Aachen: The U.S. Army's Battle for Charlemagne's City in World War II (4 page)

Lieutenant Eells's engineers had attempted to clear the second roadblock so Vaughn's infantry could work their way into Schmidtoff to break up the incoming fire that had now held up Task Force King for more than twenty-four hours. Surprisingly, Eells's men found that they could easily pull the I-beams toward the left of the gate, and in doing so they cleared a narrow passageway. A tank dozer, working under enemy machine-gun and sniper fire, quickly filled the left side of the crater with dirt, but the four tanks that tried failed to make it through. The steady rain had made the ground so muddy that the tanks bogged down and simply could not move.

As a result the attack on Schmidtoff was called off, and Task Force King spent the rest of the night holding its positions. After midnight King discovered that an old wound had been infected; he would be evacuated the following morning, relinquishing command to Major Mills.
¹³

The day also ended with Task Force Lovelady stopped short of its objective, but the afternoon had some measured successes.
¹⁴
After losing the four tanks and a tank destroyer right after noontime, more German Panthers had appeared. A tank destroyer hit one with a dozen rounds of 76mm fire, forcing its crew to flee as the vehicle burst into flames; tank fire from the edge of the woods destroyed another well-camouflaged Panther in Rott. Artillery helped subdue the remaining opposition and at 1730 Lovelady's tanks, with infantry interspersed between them, moved forward into the village. An abandoned 8.8cm flak gun was found at Konigsbergerstrasse; a 7.5cm antitank gun at Roetgenerstrasse was destroyed; three 2cm guns just to the east were found with their breechblocks removed; and another five were destroyed. Opposition eventually ceased entirely, with the remaining Germans surrendering.

Shortly after this, the advance elements of the task force started out for Mulartshutte, one mile north of Rott. Groups of enemy soldiers were sighted along this route, so Lovelady ordered the artillery to lay down a rolling barrage ahead of the column to scare them away. The attack proceeded slowly, and while the Germans offered little opposition, the bridge across a stream that flowed to the east of Mulartshutte had been demolished, ceasing progress. The engineers constructed a temporary ford that eventually enabled a few tanks to cross and provide advance protection for the column. Infantry then crossed over to secure an area large enough to permit the engineers to rebuild the bridge unmolested. Their work was well underway by 2200. Under the circumstances the task force had no choice but to halt for the night. Lovelady's decision was fortuitous. The engineers kept working on the bridge after midnight, but the light tank that tested the strength of their work caused the entire treadway and trestle bridge that had been erected to collapse.

Task Force Doan met with greater success in its mission on 13 September. Lt. Col. Edward S. Berry's after action report for his 67th Groupment Armored Field Artillery actually described the accomplishments of Task Force Doan at Oberforstbach as “an action characterized by the greatest heroism and self-sacrifice on the part of those engaged.”
¹⁵
This was not without tremendous difficulties and casualties as Maj. Gen. Maurice Rose's third task force faced its mission during the day and into the dismal night.

Lieutenant Colonel Doan's plan was similar to those of the other task force commanders that day. His tanks were to stay behind the line of departure near his command post in the Eynattener Woods by Langfield before rolling up to support the attack of the 1st Battalion of the 36th Armored Infantry. Under the command of Capt. Louis F. Plummer, these men would first go through the dragon's teeth to secure the high ground beyond the obstacles. The engineers of the 23rd Armored Engineer Battalion commanded by Captain Replogle were to then come up and make a breach in the dragon's teeth before Doan's tanks went through. The time for the general attack was set for 0900, after the infantry first moved out.

Opposing Task Force Doan at Oberforstbach was
Oberst
Mueller's 9th Panzer Division, as well as other units from the instruction and replacement battalions that had come under his command by this time.
¹⁶
One of Mueller's antitank units was turned from its position behind the
Westwall
during the day in order to help block the breach Task Force Lovelady made near Roetgen. Still, it was later learned that, in addition to the organic units of the 9th Panzer Division, Task Force Doan was also opposed by sections of the 16th Engineer Battalion, fighting as infantry, the 12th
Luftwaffe
Field Battalion, and the 173rd
Ersatk
(Replacement) Battalion, which had only been in the German army for three or four months. Both of the latter units were in bunkers east of Oberforstbach and were supported by antitank guns of the 7th
Flak
Division. Given his hasty assumption of command of these different units,
Oberst
Mueller had no telephone communications between their commanders and his staff.
¹⁷
There were few radios available, and no maps.

Plummer's exact point of penetration had been selected because it was in defile from the pillboxes, except for one lone box to his immediate front about 150 yards beyond the dragon's teeth.
¹⁸
There were no signs of activity from this pillbox, or from any others at the time. The attack was actually behind schedule now, as it was past 0900. Plummer had used the delay to call for tank destroyer fire on the pillbox as a precaution. Right after this he moved his men out of the woods and up to a dirt road, eventually coming to a house nearer to their line of departure. At the time, there was still no fire being returned from this pillbox.

A makeshift command post had been set up in this house, and Lieutenant Colonel Doan and Captain Replogle joined Plummer there at about 1100 hours. It was 1230 when the infantry finally proceeded to
the right of the house, through the dragon's teeth, and up a rise. But as Plummer's men advanced some 200 yards over its crest, they were suddenly swept by machine-gun fire from a pillbox beyond the first one they had encountered. This fire forced his men to withdraw back to the dragon's teeth, where they took cover. Doan ordered Plummer to shift his men left along the dragon's teeth, and to cross over and attack this second pillbox from the west.

Plummer's men carried out this maneuver, but when they reached a north-south axis that ran between the silent box and another pillbox that was half the distance to the one that had fired at them, rifle shots rang out. Suddenly, even heavier machine-gun fire also came at them, but the direction of the incoming rounds was different. This time the fire had come from the first pillbox, the one that had been quiet, and two badly wounded Germans were now lying outside of it.

A platoon of Company A, 703rd Tank Destroyer Battalion, commanded by Lt. Ralph L. Henderson, was responsible for drawing the enemy soldiers out. Just before Plummer's platoons jumped off, Henderson had noticed a machine-gun nest about 100 yards across the dragon's teeth to his TD's right. The artillery forward observer had directed fire into this position, but the target was missed. Henderson's tank destroyers answered with long lances of direct fire, chasing the enemy machine-gun crew to the left toward the silent pillbox. Four rounds of armor-piercing ammo were then laid directly into the box. A German was killed, one ran, and a third was wounded. “At this point the pillbox was lying low, not returning fire,” Henderson remembered.
¹⁹

By this time Plummer had moved a squad toward this box. One of his aid men who spoke German went up to help the wounded enemy soldiers, and when he reached the pillbox he called out for the remaining occupants to give themselves up. Instead, someone yelled back in broken English, “Go to hell. We will fight it out!”
²⁰

This resolve did not last. Soon afterward the dozen Germans in the pillbox surrendered. For the next two hours, however, others fought on. For a third time, Plummer's men tried to push through the dragon's teeth, without success. Ten tanks had come up and deployed along the obstacles in support by this time. Captain Replogle's engineers even moved up to lay wire and demolitions to blast at the dragon's teeth, all
the while under fire from enemy mortars and machine guns. At about 1400, even heavier mortar fire began falling, putting the attack further behind. This prompted Brigadier General Hickey, who had come forward to the command post in the house, to radio Lieutenant Colonel Doan and tell him to come back to discuss the situation. General Rose was now present with Hickey.

Before Doan arrived, a lieutenant told him that there was a makeshift roadway over the dragon's teeth about 300 yards south of Plummer's position. Stone had been filled in and dirt spread between the obstacles, probably either by local farmers to convenience crossing through the dragon's teeth or by German forces to withdraw their equipment. Another officer who had been in the woods confirmed this, telling it directly to Hickey, but he also warned that the roadway looked to be mined. Still, Rose, Hickey, and Doan decided to try to penetrate the
Westwall
in this location.

Doan quickly put a plan in place that called for a Company E platoon of four tanks, commanded by Lt. John R. Hoffman, to investigate the situation and then go through this roadway led by a flail tank. The flail tank—dubbed a “Scorpion”—was a Sherman that was fitted with a whirling chain mechanism and could detonate mines. When the group reached the road, they found that the passage—despite the officer's warning—was not mined. But when the Scorpion mounted the roadway, the loose earth gave way and the tank lurched over to the left. One of the chain flails became tangled in the dragon's teeth, and if the Sherman shifted any farther, the passage would be blocked. The 3rd Armored Division's immediate postwar history described what followed:

In those long, terrible moments when the flail seemed to spell doom to the entire operation, five men were suddenly very important people. They were Sergeant Sverry “Wiggie” Dahl and his crew from the Scorpion, Gunner Technician Charles Hughes, Technician Milt Jeffery, Private Orrin Madden and Private James L. Ferguson. These men never hesitated. Under intense small arms fire and mortar bursts, all five piled out of their stranded vehicle and proceeded to disentangle the flails from the dragon's teeth.
²¹

Despite heavy enemy mortar fire, Lieutenant Hoffman dismounted his tank, hitched it to the flail tank, and tried to pull it out of the roadway. When this failed, another tank hitched up to it and the two finally succeeded in pulling out the endangered Scorpion. “Then they squared off and sailed through,” Lieutenant Colonel Doan recalled. “The dragon's teeth had been breached.”
²²

But it was not clear sailing for everyone. Company E gunner Clarence Smoyer remembered, “It wasn't easy. There was incoming small-arms fire and there were German tanks lurking around. There was an antitank gun well hidden in a nearby building in the area we were crossing. We never saw that gun until we were right on top of it. The crew must have gotten scared and run off. Then we encountered a pillbox and the platoon surrounded it from three sides and fired away repeatedly.”
²³

By 1550 all twenty tanks of the task force were through the gap, probing toward the draw south of Verscheid; they destroyed six enemy armored vehicles in short time. But Lieutenant Colonel Doan suddenly received bad news. First, Lieutenant Henderson's tank destroyers were having trouble getting through the obstacles to support the attack. Second, Doan learned that Captain Plummer had already sustained sixty casualties in his infantry battalion. Plummer had also been badly wounded and command of the infantry had to be turned over to Lt. Col. William R. Orr. Enemy resistance continued to increase, so Doan mounted his tank shortly after 1600 to join the rest of the task force on the other side of the obstacles. He was greeted with “murderous enemy artillery fire.”
²⁴

Doan had just ordered Orr to turn his infantry eastward toward Nutheim, about 2 kilometers from the breach in the dragon's teeth, using the draw to get there. Nutheim afforded command of the roads leading deeper into the Stolberg Corridor; it had to be taken. However, as the tanks of the 2nd Battalion of the 32nd Armored Regiment passed beyond the pillboxes and advanced over a crest covering the draw, they ran into heavier fire from the north and northwest. Other pillboxes, hidden from view but from the direction of Oberforstbach, also delivered 88mm fire. To control his tanks, Doan dismounted his own vehicle to confer with individual tank commanders. Command tanks were being knocked out, including the M4 of Lt. Col. Sydney T. Telford, the 32nd Armored Regiment's 2nd Battalion commander. At one point Doan could see seven of his tanks ablaze. He even witnessed Telford's tank
burning, only to learn later that Telford was killed in the melee; Company F's Capt. Abraham S. Kahn died. Company E's Lieutenant Hoffman was wounded, and his radio set was destroyed.

Communications started to break down as the tanks dispersed to get away from the deadly enemy fire. Still, more were hit; at 1715 Doan radioed Hickey for reinforcements, as he had just ten tanks left. Hickey ordered him to return to the command post back in the woods to confer, so a disgusted Doan, not one to leave his forces alone, dismounted his tank and, according to reports, “walked back to the rear.”
²⁵

By this time Hickey had made the decision to use the 1st Division's 1st Battalion of the 26th Infantry Regiment on Task Force Doan's rear left flank. Commanded by Maj. Francis W. Adams from Marion, Arkansas, and assembled in the Aachen-Eynatten woods, these men were ordered to attack at 1830 and take Nutheim from the west. Adams's three rifle companies and his heavy weapons company consisted of just 586 men—36 officers and 550 enlisted—on 13 September. Moreover, there was little time to plan the attack. Capt. Armand R. Levasseur, the battalion S-3, remembered, “From the northeast edge of the woods the line of dragon's teeth could be seen several hundred yards to the front.”
²⁶