THE
After our division closed on the
My company was sleeping soundly in a small German town
about three miles back from the
Meantime, on 26 March our 311th Timberwolves relieved
1st Division units defending seven miles along the
Bridge of the Charly Company helps the men to cross the Sieg-River at the little
town Etzbach.
By 1 April, the U.S. Ninth Army in the north and our
First Army in the south had surrounded the Ruhr industrial area of
Early in April, my company was directed to conduct a
feint by erecting two “Dogma Charlie” footbridge spans into the
After dinner, the Lieutenant explained our
assignment. We rehearsed our parts and
set out. The river banks were so flat
they wouldn’t afford us any cover if fired upon. . . As we rolled into an open flat plain, a
stream of tracer bullets arched across the sky towards us. T/5 Monaghan, our truck driver, put our truck
behind a house until the firing subsided… Then Monaghan sped toward the river…
as that probing finger of 20mm fire kept searching for us. . . I was on the
second H-frame as we started toward the river.
The cavalry doughboys were spread out around us, but you couldn’t see
them. The artillery was banging them
regularly on the opposite shore.
Everything was going fine until someone set off a flare, and believe me,
all of us thought our goose was cooked!
The flare soon died down and nothing happened, so we kept going. It didn’t take long to put up our two
sections, and it didn’t take long to pull out. . . Two hours later, we were
crawling into our sacks.[120]
On 5 April, the 97th Division relieved the 2nd and 3rd
Battalions of the 311th. When the time
came to cross the
The 1st
Battalion of the 311th was attached to the 309th Infantry, which would attack
through the 1st Battalion’s sector in crossing the
My Dogma Charlie Company had the job of crossing the
foot elements of the two assaulting regiments, freeing A and B Companies of the
303rd Engineers to advance promptly with their regiments across the river. Division vehicles would cross when Corps
engineers completed construction of a large Bailey bridge over the Sieg at
Wissen, which the 2d Battalion of our 311th Regiment would secure while in reserve
at the center of the crossings.
During the 5th of April, my three platoons
reconnoitered their respective crossing sites along the rain-swollen
That night Staff Sergeant Paul Steffen and Corporal
Walter Underwood from Lieutenant Siegele’s 1st Platoon reconnoitered where they
would cross the foot elements of the 309th Infantry near the main street of
Dreisel along the river bank. Finding
Teller antitank mines dug into the street, they started removing them, but
Krauts across the Sieg opened fire on them.
After quickly withdrawing, they soon returned with Underwood’s 3rd Squad
and removed several mined road blocks all over the town, drawing no further
fire. By dawn, the rest of the 1st
Platoon had arrived and assembled sections of their footbridge behind some
houses. Having no infantry for local
security, Lieutenant Siegele deployed his three squads in houses to cover him
while he, Technician Fourth Class Frank Momot, and Private Russell Gaudet hauled
a line across the river to use in emplacing the anchor cable. When the three walked toward the riverbank,
Krauts opened up on them with machine gun and rifle fire, hitting Gaudet in the
neck and back and creasing Seigele’s helmet.
Siegele's overwatching squads immediately responded with their
rifles. Gaudet managed to run behind a
house, but his wounds were so severe he could go no further. Sergeant Ernest Collins ran back through the
firefight to get a medic. In two hours
of fighting, Siegele’s platoon accounted for eight Krauts. The skirmish ended when friendly infantry
crossed the river upstream and circled around behind the Krauts, capturing
those who were left.
Lt. Siegele then tried to swim across the river, but
the current was too swift. They finally
crossed to the other side in an assault boat and positioned the anchor
cable. This cable enabled them to
install the floating footbridge quite readily, despite the strong current. However, the river was wider than they had
anticipated, and they didn’t have enough sections to complete the bridge. They remedied this quickly by placing a
section of the Dogma Charlie expedient footbridge at each end of the floating
bridge.[123] Foot elements of the 309th Infantry proceeded over this footbridge
and began their assault of the Ruhr Pocket.
On that same night, Lt. Monroe led Staff Sergeant Karl
Hanville and Sergeant John Stache to reconnoiter the site where they would
cross foot elements of the 310th Infantry over the
When Infantry deployed along the banks the next
morning at 0500, Lieutenant Monroe’s platoon moved in with footbridge equipment
under a heavy fog. Everything was
quiet. Upon learning that the truckload
of assault boats for the initial crossing had taken a wrong road and was miles
away, a couple of the engineers tried to swim the river, but the current was
too swift. Finally the boats arrived, and
six men paddled across to secure an anchor cable for their footbridge. Upon reaching the far shore, they were
surprised to find two Krauts sitting in foxholes along the riverbank. Fortunately, the Krauts surrendered quietly
and the engineers secured their cable. The 3rd Squad began building the
footbridge while the rest of the platoon ferried infantry across in assault
boats. When the bridge was partially
done, one of the assault boats crashed into it, tearing out the anchor cable
and breaking the bridge into several parts.
While they reassembled the bridge, another boat capsized, losing all
equipment in it. After hours of
backbreaking work, they completed the footbridge, and the rest of the 310th
Infantry regiment crossed to commence their assault into the Ruhr Pocket. So far, no enemy fire had fallen on the
bridge, but now that the work was done, Kraut shells started coming in. Meantime the infantry captured a group of
Krauts who had dug in along a railroad track only two hundred yards from the
bridge. Apparently they hadn’t fired
earlier because of the fog.[124]
Meanwhile, Lieutenant Timm had observed his site near
Wissen during daylight from a distance, since it was obviously under
observation by Krauts on the far shore.
Dismounting from their jeep at the edge of woods, Timm, Sergeant Stephen
Monoski, and Technician Fifth Class John Kapitan examined the area. In turning around the jeep, Private First
Class Simone Lagravinese got it stuck momentarily and then drove over to pick
up Timm’s party. Moments later, two
Kraut shells exploded where the jeep had been stuck!
Early the next morning, 311th Infantrymen had managed
to scramble across twisted remains of the blown bridge at Wissen and secure the
far shore by capturing eighteen Krauts in a factory. These were the Krauts who had fired earlier
at Siegele’s platoon farther downstream.
While this was going on, Timm’s 2nd Platoon tied bridle-lines for their
footbridge to the downstream side of the blown bridge at Wissen and installed
their 80-foot footbridge in time to cross a battalion of infantry before
daylight.[125]
As Corps engineers began arriving to build a Bailey
span across the gap in the blown bridge,
I crossed the footbridge and discovered the Krauts had also blown a smaller
bridge over a creek on the main road barely two hundred yards north of
Wissen. Returning quickly to Lieutenant
Timm, who was in the process of regrouping his platoon, I directed him to walk
his men over the footbridge and undertake to repair the second blown bridge by
the time Corps completed its Bailey span at Wissen. Timm has recalled undertaking this task as
follows:
Right
after lunch, Captain Camm assigned us the Wissen Creek job that turned out to
be a combat engineer’s dream. We
discovered a lumberyard a couple of hundred yards from the near shore abutment
and also found a French enforced-laborer with a horse. Convincing him to work for us instead of the
Krauts, we used his horse to drag lumber to the construction site. Using wrenches from a nearby railroad shop,
my men removed rails from a nearby railroad track. Meantime Captain Camm and driver, Crouse,
found a way to get their jeep across a shallow ford in the
Using
our new Dodge personnel carrier with our now famous A-frame hoist, we
constructed a two-bent bridge and worked all night under the truck’s
lights. We had to take one break when
the Krauts sent in their bed check Charlie aircraft to spook us. We spiked decking into four-by-four timber
spacers to keep the rails from turning over and were putting on the finishing
touches and handrails as the first traffic arrived from the big Bailey
Bridge. We finished the job at about
1500 hours, in almost exactly 24 hours non-stop. It was a beauty!
Division vehicles then poured over the Bailey span at
Wissen and our expedient bridge just beyond to accompany their doughboys
already punching into the Ruhr Pocket.
At first the going was slow. We
had many road craters to fill, blown bridges to bypass, log barricades to clear,
and mines to remove. Four German
divisions faced the 78th Division north of the
With the Luftwaffe destroyed as an effective force,
our division’s antiaircraft battalion attached two firing batteries to each
forward infantry regiment, providing powerful direct antipersonnel fire support
to our advancing infantrymen. So
effective was this fire that many Germans surrendered before engaging in a
firefight.[127]
Our division’s daily count of prisoners taken reached
a record high of 9186.[128]
Our doughboys took many towns with German speaking soldiers calling the Burgermeister on the telephone and
telling them to surrender their towns or else.
In most cases, white sheets soon
fluttered from town windows and the towns surrendered without more ado. Public-address systems on tanks also blared
out surrender messages to achieve the same effect. When the Krauts responded with machine-gun
fire or mortars, our troops would withdraw several yards, call for artillery,
and shell the town. When the barrage
ended, our GI’s raced in and quickly overpowered bewildered and shaken
defenders.[129] One of our 78th Recon
troopers described our capturing
of towns as follows:
We
had a sergeant by the name of Doug Linn who was a native born German. His family had been run out of
A Home Guard unit of about forty men and
large boys from the area defended one village.
When they saw and heard us, they gave up without a shot and we gathered
them together in the
Our decentralized mode of operating functioned well as
we advanced into the Ruhr Pocket. With our infantry battalions advancing along
different roads some six to eight miles a day, my platoons accompanied them
clearing all obstacles encountered.
There were days when we advanced eleven miles through difficult
terrain. The roads were crowded with
mobs of released slave laborers and columns of captured prisoners marching to
the rear. Sometimes our infantry mounted
trucks and advanced faster. I devoted
much of my time to keeping track of the tactical boundaries for my platoons. We swept forward so rapidly that
occasionally our engineers captured towns in advance of the infantry. This was mobile warfare at its best.
Engineer patrols were constantly probing ahead of the
attack, seeking routes to bypass obstacles and continue our drive unimpeded.[131]
In our zeal to clear obstacles in our way, we sometimes found ourselves out in
front of the advancing infantry. On one
such occasion, I followed a jeep up over a hill, thinking we were still behind
the infantry. When the jeep stopped, an
American three-star general stepped out of it.
It was our Corps Commander, Lieutenant General Mathew Ridgeway, out
checking on the rate of advance! Always
glad to let someone else draw the fire of enemy out front, the infantry seldom
warned us when we advanced beyond them.
Needless to say, our infantry were red-faced when they found their corps
commander ahead of them!
When we had penetrated halfway into the Ruhr Pocket,
Lieutenant Siegele was passing across the front of his infantry battalion when
a German tank poked its nose around a corner, aiming its gun directly at
Siegele. Sieg and his driver leaped out
of their jeep just as the tank shot it right off the road. They managed to scramble back to our lines,
and I lent Sieg my jeep until his was replaced.
In the meantime, I used a captured German Army
Volkswagen. So many of our division soldiers were driving all over in such
captured Volkswagens, using up so much Army gasoline that Division had
prohibited further use of such vehicles.
Nevertheless, I decided to disregard this order temporarily in the
interests of quickly redressing Sieg’s loss in combat effectiveness. Shortly thereafter, an officer had to go back
to Division Rear in Gummersbach to pick up the monthly of my soldiers. Since my executive officer was absent and all
three platoon leaders were out with their men, I went back in the
Volkswagen. At Division Rear, an MP
stopped me for using the Volkswagen and I explained that I was using it to
avoid losing the use of a jeep in combat.
However, his orders required him
to cite me, so I got a ticket in combat!
I continued using the Volkswagen another day or so until Sieg’s jeep was
replaced and heard nothing further about my ticket. I suspect the MP’s
processing my ticket accepted my story.
Just a couple of days later, the Germans captured
Sieg’s platoon sergeant, Sergeant Steffen, up front with one of his men. Then Sieg was captured briefly, only to
escape within a couple of hours. The
German tankers who captured Sieg put him on the back of their tank and gave him
a wild ride as they dashed back and forth trying to elude Americans attacking
both ends of the road. When Americans
began firing at the tank, Sieg managed to jump off and hide until our infantry
reached him. What a relief it was to get
him back, safe and whole!
Sergeant Steffen, too, had had quite an experience as
a prisoner of the Germans. Having no way
to evacuate him as a prisoner, his retreating captors took him along with
them. When they fell back through their
hometown, one German soldier took Steffen home to visit his family. They then got haircuts together from a German
barber. Later as they were falling back
on foot with a single kitchen truck, they came under
When the Germans realized we had them surrounded in
the Ruhr Pocket, they became demoralized, and our work toward the end consisted mainly of clearing abandoned
vehicles and debris from the roads so our attacking armor and vehicles could
continue unhindered.[132]
The crush of prisoners became so great that up to eighty were standing in each
two-and-a-half truck carrying them to the rear.
On the 12th of April President
The Ruhr Pocket provided its share of humor. For example, three GI’s riding captured
horses in a circus-like procession escorted a column of almost a thousand
prisoners dressed in every uniform imaginable.
On another occasion, an officer on an urgent mission encountered a
couple of Krauts who wanted to surrender.
Not even pausing to take their pistols, he waved to them to sit on some
steps. When he returned about half an
hour later, twenty-seven Krauts awaited him on the steps!
As we approached
On the 15th of April the city of
The following day, our company advanced into
The other day, we set up our
command post in a beautiful home full of all sorts of modern conveniences. The living room had a huge picture window
opened by electric motors. My room in
the master bedroom was finer than any others previously occupied. The bathroom had a fixture peculiar to
The last few days of the war have gone quite rapidly with
us. It is yet too recent for me to say
more than that I have learned a lot in my profession and about men. I regret that some of our American soldiers
appear to be as brutal and barbarous as German soldiers. I’ve seen some incidents where our men seemed
no more civilized.. Mob, or mass, psychology
prevails sometimes, and men can certainly become as drunk with victory--and as
unruly and destructive--as when full of liquor.
I shall not write of the specific incidents, since I’m ashamed to admit
Americans did them.
The taking of
In eleven days our division had advanced fifty miles
and captured 47,581 prisoners, including seven general officers.[136] In this period, our 311th Infantry
took 266 towns, overran 149 square miles of territory and captured over 15,000
prisoners and large quantities of military equipment. Prisoners taken were from forty-three
regiments or separate units, including eleven divisions, two brigades, two Army
Corps, an Army Group, and an Air Force headquarters and a General
Headquarters. The Ruhr Pocket was not
exactly a picnic--the Regiment lost thirty-seven killed in action and 218
wounded.[137]
As I reflect on those intensely active days of combat,
I realize how fortunate I was to have such fine help in our dedicated officers
and noncommissioned officers in my company.
We were also blessed in the many fine, innovative, and hardworking
soldiers we had in the company.
Our first platoon under Lieutenant “Sieg” Siegele
seemed to encounter the most intense combat.
Siegele himself was brave, possibly too brave for his own good, and his
platoon was very close-knit. As a result, each time they lost a man, the platoon
went into a funk. It just couldn’t do
anything for the rest of the day.
Accordingly, when I learned they’d lost a man, I’d check what they were
doing, and whether it could wait until they were back in action the next day. If not, I’d assign it to another platoon.
The second platoon was under Lieutenant Glendon Timm,
a solid and determined man who always called a spade a spade. They were the platoon that built the most
bridges in combat - near Euskirchen, near Buell, and across the creek near Wissen. Timm was completely bald, including his
eyebrows, mustache, and beard. He just
never had to shave. Just after we
entered combat, I noticed that when his men took off their helmets, they were
all bald! That whole platoon had shaved
their heads in the cold of winter! What
a great manifestation of platoon morale!
They were with that lieutenant all the way! Like their leader, the second platoon was as
solid as a rock.
The third platoon under Lieutenant Bill Monroe was
well organized and innovative. They were
the ones who were most aggressive in organizing our defense as infantry during
the
And company headquarters functioned exceptionally well
under the general direction of Lieutenant Maurice Phelan (who left to command A
Company after leading the patrol into the Schwammenauel Dam and was promoted to
captain) and the detailed direction of big and burly First Sergeant Glenn Titus
throughout combat. A natural athlete,
Titus enjoyed enormous respect from us all.
He managed our company administration with the able assistance of our
motor sergeant, Staff Sergeant DeFriese; our mess sergeant Staff Sergeant
Pearson; and our supply sergeant, Sergeant Peterson. This left me free to focus almost exclusively
on our intensely challenging combat engineer mission, ably assisted by our
radio operator, Technician Fourth Class Rockerfeller.
Many months together in training and several more in continuous combat had forged our fine officers, noncommissioned officers, and men into an extremely effective fighting team!