By BILL McKINNEY
Morning News staff reporter
Relative
quiet greeted Sgt. Ed Kacnerski and his infantry platoon when they hit a fog-shrouded Omaha Beach 50 years ago.
It should have been; it was a month after D-Day.
Ships and landing craft bobbed in the English Channel
that day, but nowhere near the thousands of ships and craft that went from horizon to horizon on June 6, 1944.
Still, through the gray mists of a rainy day Kacnerski saw evidence of hell on Earth.
""We saw
jeeps and landing boats and other vehicles that were hit by German 88s,'' he said. The 88s were deadly artillery used by the Germans.
""There wasn't much left of some of them.
""There were
tents set up on the beach. They were temporary, to take in the wounded coming in from St. Lo (a major breakthrough battle going on at the time). We were told to keep walking, to walk straight ahead.''
As they
walked, they passed injured soldiers coming back from the front lines. ""I remember I felt sorry for them,'' Kacnerski said.
He also knew he and his buddies were headed for the same killing ground these men
had just left.
Kacnerski was a member of the 2nd Platoon, Dog Company, 319th Infantry Regiment, of the 80th, or Blue Ridge, Infantry Division. It was destined to become a part of Gen. George Patton's
hard-charging Third Army.
Patton had missed the big show - Operation Overlord - and he was still stewing about it.
Kacnerski met Patton face to face once, as the general reviewed the troops shortly after he'd been
given command of Third Army.
""He had these piercing eyes but a thin, squeaky kind of voice. I just stared straight ahead, over his shoulder,'' Kacnerski said.
Patton went to a podium and addressed the troops.
""When he started talking, every other word was a cuss word. He might have had a squeaky voice but, boy, could he cuss. Someone had to remind him
there were ladies present.''
Kacnerski had enlisted in the Army in July 1942. He requested artillery and got infantry.
After training at Camp Forrest, Tenn., and Camp Phillips, Kansas, and undergoing desert
maneuvers in Arizona, he unit was shipped to Camp Kilmer, N.J.
>From there they rode the rails to New York City and boarded the Queen Mary, a luxury liner pressed into military service. They crossed the
Atlantic in five days. The liner's speed was its defense against German U-boats, which could not keep up with it.
The troops disembarked in Scotland and were moved by train to Southampton. It was there that
Kacnerski learned about D-Day.
""Everything had been kept under wraps. We weren't told anything until much later,'' he said.
In Southampton Kacnerski saw the rows and rows of dummy tanks and trucks that
had been lined up to fool the Germans into thinking the invasion would come at Pas de Calais, where the Fench coast is closest to England. The German reconnaissance planes were allowed to see those fake vehicles
and German intelligence was fed fake information that Patton would command the army that landed at Calais.
Once the Normandy invasion was several weeks past, Patton took the Third Army from action there, alongside the
already - formed First Army.
Once ashore in France, Kacnerski remembers, there was a sound of distant thunder - artillery from the fighting at St. Lo.
Kacnerski's baptism of fire came at Avranches, a French
town that also figured importantly in the American army's breakout that would send it rolling across France.
He remembers being scared and remembers trying hard to be careful, not that it was possible.
Early on, a
piece of shrapnel slashed his lower leg. He still has the scar. But that paled in comparison to some of the horrors he saw done to other men. He decided against reporting his injury.
That decision cost him the Purple
Heart medal, awarded for combat injuries. He received the Bronze Star for bravery, though.
After Avranches, Kacnerski and the 80th Division went through 100 consecutive days of combat. They stopped in
mid-December to catch a breath and, before they knew it, all hell broke loose in cold, snow-covered fields near a place called Bastogne.
That part of his story, and how he won the Bronze Star, will be told later, when
we remember the Battle of the Bulge.
By BILL McKINNEY
Morning News staff reporter
Adolf Hitler's massive counterpunch came Dec. 16, 1944 in the Ardennes Forest in Belgium, a place the U.S. Army considered a rest
area.
Quickly dubbed the Battle of the Bulge, the German offensive caught the American high command by surprise.
Sgt. Ed Kacnerski of Erie and his buddies were sitting in a cafe in Paris, enjoying a rare and
well-deserved pass. They had battled their way across all of France and were weary of war.
Their wine tasted good going down.
The enjoyment was short-lived. American Military Police burst into the cafe
and ordered all GIs to return to their units. They announced that the Nazis were counter-attacking in force to the north.
""We got to our area, got our gear and got on trucks. Gen. Patton ordered
all headlights on. He said we had to make time. We made more than 150 miles and made it in a hurry, disembarking just outside of Luxembourg (City).
""Then we were on foot, attacking at a 90-degree angle.''
Kacnerski's outfit marched some 20 miles, making a sharp right turn to pick a path through the forest in order to engage the enemy.
They came under
artillery fire first, the German shells bursting above them as the rounds hit tall, strong trees in the dense pine forest. Shrapnel rained down on the Americans, bringing pain and death to many.
Kacnerski was a
platoon sergeant leading a machine gun company of the 319th Infantry Regiment, 80th Infantry Division, also known as the Blue Ridge Division.
Company leaders were usually officers, but Kacnerski's outfit lost every
lieutenant assigned to them. One after another they were either killed, wounded or lost to combat fatigue. At some point someone stopped sending officers and Kacnerski took over until the end of the war.
Battle ""wary,'' Kacnerski had ripped his stripes off jacket long ago. ""The enemy would try to pick out officers and sergeants and knock them out. My guys knew who I was and I knew who I
was. The stripes weren't necessary.''
On Dec. 22, three days before Christmas, Kacnerski led his men up to the top of a clearing on Delme Ridge. He ordered his machine guns into position, two toward the
front and two to the rear.
Two infantry units they traveled with for mutual support took up positions on either side of the machine gun nests.
Kacnerski, armed with a carbine and carrying a .45 automatic on his hip,
placed himself somewhere in between the machine guns so he could maintain contact.
Coming at them were black-clad German SS troops and tanks.
""Our guns were .30 caliber, water-cooled machine guns.
We were pouring out so much fire that the water in the cooling jackets started boiling; that's how hot the barrels had gotten.''
He said machine gunners knew they should fire for only a short time from any one
position and then move. Every fifth round was a tracer that the enemy could see. Enemy spotters could track the fire back to its source, then call in artillery.
""The German 88s were vicious,
terrible. We lost two of our machine guns and crews to direct hits, about half an hour apart. The hits were awful. There was nothing left of the guys. I could see their packs but they were blown
apart so bad I couldn't identify the bodies, except for the fact that I knew who'd been there.''
With lots of help from air support and artillery, the American line held and began pushing the Germans backwards,
keeping up the pressure throughout the night.
""We'd attack at night and sleep during the day whenever we'd get the chance,'' he said. ""A big searchlight was left on at Division and that
would be our reference point. If we got lost, we'd head back toward the searchlight.
"Night was when we found we could make the best time and take the most ground and General Patton wanted ground. He
was a good general but he was a glory hound; loved war. He seldom let us stop to rest.''
""Old Blood and Guts'' became indelibly etched into Kacnerski's memory when, carrying out a promise as the Third
Army crossed into Germany, Patton relieved himself in the Rhine River to the delight of his troops.
Kacnerski's Bronze Star for bravery came at Mahl, Germany.
His award notes his earlier combat experience and his
reputation for calm in the face of enemy fire.
""Sgt. Kacnerski holds the record of not having missed one day of combat through wounds or sickness,'' a newspaper account from the period reads.
The award
cites Kacnerski's service at Mahl ""at which time he established a line of rifle men for a platoon whose leader had been evacuated, while at the same time setting up his own section of heavy machine guns.''
The words fail to capture the complexity of what happened.
""I don't remember when it was exactly but we got to Mahl sometime after the action on Delme Ridge. I saw a line of unoccupied German foxholes
and told our guys to use them. It was a good position and we didn't have to dig.
""I started hearing noises about 5 a.m. We were below and looked up. It had been raining earlier but the sky
was clear by that time. I could see helmets and they looked German. Then we heard the voices.
""I yelled, "They are German! Open up!'''
In the ensuing firefight the Germans, who were
returning to their foxholes, were caught off guard and took heavy casualties. They returned fire before retreating and four or five bullets ripped through Kacnerski's bulky raincoat, through the back and near the
neck.
""I don't know how I wasn't hit but I wasn't. The raincoat was a mess, though.''
Of all the grisly horrors the Erie veteran saw during his time on the line, though, none was more terrible than
the Nazi death camp at Buchenwald.
Warned by superior officers about some of the sights they might see inside the camp, Kacnerski said the reality was still overwhelming.
""We attacked so quickly that the
Germans didn't have time to finish all their killing. They ran and we took them under fire.
""When we got into the camp we found dead bodies of Jewish people that had been killed in gas chambers, half
burned bodies in ovens, bodies stacked up in piles with lye dumped on them.
""Some of them had gold teeth pulled from their mouths. Fingers had been cut off to get at rings. Of the hundreds of
people still alive, they weren't any more than skeletons in black and white striped pajamas.
""God, it was awful. They were barely alive.
""One prisoner came up to me crying. He
kissed me and dropped and kissed my knees. They were so hungry and so happy we were there.''
To his credit, Kacnerski said, General Patton ordered German civilians from nearby villages to tour the death camp and
witness what their government had done to Jews. Kacnerski said the villagers did not go willingly.
World War II came to a quiet close on the front lines of Europe.
While the end was greeted by ringing bells
and cheering crowds back in the United States and in England, Kacnerski said the long awaited announcement was met with silence among the men with whom he served.
""Germans had been surrendering by the
thousands just before that,'' he said. He pointed to a sword hanging on his wall, given to him by a surrendering German general.
""We knew the end was near but, when it came, there wasn't any
shouting. They just told us not to fire anymore, that the war was over. The quiet was almost unbelievable. I guess we were sort of stunned. It was like someone hit you over the head.''
Kacnerski returned home on Dec. 26, 1945.
On March 2, 1946, he married the sweetheart he had been writing to throughout the war, Jo Kubasik of Erie. Forty-eight years later, their marriage remains strong.
As do the memories of war.
