Rhinelander (Kirov Series Book 40)

by Schettler, John

  Gerow, formerly with Bradley’s 2nd Army, was now on the phone wanting instructions.

  “I’m through the Siegfried Line,” he said. Where do you want me to go? Their whole front is collapsing here, and they just pulled out of Gielenkirchen.”

  Patton was quick to respond.

  “Have 4th Infantry push on them and then extend its flank as far east towards the Roer as possible. 1st Armored should take Linnich, and the 5th can roll right on into Julich. Let me know the moment you get there.”

  The news about the German demolition on the upper Roer had not yet reached the headquarters, so Patton was going to get himself a bridgehead over the Roer, or so he believed. Linnich would fall within the hour, and Oliver’s 5th Armored was raging towards Julich. On that one morning, the small penetration tripled in size, nearly as deep as the Stolberg Salient, which had taken two weeks to establish.

  “Hot damn,” said Patton, rubbing his hands together. “Now we’re cooking with gas. Bug Oliver should be in Julich by noon today. We’re on the Roer.”

  “Well,” said his Chief of Staff, Gay, “don’t get any ideas about crossing that river. Have a look at this.”

  He handed Patton a single white sheet of paper.

  Chapter 9

  “Goddammit!” Patton looked at the message, a bold warning in all caps. The Germans had begun to open the floodgates on all the Roer River dams. “Just when we were kicking the hell out of those Nazi sons-of -bitches, they go and call a time out.”

  “Saved by the bell,” said Gay. “Actually, it was a battalion of the 442nd that triggered this. Those Japanese boys are one intrepid lot. They came within a hair’s width of seizing one of those dams. I suppose that’s what put the fear of the Lord into the Germans.”

  “Alright,” said Patton. “Get word out to Oliver and the rest. Nobody crosses the Roer, and any division that presently has a bridgehead should withdraw west of the river. This is going to set us back two full weeks, and here I have 5th Armored poised to take Julich.”

  “They got there,” said Gay, “but there’s a battalion of the Reichsführer Division in the city. The Germans are already pulling back anything they have west of the Roer—except at Aachen. Looks like they’re going to dig in and wait this out.”

  “Oh, they’ll fight for Aachen,” said Patton. “That’s where the First Reich was born, and old Charlemagne’s tomb is right there in the cathedral. Well, if nothing else, this will give us a little time to lay in supplies. The troops have been at it for two weeks, particularly Truscott. His corps could use a rest. Get hold of Eddy. Tell him to bring up his reserve division.”

  “The 29th sir?”

  “Good enough. We’ll sent it in to help finish up this business in the Hurtgen Forest. I won’t be crossing the Roer until September, but I won’t be sitting on my thumbs here either. We’ll clear that forest, and be ready to move on through Duren when this high water subsides. In the meantime, we still have Aachen to deal with as well. Where’s Collins?”

  “Sir? VII Corps is still west of Brussels. Collins is waiting to receive the 104th and 92nd. Ike approved the transfer last week.”

  “What about 10th Armored?”

  “They’re ready, sir, fitted out after a month of training with 11th Armored. But Lee says he can’t support all these armored divisions. In fact, he says he can barely authorize supply requisitions for the two armored divisions Collins already has.”

  Patton frowned. “Send Muller out there,” he said. “Tell him to scare up fuel and ammunition for 10th Armored, and to make sure the 6th and 7th under Collins have whatever they need.”

  “Sir, with those floodgates opened, do we still want Schmidt?”

  “Why not?” Patton looked at the map. “That’s good high ground up there. That ridge commands that whole segment of the forest. The 18th RCT will continue to push for Schmidt, and I’ll back them up with a regiment from the 29th when it arrives.”

  “Very good, sir. I’ll see that these orders go out tonight.”

  * * *

  The destruction of those sluice gates and the flooding of the Roer would take time. 24 hours after the demolitions, the waters were beginning to rise downstream as far as Duren. The 442nd, the unit that had tipped the first domino, had made a hasty retreat back over the upper Roer. Now the Dams meant nothing, but their herculean effort had forced the Germans to play their hand. A clock was now ticking on that flood, forcing Patton to forsake the distant glittering prize of a bridge over the Rhine and instead focus his attention on two more mundane objectives.

  It was clear that the Germans meant to hold on to Aachen for as long as possible. A pocket was slowly forming, and the flooding of the Roer was now buying the Germans the valuable time they needed to man that line with Volksgrenadiers, and complete the assembly of their divisions for Operation Rhinelander. It was clearly impossible for the attack to proceed until that flooding had run its course, and the time would be used to bring up the necessary supplies behind the troops, brief officers, and complete final planning.

  For Patton it was now to be a battle of attrition, clearing Aachen and the Hurtgen Forest as pre-requisites to the next stage of his advance. In the next two weeks, the action on the front would be centered on two mini Volgograds, Aachen in the north, Metz in the south, for Montgomery had also determined that he could not leave Metz in his rear if he really wanted to drive on the Saarland.

  After ordering all divisions to the west bank of the Roer, Patton sent orders for 1st and 5th Armored to reorient their drive south to complete the isolation of Aachen. Now the flooding river would protect their left flank, allowing them to concentrate good combat power forward to sustain that drive. The town of Eschweiler would now be threatened from the north as Bug Oliver’s division advanced, and from the south with continued pressure from 3rd Armored. The Germans would have no choice other than to yield the city, and fall back towards the Schill Line fortifications that ran in a thick belt behind Aachen.

  The ‘Aachen Pocket’ was slowly forming, only this time it was by design. It would contain the greater part of the Reichsführer Division, Kurt Chill’s 85th, Caspar’s 48th, the crack 6th Fallschirmjager Regiment, 89th Regiment from 12th Volksgrenadiers, a small slice of the 59th Division, four Fortress MG Battalions and some mobile flak units—about 35,000 men in all.

  Patton would eye the situation map hungrily, seeing that the roads to Duren were barely guarded, and he might have both that bridgehead city as well as Julich if not for those ‘damn dams.’ But Guderian was already thinking two or three moves ahead. The 26th Volksgrenadier Division had left its post on the Rhine to join the front between Linnich and Julich, taking up positions behind the rising waters of the Roer. Now General Denkert’s 3rd Panzergrenadier Division was already moving in two long columns toward the Hambach Forest, about eight to ten kilometers north of Duren. They would provide the defense there, intending to link up with the beleaguered 105th Panzer Brigade.

  US Engineers were already hard at work, planning the eventual crossing of the Roer after the flood abated. While normally only two feet deep and 80 to 100 feet wide, the river would expand to over 5000 feet wide in places, to depths over seven feet. Estimates of the size of the reservoirs being released to cause this flood told the engineers that no one was going to be crossing that river for at least two weeks. So a tentative date was sent for the crossing operation, preferably a little before the river had returned to normal, so as to retain some element of surprise. The date chosen was September 1st, over five months before that crossing was made in the real history. Yet the best laid plans of mice and man have often gone awry, and the Germans also had business on that day, whether the river was ready or not.

  German engineers were also planning, even as all the bridging equipment and assault boats they could muster were quietly being staged in the assembly areas. There were two rivers to get over in the north, the Meuse being some 500 feet wide. They estimated that by the start date for Rhinelander , the Roer would
have subsided to a width between 300 and 350 feet, with a five mile per hour current. It would be crossed at several places, at Roermond itself, near Melick and St. Odilienberg and between Waterscheid and Herkenbosch. That would get 1st and 2nd SS over the river. The 9th and 10th SS under Willi Bittrich would be the only units to cross the Meuse, and they would do so north of Roermond.

  So water was on the minds of all the engineers and planners, even while Patton slowly began to compress the perimeter around Aachen, husbanding artillery behind the siege of that city. His two pincers had already met at Eschweiler, and the circle was complete, but soon the hunter would become the hunted, as the Germans attempted the far grander scheme of bagging the better part of Patton’s entire 3rd Army.

  * * *

  Hell on Wheels reached the eastern edge of Aachen on the afternoon of August 16th. Mustering at the town of Brand, it had taken three days to advance an equal number of kilometers. There they found the city lay under low clouds and haze, heavy on the dull brown rooftops. At intervals, the spires of a church or Cathedral reached up into the gloom.

  The fight for the city would be a three dimensional battle, and the Americans soon found they had to blast the German MG positions out of the upper floors of the buildings first. Then, with that fire neutralized, the tanks would rumble up and blow a hole in the brick or wood walls, big enough for the infantry to get inside the ground floors, where the slow and painful process of clearing them would become a room to room fight.

  The German Army knew well how to fight in cities, and in rubble, after long experience in Russia, but the American GI’s were quick studies, and clever at improvising. Instead of calling on their big 155mm SPGs from ten kilometers back. They asked to have them roll right on in behind the Shermans. Once in the city, they would use them like heavy assault guns, for point blank fire on stubbornly defended buildings.

  Patton had a good number of the older M12 155mm SPG, and even more of the newer M40 155s. The British loved them, dubbing them the “Cardinals” in the line of priestly names they gave to their self-propelled artillery (Deacon, Priest, Bishop, Sexton). The guns became known as the Blockbusters by the GI’s that relied on them, but most soon earned special nicknames, like Adolf’s Assassin, Choo-Choo-Bama, Doorknocker, King Kong or simply the Babe, after the famous “Sultan of Swat.” With that kind of clout at hand for the city fight, it’s easy to understand how the maxim “knock ‘em all down” got circulated among the men. The US was doing exactly that—blasting the lower floor walls to pieces, which then collapsed the upper floors into a pile of smoking rubble, killing or maiming anyone there. Then they had to take the fight into the cellars.

  Aachen would have been first on the list of German cities, were it not for the city of Aach, in Baden-Würtemburg. As far as any major metropolitan city, it was certainly first up for the GIs. They brought up those big guns, engineers, demolition charges, flame throwers, and they were going to slash, burn, and break anything in front of them. In the real history, General Schwerin had tried to negotiate the surrender of the city to avoid that kind of destruction and carnage, but Schwerin, and his 116th Panzer Division, were not there. Instead they were mustering in the woods, mid-way between Louvain and Liege, as one of the war horses lined up in that sector by Manteuffel’s and his 6th Panzer Army.

  1st, 2nd, and 3rd Armored Divisions were now all side by side, slowly grinding towards Aachen. 5th Armored had moved southeast from Eschweiler, around the northernmost fringe of the Hurtgenwald on the road to Duren. There they found that the Germans had sent their recon battalion, and a battalion of Panzergrenadiers across the river before the flooding started, to help prevent just such a move. Word went up to Gerow that a new German division had been identified, the 3rd Panzergrenadiers.

  With superb air support, even in a gathering light rain, the ‘Victory Division’ lived up to its name and punched through that line to open the road to Duren. Patton had seen that the Hurtgen Forest was a far greater obstacle than he first believed. 1st Infantry had finally washed up against the heart of the German defense there on the Westwall, and was stopped cold, so if he couldn’t go through the forest, he resolved to send Bug Oliver’s division behind it to see what the Germans would do. When the Germans starting lobbing artillery and heavy mortar fire over the river from Duren, he realized where they rest of that new division must be.

  Through all this time, only one man began to get restless on the Allied side of these operations, the balding, bespeckled Colonel Oscar W. Koch. Considered one of the best intelligence officers in the Army, Koch had received numerous reports of “a lot of noise” coming from the enemy side of the line, first up behind Roermond, and later well south, along the Vesdre River, which flowed towards Liege between that city and Verviers.

  With the Roer flooding near Roermond, he was not immediately concerned, but soon other reports from the south got his attention, so much so that he went to see Patton’s Chief of Staff.

  “General, there’s trouble afoot,” he said. “Take a look at this. The 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division is back on the line again, in the woods just east of Seraing—right below Liege.”

  “What’s so surprising about that? They needed rest, now they’re back.”

  “Well, General,” said Koch. “This lost horse brought back some friends. We’re not exactly sure just what’s up there. Have a look at these recon photos the fly boys delivered yesterday. There’s heavy Armor in that photo, yet for the life of me, nobody can seem to identify those tanks. They aren’t Tigers or those big new Lions, but they’re certainly in the same class. If you want my bet on it, I’d say it was those heavy tanks that first showed up in the Pas-de-Calais.”

  “But we haven’t seen anything like them for months. The last time we spotted those monsters they were well south of Paris.”

  “That’s what’s got me worried. We think those tanks are a limited run model, but when they show up on the line the Germans mean business. Now they know we have no plans to attack in that sector. All we’ve done there for weeks is exchange mortar rounds. So why in hell would they be sending this hot shot heavy tank battalion to a place like that?”

  “You think they’re going to attack?”

  “Sure looks that way to me. There’s been reports of a lot of traffic on their land lines—a lot of codewords that ULTRA says they never heard of. Word is there’s been rumbling behind that front for the last seven days. Troops have been hearing things at night—and only at night. The Krauts are forward of the Vesdre River, and that’s another thing that’s been bothering me. They ought to be safe and happy on the south bank, but these latest reports say they continue to hold positions north of the river—to a depth of 500 meters to a kilometer, from Fort Chaudfontain all the way east to Nessonvaux. That’s an eight kilometer front. Now… what’s the goddamn 245th German Infantry Division doing with that? That division is second tier—not even rated for offensive operations. Why are they sticking their necks out like that? My guess is that there’s something building up behind them, and I don’t just mean the return of the 17th SS.”

  “I see what you mean,” said Gay. “General, get what you have—maps, photos, signals intercepts, the works. I’ll see if I can get a meeting with Patton. And while you’re at it, see if you can tell me where these divisions are.”

  Gay handed Koch the list he had made, carried in his jacket pocket now for some weeks. It was all the Panzer divisions that had suddenly gone missing on the front….

  Part IV

  Rhinelander

  “ St. Agnes! Ah! it is St. Agnes' Eve—

  Yet men will murder upon holy days:

  Thou must hold water in a witch's sieve,

  And be liege-lord of all the Elves and Fays,

  To venture so…”

  —John Keats

  Chapter 10

  20-AUG-1944

  Patton knew Koch well enough to pay attention when he spoke up like this. Koch was good at intelligence work, as good as they came—so good tha
t the men had come to call him “Patton’s Oracle.” He was at the root and stem of all the reports that came in through “Patton’s Household Cavalry,” but he also had his hands on all the aerial recon photos, information provided by Allied sympathizers inside Germany, signals traffic, unit patrol reports, the lot of it. He had been able to read off what they Germans threw at Patton in Operation Valkyrie, chapter and verse, now he seemed nervous, even edgy.

  “General,” he said. “I ordered a lot of night fighter recon runs over German marshalling yards, to see if we could find where the divisions on Hap Gay’s list are these days. In all this time, while we kicked our way through the Siegfried Line and damn near crossed the Roer before they opened those sluice gates, they had, by my present count, at least nine top tier Panzer Divisions off the line, and they didn’t lift a finger to stop us. Why? Even during Comet and Starfall , they operated only with the five reserve divisions they had on the line—Lehr , 16th and 17th SS, Herman Goring and 2nd Panzer. Then after we pushed them all the way to Liege and the Meuse, 17th SS and the 2nd Panzer pulled a disappearing act.”

  “Didn’t they throw 1st SS at the British up north?”

  “Yes sir, I had a line on that division, and I warned O’Connor about it too. Then it disappeared, two weeks ago, probably to refit and take on replacements after that action. Now they’ve even pulled the Lehr and Brandenburg Divisions off the line, and they’re relying on those tough Paras to hold the Emmerich Bridgehead.”

  “Well, it may not be much of a mystery,” said Patton. “We kicked the hell out of them, that’s all.”

  “Yes sir, but the 116th, 7th, and now all five of the SS Divisions, have had months to refit. Unless our bombers have hit every factory in Germany, they should have been rebuilt fairly quickly. The thing is this, sir. They had the means to put a lot more hurt on Operation Starfall , and they didn’t use it. And here, they had the means to throw three or four panzer divisions into this fight for Aachen, and they’re standing pat. I don’t like it.”