Killed In Action

Rank : Technical Sergeant  

Killed on November 18, 1944 at Fort St. Julien (France)

Activity during World War Two :

"Under cover of the early morning fog on 18 November, the assault battalion moved silently off the road and circled into the sparse woods west of the suburbs of the town of St. Julien-lès-Metz. About 0700 the battalion began the attack east toward the rear of the fort. However, a fortress battalion, which had been sent north the day before, was in the houses and along the streets intervening between the woods and the fort. A sharp fight raged up and down the streets during the rest of the morning; but by noon the Germans had been driven back into Fort St. Julien and the Americans closed in with tanks, tank destroyers, and the ubiquitous self-propelled guns for the assault against the fort itself. For an hour the heavy weapons of the task force, their fire thickened by 240-mm. howitzers brought into play by the corps artillery, shelled the fort. Under cover of this shelling the infantry surrounded the German position. When the fire lifted, the first assault was launched in an attempt to breach the rearward wall. Fort St. Julien was an outdated work with high, thick walls surrounded by a moat some forty feet wide. From the west, or rear side, the moat was bridged by a walled causeway leading into an open areaway. The first men across the causeway were hit by fire from the loopholes in the enceinte which overlooked the causeway." From: The Lorraine Campaign by Hugh M. Cole United States Army WW II The European Theatre of Operations Historical Division U.S. Army Washington D. C., 1993

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