After the St Lo breakthrough, a flood of Allied troops poured into France. As a result, the Germans were forced to shorten their lines in some areas. They pulled back very quickly with the 24th Cavalry Recon Squadron in hot pursuit. That’s what we did best. Chase the enemy. We would carefully enter a town, contact the civilians, and hope to hear our favorite French phrase. “Le Bouche parti”. The Krauts have scrammed!
As soon as the Frenchies recognized our American uniforms, they swarmed all over us with hugs, kisses and booze. I especially liked the booze. After our initial contact, it was always party time for the town folks. I remember this one time, our squad consisting of two machine gun jeeps, and one armored car was stationed right across the square from the local tavern. That was unusual for us. We generally got stuck setting up a perimeter defense on the outskirts of town to guard against counterattacks. Now, this specific village was quite large and there were a lot of people milling around having a good time.
As I was observing the festivities, I noticed two men run into the tavern across the plaza and come out carrying a table and chair. They placed the table to the right of my Jeep next to the armored car, then put the chair on the table. Immediately, a few of the local boys split in different directions. When they returned a few minutes later, they were dragging three women behind them. What happened next was not pleasant to observe. One at a time, they were forced to sit on the chair and to the cheers of the crowd. Had all their hair clipped off. Why? Apparently the three women had Kraut boyfriends, and the local Frenchies were making an example of them. That whole episode did not go over well with me. Beating up on defenseless women was not my idea of justice.
As they were finishing up on the last of the three women, there was a commotion at the far end of town. I looked over to see a French man on a bicycle pedaling towards us, screaming at the top of his lungs, “Le Bouche! Le Bouche!” The Germans are coming! Wow. You can believe me that dispersed the barbers and the milling crowd. We quickly assembled an advance to the edge of town where our defenses were set up.
Our armored cars with their 37-millimeter guns were well camouflaged right at the bend of the main road leading into town. We joined them and waited. After a while, we heard the ominous clickety clank, clickety clank of two Panther tanks speeding in our direction. Oh, ****! A Panther wasn’t as big as a Tiger tank, but they were bigger than anything we had at that time. If they had any infantry support, they would make short work of us. Our 37-millimeter shells would bounce right off a Panther. We would have been history very quickly.
Well, unlike the three bald women in the village, we were lucky that day. As the tanks were turning into town, the three armored cars, and all our machine guns began firing volley after volley. We made a lot of noise. The Krauts not knowing what was ahead of them turned tail and left immediately. They were probably lost and not looking for a fight. Whew! We breathed a sigh of relief, except, of course, the three bald women. I wonder how the barbers would have fared if the Krauts had recaptured the village. They could have, you know, with just a couple of squads. All we had was a platoon of men and no way to take out the tanks.
I once asked an English-speaking French civilian how the Germans treated French women. She said they were very correct. I interpreted that as meaning very disciplined.