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i nuyi;ROOF TOP WILLIE HAD GOOD AIMComprised One Man Airforce Minus PlaneBy WALTER CRONKITEWith Americans. Outside Ech-teraacht, (U.PJ — Roof Top Willie will have to be the name of this one-man airforce without an airplane. His bombs were hand grenades and his targets were Germans in the house beneath him.•He was lust one of the many unidentified heroes of this war. All they know up here is that Willie was a corporal, part of a unit of 120 infantrymen and about 60 tankmen cut off for 3 days in a village near the German border by the sudden na2i counteroffensive. ■ ,For 72 bloody hours they fought off an entire .German regiment which penetrated Into the narrow alleys of the village before they managed to withdraw.They chopped through buildings to chase the Germans, they rescued their wounded with tanks, and they piled up so many German dead in the streets they had to hurdle the bodies in order to retreat.Willie took on the job of clearing Germans from one • of the houses being occupied next door to the doughboys.He climbed io the icy roof of2-story gabled house in which the Germans were holed up, slid down to the front edge, and laid his rifles over the gutter.Then he fired Z shots ’ toward the front door as a teaser. Four Germans slipped out to see what was coin* on. Willie polled thepin from a grenade, squinted over the roof edge for better aim, and dropped It.He hit the jack pot and the 4 Germans qualified for posthumous iron crosses.Willie grinned as he crept back behmd a gable and took another grenade from his pofcket. In a moment a patrol of. 5 Germanscame.out of the house. His aim was true again.'Willie’s “mission” lasted nearly an hour despite the bullets of snipers who had spotted. his bombing . platform. When his pockets were empty of grehadcs and he finally scrambled down, 43 'dead'Germans were piled up in front of the door.The story was told by Capt. Steve Lang of Chicago in a little Luxembourg farmhouse which was his headquarters. Outside, his men lolled in their battered tanks and licked tlj'eir wounds. • ’ Almost casually but in the best tankers hardboiled jargon he told of his company’s worst 3 days. 1 “It was pretty tough but I guess it was just what a‘lot of other outfits had right after that breakthrough, he said. *
Newspaper Details
Mason City Globe Gazette
Mason City, Iowa, US
Fri, Dec 29, 1944
Page 4
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
USA 17 Apr 2017
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