If You Survive

by George Wilson

  Meanwhile, our Private Crocker was having difficulty with the .50-caliber machine gun. It jammed too easily and apparently needed head-space adjustments. I tried my hand at the repair and told Crocker to go out to the edge of town and fire it a few times to try it out. Soon we could hear the .50-caliber machine gun in rapid fire, as expected, but there came some rather insistent rifle fire as well.

  It seems that two Kraut soldiers had just rounded a small bend in the road headed for town when the .50-caliber machine gun opened its practice fire. Both of them dumped their bicycles and rolled into the ditch with their hands raised. The one farther back suddenly decided to make a break. He jumped a small fence and ran like hell down through a little orchard. The riflemen opened fire, but the German was too evasive and got away. He probably would have been better off as a prisoner.

  The captured man was so frightened he shook convulsively and his forehead was beaded with sweat. Then he began to jabber in a foreign language and gesticulate, as though he were begging for his life. When one of the men began speaking to him in Polish, the prisoner quieted down.

  Once the prisoner was convinced he was not going to be harmed, he began to talk. He was a Russian forced into the German Army after his capture. He was told the Americans would shoot him as a spy if he surrendered, and he was threatened constantly by the German who always rode behind him with orders to shoot him if he failed to do his job. He told us he was the lead scout of a bicycle company coming up the road to fight us, and he said they were only a few hundred yards behind. The poor guy was frantic, almost berserk with fear.

  I quickly moved men and tanks into defensive positions, hoping the Germans would blunder over the little hill to our front. When they didn’t appear after a few minutes, I sent a few jeeps with machine guns to explore the road up to the next curve.

  In a few minutes they radioed back that they had found a lot of bicycle tire tracks in the road where the Germans had turned around and headed for home. Apparently they had been warned by the clatter of the .50-caliber machine gun and rifle fire. When their scouts disappeared, they knew their bicycles and rifles were no match against us. Especially if they had spotted our tanks and TDs. We could hardly blame them for leaving.

  By now we had the feeling that the Siegfried Line couldn’t be too far ahead. We came down a long slope and passed what appeared to be a railroad freight yard with a small station that bore the sign BLEIALF. We could see the town buildings about a half mile to the northeast.

  The rail tracks led northward into a tunnel, and we discovered the tunnel had been widened for machine shops and appeared safe from bombing. The machinery, plus any war material, evidently had been moved very recently. You could see where machines had been positioned before the wires had been cut so that they could be moved.

  Some of us went into the beer hall across the road from the tunnel, and as we entered something made a noise behind the counter. My Browning Automatic rifleman began shooting without questioning. He ripped off his entire twenty-round clip into the bar, but, to his regret, all he hit was bottles. C’est la guerre.

  When our eyes got accustomed to the dim lighting, we spotted a young woman and an old man, both very frightened by the shooting, hiding in a corner. They were father and daughter, slave labor from Poland. She had been a teacher, and she spoke several languages, including English and German. Her father was ill, and she had hidden him when the Germans had moved out all of the machines and other people a few days before.

  She also told us we were getting very close to the Siegfried Line, which was not much more than a mile away. She had been there several times with German officers. She was sure the line was occupied, and she volunteered that the bicycle outfit had come from there.

  We passed all this information back to the rear and then were told to go on into Bleialf with extreme caution. We stayed on the road and went past a rather large butter factory and right on into the center of town, marked by a church and a cobblestone square. I was greatly surprised that we had no trouble, for there were several excellent defensive positions.

  The road eastward toward Sellerich was a long, winding incline, and halfway up the hill I stopped the column and very gingerly walked the rest of the way up, taking one man with me. There was considerable cover from underbrush and scrub pine along the way. We had to go a bit beyond the crest before we could get a clear view of our road winding down the hill and across a small valley, only to disappear into the thick pine forest beyond.

  I lay on the ground and used my field glasses to very carefully study every inch of the little valley and the edge of the thick woods. At first I saw nothing at all; then a slight movement caught my eye. A couple of German soldiers were cutting wood with an axe partway up the slope, right in the edge of the woods. One guy picked up an armload and disappeared behind a door that seemed to open into the side of the hill.

  I fixed my eye on the spot and saw the door open again, and the man came out for more wood. Now I could clearly make out a mound of earth and the outline of gun emplacements. This fortification was just across the valley and only about one hundred yards from the road. Suddenly my stomach turned a little, and I got a slight chill as I realized I might well be the first American to set eyes on a pillbox in the famous Siegfried Line.

  The earthen mounds looked like piles of dirt with tufts of grass and bushes on top. Darker spots apparently were doors or windows cut into the earth. I could not see any cement or guns, but we found out later they were very much there under that pile of earth—cement walls eight feet thick with roofs ten to twelve feet thick.

  I was able to spot several more mounds that might have been pillboxes covered with earth and grass. Huge iron doors were slightly ajar, and there was no longer any question in my mind that this was indeed the Siegfried Line.

  Using my compass, I took azimuth readings for each pillbox, marking them on my map. Then we crawled back over the hill to our vehicles and radioed headquarters of my find. I was told to wait there for further orders.

  Luckily for us, from what I heard later, Colonel Lanham’s original orders never reached us. I never found out if he changed his mind or whether the orders somehow went astray. Friends told me he had originally wanted me to go right over the hill and attack the pillboxes, to find out how well they were defended. I suppose I was flattered he thought my small combat team could do this, but I don’t see how we could have attempted it alone and come out alive.

  Finally, around dusk, I received orders to pull back and rejoin E Company south of Bleialf.

  Some other unit in our regiment got credit for being first to cross the German border, but I am sure we had to have been the first to see the Siegfried Line. At least our regiment, the Twenty Second Infantry, got credit for being the first on German soil, on September 12. Unit pride was important in those days.

  We did not know how much or how often we would have to fight there in the next few months.

  IX

  SIEGFRIED LINE

  During the night of September 12–13, while I rested from the tense days on point, Colonel Lanham was busy planning to attack the Siegfried Line the next morning. He had maps, aerial photos, and the reports from his two point leaders on the positions of pillboxes, and he would assume the line was fully manned from the information he had received.

  Colonel Lanham also had an uncompromisingly aggressive nature. He believed the best way to end the war quickly and save lives was to attack and attack. He also believed wholeheartedly that the boys of the Twenty Second Infantry Regiment shared his spirit, that they could do the job if anyone could. The Siegfried Line was, to him, more an opportunity than an obstacle. He wanted his regiment to be the first Americans through the line, as they’d already been first across the border into Germany. Plans were to attack east from the vicinity of Buchet.

  The attack plan was starkly simple. The Third Battalion, led by veteran Lieutenant Colonel Teague, was to jump off in column of companies—that is, with one company leading the att
ack as point and the others following one by one in its path. After the penetration, the two other battalions were to follow through the same gap and then turn left and right to attack the neighboring pillboxes from the rear.

  It was important to cut a wide swath through the lines because each pillbox was close enough to its neighbors that they had overlapping fields of fire. An attack thus drew fire from the pillbox it faced directly, plus crossfire from the pillboxes on each side.

  The vulnerable part of the pillbox was its rear. The crossfire support did not reach back there, and all they had was some barbed wire and whatever rifles and machine guns could be transferred to the rear trenches. The trick was to get behind a pillbox quickly.

  The lead attack company faced the worst beating, but it was not simply going to walk into the “jaws of death.” The open ground close to the pillboxes did have some small depressions into which the infantry could duck, and a scattering of small pines and scrub brush offered some cover.

  The tanks and TDs also were to come up to within two hundred to five hundred yards of the pillboxes and plaster them with direct cannon fire against their firing apertures and steel doors. Artillery would fire hundreds of rounds onto the same targets. Many of the Germans thus would be pinned down and occupied with their own safety, and thus—it was hoped—would not be very effective against us.

  For close support, right up beside a pillbox, the infantry had two deadly weapons, flamethrowers and satchel charges. The flamethrower was operated by one man with a tank strapped to his back, The flame from the hose was huge, but the man had to get within ten to twenty yards of his target. If he could get close enough to an aperture, he could blind or suffocate those inside the pillbox. Some of the enemy might also be set on fire.

  The satchel charge had a long fuse attached to twelve pounds of TNT, six pounds in each side of a saddlelike bag. If it could be set off in one of the pillbox openings, it would kill or stun anyone inside. With both weapons, a man had to get in very close. Dangerous work, but it really paid off. Either close-in weapon could finish off a pillbox—providing the attacker could stay alive long enough to use them.

  Our splendid Third Battalion (Companies I, K, L, and M) was the one Colonel Lanham seemed to use in crucial situations, and they did not fail him this time. They absorbed their casualties and drove a small hole right through the Siegfried, and then they widened it into a wedge. The First Battalion followed close behind and then turned to the left to wipe out the pillboxes on the north from the rear. The bulk of the Third Battalion then turned right toward Brandscheid, a fortified town astride the Siegfried almost a mile to the south. Meanwhile, the Second Battalion, which included my E Company, kept straight ahead through the gap for over a half mile, then fanned out in two-company width, facing southeast across some open fields.

  The First Battalion found it rather easy to take pillboxes from the rear, and they took many prisoners as they headed northward. They advanced as far as reasonable, perhaps a thousand yards, and then consolidated their position.

  Our job in the Second Battalion was even easier. We simply set up a good defense and waited for the enemy to attack, which he failed to do, and that was a break for us.

  The Third Battalion moved smoothly southward until they hit the heavily defended village of Brandscheid and a very tough Kraut battalion. The battle raged on for the next two weeks, and Brandscheid never did fall. This little burg was circled by pillboxes, and it just wasn’t worth the cost of storming it, so Colonel Teague’s men kept plunking away at it to keep it contained.

  Meanwhile, the First Battalion was hit by a very heavy counterattack and had to fight desperately for a couple of days to keep from being overrun.

  We in the Second Battalion were alerted for a probable counterattack, but none ever materialized. We did detect a convoy of Germans moving eastward on the Sellerich road, and I led a patrol to within thirty yards of the road to confirm that they were, indeed, Jerries, but nothing was ever done to try and stop them. I found out later that we were really handicapped by lack of supplies, having only enough gas to move each vehicle in the division five miles, and we had only one day’s supply of ammunition.

  Colonel Lanham had asked division headquarters to permit him to continue the attack right on through to the Rhine, but Division did not have the supplies to support him, and we lacked support from other units for the same reason. Colonel Lanham claimed, and history proved, that no German unit was strong enough to stop us short of the Rhine. It’s hard to imagine how many lives might have been saved if our troops had reached the Rhine in September, instead of six months later in March. This assumes, of course, that neighboring divisions would have kept up with us so that we would not have been cut off. I feel sure they could have if we had all been given the supplies we needed.

  Eisenhower himself made the decision, allowing only what he called “pencillike” thrusts through the Siegfried. We can only hope this was not a major error.

  We really did not fault the quartermaster people for our supply shortages, because their lines stretched clear back to Cherbourg and they were just beginning to open up Le Havre. There were ugly rumors, however, that Patton’s Third Army was getting more than its share, sometimes even through pirating. It was also believed that the High Command favored Patton, not expecting that Patton would be stopped cold in the Metz-Nancy region, nor that Hodges’s First Army would make such tremendous progress. Too bad hindsight always seems to beat foresight.

  Meanwhile, we were still in defensive positions deep behind the Siegfried with our E Company on the extreme right. We were about a half mile east of the Siegfried, at the edge of some woods which overlooked a valley just below Sellerich. As the sun came up we had a clear view of the rolling farmland generally to our southeast. In a little while we found ourselves with what amounted to grandstand seats for a remarkable panorama of war.

  Another battalion, perhaps from the Ninetieth Division, moved into the woods about a quarter mile to our right, east of Brandscheid. Soon they began an attack eastward, directly toward Sellerich. They jumped off with two companies abreast and headed down through the valley that led to the hills around Sellerich. The rifle companies were leading, supported by tanks along each side of the Sellerich road.

  At first everything went exactly by the book as tank-infantry teams performed beautifully, wiping out pockets of Germans in their path. We could see every move and hear the continual clatter of the tanks’ machine guns and the crack of rifles. We could even hear the excited shouts of men in combat.

  Maybe it was because we were not used to being spectators, but somehow all the action seemed unreal, almost as though it were a training film. Each unit performed smoothly; they were in full control as the enemy melted away.

  Then unexpectedly German mortars and artillery, which had not been evident up to that point, suddenly came down hard on the infantry and tanks as they reached a small exposed area at a crossroad. There was no cover from the terrible barrage; the Germans knew the exact range and obviously had been waiting for the Americans to reach that point.

  The American tanks turned and raced back toward the woods to escape the slaughter, panicking the riflemen, who chased after the tanks in confusion. The retreat was an uncontrolled stampede, and a great many casualties were left where they fell. Even at our safe distance we all felt sick. It could so easily have been us.

  It had taken about forty-five minutes for the tank-infantry teams to reach the crossroads in the low ground west of Honthiem, and the entire gain had been wiped out in less than five minutes. Dead and wounded lay all over the fields, and the officers were fighting desperately to regain control of the survivors. They were now all back in the woods where the attack had begun almost an hour before. Perhaps the Germans were short on ammo, too, since they did not follow up their victory by dropping more artillery in the woods.

  The whole disheartening episode was at least a lesson in the naked power of artillery and its effective use. The Germans had des
troyed an attack without committing any of their tanks or infantry. The results could have been much worse if they had followed up with more artillery.

  Our company abruptly had some major changes in officer personnel. Our executive officer was transferred out, and the company commander, First Lieutenant Toles, who had not fully recovered from earlier wounds, stepped down to the executive position. We received a new company commander, Captain Arthur Newcomb, who had been on the battalion staff since before I had joined the outfit in July of 1944. He was one of the officers who landed with the regiment on D day. We felt lucky to get him.

  During the rest of the day our artillery forward observer (FO) managed to fire some rounds at the German positions we could see in the hills around Sellerich. He timed the shells to explode just over the heads of his targets, and the airbursts looked to be very effective. It was the first time I had seen them in use. Later in the day we watched a long line of German ambulances pick up wounded in that area. Our forward observer had to cease firing after a while, however, because he ran out of ammunition, and he was pretty disgusted.

  During the evening of the day on which we witnessed the slaughter of the other battalion in the low ground between Honthiem and Sellerich, we were alerted for an attack in that area the next morning. Then we were all told to get a good night’s rest because we would be jumping off in the attack early in the morning! How do you forget such carnage while trying to rest up to repeat it?

  At the first sign of dawn I ate a hurried K-ration breakfast, which I warmed over the wax-paper carton it came in, and then joined Captain Newcomb and the other officers for a briefing. The attack plan was for E Company to lead the way, with the other companies following in column behind us. We were to swing wide to the left and hit the Germans from the flank. At least we didn’t have to follow the same route those people had taken the day before, and we wouldn’t be surprised by Kraut artillery.