Pierson Sergeant with Small Group That Held Hill and Outbluffed Nazis
Germans No Supermen in Opinion of Italian Infantrymen
With the Fifth Army, Italy—“Supermen, hell,” remarked Sergeant Wayne R. Herbold, son of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Herbold of Pierson, Iowa as he related how a party of 17 American infantrymen recently held a remote hill on the Fifth army front in Italy while surrounded by what he estimated to be a company of “krauts” heavily armed with automatic weapons.
The party was sent forward to make certain observation and report activity in an enemy area.
Upon arriving the group reported back by their voice radio that the hill was uninhabited, with the exception of three dead Germans.
During the night the party lost contact with their main forces and at the crack of dawn the Nazis launched an attack against them from three sides, the group taking cover in an old abandoned castle atop the hill. The battle raged furiously for over an hour.
Just as the group’s ammunition became exhausted the fighting attracted attention of their main body who came to the rescue. The besieged party of scouts escaped without a single casualty.
The trapped party had bluffed its way out. By laying down a heavy volley of fire and Jerry overestimating its strength and pulling his forces back to regroup, it had opened the way for its main body of troops to come through from the unoccupied side of the hill.
With the newly arrived reinforcements the men gave the Nazis a hot reception when they finally attacked again.
A machine gun section leader, Herbold entered the armed forces on May 8, 1942. He attended Pierson consolidated school.
Herbold has three brothers, Gordon, Loren and Verdean Herbold, serving overseas.
Source: The Sioux City Journal, July 18, 1944
