A Tribute to Edsel Vincent Colvin June. 2014 | Page 11

On November 11th, 1944, Edsel and his regiment arrived in the Vosges
Mountains. None of them really knew where that was due to the lack of
knowledge about French geography. It was dark when they unloaded the
trucks. They started hiking through the mountains and it kept getting darker.
It eventually got so dark that they had to hold hands and walk in a single file
line. They were told not to talk or even whisper. They could not make a single
noise. They had to be careful of their gear making noise too.
After walking at what Edsel thought was an eternity, they came to a flat
area. Light had started to come through and they could see that they were in a
valley. They had no idea there were a lot of German soldiers on the other side
of the valley. It was going to be their job to drive them out of the valley and
back towards Germany.
During that early morning, Edsel’s squad of 12 men were led to foxholes
and was told to relieve the soldiers who occupied them. He went into the
foxhole and saw one man. He told the man that he was there to relive him and
the others. The man told Edsel that some of the other foxholes had no people
at all. They had been killed. He told Edsel that he could expect German
soldiers to be firing at them any minute. He advised Edsel to keep his head
down, and then he left. Edsel was not happy about having to climb into the
foxhole after that.
That day had little activity and was very quiet. That night though, as
Edsel says, “all hell broke loose. The Germans were using heavy artillery and
mortars on their position. Edsel was on guard that night and was to stay
awake all night. He states that he had no trouble after hearing stories of
German soldiers sneaking up on guards and slitting their throats. The artillery
shells and mortars helped quite a bit also.