Crossing the Rhine

 

 

    March 7th, 1944 , the American 9th Armored Division captured the Remagen Bridge or, as it is known in Germany , the  the Ludendorff Bridge . This was an astounding feat as it put the Americans across the Rhine River months ahead of schedule and paved the way for a quick defeat of the German Army. Thirteen Distinguished Service Crosses were awarded for this feat.

 

    My outfit (I Company of the 60th Regiment, 9th Division) was about 100 miles from the bridge at that time. We were given orders to be ready to move out at 2300 hours. Our mission was to cross the bridge as soon as possible. We were given Benny's (drugs) to keep us awake for the trip, however our Commanding Officer had trouble locating trucks for us so, at 10:30 , since we were going nowhere, we were all given something to help us sleep.

 

  Our CO however was not one to give up so he managed to confiscate some supply trucks from the Red Ball Express outfit. The Red Ball outfit put up a fuss but they lost out on this one. Now our guys, who were finally getting some decent sleep, were rudely awakened and given some new pills to wake you up. Can you imagine what that did to our brains. We didn't know whether to stay awake or go to sleep. We boarded the trucks for an all night ride. I felt very lucky. because I rode in the cab. The guys in the back had a wild and very rough ride.

 

     When we got to within a few miles of the bridge, We heard a weird sound, a very unusual sound. We saw aircraft that had already had passed and were quite a distance away. These were the first jet aircraft that any of us had ever seen or even  heard about. They strafed us three times on the way down to the bridge. Each time the trucks stopped, everyone jumped out and crawled under the trucks. I don't believe we had any casualties from the strafing, but we had two from broken legs, jumping out of the trucks.

    As we reached the bridge, we could see on our right, an unbelievable sight. On the high ground and as far as we could see, there was a concentration of all types of equipment that must have been brought in from the whole army. There were loads of anti aircraft guns, jeeps with mounted with 50 caliber machine guns and anything that could be used to fire at aircraft. When we reached the bridge, we found that it was still in intact enough for us to run across. We crossed on the morning of March 8^th  but no vehicles were able to make it across because two tanks that had hit mines had blocked the way.

 

    I saw one of our B25's go down near the bridge. The German jets and other German planes finally took the plane down.  When I started across, I didn't believe I could run that fast and finally reached the train tunnel on the other side. After crossing, we took the city of Lintz and spent the night there.

 

   This was a champagne town. I believe every house in the town had a basement full of Champagne in racks. I didn't touch a drop, because we had an important job coming up the next day. We captured the high ground. Sometimes I felt like I spent a hell of a lot of time taking the high ground. We spent three days on flak hill. We were shelled 24 hours a day. Some times we had 20 minutes between shells. A number of the guys threatened to stick there one leg out of there hole hoping to catch a shell fragment.We had casualties from the anti aircraft shell bursts.

 

     A  piece of shrapnel about the size of a nickel landed about 3 inches from my crotch. I was lucky I had my legs spread apart while sitting in a deep slit trench. The next day, the 12th we broke out of that position and took the high ground east of Erpel and continued on toward the Cologne-Frankfurt Autobahn. In the process, we took the towns of Strauscheid, Rahms, Weissenfeld, Hodden, Hombach and Epgert. 

 

    This helped to secure the Rhine crossing. Our next objective was the town of Strauscheid. We took that and then headed toward Rahms. We went through a section that was kind of swampy, thank god for that. I took a step at one point and felt a wire hit the instep of my boot, I froze, I knew what it was, and prayed, all of this in a fraction of a second I heard the pop and got splattered with mud. The blasting cap went off, but the bouncing Betty didn't come up. No explosion, and no loss of one or two legs or death. Once again, my luck didn't run out and many thanks to the soggy ground. I think my heart lost about a dozen beats. You can bet I was dam careful walking through the rest of that area.

     We took Rahms. Next came Weissenfeld. I remember this town very well. It was kind of special to me. First of all, it was one of the few times when everything went according to the book. Many times in combat, you get an order to pack up were moving out. I'm sure the the Platoon Leader knew where we were going, but the word never got around to everyone.

     On this occasion, I was called into meeting at battalion and we were given the plans for the next assault. I was given a light machine gun section and three riflemen, then told to climb up the hill on the left approach to the town of Weissenfeld. We were to set up the machine gun in a position to lay fire on the first house on the left side of the road leading through the center of town.

     A heavy machine gun was to set up on the hill on the right side of the road to lay fire on the first house on that side of the road. The rest of the platoon, lead by the Platoon Leader, was to approach the town along both sides of the road. We also had two Sherman tanks in front of us ahead on the road. We were to go in and if one shot came from any house we would destroy the house with fire.

     Everything went beautifully. When the tanks and riflemen got close to the houses I told the machine gunner and riflemen to stop firing. The gunner was firing like crazy and kept firing. I had to kick his hand off of the gun or he would even have been firing at our people. When we made it into the town, we started to search the houses.

    At first there were no people around, it seems that everyone including the military and civilians had retreated into the houses and managed to keep ahead of us. I was walking down the center of the street, so I could direct the search teams into alternate houses. By the time we reached close to the other end of the town, the people had crowded into  the few remaining houses. At this point, the Wehrmacht, which was mostly elderly soldiers and very young soldiers, surrendered. Then I heard a shot on my right and saw that one of my squad leaders had fired at a third floor window in the house directly in front of me. I looked up and saw a German soldier go down. He had his gun pointed directly at me. I was thankful that my squad leader was such a good shot.    

    The next morning, we left to clean out the town of Hodden. . After taking the town, we ended up on the far end and from the house where we were located, using my field glasses, I could see a King tiger tank perhaps 2000 yards away. I told the guys to be careful not to be seen but, as usual, some of them strayed, and the tank fired a couple of rounds into the top of the house.

    I told the squad that was with me, they better get into the cellar. The ideal thing to do. It was the worst call I ever made. The rear part of the house faced the tank. I was standing to the right of the kitchen doorway watching the tank and I could see the gun moving and yelled there's one coming. This round came through the open doorway, and directly opposite was the doorway to the basement. The round came through the opposite basement doorway and exploded in the basement wall.

    Out of the six soldiers, two were killed in action, two were wounded and two lost their hearing for awhile but were otherwise ok. Luckily, I was just far enough to the right that  I was not injured. We then advanced to the town of Hombach. After moving in, we had a bit of a fire fight, then the the shooting stopped and what was there was the Wehrmacht. They surrendered so we  knew that the unit of SS troops had pulled out. When they had no one at their backs threatening to shoot them, they would surrender.

    Then off to the next town, Epgert where it was a night attack under similar conditions. No signs of people, as we searched the houses. Sometime during the night, I was in a fair sized building where it was so dark that I couldn't see anything. I bumped into a large leather easy chair and heard a lot of chattering, opened my eyes and there must have been15 or 20 women and children, pointing, laughing, giggling and having a grand time. It was the first time I had ever seen so many Germans actually looking so happy.

Next:  On to the Hartz Mountains.