Some of the troops had fought in towns during the battles for Sicily, Normandy, and in the drive across France. But no one had any experience fighting in a city of this size. The soldiers tended to call urban combat "street fighting," a moniker that revealed a certain level of ignorance since the open streets were often the last place an infantryman wanted to be during the fighting. The Army had almost no published doctrine on urban warfare, but this hardly mattered. The ability to improvise, under the stress of combat, was (and still is) a great strength of American ground combat troops, from privates to colonels. In this case, neither Daniel nor Corley had the time to deal with fancy field manuals or retrain their soldiers for urban combat. Instead, both men, in spite of their lack of experience with city fighting, intuitively understood how to approach it, as did many of their sergeants, lieutenants, and captains.
The key was to organize platoons and companies into combined arms teams. "Tanks and tank destroyers were a.s.signed to each company," Lieutenant Colonel Daniel later wrote. "Artillery observers were to move forward as soon as ground was secured by the advancing rifle companies, meanwhile maintaining liaison with the rifle company commanders." Self-propelled guns and ant.i.tank guns also supported the riflemen, as did squads of engineers, mortarmen, and machine gunners.
Each group contributed its own unique strength to the team. The tanks, tank destroyers, and guns could pulverize buildings, ward off enemy armor, destroy German machine gunners, and even provide mobile cover for the infantrymen. Artillery could devastate entire city blocks, killing enemy soldiers or forcing them to move to safer places. The machine gunners and mortar teams lent even more accurate fire support. The engineers could deal with mines and b.o.o.by traps. They also had the capability to blast German defenders in their cellars and bunkers. The riflemen, of course, were the lead actors in this urban ch.o.r.eography. They could protect the armor from the peril of enemy Panzerfaust ant.i.tank teams, whose warheads could puncture the armor of American tanks. The riflemen were also the ones who would carry out the actual a.s.saults, securing buildings, killing the enemy at close range. These riflemen, according to one unit report, had to be "proficient in proper methods of moving along walls, advancing over walls and rooftops, firing from either shoulder, from the hip, and from covered areas, and rapid entry of buildings."
In the urban maze of rubble and ruined buildings, commanders might easily lose control of their soldiers. At Peleliu, the Americans had been hampered by poor maps. At Aachen, they were blessed with excellent, detailed maps of the city. In Daniel"s case, he and his company commanders used those maps to establish "a series of checkpoints on street intersections and also in the larger buildings so that each unit knew where the adjacent units were on its flanks. Each company was a.s.signed an area and generally each platoon a street. On cross streets, each platoon would go down about halfway, meeting in the middle."
The Americans did not have to worry about any political constraints. There were only a few thousand civilians in Aachen. The Americans had no wish to kill them, but, if they did, few would notice in the context of a world war that had already snuffed out the lives of more civilians than combatants. What"s more, in Aachen the opposition would consist entirely of uniformed soldiers, making it easy for the Americans to determine who was a threat and who was not. The city was already in a decrepit state because it had been bombed so often. Thus, if the Americans unleashed wanton destruction on historical buildings, churches, and landmarks, they would suffer no political consequences in the court of world opinion. Indeed, the motto of the soldiers was "Knock "em all down!" This applied equally to objects or people. Anyone, or anything, that even remotely threatened the Americans was fair game for the full range of U.S. firepower. In this pretelevision age, the Americans did not have to worry about the image-driven consequences of needless destruction or the killing of civilians. They could concentrate solely on the task of taking the city. The odd thing is that the Battle of Aachen was fought largely for political reasons, because of the city"s cultural importance to German nationalism, yet politics had almost no impact on how either side actually fought the battle.3 Surrender or We"ll Blow You Away.
At 1020 on the morning of October 10, three American soldiers emerged from the cover of a building in Aachen"s suburbs and began walking down Trierer Stra.s.se (street), toward the German-held city. The man in the middle, Private Kenneth Kading, was waving a bedsheet-sized white flag attached to a pole. To his right was First Lieutenant William Boehme, an interpreter. To Kading"s left was First Lieutenant Cedric Lafley, who was carrying orders straight from General Collins, demanding the surrender of the German garrison. The day was gray and overcast, with light rain pattering off the battered concrete. Much of Aachen was ringed by railroad tracks whose embankment rose up as high as forty feet. About fifty yards shy of a railroad underpa.s.s, several German soldiers materialized, waved the Americans over to them, and guided them through the underpa.s.s, into the German front lines. The Germans blindfolded the three Americans and led them up the street, first into an apartment building and then into a bas.e.m.e.nt. Shorn of his blindfold, Lieutenant Lafley asked to see the German commander, but was told by two German officers that he was not there. Lafley gave them two envelopes containing the surrender ultimatum.
The Germans had exactly twenty-four hours to comply or else, the ultimatum decreed, Aachen would face "complete destruction." One of the German officers expressed a hope for good surrender terms. Another ventured to say that they would fight on regardless. A few minutes later, after some more desultory conversation and a polite exchange of cigarettes, the blindfolds were put back in place and the German guides led them back to the American lines. "On the way back our guides stopped briefly beside some comrades to take a nip from a bottle," Lieutenant Lafley wrote. "They would have liked to strike up a conversation with us but due to previous instructions they only spoke when necessary." The Germans led them past the underpa.s.s and nearly followed them back to the American positions. "It was necessary to tell them to stop and tell them to go back while we proceeded to our own lines." Later, the Americans broadcast the ultimatum by radio and loudspeaker. They also fired artillery sh.e.l.ls full of surrender pamphlets into the city.
The Americans waited the requisite twenty-four hours and hoped for a German surrender. Few of the soldiers wanted to fight among Aachen"s ruins. Although white flags did sprout from some windows and several dozen enemy prisoners filtered into American lines, most of the Americans were realistic enough not to get their hopes up. "Them b.a.s.t.a.r.ds ain"t gonna give up," a sergeant drawled on one street corner. "We"ll have to root "em out house to house style." He was exactly right. The German commander, Colonel Gerhard Wilck, never even replied to the ultimatum. His silence amounted to a contemptuous no.
In response, the Americans pounded Aachen for two days with artillery sh.e.l.ls and P38 and P47 fighter-bombers. In the recollection of one witness, the fighters "came in at a 70-degree angle. You could see them strafing and then the two specks which were 500-pound bombs would cut loose and then a minute later there would be the explosion. Fires were started all over Aachen-there must have been a dozen large ones." Huge clouds of dust and smoke rose from the debris. Infantrymen watched approvingly and muttered encouragement to the aviators: "Go to it, you glamour boys!" The fighters dropped nearly 173 tons of bombs on Aachen. When the planes were gone, the artillerymen lobbed some five thousand sh.e.l.ls at the city. At one point, as the sh.e.l.ls exploded, scattering masonry, fragments, and dust, the Germans began playing waltz music over a loudspeaker they had set up. A bizarre voice spoke over the surreal music: "Hey, you dumb Americans, why don"t you put your rifles down and come over and we"ll have a party? If you will stop sh.e.l.ling we will play some music for you. We regret that we have none of your American swing records." When the sh.e.l.ling continued unabated, the voice said reprovingly: "All right, if that is the kind of music you like, that is the kind of music you shall have." Enemy mortar crews fired several rounds at the American-held buildings.
Engineers from the 1106th Engineer Combat Group added their own special flourish to the pounding. They actually built car bombs out of abandoned trolley street cars, placed them on their tracks, and used a bulldozer to push them down a hill at the Germans in Aachen. Each car bomb "was loaded with approximately a ton of enemy explosives made up of six German rockets, fifty 88mm sh.e.l.ls, two boxes [of] 20mm sh.e.l.ls, two boxes [of] 37mm sh.e.l.ls and hand grenades and rifle grenades," one after action report said. The car bombs were the brainchild of Lieutenant Colonel Bill Gara, one of the engineer commanders. They did little appreciable damage. "I"ve always been disappointed that we didn"t get better results from this ingenious scheme," Colonel Stanhope Mason, the division chief of staff, later wrote. As a whole, the bombs and sh.e.l.ls rearranged the rubble, and jostled the Germans around, forcing them to take refuge in their cellars, but most survived the bombardment and were more than ready to fight when the a.s.sault on the city began on October 13. The incessant pounding did an effective job, though, of forcing enemy soldiers from the buildings that overlooked the railroad tracks.4 Plunging into the Concrete Jungle.
Before launching their a.s.sault, the infantrymen hurled grenades over the railroad embankment. The grenade explosions sounded like a series of dull thuds. Men could hear shrapnel plinking off the piles of shattered masonry. As they hoisted themselves over the embankment, the city was eerily silent. The shattered hulks of apartment buildings loomed immediately ahead, brooding like some sort of disfigured ghosts. Jagged piles of rocks, support timbers, and other urban junk were heaped everywhere. Many of the soldiers took cover behind the piles or against the exterior of buildings, waiting for the supporting Shermans from the 745th Tank Battalion to negotiate their way over the tracks.
Lieutenant Colonel Daniel was impressed with the aggressiveness of the tank commanders in safely driving their vehicles over the embankment and positioning them for the a.s.sault. Daniel lined up all three of his companies, each with at least two tanks in support, and sent them forward into their a.s.signed sectors. "Then began the slow mopping up of the buildings in the succeeding blocks," Daniel wrote. "The infantry had been instructed to avoid the open streets and work through the cellars with liberal expenditure of concussion grenades. The process was necessarily slow and methodical; it was found that in many blocks all cellars were connected, thus making it possible to clear the entire block without emerging on the streets."
Private Lauren Gast and his rifle squad found some of these pre-prepared tunnels and were only too happy to move through them. At times, though, they had to emerge from the tunnels to get into another building. "We would use a rifle grenade to blast the door open, then run across the street and enter through the open door." Most of the time, the buildings were empty. If there were no tunnels, the Americans created their own. "The area we were in was a lot of very small apartment buildings that one b.u.t.ted up against the next," Private Charles Dye of L Company said. "So we chopped holes through the walls and crawled through the walls. The engineers brought us up TNT and we would blow holes through the walls of these houses."
They could not take the whole city this way, though. Most of the time, they cautiously picked their way along the streets, using tanks, piles of debris, or doorways for cover. "In general a tank or a tank destroyer moved down each street with a platoon of infantry firing at the 2nd or 3rd house ahead," some of the soldiers testified in a post-battle historical interview. "When a house was cleared the infantry would signal that they were ready (and protected from muzzle blast); then and then only would the tank or tank destroyer fire its next mission. As the tracked weapons fired into a building they would force the enemy down to the cellar, where the infantry would toss hand grenades and immediately follow in." Often, the tankers fired high-explosive sh.e.l.ls through windows and doors. Sometimes, they fired armor-piercing sh.e.l.ls to punch a hole in a building and then followed that up with several high-explosive sh.e.l.ls. The average tank crew fired fifty rounds of high-explosive ammunition per day.
Machine gunners set up their guns behind debris piles or in especially deep doorways about half a block behind the leading vehicles and riflemen. From there the gunners sent out volleys of bullets, down the street, ahead of their comrades as they advanced. Often the machine gunners shot up windows, especially on the upper floors of intact buildings, in hopes of killing snipers. Artillery observers moved with the infantry, calling down fire as close as two or three blocks away. The urban sprawl made radio communication spotty, so signalmen strung communication wire in the wake of the advancing infantry, allowing Corley and Daniel to stay in touch with their company commanders. Flamethrower and demolition men worked closely with the riflemen. "When a steel door was encountered," the soldiers said, "it was covered by infantry fire while the demolition man worked his way to it. At the same time, the flamethrower would work his way to a window through which he would throw a two- or three-second stream of fire normally 30-40 yards, thus forcing those inside to keep down, or driving them out." In the meantime, the demolition man would set his charge and blow the door open. Riflemen then ran forward, burst through the opening, and shot everyone inside at such close range that they could see the horrified expressions on the faces of their victims.
The Americans had to do quite a bit of "back clearing." This meant back-tracking and clearing buildings they thought they had secured. "A group of enemy would work along the pa.s.sageways in the sewer and then appear in areas that were thought secured," an after action report stated. "Each manhole had to be located, grenades thrown and the sewers thoroughly blocked and covered." The infantry soldiers also had to "search every building from cellar to attic, being certain that n.o.body, civilian or soldier, is left behind." Needless to say, this was time-consuming.5 Richard Tregaskis had covered the Pacific War, penning a famous book ent.i.tled Guadalca.n.a.l Diary Guadalca.n.a.l Diary. At Aachen, he tagged along with F Company, 2nd Battalion, as the men of that company fought block by block through the city. He was struck by how similar city fighting was to jungle fighting. "Windows are bushes, houses are trees. Every one of the thousands of windows, like every tropical bush or plant in the jungle, is a potential source of danger. And every house in a city, like every tree in the jungle, must be checked for enemy soldiers-probed by high explosive or an American foot soldier." As Tregaskis watched, the troops unleashed every implement of firepower in their a.r.s.enal, at anything or anyone they even perceived to be a threat. "The technique is to blast your way through the middle of a block of houses with high explosive when you can; just as you might carve a path through the solid wall of jungle with a machete."
Even with all the firepower, the process was exceedingly dangerous. The Germans could choose from a dizzying array of hiding places. Cellars with street-level windows were ideal locations for machine gunners, who spewed grazing fire along the concrete streets, or Panzerfaust gunners with perfect vantage points to hit the treads or side armor of tanks. Snipers favored upper-level windows because of the fields of fire and sight lines they offered. Sergeant Mack Morris watched, in disgust, as "a soldier stood easily in a doorway and a sniper two blocks away put a bullet through his head. The boy fell and lay quietly for a while. Then he bled from the mouth and groaned and died. His blood covered the doorway."
Elsewhere, at the leading edge of the 3rd Battalion"s advance, Private First Cla.s.s Leroy Stewart, a scout in K Company, was crawling in a ditch alongside a curve in a street. Several machine guns opened up on him, kicking up mud and gra.s.s frighteningly close. He was an experienced infantryman who had joined his company in Normandy. Realizing that the road was completely covered by the enemy guns, he crawled back and looked for a concealed route to close with the machine guns. It occurred to Stewart that a tank could destroy the machine guns, so he sent back a request for one. "Word came back up. They didn"t want to send up a tank because it might get knocked out. That made me mad. They didn"t care if I got clobbered but didn"t want to take a chance with a tank."
Stewart"s att.i.tude was very common among infantrymen. Nothing infuriated them more than this kind of situation. Their job was the most dangerous. They took the highest casualties. To them, it made sense to call on every measure of support, not just to accomplish the mission but to minimize their own danger as much as possible. But officers-especially tankers-often had a more cold-blooded point of view. To them, tanks were more precious than riflemen, especially in city fighting, where the armor was so immobile and vulnerable in tight s.p.a.ces. As one such officer wrote, "It is not advisable to have [tanks] advance with the a.s.sault infantry. It would be very simple for the enemy to attack the tank" with a range of weapons. "A tank has no room to maneuver in a city street, and thus becomes very vulnerable to AT [ant.i.tank] fire."
Reflecting this viewpoint, Stewart"s platoon leader came up and ordered him to get moving. Stewart tried to explain the situation to the lieutenant but he was unswayed. "He told me he was giving me a direct order to move up and not keep holding up things." Private First Cla.s.s Stewart angrily refused. Here was a cla.s.sic example of a crisis in small-unit leadership. Stewart had more combat experience than his lieutenant, affording him more status. In the Army"s hierarchical structure, the officer"s word should have been law. In garrison it probably would have been, but not in this life-or-death combat situation. Stewart knew that Army discipline and potential punishment paled in comparison to the grave danger posed by the machine guns. In real combat, American soldiers followed officers and sergeants because of confidence in their leadership, not necessarily because of their rank. The new lieutenant thus had no leverage. If he threatened court-martial, Stewart would probably have welcomed it as a chance to leave the front lines.
Stewart was a good soldier, though, not a malingerer. He offered to do what the lieutenant wanted but only "if he would go beside me." Again, here was another test of leadership, and the lieutenant failed. Instead of accepting this challenge, thus demonstrating his courage and a belief in his own orders, the lieutenant threatened to court-martial Stewart. As he did so, another soldier let the young officer off the hook by offering to carry out the lieutenant"s order himself. The soldier made it to the bend in the road when, all at once, the guns opened up. Bullets tore into him. Stewart"s squad leader tried to pull the wounded man back but he got hit, too. Chastened, the lieutenant called up tanks. The infantrymen used the tanks for cover. The tanks blasted the machine-gun-infested buildings, and the advance continued. In Stewart"s opinion, "we had lost both of these men when we didn"t have to." Such are the grave stakes of small-unit leadership in the infantry.6 Some of the heaviest fighting raged in several city blocks around a cemetery that was located immediately astride the 2nd Battalion"s planned route of advance. Here the Germans had pillboxes, trenches, and ant.i.tank ditches, along with 20-millimeter and 75-millimeter guns hidden in several apartments. One platoon got caught in a cross fire of deadly machine-gun and mortar fire that killed two men and badly wounded eight others. A Panzerfaust streaked from a building and slammed into a tank. The ensuing explosion "knocked out" the tank. This was a boxing term favored by the Americans to describe a catastrophic kill. It was easier just to say "knocked out" rather than to describe the actual reality of twisted metal, burned crewmen, and exploding ammunition. For hours the two sides battered each other. Machine guns chattered. Tank guns boomed. Bazooka rockets smashed into walls. Rifles barked. American BAR men disgorged twenty-round magazines with a steady "tac, tac, tac" staccato.
The Americans steadily overwhelmed the German defenders, but doing so was a nightmare. One enemy-held building was really a reinforced steel and concrete pillbox. It contained four machine guns, protected by soldiers with Panzerfausts and MP40 submachine guns that the Americans called "burp guns." The burp guns were deadly at close range and could fire thirty-two-round clips at a rate of four hundred rounds per minute. At ranges greater than one hundred yards, the burp guns were useless. In tight s.p.a.ces, they were quite deadly. The Americans brought up an ant.i.tank gun and battered the pillbox with several rounds, to no effect. In the end, according to a unit citation, "riflemen infiltrated under intense enemy fire that took its toll, and stormed the building, killing and wounding the entire German group of defenders." In other words, foot soldiers somehow worked their way close to the building as bullets. .h.i.t many of them, probably killing a few (hence the phrase "took its toll"), until they were close enough to hurl grenades, burst inside, and shoot their enemies at close range.
Whoever wrote the citation did not mention the staggering toll this daring a.s.sault must have taken on the surviving American riflemen-the adrenaline rush, the gut-wrenching fear, the anguish of seeing friends torn apart by bullets and fragments, the guilt and helplessness of being able to do nothing to alleviate their suffering, and, especially, the trauma of killing fellow humans at close range, watching the life drain from their faces, hearing them cry for their mothers, listening to them beg for survival, possibly even finding family photos in their wallets, and knowing all the while who was responsible for killing them. This was the reality of urban combat for the 26th Infantry at Aachen.7 Experiencing the City.
As the Americans drove deeper into the city, they encountered substantial numbers of civilians. Their presence only added to the stress of fighting in such an urban maze. To some extent, most of the soldiers held the German people responsible for the war, so they felt little sympathy for them. Nor did the Americans regret inflicting destruction upon such a shrine of German national consciousness. At the same time, though, few if any men wanted to kill or harm a noncombatant. "There were a lot of Germans still living in the town, in the bas.e.m.e.nts," Private Dye said. "We did have to take some consideration for them. We tried not to hurt them. We weren"t fighting the civilians; we were fighting the soldiers."
When the infantry soldiers flushed such civilians from homes and cellars, their first priority was to make sure they posed no threat. Very few did. Most of the Germans were frightened, almost desperate-looking. The vast majority were elderly people or children. "You want to get them out of the way so you can go on," one infantryman said. "Then some old lady . . . will remember that she left her kerchief, and of course she"ll want to go back and get it. Or some little girl about six will have run off without her coat and her mother will want to go back to the house and get it or something. d.a.m.n it, that"s a nuisance when you"re fighting a war." Nuisance or not, the infantry showed remarkable patience with the civilians, if only because they were happy to spend a few minutes dealing with Germans who were not shooting at them.
In the wake of the infantry, civil affairs teams, intelligence specialists, and military policemen moved the civilians to the safety of barracks outside of town, cared for their basic needs, and debriefed them. "Normally people would march to the rear on foot, carrying what personal belongings they could," one civil affairs soldier later said. "At times they were loaded on empty trucks going to the rear, so that they would not interfere with transportation going to the front [lines]." The Americans issued them identification cards, fed them from food stocks they had captured in France, and gave them medical attention. On the first two days alone, the Americans evacuated 609 civilians. In the ensuing days, the numbers rose into the thousands.
Specially trained German-speaking counterintelligence teams-aided by German informers-circulated among the local men, making sure they were not n.a.z.i spies. In one instance, Sergeant d.i.c.k Lang was interrogating a group of people in a church when he noticed a priest who, for some reason, did not look the part. Lang questioned him intensely and took an instant dislike to him, but the man answered all of his questions with no problem. He asked the other people about him and they said they had only known him for two weeks but he was okay. Lang still did not feel right about the man. "I couldn"t really find anything wrong with the priest except I didn"t like him." Another, less patient member of Lang"s team shoved a pistol in the priest"s face and demanded answers. "At this, our suspect stood up very straight, and at attention gave his true name and military rank. He was an SS spy, one of the first caught in Germany." He was, of course, a rarity. Most of the civilians were ordinary people who were glad to see the fighting pa.s.s them by. They were simply biding their time until they could return to their shattered homes and rebuild them.8 As German soldiers retreated at Aachen, they often left behind webs of b.o.o.by traps and mines for the advancing Americans. Like Tregaskis"s jungle, the urban wasteland was ideal for such traps. Slag heaps, hills of masonry, doors, window frames, and the a.s.sorted detritus of city life all made excellent hiding places. Earlier in the war, the German Army had done the same thing in the towns of Italy and France, so this was merely a continuation of their impersonal defensive warfare. In blocks where the Germans stood and fought, the Americans were reasonably sure to encounter few mines or b.o.o.by traps because the Germans, of course, had no desire to trigger their own traps. But undefended areas fairly crawled with them. This was why Daniel and Corley attached teams of engineers to their rifle companies. As tanks and infantry soldiers carefully maneuvered along each street, engineers kept a wary eye out for mines and traps. "Certain houses had their doors wired to explosives in the mailbox," an engineer commander wrote. "A house yard was found to be mined and was carefully avoided throughout the operation. This small area was found to contain at least twenty-five b.o.o.by traps, most of which were made of grenades with pull wires." Teller mines blocked some rubble-choked streets. Live grenades were placed in cupboards and drawers.
One thing that worked in the Americans" favor was that the Germans had to do almost all of their b.o.o.by-trapping hastily at night. Also, Colonel Wilck needed most of his own engineers to fight as infantry, meaning he had few experts available for extensive b.o.o.by-trapping. "Frequently trip wires were fairly obvious," the same engineer officer commented. Sometimes detonators were sloppily hidden or at times "not concealed or carried away." Quite often, civilians and prisoners revealed the locations of b.o.o.by traps because they knew the Americans would defuse them, minimizing property damage and loss of life for everyone.
Most of the time, the infantry soldiers found more benign items in Aachen than mines. After all, thousands of people had once lived there. Their property was everywhere-clothing, jewelry, heirlooms, books, personal papers, cabinets, photos and the like. It was a strange mixture of the harshness of war with the comforts of home. The Americans rifled through many a family home. The soldiers were mainly looking for food, alcohol, money, valuables, and weapons. In the bombed-out kitchen of one shattered house, several soldiers from F Company found a tasty menu of food to scrounge. The kitchen, in the recollection of one witness, "was well stocked with rows of home-canned vegetables, a big barrel of hen eggs and another of goose eggs. There were various kinds of bread, cakes and preserves . . . all spread out by sh.e.l.ling." The soldiers promptly cooked themselves a meal of scrambled eggs, topped off by cakes.
At one point during the battle, Private First Cla.s.s Stewart"s K Company took a jam factory. "There were big wooden barrels full of fruit juice. We would shoot a hole in the barrel and drink all we could. There was fresh jam of all kinds waiting to be eaten. Close by was a ginger bread factory so we got a lot of the bread and made jam sandwiches." This rich food was rough on the const.i.tutions of infantrymen who were used to eating canned C or K rations, causing some serious diarrhea. Toilet paper was already in short supply and, for obvious reasons, this made the diarrhea problem much worse. "We were using anything we could find for paper," Stewart said. "Curtains, bedding and anything we could find was used." In yet another abandoned house, Private Jim Curran"s squad found a two-foot-high jug of wine. "It was the greatest wine I"ve ever tasted. We filled up our canteens and then went battling down the street." Most of Aachen was without electricity and water. Some of the American soldiers grew so thirsty that they took to dipping their canteens into the holding tanks of toilets.
There was simply too much rubble and broken gla.s.s for wheeled vehicles to move around in the city. Commanders and staff officers employed tracked M29 "Weasels" to haul supplies to the frontline rifle companies. They also used them to evacuate the growing number of wounded soldiers. In the opinion of one major, medics would "go anywhere, anytime" to get the wounded, many of whom would have died without quick, expert medical attention. At one street corner in Aachen, Tregaskis, the correspondent, saw a wounded lieutenant who had been st.i.tched in the chest and abdomen by three burp gun bullets. The lieutenant was in shock, and his life was literally ebbing away with each pa.s.sing moment. "His face was gray, and he had the stunned look of a badly wounded man. The human color had drained from his skin and his eyes were glazed." Blood from the bullet holes was seeping onto the sidewalk. Several tense minutes pa.s.sed before finally a litter team retrieved the wounded soldier. "The wounded man"s head sagged on his neck as he was lifted. His face was clay color and he groaned as if a wave of pain or fear had come over him." The litter team expertly lifted him up, comforted him, and hauled him away.
They were part of a clearly defined medical process. When a soldier got hit, his company aidman tried to get to him and administer first aid. Then litter teams came up, put the wounded soldier on a stretcher, and carried him back to the Weasels. The Weasels then carried them to aid stations that medics had set up in houses outside of town. Battalion surgeons, who were sometimes overwhelmed with wounded, nonetheless followed a checklist of their own. "The patient has all b.l.o.o.d.y and wet clothing removed," one surgeon wrote. "He is transferred to a dry dressed litter. He is given morphine. He is adequately bandaged and splinted and he is given plasma . . . and then evacuated" to a more permanent hospital.
The medics saved many more men than they lost, but casualties were still eroding the fighting power of the rifle companies. Within a few days, most were operating at half or two-thirds strength, proving the combat axiom that the closer to the sharp end of real fighting, the smaller the number of partic.i.p.ants there will be. Each night, personnel officers fed brand-new replacements into the companies. This kept the rifle companies in operation, but they were always understrength, in constant need of reinforcements and fire support.
For the replacements, this was a rough way to enter the world of combat-friendless, in the middle of an urban brawl, engulfed in mindless destruction, engaged in the kind of fighting that took great savvy and wits for survival. The new men either adapted to their brutal circ.u.mstances or they died. "It would take a few days for a new man to get over the shock of being in combat and a lot of times they didn"t last that long," one rifleman wrote. Private Dye welcomed many such newcomers to his L Company, and tried to teach them how to survive. "Follow me and do what I do," he told them. One time, he was leading four new soldiers to the collection of ruined husks that const.i.tuted the company positions, when he heard mortar rounds coming in. He hit the ground, huddled against a wall, and crouched for the impact. The four replacements stood staring at him in confusion. When the mortar sh.e.l.ls exploded, though, their confusion evaporated quickly and they learned to hit the ground.
In the 3rd Battalion, a few of the rookies refused to go into battle. One shot himself in the hand, another in the foot. The veteran soldiers did not approve of this self-mutilation, but they understood why it would happen. Many of the old salts were suffering from combat fatigue and had to be medically evacuated. They were significantly more likely than new men to be affected by this combat-related psychoneurotic condition, mainly because they had seen too much, done too much, and were just plain exhausted (hence the word "fatigue").9 Killing for the Ruins.
One of the most problematic aspects of the American situation in Aachen was that they went into the city without first isolating it. This afforded the Germans an opening (quite literally) to reinforce their hard-pressed defenders in Aachen. Isolating a city in urban combat is axiomatic: if the defending commanders can reinforce their garrison within the city, they can wage a protracted, attritional battle, grinding down the attackers, perhaps eventually destroying them in this way. Stalingrad is probably the best example of this nightmarish scenario. At Aachen the Americans did not face a situation of that gravity, but they did absorb major German counterattacks. Most of these attacks. .h.i.t the 16th and 18th Infantry Regiments, outside of town, around Verlautenheide, where the Americans had not yet completed the encirclement of Aachen.
On October 15, amid ugly rain showers, some of the German attackers made it into Aachen itself, where they smashed into the right flank of Corley"s 3rd Battalion. By now, Corley"s men had taken Observatory Hill and much of the area, generally known as the Farwick Park, around the hill. "The Farwick Park area consisted of a dominating hill feature with a four-story observation building on top of the hill, a large building called the Kurhaus, and another called the Palace Hotel," Corley wrote. Jagged blocks of houses bordered the area on the southwest and northwest sides of the park, from a roundabout called Roland Circle to a street called Manheims Allee. "The Park was originally a hill. It had been gouged out to build gardens, an artificial lake, walks, tennis courts, and the two main buildings, the Kurhaus and the Palace Hotel. The forward slope of Observatory Hill was an abrupt slope covered with heavy underbrush. The ground next to the Palace Hotel was a rapid rising slope covered with scattered trees and slight underbrush."
The most powerful enemy attacks occurred late in the afternoon on the fifteenth, when a battalion of German soldiers-some of them teenaged SS troopers-with six tanks and self-propelled guns a.s.saulted Observatory Hill. The noise, destruction, and chaos of the fighting were nearly overwhelming. Mortar sh.e.l.ls belched from the hidden tubes of both sides, pelting the whole area, turning green gra.s.s into brown craters. A pair of German tanks with infantry riding aboard drove to within a couple hundred yards of the battalion CP. American M10 Wolverine tank destroyers from the 634th Tank Destroyer Battalion danced from street to street, trying to score kill shots on the enemy tanks. Corporal Wenzlo Simmons fired thirteen shots at one German tank. He thought he destroyed it but he probably just forced it to retreat because the tanks simply disappeared.
Some of the most desperate, close-in fighting occurred on the hill itself. A forward observer was in the tower, calling down 60- and 81-millimeter mortar fire on his own position, in hopes of stopping the German soldiers who were trying to negotiate the steep slopes. The Germans scored no less than thirty-six direct hits on the tower, but the observer continued his work. Some nine hundred U.S. mortar sh.e.l.ls exploded all over the hill and the Farwick Park.
Combat raged at close quarters around the Kurhaus. The Germans were so close, and so determined to prevail, that most of the Americans ran for their lives, hoping that the mortar sh.e.l.ls and some covering fire from a few stalwart individuals would save them. The infantry soldiers who were manning forward observation posts in select houses near Roland Circle were especially vulnerable. One of them, Private Curran, could hear "the krauts running up and down the streets there in front of us. There was about six of us at the outpost. I remember I was. .h.i.t in the leg . . . by some shrapnel." Somehow they escaped, but Curran was never sure how. No doubt his conscious mind deliberately blotted out the horrible details, a common defense mechanism to minimize the damage of traumatic events.
As always in combat, the actions of a few individuals made a huge difference. In his battalion journal, Corley specifically mentioned two of his sergeants, Wise and Tomasco, for "brilliant qualities of leadership" and a "PFC [Jesse] Short of Co. K for single-handedly" holding off an enemy attack on his unit. Bazooka men risked imminent death by leaning out of windows to shoot at enemy tanks that they could only vaguely see advancing down the avenues toward them. No one knew if they hit any of the tanks, but they certainly warded them off. One BAR man alone fired fifty-nine magazines of ammunition at the Germans (further evidence, among volumes, disproving S. L. A. Marshall"s dubious ratio-of-fire contentions).10 The fighting seesawed around Observatory Hill for most of October 15 and 16. In the opinion of Colonel John Seitz, the commander of the 26th Infantry Regiment, Corley"s 3rd Battalion, in that two-day period, had "its toughest time" during the campaign so far in northern Europe. The German counterattacks were ultimately unsuccessful, but they did temporarily halt the American advance in Aachen. General Huebner waited until his division staved off the German counterattacks, then joined hands with the 30th Division, and isolated Aachen, before giving Seitz the go-ahead to resume his a.s.sault on the city.
The attacks resumed in earnest on October 18. Corley"s battalion focused on clearing Observatory Hill, Farwick Park, and the area around the Kurhaus, particularly the Palace Hotel (also called the Quellenhoff), a beautiful, stately building that was perched atop the high ground. The aggressive battalion commander inadvertently strayed into the German lines during a pre-attack reconnaissance of the area and this, in his estimation, gave him "a hasty picture of the ground to the immediate front."
The Americans pummeled the area with mortar and artillery rounds on October 17, but went forward silently the next morning under cover of predawn darkness. The battered German defenders could not hope to defend every building and avenue. Corley"s men quickly infiltrated the enemy lines, surprising small groups of enemy soldiers, rupturing the center of the enemy defenses. Corley was convinced that the Palace Hotel was the key objective, so he focused most of his efforts on it. A few days earlier, in response to his request for more mobile fire support, a nearby artillery unit had sent him, and also Daniel, one 155-millimeter, tracked, self-propelled gun apiece. Corley made liberal use of the gun, battering enemy-held buildings. In one instance, the gun pumped fifteen rounds into several houses around Roland Circle, setting up a perfect a.s.sault by I Company. Later, he placed the gun on the tennis courts, a.s.signed a platoon of infantrymen as security, and ordered the gun crew to open fire on the Kurhaus and the Palace Hotel. Each time the gun fired, concussion waves engulfed bystanders like an unseen wind. The sound echoed off nearby buildings, and even knocked down walls. Private Stewart was in a house adjacent to the gun. When the 155 fired, some of the house began to crumble around him. "I thought . . . a German tank had got to us."
Anyone standing too close to the gun risked getting knocked down, or even knocked out. The men could feel the concussion in their chests. But the sh.e.l.ls were doing major damage, ripping through the walls, sailing through windows, exploding, showering anyone inside with a welter of deadly shrapnel. Tanks and tank destroyers added their lesser guns to the cacophony. Collectively, this firepower "forced the abandonment of a 20mm gun installed in an upper story of the Palace Hotel," Corley wrote. "It weakened all resistance to our front." The abandonment of the 20-millimeter gun was especially important because that rapid-firing weapon was so deadly to infantrymen, particularly those who were on the move, in the open. Under cover of the friendly supporting fire, groups of riflemen leapfrogged through ruined buildings. They crawled uphill toward the Kurhaus and the Palace Hotel, where Hitler had once stayed.
One platoon from L Company took the Kurhaus. Another, under the command of Lieutenant William Ratchford of K Company, burst into the lobby of the hotel. As was typical, Ratchford had mostly new men in his platoon. Many were tempted to think they had done their job simply by getting into the hotel, but Ratchford knew better. He divided them into small groups and told each group to secure every entrance to the bas.e.m.e.nt, where he knew enemy soldiers would be hiding. "They threw captured potato masher grenades in on the enemy who was throwing his own out," a post-combat interview revealed. "Machine gun fire was also turned on the enemy, who by this time had had enough and was trying to get out of the building, pausing only long enough to set his ammunition on fire." Wherever they could, the GIs slaughtered retreating Germans, peppering them with machine-gun bullets, destroying them with grenades.
The luxurious interior of the hotel quickly became a wasteland of torn walls, shattered gla.s.s, shredded carpet, bodies, and bloodstains. The coppery stench of blood, along with the sulphuric odor of spent gunpowder and the dusty pall of fallen timbers and plaster, all permeated the hallways and rooms. "In peacetime it had probably been a nice [place]," Private Stewart later commented. "When we got done with it, it needed a lot of work done on it before it could reopen." Inside the hotel, the Americans killed twenty-five enemy soldiers and captured another twelve. They also found large amounts of food and ammunition. The hotel had, at one time, served as Colonel Wilck"s headquarters, but he had since relocated to a large concrete air raid bunker several blocks away. By day"s end, the 3rd Battalion had secured all of the key buildings on Observatory Hill, the whole Farwick Park area, and was now in the process of clearing some of the smaller hills and neighboring blocks of homes. In Corley"s estimation, their success stemmed from the maximum use of firepower combined with quick, well-led, and coordinated a.s.saults by the infantry soldiers.
A few blocks to the west, Daniel"s battalion was also methodically fighting block by block in the medieval heart of the city, employing a similar blend of combined arms. The fighting ebbed through several venerable cathedrals in the city center. German artillery sh.e.l.ls were falling in disquieting numbers. Many of them hit the ruined facades of tall buildings "with the result that the precarious walls collapsed" on anyone underneath, in the recollection of one soldier. Like his colleague Corley, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel made extensive use of his 155-millimeter self-propelled gun. At one point, he set it up at a crossroads, with perfect fields of fire, and watched as the crew disgorged sh.e.l.l after sh.e.l.l at German machine-gun crews in the ruined State Theater. The machine guns soon posed no further threat to the infantry.
As the foot soldiers advanced, they hugged close to accompanying tanks and tank destroyers. Both groups shot at anything that looked suspicious. "To discourage ant.i.tank crews or any enemy group, the infantry would toss a.s.sault grenades into each building whether they were fired on from that structure or not," an infantryman wrote. "In case the grenades did not secure the desired effect a vehicle would then pump a few rounds into the building. This usually brought a few Germans streaming from the building but, since the cellars of all the buildings were connected, the enemy often withdrew to the next structure; thus making it necessary to repeat this performance on each building." Sometimes the infantry soldiers spotted Panzerfaust-wielding German soldiers in windows. Riflemen peppered the windows, as did accompanying machine gunners. The tank crewmen, thus alerted to the danger, pumped their own rounds into the windows. Few of the enemy soldiers survived such onslaughts. When the infantry wanted to avoid moving on the open streets, they attacked through the back alleys. In many cases, bazooka men shot holes through walls, allowing infantry squads to outflank the Germans.
The bitterest fighting occurred in a technical school and in several surrounding houses, where young German soldiers were determined to make a final stand against an a.s.sault by F Company. "Machine gun, rifle and mortar fire hindered our advance," the company history recorded. "Several houses were bitterly contested room by room." This meant close-in fighting-hurling grenades, shooting people at point-blank range, sometimes even fighting to the death with fists or bayonets. It was the worst kind of traumatic, stressful, exhausting combat. "Driving hard against the outpost buildings before the school," one of the soldiers later wrote, "four squads worked from roof to roof clearing the machine gun nests which were sited to cross fire upon the approaches to the school."
Five horrendous hours of fighting ensued. It was an infantryman"s fight all the way-personal, physically exhausting, and soul-stealing. For the most part, the soldiers of F Company had to fight room by room, against enemy soldiers who generally preferred to die rather than surrender. The tankers lent what fire support they could, but the closeness of the fighting often forced them to hold their fire. For the infantry, the killing took place at intimate range, in rooms, foyers, and bas.e.m.e.nts. They watched their enemies die at close range. They watched them hurt. They heard them scream. They also watched their own friends get hit and go down, sometimes in silent, lifeless heaps, but usually with painful, surprised cries and b.l.o.o.d.y wounds. Corridors echoed with beseeching cries for medics. The reports of grenades, submachine guns, and rifles in such confining s.p.a.ces a.s.saulted the eardrums of everyone involved. No one who partic.i.p.ated was unaffected. In short, it was awful in the extreme.11 Fortunately, the Germans were just about finished. With the fall of the technical school on October 20, along with much of the city center, and 3rd Battalion"s seizure of the high ground in northern Aachen, Colonel Wilck"s survivors could not hold out much longer. With the Americans in control of most of the city, German holdouts were scattered around, hanging on, but out of communication with higher headquarters (senior officers called these holdouts pockets of resistance).
Wilck, his staff, and many of his remaining soldiers were cl.u.s.tered inside a three-story-high, reinforced concrete air raid bunker that was straight in the path of Corley"s relentless advance. Bunkers like this served as shelter, not just for German troops but also civilians. The Americans had already cleared several in Aachen. Mindful of Hitler"s order to fight to the finish, Wilck sent his superiors several defiant messages, including one that reported that "the last defenders of Aachen are embroiled in their final battle!" Privately he was not as resolute. He knew the end was near, but he was concerned that if his garrison did not appear to be fighting to the end, Hitler would exact reprisals on the families of his soldiers.
On the morning of October 21, Corley"s lead troops, augmented with the 155-millimeter gun, prepared to a.s.sault Wilck"s bunker. The 155 crew fired several shots, battering the concrete, ripping big holes, but not otherwise penetrating inside. For Wilck, this was the final straw. He knew he had to surrender. He tried to send two of his men outside under a white flag, but in the fog of battle the Americans shot them down. So Wilck enlisted the help of two American prisoners, Staff Sergeant Ewart Padgett and Sergeant James Haswell. Both of these men were combat engineers who had been captured in Aachen a few days earlier.
Sergeant Haswell took the white flag and ran into the street, waving it vigorously. "There was a great deal of small arms fire at first, but I continued to wave the flag until the firing ceased." An American soldier leaned out the window of a nearby house and motioned Haswell to him. Haswell and Padgett then communicated Wilck"s surrender message up the American chain of command to Lieutenant Colonel Corley"s CP. Corley, Colonel Seitz, and Brigadier General George Taylor were all there. They insisted on an orderly, unconditional surrender. Haswell and Padgett dutifully returned to the bunker and relayed this to the Germans. Wilck and his staff were a.s.sembled in the colonel"s room, waiting to surrender. As a sign that he accepted Corley"s terms, Wilck took out his pistol, removed the clip and, in Haswell"s recollection, "threw the clip under the bed, laid the pistol on the table, smiled and left the room." This was his way of accepting the terms.
A few minutes later, at 1000, Wilck and his men streamed out of the bunker, into captivity. Hundreds of enemy soldiers, a few with their hands on their heads, most with their hands at their sides, shuffled down Aachen"s battered streets, past grubby-looking GIs. One of the American survivors, Private First Cla.s.s Stewart, watched them walk by. They looked haggard but he and his buddies looked even worse. Stewart noted that he had not had a bath, a shave, a haircut, or a hot meal in thirty-seven days. Later, the Americans led Wilck and his officers to the pockets of resistance, where the colonel persuaded his remaining soldiers to lay down their arms. "The show is over," a 26th Infantry officer recorded in the unit"s journal that afternoon. The Battle of Aachen was done.
The venerable city was almost completely destroyed. "The city is as dead as a Roman ruin, but unlike a ruin it has none of the grace of gradual decay," Lieutenant Robert Botsford wrote. "Burst sewers, broken gas mains and dead animals have raised an almost overpowering smell in many parts of the city. The streets are paved with shattered gla.s.s; telephone, electric light and trolley cables are dangling and netted together everywhere, and in many places wrecked cars, trucks, armored vehicles and guns litter the streets. Most of the streets of Aachen are impa.s.sable, except on foot. Piles of debris have been sh.o.r.ed up along the gutters without much method."
This was the field of ruins that two battalions of infantry, augmented by armor, artillery, and engineers, had had to master. "Though the German garrison had fought courageously and skillfully, it had been beaten by a combined American force of half its size," one of the American officers recorded in the regimental records. Aachen demonstrated the potency of well-led combined-arms teams, as well as the remarkable versatility of infantry and the ability of ground soldiers to adapt to a confined urban environment. By all rights, two understrength battalions of infantry soldiers should not have been able to take a sizable city against a force more than twice their number. They did it through the manipulation and prodigious use of firepower, the aggressive zeal of riflemen, and the adept planning of commanders.
But they also had other advantages. Aachen was isolated for part of the battle, negating the enemy"s ability to reinforce his garrison. More important, the fighting took place within a political vacuum. The American soldiers who fought there did not have to worry about any political consequences of their actions. Concern for civilians notwithstanding, the GIs were able to concentrate exclusively on the tactical challenge of taking the next building or the next block. They could destroy everything, and everyone, with impunity, as long as it enhanced the mission of seizing Aachen. No one cared if they did this with particular zeal, or even a l.u.s.t for destruction-hence, "knock "em all down." The media they dealt with were entirely friendly and supportive (Tregaskis even lived with the soldiers and told their life stories in his piece). World opinion had no impact on the battle. To the Americans, Aachen was just one more place to carry the fight to n.a.z.i Germany, another piece in the strategic puzzle of victory. The city"s annihilation held no significance to them whatsoever, nor to the overall strategic balance of world opinion. It was the cla.s.sic example of a politically unrestrained urban battleground, one of the last such politically benign city battlefields in which Americans would ever fight.12
CHAPTER 4.
Scenes from the Northern Shoulder of the Bulge: Men Against Tanks and Everything Else.
Winter and Discontent.
NO ONE COULD DECIDE WHICH hurt more, the cold or the inertia. In December 1944, the western Allies were stalemated along the western frontiers of n.a.z.i Germany. A fearsome winter had set in, blanketing much of the front with snow and ice, compounding the misery of frontline existence for American infantry soldiers. Most lived in crude, slushy holes or dugouts. If they were lucky, their holes had some overhead cover afforded by logs or sc.r.a.p metal. A few soldiers enjoyed the partial shelter of ruined houses or barns. Foot gear was inadequate. Winter clothing was improvised from a mishmash of long underwear, sweaters, fatigue jackets, and wool gloves. Temperatures ranged from the teens to the twenties. Trench foot, frozen feet, and frostbite were distressingly common. Men went weeks without showers, haircuts, hot food, shelter, or any semblance of warmth beyond what a handful of pine needles set afire in an empty ration can offered.
What"s more, they were sitting in place, defending fixed positions, instead of attacking, gaining ground, and hastening the end of the war. The combination of winter weather, supply problems, and stiffening German resistance had ground the previously inexorable Allied advance to a halt. So now they were defending. The average infantryman might have welcomed a respite from the dangerous routine of attacking, but each of them knew in his heart that only such a relentless advance would conquer Germany and end the war. Because of this, the wintry inertia was disquieting for the American soldiers. n.a.z.i Germany was on the verge of defeat, but the maniacal Adolf Hitler was not prepared to admit any such thing (proving the wise axiom coined by a later generation of American soldiers that "the enemy gets a vote").
Hitler decided to sc.r.a.pe together his last reserves, including his best armor and his most committed SS troopers, for a major winter offensive against a thinly held section of the American lines in the rough Ardennes Forest. In all, he had three entire armies, including more than eight armored divisions. His ambitious long-shot goal was to attack under a winter canopy that would negate Allied air superiority, gash a huge hole in the American front, drive a wedge between the British and American armies, destroy the fragile Allied coalition, and then negotiate a skin-saving end to the war. His main fist for this surprise sucker punch was the 6th SS Panzer Army under General Joseph "Sepp" Dietrich, an old n.a.z.i party crony. Dietrich"s army included four SS armored divisions. Led by these powerful units, he was to hit the northern shoulder of the American line in the Ardennes, knife into Belgium, and dash all the way to the vital supply port of Antwerp. A major portion of his attack was to hit the spa.r.s.ely defended front of the U.S. Army"s brand-new 99th Infantry Division.
The 99th had just arrived in November and had been holding defensive positions in the quiet northern Ardennes for about a month. The division was spread thin over a horseshoe-shaped nineteen-mile front of rugged terrain from Lanzerath in the southwest to Hofen in the northeast. This was twice as much ground as most American generals thought a division should defend, but with combat manpower at a premium in late 1944, this was the unhappy reality. Major General Walter Lauer, the division commander, had all three of his infantry regiments on the line. The 395th held his left (eastern) flank, which was anch.o.r.ed at Hofen. In the middle, east of the twin villages of Krinkelt and Rocherath, the 393rd was sprinkled among forest positions, facing east toward Germany. On Lauer"s right (western) flank, the 394th Infantry Regiment defended the vital Losheimergraben crossroads, amid dense rolling woodlands.
In the U.S. Army, most infantry units have a distinctive culture that stems from tradition, the unit"s leadership, and the men who populate the outfit. The soldiers of the 99th called themselves "the Battle Babies." The division was composed of an interesting mixture of men. The youngest soldiers were academically bright, college-experienced men who had once been part of the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP). The ASTP had offered them the chance to go to college, on the Army"s dime, while they trained for future leadership or technical positions outside the world of combat infantry. However, the voracious combat needs of the fighting fronts had necessitated the program"s cancellation in early 1944. As a result, many of these teenaged ex-ASTPers ended up in the 99th (and several other similar divisions), mixing with less educated men, generally in their early to mid-twenties, who had more experience in the Army. Forging a common ident.i.ty as Battle Babies, they trained to a fever pitch back in the States.
COPYRIGHT 2010 RICK BRITTON.
By the middle of December 1944, though, they had seen no extensive action. They had patrolled, stood guard near their frontline holes, huts, or dugouts, and generally learned as much as they could about the ruthless world of frontline combat. Their vast sector consisted of "rocky gorges, small streams, abrupt hills and an extremely limited road net," according to a divisional report. Much of the area was blanketed with fir and pine forests that were now thick with snow and, on balmier days, mud. At this time of the year, there was only about seven hours of daylight in the Ardennes. Even at the height of the day, though, the trees made it almost seem like night. "Visibility was limited to 100-150 yards at a maximum," one soldier later wrote. "Fields of fire were equally limited and poor. Fire lanes for automatic weapons would not be cleared for any great distance without cutting down trees and thereby disclosing the position." It was a confining, almost claustrophobic environment. Throughout December, they could hear the Germans, several hundred yards to the east, moving large numbers of vehicles and soldiers. Patrols confirmed that the Germans were moving these men and this materiel into position, for what purpose no one really knew. The Battle Babies sensed that the Germans were up to something, but they had no idea they were right in Dietrich"s path.1
Battle Babies Part I: The 394th Infantry at Losheimergraben.
Precisely at the stroke of 0530 on Sat.u.r.day, December 16, the Germans unleashed a monumental artillery barrage on the 99th Division lines. Unlike Guam, Peleliu, and Aachen, this time the Americans were on the receiving end of ma.s.sive firepower. The sh.e.l.ls poured in with "unprecedented ferocity," in the recollection of one soldier in the 394th Infantry. "Guns and mortars of all calibers, supplemented by multiple-barreled rocket projectors plastered . . . the area." So unaccustomed were the Battle Babies to large concentrations of German artillery that some of them initially thought the barrage was coming from American rounds falling short. Gradually, though, they realized that the sh.e.l.ls were German, particularly when they recognized the familiar, and dreaded, crack of the enemy"s 88-millimeter artillery pieces and the terrifying roar of Nebelwerfer rocket launchers. "It sounded like wolves howling," Private Lloyd Long, a BAR man in A Company, said. "[We] could hear incoming whistle and whoosh depending upon how close. Direct hits on the huge trees blew their tops off but also splattered shrapnel around." Huddling in a deep hole, Long heard pieces of shrapnel flying around outside. "It came down like deadly rain for what seemed like hours," Sergeant Milton Kitchens, a machine gunner in H Company, wrote. "My bunker sustained a direct hit, logs, timber and muddy snow flew everywhere." Blood was pouring from his mouth and his coat was shredded, but he was otherwise okay. His heavy, water-cooled machine gun was undamaged. Two men on his crew were wounded. Another was on the verge of a mental breakdown. "[He] was bawling like a baby and he looked finished but I kicked his a.s.s up and ordered him to man that machine gun, which he did admirably."
At the crossroads, two gun crewmen from an ant.i.tank unit ran from their gun. They had failed to dig a proper hole for themselves and were frantically looking for cover. In the chaos of the moment, they ran into a line of foxholes manned by a platoon from K Company. The riflemen of this platoon did not know the crewmen. In the recollection of one witness, the crewmen were "oblivious to the several calls to halt, and tore off the cover of one of the foxholes. They were, of course, the instant target of the foxhole occupants." One of them was killed immediately, the other badly wounded.2 The pounding lasted for about ninety minutes, and inflicted surprisingly light casualties on the Battle Babies, mainly because most of the men enjoyed the shelter of deep, log-reinforced dugouts or holes. Some had even built st.u.r.dy log cabins for themselves. The enemy sh.e.l.ls tore up communication wire and shredded many of the cabins, but they did little damage to the soldiers themselves.
The morning was dark and misty. Several inches of snow blanketed the ground. When the sh.e.l.ling ceased, an eerie, wintry silence descended. At 0800, just before sunrise, German infantry soldiers began moving toward the American lines. The darkness provided ideal concealment for them but, for obvious reasons, it also hindered their movement. The German high command arranged for legions of spotlights to bounce their beams off the clouds, thus providing the a.s.sault troops with artificial moonlight, which they used to infiltrate in and around the American lines. But the light also made them visible targets for the Americans, who now saw their adversaries emerging, like gruesome phantoms, from the predawn shroud.
At Buckholz, where the 3rd Battalion was in position astride both sides of a north-south railroad line at the extreme right of the 99th Division"s entire front, soldiers from L Company were queued up in a chow l