In his book Brave Men which covered his reporting of WW II from the invasion of North Africa to August 1944  France, chapter 6  The Engineers War,  Ernie Pyle wrote.   " During the latter days of the Sicilian campaign, I spent all of my time with the combat engineers of two different divisions.   The engineers were in it up to their ears.   Scores of times during the Sicilian fighting I heard everybody from generals to privates remark that "This is certainly an engineers war."   And indeed it was.   Every foot of our advance upon the gradually withdrawing enemy was measured by the speed with which our engineers could open the highways, clear the mines, and bypass the blown bridges........
    The mine detector and the bulldozer were the two magic instruments of our engineering......In Sicily our Army would have been helpless without the bulldozer as it would have been without the jeep........I met a bulldozer driver who operated his huge clumsy machine with such utter skill that it was like watching  a magician do card tricks.   The driver was Joseph Campagnone.........who had been a "cat" operator ever since he started working.   I sat and watched him for two hours one afternoon while he ate away a rocky bank overhanging a blown road, and worked the stone into the huge hole until the road was ready for traffic again......Joe had one close shave.  He was bulldozing a bypass around a blown bridge when the blade of his machine hit a mine.   The explosion blew him off and stunned him, but he was not wounded.  The driver less dozer continued to run and drove itself over a fifty foot cliff, turning a somersault as it fell.   It landed right side up with the engine still going.
 
 
 

319th Engineer Combat Battalion
of the
     94th Infantry Division

---

  My neighbor observing my web page, produced this photo of a floating Bailey bridge.  I call it a floating Bailey as it appears to be constructed on a series of floats or barges.  This was occasionally done and I recall one such in downtown Rouen across the Seine which was placed on a series of canal boats.  The required pivoting action due to tides ect was accommodated in some manner which escapes me.  You will note by the signs on this bridge that it was constructed by   C  Company of the 319th Engineer Combat Bn. in May of 1945.   However it was dedicated to Sgt. Peter Medwick who as a member of C Company was killed in action on September 18, 1944 near Blain, France.    Peter Medwick was my neighbors uncle and if anyone viewing this page served with the 319th or knew Sgt. Medwick she would appreciate hearing from you.      Even at this late date you never know, drop me an e-mail and I will put you in touch with her.

        After the above article being on this page for about 3 years, in October of this year (2000)   I received an e-mail which was like a voice from the past, reaching out over a span of 55 years.  Of all places it came all the way from Alaska, the content was:
    Hello;
            I visited your WW II Generation Tales page and saw the floating Bailey Bridge built for Peter Medwick by Company C of the 319th Engr. Combat Bn.  You said he was an uncle of your neighbor.  My uncle S/Sgt. John Schreier, also had a floating Bailey built for him.  He was killed in Jan. 1945 near Besch, Germany.  Both my uncle and Peter Medwick and the bridges are mentioned on page 469 of the "History of the 94th Infantry Division in WW II", edited by Lt. Laurence G. Byrnes.  Please tell your neighbor she can contact me if she would like to.  I have a listing of men from Co. C that might have known her uncle.

S/Sgt. John L. Schreier, from St. Paul, Minnesota, was killed in January 1945 near Besch, Germany, while serving with Company B, 319th Engineer Combat Battalion, 94th Infantry Division.  A bridge was erected in his honor by Company B.

    Rose Crupi, Peter Medwicks niece after receiving the information, which contained the addresses of several veterans of the 319th Engineers, wrote to them and some of their responses follow.

    Dear Mrs. Crupi,
            Yes Rose I knew Peter well.  We was together in the same company from the time the 94th Division formed until Peter was killed.   I do believe you would want to know how it happened.  Peter and his squad were putting in booby traps.   Between our lines and the German lines.  When one of Peters men was trying to install the AP mine and was having a problem with the firing pin.  Peter went over and moved all his men away from the danger area.   Peter proceeded to correct the problem.  At that time the firing pin to the firing device came out allowing the firing pin to go forward igniting the booster charge.   This booster charge in turn sends the canister of ball bearings 3' to 5' in the air and explodes sending ball bearings in all directions.  In other words if you were there from the time the firing pin went forward if you were fast, you might have time to hit the ground.   No maam Peter did not have a chance to get out of harms way.   He did move his men to a safe position before attempting to correct the problem.
    Yes he was a true leader of men and had a lot of respect for others.  Yes he was missed by every one that knew him.  He was that calibre of a person.
    It's been a long time and I know all about this old age,  I will be 80 years old Feb 4, 2001.
        I hope I have been some help in this matter to you.
                                                                         Thank you & God Bless
                                                                                Adus J. Clark

  Having re-enlisted into the U.S. Army while with the 488th Engineers in Holland in November of 1945.    I had been on furlough in the States and in the spring of 1946 was returned to Europe.  After the usual rounds of Repple Deppl's I was assigned to the 346th Engineer General service Regiment stationed here at the Vaihingen Kaserne.  After a few days in a line company I was called up to Regimental Hq. by the Personnel officer,  2nd Lt. Albert Brenman.  who asked if I would like to become his driver as well as a Regimental Courier.  This was an opening which I gladly accepted as it got one out of the hum drum of daily life of a line company and into Hq. & Service company which was a much more relaxed military atmosphere.   After morning formation each individual pretty much went there own way to whatever there assignment might be.
    There was two of us regimental couriers and we alternated every other day between daily official runs to the local military Brigade Hq. in Stuttgart and on the odd day to 3rd Army Hq in Heidelburg.  The only drawback to the local Stuttgart trip was that one also picked up the daily Stars & Stripes Newspapers for the entire Reg.. and one couldn't dally to much on this trip.  As I had noticed that as I drove into the 346th Hq. building parking area each day, I could see Colonel Rogers in his office window awaiting the daily news paper.   The Heidelburg trip with official mail was an all day affair with lunch at a transient mess in down town Heidelburg on the Karlsplatz.
    On the short days we might drive on various field trips with either the Regtl. Personnel Officer or the Regtl. Executive Officer 1 st Lt. Ralph Kristoferson.
    One memorable trip I recall on the Heidelburg run started one morning when Lt. Kristoferson called me to his office and asked if I would mind having a passenger on this days run.  Naturally I said "No, I would welcome the company."   He then directed me to go to the 91st. general hospital in Stuttgart and proceed to the nurses quarters and that inside on the 1st floor I would find a phone with which to call and announce that I was there to pick up a Nurse Lt., whose name escapes me.   As she had the day off and she would enjoy a day trip to Heidelburg.  This sounded like a winner to me, so I carefully followed instructions and when I got there, to this country boy the first floor was that one up there.  So up I went looking for a phone.  Suddenly all hell broke loose and a whole bevy of pajama clad females were stampeding about and hollering about a man being on the floor.  I looked around and couldn't see him.   I didn't really run back down the stairway but admit I was moving pretty fast.    (Ala Satchel Paige)    I was sure I could feel something gaining on me.  Sure enough those footsteps, I felt, turned out to be the biggest, orneriest nurse in full regalia that I had ever seen and to top that all off she had an Eagle on her collar.  Well she started up one side and down the other with some pretty harsh rhetoric.  I didn't really get a chance to say anything and had visions of MP's being next, but luckily my Lt. Nurse, who I hadn't met until now came on the scene.  It took a bit of doing but she finally convinced the Colonel that I hadn't been in the facility all night and that this trip was on the up and up.  If you recall in those days it was not normal procedure for a Cpl. to be escorting a female 2nd Lt.  In any case we went on to have a good day and took the grand tour of Old Heidelburg but that is another story for another time.
    Recently surfing the web I came across a page which consisted of the commentary of Don Chestnut about his service in the 346th at the Vaihinge Kaserne from (September 1946 to February 1947). CLICK 
 
 

    Unfortunately, heavy bomber missions could cause serious problems. The first two strikes on Caen resulted in numerous "collateral" casualties to French civilians. Sometimes friendly troops were victims of misplaced bomb strikes. In the Normandy campaign, as in other campaigns, air and land forces had to get used to working together. Bradley remarked after the war that "we went into France almost totally untrained in air-ground cooperation." It is difficult to accept this statement at face value because the air and ground forces worked together with an unprecedented harmony. Nevertheless, in the very early stages of Normandy some "disconnects" did occur between the air and land communities. Friendly troops experienced attacks from Allied fighter-bombers. To minimize this danger, air and ground commanders arranged for friendly forces to pull back in anticipation of
an air strike against German positions. But if communication failed and the strike did not come off, troops found themselves fighting twice for the same piece of real estate as German forces moved back into the gap. Soon commanders learned to follow-up air strikes with artillery barrages so that friendly infantry and armor forces could close with the demoralized enemy before he recovered and redeployed. Within six weeks after the Normandy landing, air and land forces were so confident of working together that fighter-bombers routinely operated as close as 300 yards to American forces. This was not true, unfortunately, of strategic bomber operations, as the strikes of late July and August clearly indicated.

    The most publicized example of the difficulties of operating heavy and medium bombers in support of ground forces came during the preparatory bombardment for Operation Cobra, the breakthrough attack at Saint-Lo that led to the breakout across France.  The Cobra strikes killed slightly over 100 GIs and wounded about 500. Without a doubt, the strikes were badly executed, and serious command errors were made. The first came on July 24, a cloudy day, when Cobra had been initially set for launch. A postponement order reached the Eighth Air Force Commander, Lt. Gen. James H. "Jimmy" Doolittle, too late: the Eighth's bombers were already airborne. Most crews wisely refrained from bombing due to weather and returned to base. Some found conditions acceptable and did drop.  Friendly casualties occurred in three instances. When another plane in the formation was destroyed by flak, a bombardier accidently toggled his bomb load on an Allied airstrip, damaging planes and equipment. A lead
bombardier experienced "difficulty with the bomb release mechanism" and part of his load dropped, causing eleven other bombardiers to drop, thinking they were over the target. Finally, a formation of five medium bombers from the Ninth Air Force dropped seven miles north of the target, amid the 30th Infantry Division. This latter strike inflicted the heaviest casualties 25 killed and 131 wounded-on the first day that Cobra was attempted.

    The next day, in better weather, there were three more friendly bombings, all by B-24s. First, a lead bombardier failed to synchronize his bombsight properly, so that when he dropped-and eleven other bombers dropped on his signal-a total of 470 100-lb high- explosive bombs fell behind the lines. Then a lead bombardier failed to properly identify the target and took the easy way out- bombing on the flashes of preceding bombs. A total of 352 260-lb fragmentation bombs fell in friendly lines. In the third case, a command pilot overrode his bombardier and dropped on previous bomb flashes; previous bombs had been off target but within a safe "withdrawal" zone. The pilot's bombs fell within friendly territory.

    All of the above errors were incidental to the real causes of the tragic bombings-the restricted size of the bomb zone and confusion over whether the air attack would be flown perpendicular or parallel to the front lines. The Army wanted a parallel
attack so that short bombs would not land in friendly territory. (Actually, this approach would not guarantee an absence of friendly casualties.) The AAF, concerned about the run-in to the target and enemy antiaircraft fire, preferred to fly a perpendicular approach. AAF bomber commanders also recognized that the "heavies" were not as precise as the fighter-bombers. They asked  Bradley to keep friendly troops at least 3,000 yards from the bomb line; Bradley compromised on a minimal distance of 1,200 yards, with a preced- ing fighter bomber attack to cover the next 250 yards so that, in fact, the heavy and medium bombers would strike no closer than 1,450 yards-a distance a heavy bomber would cover in approximately fifteen seconds. A distinct aiming point and a split-second precise drop were thus critical.

    Despite Bradley's later claims that the AAF was enthusiastic over the strikes, evidence indicates that the strategic bomber people were anything but enthusiastic. In general, the strategic bomber commanders-British as well as American-believed that any diversion from their strategic air campaign against the Nazi heartland weakened their effort. The AAF leadership also had strong feelings-communicated directly to Eisenhower-that the Cobra bombings were questionable because they would involve the dropping of a large quantity of bombs in the shortest possible span of time in a restricted bombing zone. However, the AAF was overruled and the operation went forward. Whenever American bombers executed a perpendicular run, Bradley alleged that it violated a previous decision. After the short bombings of July 24, Bradley had ordered an immediate investigation of why the strike group had flown a perpendicular course. The AAF replied that such a course had been previously agreed upon, and ground forces had been informed. Shortly before his death, in his autobiography, A General's Life, Bradley charged that the "Air Force brass simply lied," though earlier writings had been far more temperate. One wonders whether this bold statement merely reflected the hardening of age.

    In any case, Bradley reluctantly concurred with AAF plans for another attack on July 25 (though he has stated he did so because he was over an "impossible barrel"). During this series of strikes occurred the most sensational casualty of Cobra. Lt. Gen. Leslie J. McNair, former Commander of Army Ground Forces and currently the "commander" of the fictional "1st Army Group," was killed in his foxhole by a direct bomb hit as he waited to observe the follow-up ground attack McNair's death and the other friendly casualties infuriated the ground forces, perhaps in part because they remembered the general's vociferous criticism of the air support organization in 1942-43. Strangely, the tragedy seems not to have harmed ground-air relations at higher command levels.
Though Bradley has stated that Eisenhower informed him that strategic bombers should no longer be used to support ground forces, this is not evident Tom Eisenhower's written comments. In fact, American "heavies" continued to be used in troop support missions, notably in the German winter offensive. Eisenhower's comments after Cobra's bombing were far less critical than might have been expected:

    The closeness of air support given in this operation, thanks to our recent experiences, was such as we should never have dared to attempt a year before. We had indeed made enormous strides forward in this respect, and from the two Caen operations [the stnkes of July 8 and 18] we had learnt the need for a quicker ground follow-up on the conclusion of the bombing, for the avoidance of Catering and for attacks upon a wider range of targets to the rear and on the flanks of the main bombardment area. our technique, however, was still not yet perfected, and some of our bombs fell short, causing casualties to our own men. Unfortunately, perfection in the employment of comparatively new tactics, such as this close-support carpet bombing, is attainable only through the process of trial and error, and these regrettable losses were part of the inevitable price of experience [emphasis added].

    Though the preparatory bombing was tinged with faulty planning, sloppy execution, and bad luck, Operation Cobra itself was a masterful operation. We will probably never know precisely who was responsible for the short bombings. Certainly, the AAF was not entirely to blame. John J. Sullivan's incisive examination of the Cobra operation rightly concluded that there was no duplicity on the part of the AAF (much less "lies"), and that, in fact, the AAF had been most reluctant to undertake the operation at all. The ground commanders did not take adequate precautions to protect their troops, and thus, Sullivan concluded, Bradley and his fellow ground commanders bore "full responsibility" for the bombing casualties to exposed troops. Yet, in fairness, the airmen must share
some responsibility-Tom Tedder and Leigh-Mallory, who did not supervise the operation as thoroughly as they should have, to the individual aircrews who botched their runs.

    While there is plenty of blame to go around, one must temper criticism of the Cobra strikes with an appreciation for the losses on the ground during the bitter hedgerow fighting and the effect of the bombing on the German forces. The relatively minor casualties incurred by friendly bombing and the bombing's unqualified success in shattering German resistance (even Bradley was forced to admit that Cobra "had struck a more deadly blow than any of us dared imagine") illustrate how petty the uproar surrounding the bombings really was. Unfortunately, in the postwar folklore of air-land operations, too often the short bombing is the only aspect of Cobra that gets attention. Thus, it is refreshing to read Eisenhower's reasonable, mature, and admirable judgment quoted above.
The European Theater commander never lost sight of the most important result: the Cobra bombing devastated German forces and paved the way for the breakthrough that would trigger the breakout and roll back the Wehrmacht to the German homeland itself.  The main weight of the Cobra bombings fell opposite Maj. Gen. J. Lawton Collins's VII Corps, on Lieutenant General Fritz Bayer-lein's already battered Panzer-Lehr Division. The initial confusion of the July 24 strikes had misled the German defenders into thinking that they had withstood and repulsed an American attack. They were not prepared for the whirlwind that descended on the 25th. The bombing, Collins recollected, "raised havoc on the enemy side." Though VII Corps, hurting from the accumulated short bombings of two days, did not make great progress in its ground attack on the 25th, Collins shrewdly realized that the German command and control structure had been badly disrupted by the air attack, and he planned a full-scale assault for the next morning. There began the genuine breakthrough. Combat Command A of the 2d Armored Division, ably supported by Quesada's IX TAC and building on the accomplishment of the 30th Infantry Division (which had taken the brunt of the short-bombings), cut through enemy defenses. Breakthrough now became breakout. The stage was set for the drive across Northern Europe.

    Bayerlein left a remarkable account of the effects of the Cobra bombing and ground assault on his already war-weary command. In response to postwar interrogation he wrote:

    We had the main losses by pattern bombing, less by artillery, still less by tanks and smaller arms.  The actual losses of dead and wounded were approximately:

By   Bombing                                         50%

By   Artillery                                          30%

By   Other Weapons                              20%

    The digging in of the infantry was useless and did not protect against bombing .... Dugouts and foxholes were
smashed, the men buried, and we were unable to save them. The same happened to guns and tanks . . . . it seems to
me, that a number of men who survived the pattern bombing . . . surrendered soon to the attacking infantry or escaped to the rear.
    The first line has [sic] been annihilated by the bombing.... The three-hour bombardment on 25.7-after the smaller one a day before-had extermi- nating morale effect on the troops physically and morally weakened by continual hard fighting for 45 days. The long duration of the bombing, without any possibility for opposition, created depressions and a feeling of helplessness, weakness and inferiority. Therefore the morale attitude of a great number of men grew so bad that they, feeling the uselessness of fighting, surrendered, deserted to the enemy or escaped to the rear, as far as they survived the bombing. Only particularly strong nerved and brave men could endure this strain.

    The shock effect was nearly as strong as the physical effect (dead and wounded). During the bombardment. . . some of the men got crazy and were unable to carry out anything. I have been personally on 24.7 and 25.7 in the center of the bombardment and could experience the tremendous effect. For me, who during this war was in every theater committed at the points of the main efforts, this was the worst I ever saw.

    The well-dug-in infantry was smashed by the heavy bombs in their foxholes and dugouts or killed and buried by blast. The positions of infantry and artillery were blown up. The whole bombed area was transformed into fields covered with craters, in which no human being was alive. Tanks and guns were destroyed and overturned and could not be recovered, because all roads and passages were blocked ....

    Very soon after the beginning of the bombardment every kind of telephone communication was eliminated. As nearly all C.P.'s [Command Posts] were situated in the bombed area, radio was almost impossible. The communication was limited to [motorcycle] messen-gers, but this was also rather difficult because many roads were interrupted and driving during the bombardment was very dangerous and required a lot of time.

    By any standard, the Cobra bombing had an extraordinary effect on the German defenders, and as the official Army history of the Normandy campaign acknowledges, the Cobra bombing constituted the "best example in the European theater of 'carpet bombing."' This, of course, does not mean that the subsequent campaign on land was a pushover, for throughout the war, the decimated Panzer-Lehr Division and many other battered Nazi units showed an amazing resiliency, reforming, recuperating, and continuing to fight. Nevertheless, the Cobra operation did put the German army in France on the skids. Ironically, it would be a Nazi command decision which would set the stage for total German destruction in Northern France.