Observations placeholder

This happened to me in Sicily during the invasion of Italy. My platoon was passing through a field when we were pinned down from in front by a German machine-gun nest. Since I was a platoon sergeant, I considered it my job to get rid of the nest so we could continue to advance.  I went far around, using a grove of fruit trees for cover.  

In about thirty minutes I had looped around the field and ahead so that I came in behind them. I was ecstatic. There were three of them in this hole that was dug just on the other side of a bridge. They were so involved in keeping the platoon pinned down that none of them was looking behind.  I probably could have gone within six feet of them and not been seen. I thought about doing that, but instead I threw a hand grenade when I got to the top of the bridge.  I remember pulling the pin and preparing to throw it from twenty yards away. I cocked my arm, and just before throwing it, I yelled, "Here you go, suckers." Then I hit the dirt and waited . . . and waited, and waited. The grenade didn't go off.

It was a dud, as worthless as a rock.

Before I could do anything, they had turned a machine gun on me and started firing. I curled up in a ball and waited for something to hit me, but nothing did. Maybe it was the rise in the bridge that gave me cover, or maybe it was just good fortune, but nothing that was fired hit me.  But a funny thing happened. As I lay there, I suddenly left my body - and Sicily, for that matter. I "travelled” to a munitions plant in New Jersey, where I floated over an assembly line of women who were putting hand grenades together. I tried to talk to them and tell them to pay attention to their work, but they wouldn't listen. Instead they kept chattering as they did their work.

I felt like I was there for fifteen or twenty minutes. Then I was suddenly back in Italy lying at the top of this bridge, still alive. By now the Germans thought I was dead and had turned their gun back around. I got up and pulled the pin on another hand grenade and pitched it into their hole. This time it exploded.

The platoon had seen everything and thought that I was dead. I was very calm about the whole experience, so calm that the company commander sent me to a psychiatrist. I told him what had happened, and he gave me a clean bill of health and sent me back into battle. He told me that he had heard of this happening to other men before and that I should keep the experience to myself so I wouldn't get sent to him again. That's exactly what I did.