THE STORY SO FAR: German troops have decimated Army Pfc. Jim Creech's small squad of riflemen.

Fourth of 10 parts


The three men Jim Creech brought with him to clear German stragglers out of a woods were dead, cut down by enemy fire.

Many more Germans occupied the forest near the French town of Colmar than the Americans had believed. Some were now closing in on Jim's position.

In the dusk and light rain of Nov. 25, 1944, with fragments from a 20 mm shell searing his right leg, the squad leader played dead until he heard the click of a round going into a chamber.

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He glanced up. Two Germans had leveled their weapons at him -- one a rifle, the other a pistol.

"Come here, boy," the one with the pistol said in English.

They helped Jim up, pulled his arms around their necks and walked him to an area where the Germans tended about 20 wounded. An aid man cut off Jim's pants leg, and Jim saw he had four cuts in the calf where shell fragments had penetrated and lodged deep in muscle. Using Jim's first aid kit, the aid man wrapped the leg in a cloth bandage.

Left unguarded, Jim tried to crawl back to the American lines under a darkening sky but got lost. He felt a pair of boots. There stood a German at the 20 mm gun that had caused Jim's wounds.

Deciding to withdraw from the woods, the Germans backed the gun- mounted truck onto the road where the German carrying the tripod had been shot. They lifted Jim into the rear and ordered him to put both hands around the gun barrel.

A guard saw the gold high school ring Jim wore on his left hand and wanted it. But Jim couldn't twist it off. He tried to interest the guard in the silver infantry ring with crossed rifles that he wore on his other hand. The guard looked at it, shook his head and threw it in the woods along the road. He reached for his bayonet, intending to cut off Jim's finger to get the gold ring.

Jim hurriedly stuck his finger in his mouth and got enough saliva under the ring to pull it off.

At a warehouse-turned-field hospital, doctors tended to Jim and re-bandaged his leg. An aid man gave him a slice of bread. Famished, Jim took a bite and gagged. The bread was made from equal parts of chestnut hulls, sawdust and flour.

An ambulance took him to a German army hospital in Zweibruecken, where he was the only American patient and ate a little better. In the morning, he and the three dozen Germans in his ward got hot coffee with sliced bread and marmalade; in the afternoon, hot soup. They also got four cigarettes a day, and because Jim didn't smoke, he traded his for the other men's bowls of soup.

One day Jim almost made his situation worse. An SS officer came into the ward, accompanied by an armed guard, and went from bunk to bunk, speaking to the men. When he got to Jim, he asked in perfect English:

"American, eh? Why did you come to Germany?"

"I came to kill my enemies, Germans!" Jim answered.

The officer's face reddened. He grabbed the guard's rifle by the barrel and swung the butt at Jim, who shifted to avoid a blow to his head. The butt struck him on his injured right knee, causing a bruise, days of pain and a permanent scar.