I thought I would share with everyone by this excerpt from:
The Path to Victory The Mediterranean Theater in World War 2, by Douglas Porch - p.647
The scene is the Gothic line April '45
By 20 April, the Fifth Army, attacking across its entire front, had cleared the mountains and flooded onto the Plain of Emilia, despite a desperate attempt by the Ninetieth panzer Grenadier Division to sacrifice its tankd to prevent it. fighting was hard, nonetheless. Second Lieutenant Daniel Inouye (you wondered where the 'Japanese' was going to come!) of the 442d took on a machine gun that had wounded him in the side on the Colle Musatell, one of the ridges that blocked the U.S. advance toward the Po valley. "I thres a grenade and it cleared the log bunker and explode," he remembered, "and when the guncrew staggered erect, I cut them down with my tommy gun" He pulled himself toward a second machine-gun nest.
"At last I was close enough to pull the pin on my last grenade. And as I drew my arm back, all in a flash of light and dark I saw him, that faceless German, like a strip of motion picture film running through a projector that's gone berserk. One instant he was standing waist-high in the bunker, and the next he was aiming a rifle grenade at my face from a range of 10 yards. And even as I cocked my arm to throw, he fired and his rifle grenade smashed into my right elbow and explode and all but tore my arm off. I looked at it, stunned and unbelieving. It dangled there by a few bloody shreds of tissue, my grenade still clenched in a fist that suddenly didn't belong to me anymore ... The grenade mechanism was ticking off the seconds. In two, three, of four, it would go off, finishing me and the good men who were rushing up to help me. 'Get back' i screamed, and swung around to pry the grenade out of the dead fist with my left hand. Then I had it free and I turned to throw and the German was reloading his rifle. But this time I beat him. My grenade blew up in his face and I stumbled to my feet, closing in on the bunker, firing my tommy gun left handed, the useless right arm slapping red and wet against my side."
Wow, now that takes some doing!!
Porch concluded the episode by saying that - Inouye was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross (was that all) and later served as U.S. senator from Hawaii.
Hope you found it interesting
The Path to Victory The Mediterranean Theater in World War 2, by Douglas Porch - p.647
The scene is the Gothic line April '45
By 20 April, the Fifth Army, attacking across its entire front, had cleared the mountains and flooded onto the Plain of Emilia, despite a desperate attempt by the Ninetieth panzer Grenadier Division to sacrifice its tankd to prevent it. fighting was hard, nonetheless. Second Lieutenant Daniel Inouye (you wondered where the 'Japanese' was going to come!) of the 442d took on a machine gun that had wounded him in the side on the Colle Musatell, one of the ridges that blocked the U.S. advance toward the Po valley. "I thres a grenade and it cleared the log bunker and explode," he remembered, "and when the guncrew staggered erect, I cut them down with my tommy gun" He pulled himself toward a second machine-gun nest.
"At last I was close enough to pull the pin on my last grenade. And as I drew my arm back, all in a flash of light and dark I saw him, that faceless German, like a strip of motion picture film running through a projector that's gone berserk. One instant he was standing waist-high in the bunker, and the next he was aiming a rifle grenade at my face from a range of 10 yards. And even as I cocked my arm to throw, he fired and his rifle grenade smashed into my right elbow and explode and all but tore my arm off. I looked at it, stunned and unbelieving. It dangled there by a few bloody shreds of tissue, my grenade still clenched in a fist that suddenly didn't belong to me anymore ... The grenade mechanism was ticking off the seconds. In two, three, of four, it would go off, finishing me and the good men who were rushing up to help me. 'Get back' i screamed, and swung around to pry the grenade out of the dead fist with my left hand. Then I had it free and I turned to throw and the German was reloading his rifle. But this time I beat him. My grenade blew up in his face and I stumbled to my feet, closing in on the bunker, firing my tommy gun left handed, the useless right arm slapping red and wet against my side."
Wow, now that takes some doing!!
Porch concluded the episode by saying that - Inouye was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross (was that all) and later served as U.S. senator from Hawaii.
Hope you found it interesting
