by Gerald Astor
Jordan sought out Lt. Hubert Urban, his company commander, after persuading one “bona fide case of battle fatigue” to head for the aid station. “There was a copse of woods about 200 yards ahead that extended from the rail line well into the beet field. In the middle of the woods was what appeared to be a large house with towers and solid walls. I asked the CO, ‘Why don’t we get into that house and out of this shit?’ He said, ‘Go ahead, you take it and we will follow.’
“I set the platoon off as I walked back, telling each to run to the woods. By the time I had gotten the last man started, most of the platoon was lying out in that beet field at one place or another, either cowed by the MG or tripped on beets. Most had not been hit. They saw someone else drop, so they did and stuck their noses in the mud. If you can’t see them, they can’t see you. I felt sympathy, because running on beets is like running on loosely packed bowling balls. I was running around, kicking ass, cussing, threatening, and trying not to break my ankles at the same time. Some got going, and I am sure some were shot by the Krauts for not going.”
When Jordan reached the woods, he found several German soldiers “standing in their half-dug holes, looking at me. They had guns in their hands, but they were not using them at that moment.” They surrendered on his command. As he walked through the thicket, Jordan now realized the building he had seen was beyond the stand of trees and another 200 yards of open beet fields. The large, tall structure itself struck him as more Victorian than Gothic. As he studied the sight, Sgt. James Searles, from the 1st Platoon, came up behind him. Bullets continued to spew from the castle. “I told the sergeant [whom he did not know] that I was afraid if we stood around gawking, one of those bullets would find us, so we would try for the building.”
Another rush, while bullets snapped about them, brought Jordan and Searles to a hedge that ran before a lower building. “There were about thirty or so German soldiers complete with rifles dug in along the hedge. The two nearest us stood up, and I shot one in the jaw, and the sergeant shooting over my head killed the other. The remainder threw their rifles down and [put] their hands up.”
With the prisoners, service troops who demonstrated little expertise with their weapons and a readiness to surrender, the Company K band, enlarged to twelve by the arrival of others in the platoon, barged into the courtyard. A door in the low building led to a cellar, and Jordan stashed the captives there. Rifle fire from the castle itself forced the Americans to take cover. The platoon leader saw big, heavy, wooden double doors leading into the castle. It was approached by a stone or concrete bridge with balusters over a moat.
Jordan summoned his bazooka man. “I told [Pfc. Carl V.] Sheridan to go up to the baluster and take his best shot at the hinges of the far door. When he had fired, he was to stay put until I could determine if there was a hole big enough for us to get through. He arrived at the baluster without incident, rested his bazooka on top of it, and fired. It hit where he was firing, but there was a big dust cloud covering the whole doorway, so I waited for it to clear before making a decision. At that time, Sheridan stood up, looked around at me, and said, ‘Well, are we going in?’ He was shot, dead. The door had been knocked off one hinge, but it still hung in the way, so I didn’t think it wise to attack. It is too bad, because at that time we probably had almost as many men as they did.”
Jordan had dispersed his small group around the barn area with most of them in the southern unit. For the next two days, the castle and its environs witnessed cat-and-mouse skirmishes of Germans and GIs. “Sergeant [Clarence] Myers,” said Jordan, “was having a one-man war in the east unit. They shot everything they had at him, including machine guns and panzerfausts without even scratching his bottle-bottom glasses. He would fire from the ground floor for a little while until it got too hot, and then he would go upstairs.” Myers, a former Cadillac salesman from St. Paul, Minnesota, was about thirty years old, Jordan believed. Afflicted with a ruptured eardrum, a hernia, wearing thick eyeglasses, he was a veteran of combat dating back to North Africa, “He may have been the only fearless man I ever met, indefatigable, unflappable.”
Later, when Jordan took command of the company, Myers acted as platoon leader so often that Jordan cajoled him into giving his permission to nominate him for a battlefield commission, but he flunked the physicals. At Jordan’s insistence that they either promote Myers or discharge him as physically unfit, the higher powers relented. “He took a pay cut,” said Jordan, “because lieutenants in combat made less than sergeants. Later, he lost a leg in combat but survived the war.”
“Just before dark,” said Jordan, “a kamikaze sprinted from the bridge toward a door, just north of me, where Sgt. Tom Sheldon hung out. The hobnail boots insured our attention, and he was blasted short of the door. Sheldon pulled him in and he was carrying twenty-eight hand grenades and a P38 [pistol]—a human bomb.
“About sunset on the 26th, the Germans attacked the cellar, killed our guards, and repatriated their men and captured two or more K Company men. Evan B. “Red” Thompson, the radioman, was in the cellar with Lieutenant Urban when the attack came. They had been wounded by the railroad tracks and brought in by German medics. He says that three Germans hit the door with burp guns and were about to spray the room when the medics shouted that there were only Germans and wounded Americans left.
“I undoubtedly had my head in my ass during all of this. An artillery forward observer had come into our barn with his two radiomen, and I chatted with the FO. I was sitting on a concrete feed trough, leaning against the upper half of a Dutch door, when a Schmeisser [machine pistol] was stuck in the door next to my ear and hosed down the pigpens. I fell back into the trough with my ears ringing, while bullets ricocheted around the sties like angry bees. No one received a scratch, but by the time I looked out the door, our assailant had disappeared. Obviously, this was the time of the counterattack and the reason I missed it.”
The FO, after consultation with Jordan, attempted to call in fire upon the castle, but the battery refused because the Germans and the Americans shared the same coordinates. The executive officer of Company K, 1st Lt. William L. McWatters, had followed the path taken by Jordan and crawled through a hole in the wall around the buildings. He advised the platoon leader that with Urban wounded, he was now in charge. “He said he could operate better from the woods, so he was leaving me in command of the troops in the barns until further notice.” Jordan reiterated his desire for artillery on the castle without results.
More than eighty German paratroop engineers reinforced the soldiers holding the castle. An American captain attempted to negotiate a surrender. The German officer refused but accepted a cease-fire to remove the wounded. Subsequently, a runner brought a message to Jordan that he and his fellow Americans could pull out. Artillery would then demolish the stronghold. Both sides slipped away. During the morning of 28 November, after an explosive outburst that included incendiary white phosphorus shells, two companies from the 47th’s 2d Battalion entered the smoking ruins, and the battle for Frenzerburg Castle was over.
At 2400 on the cold, black rainy night of 24 November, the V Corps dispatched the 5th Armored Division’s Combat Command R, attached to the 8th Infantry Division, into the forest with the village of Huertgen as the objective. The drive was spearheaded by Task Force Boyer (after Lt. Col. Howard Boyer), composed of elements from the 47th Armored Infantry Battalion and the 10th Tank Battalion, which left the base at Roetgen separately and were to meet on the road between Germeter and Huertgen.
After the foot soldiers left their half-tracks in the early hours of the morning, they trudged into the heavily mined forest. Weather and shells had obliterated the white tape put down by engineers to mark a safe passage, and calls for medics announced the first casualties. Enemy guns, large and small, fired into the woods. Antitank mines frustrated Task Force Boyer’s armor, and three tank commanders were victims of snipers. Small arms and mortars peppered engineers who attempted to bridge the huge craters.
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p; By early afternoon, with little or no progress achieved, only eighty of the 225 men from the 47th Infantry’s B Company remained able to fight. Medics supplemented by GIs from the antitank platoon could not cope with the volume of wounded. C Company came forward to try a flank attack through the woods, but, after only fifteen minutes amid the mines and artillery blasts, fifty of its complement lay wounded or dead. Task Force Boyer retreated.
The 8th Division’s commander, General Stroh, deeply disappointed at this most recent failure, directed Tom Cross to employ his 121st Infantry to seize Huertgen. After hearing his mission at division headquarters, Cross noted, “No doubt a tough job. Held a meeting of battalion commanders and issued instructions but new order came from commanding general, to send two battalions, one from the 121st and one from the 13th [Infantry], to attack across country.”
Wretched intelligence spawned this fiasco. According to Paul Boesch, the assistant division commander, Brig. Gen. Charles Canham, told him, “We’re getting ready to move in right now. The fact is F Company has already pushed off. I’m sure the town is empty. Air saw a long column marching away from it.”
Subsequently, two prisoners offered conflicting information. One said that about 100 dispirited men had been prevented from surrender only by a handful of officers who remained in Huertgen. Another captive warned of some 400 prepared to fight to the death. Battalion commander Lt. Col. Henry B. Kunzig chose to believe the first man who appeared to confirm the information relayed by Canham.
The renewed attack by the 2d Battalion of the 121st, in the form of Company F led by Capt. John Cliett and Company G under First Lieutenant Boesch, would leave the woods to the southwest and strike at the town. Unfortunately, the supportive artillery would lay siege only to the center of Huertgen, where the remnants of the German forces would be, leaving structures on the outskirts untouched. To hit them would mean pulling back F Company, which had already advanced to positions on the road near these buildings. Cliett and Boesch protested to Kunzig, who refused to approve any withdrawal or alteration in plans. The field telephone lines ran through Boesch’s bunker, and he listened in as Kunzig relayed the misgivings voiced by the two company commanders to Cross.
The latter adamantly refused the suggestion for a temporary pullback to allow artillery an opportunity to blast the nearby buildings. “Not one inch, he said,” recalled Boesch. “We will not move that company nor any other company back one single inch, Kunzig. I’ll hit them with every weapon we’ve got that will fire. We’ll keep it up all night and then give them a concentrated dose in the morning just before the attack.” But despite the assurances, Boesch saw the artillery fire line did not cover the suspected strong points of enemy defenses.
The scheme proceeded. Following the avalanche of ordnance on the outer reaches of Huertgen, the GIs left the cover of the trees to be greeted by a withering storm of small-arms fire from these buildings, which stopped them cold.
Cross summarized the operation: “The 1st Battalion of the 13th did not get off. The 2d Battalion, 121, got one company a few hundred yards from town but was forced to stop. Altogether too many fingers in the pie are messing with plans. This applies particularly to V Corps headquarters.” Quite possibly, Cross had refused to heed the pleas of the 2d Battalion company officers because of thunder from the upper echelons. He, of course, owed his new command to the perceived failings of his predecessor, and no one in the regimental and division hierarchy could be unaware of the, strident demands from corps and army for progress, seemingly regardless of the costs.
Cross resumed the siege of Huertgen. He directed the attached 1st Battalion of the 13th Regiment, minus its heavy weapons company, under the cover of the early hours of darkness, to approach the eastern edge of the town. However, he received erroneous information of the unit’s exact placement, and there was further error in the location of some of his other troops. As a consequence, his plan of attack was delayed for a day.
To top off the mistakes, Kunzig advised Cross that patrols would slip into Huertgen during the night “to ascertain the presence of the Boche.” Cross was agreeably surprised to hear at 9 P.M. that the town was free of Germans. “I directed E and G Companies to move in immediately and occupy the place as far as the church in the center. [I] directed the 1st Battalion of the 13th to do likewise, initially with patrols and then to send one company to the northeast side of town. This was accomplished without incident, before dawn. During the night, I was constantly advised that the town would fall like a plum, and, based on that information, I suspended the attack of the 1st Battalion but directed that it should be prepared to jump off at 0700.”
Within the town, the small group of Americans exchanged a few shots with an unidentified source and someone ignited a building with a flamethrower. Paul Boesch, leading G Company, occupied a communications ditch about 100 yards from Huertgen along with some sixty riflemen in foxholes. He had dispatched one of the patrols during the night into Huertgen. It collided with the GIs of the 13th Infantry, and a firefight among Americans was narrowly avoided. Despite the assurances given by Kunzig, Boesch’s patrol returned with confirmation of hostile forces still on the scene.
Cross scribbled in his journal, “I was informed by Lieutenant Colonel Kunzig that the town of Huertgen had come to life and that the battalion was back where it started from.”
When morning light broke, any doubts were erased by showers of shells from Huertgen. Although the eruption produced no casualties, it blew away the telephone line. With his radio inoperative, Boesch said, “We remained out of touch with the rest of the U.S. Army. Jerry alone seemed to know or even care where we were, though we could hardly appreciate the violent way in which he reacted to us.”
The members of G Company frantically tinkered with the radio to link themselves with battalion headquarters. As they repaired the apparatus, a covey of medium tanks clanked out of the woods and rumbled along the road leading into Huertgen. At that moment, the radio whispered to life, bearing orders to join the tanks in the assault.
As they readied themselves to leave, a sergeant brought word for Boesch to confer with a full colonel in a nearby house. To the captain’s astonishment, the stranger identified himself as Col. P. D. Ginder from the 2d Infantry Division. The V Corps commander, Gerow, dubious apparently about the resolve of the 8th Division, had named Ginder to take over the assault upon Huertgen. To Boesch, Ginder radiated a confidence previously absent. He directed the G Company leader, “Get with your men. Keep them moving and don’t stop. We’re going to take this town.”
Later, the 2d Division colonel bragged, “Boys, I’m the one that took this town of Huertgen.” He described the battle: “No movie script could equal the actual action in the taking of this town. Men didn’t work in any formation, they worked in teams like clockwork.”
His remark glossed over the awful fury that enveloped those immersed in the struggle. Boesch wrote, “It was a wild, terrible, awe-inspiring thing, this sweep through Huertgen. Never in my wildest imagination had I conceived that battle could be so incredibly impressive—awful, horrible, deadly, yet somehow thrilling, exhilarating. Now the fight for Huertgen was at its wildest. We dashed, struggled from one building to another shooting, bayoneting, clubbing. Hand grenades roared, rifles cracked—buildings to the left and right burned with acrid smoke. Dust, smoke, and powder filled our lungs, making us cough, spit. Automatic weapons chattered hoarsely, while throats of mortars and artillery disgorged deafening explosions. The wounded and the dead—men in the uniforms of both sides—lay in grotesque positions at every turn. From many the blood still flowed.”
In describing the ultimate success, Cross wrote, “This was accomplished by putting platoons of tanks carrying infantry in the lead, followed by tank destroyers. After furious fighting, captured the place, including 350 prisoners. Losses were heavy. At nightfall, the 1st and 2d Battalion in town, the 1st Battalion, 13th, on its objective, and the regiment disposed for attack to the south.”
As a
radio operator in a forward crew for the 56th Field Artillery, supporting the 121st Infantry, Arthur Wagenseil occupied a position on the outskirts of Huertgen. “On the way up we saw many bodies, and the ground was saturated with blood. We stopped to examine some of the dead. There were two very young, younger than I—I was twenty-five. One had the top of his head blown off and you could see the entire brain. We noticed a shoulder patch on the overcoats, from the Air Corps. Those poor guys never had a chance. They didn’t even have time to get the 8th Division patch on and were killed. They probably never had infantry training. I was so angry I could have cried, to think that the army threw these poor guys into the Huertgen Forest. [It is possible those with Air Corps insignia belonged to an observation team.]
“The Germans were very stubborn about the town. We were on top of a ridge and the Germans on the bottom. We tried three jumpoffs and couldn’t make it down to the bottom. The Germans tried three times to come up the ridge and they were repulsed. It was a stalemate for a while.”
Among those from the 8th Division who moved into Huertgen was Ernest Carlson, radio operator for an 81mm mortar unit. “We got into a basement of a house. It was a blessing to be out of foxholes for awhile. The church in Huertgen was used as a first-aid station. You could not count the number of Keystone Division [28th] helmets that were stacked up in the basement. When it began to thaw, we found German bodies stuffed into basement windows for blackout purposes. It enabled them to burn candles in the basement.”
While the American losses mounted at an unprecedented scale compared to previous campaigns, the offensives severely weakened the enemy. Hubert Gees, the German company runner in the 275th Division, had been fighting off the Americans from the first week of October. In his recollections of that period, he noted, “strong artillery fire surprised us once again. Bright red clouds of phosphorus shells darkened the cellar space. Infantry fire commenced from the front lines 300 meters away … north of the minefield Wilde Sau, a defense was made against the infantry attack. South of the minefield, a unit of the 12th Regiment had broken through our second company up the main road. The remainder of our company, consisting of only eighteen soldiers, had formed a small bridgehead before the mine-free side road around the company command post.