Schwerpunkt: From D-Day to the Fall of the Third Reich (44 page)

When I got back, there were only three guys from my unit left, Frank. We were decimated up there. I got back just in time to move to Luxembourg. We then moved out to rest in the Ardennes, only if that is what you guys call resting, I’d hate to see what you call fighting. I ended up in St. Vith which was crawling with Krauts. Christmas came and went although at our line, we got a hot meal brought to us along with mail and parcels. This was a welcome treat but since it was due only to the fact that it was Christmas Day, we didn’t expect to see any more of that kind of luxury. What we also got that Christmas was word of Jerry infiltrators dressed like Americans. I’ll tell you, if you didn’t know that Casey Stengel never pitched for the Cubs, you were in serious trouble! One funny story that’s made the rounds was that some general (some even say it was General Bradley) was asked the capitol of Illinois and he said Springfield. Because the knucklehead who asked him thought the right answer was Chicago, the general almost didn’t make it through. Road blocks were set up and everyone was questioned closely. I heard we did find a couple of them and the infiltrating bastards were tied to posts and immediately shot as spies.

I got to admit, the last month is really a blur. I remember going house to house...taking prisoners...throwing grenades down into cellars. I remember snipers and I still dream about them picking us off. I remember finding machine gun nests and putting them out of commission...being surrounded by more goddamn Germans (pardon my French, Frank) than I’ve ever seen before and I remember replacements coming in to give us the extra leverage we needed to clean up the perimeter and take those Krauts left in the pocket as prisoner. I hope your Christmas was better than mine but at least I survived, Frank. But I can’t wait for this war to be over.

Love you, Brother.

Harold

I can’t wait for the war to be over too. There’ve been too many of those meat grinder battles and now we face more with the invasion of the Fatherland. If we thought those bastards were tough defending their holdings in France, I can’t imagine how brutally they’re going to fight to protect their wives and mothers. We continued to advance all along the German border and met heavy resistance from the Krauts who hadn’t yet heard they lost the war after their jab at the Ardennes. We expected strong resistance along the Siegfried Line at Germany’s border and that’s what we got. Our recon reports estimated some ten thousand Krauts were defending the area just around the Reichswald. Those reports said we should expect all kinds of anti-tank ditches and obstacles along with the well dug in Huns defending their Line.

As much as we worried about the defenders, it seems we worried more about the weather that just weeks before kept the ground frozen enough for tanks but was now melting and turning that terrain into a muck and mire soup. We brought in more troops and artillery but because of the goddamn rain, the thawing ground was a real show stopper. Brad’s Twelfth Army Group could make no progress over the Eifel Mountains. Even Patton’s troops were stymied by the warming weather but when it finally got warm enough to dry this shit up, we all moved and eventually the German Siegfried Line was breached.

When the fighting over what the Krauts call their “West Wall” died down, it was reported that over 300,000 German soldiers were captured as prisoners. There’s been talk that some of those soldiers were literally throwing themselves on our men and I heard it was because they wanted to be captured by the Americans first, the British second and the Russians never. With such a net of Krauts, where do we go? North or South? Ike wasn’t concerned about beating the Russkies to Berlin. That was chicken shit to him since Berlin had already been partitioned on paper after Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin had their last meeting at Yalta. Ike figured it was senseless to risk more Allied lives to fight for territory that would have to be given back to the Russkies anyway, so he would just let them fight for Berlin themselves. The boundaries had already been set and no matter who did what in Berlin, nothing would change. As Ike shifted from a northern objective to securing southern Germany and Czechoslovakia, he decided that the best strategy right now would be to take back the U.S. Ninth Army that he had previously transferred to Monty’s army group and give it back to Brad’s Army Group. With that, Brad’s southern push moved quickly as Patton took off towards Bavaria.

By the middle of February, we were approaching the Rhine but had to deal with the dams over the Roer River first. Our guys figured that if the Krauts blew those dams, the whole Rhineland would be under tons of water. I see now why they defended the Hürtgen Forest so heavily. If we had reached the dams and opened them ourselves, electric power supplying a large portion of Germany would have been cut off. Our guys destroyed part of a dam on the Roer River near Monschau a couple of weeks ago, certain in the knowledge they’d be able to control the flooding waters. The Krauts had destroyed all the valves though, unbeknownst to our engineers. We are still waiting for the waters to recede enough to allow our Ninth Army to make the drive east. Once again, the best laid plans of mice and men.

Fighting along the Roer River dams continued until we were finally able to secure the dams. Just as we were all set to breach the Roer River on our way to the Rhine River, the Krauts blew up not only the Roer dams but the Rhine riverbanks as well. The sons of bitches flooded their own people to prevent us from getting across. Almost two weeks later, it still looked like we’d have to wait to cross the Roer River but General Simpson finally decided he’d had enough waiting so he ordered assault boats and DUKs to assemble and he got his men over this raging river by the next day. New bridges were built and now it was on to the Rhine. Since there were still Krauts in the Colmar pocket, which is what we’re calling the area between the Moselle and Rhine Rivers, we are now fighting to clear this territory.

We’ve stepped up the bombings of German cities in an effort to crush the will of the people still loyal to Hitler and still willing to fight our advance. The only problem, of course, is that we have no way of knowing which citizens are for and which are against us and so a whole lot of Germans went the way of a whole lot of British, French, Dutch, Belgian, and Italians. We tried to select cities with worthwhile industrial targets but then came the decision to bomb Dresden for no reason other than to terrorize its citizens. We knew that over a million civilians lived in the city and I guess maybe the Brass thought that with one big raid, Hitler would come to his senses. It’s clear now that he has no sense. The city became an inferno and we know that too many innocent women and children had been killed, though we didn’t know how many. Later we found out that there were probably 100,000 people killed in that air raid. I have doubts this strategy will work and fully expect that the resolve of the people will harden just as it did when the Krauts were bombing the shit out of the British in London. After reconsideration of this strategy, it’s now been decided we would probably never do that kind of terror bombing again and in Europe, we will focus only on future industrial, communication or transportation targets. So while those military targets are being bombed, our ground troops continued advancing towards the Rhine River.

By the first days of March, through sheer determination, the Americans and Canadians linked up north and west of the Ruhr Industrial Valley and now jointly continued their push towards the Rhine River. We were on our way and eventually reached the mighty Rhine. Then we came to the bridges which the goddamn Krauts blew up, one by goddamn one. Our men were on the west bank of the Rhine River while the destruction of Germany waited for us past the east bank. I‘m confident the Hun was waiting for us to cross this river, but I’m also confident he was going to do everything he could to make it as hard as hell for us to do it.

While Monty on the north was pushing east towards the Rhine River, the Americans reached the Rhine to the south. We had all pretty much given up hope of ever finding an undamaged bridge so Montgomery was busily planning a full scale assault to cross the Rhine up north around Wesel, codenamed Operation Plunder. On March 7
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, however, we received the most unbelievable news. One unit of the US First Army had found an intact bridge at Remagen called the Ludendorff Bridge. We knew it was supposed to be blown because they reported that it had all the necessary wires and sticks of dynamite all over it. Just as our guys heard the Jerry commanders give orders to prime the charges, the infantry rushed the bridge instead of shooting the shit out of it. For some reason, the Jerries couldn’t blow it. Maybe it was made by slave labor or by workers who we were finding out truly wanted to hinder the German war effort whenever and wherever they could. Or maybe it was just that we scared the shit out of the defenders of the bridge and they ran for their lives. Whatever happened, it was a real break for the good guys because there it was: an intact bridge over the River Rhine.

Once we fixed the damage that was done to the bridge, our way into the heartland of Germany was established. Our engineers built a smaller bridge under the Luddendorf Bridge and we used this as well as the main bridge to bring men, equipment, and supplies into the Fatherland where we could continue the fight to get this goddamn war over with. This bridge lasted ten days until March 17
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when it finally collapsed from all the damage it sustained and all the traffic it carried. Monty was still finalizing his Operation Plunder plans.

Monty had been preparing Operation Plunder since the beginning of March and he was just about set to launch his operation since in the last two weeks, all the groundwork had been laid, all the permutations had been considered, all the troops had been briefed and trained, all the equipment had been requisitioned and tested, and all the tea they’d need to brew had been accounted for. Nevertheless, Patton’s 5
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Division made the crossing the night before Monty got his road on the show.

We got word that sly General Patton couldn’t wait for something as mundane as official orders. Apparently, Patton not only got to the Rhine, he was actually walking across a pontoon bridge on March 23, 1945, a day that may not live in infamy but will certainly be remembered by all who were there because as he was crossing the mighty Rhine, he undid his fly, took control of his pecker and pissed in the river to the amusement of all. And he did this before Montgomery even reached the banks of the river up north. Patton beat Monty’s crossing by a whole day because it wasn’t until March 24
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that Operation Plunder got underway. Patton was positively giddy knowing that not only was he across the river before Monty, but he did it without any preliminary bombing runs, naval bombardments, artillery barrages or smoke screens. He simply put his men into boats and sent them across the Rhine near Oppenheim. And he knew goddamn well that by doing this, he was stealing every possible ounce of Montgomery’s thunder. In fact, Patton’s men made another crossing near Worms the night after Plunder launched. The Rhine must have been crawling with Allieds the night of the 25
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.

Since I’m the first one to give Monty all the credit he so richly deserves, I must say that Operation Plunder, when it was undertaken, landed more than 15,000 troops across the Rhine River and soon after, four separate bridgeheads were linked up. By now, the Germans had moved on, apparently considering their defense of the Rhine a lost cause. The Rhine was crossed from Wesel to Karlsruhe and Patton was on the move to capture Darmstadt, Ludwigshafen and Speyer, Germany as well as scores of small towns along the way.

By the end of March, Monty finally got himself across the Rhine River in a boat. I guess he made a three act play out of it because I know Ike was there to see it and I was told Churchill witnessed it as well. After Monty did all but part the waters of the Rhine, I heard that Churchill and Monty impressed some U.S. commanders and armed guards into service and they sailed across the river where Winny did his best impersonation of Patton and he too pissed in the river. I guess they stayed “behind enemy lines” for a half hour or so without getting themselves killed or injured then headed back to the friendly side. They were going to extend their lark and visit some bridge or something but a couple of angry Krauts took some potshots at them and they got the hell out of harm’s potential way. I’m surprised Hollywood wasn’t notified so a new motion picture could have been made starring HRT (“His Royal Thespian”) Bernard Montgomery. What a putz. But I guess, in the interest of unity and all that happy crap, I have to say, “We are across the Rhine” and we’re now in a position to deal with that goddamn Hitler once and for all. But we still have some business to attend to. We’re still 400 miles away from the Russians and I’m guessing the march across Germany to meet them is going to be contentious. We’ve heard that Hitler has now drafted the men and boys too old, young, sick or unfit to serve in the army as Home Guards. Now we’re going to need anti pitchfork artillery.

With the American Ninth Army up at the north bank of the Ruhr River while the American First Army was fast approaching to the Northeast from Remagen, the Ruhr Valley was looking like it might turn into another Falaise Gap, but maybe this one would close. And then, son of a gun, on April 1
^st
, Simpson’s Ninth Army and Hodges’ First Army met up in Lippstadt which may sound like a run of the mill encounter but with this meet up, Germany’s industrial center was now out of Hitler’s hands and into ours. And to top it off, those guys captured the first pocket of German soldiers who surrendered on German soil. 100,000 of them. But there were still more who apparently hadn’t had enough and shortly thereafter, we bagged them too. We found out that these guys were under the command of Field Marshal Model who actually had the gonads to try a counter-attack. Not once but twice. Brad ordered that the son of a bitch be subjected to constant attacks and the pocket was split in two. We accepted the surrender of the eastern half on April 16
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and the western half on April 18
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. With these surrenders, we took more Kraut prisoners than even the Russians did at Stalingrad. We bagged just about 325,000 German troops. And more than two dozen of them were high ranking Jerry officers. I guess Model himself took a self inflicted bullet instead of surrendering. Oh well.