Aachen: The U.S. Army's Battle for Charlemagne's City in World War II (21 page)

Fortunately Pillbox 4 had an embrasure that permitted enemy fire to be delivered just to the north and west. With the pillboxes to the south already reduced, Spiker ordered the sergeant to move his men up to the Palenberg-Rimburg road, then to pivot left and head for the blind side of the box to its rear.

Sergeant Wolpert responded by quickly sending the platoon ahead in a well-dispersed single file to build up a stretched-out line along a hedge about 100 yards behind the pillbox. From here, Staff Sgt. Walter E. Webb first fired a rifle grenade at the southwest corner of the box. No enemy reaction resulted, so Sgt. Albert T. Maudice of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, deployed eight riflemen along the hedge where they delivered fire to the side of the box. Pvt. Henry E. Hansen had drawn the assignment to use his flamethrower against the embrasure with Pvt. Andrew Chuckalovchak of Altoona, Pennsylvania, assisting. After Hansen tested his weapon, he moved up and put two blasts of fire in the rear door. Then he hugged the wall and swung around to the front of the box and delivered two more blasts into the embrasure. Circling back, Hansen took a quick look at the back of the pillbox where he saw a German lying in wait in the doorway with a raised pistol. “[I] was in position to burn
the German,” he later explained while also evincing how he did not hesitate. “One squirt caused the enemy to whirl and one more full in the face caused him to pitch forward into the open door of the pillbox.”
¹¹

Two riflemen then charged the open doorway, where an errant shot first produced a friendly casualty when it ricocheted back on one man moments before two other privates were sent up to guard the opening. Believing the occupants were subdued and would likely surrender, the remaining men proceeded to a reorganization point ordered by Sergeant Wolpert. Private Hansen, however, decided there was no use in carrying his flamethrower back, so before joining the rest of the platoon he and Chuckalovchak went around to the front of the pillbox and sprayed the embrasure until the weapon was empty. Minutes later, smoke and flames were coming out of the rear door. Ammunition started popping inside, and ten Germans ran out and surrendered. With this, Company B had reduced seven pillboxes; two were not even in their assigned area.

By this time Captain Kent's Company A had departed from Scherpenseel to take over the mission of Captain Stoffer's Company C. Using the same route the 743rd Tank Battalion's armored vehicles had taken, Kent's platoons were also subjected to the same artillery fire on their way to the river. Casualties were few, but Technical Sgt. Abby Revier was badly wounded during one concentration; this was a key loss because his platoon leader who was new to the 2nd Platoon leaned heavily on him. Subsequently scared to execute the mission given to him by Captain Kent—to push across the Wurm to the railroad tracks—the rookie platoon leader was immediately relieved. With this, Kent turned to the 3rd Platoon, and when he got to Lieutenant Foote he told him, “I just received word from Lieutenant Colonel Frankland; your platoon will now take Pillboxes 5 and 6.”
¹²

After swinging his platoon through a wooded area to avoid the harassing artillery fire, Foote took his squad leaders to a high point before the river where they could observe these two pillboxes. They developed a hurried plan; he later recalled, “I wanted to be sure they could tell their men precisely where they were going to go.” Returning to the platoon right after this, the Americans then advanced unobserved through the woods to the river. “It took exactly three minutes to run across the open ground from the woods,” remembered Sgt. Joseph B. Underwood.
¹³

But trouble waited at the Wurm. The entire company had to take advantage of the same bridges Company C had used, which were precisely where the tanks were bogged down. This drew more artillery fire, but as soon as they crossed the river, the U.S. soldiers dashed up to the railroad line in small groups of three or four, hitting the ground only when German small-arms fire became too intense. Eventually they found the remnants of Stoffer's Company C; these men were still hugging the earth, dug in and taking fire from their front and right. Much of this fire was coming from the Rimburg Castle and another large house in the 119th Infantry Regiment sector to the southeast. Despite this stiff resistance, the soldiers managed to work their way into a well-protected position on the west bank of the railroad track within ten minutes. At this point Lieutenant Foote tore across the track alone and took up a position in a little dip with just enough defilade to be under the firing trajectory of the occupants of Pillbox 5.

Since Pillbox 6 had already fallen to Captain Spiker's Company B, this permitted the rest of Foote's platoon to move up with no interference to their left. After the two support squads moved into position on the Palenberg-Rimburg road, these men found themselves just 30 yards from the fallen box. This allowed Sergeant Underwood to place his squad in support of the assault detachment, facing south. These men initially started out from the west side of the road, and then they made their way to the edge of a wooded area located about 20 yards from the box.

Sergeant Underwood had his men train their fires on a German machine-gun nest that was emplaced on higher ground to the east of the pillbox. Other fire was laid into and around the box's embrasure. Lieutenant Foote had joined the assault squad by this time; they had six men, including Pvt. Marvin Sirokin who was the demolitions man carrying the pole charge. Stubbly bearded, powerfully built Pfc. Gus A. Pantazopulos headed up the three-man bazooka team, which included Cpl. Russell Martin and Pvt. Howard King. With the support squads firing at the pillbox and the outlying machine-gun nest, the assault detachment went right into action.

Conveniently, the earlier bombings had left a crater near the front of the pillbox and the bazooka team moved right up to it. Under encouragement from someone who yelled out, “Put it in low Gus and create a disturbance,” Pfc. Pantazopulos hurriedly pumped in two rounds; one went
into the embrasure facing west and the other glanced off the opening facing southwest toward the river.
¹⁴
The first one also tore a hole 3 feet wide in the firing slit; with thick dust filling the air after the second was fired, Private Sirokin shoved his pole charge into the embrasure. It first appeared to quiet the occupants, but one German tossed out a grenade from inside the box that ripped off a piece of Lieutenant Foote's cheek.

Corporal Martin and another private quickly reacted by running up to the pillbox and throwing in a couple of their own grenades. A few seconds later the assault squad and both support squads rushed the box. Pfc. Pantazopulos was one of the first to arrive and he hurled two more hand grenades through one of the embrasures. A few Germans were outside in nearby firing trenches behind the pillbox; one threw his own grenade at the Americans and Private King responded by killing him. Another tried to scramble toward the machine-gun nest east of the pillbox but a charged-up King raced over, closed on him in the trench, and pulled the trigger when his gun was a mere 6 inches from this German's head.

Shortly after this the remaining Germans surrendered. Lieutenant Foote then gave temporary command of the platoon to Technical Sgt. Francis Banner, a fierce-looking warrior, and directed him to lead the men against Pillbox 8, not knowing at the time that Spiker's Company B had already reduced this pillbox. By now the other platoons of Company A had also moved up and Captain Kent soon found that these men were bunched up with the remnants of Company C. This drew the attention of the Germans, and a barrage of their mortars fell among the American troops. An enemy 20mm gun opened up on the men from a pillbox disguised as a brick barn located on the west side of the Palenberg-Rimburg road near the crossroads leading to Ubach. Two more bazooka rounds by Pfc. Pantazopulos helped quiet this threat but his platoon, already having suffered fifteen wounded and one killed since leaving Scherpenseel and taking Pillbox 5, was unable to provide any stronger support. Company C, led by the exceptional initiative of the 1st Platoon's Pfc. Frank C. Brakefield who spearheaded the effort, eventually closed in on the camouflaged barn. Other grenade and rifle fire by Captain Stoffer's men helped force its occupants to finally surrender at 1510 hours.
¹⁵

Major Ammons's Company F had started its mission to clean out the western half of Palenberg by this time. These men had reached the
Wurm just after 1430 hours, and then used the same bridges to cross over the river that Captain Spiker's Company B had taken. There was only slight opposition as they worked their way along the railroad track toward Palenberg, but as the afternoon wore on the men found themselves under more intense rifle and machine-gun fire. This fire was coming from dug-in enemy positions to their front, as well as from homes in the village; a later report noted, “It then became a slow process of creeping around houses and throwing grenades into windows.”
¹⁶

While these soldiers were engaged in this nasty house-to-house fighting, Lieutenant Parker's 1st Platoon of Company E was holed up in a row of brick houses closer to the bridge site; the pillboxes nearer Palenberg had firing traverse capability onto the bridge. These two boxes were just east of the railroad track, and the platoon's light machine gunners first sprayed their apertures while the riflemen also took aim at the openings with their M1s. The attached heavy machine guns of Company H were unable to observe the pillboxes; these men instead went to work on the snipers in the surrounding houses within range.

Captain Hoppe then ordered his 2nd Platoon to creep up along the west side of the railroad tracks to the front of the boxes while the men of the 3rd Platoon crossed and started toward their rear. Reducing these fortifications proved to be a different task than that experienced by Lieutenant Colonel Frankland's 1st Battalion companies. As Major Ammons explained later, “The careful training had little relation to the actual way the pillboxes were reduced.”
¹⁷
Thin, tall Capt. Richard J. Wood, the battalion's S-3, described how it was done:

We kept small arms fire on the apertures. We did not use flamethrowers at all, but found that bazookas were highly effective at 100-yard ranges. In one of the pillboxes, there were separate rooms for living quarters and where their guns were placed. You had to go outside to get from one to the other. When we fired bazookas on one pillbox the occupants ran out from the gun section to the living quarters and then were apparently too scared to return.

After an unsuccessful attempt was made to bring up two 155mm self-propelled guns to help reduce the pillboxes, Colonel Johnson sent three M10 tank destroyers and they were
of material value. [This had been ordered at 1330 by Colonel Johnson to help Company E on Pillbox 9; the tank destroyers were west of the river at this time.] They were also helpful in silencing the sniper fire from the surrounding houses. Captain Hoppe said every time small-arms fire came from one of the Palenberg houses, one of the tank destroyers would snipe back with their 3-inch gun and blow a hole in the house.

Company F had helped in this effort; they sent a platoon over to assist in reducing the numerous enemy machine-gun positions outside of the boxes. It was during this action when Company F's Pvt. Harold G. Kiner of Enid, Oklahoma, saved two of his fellow soldiers from grenade fire by hurling himself upon one grenade that dropped between him and these men; he smothered the explosion, preventing his fellow soldiers’ certain wounding or deaths, but sacrificed his own life during this selfless action. Kiner was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

The Germans actually had a series of withdrawal trenches running from the pillboxes back into Palenberg. Few prisoners were taken when the pillboxes finally fell; it was concluded that others used this escape route. Captain Hoppe put the day's fighting into perspective by later stating, “The opposition from the houses in Marienberg and Palenberg was actually stronger than that from the pillboxes.”
¹⁸

By 1600 enemy small-arms fire had been quieted back at the bridge site, so Company G moved rapidly down to the Wurm. After crossing over under heavy enemy mortar and artillery fire, these men cleaned out the rest of Palenberg and then advanced to the factory district east of town. This area was located on built-up ground and was surrounded by a wall that was anywhere from 15 to 25 feet high; this gave the remaining Germans holed up here good observation on the American soldiers’ positions, so the men held in place. Later, Company F took up defensive positions beside Company G at the bottom of one of the nearby slag piles, aided by the relentless firing of their supporting tank destroyers “up one side of the pile and down the other.”
¹⁹

The 119th Infantry Regiment's attack had not advanced beyond the railroad tracks at the time; the Rimburg Castle had proven to be a tenacious strongpoint and fire from here also threatened Captain Stoffer's
Company C in their positions south of Palenberg. Responding to this, at 1830 Colonel Johnson called the 3rd Battalion's commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel McDowell, and ordered him to get Company I down to the river and up to the right of Frankland's 1st Battalion to help protect Stoffer's flank.
²⁰
Lt. George Thompson, the Company I commander, had already established a CP in a brick house on the Marienberg-Rimburg road, so he was able to move out without delay. The company, however, suffered five casualties coming over the bridge when well-placed enemy mortar fire came right down into Thompson's column. A heavy machine-gun section from Lieutenant Baran's Company M was also wiped out; one man was killed and four others were wounded. Still, Thompson was eventually able to bring the company up to the pillboxes where they tied in with Stoffer's men.
²¹

Despite this, the overall timetable for the day's advance had been set back. CCB of the 2nd Armored Division had been released at 1750 hours from thirty-minute alert for its movement across the Wurm; this alert changed to 0500 the next morning. The exhausted men of the 105th Engineer Battalion were finally able to complete construction of the bridge some 300 yards south of the Marienberg-Palenberg road at 1850; the armored vehicles of Lieutenant Colonel Duncan's 743rd Tank Battalion finally crossed the Wurm here at 2000 hours.
²²
Small-arms fire from the slag piles on the northern edge of Palenberg delayed until midnight the opening of a second 45-foot treadway immediately adjacent to the previously blown bridge connecting Marienberg to Palenberg. After mines were cleared from the roadway on the Palenberg side, Captain Sinclair's 1st Platoon, Company A of the 803rd Tank Destroyer Battalion, crossed this bridge and established roadblocks. Duncan's M-10s were eventually able to get into position with Frankland's 1st Battalion and assist in maintaining their perimeter defense, but not until 0300 the next morning.
²³