Aachen: The U.S. Army's Battle for Charlemagne's City in World War II (46 page)

Six Americans were killed and thirty-nine suffered various wounds around Farwick Park in Aachen on 16 October; Company L's commander, Captain Chaplin, was a casualty.
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An 80mm enemy mortar landed near him while he was in an open position directing defenses, and when its main charge ignited, shards of sharp steel burst, killing him; Lt. Vincent I. Shepard assumed command. It was supposed to be a day of limited offensive action and consolidating positions for all of Corley's 3rd Battalion companies, but probing attacks by Battalion Rink infantry and hailstorms of hostile artillery fire halted any movement at all. Direct self-propelled enemy gunfire from a tube near the Hotel Quellenhof even destroyed a building near the observatory atop the park.

Lieutenant Colonel Daniel's 2nd Battalion companies made limited attacks during the day. Captain Smoot's Company E moved westward to Kaiserplatz where these men and the Germans sniped at each other from damaged but richly ornamented art nouveau houses on opposite sides of the broad square. Webb's Company F moved a short distance along Adalbertstein Weg; enemy mortar fire that was believed to have come in from the Lousberg slowed the company's advance.

Even with Aachen now choked off, General Huebner still planned to hold the 26th Infantry forces in the city back for another day. The Germans, however, would have little opportunity to catch their breath. The final blow by the Americans would bring two new battalions of tanks and armored infantry of the 3rd Armored Division into the city; Task Force Hogan was already rolling out of Stolberg on its way to Brand, staging for a deadly right hook into what remained of Battalion Rink and
Oberst
Wilck's forces in Farwick Park and around Lousberg Hill.

Moving northward from Camp d'Elsenborn in the V Corps sector, a battalion of the 28th Division was on its way to augment Lieutenant Colonel Daniel's drive through the core of old Aachen right to the railroad embankment at the city's western limits. The 110th Infantry would fill the growing gap between his battalion and the 1106th Engineers while Daniel delivered this punch.

The Germans now recognized that unless the 3rd Panzer Grenadier and 116th Panzer Divisions could break the encirclement by retaking Ravelsberg Hill, Aachen was lost. “On 16 October the beginning of the fall of Aachen became apparent,” LXXXI Corps confessed in its war diary.
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General der Infanterie
Köchling nevertheless held out what hope he could; “The garrison was repeatedly instructed to fight further on unconditionally because strong liberating forces would break the ring.”

“I'm going to give you an order to attack all along the line and close the gap.” According to witnesses, the words “close the gap” were repeated four times.

GENERAL CORLETT TO GENERAL HOBBS 1920 HOURS, 15 OCTOBER

W
hile the Big Red One was fending off attacks both in the city and on the hills to the east of Aachen, the Germans were making it clear to the commanders of the 30th Division that their linkup with the Americans on Ravelsberg Hill could not be taken for granted. Würselen had been the objective for General Hobbs's regiments since 9 October. With positions stretching from Alsdorf southwestward through Ottenfeld to Herzogenrath on that morning, Würselen indeed appeared to be within grasp, once a dominating hill 300 yards south of the nearby tiny crossroads village of Birk was taken. From here U.S. troops would be able to see with their naked eyes out over the surrounding sugar and beet fields and make out the tall church steeple in North Würselen, even the St. Sebastian Catholic Church in Würselen proper. Past the oak tree-dominated wooded area before the rise onto Hill 194 southeast of Wurselen, a man on this hill could focus his binoculars beyond the “big road” and see a fellow soldier atop the Ravelsberg.

But it would not be easy. The German soldiers had advantages befitting to those now defending their cherished homeland; between their villages they maintained excellent defensive positions in pillboxes, hedgerows, and deep zigzag trenches that overlooked the open country over which the Americans would have to advance. The street layouts of the towns themselves provided excellent defense: muddy, sometimes
winding roadways and intersections connected the villagers to their small shops, taverns, even farmhouses and barns that had become strongholds. The fortunes of war also found the U.S. soldiers burdened with unexpected opposition, for late on 8 October Model had released Panzer Brigade 108, to include the 506th Tank Battalion, from Regiment von Fritzschen near their positions outside of Alsdorf and reinforced these forces with the 404th Infantry Regiment. Their mission now was to thrust southwest toward Bardenberg to help prevent the linkup.
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Destiny would have the Germans unwittingly crisscrossing the American advance toward Würselen the very next day.

It was very foggy that Monday morning when Maj. Harold S. Griffith's 1st Battalion of the 120th Infantry started their drive toward Birk; minimal enemy artillery and small-arms fire interfered with the advance as two of his companies made their way through Esel.
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The Germans here were literally caught off guard, and the Americans took fifty prisoners along with an 88mm gun and several wheeled
Panzerfausts
. But at 1100 hours the American thrust was stopped at the railroad embankment fronting Birk; other enemy soldiers held the adjacent high ground to either flank and had the area covered with machine-gun fire and accurate mortars. The embankment suddenly became a no man's land; movement was impossible. The battalion was pinned down.

Just after noon, ten Panzer Brigade 108 tanks made another thrust toward Euchen without any artillery preparation and struck at the 120th's 2nd Battalion companies as they were digging into positions along the railroad tracks on the western edge of this hamlet. Enemy machine-gun fire raged while their armored vehicles fired round after round into the Americans; mortar fire added to their misery as the men jumped into foxholes that the Germans had dug earlier when they were defending the area. Capt. Ralph A. Kerley, commanding Company E, realized that he would have to call down friendly artillery fire very close to his men's positions if they were to escape from the onslaught; he did just this, and it invoked enough confusion and smoke cover for both his company and Company F's men to extricate themselves and fall back to safer defensive ground around nearby Schleibach.

The Germans wasted little time before they again regrouped and directed another effort at Griffith's 1st Battalion men still clinging to the embankment in front of Birk. The attack, made by elements of the 404th Infantry Regiment and Panzer Brigade 108, came in midafternoon, and this time the Americans were ready for them; artillery knocked out seven tanks, and the surviving grenadiers retreated back to safer ground near Euchen. But with their positions on the embankment still zeroed in by hostile artillery, the two American companies also had to leave the area and head down the Duffescheide-Bardenberg road southward, this time to pivot and come back at Birk from the west. This almost worked. Company A ran into five enemy half-tracks that started spraying 20mm gunfire toward them; it cost the company twenty casualties and cut it in two. It was bazooka fire on the enemy half-tracks that saved the rest of the men, allowing them to withdraw back to Esel under the protective canopy of early nightfall. But the day was far from over. Major Griffith required evacuation
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; he was suffering from battle fatigue and command passed to Capt. Chris McCullough of Fayetteville, North Carolina, the battalion's executive officer who had just returned from the hospital himself. The Germans pounded Birk with artillery fire until 0430 the next morning. Then their batteries went silent and they finally rested.

When other forces of Panzer Brigade 108 pushed on toward Bardenberg in their half-tracks on 9 October, they collided with an understrength American company left behind at a roadblock after two of Colonel Sutherland's 119th Infantry battalions had “crushed the halfhearted resistance from demoralized remnants of the 49th Division”
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and “in a last burst of energy before night set in, charged southeastward more than a mile into North Würselen.” Ravelsberg Hill was suddenly a mere 3,000 yards away, and “closing the gap looked like little more than a matter of mop up and patrols.” Events at the roadblock proved this was not to be the case.

Captain Simmons's Company A men had put in the roadblock on the far side of a cemetery edge during the late afternoon to prevent the Germans from getting back into Bardenberg. With just forty fighting men, the roadblock was simply not strong enough to withstand the arrival of the Panzer Brigade 108 detachments. A prisoner taken later estimated that “about 300 infantry, plenty of half-tracks and some tanks constituted the force that had overrun Company A's roadblock.”
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The single tank destroyer Simmons had at his disposal never even got a shot off. The men in one platoon sought refuge in North Bardenberg; others were wounded or captured. Just eight Americans made it back to the new
CP Simmons had found in the church tucked into the northwest edge of the village. “We built up all around,” Simmons remembered. “But we were still forced back about a block.”
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It was a bad night for what was left of the company. The regiment's 2nd Battalion was inbound, but these forces were stopped short; to avoid being surrounded, Simmons snuck the men with him out a window of the house in which they were hiding and into another in the center of town. “They expected to wake up and find Jerries all around them,” a later report noted. Simmons revealed that “it was the closest I came to being captured. They coulda took me.”

Only Company E of the 2nd Battalion got into North Bardenberg that night; these men were stopped by 20mm antitank fire when they reached the same church to which Simmons's few soldiers had first escaped. This company was also split up; Sgt. Neal M. Bertelsen, after heading for the basement, remembered that “he could see enemy infantry and tanks going up and down the street.”
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Sgt. George Petcoff was stuck with ten other men in a beer garden cellar and surrounded. Sergeant Holycross and his 2nd Platoon were cut off in another part of the village. But they were all lucky. Sergeant Bertelsen was able to keep battalion informed by whispering their positions over his 300 radio. And even though “the Jerries were not more than 15 yards away,” they never made any house-to-house searches.

During the afternoon, Lieutenant Colonel Brown's 3rd Battalion had experienced “beautiful success in its drive aimed at North Würselen,” but now his companies were cut off. As Lieutenant Knox of Company L recalled, “Everything was falling in North Würselen. We moved on through, however, behind Company K, into the northern part of the village [to a place] we called ‘The Mine.’”
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I went down a shaft here to see what was going on and to determine if I could find a suitable CP. People were packed in it for safety. We finally set up in part of the main office of the mine. Battalion was in a different part. Just after dark we received news that there was pretty much of a concerted counterattack being tried by the Germans. We were kept on alert all of that night.

Panzer Brigade 108 forces had indeed poured through onto more streets in North Würselen; it was later noted that “although the Germans
had not known it when they planned their thrust, the chance timing of the attack made them appear Argus-eyed and omniscient. By striking when they did, they made it hurt.”
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It hurt everywhere along the division front on 9 October. At noon, General Hobbs had approved Colonel Johnson's request to have his 117th Infantry companies defend the division's east flank from Alsdorf, Scaufenberg, and Kol-Kellersberg rather than what had been their original objective that day—Mariadorf. Remnants of Regiment von Fritzschen here had stopped the Americans from advancing over the open ground into their positions. “Evidence existed to indicate that the 117th's long period of attack without rest—a total of more than a week—had begun to tell,” a later report confessed.
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But by being where they were now, the Americans would prove to be as omniscient as the Germans in the days to come.

At 0530 the next morning, Captain McCullough's 1st Battalion of the 120th Infantry started out down the Duffesheide-Bardenberg road in eight columns. Four columns headed for the roadblock outside of North Bardenberg where Captain Simmons's men had been caught off guard the previous night; it was taken back and a hasty defense was set up. The other four columns made a sharp turn eastward and surprised the German security detachment at their posts in Birk. There had been no artillery preparation to wake them, nor did the single errant friendly rifle shot during the stealth attack rouse “the sleepy, groggy enemy.”
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Fifty prisoners were taken. The important 180-meter-high elevation just south of the village was open, bald ground and under enemy observation. It could not be occupied, but the Americans also had it under their watchful eyes.

The Germans then tried to retake Birk throughout the morning. Captain McCullough's men first experienced small strikes, but at 1100 the enemy struck furiously from the south end of Birk. Their tanks also came through draws around the reverse slopes of Hill 180 and at one time closed within 50 yards of McCullogh's Company A positions. The men here answered by turning the wheel-mounted
Panzerfausts
captured the day before on the incoming German armor; one was hit at 200 yards out. Another, in defilade, suddenly withdrew. Friendly artillery fire, a single tank destroyer, and American machine-gun crews added to their opposite number's misery. Before it was over, thirteen enemy panzers were disabled or destroyed; from his command post in a farmhouse near
the front line in Birk, Captain McCullough later tallied counts showing more than thirty Germans killed or wounded.

When Lieutenant Colonel Cox's 2nd Battalion of the 119th Infantry renewed their attack to clear out North Bardenberg earlier that morning, there was no indication that the commanders of Panzer Brigade 108 in town knew that their supply line through Birk had been severed. Entering through Pley, the fighting was bitter as Cox's men tried to reach the center of the village. Here, the Germans had their five tanks out of view in gardens and behind houses on side streets. Their many half-tracks mounted frightening multibarreled 20mm antiaircraft guns—frightening because there were ten to twenty at a time roaming the roadways, and this was the first time the Germans had used these weapons on 30th Division forces. Consequently, efforts to extricate them from the center of North Bardenberg failed as the morning wore on, despite instances of selfless heroism on the part of one tank commander:

The lead tank, commanded by Lieutenant Lambert V. Wieser, tried to cross an intersection and was fired upon by an assault gun set up in the street to his left. Lieutenant Wieser turned his tank into the face of this fire and traded shot for shot with the assault gun as he bore down on it. Although his fire had no effect on the assault gun, he continued firing until he was 50 yards away, even though his tank was burning. He evacuated his crew, took command of another tank and went after the gun again. The second tank was destroyed by a captured German bazooka, but Lieutenant Wieser sustained burns which caused his death.
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Lieutenant Colonel Brown's 3rd Battalion reports for this same day—10 October—indicated that for his men it was “the stiffest fighting of the entire Siegfried Line operation.”
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Grenadier Regiment 404 launched five powerful counterattacks against the battalion, “sending in the first wave of approximately 30 men and then a second wave of battalion strength, which covered the advance of the first wave.” The attacks, however, were judged to be unsuccessful because Brown's forces were able to stop the first wave with their machine-gun and small-arms fire, then
the second wave suffered a similar fate when mortars rained down on them. Again, an individual initiative punctuated the action that day: