Rhinelander (Kirov Series Book 40)

by Schettler, John

  So when it was reported that Lammersdorf and Rollersbroich had been “cleared,” this was the price. Those towns had sat in a clearing at the edge of the real forest. Now the Big Red 1 was pushing into the worst of it, gullies, ravines, and ridges guarded by those dense ranks of conifers, silent, unfeeling, but killing your men for every yard you advanced. One private looked around his squad one day, and realized that he did not know a single man there. Even his Sergeant had been replaced. All the buddies he had landed with near Boulogne, fought with for months, were gone. A silence came over him, and a deep cold that penetrated all the way to his soul.

  For a while, at the very edge of those deadly groves, the tanks could provide fire support. Yet they would be road bound in those thick woods, and so after that, it was all up to the infantry. If any tanks were to make it to Schmidt, the troops would first have to fight their way over a ridge line three kilometers wide, and at its far edge, right at the clearing that held that town, there was another line of defensive works that was a part of the Siegfried Line.

  General Heubner had his whole division committed, the three regiments in line abreast. He went back to Truscott’s HQ and told his Corps commander that he had to shorten his lines if he was to have any strength to make much progress. He would have to thin out in areas where there was no big push, and that would allow him to stack two regiments for the main effort.

  That was a microcosm of Patton’s entire 3rd Army at that moment. It was holding too much ground. The two offensive thrusts up the Stolberg Corridor and into the Hurtgenwald, had created shoulders on either side that had to be held. For the drive on Schmidt and the Roer Dams, three divisions had been committed. When Abrams shot his Provisional Armored Division through the Roetgen clearing, the 28th Infantry embraced all the lower Hurtgenwald on his right, while the 1st Infantry bearhugged all the upper portion of the forest. Abrams could go no farther with his tanks, but the unique structure of his division, with the entire 442nd infantry Regiment attached in addition to his normal armored infantry, would now allow him to continue the fight into those woods.

  There had been some reorganization and shuffling of divisions about the front after the meeting with Eisenhower. Patton’s five corps now had 17 divisions on the line, five more in reserve, and one scheduled to arrive. Thus far, the burden of the offensive had fallen squarely on Truscott’s II Armored Corps, with all five of its divisions committed. After Abrams’ division, the other two armored divisions, 2nd and 3rd, were in the Stolberg Corridor. 1st and 5th Armored had been transferred to Gerow’s V Corps, to try and get a push north of Aachen going. It was now doing just that, a little north of Gielenkirchen. Middleton’s VIII Corps in the north and Eddy’s XII Corps in the south each had three of their four infantry divisions on the line.

  The Army’s strategic reserve was VII Corps under Lightning Joe Collins. After its whirlwind advance up the coast, first turning the flank of the German 7th Army, then taking Le Havre and pushing on up to link up with the invasion forces, Collins and his men earned a well-deserved rest. Lucas had been taken ill and sent home to the US, so his staff was put into reserve, and 6th and 7th Armored went to Collins. His divisions were parceled out to other commands, and with those two Armored divisions as a nucleus, he would get the job of building a new corps in reserve. The first arrival was the 45th Infantry, and the 92nd and 104th had been promised to him as well. Yet doing that back behind Brussels, he was out of the fight, so locally, Patton had only those two divisions from Middleton and Eddy in reserve on his flanks (30th and 29th).

  It was a case of getting the most from his available divisions, and thus far, Truscott had not disappointed. For his part, Heubner pulled out his 18th Regiment, ordering Seitz in the 26th to thin out and extend his lines to simply hold the right shoulder of the Stolberg Corridor. Then Smith took his 18th Regiment back down the road through Rott and Roetgen, and on up through Lammersdorf. They were the ones who would get the dreadful task of trying to deliver Schmidt. When they got to the edge of the forest north of Steckenborn, the tanks of the 701st Battalion were sitting there like frozen elephants, waiting for them.

  1st Battalion of the 18th RCT tried the main road to Schmidt that morning. There were two roads into the forest in this area, the main road that led right up to Schmidt, and a kilometer to the west, a secondary road that went up to the Westwall fortifications around Hill 495, and then reached the town of Germeter.

  Two roads diverged in a grey dank wood, and both that morning equally lay. It was hard to say which was the road less traveled, or which one would make all the difference in this attack. Smith’s 18th RCT would try them both, but he would soon discover that a single regiment could not walk both roads and yet one traveler be….

  Chapter 8

  The arrival of the 9th Volksgrenadier Division on the afternoon of August 10th put an end to any thoughts General Abrams might have had of exploiting into the Monschau Gap. Guderian knew he needed to cover that area, and by so doing, permit 2nd Panzer to answer the call to arms and start moving towards its assembly area that night.

  There were plenty of other crisis points for the Germans, at Stolberg, where house to house fighting had seen the 3rd Armored take all the lower half of the town, while 2nd Armored continued to push at the flank of the defense forward of Aachen. The Reichsführer Division had been parceled out to many threatened areas, and was no longer fighting as one cohesive division. Now the biggest threat was north of Gielenkirchen where 1st Armored had plowed through the Westwall, and that was about to get worse as 5th Armored moved up to join Gerow’s corps and add fuel to that fire.

  That attack had created a small inroad after Wurm fell, penetrating another four kilometers towards Linnich on the Roer river. Neither the Wurm River, which could be easily waded by infantry, nor the Roer, which was no more than 100 feet wide, would present any obstacles to Gerow’s northern pincer. The object of both those American attacks was now Julich, but that was a long way off.

  If the Germans wanted to do what they had planned, and hedgehog around Aachen, then they were going to have to eventually pull Kurt Chill’s 85th Division off the Westwall between Kerkrade and Gielenkirchen. It would have to fold back its lines through Alsdorf and make contact with the Stolberg defenders, most likely in the woods between Eilendorf and Eschweiler. Yet it was too early for such a move, unless forced by a major breakthrough by either of the two American pincers. If that were to happen, Gerow had the best chance with 5th Armored, and in that instance, the entire line of the Roer was completely undefended between Julich and Duren.

  In spite of this, Guderian remained confident. In fact, he was inwardly hoping that Patton would be impetuous enough to order a major crossing of the Roer. While the gap between Julich and Duren would open the way to Dusseldorf and Koln on the Rhine, those bridges were wired for demolition, and he and arranged for some defense there to impede any crossing attempt. He still had two cards to play in his deadly poker game against Patton. The first was the Roer River Dams, which were also wired.

  The Schwammenauel and Urft Dams held back four billion gallons of water. The former dam was so massive, that the Germans could not gather sufficient explosives to destroy it, but a different decision had been reached. Instead of trying to actually destroy the Dams, the Germans would destroy the mechanisms that closed the sluice gates—after they opened them. This way, instead of one massive and catastrophic flood that would last perhaps three days, they would slowly flood the Roer Valley, expanding that 100 foot wide river to over a thousand feet or more, and this would persist for perhaps two long weeks.

  That was his ace in the hole, but his Joker, that all-encompassing trump card, was the massive movement of forces in the 5th and 6th Panzer Armies. So come to us, General Patton, Guderian whispered to himself. Get yourself in deep water, for soon we will be behind you.

  The movement to the assembly areas would be done only at night. In preparation, all roads to be used had been inspected and cleared, with muddy spots repaire
d, bridges tested for weight bearing, and the Traffic control “Chain Dogs” all prepositioned to coordinate things. All unit insignia symbols had been painted over, so even if any column was spotted from the air, the division it belonged to could not be identified. The insignia could be repainted at the assembly points.

  As a part of the buildup, the newly created “Volksartillery” units were being positioned, many batteries of heavy guns, and Nebelwerfers. It would be the only time in the war in the West since Operation Valkyrie that the Germans had amassed a truly potent collection of artillery, and the shells and rockets to use them. Beyond that, the quantity of armor on the front would quintuple in the next two weeks.

  All the SS Panzer Divisions had been given two battalions of four companies each, and some had an extra PanzerJag battalion added for good measure. In the Leibstandarte Division, its losses at Rees hastily replaced, Joachim Pieper would command the new Panzer Regiment, which now included 44 of the great new Königstigers . There were also companies of the new heavy 72-ton Jagdtigers in the south, a heavier concentration of the VK-Löwe-90, and the icing on that cake was KG Berg, now designated as the tip of the spear.

  So come to us, General Patton, thought Guderian. We have a big surprise waiting for you.

  * * *

  In the Hurtgenwald, 18th RCT contemplated a night attack to try and storm the bunkers, but even in daylight, the forest was so dark that you could barely see five feet in any direction. The bunkers ahead were well hidden, and had interlocking fields of fire. The engineers had not yet probed ahead to test the ground for mines. The few trails leading up the ridge were slippery, wet and muddy, making movement of supplies or evacuation of the wounded a nightmare under enemy mortar fire. At night, the Green Hell became the Black Hell, so Colonel Smith wisely thought the better of trying to clear those bunkers in the dark, and let his men sleep.

  The only place there was any fighting that night was in Stolberg, where 3rd Armored took advantage of the darkness to try and surprise the Germans and clear another block. They would do so without artillery support, but with plenty of direct fire from the tanks and tank destroyers.

  That night, the 5th Armored crossed the shallow muddied waters of the Wurm into the penetration achieved by Old Ironsides. They were over the river and into their assembly point a little after midnight, and the troops settled in for some sleep before the attack the following morning. The addition of another full armored division would be simply too much for the Germans to stop.

  5thArmored got moving before sunrise, and blew right through the southern shoulder of the penetration. They came up on some bunkers of the inner Schill Line, and started plastering them with direct fire from the tanks and assault guns, only to later find that they were not even occupied. That attack went rolling another two kilometers south to Puffendorf, which was only being held by a German flak battery, so that town was in American hands by sunrise.

  Much to the chagrin of the local Commandant at Aachen, General Schlack, he realized he had nothing in the way of any reserve to move to confront this crisis. His last battalion, from the Julich NCO School, had just been send to try and bolster the defense against the persistent push by the American 2nd Armored Division. That attack had now flanked the Aachen State Forest near the outlying town of Schonfort, which was just three kilometers from the center of Aachen.

  Patton’s plan for a double envelopment seemed to be working, only the northern pincer was still 20 kilometers from Aachen. As far as Patton was concerned, that was not a problem. He thought he could take Aachen with 2nd Armored alone., and was ordering the 35th Infantry division to adjust its lines and shift to the right so more elements of CCB could move into the real action near Schonfort.

  The breakthrough in the north, however, was now the main crisis of the hour. General Schlack called von Rundstedt to tell him he could not stop it unless he ordered the immediate withdrawal of Chill’s 85th Division. While he was reluctant to form the hedgehog so early, it seemed there was no other recourse. Even if he could have prevailed upon Guderian to release one Panzer division to master the situation, that was already too late. The divisions were all on the way to their assembly points for Rhinelander .

  With a heavy sigh, von Rundstedt picked up the telephone and spoke one word: Schweineatem .

  * * *

  “Hear anything more about the fog?” asked Sergeant Jenks.

  “No sir,” said Corporal Romano. “No more fog. Now they’re talking about the pigs.”

  “The pigs? What are they saying about them?”

  “Schweineatem— Pig’s breath. Heard that four times this morning. What are they doing over there, kissing the damn things?”

  “Pig’s breath? No, Fonzi, that’s another goddamned codeword. Hell if I know what it means, but I’ll report it anyway.”

  Once again, the Sergeant was correct. “Pigs’ Breath” was the code word for the order to assume hedgehog positions around Aachen, and that was going to be a very big deal.

  First off, it was going to unhinge the defensive line the Germans had been fighting along up until that morning. In effect, it was going to expose the Roer, including both Julich and Duren. As far as Patton would see it, all hell would be breaking loose, and he would interpret the movement as the sudden collapse of the German defense.

  That order had to be given in conjunction with a second order: Wassermann , or “Water Man.” That was the coded signal to make ready to destroy the sluice gates on the upper Roer Dams, and it would come in the nick of time, because the all Japanese American 442nd Regiment had nearly stolen the show….

  * * *

  All the previous night, a reinforced battalion of the 442nd under Lieutenant Kimura had moved like fog through that thick woodland between Woffelsbach and Rhurberg. There they did what Colonel Smith and the 18th RCT had been unwilling to order, a night attack on the pill boxes in that area. It was a sparsely defended area, the woods themselves being the greatest impediment. They descended to the narrow flow of the Roer, and managed to cross like silent wraiths in the night. Every man was waist high wet, and they took an hour to rest and dry out before proceeding up a steep ridge, nearly 500 meters high.

  Exhausted at the top, they rested again for 30 minutes before pushing another kilometer into those dark, tractless woods. The men managed to avoid wandering and getting lost by tying a rope to the lead man and then literally stringing the platoons along. At 02:00, they came across a series of bunkers, which they took an hour to scout out before Kimura ordered an attack. The startled Germans, who thought they were as far from the front as they could be, were put to rout in 90 minutes. Kimura and his men had crossed the Roer, climbed that ridge, and penetrated the Siegfried Line all in one throw. Beyond the bunkers they came to a small service road that ran along the ridge back towards Woffersbach, and also south to the Paulushof Dam.

  That night the two bolts of bad news shocked von Rundstedt, prompting him to order Pig’s Breath and Water Man. The Army would hedgehog at Aachen, and the sluice gates on the dams would be opened and then the machinery demolished. Behind that dam, was the bigger Urft Dam, which held a much greater reservoir. Soon the order would move to that facility, and the waters they had penned up would start coursing downstream, into the great reservoir held by the Schwammenauel Dam. Not being under immediate threat, it would be the last to see its sluice gate equipment destroyed.

  Lieutenant Kimura did not yet know it, but his remarkable feat had just begun the great flooding of the Roer river valley, just when Gerow’s 1st and 5th Armored were poised to make a run for Julich. It would first seem unfortunate to Patton, but he would later be thankful that his armor had not reached those objectives and found itself trapped east of the Roer. He was going to need it….

  * * *

  KG Schaefer was the first to peel off the line at Gielenkirchen, hastening southeast through Immendorf to occupy the empty bunkers in the Schill Line beyond. Next the 57th Festung MG Battalion abandoned Gielenkirchen itself. Kurt Chill hat
ed to give up his positions on the Siegfried Line, and resolved to try and hold the line from Palenberg due east towards Julich. If necessary, he would complete the withdrawal down to Alsdorf as per pre-ordained orders.

  In the south, the 89th Regiment of the 12th Volksgrenadier Division had been cut off from the rest of its division when Truscott attacked up the Stolberg Corridor. It was screening the right segment of the Aachen State Forest, and now that area had to be abandoned, as it was already being flanked by 2nd Armored. The regiment would continue to hold in the woods, and the bulk of the Reichsführer Division was repositioning on its left to screen Aachen.

  Lucky Forward, Patton’s Headquarters, was now in Maastricht, the ancient city where human remains date as far back to the Palaeolitic era, some 25,000 years ago. Some remains are even older, dating to the time of the Neanderthals. The Romans eventually came there, and built the first bridge over the Meuse, which Patton had visited earlier. There they fortified a small military camp, and built a granary, baths, and a shrine. Religion, war, commerce—those were the energies that eventually saw the city become a bustling trade center and later an industrial hub on that strategic waterway.

  Eschewing the comforts of a city hotel. Patton set up Lucky Forward in the Fortress of Saint Peter, then he set his engineers to repairing or replacing the bridges that had been damaged or destroyed. That city would now supplant Vise as the primary arterial route for his supplies, which came in by rail to a massive marshaling yard near the Dutch towns of Winterslag and Waterscheide. It was there that his Supply Officer, Muller, had stowed away 3rd Army’s fuel allocations, and where he had been hoarding cases of artillery rounds.