
under fire, just by looking at him, and you didn't want a guy to crack up while he was sharing
your foxhole. This particular guy had a baby face, and probably hadn't even started to shave yet.
He couldn't be more than eighteen. The occasional German mortar shell that fell nearby made
him jump.

>From his foxhole, Sergeant Gilbert spoke to the new private and pointed to an open spot in the
line of foxholes. The replacement turned and made his way to the appointed spot. He leaned his
M-1 up against a tree, and took out his entrenching tool. In moments, he was chipping at the
frozen surface of the Belgian soil.

Over the next twenty minutes, the sounds of chopping and digging filled the air. Twice as he
dug, the replacement slipped and almost fell into his unfinished foxhole. The men watched
silently as he glanced around and tried to regain his dignity.

Finally, his hole complete, the replacement grabbed his rifle, climbed in, and took his position
on the line. No doubt he was trying to figure out what would happen next.

He probably never heard the fluttering sound of the approaching mortar shell, but the men
around him did, and they ducked deeper into their foxholes. An abrupt explosion shook the ground and
threw bits of something through the air; there were the sudden smells of burned cordite and
singed flesh.

The soldiers looked in horror at the foxhole of the new replacement. Smoke billowed out of it,
and pieces of bloody flesh were everywhere. Tattered bits of his uniform and a length of
intestine hung from broken tree branches above the burned foxhole, and next to the tree lay a
boot with part of a leg still in it.

That was it, thought Private Daniel R. "Bob" Shine as he sat in his foxhole watching the day turn
into night. One minute you're alive and all in one piece; the next minute you're gone and nobody
has even had the time to find out who you were. And God knows where your dog tags were
blown to... Although he and the other men had seen this kind of thing happen before, nobody
ever really got used to it. Night fell, and it began to snow, masking the frozen pieces of what
had once been a man.

In the early morning hours Item Company assembled for their attack of Salmchateau. Today
they would be facing elements of the 326th Volksgrenadiers and remnants of the 62nd
Volksgrenadiers.

Shine was the bodyguard to Lieutenant Rocco Durante. He and the lieutenant led their platoon
through the snowy predawn darkness and the day's first light. As it became fully light, they left
the forest and followed a dirt road into the village. This was usually the moment when things
began to happen, and as the second man in the advancing column, Shine was frightened. As was
often said, "Any man who wasn't frightened at these moments would have to be insane".

They had almost reached a bridge leading into town, when there was a sharp "crack" to their
right front, and the lieutenant went down. Shine, following him about three paces back, rolled
Durante over and saw a bullet hole cutting the lieutenant's belt loop just to the right of the belt
buckle. As he took the lieutenant's pants down, he saw the point of the bullet just breaking the
skin near the lieutenant's groin. Evidently the bullet had ricocheted off of a bone.

To remain stationary in a spot such as this was to invite disaster. Shine and the others moved
forward, and left the lieutenant for the medical corpsmen who would be following.

To the foot soldier of WWII, nothing was more reassuring than the feel of an M-1 rifle in his
hands. It promised power and accuracy at the squeeze of a trigger. It also promised to be a
heavy burden on a long march. The M-1 rifle weighed almost ten pounds--about twice the
weight of an M-1 carbine. In the infantry, enlisted men carried the rifles and officers carried the
carbines.

Behind Shine, Private Krizan eyed the M-1 carbine dropped by the lieutenant. Like most
riflemen, his arms ached from carrying the heavy rifle; here was something more attractive. He
picked up the carbine and resumed his advance. That was the last mistake he ever made.

There was another sharp "crack" from the high ground on their right, and Krizan went down and
rolled over on his back. Shine looked back at Krizan; he lay there with a neat little bullet hole
right between his glazed eyes. Beneath his head, a crimson stain began to spread in the white
snow. The sniper, seeing a carbine in Krizan's grip had mistaken him for an officer, and killed
him.

About this time Shine figured his number was coming up. He ran and caught up with the squad
as they prepared to clear the first house on their side of the street. Private "Snuffy" Toth went
into the front door, fragmentation grenade in hand with pin pulled, threw the grenade and turned
to get out. As he turned, he slipped on the ceramic tile floor and fell. Before he could get up the
grenade exploded. Snuffy staggered out the door and went down again. He was badly shaken
up, and the squad left him behind for the medics as they advanced through the town from house
to house, clearing them as they went. Most of the Germans had fled. There was no further
sniper fire, but still some incoming artillery and a few pockets of resistance from the houses.

Late in the evening, they found three or four Germans holed up in a cellar at the far edge of
town. One of them made a menacing move and the three Americans facing them fired at once. The
result was devastating.

Item Company spearheaded the attack on Salmchateau and won the town, thus meeting their
objective. Their ranks had been thinned that day by deaths, wounds and frostbite cases. Snuffy
Toth was finished as a front line soldier; the explosion of his grenade had left him shell-shocked.
He was eventually evacuated. Lieutenant Durante was also evacuated, and they didn't see him
again.

Shine's squad spent the night billeted in the stucco and stone houses of Salmchateau, while
outside, the dead of both armies froze into grotesque positions. And as the dead and the living
slept, once again it began to snow...



Bloody Ridge

Salmchateau, Belgium
January 16, 1945

Private Daniel R. "Bob" Shine stared up at the snow-covered ridge in disbelief. This would
surely be the end for him. The lieutenant's words rang in his ears, "When we charge the ridge,
you three run straight for that big foxhole and knock it out."

Sheltered within the high foxhole were three German soldiers firing Schmeisser machine pistols
down at the Americans. As the rifle company's first wave advanced up that ridge, it would fall
upon these three young G.I.'s to eliminate that particular threat.

The three Germans seemed to have every advantage: they were elevated, they had adequate
cover, and they all had rapid firing weapons. Shine could hear the Schmeissers distinctly now.
They fired so fast that it sounded like cloth tearing. To charge straight toward that foxhole
seemed practically suicidal.

Shine thought of his parents and his girl, Muriel back at home; how he wished he could see them
all just one more time. Well, things at home would just have to go on without him, he guessed.

Shine took a moment to say a prayer for his survival in this assault. If he was to be hit, he hoped
that the wound would be enough to send him home. If it was his fate to die on this day, he hoped
the end would be quick and clean, and not a lingering death like so many he had seen. He
couldn't help but wonder if God was listening to American or German prayers this day.

Before they had attacked the village of Salmchateau, the soldiers in Shine's squad had traded in
their M-1 rifles for M-3 "grease gun" submachineguns which were useful for house-to-house
fighting. The grease gun was capable of putting a lot of lead in the air, which was also good in
times like this. Shine hated the grease guns however, because they had a deadly design flaw.
The magazine release stuck out in a bad spot where the soldier often bumped it against his body,
dropping the ammunition magazine on the ground at his feet. This left the G.I. with an empty
gun, usually at the worst possible moment. Like right now.

At the signal, the three riflemen, along with the rest of the first wave were up and running at top
speed, dodging left and right to evade enemy fire. Spaced just six feet apart, they made excellent
targets for the Germans above them. Up the steeply sloping ridge ran the three, consumed by the
noise and fury of war, and firing their weapons in short bursts as they ran. To the left and right,
running soldiers suddenly fell, turning the snow bright red beneath them. At any moment, Shine
expected to feel the sting of a bullet hitting him.

By the time the Americans had reached the foxhole, all three Germans had been hit. They lay in
the snow, writhing and bleeding from ugly wounds, and making the strange noises that dying
men make. A wounded German, however, could still shoot you in the back as you passed him.
So, the three Americans, themselves miraculously unhit, finished the Germans off and continued
their charge. On either side of them, other surviving members of the first wave advanced, some
firing, some falling, as they closed in on their objective.

The Germans were driven from the ridge above Salmchateau that day, but the cost was dear.
Many of Shine's friends in the company were killed, and many more were wounded. They'd all
watched helplessly as their sergeant, Roberts had bled to death after receiving a shrapnel wound
in the back. The medical corpsmen and the riflemen in Roberts' squad had tried to reach him, but
were pinned down under heavy fire. So Roberts had died, alone in the bloody snow.

They dug in on the ridge for another frozen night in the field. Salmchateau and "Bloody Ridge"
as it would become known, were now in American hands.

Shine crouched in his foxhole and peered off through the darkness toward where the enemy must
be. Somehow today, his number hadn't come up. The three Germans in that foxhole had been
very young and inexperienced "Volkssturm" troopers, and not combat-hardened veterans. This
stroke of luck alone had saved the three Americans, and had cost the three young Germans their
lives.

But what of tomorrow, and the next day? Today he'd lost his sergeant. Yesterday, they'd
evacuated his lieutenant, Durante to a rear area hospital after he was shot in the hip by a sniper.
Just how long would Shine's own luck hold?

There were--and there would be--no medals for the three Americans who charged that foxhole;
today had simply been business as usual. Nor would there be elation, nor remorse; just the weary
realization that they'd survived another day, and were one day closer to the end of the war.

As the blackness of sleep met the blackness of the Belgian winter night, Shine, filthy, hungry,
exhausted and frozen, prayed for his luck to hold just a little bit longer--and for the war to end
before that luck ran out.

...decades have passed since those terrible months when we endured the mud of Lorraine, the
bitter cold of the Ardennes, the dank cellars of Saarlutern . . . We were miserable and cold and
exhausted most of the time, we were all scared to death . . . But we were young and strong then,
possessed of the marvelous resilience of youth, and for all the misery and fear and the hating
every moment of it, the war was a great, if always terrifying adventure. Not a man among us
would want to go through it again, but we are all proud of having been so severely tested and
found adequate. The only regret is for those of our friends who never returned.


Bronze Star

Appenwihr, France
February 1, 1945

As the screaming artillery shells fell and exploded around them, a dozen GIs sprinted for the
safety of the distant woods and their own lines. The deep snow sucked at their feet and caused
them to slip as the bursting shells showered them with clods of frozen dirt. The German artillery
seemed sure to annihilate them at any moment.

Private Daniel R. "Bob" Shine felt as though his lungs would burst. As radioman for the
reconnaisance squad, he carried all of his normal fighting equipment, plus their SCR-300
shortwave radio, which was housed in a large backpack. In all, he was running with more than
seventy pounds of equipment strapped to his body. Shine felt as if he couldn't run another step,
but run he did. Run or be blown to bits in this open field outside the village of Appenwihr.

BOOM! One shell fell much closer than the rest, landing less than forty feet away. A running
GI stumbled and fell. When he got back onto his feet, it was clear that the force of the
explosion had rattled his head. The woods were getting closer now, but so were the explosions.
Would they make it in time?

The Allied Forces had fought and won the Battle of the Bulge. It had taken them over a month
to retake the ground they had lost to the Germans in those few days before Christmas, 1944. For
the front line infantrymen, it had been a month of stark terror. Every soldier had vivid memories
of comrades who had been killed in the effort. Memories of those who had died stoically, and
those who had given up their lives in fits of terror while calling for their mothers and their God
to save them. No matter what their rank or how they had died, death had brought them together as
equals now, lying silent and numb beneath the fields of Belgium.

At the close of the Bulge, the survivors from the 75th Division had been loaded onto railroad
boxcars. These were called "40 and 8s"--French boxcars left over from WWI. On the sides of
the cars were signs saying in French, "40 men, 8 horses." The 40 and 8s were unventilated and
unheated and they had no sanitary accomodations. But the GIs didn't care, for it was rumored
that they were to be taken from the battle line and sent to the rear area for a much needed rest.
This was not to be.

The steam locomotives had pulled the long troop trains south for two miserable days, and the
infantrymen had then disembarked in eastern France, where the foothills of the Alps come
together with the Vosges Mountains. There, the Germans had chosen to stand and fight in a
corner of France known as the Colmar Pocket.

In the closing months of the war, Hitler had bolstered his shrinking armies by the use of 15 year
old boys and 45 year old men as his Volkssturm troopers. They were generally not as effective
as seasoned combat soldiers, and often surrendered or got themselves killed needlessly. The
Germans in the Colmar Pocket however were regular army, members of the 305th
Volksgrenadiers and the Wermacht's 198th Division. They were hardened veterans and well
equipped. And they were still able to make the Americans pay dearly for every town they
captured.

As the Americans had disembarked from the trains the realization hit them that they were merely
trading one snow-covered battlefield for another. The previously hopeful mood of the troops
quickly became somber and fearful.

Nonetheless, they'd immediately taken the towns of Holzwihr and Bishwihr, and in a coordinated
attack, they'd captured the heavily defended town of Andolsheim. Still, there were more towns
to be taken, and still the American infantry fought with wet and frozen feet. And through the
long nights, they continued to sleep in foxholes hacked from the snowy ground.

Near-starvation was as life threatening as enemy fire at times. Recently, the GIs had been
forced to steal their food in order to eat. It was a real challenge in the face of all this adversity to
keep fighting an honorable fight and not become the animal that one's circumstances might
dictate.

Before dawn the next morning, the Americans received the order to attack Appenwihr.
Thankfully, their advance was preceeded by an artillery bombardment. Then the tanks moved in
ahead of the foot soldiers, who carefully walked in the tracks of the tanks to avoid any waiting
land mines.

Shine's squad was one of those chosen to lead the attack, and Shine, who was the lieutenant's
bodyguard, was close to the very front of the action as the infantrymen headed out across the
open field.

"Infantry," he thought to himself. Literally, "the children." That was exactly what Shine felt
they resembled as they moved forward. Small, seemingly defenseless, yet hurling themselves
relentlessly against a powerful, dug-in enemy. He could picture their advance as seen from a
distance, tiny soldiers dwarfed by the forests and the surrounding mountains. Enemy fire was intensifying;
they were getting close now . . .

CLANG! Shine's head was suddenly wrenched to one side, and he fell, not knowing whether he
was alive, dead or dying. An intense ringing had begun in his ears, and suddenly his head and
neck ached. Reaching up, he ran his fingers over his steel helmet, searching for the cause of his
pain. On the left side, just above his ear, was the smooth entrance hole made by a bullet. Just
above his other ear was the jagged exit hole of the same bullet. Through the pain and the
dazedness of just having rerouted an enemy slug, Shine realized that he had once again been
incredibly lucky. The bullet had traveled between his helmet and liner and exited the helmet
without ever touching him.

Before the GIs' attack of Appenwihr, the artillery supporting the German troops had been
destroyed by American howitzers, directed in their efforts by brave artillery spotters flying single
seater Piper Cubs. Without artillery support, the Germans were forced to retreat. But it was a
slow, grudging, organized retreat, and in no way a rout. The Americans would continue to pay a
high price for their real estate aquisitions.

At dusk Shine's platoon had dug a line of foxholes just outside of Appenwihr. The Germans had
been pushed back to the next village, Hettenschlag.

Midnight. Another night, another town, another frozen foxhole. In this, the heart of the night, a
man could be so terribly alone. Alone with the ghosts of those he had killed as they sought to
kill him. Alone with memories of his home, his family, and above all, his girl. He smiled as he
thought of Muriel in her white nurse's uniform, and contrasted it with his own uniform, which
stank of sweat and mud and worse. He smiled again as he thought of his last shower, which was
weeks ago. Hot water. And soap. How good it had felt! Their uniforms had been far beyond
cleaning, so they were issued new wool trousers and tunics. Now those clothes too bore the
stains of food and mud and gun oil.

Shine couldn't sleep. His stomach churned with the diarrhea that was plaguing most of the men.
He thought of the taking of Andolsheim a few days before. During the fighting, his friend Joe
Feeney had run up to him yelling, "Your coat's on fire!" There directly above his heart, a large
piece of shrapnel had come to rest. Still hot from the explosion that had freed it, the steel shard
had caused a smoldering in his overcoat before Shine had even noticed it. How was it that he
had been spared from death or terrible injury so many times and in so many ways?

In the darkness, he removed his boots and wet socks and began to rub his feet as the GIs were
instructed to do to prevent frostbite. Like every front line soldier, dead or alive, Shine had his
second pair of socks hanging around his neck to dry. He removed them from his neck and put
them and his wet boots back on. The wet socks were then hung around his neck, and the process
continued. The army's leaky leather boots ensured perpetually wet feet for everyone, and Shine's
feet had been bright red for weeks. Everyone knew that waterproof, insulated shoepacks were
plentiful in the rear areas. Someday, maybe they'd be delivered to the guys who needed them the
most. The numbers of frostbite evacuations and amputations had become epidemic.

In the frozen darkness, his mind whirled. He thought back to the night they'd spent billeted in a
Belgian barn. They'd slept on a bed of hay that night; the barn was warmed by the bodies of the
cows kept within it. One of the dogfaces had rolled over carelessly during the night and had set
off one of his fragmentation grenades; luckily, he was the only one killed by it.

In his mind's eye, the face of Captain Applegate passed before him. Good old Captain
Applegate, Commanding Officer of Company K. Shine, in Company I looked up to and
respected Applegate, as did all the soldiers who knew him. Just that day, Shine had seen
Applegate's jeep and driver parked in the rear area. "How's Applegate doing?" The driver gave
him a funny look and jerked a thumb at the small G.I. blanket folded up in the back of the jeep.
Wrapped in that blanket was all that remained of the captain, who was blasted into eternity that
day by some distant German cannon.

And Shine thought of that backpack radio of his. That damned SCR-300 that attracted the
attention of snipers everywhere. Snipers. He thought of the team of snipers that had briefly
halted their attack of Appenwihr that day, until a bazooka team had blown up the church steeple
in which they were sheltered. Shine had rejected repeated invitations to become a noncom, so
they'd placed him alongside of the lieutenant, at the head of every charge, it seemed. And, he
noticed, he was losing a lieutenant a month; this was not a healthy spot to be in.

A choice target, that's what he had become. At last Shine drifted off to sleep, haunted by the
tormented image of himself in the crosshairs of a sniper's telescopic sights.

As the 75th completed the liberating of the villages surrounding Colmar, the French 1st Army
took Colmar itself. Subsequently the combined American and French forces joined up in
pushing the Germans back across the Rhine and on into Germany itself. From then on, the
German would no longer fight on foreign soil; now he would fight for home and fatherland. No
doubt this would strengthen his resolve, and he and his comrades could be expected to fight like
demons from hell.

The men of the 75th prepared to board trucks taking them onward to some distant and unknown
battlefield. All roads led to Berlin it seemed, and one of those roads would be theirs. The trucks
would take them to a railroad siding where they would board troop trains headed north to the
Netherlands.

February 9 was to be the 75th's last day in the Colmar Pocket. It was, by coincidence, the
beginning of the warm spell that the GIs had been praying for. At last, their wet feet would be
safe from the dreaded frostbite. As they prepared to depart for their next battle, several
trucks suddenly roared up and were unloaded. The GIs stared, dumbfounded. At last they had
what they no longer needed--the insulated, waterproof shoepacks!

For his months of service as the bodyguard to his platoon leader, and for his faithfulness to duty
and for the extreme risks taken in combat, Shine earned a citation and later the Bronze Star for
valor. In all, he served under four lieutenants. During that time three of them were killed or
wounded.