The Decoy Doughboy

Souvenir Edition -- Printed in Czechoslovakia

May 23, 1945. -- Publishes by and for the men of the 18th Combat Team. -- First Infantry Division, U. S. Army.

Command Post a Crazy Place

Whit German tanks and infantry defending the :own of Uckerath, a small but strategic town east of the Rhine, Captain Nelson G. Park had to pick a CP, and fast. As his 'G' Co. fought its way into town, Captain Park and his headquarters group headed for a large house on the outkirts.

Entering the building they found the place in an uproar. Countless civilians were screaming, laughing, and crying. Others ran up and down the stairs aimlessly, but Captain Park had no time to bother with civilians. Rapidly setting up radio and telephone communications, the CP group wasted no time in conducting the attack.

Later, when the attack had been completed and the enemy driven out of town, Captain Park and his executive officer, 1st Lt. Harold Parker, made a tour of their CP and found it still in a state of bedlam. After talking to one of the English-speaking civilians the two 'G' Company officers discovered that the building was an insane asylum housing 75 inmates, mostly of German nationality.

There were characters of every description. One civilian had rigged up a wooden machine-gun and from a stairway vantage-point simulated mowing down wave after wave of oncoming infantry. Another deranged German led them to his "liquor cabinet", which turned out to be a chest of empty bottles, while a woman claiming to be Hitler's secret wife, offered to lead them to The Furher's hiding place.

These and similar incidents proved to Captain Park that a combat area was no place for these mental cases, but it wasn't until the next day when German artillery let up and transportation was available that the inmates were evacuated.

The sights the 'G' Co, men saw prompted 1st Sgt. Nathaniel Smith to name the house, "The chamber of horrors".

No such action as this had ocured in Decoy since the warm day in Normandy last summer when Captain Solomon, then Blue S-3 established the battalion CP in what he first thought was a French Hotel-resort spot, only, as the warm summer evening fell, to find it a b o r d e l l o. The CP of Decoy Blue displaced forward that night.