Aachen: The U.S. Army's Battle for Charlemagne's City in World War II (20 page)

Lt. Fay M. Parker, the mortar platoon leader from Company D, was with the 1st Platoon observing fire when its leader was wounded. He reacted swiftly, went over to Captain Hoppe and offered, “I know the situation; I'll take the platoon down to the bridge site.”
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After hastily reorganizing the platoon, the stalwart volunteer then led the men down the hill and through the woods lining the road to Palenberg, still directing mortar fire as he approached the banks of the Wurm.

Captain Hoppe by this time had crossed over the Marienberg-Palenberg road to push on his 2nd and 3rd Platoons. He was not disappointed with the outcome. From the top floor of a house on the south side of the roadway, Hoppe directed artillery fire as he watched his men move down to a row of brick houses facing the bridge site. Two pillboxes stood directly across the river, just east of the railroad tracks. Parker ordered light machine-gun fire into the apertures while the riflemen of the platoon tried to find the same openings with their M1s. The heavy machine guns were too far back to reach the pillboxes, so they went to work on the enemy snipers nearer the river as the Americans started to throw in their bridges.

Then came a setback. The planks were not long enough to reach from bank to bank. While German small-arms fire started to rake the area, Sgt. Lewis A. Reeves and Pvt. James W. Harris took matters into their own hands. After jumping into the cold, chest-deep water, both men somehow steadied the planks from tipping and held them in place; Private Harris stayed at his post, even though he was wounded.
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The 2nd Platoon got across, then crept up toward the pillboxes along the west side of the railroad tracks while the 3rd Platoon crossed the tracks and started working their way around toward the boxes from the rear. Company E was across the Wurm.

At the start of the rolling barrage at 1100 hours, both of Lieutenant Colonel Frankland's 1st Battalion assault companies had also moved out quickly; Captain Cole, the chemical mortars’ forward observer with the 117th Infantry noted, “They got used to the bursts and seemed to know when the barrage would lift.” For Captain Stoffer's Company C, however, quick movement also brought early casualties. First, his weapons
platoon leader was hit by enemy artillery just over their line of departure. Second, both Lieutenants Stanley and Johnson later stated that “they had information that some of the 4.2 mortars slipped in the mud, and the base plates kicked backward in such a way to cause some shorts which fell amongst our troops.”
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More casualties followed after crossing the beet fields when the assault platoons reached the downward slope just over the brink of the hill. The draw canalized both Company C platoons’ advance; German artillery had these men zeroed in. Captain Cole, who had stayed with one of the platoons remembered, “The draw was jammed full of the boys carrying their bridges; the enemy walked up and down the area with their artillery.”
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Six Americans were killed, another fifty-eight were wounded, and twelve others were unable to continue after the resultant melee. Pvt. James A. Smallwood remembered the shells caught his 2nd Platoon squarely. “Almost the entire platoon was wiped out in a few minutes. I looked around me and saw only three or four men who looked as though they hadn't been hit. It was terrible.” Stoffer's support platoon was also hit badly. “It was pinned down so hard it couldn't wiggle,” Lieutenant Stanley recounted later.

When Stanley reached the river, just five 3rd Platoon men were present as they attempted to get their bridges across the Wurm's banks. Some fire came in from a switching station as well as a large building east of the railroad tracks and from the Rimburg Castle to their right in the 119th Infantry's sector. At the time, Lieutenant Stanley did not know that the assault squads in his platoon had been hit back at the draw, so he waited at the river bank, expecting his men to catch up. A bit later, Stanley worked the men with him across the Wurm and up to a sheltered position on the near side of the railroad track. Lieutenant Johnson did the same with his 1st Platoon. At the track bed, there were just twelve men left with Johnson; Stanley now had fifteen soldiers with him. Here both platoons remained for about forty-five minutes; just two men worked their way across the track into defiladed positions. Heavy small-arms fire was coming in from two pillboxes. Everyone was pinned down. After another forty-five minutes, Stanley finally radioed Captain Stoffer and reported, “I have no assault squad, and I can't assault the pillboxes without an assault squad.”
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It would be another hour before Captain Kent's Company A arrived to take over ravaged Company C's mission.

Casualties may have been heavier for both of Stoffer's assault platoons were it not for the stunning movement down to and across the river by Captain Spiker's Company B. When his assault platoons jumped off from the cow trail along their line of departure, the 118th Field Artillery's M2 howitzers added to the chemical mortars’ barrage; its batteries had counted on the men covering about 100 yards every five minutes. Instead they moved faster. “It was fortunate that Lieutenant Walter Hawbaker observed this from his outpost on the third floor of the house he was in, for he had steady communication with the guns firing and kept the preparation rolling ahead of the fast-moving troops,” remembered Maj. Raymond W. Milllican, the S-3 of the 118th FA.
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First enemy fires nevertheless came in as Lieutenant Borton's 2nd Platoon dashed through the beet and turnip fields aside the Scherpenseel-Marienberg road; this was fire from a pillbox near Marienberg. Only a single casualty resulted before a lone German soldier was observed rushing from this pillbox. He got about 30 yards away, running to the Marienberg-Palenberg road that cut through the beet fields in front of the advance; he had been hit by one of the chemical barrage's exploding mortars. “When we got up to him his whole chest was ripped out and he was plenty dead,” Lieutenant O’Neil of the Pioneer Platoon observed.
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Remembering Lieutenant Colonel Frankland's warnings during planning the attack, O’Neil later recalled, “Its only result was more speed; we took off like big-assed birds.”

After Borton's platoon reached the road, they cut south; Lieutenant Cushman's men had been keeping pace, staying abreast of Borton's soldiers, with Lt. Jay Manley's weapons platoon following. Cushman wanted to get the war behind him; he had learned from a telegram ten minutes earlier that he had a new baby boy back in the states. Lt. Whitney O. Refvem's 3rd Platoon was following Borton's men. Each assault platoon occupied a front of about 75 yards as the leading elements reached the brow of the hill less than five minutes after jumping off.

Neither assault platoon had taken any casualties. At the edge of Marienberg, the troops started down a draw and then turned directly for the river. Manley's weapons platoon moved down the left side of the draw along with Refvem's forces and were caught by some of the mortar and artillery fire that had hit Company C as they were racing for the river. Caught now in this better-adjusted hostile enemy fire, both platoons
started taking casualties. The assault platoons, ahead of this fire, continued rushing to the Wurm. Cushman's 1st Platoon turned sharply southeastward while Lieutenant Borton's 2nd Platoon wound through a slightly longer path on the left. There was the expected single-strand barbed wire fence in front of them; wire-cutters quickly took care of this. Lieutenant O’Neil later recalled what happened next:

For some unknown reason everybody stopped at this fence. The men had also started to complain that they were tired from the fast pace and the load of carrying the ladders. Lieutenant Borton yelled “Let's go, guys.” I picked up a shovel and smashed it on the fence yelling “Jesus let's get out of here.” Borton then ran toward the river, plunged into the water, waded across and slammed one of the bridges firmly on the far bank. Then he put the ladder from bank-to-bank. Then he jumped out of the water, put his hands on his hips and turned around toward his men with the words: “There's your God-damned bridge.”
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Right after this, Lieutenant O’Neil threw in another bridge and Borton's men then swarmed across the river. Some did not wait for foot room on the bridges; they waded over and got soaked. “Through all this excitement, Borton had complete command of the situation,” O’Neil added later. “The last time I saw him he was telling his men to spread out as they advanced up to the railroad tracks.”
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Lieutenant Cushman's 1st Platoon had their bridge in shortly afterward. In this case, they used a 15-foot length but it did not stretch quite far enough to go all the way from bank to bank; consequently the men double-timed across in water almost up to their knees.

At first there was not much opposition between the river and the railroad tracks. Along the track twenty-five to thirty Germans were dug in, but they surrendered as the boot-crunching roar of the assault waves rushed in at top speed. Friendly mortar fire was now shifting to the pillboxes. Company D's 1st Heavy Machine Gun Platoon had already displaced and the squads had set up near their 81mm mortars at the edge of the woods bordering the draw on the southern edge of Marienberg. Lieutenant Manley's weapons platoon by this time had recovered from the enemy artillery and mortar hits they took in the draw while coming
down to the river; the gunners were now ready to fire from a rock pile just west of the north-south road which paralleled the river. Only forty-five minutes had gone by since the assaulting platoons of Captain Spiker's Company B crossed their line of departure.
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Observers at Colonel Johnson's 117th Infantry Regiment Command Post on the third floor of a building nearer the brink of the hill leading down to the river remembered that he was busily giving instructions to his staff at the time. By 1200 he knew that Company B was across the Wurm. At 1215 he was overheard ordering, “Get a hold of Verify [743rd Tank Battalion]. The assault companies are well across the river.”

Then Johnson turned and barked sarcastically at his staff, “They are hollering push from division, as usual.”
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“The great success on the American side was the moment of the completely surprising action by the assault on the Westwall across the Wurm near Palenberg on the 2nd of October.”

GENERAL DER INFANTERIE
FRIEDRICH KÖCHLING
COMMANDING GENERAL LXXXI CORPS

W
hen Lieutenant Colonel Duncan's 743rd Tank Battalion reached the Wurm River with the tank dozer and a tank pulling the sled loaded with the culverts, they were immediately subjected to enemy artillery fire. Everyone was forced to take cover for nearly thirty-five minutes. The original plan had called for the remainder of Duncan's tanks to stay in Scherpenseel until the culverts had been installed. However, as soon as the tank dozer had a chance to start clearing the west bank of the river after the infantry crossed, these tanks were ordered by an anxious Colonel Johnson to start moving out.

Arriving prematurely at the bridging site, their crews found that the tank dozer had pushed just one culvert into the water and it was now stuck in the muddy banks of the Wurm. Two mediums rushed over to pull the dozer out, but they also got stuck in mud that went up over their suspension systems. While the crews valiantly attempted to winch the armor free, German artillery shells, small-arms, and mortar fire killed the effort. As a result the engineers were unable to put the culverts in. Other Americans, also spotted by enemy observers, took cover in hastily constructed slit trenches. No tanks were knocked out, but Company A's Capt. Kenneth R. Cowan was wounded when a shell hit the exposed turret of his tank.
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Capt. Edward Miller, the Assistant S-3 of the battalion, was also
wounded right after he reported to regiment at 1245 hours that the remaining tanks had just made it to the Wurm.

Two suspenseful hours later, Colonel Johnson's CP learned that the engineers were using shovels and picks to try to dig the tank dozer out. At 1510 hours more bad news poured in. Lieutenant Colonel Duncan reported that “the situation is still pretty bad with all that artillery.” Johnson told him he had just ordered Captain Rice's Company A of the 105th Engineer Battalion down to help get the tanks across. Rice subsequently reported at 1550, directly by phone to General Hobbs, the very concerned 30th Infantry Division commander, that two tanks remained stuck in the mud but were finally being winched out. Even Gen. William K. Harrison Jr., the assistant division commander, had come down from Johnson's CP to see what could be done; when he got back all he could report was that he had ducked a lot of sniper fire. At 1800 the tanks were still deep in the silt, but the engineers reported that they expected to have them freed up within thirty minutes.
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As a result, there was no opportunity to use the well-practiced tank-infantry tactics anticipated by Lieutenant Colonel Frankland as his 1st Battalion companies attempted to accomplish their final missions during the early afternoon hours of 2 October. The infantry would have to go it alone. Men in Captain Spiker's Company B later noted that “the tanks actually caused more harm than good by drawing artillery fire and mortar fire on [our] support and weapons platoons.”
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But at that moment the nine pillboxes capable of delivering fires into the company's positions across the railroad tracks were of even greater concern. Because of the limited visibility through their embrasures, the Germans had placed some of their spotters and gunners in trenches outside of these pillboxes. Many had been driven to cover when the thundering bombs, artillery, and mortar fires announced the start of the American offensive, but there were still machine-gun positions outside of the boxes that were not damaged and with which the company would now have to contend. Complicating matters, the Germans still maintained good observation on their positions from the two large slag piles east of Palenberg; the men could also be seen from houses here as well as from homes in Marienberg.

There was also that upward slope grown over with beets that the men had to contend with before they could reach the pillboxes. A ridge punctuated the terrain they would have to climb, but there were some brief
defiladed spots just beyond the tracks where dips in the ground and bomb craters afforded some cover while they attacked. Unknown at the time, shoe mines and other booby traps had also been laid into the slope. Captain Spiker's Company B was assigned to five pillboxes. Lieutenant Cushman's 1st Platoon was tasked with taking Pillboxes 2 and 8 on the right flank of the advance; Borton's 2nd Platoon would reduce Pillboxes 3 and 7 in the center while Lieutenant Refvem's 3rd Platoon came up on the left and captured Pillbox 4. This latter enemy box was actually in Palenberg.

Their planned supporting fires were well positioned. Lieutenant Manley's Weapons Platoon would cover Refvem's men as they attacked Pillbox 4. His light machine guns had been equipped with BAR bipods. These enabled higher shooting trajectories than normal tripod bases afforded, permitting the gunners to deliver longer overhead fire and actually sweep from the Marienberg bridge site all the way through the Company B zone to the south, right into Pillbox 8. Manley's 60mm mortars would add extra firepower and also cover the advance of both Cushman's and Borton's men.

With this support in place, enemy artillery and mortar fire nevertheless combined with small-arms fire when Lieutenant Cushman's 1st Platoon started from the bridge up to the railroad tracks. Shrapnel burst everywhere; to calm himself before jumping off, Pfc. Richard Ballou drew a sketch of the terrain on the back of a postcard. Then shells started landing in the river 8 feet behind his squad. A large hole was blown in the opposite bank. Staying in position was no good. One by one, the men took their loads and jumped off toward the railroad tracks. Shots rang out from the woods to their right but Cushman, in the lead, worked his way up to a hedge bordering the tracks and personally cut away the strands of a barbed-wire fence, encouraging the rest of the platoon to move up. Some men had found concealment by sneaking around a few dead cows that were hit by the earlier friendly artillery fire. This roundabout route delayed the arrival of Cushman's assault squad. Still, the men eventually sprinted forward, hopping away from bullets as they hit the dirt near their feet, and charged up toward the ridge. The support squads then took up positions directly facing the pillboxes on the right side of the company sector. Amazingly, there were very few casualties.

Pvt. Brent Youenes, who had reconnoitered the Wurm with Lieutenant Cushman two weeks before the attack, had volunteered for the
flamethrower assignment that waited. Running up to the first pillbox, he quickly squirted two bursts into the front embrasure from just 10 yards away. Pvt. Willis Jenkins rushed forward when the flame cooled, placed a pole charge through the embrasure, and dove to the right as the pillbox exploded. Minutes later Sgt. James Billings and Pvt. Pasquale Vitalone entered the box, and not long afterward the Germans surrendered. “The last five filed out shaking and saying ‘Kamerad,’” New York native Vitalone remembered.
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By this time Youenes had already started across the road to Pillbox 2. He had transferred the flamethrower to another private, William W. Smith, and as he approached this box Youenes spotted two German helmets outside of a different box—Pillbox 6. This box was in Company C's assault zone, but an enemy machine gunner had opened up on members of Youenes's squad. Sgt. Daniel Preston retaliated by taking quick aim at one of the Germans, killing him, while the second one rushed back into the pillbox. Three other assault squad members, a sergeant and Privates Isadore Polansky and Norman Jandreau, crawled up along the edge of the woods to approach the pillbox from the blind side. Lieutenant Cushman and the support squad covered their advance; Pfc. Hershel D. Jones fired a rifle grenade into the dirt in front of the box, blinding its occupants to the American assault. Polansky crept up to throw grenades in; Jandreau rounded the pillbox with a satchel charge. Cpl. John Curtis and Sgt. Fred Burke, armed with smoke and hand grenades, rushed up to the right side of the box.

Moments later the first grenade was thrown at the pillbox, but it was a rushed mistake and turned out to be yellow signal smoke; the private who threw it quickly reacted by hurling a live grenade into the front embrasure. Polansky, who had been wounded in the thigh while charging the box, still managed to jump up on top of it and quickly throw a grenade down the ventilator. Covered by fire being delivered by Technical Sgt. Waymon R. “Mac” McClurkan, Privates Youenes and Smith then raced over to help with the assault. Warning Polansky to get down from the top of the box, Youenes rushed in while holding the nozzle of the flamethrower and gave the opening a long burst of flaming gas. Private Jandreau, still behind the pillbox, slammed his satchel charge into the open rear door; the charge instantly ripped ragged holes around the edges of the concrete that framed the doorway.

This brought Youenes around to the rear to help Jandreau, with Private Smith two feet behind him still toting the flamethrower. Youenes later recalled:

I figured that there must be an opening in the center rear, and decided to also give that a burst, which I did when I rounded the pillbox. The only result was a feeble “ph-t, ph-ht-tt” of escaping nitrogen. Just then I saw the blurred head of a German officer come out of the pillbox and he fired three shots, killing Smitty. When Smitty fell he jerked me backward with the flamethrower. As I struggled to get a hold of my rifle, which Smitty had, the officer fired two more shots into Smitty and shortly after that started hightailing it over toward the other box. I tried to get my bloody rifle out of Smitty's hands, but he was clenching it too tight.
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Within minutes, the German officer was dead; the first shot had been fired by Lieutenant Cushman, followed by rifle fire from many angry squad members. Private Smith was “sprawled pitifully on the ground, his face in the dirt—helmet on the ground near his head; bulging from each hip pocket was a never-to-be eaten K-ration.”
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The men looked away. Six more Germans filed out of the box, yelled they were surrendering, and were sent to the POW cage; Youenes and Jandreau were left to guard the box in case others were still hiding inside.

Cushman's 1st Platoon now turned back toward Pillbox 2, the first of two the men had been tasked with taking that day; the other two were in different zones. Pvt. Willis Jenkins was the spearhead in taking this box. He ran toward the pillbox with a pole charge, rounded the left side, and thrust it right into the embrasure; the explosion tore a hole about 8 inches in diameter into the opening. However, the private wasted little time and pitched several grenades through it while Corporal Curtis went around to the rear door to throw more grenades into the box. The Germans responded by offering no resistance and surrendering.

By this time most of the 1st Platoon men were swarming around Pillboxes 8 and 9. Lieutenant Manley's supporting machine-gun fires had fortunately kept the enemy away from the embrasures of both boxes, preventing return fire on the attacking Americans. Germans in pits outside
of the box had also been driven inside by the work of Manley's mortars; concussions from the earlier artillery fire had already intimidated everyone inside. In a final gesture of persuasion, Lieutenant Cushman's squads lobbed numerous hand grenades into the pillbox, after which the occupants chose to surrender. It was approximately 1300 hours; the 1st Platoon had reduced all opposition in five pillboxes less than two hours after jumping off from the other side of the river.
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Lieutenant Borton's 2nd Platoon had also been working on Pillboxes 3 and 7. Technical Sgt. Grady Workman led the assault echelon of sixteen men; Pvt. Victor Kuinis spearheaded the attack with his flamethrower. Two pole charge carriers, Privates Harold Zeglien and Merle Hasenkamp, assisted. The support squad was under the direction of lanky Sgt. George Dail; his men first moved up to the railroad tracks and deployed to provide covering fire while Kuinis, Zeglien, and Hasenkamp led the double-time charge across the beet fields right up to the ridge. No fire was received from either pillbox as the men closed in.

All sixteen soldiers in the assault group first concentrated on Pillbox 3, the left-most box. Private Zeglien led this strike, placing his pole charge in the embrasure. The work of Lieutenant Manley's weapons platoon again became apparent; the pillbox's occupants had “cowed and retired to the living quarters without offering opposition.”
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Following the detonation of Zeglien's pole charge, however, four Germans ran out the rear door and started through the shallow communications trenches outside the box going southward. They did not get far. A yell from Sergeant Dail to surrender resulted in their immediate capitulation.

At this point Lieutenant Borton and Sergeant Workman joined with Dail and switched their attention to Pillbox 7. This time Private Hasenkamp moved over and placed his pole charge at the embrasure; everyone believed the Germans were also huddled in this box. Another soldier worked his way into a position to fire a bazooka round into the doorway of the living quarters, but his first round failed to do any damage. Instead, it provoked return fire and a well-placed machine-gun bullet killed the private.

This brought Captain Spiker rushing up with his operations sergeant, Theodore Lassoff. The same machine gun fired again; it was to the rear of Spiker but he hit the ground anyway. “Sergeant Lassoff, who
spoke German, then directed a prisoner to go in and tell the occupants that if they didn't surrender they would be burned to death with a flamethrower,” a witness to the action later recalled. “The reply came back that they would come out if they were given cigarettes when they emerged. Captain Spiker complied; however only the German who had done the persuading [was given] one single cigarette.”
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The last box in the Company B zone was Pillbox 4 and it initially caused a great deal of trouble for Lieutenant Refvem's 3rd Platoon. They were already weakened from casualties taken while coming down the draw to the river, disorganized, and had for a brief time lost communications with the company. Refvem became a casualty when the platoon moved up to the railroad line; he was badly wounded. After Technical Sgt. Howard Wolpert rushed over to provide what help he could, Lieutenant Refvem gave the fierce-looking 6-footer command with instructions to contact Captain Spiker for additional orders. “It only took a few minutes to make the 3rd Platoon once again a smooth-functioning machine,” participants recalled later.
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