Word: kerley
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...third day the battalion's plight seemed hopeless. Up the hill, under a white flag, came a shiny-booted SS officer. His ultimatum to the battalion's gaunt, lanky, black-bearded commander, Captain R. A. Kerley: surrender by 8 o'clock that night, or be destroyed-totally. Texan Kerley's reply: "Go to hell." Then he amplified: "I will surrender when every one of our bullets has been fired and every one of our bayonets is sticking in a German belly...
After five and a half days the Germans retired. Captain Kerley's outfit spotted a long line of tanks and guns moving out, radioed the range. This time U.S. shells were merciless. The lost battalion could report: "Total destruction." By night Americans were back in Mortain, and a rescue battalion had worked itself up the hillside. The regiment's colonel heard then of Kerley's talk with the SS officer...
Said Captain Kerley: "They had a hell of a nerve to put a proposition like that...