By Leon Reed
The heady days of summer—when Third Army made 600 miles in a week as the German troops fled for their lives—were a distant memory, a sort of story the veterans told the waves of replacements. Now, in mid-November, rain, mines, and replacement troops were the three constants of GI life as Third Army slogged through the mud and muck of the French province of Lorraine.
Two of those replacements were Private Thaine Hogue, Company F, 2nd Battalion, 317th Regiment, and Private Joseph Drasler, who was assigned to Company L, 3rd Battalion, in the same regiment.
Drasler came across the English Channel to Omaha Beach on November 4, 1944, rode inland to the city of Nancy in a Red Ball Express 6×6 truck full of soldiers, and joined the 317th on November 17. Hogue arrived with a truckful of replacements on November 15. He was paired up with another replacement, Valie Hotz, and they were both made scouts. In a combat branch where turnover was so high many soldiers never learned the names of their mates. Hotz and Hogue instantly became fast friends.
By now, the 317th was a combat experienced regiment, having received its baptism by fire three months earlier at Argentan and borne the brunt of the fighting and casualties when the 80th Division crossed the Moselle River in September. Following that came the fights to hold the Moselle bridgeheads, the bloody assaults on Mount St. Jean and Mount Toulon, the Seille River crossing, and finally the tough slog through Lorraine. By the time Hogue and Drasler joined it, the regiment had suffered more than 1,000 killed or severely wounded in action. One officer observed that the 317th had become “a regiment of replacements.”
Shortly after Hogue had joined the 317th, the chaplain had come along the line, asking the men if they wanted to get together and Hogue and Hotz both went,“even though it was not Sunday,” he recalled. “However, about the time the chaplain got going good a German plane came over and strafed the street.” The chaplain led the worshippers to the basement, where they waited a while to make sure the plane wasn’t returning for a second pass. The chaplain finished by saying the soldiers could relax—the 317th would not be making an attack for a while. “That is how he got the reputation of always being wrong, and he maintained that reputation as long as I knew him,” Hogue said.
After moving forward one rainy evening, they received orders to dig in. The sergeant showed Hogue and Hotz the exact spot to dig their foxholes. “And dig we did; right in a dead furrow of a plowed field. The rains came, ran down the dead furrow, and filled our fox hole. Hotz and I dug and then dipped water.” They finally gave up and dug a new fox hole on higher ground. “I decided that our sergeant had never seen a farm and that was his excuse for telling us to dig in a dead furrow. I really can’t say what my excuse was but I was learning.” Hogue also learned he could sleep for about a half hour lying in the mud and water. He was pretty sure Hotz had no sleep that night.
Hogue had one valuable experience during these early days. “Hotz and I got very well acquainted, and I learned to really appreciate his companionship. We had one great thing in common: we trusted our lives to each other. We were forced into it, but it was also a great satisfaction. I could put real faith in him. There was 10 years difference in our ages, but it did not mean a thing here. Only the real character of the man counted now.”
Drasler and Hogue both had their first experience with combat maneuvers almost immediately, with the 80th Division’s November 20 crossing of the Nied Allemande River, followed by their assault on the Maginot Line five days later. It was a relatively gentle introduction to combat, since the Nied Allemande crossings weren’t defended and the German Maginot Line defenders in the sector attacked by the 317th surrendered after a short fight.
Next was a brief stop in St. Avold, which was less restful to the troops than originally planned because of the 30-plus time bombs left behind by the Germans, which made everybody jumpy. Then came the final push to the German frontier. During this advance, Hogue said, “There was little rest because one man had to be alert and ready in every foxhole at all times. Most days we dug two or three foxholes and were never inside a building. We ate cold C rations only, and we had two or three hours sleep each night. It was rainy and foggy every day, and we had no raincoats. We had no overshoes because they were never issued to us. From the map, it looks like we marched about 20 miles, but we never traveled in a straight line.”
Standing squarely in the 317th’s way was the village of Farebersviller. There was nothing that made Farebersviller different from any other French village, except that the Germans holding the town were ready to fight like they were defending the Fatherland.
Just before the fight, Drasler’s company had a moment of comfort. Reaching a little town just outside Farebersviller at dusk on the 27th, the Blue Ridge soldiers dug in for the night. “French people from the village brought out buckets of pears, black bread, and cognac for our use,” Drasler said. Unfortunately, enemy artillery fire kept the soldiers from getting too comfortable.
The village was enveloped in a heavy mist and fog when the 317th entered it at 8:30 a.m., on November 28. Drasler characterized it as “a day and a town I will never forget.” The battle for Farebersviller raged all day. Once they started forward, the 3rd Battalion was in trouble immediately, as the leading elements had to fight their way into town. Once they had a foothold, the Germans withdrew slowly, forcing the Blue Ridgers to fight from house to house. “The Germans used their 88 artillery weapons extremely well as anti-tank, anti-aircraft guns, or for firing fragmentation shells against attacking troops,” Drasler observed.
At the same time the 3rd Battalion was moving into the firefight, the 2nd Battalion (including Hotz and Hogue’s company) was taking up a supporting position. At about noon, Hogue walked out on a trail through timber outside of Farebersviller. “There was fog and mist in the air and to my surprise there were three of our tanks by the edge of the timber. What a relief. We had open ground ahead, and tanks were there to help us!”
The 2nd battalion was assigned to clear the area on the right side of the town and dig in on the high ground beyond. The soldiers were grateful that they would apparently have tank support. But the feeling didn’t last long, though, because as the patrol started across the open area, the tanks pulled back.
The patrol moved ahead with no armor and no overhead artillery fire support. The sounds they could hear in the distance made it clear that the units attacking the town had a fight on their hands. “We advanced to a line even with the town, and here it came, everything we expected and more,” Hogue said. “They hit us with everything: small arms, machine guns and mortar. It came suddenly, and we all hit the dirt.” Soon there was a pause, and the troops were ordered to withdraw. Hogue called for Hotz and got no answer. “I wanted to go back to Hotz, but I knew I would have drawn more fire on him and me both. I did hope we would remain where he was until it was dark enough not to be seen from town. If I was put in this situation later, I would have handled myself differently. At that time we were conditioned to jump on command.”
Valie Hotz was seriously wounded in action on November 28, 1944 (Morning Report). He was 19 years old and from DeWitt County, Texas. He had two years of high school when he was drafted, and his occupation was listed as “farm hand, general farms,” on his enlistment record. He had been in combat for only 14 days. Hotz eventually spent more than a year in hospitals, but did recover and return home.
By dusk, after a full day of fighting, the 3rd Battalion had cleared less than half of Farebersviller. The soldiers of the 317th took shelter in basements to protect themselves from heavy German artillery fire. Unfortunately, the Germans counterattacked with Tiger tanks at about 9 p.m.
“This was one of their favorite maneuvers, we learned to our sorrow,” Drasler said. “Enemy night attacks of this nature were invariably carried out with drunk troops, riding on their tanks and shouting like crazy. That was probably the only way they had of getting up enough courage to attack. The German army used liquor extensively for this purpose.”
The Germans relied heavily on concussion grenades in city fighting. One grenade landed in the command post on the ground floor of the building where Drasler and about 20 other GIs were sheltering in the basement. The Germans captured several men and officers in the ground floor command post. “It was impossible to know which companies the officers represented,” Drasler said. “Generally, following a tough battle, it took a day or two for all men to get straightened out with their C.P. and officers.”
When the grenade exploded upstairs, one of the GIs in the basement began to scream hysterically and would have gone raving mad if Drasler and several others hadn’t grabbed him and gagged him. The soldiers were aware that one concussion grenade, coming from the window opening at street level, would have taken care of all of them, since the walls and ceiling of that basement were of solid concrete. “The motivating purpose of these people, every time they built their home and basement, seemed to be to make it a bomb-proof shelter,” Drasler said.
This incident proved to be one of the very closest scrapes Drasler had with death, “and I still believe the only reason the drunken Germans didn’t toss a grenade at us was that they were too jittery and too anxious to get out of town.” Thinking they might be captured, the soldiers huddling in the basement abandoned and hid their Luger pistols and other souvenirs. “Getting captured with any of that stuff on you was equivalent to losing your life,” Drasler said. “Germans had no sympathy for us at best and much less if they caught you toting their ‘hardware’ as they didn’t have to think twice about how you acquired it.”
Not knowing if the enemy was still in town or not, the group in the cellar were effectively German prisoners for a night.
The next morning, November 29, Drasler was relieved to see help coming. “One of the happiest sights of the entire war was observing one of our jeeps entering the town next morning,” he said. “It didn’t take long for us to clear out of the basement.”
They rejoined a new set of soldiers whose counterattack on the town was led by Lt. Col. William J. Boydstun, commander of the 2nd battalion of the 317th. When the German attack had commenced the previous night, Boydstun ran from his command post to organize his men, but it was too late. An article in The New York Times described the scene: “Tanks—8 to 10 of them—stormed into the streets of the village, firing in every direction and tearing around like mechanical monsters gone berserk. With them were 100 or more infantrymen, who fired at anything that moved and hurled grenades into any opening where there seemed to be life remaining.”
With communications cut off and unable to gather his men because of the fury of the German counterattack, Boydstun crept through underbrush until it was safe to make a dash toward the nearby town of Seinhousse, where he rounded up 200 men and four tanks. Boydstun brought his new army back to the town and found that the Germans were dug in on the eastern side of the village and were using a church as their main headquarters. Boydstun gathered as many of his original men as he could find and launched a counterattack.
“Tank clashed with tank until one or the other gave way; men fought with rifles, pistols, bazookas, and machine guns, separated sometimes only by the width of a street,” The New York Times article continued. “The Germans had converted the church into a fortress and were firing from windows, doors, and a steeple, while in other parts of the village the battle was on a house-to-house basis. Bullets were spurting from roofs, doorways, and cellar apertures, with no quarter given on either side. The fight went on throughout the night but slackened by morning, when both sides were nearing exhaustion. By early afternoon the Americans had taken back most of the town and were in command of the church.”
“We got into town at 10:30 a.m. and by dark we had driven them out,” Boydstun later told Stars and Stripes reporter Jimmie Cannon. “I was in my CP when it happened. The tanks came through the fog that had sprung up like a suddenly recruited German ally. The infantry followed, spraying fire like insane gardeners with deadly hoses.”
At the same time, the 2nd battalion was attacked by a force of several hundred infantry, led by five tanks. Hogue wrote, “We knew our objective, and we could see the outline of a hill in the fog ahead of us an estimated two miles away. There were not many of us left, but we moved forward in a disorganized manner across a big ditch and up a big hill. I was alone, so I looked around and found John Pavelda who had lost his partner (the nice young man from Nebraska). We dug in together and stayed all night in that hole. The ‘hell to pay’ was downtown. Rifle fire continued all night long. It was obvious that G Company was not able to clear the town. I kept remembering that the town (still occupied by Germans) was behind us, not in front of us and that put us in a bad position.”
“The fog was worse in the morning, and we knew even less about what was going on. There was a company commander with us who came over on the same ship with me. They took our platoon guide, Sgt. Hill, and put him in charge of the first platoon. This left Sgt. Reece with us but no Lieutenant to help. We were not much more than a squad (12 men) anyway. There were so few men left that I did begin to learn some names.”
“There was trouble behind us and a question in front of us.” About a quarter mile ahead, near the edge of the fog, there was a woods, and the soldiers could hear a tank. Late in the afternoon they could still hear the sounds of battle in town, and the German tank hadn’t gone anywhere.” Hogue’s tiny platoon had only their rifles for defense if the tank came in their direction. An artillery observer who was with them earlier could have placed a few artillery shells on that tank, but he had gone.
After an 88 shell wounded several of the men, they realized their position was impossible. Darkness was coming, and the tank was moving toward them. The commanding officer ordered the men to pull back.
Two weeks later, the exhausted and depleted 80th Division was pulled out of line for rest, refresher training, and replacements, ready to pitch into German territory on December 19, 1944. By then, Hitler’s “Watch on the Rhine” counteroffensive had begun, and the 317th— along with the rest of the 80th Division—would undertake its 150-mile overnight sprint to Luxembourg to keep General Patton’s promise that they could attack within 72 hours.
“The dead hold Farebersviller now,” Cannon wrote after the battle. “Once the enemy did and then we came. But they returned, and so did we. Today only the dead are here. The fish in the shallow creek are the only living things in the town, which lies prostrate in the basin between disfigured hills.”
For his efforts to organize a counterattack, Lt. Col. Boydstun earned a Silver Star. He continued to command the 2nd Battalion until January 21, 1945, when he was killed by a German shell while organizing a movement toward Bourscheid, Luxembourg.
Leon Reed is a former U.S. Senate aide and U.S. History teacher. He is the co-author of (with his wife, Lois Lembo) A Combat Engineer with Patton’s Army: The Fight Across Europe with the 80th “Blue Ridge” Division in World War II (Savas Beatie, 2020) and is currently editing Walter Carr’s memoirs and writing a book on army training in World War II. He is the editor of Bulge Bugle, the quarterly magazine of the Battle of the Bulge Association.
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