Aachen: The U.S. Army's Battle for Charlemagne's City in World War II (44 page)

After Captain Dawson sent a patrol out to reestablish communications with his two platoons that were cut off earlier, he learned that these men had also been attacked around midnight; the Germans here were driven off by the mortar and murderous artillery fire that had caused 7th Army to order the general withdrawal of the 3rd Panzer Division's 29th Panzer Grenadier Regiment that night. But prisoners revealed that there would be another strike by two of their battalions the next day; the Bears would be back.

Cold, pouring rain and thick clouds covered Aachen and the surrounding area at first light on 15 October. It was destined to be a day of hard-fought gains and losses for Lieutenant Colonel Corley's 3rd Battalion in muddy Farwick Park. Captain Chaplin's Company L had finally linked up with Daniel's forces in the cemetery, so his men were able to leave the Perliserkerstrasse area in the early going and work their way north to Passstrasse to join in the fight. With chemical mortar strikes assisting, Corley's men took the garden buildings and the Kurhaus, but the German defenders in the sturdy Hotel Quellenhof would not budge. Adjustments became necessary; Company I's Captain Botts split up his men. One of his platoons moved from the east side of the park to clean out the defenders along Krefelderstrasse between Passstrasse and Margratenstrasse; another improved their positions on Rolandstrasse. Corwell's Company K held in front of the hotel.

The Germans were arrayed in preparation for their second attack on the ridge outside of Eilendorf before any light filtered through the rain and fog that morning. A company of grenadiers with at least two tanks and one SP gun had been hiding in front of Captain Richmond's
Company I platoons since 0400. Five more tanks with their accompanying personnel had been able to advance under the deafening downpours up into Captain Dawson's left front; his platoon here was also being stalked by three more tanks to its right. Another three were rumbling ghosts in the fog, ready to throw their weight between Dawson's right flank and Lt. Stanley A. Karas's Company E. Four were captured American Shermans; one still had the insignia of the 5th Armored Division on it. The rest were thickly plated 60-ton Mark VI Tiger tanks mounting long-barreled 88mm guns.

Richmond had divided his company into two platoons for their defense; he had few supporting weapons. Captain Dawson had a section of light tanks and just one tank destroyer with its 3-inch gun. Both companies were undermanned. It was the 29th Panzer Grenadier Regiment's intention to spearhead its effort by first breaching both companies’ lines while blocking Karas's Company E from getting into the fight. Then more forces and tanks would pour in, work the remainder of the American line along the high ridge, then glance off and drive right into the positions of Lieutenant Colonel Williamson's 2nd Battalion of the 18th Infantry in Verlautenheide.

At 0500 the Germans started through a stand of trees to Dawson's left and attacked; some walked through ankle-deep mud. Others crawled because unobserved, but preplotted, American artillery and mortar shells had somehow found them. Many were stopped within 15 feet of the foxholes Dawson's men had dug; a few died at even closer range and often their bodies fell right into the rain-filled holes beside the U.S. soldiers who had killed them. In one case, a soldier somehow waited for the German who mortally wounded him to reach his foxhole; he then emptied his M1 into him. The shots echoed the din of death as the grenadier fell on the American and groaned his last words. More rifle fire got others; hand grenades were thrown at the Germans who were moving more slowly and still crawling on their bellies toward Dawson's lines. The grenadiers fared no better when they tried to penetrate Company I's front; the smashing effect of grenades, small arms, and bayonets exacted revenge on the Germans who dared to attack. As Captain Richmond told everyone later, “The men were draping [them] right over their foxholes.”
¹³

Why their tanks did not accompany the grenadiers was uncertain; the battalion's S-3 thought that the slippery, wet conditions on the slope
leading up to the ridge might have been a factor in this decision, but mud-slicked roadways had not deterred the Germans from assembling their armored vehicles behind a row of houses near a railroad junction just north of Verlautenheide for another attack. At about 0800 forward observers with the 18th Infantry's 634th Tank Battalion finally saw two other enemy tanks leave an area just northeast of Waumbach and head for the woods closer to the ridge outside of Eilendorf. But with the visibility being so poor, Lieutenant Duffy's nearest TD did not have sufficient time to go after them before these two armored vehicles faded through the mist into the tree cover.

Then two more tanks were spotted, both hulking Mark VIs; they were also trying to reach this assembly area. This time, Duffy's TDs were able to get at them; cleverly they waited until the tanks showed their tails where their armored plating was comparatively thin. But the TDs’ 76mm fire merely harassed their targets, as neither German tank even bothered to return fire while they continued their run to the woods. “They were damn poor shots [on the occasions] they did fire back,” Duffy recounted later.
¹⁴

At 0900 hostile artillery fire suddenly poured across Verlautenheide, followed by the appearance of the tanks and several SP guns that had been behind the railroad junction; three tanks closed to within 100 yards of Captain Koenig's Company F perimeter. Two of the guns and one armored vehicle overran Company E's outpost, but mines, bazooka fire, and the Antitank Company's 57mm guns stopped any further progress, and the Germans withdrew.

Then, yet another attack came around noon, this time hitting Captain Dawson's and Captain Richmond's platoons again; Captain Wozenski, the 16th Infantry's 2nd Battalion executive officer, first reported this. At 1227 he escalated the situation to serious, then critical at 1240 after a runner came up from Richmond's command post and reported that both Companies G and I were being overrun. Minutes later, an alarmed Lieutenant Colonel Hicks relayed word to regiment that three to four tanks were closing in on Karas's Company E; he also confirmed that eight tanks and an unknown number of dismounted grenadiers were now on top of Dawson's and Richmond's men.

At 1258 the 16th Infantry's commander, Colonel Gibb, weighed in; he wanted more details. Hicks, by now evincing severe signs of battle
stress, told him that he was out of communication with the besieged companies, but that a messenger had just come in from Dawson's CP with requests for fire support; based on this Gibb decided the situation needed to be upgraded to very critical. Accordingly, artillery fire was delivered by every available FA battalion; requests were made for one battery to place constant rounds on and in front of the railroad draw behind Verlautenheide to cut off any further 29th Panzer Grenadier Regiment attempts to use this avenue of approach. Even 81mm mortar fire delivered by Company H of the 18th Infantry landed on the Germans off Dawson's left flank.

In the minds of the American commanders, they needed even more adjustments. At 1336 Captain Miller's Company B of the 18th Infantry was ordered up to Eilendorf; one of his platoons was soon inserted between Dawson's soldiers and Captain Jeffrey's Company G on the edge on Verlautenheide. Miller's other platoons took up positions behind these men, in case of a breakthrough. Major Adams's 1st Battalion of the 26th Infantry was put on alert. General Huebner even appealed to General Collins, requesting that he “alert anything the 3rd Armored Division might spare.”
¹⁵
Then, just ahead of 1400, the Germans pushed toward the 18th Infantry's lines again.

By now air support was doing its best to thwart the attacks; friendly planes came out of the lead-gray sky just after 1340, first strafing the triangle coordinates of the German assembly area in the nearby woods to prevent more of their tanks from entering the fight. Ten minutes later, a squadron which had already dropped most of its bombs in the 30th Infantry zone appeared over the 16th Infantry lines; two 500-pounders were released on top of the German tanks.

One flight of P-47s led by Capt. George W. Hurling Jr. dove very low into red smoke that had been laid down by the artillery and delivered machine-gun fire quite close to Dawson's and Richmond's positions; urgency dictated this risk. “They came in about 25 feet from our front lines and strafed the hell out of the enemy and came down so low they could tell the difference between the uniforms,” the G-3 of the 1st Division reported. “It was a beautiful job.”
¹⁶
Captain Dawson explained later, “I also had to call for the artillery right on us, only ten yards in front of us, and they saved lives because the Germans were literally overwhelming us in numbers.”

Raising the alert level to very critical and the resulting collective actions of the air, artillery, and mortar units had actually caused the attack to wind down. The battalion's S-3, Capt. Fred W. Hall, a 1941 ROTC graduate of the University of New Hampshire, first reported this to regiment at 1345 hours; he had received word that a forward observer in Verlautenheide saw tanks withdrawing from their front. More good news followed; at 1417 the 1st Division's G-3 also heard from a forward observer of the 7th Field Artillery that their shells had devastating effects and the attack was being beaten off. Just after 1500 hours the enemy tanks were seen disappearing into the woods from which they came; American artillery was still pounding away at them. At 1614, the penetration was completely sealed off; all that could be seen were the dead bodies of Germans sprawled along the front, vibrant red blood covering their tattered field gray uniforms where they lay in the mud.

Generalmajor
Denkert later commented on the attacks of 15 October by first offering that “the artillery fire was so strong that a continuation of the attack, even if the fire ceased, was not possible.” He added:

Our armored vehicles had difficulties on the bad terrain, and the artillery fire separated the infantry from the tanks. [I personally observed] that the infantrymen who accompanied the tanks were soon without crews. As the tanks alone could not continue the attacks, they withdrew to good cover, part of them to the border [Waumbach] where they could wait for nightfall. [I] ordered the forces to dig in, to hold their reached positions and to make reconnaissance.
¹⁷

The 12th Infantry Division's
Oberst
Engel reflected the same sentiments, although skewed by a mercurial attitude because his division had not been engaged in the fight:

The factors of incorrect timing of the attack, the superiority of the enemy artillery and last, but not least, the use of a unit unacquainted with the terrain features and the peculiarities of local combat conditions in an attack under the most trying circumstances, brought dire results. It should also be mentioned that Army and Corps had proposed to Heeresgruppe that the 12th
Infantry Division, which was well acquainted with the local fighting conditions and the terrain features, should have taken part in the attack.
¹⁸

LXXXI Corps’
General der Infanterie
Köchling speculated after the war as to why his command decisions regarding use of the 12th Infantry Division had been interfered with at the time, offering, “I suppose that [
Heeresgruppe
] estimated the Corps as being troubled too much with the defensive battle in and around Aachen.”
¹⁹
Facts on the ground in the city itself during the afternoon of 15 October proved there was indeed much trouble afoot.

At 1550 hours the German garrison began the heaviest attack Lieutenant Colonel Corley's 3rd Battalion experienced since entering the city. After an intense 120mm mortar barrage, six tanks and a battalion of Rink's newly arrived infantry first hit between the flanks of Captain Botts's Company I and Captain Corwell's Company K; the strike actually came from three separate directions. From the northwest, two Mark IVs and one company closed in on Botts's men. Discharging heavy machine-gun fire, supported by deadly 120mm mortars, the attackers rapidly closed into small-arms range and minutes later the charging Germans were engaged in close hand-to-hand fighting with the Americans.

The 120mm mortar fire was then elevated toward the observatory atop Farwick Park where Botts's weapons squad and Lieutenant Nechey's heavy 81mm mortars had their outposts; this position took an amazing thirty-six direct hits. Tank fire added to the mayhem as their 7.5cm main guns blasted at the Americans huddled under the tower. As Captain Botts would later say, “It was then touch and go for more than an hour.”
²⁰

A pair of Mark VI Tigers loaded with grenadiers, plus another full company of infantry on foot, also closed in on the Kurhaus and attacked across the left flank of Corwell's line. It was touch and go here too. The company's bazookas fired at the tanks, but only slowed them. One tank roamed past one of the greenhouses and drove to within 200 yards of Lieutenant Colonel Corley's command post. The overwhelmed U.S. soldiers did the best they could with their small-arms and automatic-rifle fire; one BAR man, Pfc. Short, fired fifty-nine magazines of ammunition alone. Mortar and artillery fire were laid in; Lieutenant Nechey's heavy
mortars fired 300 rounds, trying to locate and knock out their opposite numbers’ 120mm mortar position; the effort failed. Company K held, but Botts's men were forced from their positions beneath the observatory.

Battalion Rink then struck Botts's right flank and drove a dangerous 300-yard gap between the two companies. Corley answered by ordering up a platoon of Captain Chaplin's Company L to fill this opening and reclaim the Kurhaus. Other orders followed; three tank destroyers under the command of Sgt. Leo F. Samek were moved closer to Corley's CP. Two more were directed to support the efforts of Chaplin's men. The TDs engaged the two German tanks creatively; they could not be directly observed, so the Americans fired at their muzzle blasts. Cpl. Wenzlo Simmons of Hendrix, Oklahoma, an assistant gunner in one of the tank destroyers, fired thirteen rounds at one enemy tank and was credited with knocking it out of action. The other retired from the fight. The TDs then shifted and fired fifteen rounds at the tanks lurking over Botts's platoon near the Kurhaus. Results at the time were not clear, but one American could clearly see what was happening from atop the observatory. Incessant hostile mortar fire rained on his position, yet he still called down friendly artillery fire to help the Americans trapped beneath the tower.