The Liberator

by Alex Kershaw

  Sparks then put a call through to Lieutenant Curtis of K Company. They were fast running out of ammunition and in dire risk of being overrun, just as G Company had been earlier.

  “Help on the way,” said Sparks.

  To soften up German positions overlooking the supply trail, the 158th Artillery began to fire high-explosive shells. Soon, one was landing every six seconds—a truly astonishing rate of fire—in the steep draw through which the supply trail climbed. One SS machine gunner, in a position overlooking the trail, hunkered down, listening to the continuous bursting of shells, not daring to imagine how many of his friends were being killed.

  Around 9 A.M., two Sherman tanks arrived at Sparks’s command post. He had little faith in the tanks’ ability to withstand a direct hit from a German 88mm shell. They were nicknamed “Ronson Lighters” because of their tendency when struck to “brew up” and explode with a giant jet of flame, just like their namesake, which the manufacturer boasted always “lights first time.” But they had powerful 76mm guns and their armor could stop machine-gun bullets and mortar fragments.

  Sparks briefed their crews and then climbed into one of the eleven-foot-high vehicles. He did not close the hatch, knowing his view would be severely restricted if he did so. Instead, he stood up in the turret, put on a pair of headphones, and began to give orders to the driver and three other men, including a gunner and wireless operator. In doing so, he crossed a line—officers of his rank were not supposed to commandeer tanks, let alone lead their crews in combat.

  Engines revved up. The tank crews went to work in their steel hulks, surrounded by levers and handles and set on top of ninety gallons of fuel, beside stores of high-explosive shells. Both tanks lurched forward, tracks grinding the ground, and headed up the supply trail.

  Sparks hadn’t gone far when Colonel O’Brien contacted his command post.

  “What is the score with Colonel Sparks?” asked O’Brien.

  “He is taking a couple of medium tanks to try to clear out the draw again,” replied one of Sparks’s officers.

  “Tell him to hold where he is. A battalion of the 179th [Infantry Regiment] is coming up to attack.”

  Sparks was directing the lead tank, still standing in its turret, when the message from O’Brien was relayed to him. He ignored it and instead told the tank’s wireless operator to send a message to K Company.

  “Help is fighting to get to you.”

  O’Brien was still on the line back at the Third Battalion command post.

  “Colonel Sparks says he will try to get up to his companies with the tanks,” said one of Sparks’s officers.

  O’Brien chose to let Sparks continue. He could ill afford to lose his finest battalion commander, but he knew from experience that the young colonel could be infuriatingly stubborn when he set his mind to something. Given his men’s desperate situation, he would in all likelihood ignore a direct order to pull back, even if Eisenhower made it, and if anyone could get through, it would surely be Sparks. Under O’Brien’s command, he had never failed to take an objective.

  The Sherman tanks trundled up the supply trail, the rubber treads and steel cleats of their tracks struggling for grip. Sparks dismounted a couple of times to reconnoiter ahead and then moved forward again in the lead tank. Suddenly there was the angry rip of a machine gun and a sharp pinging as MG42 bullets ricocheted off the lead tank. Sparks returned fire with the tank’s .30-caliber machine gun, squeezing off short bursts to avoid burning out its air-cooled barrel, sweeping the trees and rocks on either side of the trail, hoping to hit any men lurking with Panzerfausts.

  He also barked instructions through his headset to the men operating his tank’s 76mm cannon. A loader tugged a shell from a bracket and closed the breech, then the gunner fired, the cannon’s violent recoil just inches from his face. The sound was like an immense, deafening bark. Because the 76mm fired at a very high velocity, it made far more noise than an artillery piece. With his clattering machine gun, which could cut trees in two, and the cannon, which could blow a log dugout to smithereens, Sparks managed to pin down the SS overlooking the trail. Several men from Bernard Fleming’s rescue party who were hiding along the trail were able to pull back to safer positions.

  Sparks ordered the tanks forward again. The trail steepened and narrowed as it approached the bridge where Fleming and his men had earlier run into an ambush. The tanks’ engines were gunned. It was ever more difficult to gain traction. The drivers peered through narrow slits as they operated sluggish controls. The wireless radio blared. Sparks shouted orders. The turret trainer whirred and guns rattled.

  It was a terrifying experience to be inside a Sherman tank during combat. Every man knew that at any second an enemy shell could hit. If lucky, he would see a bright red bruise to the tank’s metal that faded seconds after impact. Then he would have to clamber to the turret, scraping elbows on sharp edges, and get the hell out before the enemy had time to fire a second time. Just as often, the fuel and high-explosive shells would ignite and then flames would rip through the iron tomb, leaving men looking like little black dolls, two-foot-tall blocks of charcoal.

  Sparks approached the bridge. Some fifty yards away, concealed on the hillside, was twenty-year-old SS veteran Johann Voss. He watched as Sparks closed on the bridge, still firing bursts from the tank’s machine gun. “If [he] could pass the bridge unharmed,” recalled Voss, “we only had a slim chance in a duel. Our bullets would only scratch their armor.”

  The tracks on Sparks’s lead tank spun on the steep, icy ground and then lost traction. The tank slid sideways, exposing its right flank. A Panzerfaust sounded. There was a loud explosion as a shell hit Sparks’s tank at the base of the turret. The sound would have reverberated through the tank as if it were a drum. The impact knocked out the 76mm cannon. Sparks and the crew were unharmed. Crucially, the tank and the machine gun were still operable.

  Sparks stood in the turret and looked around.

  Several Thunderbirds lay bleeding on the ground beside the supply trail.

  One man cowered behind trees.

  “Can I come out?” he shouted.

  “Make a break for it,” shouted Sparks.

  The soldier had gone only a few yards when Sparks heard the rattle of a machine gun. Another of his men had been mercilessly gunned down. It was as if something snapped deep inside him. Days of excruciating tension and frustration and very little sleep had pushed him beyond his breaking point. He looked around at his wounded men. Not for a second longer would he stand by as they slowly bled to death. He had lost his entire company at Anzio. He would rather die than lose all his men again. All that mattered was doing something to save some of them.

  Sparks climbed out of the tank’s hatch and jumped to the ground.

  SS corporal Johann Voss stood beside a machine gunner in his squad, watching Sparks through field glasses.

  The gunner had his finger on his trigger.

  Voss saw Sparks move toward his injured men.

  “Wait a minute,” said Voss. “Let’s see what happens.”

  Voss and his fellow SS held their fire.

  Sparks ran to the man farthest from him, some fifty yards away. The man had been shot through the chest. He was a heavy kid and Sparks was not strong enough to carry him on his back. So he dragged him across the icy ground. Still, the SS stood and watched. There was no honor to be gained, recalled Voss, by drilling a brave officer with 7.92mm bullets as he tried to help his wounded men. Indeed, there was a silent understanding among the SS watching Sparks. Killing him would be wrong.

  Sparks lifted the heavy kid onto the tank. Two other wounded men were not far away. He got to them and helped them onto the tank too. Incredibly, the SS still held their fire.

  Voss could still see Sparks clearly through his field glasses. Never had he witnessed such an act of courage by the enemy. There was no way he was going to open fire on the wounded lying on the tank. He watched as Sparks got back into the lead tank. The rescue had last
ed no more than eight minutes.

  Sparks ordered both tanks to return to American lines. It was impossible to continue up the trail. The tanks’ treads were worthless on the steep ice. He did his best to make the injured comfortable, tending to their wounds as the tanks backed down the trail. One had a broken leg, and he was able to make a splint, securing it with an ammunition belt.

  Voss and his nearest comrades held their fire, but others several hundred yards down the trail, who had not witnessed the rescue, did not. There was a hollow sound—the tonk of a mortar being fired. Then the SS opened up with what seemed like everything they had. Bullets pinged and ricocheted off the metal of Commander Joseph Crowley’s number two tank, which followed behind Sparks’s, shredding most of the material attached to it. But neither tank was knocked out. They both continued down the supply trail as fast as possible.

  It was 1:30 P.M. when an utterly drained Sparks arrived back at his forward command post. The front of his tank was charred black and part of the cannon had broken loose. The machine gun was almost burned-out. Sparks had fired an incredible five thousand rounds.

  Word of the attempted breakthrough spread fast. Sergeant Bernard Fleming, whose wounded squad members had been rescued, later remembered that Sparks’s actions “buoyed the morale of all who were aware of his gallantry that day. Our commander had proved once again that he valued his soldiers’ lives and was willing to take large risks on their behalf.”

  Sparks couldn’t have cared less what the men he had rescued thought. He had not been able to break through. What was left of his battalion was still stranded, being picked off by fanatical Nazis. He had not reached his men on the ridge. He had not saved any of them.

  He had failed. Yet he had survived.

  He had not cared if he got killed. In fact, he had expected to die when he got out of the tank.

  Why hadn’t the SS riddled him with bullets?

  Why? he wondered. Why didn’t they shoot me?

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  DEFEAT

  Brigadier General Robert Frederick, commander of the 45th Infantry Division.[National Archives]

  REIPERTSWILLER, JANUARY 18, 1945

  THE LAST RADIOS IN use on the ridge hissed and crackled as their batteries and crystals began to fade. In his command post beside the supply trail, Sparks checked on his men and helped organize further efforts to break through. Two companies from the 179th Infantry Regiment arrived and tried later that afternoon of January 18, but both failed to reach his men. The conditions on the ridge were horrific. “The wounded men were put in holes with unwounded men so that they could be cared for properly,” recalled Private First Class Benjamin Melton, one of the few remaining men able to stand and fight. “Some were severely wounded and needed tourniquets. We made those out of belts and had to loosen them every thirty minutes. We had no medical supplies, no food and no heat to melt the snow for water.”

  The SS noose closed still tighter on the Third Battalion, whose plight had not gone unnoticed at the very highest levels in the Third Reich. It was announced in the Wehrmachtbericht, an information bulletin issued by the headquarters of the Wehrmacht: “Gebirgsjäger of the 6th Mountain SS Division ‘Nord’ have … encircled an American battle group and relief attempts have been unsuccessful.”

  At seven o’clock that evening, the regiment’s command post received a pitiful message from L Company, five hundred yards to the east of K Company on the ridge. It was now facing a fourth night of attacks by SS troops. The enemy was so persistent that men dared not nod off even for a few seconds in case they woke to find Germans slitting their throats. The badly wounded could not last much longer without plasma and proper attention.

  “Will [medical supplies] get here tonight?” asked a man from L Company.

  The reply was brutally honest.

  “Impossible to get there.”

  The following day, January 19, 1945, it also proved impossible. Plans were made to drop supplies by air, and planes were loaded with medicine, rations, and ammunition, but the weather closed in and pilots were forced to sit on the runways, waiting for an opening in the heavy, snow-laden clouds. The break did not arrive.

  Meanwhile, the SS continued to tighten the noose.

  “We are being attacked,” reported one of the decimated companies.

  One can only imagine the frustration and heartbreak Sparks felt as hopes of reaching his men began to fade along with the voices of his young officers on the radio. Unlike at Anzio, he could not list every private’s name. But he knew all of his five company commanders and his many platoon leaders well. He could vividly imagine their horrific ordeal, having survived the Battle of the Caves.

  On January 20, driving sleet mixed with snow made visibility worse. The planned airlift was called off, and yet, despite entreaties over loud-hailers from the Germans that they surrender, Sparks’s last men stubbornly held out in the hope of being rescued. On two occasions, a German soldier appeared with a white flag asking for Sparks’s men to give up. The German came under fire both times.

  Later on the morning of January 20, Richard Baron, who belonged to a machine-gun platoon stranded on the ridge, heard the clanking of tracks and the grinding of gears. German tanks were moving in. The end was near. SS officers under a white flag appeared. A small group of Americans, including Captain Byrd Curtis, the commander of K Company, and the SS officers were soon huddled in the driving snow and sleet discussing terms of surrender. The SS promised Curtis that if he surrendered with his men under a white flag they would be given the best treatment possible.

  For a few minutes, Baron and others were able to get out of their holes and stretch stiff limbs. As he stood in the open, trying to keep warm, Baron looked at his fellow survivors. They were shivering, drenched, with hollow eyes and drawn features, every one of them taxed to the very limit of his endurance.

  Then came an ultimatum. Two senior German officers, one of them thought to be battalion commander SS Haupsturmführer Guenter Degen, demanded the Americans give up by 5 P.M. If not, they would be slaughtered. The SS officers had maps with them and indicated their positions to prove that the Americans were hopelessly surrounded. They again promised they would not mistreat any prisoners, then returned to their positions.

  The Thunderbirds on the ridge took a vote. None opted to surrender. The Third Battalion’s last able-bodied survivors, around a hundred men, were still determined to hold the ridge. They knew they had not yet been abandoned from radio communication with Sparks.

  Rescue efforts continued. The Second Battalion of the 411th Infantry Regiment of the 103rd Infantry Division attacked during a heavy snowstorm. The snow provided cover, but even so, the battalion was cut down. If a force of several hundred men could not get through, there seemed little point in trying to hold the ridge any longer. Despite the fact that it was now far too late, General Frederick finally agreed to pull Sparks’s Third Battalion off the ridge.

  At 1:30 P.M., Colonel O’Brien ordered the surviving men to try to break out.

  At 4:15 P.M., K Company replied: “We are following thru, give us everything you can for the next ten minutes.”

  The 158th Artillery gladly obliged. It had fired more than five thousand rounds in forty-eight hours. Yet more shells now rained down on the Germans. The barrage was intended to pin down the enemy and surround the survivors from Sparks’s battalion with a protective ring of fire, which would shift as the men made their way back to friendly lines. The method had worked with great success the previous month in allowing stranded men in a town called Bundenthal to break out. But that was before winter had truly set in. Now poor visibility and the difficult terrain led to artillery hits on the desperate Americans rather than the Germans surrounding them.

  The SS responded with a savage barrage of their own. Forward artillery observers were hidden under rocks on nearby slopes and were, in contrast to the Americans, able to direct fire with pinpoint accuracy. I Company’s Private Benjamin Melton saw one of his officers receive
a direct hit and simply disappear. Another I Company rifleman, Joe Early, and others made a run for it. “As soon as we got out of our foxholes,” he recalled, “they let us have it with mortars, crossfire machine guns. I fortunately got back to my hole and gave up.” Other men trying to break out began to throw down their weapons and put their hands in the air.

  It was around 4:30 P.M. when K Company on the hill sent a last message. They could not find a way through the German lines. There was nothing more Sparks could do to help them. It was agonizing all the same to learn of his men’s final communication. Finally, as dusk fell, the receivers on the stranded battalion’s last radios became too weak for men to hear what Sparks or anybody else was saying.

  As the SS’s 5 P.M. deadline neared, an officer told Private Melton and others in I Company to lay down their guns. Some attached white handkerchiefs to the stocks of their M1s and then stuck them muzzle down into the bloodstained snow. Melton was not one of them. “I was damned if I was gonna stay there,” he recalled, “and be killed in cold blood.” He joined another private, Walter Bruce, and a third man, and tried to get back to American lines. They had not gone far when a machine gun opened up on them and killed the third man. Melton and Bruce kept running, avoiding paths and trails. They came across some tracks in the snow and followed them. Then they saw a dugout. “We laid low until a GI looked out from beneath it,” recalled Melton. “You can imagine how glad we were to see that guy.”

  Long after dark, at 5:40 P.M., the fortunate pair from I Company arrived at Sparks’s command post. They were barely able to stand and were quickly taken to an aid station, suffering from nervous exhaustion. Only they had made it off the hill. Everyone else, as far as they knew, had been captured or killed.

  THE SS APPROACHED, aiming machine pistols. The survivors from the Third Battalion put their hands in the air. The first moments of captivity were always the most dangerous. Emotions ran high. The enemy was at its most unpredictable. Dead SS men lay nearby, more than sufficient reason for instant vengeance. Would there be a repeat of the Malmédy massacre on December 17, when more than a hundred American POWs had been slaughtered in cold blood by SS troops? It was anyone’s guess.