by Gee, Colin
The Junior Lieutenant had, without his knowledge, been instantly promoted to battery commander by the arrival of a 105mm shell on the previous incumbent and his second in command, neither of whom were recovered from the field.
0858 hrs 10th August 1945, American Counter-attack, Vicinity of Rottenbauer, Germany.
Allied Forces – 23rd Tank Battalion and 17th Armored Infantry Battalion and C Company, 92nd Cavalry Reconnaissance Battalion, all of Combat Command ‘B’, 12th US Armored Division and 2nd Battery, 573rd AAA Btn, all of US Fifteenth Army, US Twelfth Army Group.
Soviet Forces – 2nd Battalion, 179th Guards Rifle Regiment of 59th Guards Rifle Division of 34th Guards Rifle Corps of 5th Guards Army of 2nd Red Banner Central European Front.
Fig#16 - Rottenbauer,US Counter attack.
Over three hours had passed since the first shots had been fired and the 12th had made excellent progress. Plunging on nearly five miles into Soviet lines, fighting steadily and with purpose, roughly handling the 906th Rifle Regiment of 243rd Rifle Division.
Initially, the advance had been slowed by dogged resistance from 3rd/912th in Goßmannsdorf but they had been forced to withdraw to the south-west, leaving Combat Command ‘B’ to plunge further towards Würzburg.
Arriving in a blaze of fire at Winterhausen-Sommerhausen, the lead elements of the 92nd Cav, supported by a platoon of M4A3[76mm] tanks from A/23rd, made short work of a retreating mortar platoon, as well as a bridging engineer unit that was striving to make good the damage to the bridges.
Pausing only to destroy the engineers good work, CC’B’ moved forward, only to be taken under fire by Soviet anti-tank guns positioned on the east bank, losing one half-track from the 92nd and one Sherman from A/23rd.
CC ‘B’ s commander quickly switched his artillery to suppress the enemy guns whilst redirecting his forward elements temporarily away from the river line and west towards Fuchsstadt, ready to drive north on the parallel roads between Eibelstadt and Reichenberg.
Fuchsstadt was swiftly overcome, but at the cost of the cavalry company commander and his vehicle [A], victims of a panzerfaust hit as the Captain drew his vehicle to a halt, turning his back on the modest firefight behind him to concentrate on his next leap forward to Rottenbauer.
Again, the lead platoon of A/23rd swept forward, reducing some of the buildings on the edge of the town to rubble and flames with their HE shells and allowing a dismounted platoon from the 17th Armored Infantry to move into Rottenbauer and start clearing it completely.
The rest of A/23rd’s lead platoon then moved through the position, preceded by a platoon of the cavalry, immediately receiving fire from positions at the rear of the town.
C/23rd continued through towards Albertshausen before swinging north once more, running into no resistance until taken under fire from their left flank near Lindflur.
A platoon of cavalry reached the crossroads between Rottenbauer and Lindflur without any problems, as did another to the end of a cut northeast of the disputed town.
CC’B’’s commander intended nothing to escape from Rottenbauer.
As both sides sought each other out at long distance the 12th’s luck started to run out.
The limited fighter cover given them for the attack had been hugely successful and nothing had got through to harm them, until ten Shturmoviks finally arrived over the battlefield and received orders from a ground director.
Each of them carried four RS-132 rockets and four delivered them onto the tanks of C/23rd.
Two Sherman’s were destroyed in the attack [B], both burning fiercely, living up to their reputation as burners despite the new ammo stowage and fire precautions.
One commander stuck rigidly to his .50cal MG and was rewarded with noticeable hits on one of the aircraft, which limped away trailing smoke.
His joy was short-lived and he provided a lesson to all his fellow commanders on vulnerability in the turret when a rifle bullet took him in the head, fired from a hidden position around Lindflur.
The other six aircraft fell upon C Coy of the armored infantry and the juicy target of three platoons of 57mm AT guns, one from each of the 17th’s companies, waiting together under the supposed protective watch of B Coy.
The armored-infantry, well disposed and taking advantage of trees and buildings on the outskirts of Albertshausen, suffered few casualties.
The AT platoons were ravaged by rocket fire and most guns were knocked out, along with many of their trained servants.
Return fire from a pair of half-track mounted machine guns was ineffectual, encouraging the Shturmoviks to return for a strafing run.
More casualties accrued and still no rounds hit the attackers.
Two M-16’s from the 573rd had more joy and knocked an Ilyushin from the sky, causing it to crashland south of Fuchsstadt, where the crew fell victim to vengeful civilians before soldiers of the armored-infantry managed to get to them.
While C/23rd sorted themselves out the CC’B’ Commander plunged his troopers on into Rottenbauer, where sudden stiff resistance caused the set-piece deployment of a full company of armored infantrymen, complete with mortar support from the M21’s in the support company.
The rest of A/23rd put down fire on the town as they moved forward and past Rottenbauer, deploying halfway between the crossroads and the village, approximately two hundred yards north of the fighting. Professionally, they partially oriented to their rear in case Soviet forces tried to withdraw with the rest of the unit watching their front, using small but adequate hillocks as hull down cover, paying specific attention to likely ambush spots ahead.
Occasional rounds from Soviet PTRD anti-tank rifles hit home from the village they had passed, having little real effect but excellent as a distraction and for nuisance value.
Resistance in Rottenbauer was unexpectedly fierce and a platoon of tanks from B/23rd was sent forward to assist, the remainder of B Company sitting in reserve at Fuchsstadt.
Most of D/23rd’s light tanks remained at Winterhausen keeping well hidden from the anti-tank guns across the river, whilst a platoon pushed up half a mile to act as an early-warning if the Russians returned, happily screened from the same anti-tank guns by trees.
Casualties amongst the armored infantrymen were mounting as they battled house to house against quality Russian fighting men, experienced soldiers of the 59th Guards Rifle Division, or to give it the full honorific’s due, the 59th ‘Order of the Red Banner, Order of Suvurov, Order of Bogdan Khmelnitskiy’ Guards Rifle Division, named for ‘Kramatorsk’, ‘Nikopol’, ‘Budapest’ and ‘Lower Dneistr’.
They had been in almost constant combat since March 1942 and were veterans of a thousand battles against a competent and deadly foe.
Levering them out of Rottenbauer’s quaint houses was time consuming and costly, both in lives and the necessary chattels of war, as huge quantities of grenades, bazooka rounds, mortar shells, and small arms ammunition were being expended.
In open combat, the American units had a real advantage with the M1 Garand but in close combat fighting, they were rapidly acquiring a healthy respect for the capabilities of the PPSH sub-machine gun.
4th and 6th Companies of 2nd Btn, 179th Guards Rifles had quite a lot of them, accompanied by the skill and bravery to use them to full advantage.
The armored infantry push started to grind to a halt as casualties ate up their effectiveness and resolve, requiring closer support from the tankers of B/23rd, which exposure cost two more tanks knocked out by hand thrown anti-tank grenades.
In an effort to kick-start his advance again, the Colonel sent in ‘C’ Company of his armored-infantry.
A vicious fight took place in the Schloss itself, and an armored-infantry platoon seeking to establish itself there was forcefully ejected from the main building, seeking refuge in the stable block to the west side.
Before they could properly set themselves, the guardsmen threw themselves forward, taking casualties as they charged across the open yard.
/> Hand to hand combat ensued, at which the Soviets excelled, and the Americans were displaced as much by the extreme shock of the assault and violence of the gutter fight visited upon them as by the casualties they started to sustain. Many of the Russians employed sharpened spades as cleavers, slashing down in the manner of a chopper, aiming for vulnerable neck flesh where head met torso. More than one blow went the full distance, separating the parts.
Whilst most of his comrades recoiled from such bestiality, one American saw, for the first time, his natural element. Or rather the raw natural element of his tribal ancestors. Tsali Sagonegi Yona of the Aniyunwiya Tribe, named as Cherokee by the Creek Indians, named as Corporal Charley Bluebear by the US Army, and known both jokingly and seriously as Moose by his friends. The 6’5” frame had all the litheness and flexibility associated with his tribe but accompanied by a body tone, solidity and strength rarely seen in combination.
Add to the mix, courage beyond measure and then offer up an enemy disposed for close quarter fighting and the recipe for untold savagery and slaughter was in place.
What happened next was a blur of metal and blood.
Bluebear discarded his BAR and reached around his waist belt, extracting his heirlooms, ready to fight in the manner of his ancestors and with their weapons, treasured items entrusted to him by his family before he left for the war. A tomahawk and a battle knife that had last seen enemy blood in the Argonne Forest during 1918, when wielded in his father’s hands against the German. Uttering his father’s name, he plunged forward. As he struck out and killed he bellowed the battle cry his father had taught him, once for each enemy who fell under his blades.
“Tsuhnuhlahuhskim!” for which the English translation would be, “He tries, but fails.”
The US platoon officer went down, stunned by a rifle butt, the attacker shaping to plunge his bayonet deep into the senseless man while another guardsman drew back his entrenching tool, also intending to end the officer’s life.
In a blur, the Cherokee stepped over his leader and struck out, his tomahawk curving in a backhanded stroke, from right to left through the eye sockets of the rifleman, bodily detritus flying from the awful wound, closely followed by the knife slamming low and hard into the groin of the other attacker.
The screams were as much for the horror of the witnesses of both sides as they were for the pain of the wounded.
“Tsuhnuhlahuhskim!”
Bluebear stood in defence as others grabbed the unconscious officer and pulled him clear.
Another bayonet lunged but missed.
The brave Russian soldier ducked the intended hatchet blow only to have the battle knife driven powerfully and terminally into the side of his neck.
“Tsuhnuhlahuhskim!”
Gushing blood over his killer, the dying Russian stuck on the blade, pulling the Cherokee to one side with his body weight.
Another soldier with the courage of youth, that courage the young possess that makes them feel invulnerable, saw his chance and leapt forward, thrusting a bayonet forward, and penetrating the jacket of his target.
Bluebear did not notice the blade slice his flesh, although pain caused by the swift movement of it down his rib could not be ignored or overcome by his adrenalin.
He backhanded his tomahawk into the young soldiers’ neck, a glancing blow because of his lack of balance, penetrating but not enough to kill by itself. However, the blow caused swelling to such an extent that the airway virtually closed up in an instant.
Letting go of his rifle, the youth fell to the ground, not aware of Bluebear’s yelp of pain as the unsupported Nagant rifle dropped away and caused the bayonet to rip out his side.
Focussed by pain and anger for a moment, the Cherokee spared a second to stamp on the back of the head of the dying boy, breaking the neck instantly and, although not his design, releasing the soldier from the longer and more painful journey.
“Tsuhnuhlahuhskim!”
Men who had stood the rigours of a Stalingrad winter, and who had been in close combat in a score of skirmishes since, paled before the deadly whirling apparition.
An experienced Corporal managed to slice through Bluebear’s left forearm with a spade cut but received a blow to his left temple that stove his skull to his brain stem and dropped him dead to the floor.
The battle knife dropped from Bluebear’s useless fingers but the killing went on.
All around the stable block, men scrambled away from the death giver, friend and foe alike recognising the bloodlust that had overtaken him. No longer using his war cry, simply screaming as hard as his capacious lungs permitted, the Cherokee moved like lightning, slowed neither by the wounds or by the efforts he had already expended in his frenzy.
Panic is a virus that spreads at speed. Self-preservation took over and the surviving guardsmen escaped as best they could, more than one screaming in fright as they ran.
One Guards Sergeant turned and fired off every round left in his pistol unaimed, in panic and desperation, virtually closing his eyes to blot out the apparition he was running from.
Bluebear, in the act of pulling his hatchet from the head of another victim, felt the sting as two bullets hit him in the right thigh.
Anyone else would have gone down immediately but not the Indian. Bluebear managed the ten yards or so to the Sergeant who had tripped over a dead comrade in his terror, claiming his last victim of the battle when he sunk his weapon into the man’s forehead.
The remaining guardsmen could be heard shouting warnings to their comrades in the Schloss as they ran for their lives, some splashing through the moat in their blind panic, not knowing that the Devil had collapsed from exhaustion and blood loss behind them.
A shaking armoured-infantry medic quickly bandaged the bloodied thigh wound, applying a tourniquet and squeezing the femoral artery virtually shut, saving Charley Bluebear’s life.
The Soviet reverse really did not matter in the greater run of things, as the shocked American troops decided to withdraw, led by a wide-eyed Sergeant who would need treatment for his traumatic experiences until the day he died.
After the battle, reports from the survivors who escaped the day’s slaughter were incredulously assessed. Conservative estimates suggested a total of twenty-two men personally slain by Tsali Sagonegi Yona of the Aniyunwiya Tribe, named as Cherokee by the Creek Indians, named as Corporal Charley Bluebear by the US Army, and known both jokingly and seriously as Moose by his friends. Except those who witnessed that day first hand, and those enemy who escaped the stables and lived, for whom, be they Armored-Infantry or Guards, he was forever named Death.
Despite the horrors in the Schloss, the balance seemed to perceptibly change in favour of the defenders and when weary Guards retook St Josef’s Church for the third time, it did not change hands again.
One older guardsman committed himself to the attack with a liberated bazooka, wrecking one Sherman that had strayed too close, but setting fire to religious trappings hanging behind him with the unexpected back flash from the weapon.
A teenage guardsman started to bayonet the American wounded who lay bleeding on the pews, standard fare for the German war of course. A bloodied Starshina stayed his hand before he could send a third American boy to his god. The young man shrugged and moved off to a firing position in a damaged window. Within half an hour he would lie dead with his victims, slain by a jagged lump of stone blasted from the wall by a tank shell.
As the fight for the village became more and more stagnant, the US Commander began to realise that he was nearly as far as he was going to go unless more infantry support was available. One battalion from the 63rd Infantry division had been freed up as an infantry reserve and he made a case for its deployment with his command. He got one company allocated under his orders and it was immediately sent forward from its reserve area, ten miles to the rear. Until it arrived he would have to make do with what he had.
Rottenbauer was a stalemate, both sides having fought themselves to a bloo
dy draw but still killing although neither side was trying to expel the other anymore. The Russians were exhausted, having been fighting since midday on Monday.
The Americans were tired but, more than that, they were shocked at their full initiation in the rigours of modern infantry combat. The 12th’s soldiers thought they had acquired good experience against the German in 1945, even though they were already defeated and lacking in supplies.
By a coincidence, the 12th had captured Wurzburg in the first week of April 1945, some four months previously, sustaining a handful of casualties in the doing.
These Russians had first been committed to action in the hardest combat school ever known to man, in December 1942, on the Volga, at Stalingrad.
The 12th Armored’s experiences at Herrlisheim, the Colmar Pocket and subsequent romps through Southern Germany were as nothing compared to that Friday morning’s initiation ceremony in Rottenbauer, District of Würzburg.
Moreover, it was not yet complete.
It had taken over two hours to progress roughly two miles and casualties had mounted as enemy resistance stiffened, Soviet commanders drawing on years of combat experience gained at the hands of the world’s counter-attack specialists.
Ambulances and adapted jeeps from the 2nd/82nd Medical Battalion extracted the American wounded from the hellhole, unknowingly under the gaze of the observing Russian gunners who, faithful to their orders, remained silent behind their weapons.
The 179th’s Regimental Commander, Colonel T.N. Artem’yev, Hero of the Soviet Union, had stayed his hand thus far, all the time knowing his troopers in Rottenbauer were bleeding and dying in close combat with the armored infantry and tanks of this American Division. A very necessary sacrifice to persuade his enemy to orient themselves as he wanted, which his enemy had now obligingly done.