Several of the Germans made a break for it. “One ran behind a crashed glider that lay behind the house,” recalled Funk. “All I could see was his feet, but I started firing my M-1 through the glider at a height that I thought should be about belt high. After a few rounds I saw him topple over.”
“That’s for Burton!” Funk yelled.
The patrol flushed the Germans out, capturing a wounded Soldat and taking a few “suspicious looking” civilians into custody. They took one of Burton’s dog tags and made note of his body’s location for later retrieval. Leaving the corpse behind, they headed back to report but found the unit had already pulled out for the attack.
• • •
Lieutenant Dean Swem’s platoon of Thirteeners still occupied their positions overlooking the Issel River. They’d been kept on their toes all night. Their company had captured sixty-three enemy POWs and killed an undetermined number of Germans trying to escape over the Issel. They continued to eye the patch of woods suspected of containing the Germans who’d fled yesterday’s shoot-out. Maybe they were still in there, maybe they weren’t. Everyone kept his head down just in case.
Sergeant Bob Cull approached Swem and pointed to a crashed British glider. “I think I see a jeep sticking out of the end of the ramp inside,” he said.
Both men knew what a prize that could be. Parachute infantry regiments had only 15 of them compared to the 149 allocated to “leg” regiments. Getting their hands on a jeep would give them much-needed transportation.
Cull was confident he could get the jeep back to their lines.
“Like hell you will,” said Swem, “you’ll get your ass shot off for sure.”
But Cull was adamant; he needed that jeep to haul supplies.
“OK,” agreed Swem, “we’ll give you some covering fire to keep any Krauts down. But you haul your ass across that clearing like a turpentined cat.”
Cull did just that, blitzing across the field and into the British glider. He had to work his way around several dead Tommies, but soon had the jeep out. Cull tore across the field as the platoon fired into the wood line. Screeching to a halt with his arms raised in triumph, Cull announced, “Now we’ve got it made!”
They had it made for just a few hours.
Word of the jeep soon spread, and Coutts’ headquarters requested it be delivered for use by the staff. Cull was incensed. He’d risked his neck to steal the jeep from the British—it was a fortune of war. He ignored multiple orders to hand it over. Finally, an officer dispatched someone to fetch it.
“It will be ready, all right,” mumbled Cull.
Swem, who empathized with Cull’s disgust, stood by as Cull popped the jeep’s hood and heaved the distributor cap as far as he could. Next, Cull slashed all four tires with this bayonet and stabbed the spare for good measure.
“Now they can have the goddam thing!” declared Cull. If he couldn’t keep his booty, certainly no brass hat would get it.
• • •
John Chester and his fellow artillerymen had a restless night as well. The sounds of battle had ebbed and flowed all around them, and at 02:00, a small German patrol had blundered into their perimeter. A spatter of carbine fire dispersed the enemy, who fled leaving three wounded behind.
The 466th’s batteries rotated their guns to support the day’s eastern advance after Miller’s battalion of Thirteeners occupied the main Diersfordt road. Unless the situation was dire, fire support missions would continue to be serviced by the British howitzers back across the Rhine, allowing the airborne artillery units to conserve their shells. By one o’clock that afternoon, Chester’s battalion had all fifteen of their howitzers ready for action, the only airborne battalion in the division to have all its tubes in firing order.
The Thirteeners moved forward later that afternoon. Two platoons from Coutts’ 3rd Battalion crossed the Issel, seizing a section of woods that bordered the autobahn. While some troopers used the lone footbridge, most opted to wade across the four-foot-deep river with their rifles lifted over their heads. Scrambling up the far bank, the paratroopers occupied the wood line and started shoveling out their fighting positions.
Initial opposition was light, but they soon came under fire from a group of occupied houses. Incoming artillery rounds silenced the German machine gunner, set the houses on fire, and scattered the defenders. The men took advantage of the lull to organize a shuttle system and passed much-needed ammo crates across the river.
It didn’t take long for German mortars and artillery to retaliate. Two hundred–odd rounds crashed in, methodically ranging back and forth across the American lines. The retreating Germans had pre-plotted the target for their gun crews; thirty-two more of Coutts’ troopers were cut down in the barrage.
• • •
Closer to Bridge 10, Texan Lendy McDonald had spent the night in a foxhole with two buddies wrapped in a parachute for warmth and munching on ham and cheese from their K-rations. The trio, reflecting on their time in Belgium, were grateful: “No snow, no ice, no howling wind.” But their reverie couldn’t last, and soon they, along with the rest of Able Company, were on the move.
They were to occupy LONDON between 3rd Battalion and the glider riders at Bridge 10. Having crossed the Issel, the troopers went to ground under bursts of ripping German fire from at least two entrenched machine guns. Large explosions from a dreaded 88 mixed with fountains of enemy mortar shells. The troopers fanned out and returned fire. The mortar squad couldn’t unlimber their tube due to the trees; the overhead branches would detonate the projectiles.
Not far from McDonald, Ben Scherer’s squad was trying to get a bead on the machine gun emplacements. Scherer was close to Hal Leathers, who stuck his head up to take a peek. He jerked once and slumped back down, dead with a bullet through his forehead. Scherer was next. An explosion peppered his left thigh, torso, and shoulder with shrapnel. He limped back to a house they’d passed to wait for medical help.
Nodding in and out of consciousness, Scherer awoke to find two Germans in their field-gray uniforms staring at him from the door. He recalled, “I knew that if I reached for my carbine, they may have reacted. One could speak some broken English and I could speak some broken French, so we could communicate. They took my watch and some money and my carbine. They put one of their own sulfa-type packs on my hip area and left.”
Back near the autobahn the two stubborn German machine gun crews held up the advance for hours. It took several lucky artillery rounds from across the Rhine to finally destroy the bunkers.
Darkness caught up to the Thirteeners before all of them made it to LONDON. Lendy McDonald’s platoon came to a large field through which they’d have to pass to get to the autobahn. They were assessing their options when the radio crackled with orders for them to clear the far woods and keep moving. McDonald didn’t like the look of it, nor did his scouts.
One of McDonald’s buddies understood his leadership burden: “A squad leader who makes a wrong decision would lose men, men who trusted him. . . . [They] test their expertise in immediate action; at the point of the triangle, the chances are that the [squad] leader will make no more than one mistake.” McDonald thought it would be folly to cross the field as “it was too dark with poor visibility and with no idea of what we might run into, we should wait until morning.”
His men agreed and so did their platoon leader, Lieutenant Beckett, who was concerned they’d shoot one another in the chaos of a firefight; he decided to hold tight.
The radio again repeated the order to keep moving. Beckett informed the caller of his decision and told him to relay the message.
The radio was insistent: cross the field and clear the woods on the other side.
Beckett grabbed the handset, identified himself, and said, “You tell General Miley that if he wants those woods cleared tonight, he better hurry on down here.” There was no reply.
05:15. Drop Zone W—The Ruffians. Sunday, March 25, 1945.
The Ruffians’ day started with the di
sconcerting sound of tracked vehicles clanking toward one of their roadblocks. Alarm gave way to relief as the morning’s gray gloom revealed olive-drab American half-tracks crawling up the dirt road. As one of the embedded reporters put it, the sight of half-tracks towing M5 three-inch anti-tank guns was “as welcome as Betty Grable in a bubble bath.” The gun teams of the 605th Tank Destroyer Battalion had crossed the Rhine downstream near Xanten on barges at two o’clock that morning. The first twelve guns were assigned to the Ruffians, each of Raff’s battalions getting four. The other twenty-four guns would cross later in the day via the completed floating pontoon bridge and would then fan out to Miley’s other combat teams.
The M5s fired a three-inch (or 76.2mm) shell and weren’t ideal for anti-tank warfare. Weighing in at close to 5,000 pounds, the gun was heavy and unwieldy, making it a beast to manhandle into position and slow to traverse around against moving targets. These lumbering weapons did, however, provide infantry with a substantial bunker-busting capability. On the move, though, the guns had to leapfrog one another so they could be well positioned for fire support and keep up with the advancing GIs.
Despite assault crossings on either flank of the 17th Airborne’s sector, formal contact had yet to be made with any ground troops. At 10:50 the British started another wave of crossings just south of the Ruffians’ perimeter. Raff sent a patrol out to the Rhine to confirm the landings and establish contact. Moving in a wedge formation, the patrol threaded through the protective cover of the Diersfordt Forest toward the river, trudging over plowed fields and tributaries on their way to meet the British. The patrol radioed back at 12:50, reporting that the British had landed in six assault boats and contact had officially been made with Montgomery’s 21 Army Group.
After getting the report, Raff ordered his regiment to attack toward the east. With one battalion on their left flank and another on the right, the Ruffians would cut across the open fields before hitting the Wesel railroad tracks.
The approaches to Wesel were cluttered with pockets of die-hard snipers and machine gunners fighting a lost cause. And die hard they did.
The Ruffians to the rear of the formation hoped their platoon leaders would let the situation develop before rushing them into the attack. The veterans knew it was often best to size up the situation, to understand what they were up against, before reacting. Moving by bounds, leapfrogging one another, and using a base of fire to fix the enemy until they fled, surrendered, or died was effective; but it was also exhausting and took time to re-form the unit. The men wanted their leaders to assess and observe, then leverage the best weapon at their disposal to destroy the enemy—if that meant an infantry assault, so be it; they would do it. That was the job.
Branigan’s Bastards tagged along. They’d Frankensteined together a working howitzer from parts of the three that had been damaged during the drop, giving them ten tubes for supporting fire. They moved their guns with the help of five jeeps and five horse-drawn carts they’d collected from farmers. The crews shuttled the howitzers forward, firing them to support Raff’s infantry as they moved east. The plan worked. The Bastards fired four “fire missions,” lobbing 279 high-explosive 75mm rounds to help the Ruffians take LONDON.
Thad Blanchard’s company trudged along in a column behind Baker Company on Raff’s right flank. They split up when they crossed the railroad tracks about a mile from Wesel. Blanchard’s squad shifted up to the left flank.
It was getting dark by the time they approached the outskirts of Wesel. Muzzle flashes and the ubiquitous buzz saw of a heavy machine gun greeted the lead squad. Tracers from the Americans’ machine guns zipped back to ricochet and whine off the houses, keeping the Germans’ heads down while the big guns were brought up. It took the combined firepower of the Ruffians and the Bastards’ pack howitzers to reduce the resistance.
The paratroopers had trouble maintaining contact with one another in the dark. As they padded through the decimated town, puffs of chalky dust coated their jump boots. One of the troopers noted, “The city had been pulverized and there were absolutely no streets whatsoever, making progress difficult because of the mounds of rubble and craters.”
When the Ruffians crossed over the canal to take up their positions, the glider riders shifted north, reducing the size of their front by several hundred yards. They held Bridge 3, while the paratroopers passed over Bridges 1 and 2 to push out to LONDON.
Thad Blanchard’s worn-out troopers stumbled into the phase line after eleven hours of slow movement. They were famished, not having eaten since they landed. They’d have a few hours of rest before moving out again at daylight to occupy the next phase line, NEW YORK.
Thirty minutes before the clock ushered in March 26, Miley’s command post broadcasted over the division’s radio net: “Organized resistance has now ceased.”
Approaching Midnight. Issel River: Bridges 6 and 10. Sunday, March 25, 1945.
If organized resistance had ceased, no one had bothered to inform the Germans massing to attack Bridge 10. Using nightfall to their advantage, they again pressed an attack forward. Supported by tanks and self-propelled guns, they successfully crossed over the autobahn and pushed through the thinly defended lines held by Frank Dillon’s company.
The Germans barreling toward the bridge had come within seventy-five yards of crossing it when the glider riders leveled every weapon in their arsenal to repel them: massed artillery barrages, mortars, machine guns, and rifles.
A second wave from Kampfgruppe Karst wedged into the line between the Thirteeners and the gap created by the first assault. They were too close to repel with artillery, and one of the glider riders’ platoons was almost enveloped by the swarm. A quick deployment of reserves saved them. At Bridge 6, the German attack forced troopers to abandon the far bank, scrambling back over a makeshift bridge of wagons they’d pushed into the river to ease their crossing earlier in the day.
The Germans regrouped and attacked Bridge 10 multiple times. Artillery fire saved the day—again. Forward observers called in salvos at “danger close” range all across the front to keep the hordes at bay. By the next morning, having committed all hands, the battalion’s reserve consisted of a mere eight commo men, five enlisted staffers, and three officers.
CHAPTER 20
“THIS IS A PURSUIT”
Wesel, Germany. Monday, March 26, 1945.
Miley’s objective for Monday was Phase Line NEW YORK: a line on the map that started in the British Airborne’s sector at Ringenberg and arced through Brünen before ending at the banks of the Rhine, seven miles east of Wesel. The plan called for the 6th Airborne to swing north of the Americans as they made another leap due east.
Miley’s combat teams would have the benefit of armored support for the push. The tankers of the 771st Tank Battalion, with over fifty lumbering M4A3 Shermans, had crossed the Rhine under the cover of darkness using both barges and pontoon bridges. Like the 17th they were relatively new to the war, having cut their teeth on the front lines only days before the Battle of the Bulge. Since their baptism they’d earned a reputation of working well with the infantry. Nonetheless, Miley greeted their commander, Lieutenant Colonel Jack Childers, with only mild enthusiasm.
Childers found Miley “dubious” about the tankers’ willingness to provide effective close-in support, citing his division’s “sad experiences with tanks” in the Bulge. His troopers were skeptical, not of tanks, but of the men who drove them. The trigger pullers, with only their rifles to hide behind, wanted the armored tanks up front. Tankers, on the other hand, wanted the infantry out front clearing the way of enemy anti-tank gunners. Miley told Childers he expected to see his tanks up front. Childers assured him he’d see just that.
Childers knew the deal. It was “easy for the infantry to blame its lack of success on the attached tanks and I don’t think we ever permitted this to happen,” he recalled. “No inference, however slight, of a lack of aggressiveness on our part ever went unchallenged.” With the mutual understanding in
place, he dispatched a tank company to each of Miley’s combat teams.
The eighteen tanks under the command of Lieutenant Vince Cochrane rumbled off to find Coutts’ command post. Cochrane, a leader known by his peers for his “swashbuckling” style of leadership, liked to lead from the front. His dashing aggression had earned him several awards for bravery and just as many Purple Hearts.
As the tanks clanked through the dark, they passed under the riddled corpses of paratroopers hanging from trees and by dead Germans lying in roadside ditches. Blackened gliders with the charred skeletons of buckled-in passengers made an even more vivid impression on the new arrivals. The carcasses of cattle, horses, sheep, and goats added to the portrait of carnage.
Cochrane’s tankers found the Thirteeners at 03:30. They were preparing to attack a few hours after dawn, and Coutts wanted Cochrane to hold his tanks back in reserve. Coutts explained that the assault companies were being issued extra ammunition and rations for a 09:00 kickoff. The autobahn would be their line of departure.
Coutts had his plans. And the Germans had theirs—they still wanted a bridge. At first light, a quaking barrage of German artillery pounded the paratroopers’ positions, and dawn gave enemy observers the visibility they needed to accurately range the American lines. The Nazis’ ground attack commenced against the Thirteeners at 07:00 with a company of German infantry directing their assault on Able Company’s lines.
A mortar shell killed Able’s radio operator, exploding directly in his foxhole. Shrapnel cut down several others. Without the tanks up front, holding the line was in doubt. Lieutenant W. C. MacFarlane hurried over to a .30-caliber machine gun position manned by three privates. Sliding down beside their foxhole, MacFarlane ordered them to hold tight and cover the retreat with suppressing fire. They could fall back once everybody else was across the river. In mid-sentence a mortar round exploded at MacFarlane’s feet, showering him and the crew with dirt, but miraculously nothing else. Eyes wide, MacFarlane nodded and scrambled back across the canal. The crew chugged out a few bursts then made a run for it, shouldering their machine gun and sprinting back over the canal with gray-clad infantry close on their heels.
Four Hours of Fury Page 38