30 January 1944: "Litter bearers staggered back across the polders, 'packing meat.' Exhausted soldiers chewed malt and dextrose tablets, their eyelids 'heavy as silver dollars,' the mortarman Hans Juegensen wrote. Audie Murphy, now a sergeant and recently returned to the 3rd Division after a bout of malaria, described 'jeeps drawing trailerloads of corpses ... Arms and legs bobble grotesquely over the sides of the vehicles.' A German shell knocked Murphy senseless; upon regaining consciousness, he found the soldier next to him dead. 'Living now becomes a matter of destiny, or pure luck,' he wrote. 'The medics are bloody as butchers.'" "Anglo-American losses on January 30 approached 1,500, more than double the D-Day casualties at Salerno. German dead, wounded, and missing for the weekend exceeded 1,000." "Day of Battle" - Rick Atkinson, pages 394 and 395. Dave
