The Payroll Arnold Brown 90th Infantry Division | World War II Oral History

Retired Colonel Arnold L. Brown of Owensboro, Ky., was a company commander in the 90th Infantry Division.

After the Normandy breakout, the armored forces were pursuing the Germans twenty to thirty miles a day, some days more than that, and we in the infantry were trying to keep up. So we were marching down the road, single file, on each side of the road, and here comes a jeep down the road. My first sergeant said, "Do you know who that is?"

I said, "No."

He said, "That’s General Patton."

Well, I’d heard a lot about General Patton but I’d never met him. I didn’t realize I was getting ready to get acquainted with him. But he got right even with G Company, and he said, "Driver, stop here."

I thought, I don’t see how anything could be wrong. My biggest responsibility at that time was keeping stragglers up. In our battalion march order I was the rearmost company, so stragglers, some of those from other companies straggled way back here, and some from my company, so I’m trying to keep these stragglers moving along, and General Patton said, "Who’s the blankety blank commanding officer of this blankety blank outfit?" You can fill in the blanks.

At that time I was hoping the Germans would start shelling us so I could jump in a hole. And then I was thinking, well, if he relieves me of my command, with the experiences I’ve had in the past, he’d be doing me a favor. Anyhow, I stepped out and reported to him and said, "I am, Sir."

And he looked me over a little bit and made a few comments. He didn’t chew me out or anything, and just drove on. It was just his way of letting everybody know that he’s in charge of things and he’s up there. So I’m one of those who could brag about being chewed out by General Patton.

Prior to the closing of the Falaise Gap, we had moved into a bivouac area, and they decided that they were going to have a little break here and pay the troops. The troops hadn’t been paid for a month or two. So they told me to go back to the division rear and pick up the payroll. By the time I got back up to my company area, it was late afternoon. So I started paying off the troops. Most of them would take a few dollars, and they had a system where you could put it back and you could send it back to their dependents. I got through about one platoon, and we got an emergency order, we’ve got to move right away. I had to stop paying off the troops and move into this other area, and by the time we got into this other area and got situated it was dark, and I could hear the Germans out in front of me, hear the vehicles and tanks running around. The Germans had broke through in one spot there, and they wanted to plug the hole with us.

Before daylight, I get orders that we’re going to make a daylight attack. Now what am I going to do with this payroll? I can picture me galloping across this field with a .45 pistol in one hand and the payroll in the other. I thought about it and thought about it. We only had the rear area there for supplies and for our jeeps. So I turned this payroll over to my driver, who was a Pfc, he was a pretty reliable guy, and I told him, "Guard this with your life." So we launch this attack, and the Germans started, we were under mortar attack. A mortar round exploded nearby, and I felt something jerking my trousers below my knee, and it fluttered off into the bank. Then I jumped in a hole until this mortar barrage would lift, and when the mortar barrage lifted I started to move out, uh-oh, something’s wrong with that leg. I looked down there, and pulled the britches leg up, there’s a piece of steel sticking in my left leg, just below the knee. So I took my first aid packet, and thought through my first aid training. The first thing I did was to sprinkle this sulfa powder around the wounded area.

I left the piece of shrapnel in there. And then I put a bandage around it. Then I took my sulfa tablets and drank half a canteen of water, and checked it. Well, this thing’s got to come out of my leg before I could go any further, so I called the executive officer over and put him in charge of the company into this attack, and go back to the aid station. On the way back, I run into a Mexican who was in my company. His right hand was shredded, and it looked like there was no meat on his fingers. He said he was throwing a hand grenade and it hit an apple tree and bounced back, and he picked it up to throw it again and it exploded. I could see the bones of his hand.

We had to cross an open field to get back to the aid station, and a German machine gun opened up on us. So we ducked down in this ditch. We lay there a little while, then we got up to move, and the Germans opened up with that machine gun a second time. There was no way we could get across this field with that machine gun shooting at us. So we lay down again, and got up a third time, and the same thing. Now this Mexican took his carbine in his left arm, and he’s up there looking for that machine gun so he could charge it. I told him, "Stay down here. There’s no reason to commit suicide." So we lay there a while longer. Of course, my company and the other elements of the battalion were moving forward with the attack, and the Germans must have got out of there. The next time we got up, they didn’t shoot at us, and we got back to the battalion aid station.

They had quite a few casualties there, and the battalion surgeon looked at me and I wasn’t hurting, I wasn’t losing any blood, so he just put another bandage on top of the one that I had and gave me six sulfa tablets and told me to drink half a canteen of water. I said, "I’ve already done that, Captain."

"We’ve got to get it on the record," he said. So I took the six tablets.

Then they sent me back to the regimental clearing station. Here again they had heavy casualties, and I’m waiting for them to treat everybody and they looked at me, and all they did was give me six more sulfa tablets. I told them, "I’ve already done this twice." And the doctor there at the battalion aid station had forgot to put it on my tag, well, you can understand in combat how they forget all these things. And I had to take it, so by this time I’m more concerned about overdosing on sulfa drugs than I was about my wound.

Now I went back to the division collecting station, and this is the first place where they have hospital tents and other setups, like MASH on TV, and here again they take care of those who are most seriously wounded, including the Germans. If a German was more seriously wounded than I, they’d take him first. So I was the last one that they took into surgery. I was wounded at 9:30 in the morning and here it is midnight. So they remove that bandage off my leg, pull that piece of steel out, and blood squirted up. That hot steel had cut my artery and sealed it at the same time. You see what would have happened if we’d have pulled that out any other place? This is the sort of luck I had all through this war.

So I’m evacuated to England, and within two weeks I’m back at the front. All this time that I’m back in the hospital I’m wondering what happened to that payroll. When I came back through the division rear, I had enough nerve to go in and see the G-1, and I kind of whispered to him, "What happened to that payroll?"

"Ohhh," he said, "that! We had a heck of a mess with that. We counted it all up and there was $82 was missing, and we started wondering whether to charge you or not."

I was getting ready to say, "You aren’t charging me for nothing. I couldn’t help that."

But then he said, "Well, we had a little slush fund back here so we put in the $82." All I could figure out, the Pfc that I turned the bag over to, a Pfc got I think about $82 a month, he must have took out his $82 and forgot to sign the payroll.

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Arnold Brown is one of the veterans featured in "9 Lives"

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