Special to Autobody News

Recently, I came across a memoire written by my father about his experience during the Battle of the Bulge. He credited information gleaned from an article in Reader's Digest for saving his life. So read and retain. You can never tell where that important piece of info that can save time, trouble, and money, if not life, will come from -- an article in Autobody News or an exchange at www.aubobodynews.com.

 by Abraham Poleyeff

The following experience is true, as I have lived through it. It is a truth-is-stranger-then fiction [story], and one in which this one article I read in the Reader’s Digest can be credited with saving me untold anguish and pain, and perhaps my life.

It all began in Fort Carson, Colorado, when I was a rifleman in Company L in the Third Battalion of the 413th Infantry Regiment of the 104th Infantry Division, known as the Timberwolf division, commanded by General Terry [Allen].

Shortly before the division went overseas, I was assigned with several other men to work at Battalion Headquarters. We were on detached duty with the Battalion HQ. Our duties were varied such as doing guard duty at the command post, and such other duties as might crop up.

We, the division, sailed for Europe in August of 1944, and fourteen days later arrived in Cherbourg, France on D + 91. The 104 Division had the singular distinction of being the first troops to land directly into France from the U.S. without first stopping in England.

We spent the first four weeks in Normandy, and then slipped across France into Belgium and Holland where the Division saw its first action. After lines moved forward, it sometimes became the guard squad’s duty to pick up the dead soldiers, and take them to the identification depot for verification of identity and burial. During one of these operations, we were attacked by a sniper hidden in the bushes. Fortunately no one in the pick up detail was injured but I must have run about 100 yards in nothing flat, getting out of range.

On another occasion, we were shelled by mortars. The chaplain, who accompanied us this time, said “Let’s get out of here, the dead can wait.”

This was the way it went till the first part of December, when the division was given a well-deserved rest, after being in continuous action for over a month, and receiving heavy casualties. We were decamped out of the front lines and sent to a small town called Weisweiler where we were put up in houses.

This guard squad was assigned to two rooms on the upper floor of a two-story house. Five of us were assigned to two adjoining rooms. Three of us slept on mattresses in the larger room and the other two in the smaller room. Thus, the stage was set.

It was on Friday, December 16, 1944, that I was granted a leave to go to Verviers,  Belgium for Rest and Relaxation.

We arrived at Verviers on Saturday, about noon and had no sooner settled down to drink, when the MPs started rounding up all the GIs, with news that the Germans had broken through allied lines and were advancing rapidly. This was the famous Battle of the Bulge. We were sent back to our outfits as quickly as possible. We got back to our outfits at about 4 a.m. Sunday morning of December 18th. I went immediately to my room, took off my overcoat, and shoes, and, otherwise fully dressed, I dropped on my mattress, and fell asleep in very short order.

The next thing I remember is an explosion, and the room was filled with smoke and fire. The wall between the two rooms was knocked down by the explosion, and five of us were groping around in the dark trying to find our way out.

The heat in the room, on this cold winter night, jumped from 0 degrees to 1000 degrees in less than a minute. It was at this moment that an article I had read in the Reader’s Digest sometime in the middle 1930s flashed through my mind. The article stated that if one was ever caught in a enclosed space, namely a room, that was on fire and full of smoke, there was something to do that could help temporarily.

First, do not drop to the floor because the heavy poison gasses settle to the floor, and death would result almost immediately. Secondly, do not stand upright, because the heat rises and serious burns on the face could result. Thus, the least of the three evils is to crouch into the lower part of the middle third of the room. Therefore, you  avoid the poison gasses and the tremendous heat, while you attempt to get out.

The five of us groped in the rubble till we found our way to the windows and jumped out one after the other. I was the third one to jump out of the window, and because I crouched as indicated the Reader’s Digest article, I received the least burns of all, even less than the two who jumped out before me. They received first, second and third degree burns on the face, ears and hands Their hands and ears were badly mangled by the heat. I only lost the skin on my face and hands, and did not lose the use of my hands or leaving my facial appearance changed at all.

To this day, I thank the Reader’s Digest for aiding me in living through this terrible experience.

Incidentally, the explosion was caused by an incendiary bomb that was dropped by [one of] the few remaining German aircraft that was sent to harass the troops north and south of the Bulge.