Rhinelander (Kirov Series Book 40)

by Schettler, John

  It was dogged, difficult work, and costly in terms of both lives and equipment. 702 Tank Destroyer Battalion sent Task force Ring up under Major William Ring, to provide fire support for the infantry. Sergeant Ken Oxenreider was in the lead vehicle when it took a direct hit from an enemy mortar round.

  Privates Paulk and Wadowski bailed out, seeing smoke coming from the back of the vehicle, but thankfully no one was hurt. Upon inspection, they saw that the round had toasted one of the two engines in the M10.

  “Ox,” said Wadowski, “we’ve got one engine, but that thing busted the oil pans and the water hoses are shot to hell—so is the radiator. And our left track is torn up too.”

  “Christ,” said the Sergeant. “Let’s put it in reverse and see if we can back out of here. This place is too hot.”

  Just as he finished, another round hit an M8 assault gun right on the turret and it burst into flames. They got the single engine restarted and backed away, with Sergeant Oxenreider scowling from the turret hatch, seeing the left track left behind as they went. That engine wasn’t going to run very long without oil or water, and it overheated before the M10 could get clear. A German MG 42 started firing at it from one of the bunkers, which started a private little duel.

  “Son of a bitch ,” said Ox. “Come on Wadowski, let’s blow them to hell.”

  They started firing back with their main gun, as there was nothing wrong with the turret. Round after round went in, but after the smoke cleared, the MG-42 began to saw at them again, the bullets snapping off the frontal armor of the vehicle, causing a fearful din. Red in the face, Ox kept chewing on his cigar and bawling orders to hit the bunker again. They put 27 rounds into it, but could not suppress that machinegun.

  Twenty minutes later, up came Lieutenant Lawrence Cane of the 238th Combat Engineer Battalion, and he had three dozer tanks behind him. Seeing what was going on, he pulled up next to the M10 and shouted over to Ox and his crew.

  “Save your ammo,” he said. “I’ll bury the goddamned thing. Give me three or four smoke rounds.”

  Ox complied, until the enemy bunker was shrouded in smoke. Then the three dozers growled up and began pushing the sodden ground up against the bunker, even as the enemy fired with futile anger, the rounds thudding into the big forward shovels. Eventually, they had completely covered the firing embrasures with thick, loamy earth.

  It took all day, but the lessons were learned. The Americans used all the elements against that fortified line. What could not be broken by shock, or burned with fire, might be simply smothered with earth. Once the firing ports were clotted over with earth, the three dozers went round behind the bunker and piled up mounds of heavy soil against the thick steel door. Nobody was ever getting out of that concrete bunker alive.

  Ox, Wadowski and Paulk sat on their stricken M10 until Major Ring came up, seeing what the engineers had done. “What happened here?” he asked.

  The Sergeant saluted, his cigar thick between his fingers as he did so. “Took a mortar round, sir, and we were having it out with that bunker until the engineers came up. We put smoke on them, and they buried the suckers with those dozers.”

  Ring took a look, nodding. “Good Job, Sergeant. Stay here. This is safe ground. I’ll order up a recovery vehicle to see if we can salvage your M10. There’s another twelve bunkers up ahead, so we’ll be at this all day.”

  Back on the line north of Roetgen, the 1st Battalion of the 16th RCT was going to have to learn the same lessons the hard way, by sending up one platoon after another against that fortified line. The futility of these light infantry attacks was quickly realized, and it would eventually need the addition of C-Company of the 701 Tank Battalion, and help from another company of armored infantry from the Provisional Division to make any inroads.

  All along the line, from Roetgen to the Aachen State forest, Patton’s warriors were taking a crowbar to the hard outer shell of the Third Reich. Patton had once exclaimed that neither hell not high water was going to stop him. This part was the hell.

  The high water was yet to come….

  Chapter 3

  Pre-Dawn ~ 6-AUG-44

  1st Armored had fought well on the run along the north bank of the Meuse. General Prichard’s division had bypassed Brussels to the south, dueled with the tenacious 2nd Panzer Division, and eventually drove all the way to Liege, where it helped reduce the outer forts surrounding the city. When the bridgehead had been obtained ay Vise to the north, it found itself languishing against the grey ranks of stone buildings that made up the big city of Liege.

  The division pushed on, eventually clearing the Germans from the portion of the city north and west of the Meuse, which ran right through the center. The Germans had just blown the bridges and retired behind the river. Three days later, the division was relieved by the 79th Infantry Division, and it was ordered north of Maastricht to support the crossing of the Albert Canal and Meuse River by the veteran 2nd Infantry. This was the only division that Eisenhower had left with Patton from Middleton’s Corps, the rest heading north to cover the Meuse beyond Venlo so O’Connor could maneuver with his XXX Corps again.

  Now the “Indianhead” division would team up with Old Ironsides to try and force another crossing of the Meuse in that sector. Emerging from the woodland north of Maastricht, the 2nd Infantry had captured a bridge on the Albert Canal at Lanklaer. The Meuse was another three to four kilometers east, where they found the bridge at Berg had not been blown. It had simply come down to a lack of demolitions and engineers to do the job, and the American infantry took quick advantage of that, seizing Berg, and getting several companies over yet another small canal 500 meters beyond that town.

  Prichard’s division was coming up the road to Lanklaer, and he ordered Brigadier Oren’s CCA to get as much as he could across the river that morning before dawn. They broke through the thin lines of German resistance east of Berg, and were half way to the larger town of Sittard just after sunrise, with A-Squadron, 5th Cavalry Recon leading the way. At the same time, further north on the Meuse at Maeseyck, the 2nd Division had pushed a battalion over the river, supported by the division 759th Tank Battalion, along with the 639th Tank Destroyers.

  The addition of these two battalions, now organic to every American infantry division, was just one reason they were so effective. With three full regiments of three battalions each, a US division could put 27 rifle companies into action, with three more of engineers. At any key point, it could then concentrate those two armored battalions to create the same kind of punch an armored division had. By comparison, a typical German infantry division in 1944 would field no more than six regular rifle battalions, a fusilier battalion acting at the recon element, most using bicycles now, and if they were lucky, they had a pioneer battalion or a company of Stug III’s. All together, they would put no more than 24 companies on the field against 36 in a typical US division with those attachments.

  Here, the 348th under Oberst Gumbel, was just a regiment. It had 8 Stug’s to try and hold off 45 US Shermans, and another 40 US tank destroyers. It had five companies of infantry, a single pioneer company, and some flak guns—that was it. Just south of the breakthrough, was Kurt Chill’s 85th Division, well led, but still understrength.

  This was the sort of sudden failure in the line that gave von Rundstedt fits. The infantry was understrength to begin with, in spite of the effort to rebuild their ranks in the field. His problem now was that there were no mobile reserves behind that thin line, and the terrain was fairly open—good tank country, at least for the Americans. Aside from the 16th SS Reichsführer Division, which was locked in a struggle with the US 3rd Armored west of Aachen, there were no mobile divisions on the front in this sector, and only a few scattered Stug platoons for anything resembling armor. Once an American armored division got moving, it was difficult to stop. There was no good defensive position for another 20 kilometers, where the Siegfried Line ran north from Aachen through Gielenkirchen, so that was where the German infantry would have to go.<
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  Knowing that, and getting the troops there, were two different things. Chill’s artillery, which amounted to three batteries totaling twelve 105mm guns, and three more 155’s, had set up just outside Sittard, astride the road to Gielenkirchen. They had no transport assets at all. There were no trucks, or even a single horse team, to help move them. All the guns had to be lugged by porter squads. They were now in harm’s way, and Chill ordered them to take the road south from Sittard, hoping the Americans would not go that way.

  He had set up his headquarters in the big railroad receiving and marshaling yards northeast of Maastricht. Rail lines stretched in all directions, with spurs branching off to find the river and canals to the west, where cargo could be offloaded onto river barges and sent down to Maastricht. Now he got on the telephone to OB West, the bringer of more bad news.

  “They are breaking through on the seam between my division and the 348th,” he said. “They’ll be in Sittard by noon at this rate, and you know I have no transport.”

  “Get east as best you can,” came the order. “Poppe’s 59th in on the Siegfried Line as far south as Palenberg. You move to occupy the bunkers south of there.”

  Another chaotic retreat, thought Chill, but he had become somewhat of a specialist since he had been plucked out of the Führer-Reserve and given the 85th Infantry Division in February of 1944. Knowing that his scattered battalions would all move at different rates, he had set up a system by sending his HQ staff on ahead of the withdrawal to key towns and road junctions where they would filter any stragglers, and rebuild the companies as they arrived. Today they would have a lot of work to do.

  Though he had three regiments, each one only had two battalions, and his 1054 Regiment has already seen one cut off north of the American attack. The other battalions each had one company shattered, so the regiment was split in two and would be lucky if anything made the 20 kilometer march east intact. Thankfully, a strong battalion of Fallschirmjagers was on the road heading south to Sittard that morning, and Chill wasted no time commandeering them and folding him into that shattered regiment.

  “Oberleutnant Schaefer,” he said on the radio. “Your battalion is now attached to my 1054th Regiment. I want you to occupy Sittard, and fight a delaying action there. Do whatever you can to slow down the enemy advance.”

  The retrograde movement of Chill’s division was going to mean that the Valkenburg line could no longer be held. That was the domain of General Caspar’s 48th Division, and when he got the news that Chill was withdrawing, he made similar plans of his own. So it was that the entire German defense on the line of the Meuse, from Liege north to Venlo, was now undone. The many water barriers had failed to stop the Allied tide. Now the next line to the east would have to be made of sterner stuff, stone and earth.

  It wasn’t logistics bedeviling von Rundstedt now, but a simple lack of matériel. He needed troops that could maneuver, still inwardly seething at the fact that 2nd, 116th and the Lehr Panzer Divisions were all off the line now, along with 17th SS, and five more SS Panzer Divisions. He therefore decided that the single division he did have, might be able to move behind the Scharnhorst Line once this withdrawal was completed. To make certain it did not meet with disaster, and see the Siegfried Line penetrated, he would split the division into two strong Kampfgruppes, one to hold Aachen, the second to move north behind Chill. A portion of that unit, designated KG Baum, was now moving north from Aachen, heading for Gielenkirchen.

  The heavy rains had passed by the time CCA of Old Ironsides reached Sittard, a town about 7 kilometers due east from the bridge at Berg. There they ran right into Chill’s newly conscripted Fallschirmjager Battalion. One armored task force engaged, while a second would maneuver north of the city, where they met no resistance. Behind them, CCB of the division was crossing the Meuse at Berg, intending to flank Sittard to the south through the great rail marshaling yards. Old Ironsides was creaking over the river, and ready for a romp.

  * * *

  While the 1st Armored pushed over the Meuse, its brother division from the old days in North Africa was still clawing its way forward into the Stolberg Corridor. General Harmon had taken over the division from Brooks, who was moved into V Corps as temporary commander. Known as “Old Gravel” for his gritty voice, Harmon was a no nonsense, nose to the grindstone officer who had first seen the Meuse River in 1918 during the Meuse-Argonne offensive.

  It had taken the entire day to get through the Scharnhorst Line, and now they were pushing up the road, toward a pair of small towns Walheim on the right, and Nutheim on the left. Some enterprising officer dropped the “heim” from both and joined the remainder together to make the word Walnut. So as the rains abated, the code went out on the radio to the division artillery pool: “Nutcracker, Nutcracker, let it fly!”

  Seconds later the guns opened fire, this time with the support of three more battalions of heavy artillery from the 3rd Army pool. They were going to crack that walnut, and open the way for Harmon’s CCA. Flocks of P-47’s also began to darken the skies again, ready to swoop down with their lethal support strikes. The belt of fortifications on their left was particularly thick, and Harmon wanted to get moving. He would hand it over to Kienzie’s 109th regiment of the 28th Division, and pull CCB out of that fight to follow up the main attack.

  This was the battle that had been fought in the old history by Task Forces Lovelady and Doan from 3rd Armored, but Harmon’s division drew this straw here. It was Collier’s CCA that led the way behind that heavy artillery barrage, which had practically leveled the Walnut, with both towns no more than smoking rubble. The tanks and infantry pushed on through, engaged by enemy mobile 20mm and 37mm flak guns, which gave the infantry hell, but were easy prey for the Shermans.

  Most of the Germans were driven into the next town, Schleckheim, and Collier called in air support to blast the place. Behind him, TF White was grinding through the rubble of Walheim, and pushing on up the road. The battle for the Stolberg Corridor had begun in earnest.

  Further south, TF Abrams had pushed through the thin band of woods into a broad clearing and raced the recon troop of CCB into Lammersdorf. The General was only eight hours late, reaching the town by noon, but finding it empty. 500 meters beyond the settlement, was another segment of the Scharnhorst Line, where the leading elements of KG Reidel were settling in, the Fusilier Battalion of the newly arriving 275th Division. They had come all the way up from the Eifel region, marching through the morning rains as they emerged from the dark forest. One regiment had taken the road through Woffelsbach and Steckenborn to reach Lammersdorf, while the other had humped it up to the high plateau to move through the key town of Schmidt.

  Were it not for the arrival of the 275th under Generalleutnant Hans Schmidt, Abrams would have been free and clear after reaching Lammersdorf, all the way to the General’s namesake, the town of Schmidt. It had been a case of arriving in the nick of time, another incident that jarred von Rundstedt and convinced him that hard hitting mobile reserves were now essential if he was to have any chance of holding the Westwall. The answer to his dilemma would be the arrival of two unexpected mechanized units, part of the planning and scheming Heinz Guderian had been working on for the last two months.

  * * *

  The Panzer Brigades had been an early development in this history, collecting heavy armor and concentrating those battalions to provide extra shock and power for offensives. When the decision was made to discontinue them, and send the remaining assets to the West to rebuild burned out Panzer Divisions, the 105th arrived as an empty shell. It had seven Panthers, and two companies of Panzergrenadiers left after its service in the east.

  Guderian looked at his tank rosters, seeing that the divisions chosen for refitting were already well established. All he needed to do was bring those that had been fighting up to strength, most notably, Lehr , and the 2nd Panzer Division, which had been in action since the Allied landings in the Pas-de-Calais. He had more tanks than he needed for that, and so he though
t to use the overflow to rebuild the 105th Panzer Brigade.

  His concept for the unit was to create a hard hitting ready reserve, designed for sharp counterattack, and not for defense. The report he wrote personally on the use of this formation emphasized its strengths: mobility, direct firepower, and armored protection. Composed of two battalions and a pioneer company, it was not a large force. The Panzer battalion would have four companies, each with nine Panthers, 36 in all. There would then be a PanzerJag company with 11 PzJag 4/70’s, and then a full battalion of Panzergrenadiers, with four mechanized companies, and a fifth Schwere company.

  Ten SdKfz 251/9 halftracks mounted with 75mm guns would be in that Schwere company, but aside from that, and nine 81mm mortars, the brigade had no long range artillery, which made it very unsuitable for defensive roles. In place of those guns, it was given a lavish compliment of mobile AA halftracks, with no less than 42 SdKfz 251/21 AA halftracks, with a triple barreled MG mounted, and four more Möebelwagons. The enemy was clearly seen to be the American P-47s, and the Brigade was therefore given a very strong defensive umbrella, which also increased its firepower.

  Guderian dictated that the panzer battalion should never be split up, and always operate as a unified whole to maximize it shock power. The Panzergrenadiers were never to fight as dismounted infantry, but always go into battle mounted, with all those guns and MGs blazing. What he was creating here was an armored knight, fast moving, and hard hitting. The last thing he wanted was to ever see it holding a front on defense.

  So it was that on the night of August 6th, as Harmon’s gladiators threatened to break out and surge up the Stolberg Corridor, Guderian telephoned von Rundstedt with the news that he was sending this brigade to Duren.

  “Test it in the way it was meant to be used,” he cautioned. “Do as you admonished me—jab, jab, jab. Hit and move. Let us see if we can give this Patton a bloody nose.”