2d Dragoons

Cook’s Bridge

David.Gettman February 29th, 2008

WWII George L. Caley

At one the boys took off in the six by. They rode for quite a distance over a muddy road and finally came to a river. It was flowing fast and muddy and they could see that farther up around the bend of the road, a bridge was knocked out.

When they got out of the truck Captain Kalwaic, the Group dentist, said, “Well boys, this is your job. You cook’s are supposed to throw a bridge across the river. I think the name of it is the Meurthe. I do not know. You’ll get help from the FFI here in this last town. How you build it or repair it or fix it, I don’t know and I don’t care. Just get it done. You’ve got to have something across that open stretch of water tonight. Just enough so that a jeep can get across. So you’d better get to work. There will be picks and shovels and crowbars coming in with these FFI’s.”

They worked until late in the afternoon, and after finishing the bridge they all took a cold bath in the river. Then some of the boys decided to do a little fishing – with a hand grenade. Just as everyone, or almost everyone, had gone down to the stream to throw the grenade, Uncle Ben (Lt. Col. Benkosky) drove up in his jeep. Just as he stopped the grenade exploded, and of course he wanted to know what the big confusion was down stream. Someone told him that there was a rumor that there was a Frenchman who had seen a Jerry down by the bank. Col. Ben let it go at that.

The next day at noon the convoy crossed the bridge that the cooks had built. The recon and headquarters boys joked and laughed about the bridge, but it held up and got them across.

As Group pulled over the bridge, the cooks were the last to cross it. They rounded a curve on the far side of the bridge and Dawson and Hurts and George saw a sign pointed in a northerly direction bearing the inscription, Luneville! (map IV)(map 25)(map NS)