Aachen: The U.S. Army's Battle for Charlemagne's City in World War II
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Authors: Robert W. Baumer
The U.S. Army's Battle for Charlemagne's City in WWII
Robert W. Baumer
STACKPOLE BOOKS
In memory of my parents, Edwin H. and Jean F. Baumer, And my beloved aunt, Joan Clark
Copyright © 2015 by Robert W. Baumer
Published by
STACKPOLE BOOKS
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Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First edition
Cover design by Wendy A. Reynolds
Cover photos courtesy of U.S. Army
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Baumer, Robert W.
Aachen : the U.S. Army's battle for Charlemagne's city in WWII / Robert W. Baumer. — First edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8117-1482-2
1. Aachen (Germany)—History—Siege, 1944. 2. United States. Army. Corps, XIX. 3. World War, 1939–1945—Campaigns—Germany—Aachen. I. Title. II. Title: U.S. Army's battle for Charlemagne's city in WWII.
D757.9.A2B38 2015
940.54'2135511—dc23
2014031597
eBook ISBN: 978-0-8117-6098-0
CHAPTER 2 VII Corps Breaches the
Westwall
CHAPTER 3 Penetrating the Schill Line
CHAPTER 4 Stalemate at Stolberg
CHAPTER 5 XIX Corps Crosses the Wurm River
CHAPTER 6 XIX Corps Breaks through the
Westwall
CHAPTER 7 XIX Corps Widens the Bridgehead
CHAPTER 8 South toward Alsdorf
CHAPTER 9 Verlautenheide, Crucifix Hill, and the Ravelsberg Fall
A
fter Paris was liberated in late August 1944, U.S. intelligence summaries reflected that the end of the war in Europe was within sight. Hitler's armies in the West had been shattered, Paris belonged to the French again, and Allied armies were confidently advancing to the last frontier of the European war. Many American commanders expected their troops would be home for Christmas.
The Third Reich's means to continue the fight would cease when the Ruhr industrial area was destroyed. Berlin would follow. There were four ways for the Allied armies to get there: the plain of Flanders, the Ardennes, the Metz-Kaiserslauten gap, or the Maubeuge-Leige-Aachen axis north of the Ardennes.
On 5 September, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower made a fateful decision. He dictated a memorandum to his secretary stating that the American armies would advance rapidly on the Ruhr by pushing through the
Westwall
directly to the north and south of Aachen.
Within days the eyes of all Germans, both military and civilian, were on the fate of the ancient imperial city. Rapidly closing on the border were four U.S. divisions, arguably amongst America's finest. North of Aachen were the 30th Infantry Division, veterans of vicious fighting at Mortain where the main hopes of the German army were first shattered in the West, and the combat commands of “Hell on Wheels,” the 2nd Armored Division.
Heading for the Stolberg Corridor south of Aachen was the 1st Infantry Division, experienced from fighting in North Africa, Sicily, and the beaches of Normandy; the “Big Red One” had led the Saint-Lô Breakout from the Normandy hedgerows in late July and was now being escorted to the German border by the 3rd Armored Division, the battering ram that had collapsed the southern anchor of the Falaise Gap and
trapped thousands of German forces attempting to retreat pell-mell back to the Reich.
This is the continuing story of those American divisions and the opponents they faced at the
Westwall
of Germany. It lasts five long weeks during the fight for Aachen, a period that irrevocably changed the timetable for the end of World War II in Europe.
12 September 1944
“By nightfall, the location of our front line was no longer clear to headquarters. Its disintegration at several points made the situation very serious indeed.”
GENERALLEUTNANT
FRIEDRICH-AUGUST SCHACK COMMANDING OFFICER, LXXXI CORPS
A
t 1130 hours on sunny 12 September 1944, Lt. Richard S. Burroughs's 2nd Platoon of Reconnaissance Company, 33rd Armored Regiment of the U.S. 3rd Armored Division, started out through several tiny Belgian hamlets for the German border. Company E, 36th Armored Infantry Regiment, under the command of Lieutenant A. P. Hall, and a platoon of engineers followed in column. This reconnaissance in force first moved in a northeasterly direction until they reached Botz, then started down a road heading southeast toward the German border town of Roetgen. Along the way, a surprised enemy machine-gun crew surrendered without firing their weapons. A short time later, a frightened bicycle rider disappeared into the woods as the column approached. At 1451 hours, Lieutenant Burroughs's platoon reached the railroad tracks on the western edge of the village, and then the remainder of the armored vehicles came up to wait for the main column of Task Force Lovelady.
By this time the light and medium tanks of the task force were rolling at full speed and without flank protection toward Roetgen, using the same roads the leading reconnaissance in force had just taken. At 1620, the task force commander, Lt. Col. William B. Lovelady, ordered his command group to halt behind the reconnaissance force while roadblocks were set up here and in the southeast section of Roetgen. The only enemy
resistance found was near a crossroad east of town; all were made prisoners. A dozen other stragglers, disoriented elements of a German unit left behind to fell trees to block the roads through the woods just outside of town, were also taken prisoner by a battery of the 391st Armored Field Artillery. Less than an hour later the town was declared secure.
Roetgen, 15 kilometers southeast of Aachen and an important road intersection community in ancient Roman times, stood before the tank barriers, pillboxes, and dragon's teeth that formed the outer line of the
Westwall
of Germany. It now had the distinction of being the first town in the Reich to fall into American hands during World War II.
After the reconnaissance forces went forward and set up their defenses closer to the eastern edge of town at the corner of Bundesstrasse and Grune Pleistrasse, Task Force Lovelady started rolling through the village. It was an experience unlike others the soldiers had faced. One participant recalled, “We entered Roetgen minus the applause we were accustomed to in France and Belgium. All the houses had white sheets hanging from their windows, a sign of surrender and giving up. People just stood around watching, curiously.”
1
Holding column formation, Lovelady's tanks and armored vehicles moved past these gatherings of confused humanity “half-frightened with the dazed mask of surrender,”
2
and proceeded toward the Dreilagerbach reservoir outside of Roetgen on the headwaters of the Vicht River. Here, Lieutenant Burroughs's 2nd Platoon discovered that the Schleebach Bridge out in front of the column was blown, and this brought the entire task force to a halt. Enemy fire was suddenly coming in from the pillboxes on the opposite side of the demolished bridge, which were occupied by
Oberstleutnant
Friedrich Troster's Reserve Grenadier Battalion 328, attached to the Grenadier Ersatz Regiment 253 of the 353rd Infantry Division.
3
While reconnoitering this area with his scout section shortly afterward, Lieutenant Burroughs was killed by rifle fire from one of these pillboxes.
4
Unfortunately, the ground near where Burroughs fell offered Troster's men excellent possibilities for its continued defense. Across the blown bridge to the right was a steep, heavily wooded hill where another barely distinguishable pillbox was cleverly carved into its face. The intimidating five rows of dragon's teeth extended westward from here up the slope of yet another hill, and then these belts of pyramid-shaped concrete blocks cut a gash and disappeared into more dense woods. Beneath the
bridge itself, the Germans had created a 12-foot-deep crater by dynamiting the stream bottom where the spillway from the reservoir crossed the road. Even if infantry could get by this, the roadway on the opposite side of the demolished bridge presented yet another barrier to Lovelady's armored vehicles. First, the road ran through a gorge clearly covered by the immediately visible pillboxes. A steel gate leaning toward the direction of approach also spanned the road, flanked on the left by another crop of tank-stopping dragon's teeth.
5
And past the first gate, three more steel I-beams, reinforced with thick cable and anchored into place with stout hardwood pegs, visibly stuck up from slots in the road.
Between 1730 and 1800, the squad on point nevertheless moved up toward the blown bridge, the men still unaware of what waited beyond. All too quickly, sniper fire came in from every direction, the worst from a series of deceptive hollow haystacks to the left where fifteen to twenty Germans had hidden and zeroed in on the advancing column of Company E platoons. Lieutenant Hall, commanding the company, was killed by one of these enemy riflemen; his 1st Platoon immediately deployed to the left to avoid more of this harassing fire while the now dead officer's 2nd Platoon dispersed and spread out along the slope in the hill on the other side of the road.
In view of the necessity of pushing forward before darkness fell, Lovelady ordered the men of Company D to advance up the road toward the blown bridge. The fates of war were not to favor these men either. The lead platoon got no more than 50 feet past their line of departure before the soldiers were stopped by both small-arms and machine-gun fire. At this point a frustrated Lovelady ordered the 1st Battery of the 391st Armored Field Artillery to fire down on the roadway with their powerful 105mm guns. Despite these heavy concentrations by the artillerymen on both the road and the pillbox positions, Troster's forces were still able to keep the infantry platoons from advancing. Company D's vehicles were then brought back to Roetgen while the men found protective cover and held in place for the night.
6
Task Force Lovelady's penetration of the Reich border at Roetgen had been achieved by first passing around the left wing of the 9th Panzer Division, commanded by
Oberst
Gerhard Paul Wilhelm Mueller. On 12 September the 9th Panzer Division was comprised of just three armored
infantry companies with about ninety men each and a scant six to nine light machine guns. Mueller, a veteran of the
Afrika Korps
who had subsequently lost an arm on the Eastern Front, also had an engineer company under his command, with another ninety men, and two 105mm batteries with three pieces each. He had absorbed Panzer Brigade 105 into his division on 11 September, but most of the brigade's infantry riflemen had been lost in fights around Limbourg as Task Force Lovelady swept south of Eupen, Belgium, toward the Reich border.
7
Oberst
Mueller was a realist. He was fully aware of the predicament he faced with the arrival of American forces. His first impressions of the
Westwall
evinced that it “did not come up to my expectations. Because we were not prepared for the enemy outside the
Westwall
, although this could have been foreseen months before, and because practically nothing had been prepared for its defense, we did not want to believe how serious the situation actually was.”
8
The
Westwall
was known as the Siegfried Line to American forces. This first ring of defenses actually ran along the entire Reich border. Behind it, in a second line some eight kilometers beyond Roetgen and extending through industrial Stolberg past more rural Würselen, were other pillboxes, virtual concrete forts sited to support each other and to produce closely interlocking fields of fire like that which first rudely greeted U.S. forces. Around Aachen the outer array of antitank obstacles was known as
Vorstellung Aachen
, and the bunkers covering them the Scharnhorst Line. The even deeper, more extensive systems at the second
Westwall
defenses were called the Schill Line
(Limes-Stellung)
.
The concrete installations themselves were generally 20 to 25 feet high with a footprint anywhere from 40 to 50 feet wide and 20 to 25 feet deep. Their fields of fire were limited; the path of fire generally could not exceed 50 degrees of traverse. In many locations the pillboxes were partially underground, and overgrowth of grass and shrub often made spotting them extremely difficult. When they were constructed between 1937 and 1940, the pillboxes were generally placed where the terrain afforded the most profitable use of machine and antitank guns; however they were unable to house any weapon larger than a 37mm AT gun, standard for the German army in the late 1930s. Pillboxes were often placed in clusters and linked to each other by communication trenches. Some of the ammunition bunkers that supported the boxes were underground.
The walls and roofs were anywhere from 4 to 8 feet thick, and at some places steel plated to afford additional protection for their occupants. Many of the pillboxes even had living quarters capable of billeting as many as thirty to forty men, with room for roughly seven men per firing embrasure. Pillboxes had inherent weaknesses, however. Assessments of First Army noted:
The Siegfried Line was constructed before the development of the German military doctrine of “strongpoints,” as illustrated by the heavy defenses along the Atlantic and English Channel coasts. It was completed before the Russians had taught the Germans the principle of an all-around “hedgehog” defense. The Siegfried Line was built on the first natural barrier east of the German frontier. Where this natural barrier was weakest, the pillbox concentration was strongest. The basic principle behind the placement of the pillboxes and AT barriers was simple and logical; namely to increase the defensive potential of the terrain along the border. Where tanks and infantry would have a difficult time attacking, the defenses were sketchy. Where a natural corridor existed, there the defenses were the densest.
The basic design of the Siegfried Line called for the employment of mobile field armies operating out of and behind it. The real defense was to be an aggressive counterattacking force basing its offense from the Siegfried Line. The objective of the defenses was not to stop the enemy, but to slow him up and to tire him in the attack and then to hit him with strong counterattacks.
9
Opposing First Army on the Siegfried Line in the Aachen area was the newly appointed commanding general of LXXXI Corps,
Generalleutnant
Friedrich-August Schack. Some felt he was not the best choice to defend Aachen; he had lost his 272nd Infantry Division during the undignified German retreat across the Seine. He was reported by one observer to be “highly excitable, suffering from stress and was, in fact, on the verge of a nervous breakdown as the Americans approached the Westwall.”
10
Schack nevertheless described the situation as he saw it at the time, pointing out some of the fortification's inherent tactical weaknesses even as he was compelled to count on them.
When our exhausted and battle-weary forces finally reached the Westwall they found only antiquated and neglected fortifications. Many of the concrete pillboxes were filled with water, devoid of equipment; others were locked and the keys were missing. In addition, a great deal of the ventilation and signal communication systems was not in working condition. The field of fire was obstructed by vegetation; wire entanglements had been removed; firing slits were clogged with dirt. The type 42 machine guns, with their rapid-cycle rate of fire, could not operate in the available machine gun pillboxes, and therefore had to be used in positions out in the open.
11
By the time Task Force Lovelady probed the
Westwall
on the night of 12 September, the 9th Panzer Division command post had moved from a farmhouse just over a kilometer northeast of Eynatten to Brand, a southern suburb just outside of Aachen. Surveillance had been conducted the day before near Roetgen by motorcycle platoons, and
Generalleutnant
Schack had even visited Mueller's command post that afternoon. Considering the limited defenses in the southern sector of the 9th Panzer Division, Schack approved a plan whereby the division would retreat by way of Oberforstbach, another Aachen district more to the southeast, behind the
Westwall
. “[We] were withdrawn and moved up into position for the support of the combat group in the municipal forests to the south of Aachen,” Mueller recalled.
12
Three days earlier, on 9 September, the 353rd Infantry Division, commanded by
Generalleutnant
Paul Mahlmann, had been ordered by Schack to prepare for the defense of the
Westwall
in the forest deeper to the south of Aachen where Task Force Lovelady actually attacked. Mahlmann's recollections of the defenses at the time evidenced the German's thin attempts to fortify the positions here.
Units of the Replacement Training Army were employed. South of Aachen were elements of the 526 Ers Ausb Division. Two
infanterie ersatz
(infantry replacement) battalions were committed in the forests. [One was
Oberstleutnant
Friedrich Troster's Reserve Grenadier Battalion 328.] A few flak units, which would be used for antitank defense or as artillery, were also committed.
All these units were unready for combat by reason of their organization, equipment and state of training. They had some battle-experienced officers and non-commissioned officers, but also many who had never seen combat. The enlisted men included convalescents and insufficiently trained replacements of all age classes. They had few weapons. Heavy weapons were almost entirely lacking in the infantry replacement battalions. However, the position had to be made defensible with these forces. Division expected to get a few real combat men when the fighting should begin.
13
