Aachen: The U.S. Army's Battle for Charlemagne's City in World War II (3 page)

Later, at 1555 hours Lieutenant Colonel Brown's 3rd Battalion pushed past the right flank of the line established by the 1st Battalion at Fouron le Comte, and advanced to the east of Warsage and eventually some 500 yards inside the Dutch border near Terlinden. “People were ringing church bells when we entered these small towns,” remembered Company L lieutenant David F. Knox.
²⁸

At the same time, heavy fighting was taking place for Eysden, a small trading and shipping center before the war, where losses in the 275th Infantry Division ranks included the killing of the battalion commander defending the area. By nightfall Uheer also fell. Only Battalion Riedel held its position near Schildberg, stalling the envelopment of Schmidt's left wing. His remaining forces began to withdraw to a north-south line along the Gulpen-Cadier road. As Schmidt remembered, “Our intention was to keep the enemy away from Maastricht with the view of holding free the Meuse bridge for the withdrawal of our bridgehead troops.” This
and other setbacks along the entire LXXXI Corps’ front on 12 September prompted
Generalleutnant
Schack to comment, “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.”
²⁹

Meanwhile, in light of this eroding situation, the 12th Infantry Division, commanded by
Oberst
Gerhard Engel, a handsome and highly decorated former army liaison officer to Hitler, was alerted for movement “as soon as possible” to strengthen the defenses at the
Westwall
. This division was battle hardened from combat on the Eastern front in Russia. Heavy losses during defensive battles in the spring and summer of 1944 had resulted in its withdrawal into the West Prussian area around Danzig for rest and refitting and it was now at full strength. On 12 September the division departed Western Prussia with 1.5 times its normal issue of infantry and artillery ammunition.
³⁰
Engel's forces included three infantry regiments with two battalions each totaling approximately 6,600 men, four battalions of artillery with attached infantry that was comprised of another 2,200 soldiers, an engineer battalion with four companies made up of 400 men, and a newly organized antitank battalion with two companies that brought up its strength by another 300 men. With headquarters service personnel and his signal battalion,
Oberst
Engel had 14,800 combatants at his disposal.
³¹
He remembered:

On 12 September the division, which was prepared for evacuation, was alerted and evacuated within the shortest time to reach the Western Front as soon as possible. Because of the dangerous situation on the frontiers of the Reich, the drive went at maximum speed. The division drove along the stretch ordered at speed 36, with utter disregard for other traffic. Destination was unknown; the area of Aachen was suspected.
³²

Panic had consumed the city of Aachen by this time. Chaotic conditions at the railroad stations set in during the afternoon of 12 September where, by earlier order of Hitler himself, mandatory evacuation of its civil population was now to occur by train over the next two days.
Generalleutnant
Schack was in the city that afternoon and he saw that “Aachen was in sheer turmoil. Crying women and children wandered
bewildered through the city and old women in completely desperate conditions begged for help to get out of the city. They said that the Gauleiter had declared that whoever did not leave the town at once was a traitor. Obviously they were afraid to be dealt with as traitors.”
³³

In leaflet form, evacuation orders had been distributed to the civilians of Aachen that morning by the party's respected Joseph Grohe, the
Gauleiter
(Nazi Party District leader) of the wider Cologne-Aachen area. The order read:

German Men and Women

Fellow Countrymen and fellow Countrywomen!

If the enemy approaches the German positions in the West, he should meet our fanatical resistance! His intentions to destroy the Reich and to exterminate our people must be foiled.

He must not be allowed to achieve now that which he could not achieve five years ago, when his highly-equipped armies stood in front of our fortifications. Our children's eyes, which want to see a future, remind us to resist with all means to the last breath. The voices of the many hundreds of thousands who remained on the battlefields for the honor and freedom of our Fatherland, or those who lost their lives to enemy terror bombing, are calling us. The spirits of the heroes of liberty of our glorious history shake us, so that we do not weaken or become cowards during the decisive part of the fight for our existence!

The ruins of our cities and the millions of our fellow countrymen's homes that were destroyed by terror bombing are a silent accusation against anyone who does not do everything for the victory, without which there will be no rebuilding.

Fellow Countrymen and fellow Countrywomen!

We must expect the western front forward areas of our fortifications and also the towns within the fortifications to soon become a battle area. Therefore the Fuhrer [
sic
] ordered the evacuation of the towns and villages in the upcoming battle area for the safety of German life and war-important valuables!

The evacuation proceeds according to plan and without haste. The safeguarding of valuables that are important for the
war is being handled by the appropriate authorities; the orderly evacuation of men, women, and children has been taken over by the Party.

The Ortsgruppenleiter [Nazi Party village group leaders] issue the necessary instructions according to the Kreisleiters. The evacuation proceeds to previously designated areas of the Reich, where all preparations for shelter have been arranged. The relocated people will receive the same assistance as those who were bombed out.

Males between the ages of 16 and 60 who are capable of work will for now not be evacuated, but will be deployed at fortifications under construction, as long as they do not belong to the work force who, because of relocation of its factories, move out with them to another part of the Reich.

The fellow countrymen working on the fortifications will be brought back as soon as their work is complete or the situation at the front requires the fortifications to be released to the fighting Wehrmacht.

Fellow Countrymen and fellow Countrywomen!

In the difficult years of war behind us, you had to make extraordinary sacrifices without ever forgetting your duty. It is important that the evacuation now necessary takes place with discipline and mutual helpfulness!

Whoever disturbs measures of the evacuation, or tries to refuse to join the withdrawal, not only puts himself in deadly danger, but has to be considered a traitor against the public community and dealt with accordingly.

And now more than ever:

Long live our Fuhrer [
sic
], our Reich, and our People!

Grohe

Despite Grohe's promises of order and the dire consequences of disobedience, among the first to leave the city was anyone who wore a Nazi Party uniform. Both the Aachen City and Aachen Forest
Kreisleiters
, the official area Nazi Party leaders, fled in the madness. Some lesser party members and Red Cross nurses made an effort to help organize the people, but there were too few to bring order to the chaos.

When Grohe allowed the party leaders to leave the city, the police also followed. By early evening, the entire Aachen police force, including air raid police as well as the fire department, medical service personnel, and all of their vehicles and equipment, were gone. With this, any hopes for an orderly evacuation came to a virtual halt.

Generalleutnant
Count Gerhard Graf von Schwerin, the charismatic and much-admired commander of the 116th Panzer Division, also came into Aachen later that day from his command post outside of the city. He, too, was distressed by what he witnessed.

I found the population to be in a state of panic, without guidance, aimlessly fleeing the city into the night. This view—let it be understood the first view after returning to the homeland from enemy country—made a deep and shocking impression on my officers and me. I took measures to control this panic out of consideration for the troops who would pass through the city. Great numbers of women and children with handcarts and baby carriages [were] walking away on the roads, aimlessly. The unruly movement obstructed mobility of the troops and caused animosity and panic even amongst the soldiers.
³⁴

There was ample reason for chaos in the city. As the evacuation leaflets fell into the hands of the Aachen citizenry on 12 September, the veteran 1st Infantry Division, commanded by Maj. Gen. Clarence R. Huebner, also pushed to the German border. At 1515 hours, New York native Capt. Victor H. Briggs's Company C of Huebner's 16th Infantry Regiment burst through a gap between the 9th and 116th Panzer Divisions and crossed the last frontier of the European War.
³⁵
During the night the reinforced 1st Battalion of this regiment, under the command of Lt. Col. Edmund F. Driscoll, continued driving forward and pierced the first belt of the
Westwall
in the woods near the Brandenberg Hill, in the sector of Security Battalion 453. A counterattack at 2100 hours with eighty men launched by the Aachen battle commandant failed when these forces marched right into the left flank of Company A and were mowed down by machine-gun fire.
³⁶
The battle commandant,
Oberst
Helmuth von Osterroht, had no choice but to rush more reinforcements into this threatened part of the
Westwall
later that night.
³⁷

By this time, thousands of confused Aachen citizens still in the city were taking it upon themselves to move into its twenty-two air raid bunkers. However, Huebner's 1st Infantry Division was under orders from Maj. Gen. J. Lawton Collins's VII Corps to bypass Aachen altogether. Instead, after reaching the Corps’ initial objective six miles northeast of Aachen at Eschweiler, Huebner's infantry regiments and the combat commands of the 3rd Armored Division were to link up at the road center of Duren with XIX Corps. From here the Americans were to advance to the Rhine River and attack the heart of what remained of Germany's industrial production in the Ruhr. XIX Corps, commanded by Maj. Gen. Charles H. Corlett and positioned to the north and west of Aachen, was to turn east after Maastricht fell and cross the natural obstacles formed by the Wurm River to the north of Aachen, then penetrate the
Westwall
in its zone of operations with forces of the 30th Infantry Division and the 2nd Armored Division before driving farther eastward toward Duren for the linkup with VII Corps.

The ancient imperial city was to be left alone. On 12 September 1944, Aachen—despite the panic inside the city—was of no value to the American army other than as a route for vehicular traffic; its capture was not essential. Fate and the circumstances of total war soon changed this. Aachen, its historical epoch rooted in the takeover of the government by Charlemagne in CE 768, was destined to be surrounded. Air power, artillery, armor, and infantry would eventually subject the garrison to an object lesson in the application of modern warfare before all German troops, arms, materiel, and fortifications were surrendered to the United States Army five weeks later on 21 October 1944.

“The only glimmer of hope seemed to be the 12th Infantry Division, due to arrive by train.”

MAJ. HEINZ GUNTHER GUDERIAN,
FROM NORMANDY TO THE RUHR WITH THE 116TH PANZER DIVISION

W
hen
Generalleutnant
von Schwerin took formal command of the Aachen defenses at 0600 on 13 September, one of the first matters he chose to deal with was the plight of the Aachen citizenry; he sent his division staff officers through the city looking for any authorities who “could effect reasonable control of the panicky stream of refugees.”
¹
They were unable to find anyone, so Schwerin ordered these staff officers to reach out to the people, tell them not to flee, and to instead return to their homes. It was noted at the time that “the population accepted this offer gratefully.”

Their circumstances certainly explained why Aacheners were grateful. Arrangements had been made by Grohe for channeling them outside of the city “without friction, provided that the orders of the march and transport leaders were complied with.”
²
They had been reminded that disobedience would be dealt with “on the spot.” Yellow march order tags were given to mothers and fathers with children under twelve. A blue traveling order was issued to pregnant women and old and sick people. They were told their individual hand baggage could not exceed 30 pounds, but another 60 pounds of luggage was permissible on horse-drawn carriages that would be provided; small carriages and bicycles were permitted for carrying the other 30 pounds. The people could also bring food for three days, one wool blanket, a raincoat, a mess kit, one bottle of
beverage, underwear, a wash cloth, a lantern or flashlight, even personal papers. Women were reminded to bring articles for personal hygiene, and milk, bottles, and nipples if they had babies. Everyone was warned to douse any embers that might remain in the fireplaces of their homes; they were told that their water, gas, and electricity would be shut off.

Schwerin's concerns for the people of Aachen prompted him to again leave his command post in the Rahe Chateau in Laurensberg and enter the city early in the afternoon of 13 September. He later chronicled his first stop in one of the city's municipal buildings on his way to see von Osterroht. The fate of the people was still foremost on his mind when he spoke here with Joseph Grohe.

He had asked me if I was now assuming command of the city. By answering in the affirmative, I again became fully aware of the heavy responsibility I had to assume regarding the leaderless remaining population of Aachen…. [I]f the enemy were to advance toward the city from the point of penetration, one would have to assume that he would appear at the southern entrances of the city before my division could get there. Therefore, the time available was so short that it was impossible to evacuate the thousands of people who were still in the city. The majority would fall into enemy hands. In this situation I only had one thought on my mind: what can [I] do to help the unfortunate population if the enemy arrives in the city ahead of [my forces]? From previous fighting in France, I knew that the American Army adhered to the Geneva and Hague conventions, so it seemed possible to ease the fate of the remaining citizens by means of a purely humanitarian appeal to the American commander. I acted according to this thought.
³

After Schwerin determined that a trustworthy postal clerk would remain in the city in the event Aachen was occupied, he wrote a note in English on a piece of paper and handed it to the head postal official, who had vouched for his clerk's reliability to carry out the task. Schwerin then left the office to go to his new command post in the Berliner Hof on the railroad station street to see von Osterroht. The letter had not been put
into an envelope, so its contents were undoubtedly read at the time. Schwerin remembered, “The famous lines were worded as follows”:

To the Commanding Officer of the US Forces occupying the town of Aachen: I stopped the stupid evacuation of the civil population and ask you to give her relief. I'm the last commanding officer here.

Gerhard Count von Schwerin,
13 September 44 Lt. General
⁴

Schwerin then turned his attention to more pressing matters. A Führer order that he had received read: “In the event of enemy penetration of Aachen, every house is to be defended. A withdrawal, such as from the southern edge to the northern edge of the city, will not happen.”
⁵
With this, any lingering thoughts Schwerin had about either surrendering the city or falling back to the second, stronger
Westwall
line meant disobedience. He had ample cause for concern.

At first light that morning, the two companies of the 36th Armored Infantry assigned to Task Force Lovelady renewed their attack north of Roetgen. All three platoons of Company E, now under the command of Georgia native Lt. Verna L. McCord, departed at 0700 from the steep slopes on the hill west of the road facing the dragon's teeth.

McCord moved his 2nd Platoon forward quickly that morning, but a torrent of enemy fire quickly came in from several pillboxes on the other side of the obstacles. One of the squads deployed into a draw, a man at a time, where they were afforded some cover while a second squad rushed through the dragon's teeth and edged around to the pillbox delivering the most fire. McCord ordered another platoon to follow them; the men rushed to a makeshift assembly area and split into columns. One column went left around the pillbox and turned back toward it when its supporting tanks fired rounds of antiphosphorous shells into the front apertures. Then the other column came in from the opposite direction; the tanks rumbled forward, still firing. As McCord remembered, “The sight of this proved too much for the Germans, and they gave up.”
⁶
During this time Company D, now under the command
of Capt. Alfred J. Amborst, had moved up to the high ground south of the Dreilagerbach reservoir where nearly twenty other Germans offered little resistance before surrendering. By now it was nearing 1000 hours and the infantry had already squeezed out all noticeable enemy resistance behind the dragon's teeth.

The 1st Platoon of Company B, 23rd Armored Engineering Battalion had also gone forward with the column of McCord's infantry when they pinched the pillbox with the tanks. This platoon, under the command of Lt. George E. Conley, faced the important job of getting the heavier armored vehicles of Task Force Lovelady through the remaining obstacles. As Conley pointed out, “We put the accent on speed, doing only what was necessary to enable the vehicles to keep moving.”
⁷

Some thirty other men accompanied Conley on this mission, and not far behind were one jeep, a tank dozer, two heavy bridge trucks, and a deuce and a half loaded with TNT, mines, and other explosives. Lieutenant Conley ordered his tank dozer driver to fill the streambed crater that had held up progress the previous night. The streambed proved to be dry, and the dozer filled it without incident. Conley's men dashed forward and wrestled the first I-beam out of the roadway by hand.

When Conley moved his platoon some 300 yards to the next steel gate, he personally mounted the tank dozer and rammed the obstacle a half-dozen times. When it failed to break from its hinges, Lieutenant Conley dismounted, and with the assistance of his hearty staff sergeant, they set three TNT charges around its base, blowing the gate to pieces. His men rushed forward another 50 yards around a slight bend, this time only confronting an unmanned 88mm gun.
⁸

The 1st Platoon of the reconnaissance company and the infantry started across the dirt-filled streambed at 1015. Lieutenant McCord's Company E spread out and advanced on the left side of the roadway while Amborst's Company D platoons moved out to the right; the reconnaissance platoon worked up the center of the roadway. Most men had dismounted from their half-tracks and tanks by this time. And with just 50 yards between the groaning armored vehicles and the pillboxes, the German forces they encountered found it wise to quickly surrender. The infantry group continued its advance and passed by two antitank guns, one 75mm and the other 20mm. Both had been abandoned, although large stores of ammunition were still piled up around them. The soldiers
quickly removed the sights and moved on, but stopped when the columns came upon some felled trees.

After passing these same unmanned guns, Conley's engineers continued through the woods and picked up some hurriedly laid mines that the Germans had left behind. Artillery was now escorting the task force by keeping a moving screen of smashing explosives some 200 yards ahead of the leading squads. However, as the engineers continued northward out of the woods into the open fields of fern trees southwest of the village of Rott, the Germans fired into both of Lieutenant Conley's flanks. Four enemy 20mm guns and one very loud 88mm opened up on the right, while a sole 88 and a single heavy German tank took aim from the left. The engineers stopped and dug in.

The infantry also encountered problems.
⁹
After moving out past the felled trees they had been using for cover after the artillery fire started, the squad on point encountered an enemy patrol of six men dismounted from their motorcycles and armed with just a light machine gun. Although this force scattered when they saw the Americans coming their way, both companies were now receiving more incoming fire from Rott. Then two enemy Tiger tanks and another two Panthers appeared. Lieutenant Colonel Lovelady eventually came up and told Lt. Ernest F. Silva to go back to the dragon's teeth, send up as many medium tanks as he could find, and order his tank destroyers forward. Unfortunately, they were of little help. By noontime the opposition had knocked out four of the American tanks, two jeeps, and two half-tracks. It would now be another hour before the infantry and engineers could regroup and the enemy resistance cleared out.

By the time Task Force King resumed its attack at 0800 that morning, the Germans had withdrawn from the Koenigsberg hills.
¹⁰
The engineers went right to work with the infantry, first pulling out the Teller mines in front of the swinging steel gate that had held up their advance the night before. Then a tank came forward and nosed out the gate, forcing the hinges to give way from the concrete post on which it hung. At this point the advance elements of the task force started moving, and these men quickly lunged forward to neutralize a more formidable roadblock another 200 yards ahead at the top of the next rise. This roadblock had obviously been built to stop the task force from approaching the
village of Schmidtoff, some 500 yards away. The scrubby forest through which the men had just trodden continued to the right of the roadway, but toward Schmidtoff the woods came to an abrupt end and the terrain quickly fell off into a deep draw. The village, which was built on higher ground, was across from this draw. There was also a side road that cut off to the left along the edge of the draw before twisting and then running up to the village. This terrain offered good fields of fire for the Germans, especially toward the roadblock now facing the stalled column.

In front of them was what Lieutenant Eells, leader of the 2nd Platoon of Company B engineers, remembered as “a hell of a big crater, filled with water.”
¹¹
As it was elsewhere along the
Westwall
, more I-beam tank obstacles were planted near the steel gate next to the crater. Dragon's teeth also came out of the forest to the right of the gate, as well as to the left of the roadway before it turned and rose into Schmidtoff.

Given this difficult terrain, the remainder of the task force coiled near the railroad line north of Muensterbildchen while Lieutenant Colonel King, Maj. Herbert M. Mills, and Captain McGeorge of the reconnaissance company went forward to study the situation. By now King's Company F was down to sixty men and could not be expected to secure the depressed ground to the left and hold the wooded area on the right while the engineers built a crossing over the crater. Therefore, King decided to ask Colonel Boudinot for reinforcements; Companies H and I of the 36th Armored Infantry were called up from division reserve and ordered forward.

But King was anxious to continue the attack. He reexamined the cards he was dealt, which now included steady rain, and decided to attempt a breakthrough with the hand he held. The available medium tanks were hastily brought up and undermanned Company F was alerted and told to be ready to jump off.

At 1720 artillery forward observers called down a ten-minute preparatory barrage on Schmidtoff and on other suspected enemy positions along the roadway to soften up the advance. The men of Company F departed to the left in platoon column and then down the draw toward the village. The tanks turned west off the roadway at a farmhouse, hoping to edge into a position where they could support the infantry. Almost immediately, however, the tanks came under fire, and two were knocked out. Lieutenant Eells remembered that he “saw one man jump from a
tank with his foot blown off, but somehow [he] ran 200 yards to cover, and apparently survived.”
¹²
By this time, heavy mortar fire had completely stopped Company F, forcing them to withdraw and leave exposed the squad of engineers who had gone up to a third roadblock below Schmidtoff.

Capt. Wallace A. Vaughn's Company I, one of the two reserve companies of the 36th Armored Infantry, finally arrived at 1900 hours at the crest of the hill overlooking the enemy positions. It was getting dark and heavier rain was coming down. The men still dismounted their half-tracks, moved off in columns, and worked their way up the roadway before going down the draw. Suddenly, as they got closer to the dragon's teeth, intense small-arms and mortar fire rang out from a house hidden in the woods, stopping the men in place.

At this point the leader of the 2nd Platoon, Lt. W. C. Gordon, went forward with Vaughn and conducted a reconnaissance to look for a place to get though the draw, together paralleling the outlines of the dragon's teeth as they moved carefully in swiftly approaching darkness. Fortunately, the enemy was not manning the roadblocks, nor were they defending the dragon's teeth here. Gordon decided to forego a pillbox to his right after he learned from some civilians in another nearby house that it was not manned. With his men, he pushed to this box, carefully passed it, and then moved into the adjacent wooded area where the exhausted platoon built up a defensive position.