Aachen: The U.S. Army's Battle for Charlemagne's City in World War II (16 page)

Task Force Lovelady was relieved by the 2nd Battalion of the 32nd Armored Regiment and other elements of Task Force Orr on 25 September; his men and armored vehicles returned to Brenig for rest and refitting. Task Force Hogan was also relieved after the defensive positions Hogan had been fighting for in Stolberg were strengthened by the 1st Battalion of the 32nd Armored Regiment. Task Force Mills later joined Hogan in assembly areas for rest and badly needed vehicle maintenance after being relieved by the 2nd Battalion of the 36th Armored Infantry Regiment. Colonel Boudinot was also promoted to brigadier general on 25 September.

LXXXI Corps’
Generalleutnant
Schack noted “up to this time every enemy attack to break through south of Aachen on the right wing of Corps had failed. Since nothing of special importance happened during the next few days, 21 September 1944 may justly be considered the final day of the first Battle of Aachen.”
⁷³

During the three weeks of my command we succeeded, in spite of heavy fighting and daily recurring crisis, in filling out the skeleton commands to such an extent that efficient units were organized with surprising rapidity…. Everywhere the most astonishing shrewdness and organizational skill manifested itself.

The number of enemy infantry units was only a third greater than ours, but among all the units subordinated to LXXXI Corps only the 12th Division, which arrived toward the end of the battle, could be called [a] normal fully-equipped division. The troops themselves were completely worn out. For the most part the bulk of them, consisting of fragments of combat veteran divisions, had been fighting continuously since the enemy landings [in Normandy]. They could not be allowed to rest because of the units’ diminishing strength and the continuous withdrawals. Their socks and boots were in rags. Tired and forlorn,
they literally dragged themselves along. Nevertheless they were ready, again and again, as far as their failing strength permitted, to heed the call of duty with eager loyalty. In spite of reserves, the fine relationship between officers and men of all grades held, in unfailing unity, during every action.

The final mission—to hold the Westwall—was accomplished only imperfectly, however, because of the inadequacy of our forces and means of combat. Even at the end of the first Battle of Aachen, the deep pocket in the Stolberg area remained. On the other hand, we succeeded in preventing the decisive breakthrough planned by the enemy south of Aachen, aimed at the Ruhr industrial area.

Schack was relieved of his command during the night of 20 September. After the war he maintained that his relief was in part because of “conflict with [Nazi] Party agencies,” arguing that “up to the very last minute the Party tried to deceive the population regarding the seriousness of the situation [at Aachen]; that the sad military situation was due to sabotage by the generals.” When Aachen was being evacuated, it did indeed lead to serious conflicts between the military command and the Party, particularly with
Generalleutnant
Count von Schwerin of the 116th Panzer Division. Schack, in closing his case later while in American captivity, argued, “Added to the paralyzing enemy superiority in the air, a crushing superiority in tanks, artillery and ammunition, there was constant trouble, in matters both great and small, with narrow-minded, spiteful and pompous Party officials.”
⁷⁴

General der Infanterie
Friedrich Köchling was given command of LXXXI Corps on 20 September. A veteran of the Russian front, Köchling had arrived at the corps’ command post in Niederzier, 8 kilometers north of Duren, on 18 September. Here he was given a short report by Schack on the tactical situation around Aachen. Undoubtedly consistent with his feelings at the time, Schack also reported on the political complications he was experiencing. That night Köchling went over to the command post of 7th Army, located east of Muenstereifel, for another hasty orientation. Later, snubbing Schack, he offered, “I assumed command in a situation expressed by the General Command as being a ‘successful’ result.”
⁷⁵
Certainly not in complete harmony with these sentiments, Köchling
maintained that “the 12th Division [had] failed to accomplish its mission. It recorded slight unimportant gains and suffered heavy casualties.”

The 12th Infantry Division's
Oberst
Engel still maintained that his forces “marred the main aim of the enemy; the envelopment of Aachen was avoided.”
⁷⁶
He later noted that his losses were heaviest during the first two days his division was engaged, 16–17 September. Overall, he cited two hundred men lost during what he called the first Battle of Aachen out of a combat strength of six hundred in the 89th Grenadier Regiment. His 2nd Battalion of the 48th Grenadier Regiment lost another two hundred men, half of its combat strength. Engel's three grenadier regiments totaled approximately six hundred losses, of which 80 percent were fatal.

For the local population, sacrifices were not measured in killed. They were counted by the number who had shown the courage to stay in their homes and assist others. Eilendorf served as one example. “On September 15 1944 Allied troops took our town,” wrote the Commissioner for the village.
⁷⁷

True communities of the people were formed in the cellars. Nuns of the Convent, the bakers Kaussen of Rootgenerstreet, Kirchvink and Schmitz did their duty. The same goes for the butcher Schwanon and his brother-in-law. The occupation forces have now arrived, and not one of the population has been mistreated. They took care of the sick and wounded and placed them in their own hospitals. One lone woman and her children sleep in the same cellar with about thirty American soldiers, and not one of them has bothered her.

Limited German attacks were carried out during the remainder of September, although considerable numbers of skirmishes involving smaller unit actions continued in and around both sides of Stolberg. One such action on 24 September resulted in the awarding of the Medal of Honor to the 3rd Battalion of the 18th Infantry Regiment's Company I Staff Sgt. Joseph E. Schafer. Defending an important road intersection in Munsterbusch, Schafer's undermanned platoon was attacked by two German companies that day. When one of his rifle squads was forced out of
the intersection and another captured, his few remaining men were left to defend the position alone.

After moving this small force to a nearby house to avoid a two-pronged attack to his flank, Schafer, a Long Island, New York, native, led his men in breaking the first wave of enemy infantry when they came at the house with their flamethrowers and grenades, personally killing or wounding many. When the Germans regrouped for another attack, this time Schafer killed or wounded six more before charging a hedgerow where even more enemy soldiers were following the ones that fell. Here, he killed five others single-handedly, wounded two, and took ten stunned prisoners.

His company commander, Capt. Robert E. Hess, launched a counterattack to regain the intersection soon after this, where Sergeant Shafer again exhibited exceptional initiative. “Crawling and running in the face of heavy fire, he overtook the enemy and liberated the Americans captured earlier. Schafer, armed only with his rifle, killed between 15 to 20 Germans and wounded just as many.”
⁷⁸
His Medal of Honor, America's highest citation for military achievement, went on to note, “His courage was responsible for stopping the enemy breakthrough that day.”

A letter of instruction written by First Army the next day, and then amended on 27 September, defined new boundaries for both VII and XIX Corps. To the north of Aachen, General Corlett's XIX Corps was to protect the right flank of 21 Army Group, which would now make the main Allied effort to envelop the Ruhr from the vicinity of the Arnheim bridgehead. XIX Corps was further instructed to launch a coordinated attack on or about 1 October with the mission of penetrating the
Westwall
north of Aachen, and then gaining contact with General Collins's VII Corps northeast of the ancient imperial city. Corlett's continuing orders were to assist the subsequent advance of VII Corps by seizing and securing Linnich and Julich.
⁷⁹

At 0600 hours on 28 September the 246th
Volksgrenadier
Division, comprised of the 352nd, 404th, and 689th Infantry Regiments and commanded by
Oberstleutnant
Maximilian Leyherr, relieved the 116th Panzer Division. The next day Leyherr's forces took on the responsibility for the defense of Aachen.
⁸⁰

The 246th
Volksgrenadier
Division had been assembled just a few weeks earlier, but with a full number of men well provided with weapons, vehicles, and horses. However, according to a report by LXXXI Corps, the newly arrived division suffered from “a complete lack of training and welding. Not only were the officers barely acquainted with each other, makeup of the units took place in part during transportation to the deployment area.”
⁸¹

On 9 September, for example, an investigation by Army High Command/General Directorate/Special Staff A of 246th Volksgrenadier Division showed the following overall result: Due to the late arrival of the majority of men, weapons and equipment and the high percentage of young officers with no experience at the front, as well as the inadequate state of training, the division is not ready for deployment at the date ordered (20 September).

Nevertheless, on 29 September First Army issued a new letter of instruction.
⁸²
With a fresh enemy division over the shoulders of the advancing American VII Corps, a noose now needed to be tightened around the city of Aachen.

“I told the men we'd have to get down to the river somewhere between a fast walk and a dog trot.”

LT. COL. ROBERT E. FRANKLAND

A
t 1800 hours on 22 September, a four-man patrol from the 1st Platoon of Company B, 117th Infantry Regiment, 30th Infantry Division, reached a haystack at the edge of an open field just east of Scherpenseel. Led by Lt. Robert F. Cushman, these men had been given the mission of determining the width and the depth of the Wurm River and establishing the best place for an assault crossing. Aerial photographs of the area, 15 kilometers north of Aachen, had been studied prior to the mission, and a route to the river had also been carefully selected.

Lieutenant Cushman had Sgt. James A. Billings, Pvt. Glen W. Drake, and Pvt. Brent Youenes with him for this mission. They had agreed on hand signals earlier that afternoon; one snap of the fingers meant go, and two meant halt. Their faces were caked with mud to camouflage them after darkness fell. Each man carried two grenades, a first-aid packet, and one bandolier of ammunition for their M1 rifles. To make the least sound possible, Cushman and Youenes removed the stacking swivels from their rifles; Billings even took off his rifle sling.

Enemy artillery was firing heavily that night, but the patrol used this to their advantage. Whenever Cushman saw the flash of German guns, he snapped once and his men moved out before the concussions were heard. Light rain had already deadened the sounds of their movement and the drowning roar of the artillery fire now also helped them avoid detection
by German patrols. At approximately 2200, Cushman led his men away from the haystack, first side-stepping about 200 yards before they dropped down and crawled on their bellies to the brink of a hill. Here they stood up and started moving again, three yards apart along a road through a draw bordering the edge of a wooded area. “Things went well until Sergeant Billings stepped on some broken china that the Germans had strung along the approach,” tall, thin Private Youenes remembered. “Then Lieutenant Cushman examined it carefully and we bypassed it.”
¹

By now it was nearing midnight, and the men were crawling again. Before too long they came to a barbed-wire fence, the lowest strand about a foot off the ground. Youenes held the wires with his gloved hand and Cushman cut it. Moments later a white flare shot into the air from a nearby pillbox, but the patrol was lucky. No one saw them silhouetted in the sudden light.

While moving in the direction of a house closer to the river soon afterward, a cow made a noise that caused Cushman to whisper, “It sounds like a human being.”
²
Private Drake then swore he saw a German guard patrolling the river, and Sergeant Billings thought he saw a lit cigarette in the darkness. The combination of the cow's manlike sounds and the jumpy thinking that they were being watched caused the men to stay still for a full thirty minutes.

When they moved again, the patrol split up; Cushman and Billings went to the right while Drake and Youenes pushed off to the left. Each pair looked ahead and thought that a road was actually the river. Eventually they came abreast, the men now about ten yards away from each other. More ominous noises followed; this time a German opened up with a burp gun, but the echoes of its fire convinced the men that it had come from too far away, and that they were still not likely seen. By now they had reached the road. An enemy machine gunner was firing some tracers to their right, illuminating ghostly outlines of pyramid-shaped slag piles in the distance. An occasional mortar round fell in the area. “Then I began to notice a gurgling, grating sound to our immediate front,” Private Youenes recalled. “I said that's a fast running stream and it's going to be shallow. But our river turned out to be some kind of mechanized vehicle which was working up around the pillboxes across the river.”
³

The men moved out again, this time in short rushes, leapfrogging forward until they got to within 20 yards of the Wurm River. Here
Lieutenant Cushman whispered for his men to wait while he personally reconnoitered another 20 yards to the right before coming back and going 10 yards to the north. Then he quietly called for Youenes, and the pair edged up to the bank of the river in the inky blackness of the night. The private thought the river was about 18 to 20 feet deep and told Cushman this before he took Youenes's hand for balance and said he was going to go down the bank to find out how deep the river really was.

Private Youenes later explained:

Lieutenant Cushman went down into the water with no noises, waded across to the opposite bank and then came back. Two flares again shot up over the pillboxes, but still apparently nobody saw us. When he got back he reached up for my hand to help him up the bank. He was shivering and dripping wet. Then we started back, and didn't give a damn about crawling; we just high-tailed it back as fast as possible. On the way Lieutenant Cushman said he figured the river was between three to four and a half feet deep and averaged 15 feet in width. I told him it was more like 18 feet wide, because he had taken five and half steps when he went across.
⁴

The important mission was over at 0230. The plan to use assault boats for crossing the Wurm River was abandoned following the reconnaissance. The route discovered by the patrol was also exactly the same as that used by the 1st Platoon of Morgantown, West Virginia, native captain Spiker's Company B when the 1st Battalion of the 117th Infantry Regiment led the 30th Infantry Division in breaching the Siegfried Line.

“Cushman was a brave son of a gun,” remembered Lt. William J. O’Neil, leader of the battalion's Pioneer Platoon. “He came in dripping wet from that patrol and stood at attention in front of Colonel Frankland. The colonel told him ‘you've done an outstanding job; you will have saved many lives.’”
⁵
Cushman also brought back the news that there were no Germans west of the river; rather he had only heard digging on the other side near the railroad tracks some 200 or more yards away. Later that night Cushman told O’Neil that he thought some kind of improvised bridging would work when it came time for the actual attack.
“It turned out everything he suggested as a result of that patrol was sound,” Lieutenant O’Neil recalled later.

The overall mission for Major General Corlett's XIX Corps was to rupture the Siegfried Line and envelop Aachen; General Hobbs's 30th Infantry Division would turn southward after the breakthrough. General Huebner's 1st Infantry Division was to contain the city to the west and south, then move northeastward to affect a closure of the roadways and rail lines into Aachen. The encirclement would be completed when the two divisions linked up. The date for the 30th Division's attack was set for 1 October.

The
Westwall
in Corlett's sector was a continuous array of obstacles that extended across XIX Corps’ entire front. Unlike the area south of Aachen where the antitank barriers formed the entire outer line of the
Westwall
, dragon's teeth were placed only across the ridgeline just to the north of the city. The Wurm River formed the natural obstacle in the line from this point northward, up to where it joined the Roer River in the northernmost reach of the Corps’ sector at Geilenkirchen. Immediately east of the river the railroad line ran northward from Aachen in over 70 percent of the XIX Corps’ new sector. Tracks usually followed the river valley; however, to keep the railways as straight as possible numerous cuts and fills had been constructed in the Wurm's wandering streambed.

The pillbox band in the corps’ zone was generally three kilometers in depth behind the river-railroad line, with only one noticeable point where the boxes thinned out near the coal deposit–rich junction of the Wurm and Roer River Valleys. While the open land near the junction itself would be a hindrance to cross-country movement by any force, the Germans took few chances. The greatest concentration of pillboxes in the whole XIX Corps’ sector occurred on the nose south of the river junction to the east of flat Randerath. Defenses west of the Wurm River from which the Americans would attack consisted mainly of minefields and barbed wire like that encountered by Lieutenant Cushman's patrol. As his men also discovered, the banks of the Wurm were generally abrupt and naturally steep. Any bridging operations would be made more difficult not just by this, but also because bridges would have to be constructed while U.S. soldiers were under direct enemy observation and probable fire.

With the greatest density of pillboxes and other terrain obstacles in the northernmost sector of the line and the next greatest around Geilenkirchen, Corlett eliminated both areas as penetration points. Rather, the Rimburg-Palenberg section of the line, 9 miles north of Aachen and 3 miles southwest of Geilenkirchen, was selected for the breakthrough even before the leading troops of the 30th Infantry Division reached the German border. The road net, pillbox density, and a better opportunity for exploitation of the breakthrough to the north, east, and south without being faced with another terrain obstacle also factored into the decision to attack here.

Whereas a rupture of the Westwall farther south might bring quicker juncture with the VII Corps, General Hobbs placed greater emphasis upon avoiding urban snares and upon picking a site served by good supply routes. That the enemy's fresh 183rd Volks-Grenadier Division had entered the line from Rimburg north toward Geilenkirchen apparently had no appreciable influence on General Hobbs's selection of an assault site, possibly because the XIX Corps G-2, Colonel [Washington] Platt, deemed troops of this new division only “of a shade higher quality” than those of the 49th and 275th Divisions, which the XIX Corps had manhandled from the Albert Canal to the German border.
⁶

Artillery preparation for this assault would begin on 26 September, nearly a full week ahead of D-Day on 1 October. At H-hour minus 120 minutes, IX Tactical Air Command planned to provide nine groups of medium bombers, as well as two groups of fighter bombers, in order to effect a saturation bombing of the breakthrough area, knock out the pillboxes immediately facing the assault regiments, and also eliminate all enemy reserves that could be used for an immediate counterattack. Reinforced 30th Infantry Division artillery also planned to blackout enemy antiaircraft artillery positions fifteen minutes prior to the air attack. Once the infantry got through, Maj. Gen. Ernest Harmon's 2nd Armored Division would follow through the gap, and then drive to the north and east to protect the corps’ left flank.
⁷

The mission for General Hobbs's 30th Infantry Division was twofold. First, it would make the breakthrough; second, it would swing
south toward Aachen to relieve the pressure on VII Corps by linking up with Huebner's 1st Infantry Division. Hobbs's plan was to attack on a narrow front with two regiments abreast: Kansas native Col. Walter M. Johnson's 117th Infantry Regiment on the left and wiry Col. Edwin M. Sutherland's 119th Infantry Regiment on the right. Col. Hammond D. Birks's 120th Infantry Regiment was to initially execute a holding attack against the German defenses in and around Kerkrade, a built-up small mining town with about 25,000 Dutch citizens, and then be prepared to attack eastward or to come through the gap to join in the assault to the south.

The two weeks prior to the new attack date saw little activity along the division front other than routine patrolling, some reconnaissance missions, and an occasional exchange of fire. One thing had been confirmed. The Germans would have good observation over the ground that the assaulting forces would have to cross, some 1800 yards of expansive beet fields that faded into slopes and quarries. Beyond here lay more open fields that sloped downward through scattered draws some 250 yards to the Wurm River. A wooded area bordered the Scherpenseel-Marienberg road, which was the left boundary of the attack zone; the woods also extended to the north-south Marienberg-Rimburg road. The right boundary was the Holland-German border, marked only by barbed wire. Marienberg, last occupied by a hostile force during the Napoleonic Wars, was situated approximately a quarter of a mile southeast of Scherpenseel on the west bank of the river opposite Palenberg, a mixed agricultural and coal-mining village. Wary American recon forces knew every town could be made a strongpoint if the enemy so chose.

The only bridge in the attack zone had already been blown. Moreover, once across the river the attackers would have to advance over approximately 250 more yards of gently rising ground before coming to a high hedge line near the Aachen-Geilenkirchen railroad embankment. Beyond this the infantry might get its first break; some natural protection from enemy fire would be afforded across gently rising, open ground where the well-camouflaged and mutually supporting pillboxes stretched out another 250 yards away. Numerous independent firing trenches dotted the area, and beyond the nine pillboxes in the immediate attack zone
for the 117th Infantry Regiment, all clustered around a central crossroad south of Palenberg, other boxes were located to the north and south. A high bluff jutted out from the north edge of Palenberg; more pillboxes were here. Two slag piles on the east edge of the town afforded the German artillery observers 360-degree views over the entire area. In a dispatch to his paper in New York, Drew Middleton described the attack zone as a “countryside where huge slag heaps and tall factory chimneys contrasted queerly with rolling green meadows and heavily wooded hills.”
⁸
Minefields, barbed wire, and antitank ditches also extended across the planned avenue of attack, some 2,400 yards from the initial line of departure east of Scherpenseel to the pillbox area.
⁹

Initial corps-level planning for the attack had been based mainly on these terrain and fixed-defense studies with little detailed knowledge of the enemy disposition. Intelligence, in fact, was difficult to secure because of the change in German force strength from day to day in the later part of September.
¹⁰
However, just two reinforced rifle companies (later learned from prisoners to be
Leutnant
Hofner's 3Co and
Leutnant
Kartner's 14Co) of Hauptman Buhvogel's 330th Regiment's 1st Battalion of the 183rd
Volksgrenadier
Division were estimated to be in the assault area as Colonel Platt was refining his intelligence assessments toward the end of the month. Army official history noted: