The last thing I saw of the house was Fenton with his BAR and Zawicki with his bazooka firing into the windows.  Whether that cleared it of enemy or not I do not know because we were on the move west.  We never encountered any difficulty from the house again.  This may have been because we outflanked it, or because Fenton and Zawicki had neutralized the enemy.  It was getting dark and by the time we got the Bn. across the tracks we outnumbered the Germans and they were withdrawing to the south and west.  There was resistance south of the tracks and one man remained behind in a ditch.  Kaylor from G Co. and I were ready to blast him out with grenades when he came out on  his own.  I got his P 38 pistol but lost it out of my pocket sometime during the confusion of the night.  We pushed some distance west in the dark and the Germans withdrew as we attacked.  Early the next morning they must have realized that we had not taken the high ground to the west, or were alerted when we freed the 14 45th Division men and rushed a platoon to be positioned on the high ground if we pushed further west as we were supposed to do to take the entire objective.  It was at the footbridge across the tracks that I ran across Lt. Col. Zais and the command group who were being briefed by his S-3, Capt. Bill Pencak, as to their whereabouts.  I joined the command group uninvited and unannounced and when Pencak put his finger on the far side of our objective and said "We are right here", I said "The hell you are."  Zais grabbed the map and asked me to show him what I meant.  He was concerned because they had reported to regiment late the night before that we had taken our objective when we had not taken the high ground to the west, which was essential for holding the town.  It was easy for me to orient Zais as the footbridge and the house they had slept in was right there and as we looked down the tracks to the west, I identified a curve on the map as well as on the ground.  I had the advantage on these guys as I had been up a good part of the night with the company executive officers getting the attacking troops unscrambled and into squad, platoon and company areas where they were organized if we were attacked.  Zais, who never asked anyone what to do, but knowing what my response would probably be said, "What should we do?"  I told him to give me a squad and I would see what was up there.  The rest of the story is in the patrol with the H Co. squad.

I am not sure I could locate the house where we set the 45th guys free.  There were not too many houses south of the tracks.  Most of the town is north of them.  Spencer's write up of the patrol makes it sound like there were a lot of houses we cleared out, but there were just a few.  A French farmer alerted me to the fact that there were American prisoners in the house and I sent several men up to free them.  They did this without firing a shot and I did not ask questions when they returned as we had to move out with the 45th Division men with us to clear the rest of the objective.  As we went west, we heard the hobnailed German boots on the cobble stone coming toward us from the south and I set all of the troops behind stone walls and told them to come up yelling when I did.  Believe it or not the Germans were in close order column of threes coming right up the road with no scouts or flank security out.  When they were right in the middle of us I yelled "HALT" which meant the same thing in German and English and the guys came up yelling over the wall with M-1s and grease guns at point blank range.  We still had our grease paint on and I'm sure looked like a mean bunch.  They dropped their weapons and now I had a platoon of prisoners on my hands.  We could see that the rest of the objective was clear, so I sent the machine gun crew up on the forward slope with instructions to fire at long range if they saw enemy coming and we would send reinforcements.  With all the rest I headed back to the Bn. area.  Mel Zais met me and gave me the devil for bringing such a large body of men into the Bn. area as he thought it would bring in artillery fire on us.  Fortunately the story ends with no artillery fire and they recommended me for a silver star that General Fredrick's crew broke down to a bronze star.