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Blood and Candles: The Story of a World War II Infantryman
by Edward T. Richardson Jr.
140 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #02-0110; ISBN 1-55369-297-7; US$20.50, C$25.95, EUR16.90, £11.70
An attorney, photographer and prominent conservationist tells the story of his experiences in the Army during WWII, including seven months of intense battle in which he was one of only three members of his original platoon of sixty to survive without casualty. Blood and Candles includes photos taken by the author and others with camera and film 'liberated' during the war.
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About the book About the author Sample excerpts Catalogue info
About the BookIn the author's words, taken from the preface:
A remarkable story of courage, resourcefulness, tragedy and humor, Blood and Candles is unlike any other account of World War II that has ever been published.
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About the AuthorEdward T. Richardson, Jr. was born in Portland, Maine on August 22, 1921. His family moved to South Portland in 1925, where he has lived since that time. He is a graduate of South Portland High School and Bowdoin College. He took courses at the University of Paris while serving with the Army in 1945 and after the War he attended Northeastern University Law School on the GI Bill, graduating in 1950. His activities as a member of the United States Army in the Second World War, including extensive combat experience, are documented in this book. He received the Combat Infantry Badge for the European Theater and North Atlantic Theater of Operations ribbons. Mr. Richardson was admitted to the Maine Bar in 1950 and became associated with a law firm specializing in insurance company defense work. His law practice soon branched out into a variety of fields including real estate and probate law and a specialization in conservation law. In addition to his law practice Mr. Richardson also operated an insurance photography business, taught Constitutional Law at the Portland University Law School, and was a Field Investigator for the American Bar Foundation in connection with legal representation for indigent defendants in the Maine criminal courts. He has served on both state and local boards and commissions relating to the environment. As a lawyer Mr. Richardson is most noted for his pioneering work in the formation and development of several conservation organizations, most notably The Nature Conservancy, to which he devoted thirty years as counsel, trustee and officer. He wrote Maine's first Conservation Easement statute, was a founding member and secretary of the organization that pushed through the referendum that resulted in the acquisition of the Bigelow Mountain Range as a public domain, and he is the author of a history of the Maine chapter of The Nature Conservancy published in 1989. Since his high school years Mr. Richardson has been an avid photographer and some of his wartime photographs are included in this book. He has taught and lectured in the field of nature photography and has made a particular specialty of black and white photography, developing and printing his own work since 1935. His photographs have been exhibited and published from time to time and he has received numerous awards for his photographic work. His interests and hobbies over the years, in addition to photography, have included hiking, camping and mountain climbing. Throughout his life he has had a passionate interest in classical music and he has a substantial record collection. |
Sample Excerpt
Chapter V: To the Roer
We finally struggled out of the Huertgen Forest and began heading toward the Roer River. Many outfits were going in the same direction. The Roer was the site of several dams, which if the Germans opened them could flood large areas of the countryside down below that would have greatly interfered with our advance. We went through several villages and experienced several minor skirmishes until we approached the Roer River opposite the city of Dueren, which is on the easterly side. We rested that night in a brickyard. My lieutenant wanted me to be his runner and I consented to this not realizing at the time the risks I was undertaking. Generally, the runners had a short operational life because they were often out moving around during the action. However, the lieutenant urged me to do it. He didn't order me, but he asked me to do it and I consented. It appealed to me because I've always been somewhat of a lone operator, as the runner has to be, and for this very reason it was not a popular function among most of the men who preferred the teamwork of the regular squad operation.
The lieutenant's name was Reardon. He was from Michigan and this was his third time up. He had been wounded out twice before and his nerves were pretty well shot. He realized this and he was very much afraid, as he made apparent to me, that he would get so nervous and jittery that he would do something foolish and expose either himself or the men to excessive danger. He asked me to spend the night with him in a brick kiln in the brickyard. Neither one of us could sleep very much so we made use of candle-making materials that the Germans had left there and made candles for a good part of the night while having conversation. He did most of the talking. I was a good listener and I found this a valuable asset in dealing with later platoon lieutenants whom I would serve. Finally, we got a little sleep and the next morning as soon as it got light we got ready to go.
There was a wide front where the whole battalion was involved, but we had a central area opening on a broad field, a garden actually, beyond which were a large factory and a town. I think it was Marienweiler. The day was intermittently rainy, the ground muddy, and we got off to a bad start because the opening of the attack was supposed to have been preceded by a barrage from our heavy artillery several miles in the rear. However, the heavy artillery got bogged down somewhere back there and we didn't get the barrage. We moved forward anyway, the infantry following the tanks. We got well out into the gardens and found that intelligence had fallen down on the job also. Right across the middle of the gardens was a big irrigation ditch and it was a very big one. It was at least fifteen feet wide and it must have been eight feet deep. The only fortunate thing about it was there was very little water in it. The tanks could not cross this and they couldn't sit out there as targets themselves so they swung around and headed back leaving us exposed. We already had been under fire to some degree from the time we started and now we were wide open moving forward in a frontal assault, the worst kind. Thus began the day that was to be I think the worst day of my life.
We carried on and were approaching that big irrigation ditch when at the far side of the field, several haystacks, or so we thought they were, burst apart and we found that they contained hidden tanks, mortars and machine gun nests. All of these opened up full blast at us and they were only about a hundred and fifty yards away. I was going along at the prescribed distance of about five yards from the lieutenant and a little to his rear and to his left. To my left was the platoon sergeant, about another five yards left and ahead of me. Lieutenant Reardon went down, the platoon sergeant went down and I hit the earth, although I wasn't hit.
We all hit the earth and began crawling toward the irrigation ditch. The heavy fire was tremendous. I had just gotten to the edge of the ditch when a mortar shell hit nearby and although none of the shrapnel touched me, the concussion knocked me into the ditch and stunned me for a few seconds. I came to with one of my buddies shaking my shoulder saying, "Richie, Richie, are you dead? Are you dead?" And I mumbled, "No, I'm not dead yet." Then I got myself together and went to the lieutenant. He was sitting, his back against the sloping sides of the ditch with that vacant, remote look in his eyes that seemed to be characteristic of dying men. I comforted him as best I could. He wanted water. I held him in my arms and gave him a little sip of water. He wanted a cigarette and I held a cigarette between his lips. He puffed one long puff and he died. I laid him down. It took me a few minutes to recover from that.
The memory of making candles with Lieutenant Reardon, which formed the background of a sudden, intense friendship, followed the next day by the very fate that my new-found friend dreaded so, suggested the title for this book.
Although numb with fear, I summoned a fatalistic attitude and looked around to see what I could do. One man, his arm torn off by shrapnel, in his mortal agony screamed curses at God. Others writhing in the mud screamed to God to save them. Still others moaned away their lives. Terror of death was everywhere. Men looked with horror at their own wounds gushing blood, some weeping, some cursing. The scene was one of sickening chaos.
The ditch was filled with men wounded, crying for the medics, shouting this and that, but still crawling in from the garden, falling, rolling into the ditch. The water that ran in the bottom of it was a mixture of mud and blood. It was about the color of tomato bisque. We had had three medics in the company starting out. Two of them were wounded and out of action. The remaining one happened to be one that I had gotten to know well. A very small but husky young fellow about eighteen years old, he was working his head off trying to treat the wounded. I went to his aid, got the supplies from the wounded medics and brought them to him, then helped him as he administered shots to the wounded men or tried to patch them up as best he could, because they were going to have to wait there until after the fighting before any relief could take them out.
Many of them, badly wounded as they were, would thrash around and further injure themselves and I tried to hold them down while my medic buddy gave them their shot of morphine. The morphine came in little tubes, one shot each and each with its own needle. He would carry them in a kind of vest that he wore under his jacket to keep them warm and he would inject them one by one. The medics had a saying that one shot brought relief, two shots brought eternity. I was in a state of shock I think, doing things more or less automatically and I'd reached the conclusion that I probably would never get out of there alive. I gave my overcoat to a wounded man to make him more comfortable. I had decided that overcoats were no proper combat uniform anyhow and never wore one afterward, relying instead during the rough winter weather on several layers of clothing, adding a layer each time it got colder.
Mortar shells were landing all around, sometimes in the ditch, creating more havoc and injury and death. All of our officers except the executive officer who stayed in the rear were wounded or killed, and finally he came forward and took command. Sergeants were taking charge, those that were left. I think we hardly would have survived any of this had not the heavy artillery finally got into place sometime in the afternoon and opened fire on the enemy. After a bit of this the Germans retreated and began going over the bridge to the city of Dueren across the river.
We then rallied and, under the command of our surviving officer, came out of the ditch and rushed forward to the factory, taking cover inside the buildings. We were still under sporadic fire as the Germans withdrew and when they got well across the river they began firing their 88s and their heavier artillery from there. However, by nightfall we had established ourselves in the factory and set up defensive positions. I was in such a state of nerves that night that I was unable to lie down and could hardly sit down. I spent a great deal of the night walking around inside the building, only occasionally sitting down, until finally I was able to sit down and doze for awhile.
At one point early on, before it became completely dark, we discovered that we needed water. The factory's water supply had been cut by artillery fire, but the well was still functioning outside the building. A man went out to get water and a sniper that the Germans had left behind - as was their custom in village fighting - knocked him down. Another man tried a different route and the sniper knocked him down. So the sergeant said to me, "Richie, see what you can do about getting us some water." I was not about to be the third man to get knocked down by that sniper, so I did a little scouting to see if I could locate where the sniper was and I figured out where he had to be.
There was a brick tower on the back of the mill, which was an old building. It had been hit by a light artillery shell that had knocked out a window and a portion of the wall of the tower leaving a gaping hole there. All of the other windows were tightly shut and there seemed to be no place on the roof that a man could hide, so I assumed that he had to be behind that opening somewhere. I looked up a friend of mine who was particularly good at the use of rifle grenades. He went out with me and we carefully scouted around keeping out of sight as best we could until we got in a suitable position. Then he fired a rifle grenade right through the middle of that hole. There followed a terrific explosion. Bricks and mortar, pieces of window and other things came flying out. I figured had there been a sniper in there, he was no longer alive, and scouting along the edge of the building and going from cover to cover as best I could, I got to the water and was able to bring back a jerry can full of it. I'm sure we got the sniper because we heard no more from him.
The next day reinforcements were brought up. Wounded men were carried out. What was left of our platoon, which wasn't much, the sergeant and a dozen men I guess, were posted into what had been the factory air-raid shelter as a sort of outpost. It was a massive building as the Germans built them with very thick walls. Two-thirds of it was underground and in it was the equipment including a big iron cook stove, a good supply of coal, dishes and so forth. We were supposed to stay there probably that day and one night. Sergeant says to me, "Richie, you are the cook," and I said, "Well, I'm sorry for you." But, they got cartons of "ten-in-one rations" to us. Those were rations in small cartons, waxed to make them water-proof. They contained quite a variety of highly concentrated food and were supposed to supply one man with rations for ten days or ten men for one day or any combination thereof. My approach was to take several cartons of those rations, dump all of the meat products into a huge skillet I found there - very much like the skillets you would find in an upstate Maine lumber camp - put it on the stove and cook up a big hash as the main item. That seemed to appeal to most everybody so I got it going and the smell of it was great. Everyone was ready.
Just about then the Germans pulled up a self-propelled 88 on the other side of the river and began zeroing in their shells right on the air-raid shelter. They wouldn't penetrate. That shelter must have been four feet thick with steel reinforced concrete. But, every time there was an explosion against the shelter, little flakes of concrete would peel off the inside of the ceiling and the walls. Some of them were falling into the hash which I had neglected to cover. I didn't know it and no one noticed it happening. The 88 quit. The 88s were on self-propelled mounts and they held a rack of eight shells. They would pull the self-propelled mount into a predetermined position, fire the eight shells in rather rapid succession and then pull out to another location before our heavy artillery could get zeroed in on them.
We gathered together to eat the hash. People began hoeing in. "Boy, isn't this great? Richie, you've done it." And just about then somebody said, "Richie, what have you done?" And they began to crunch on the little flakes of concrete. I think we ended up eating it anyway, but I never lived it down. Jokes would be made regarding Richie's concrete hash. Fortunately, we were relieved about midday and I didn't have to do any more cooking. What was left of us was pulled back and prepared for the next event.
This was the twelfth day of December 1944, a day that I have never forgotten and that I never want to repeat. There had been terrible sights that day. Our platoon staff sergeant had part of his hand shot off and he went screaming to the rear waving the bloody hand. Men fell wounded or dead. They were crushed under the tracks of tanks, or trampled into the mud by their buddies as they rushed for cover. That ditch must have presented a terrible sight when the graves registration people finally were able to get there because I remember well that when I left it it was almost solidly lined with bodies and blood.
As a result of this operation, my company, Company B of the 60th Infantry Regiment, received a presidential citation, which is rather a rarity for a small unit. They are frequently awarded, but usually to larger units. For a company to get one is quite unusual.
