World Battlefronts: MEN AT WAR: Chow Call

• Share

Penned in a Normandy farmhouse, 13 paratroopers of the crack 82nd Division heard the rising crash of American rifle and mortar fire outside. Downstairs their German captors fought savagely in de fense of the house: the American prisoners heard the German commander tell his troops to fight to the last man.

At last it got too rugged for the Germans. After an hour the prisoners heard frantic cries: "Nicht schiessen." The German machine gunners outside at the gate kept on firing. So did the American attackers But inside the house the German defenders surrendered to their own prisoners, sat down, sweating and white.

How to tell the attackers that the fight was over? The paratroopers hung their own shirts from the windows for recognition signals. The firing only grew heavier. They yelled to cut it out, but their friends could not hear. Then a U.S. paratrooper found a bullet-pierced German bugle. He thrust it out the window. Above the firing rang the shrill familiar notes of "chow call."

The American fire slackened, died.