Luxembourg
We found that our outfit was in Luxembourg and shortly, so were we. The snow in many places was knee- to waist-deep and the temperature was very low.
While sitting in a barn in a hayloft waiting for transportation to the front line, the last lap of our journey, a solider in our unit shot himself in the heel, claiming an accident, of course, and got to go back to the hospital. His was the only case of self-inflicted wound in anyone in my acquaintance. Gambel and I did see from a short distance another guy shoot off his trigger finger shortly before we moved into the front line the first time back in France.
I remember Luxembourg as COLD. We slogged through snow a good part of the day running into some enemy but not much action. I remember we came to a river crossing but don't remember the name of the river.
The thing I do remember is the nights.
We couldn't have dug a hole in that frozen ground if we wanted, so we just scraped an area of snow aside for a sleeping place. Our squad would get out shelter halves, blankets, coats etc. and make a large layered pile. One guy had to stay on guard but the rest of the squad would burrow into the pile feet first and you wound up with a circular pile, feet in the center and heads at the perimeter.
A fellow whose name, believe it or not, was Jim Green, (my youngest son's name); was the tallest in the squad and had added about a 6-8 inch piece on the bottom of his GI overcoat, so his was the largest. His coat was also the only one that was not in the bedding pile. Whoever stood guard the first watch put on Jim's over coat and when he was relieved he passed it to the next sentry and crawled into the space that had been vacated. It is hard to describe how great it felt to finish your guard duty, half frozen even in the big overcoat, and ease into the warm spot in that pile.
Despite the lack of numbness, my feet had never fully recovered and about 3 weeks of duty in the Arctic atmosphere of Luxembourg resulted in problems with frostbite, trenchfoot, or whatever, and I wound up repeating my previous trip to England, this time to a hospital up in the area near Birmingham. This was neither as good a facility, nor as good a location, as the Oxford one. They had still not found the proper treatment for the foot trouble and we were told that many of the trenchfoot patients had been sent home. The exciting prospect of going home was soon squelched by some fairly strong info that sending people back home was not going to happen anymore because they anticipated that the war would be over before long.
Memories of this stay are pretty dim. I do recall that as I recovered I was assigned to help the nurses and doctors make the morning rounds. There was a cart with the records of each patient on it and I pushed the car around, handed the record to the doctor or nurse when requested and in this way followed them around the ward.
By coincidence my doctor went on leave at the time I started this assignment. I believe he was away for two weeks and in that time no one paid any attention to me.
When we passed my empty bed in the ward on rounds I was feeling pretty good so I didn't complain. My doctor came back and I was pushing the cart around when at one point he and I came face to face. He did a double take and asked the nurse "What the hell is this man doing here?" He right then and there checked out my feet and said, "he should have been in rehab long ago."
And the next day I was.
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