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(Continued from page 71) guised as an American, “the man pulled a knife on us,” but “Heydt soon spoke English” and defused the situation, King recalled. Soon his outfit entrained for Liege, Belgium, nearer the front lines. “Our first combat was in Maastricht, Holland, at an old brick factory where we held the front lines,” King wrote. Out front lay knocked-out American and German tanks. King was the squad leader overseeing a machine gun deployed to the right; a Sgt. Ramis oversaw a machine gun deployed to the left. The American soldiers placed trip flares beyond their immediate defenses; one night an Easy Company patrol “was to cross in front of my gun,” he remembered. “Instead they crossed at my right flank and sent up flares that we had placed there. “Of course, we thought it was a German patrol, and all hell broke loose,”
King wrote. As he was trained, he pulled and dropped the pin from a hand grenade, then almost threw it before discovering “they were friendly troops” outside the American lines. “Fortunately, none of our men were hit,” King recalled. Clutching the grenade, he summoned help; “my section leader came up, and we tied string around the handle. The next morning I found the pin and deactivated the time bomb.” Easy Company “fought through Dusseldorf, Linnich, Rurdorf, and Flossdorf” near the Roer River,” King wrote. Fought on December 2, the Battle of Flossmoor “was the worst battle we had been in. Some guys tried to move forward and were killed instantly.” Easy’s machine-gun section deployed during the battle. “I was shooting tracers from my M1 rifle so my gun-
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ner could pick out a German machine gun that had us pinned down,” King recalled. “Soon after, while I was in a prone position shooting,” an 88-millimeter German artillery shell exploded nearby. “A piece of shrapnel penetrated my right arm, and I rolled onto my side,” King wrote. The wound saw King evacuated to the battalion aid station, where “a half body cast was put on from my waist up to support my right arm.” He later shipped to “a temporary hospital … set up at a hotel” in Paris before being flown by C-46 to an American hospital in Birmingham, England. There “the doctors [finally] took the steel out of my arm,” King remembered, but an infection soon developed in the wound. King experienced severe pain, and even penicillin could not cure the infection.
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