Aachen: The U.S. Army's Battle for Charlemagne's City in World War II (22 page)

By this time Lieutenant Colonel Frankland's companies were well dug in with Spiker's Company B at the eastern edge of Palenberg; Kent's Company A was farther south across a big open field and Stoffer's Company C was in the vicinity of the central crossroads connecting Palenberg to Ubach. Major Ammons's 2nd Battalion companies were to their left, except for Lieutenant Thompson's Company I which remained to the right of Company C.

The 119th Infantry Regiment's attack faltered for several reasons on 2 October. Four of Colonel Sutherland's companies had been stopped by the final protective fires of the defending Germans during the early afternoon, not only because of their strong defenses in the Rimburg Castle, but also because the thick woods and steep slopes on the ridge east of the Wurm and south of the castle afforded excellent observation on Sutherland's entire assault area. Moreover, these dense woods provided more than adequate concealment for the already well-camouflaged pillboxes and thus precluded the use of friendly artillery and tank fire to reduce them.

Nor could mortars render close fire support through the afternoon. As Lieutenant Lehnerd, commander of Company D, remembered: “Throughout the operation the chief obstacle to effective heavy weapons support was the lack of observation. Concentrations were fired on call, both on the woods and the high ground east of the woods, but forward observers were unable to judge the effectiveness for lack of observation. By the time [these] observers reached positions from which they could observe the target area, [the rifle companies] were too close to the target for the mortars to be used.”
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For these and other reasons it also did not go well for the rifle companies of Lieutenant Colonel Herlong's 1st Battalion on 2 October. Captain Simmons tried until dusk to get his Company A across the railroad embankment even as horrific enemy fire continued coming in frontally, as well as from the walls of the Rimburg Castle. To their right, hidden enemy machine gunners delivered grazing fire from the woods’ line. This held up Simmons's platoons all afternoon. A few men did get across just before 1500 hours, but they were immediately pinned down and finally had to withdraw with the rest of the company to another wooded area behind their earlier position nearer the Wurm River. Here they spent the night.

Lieutenant Bons's Company C fared a bit better; a squad from Lieutenant Shetter's 2nd Platoon, held up by a pillbox camouflaged as a stucco house during the early afternoon, eventually managed to empty bazooka fire against this box, causing its occupants to surrender. This enabled the rest of the platoon to occupy a small patch of woods south of the Rimburg Castle. These men eventually made contact with Captain Reisch's Company F, which had also been working on this same stucco-camouflaged pillbox when Shetter's men were using their bazookas
against it. Bons's 3rd Platoon was unable to move beyond the open field fronting the railroad tracks they were pinned down on all afternoon. Pfc. Francis P. Smith “kept a cool head,” organized other men, and prevented a gap in their line from opening. Wounded were evacuated; food and water were brought up but enemy machine-gun fire evidenced no mercy into the afternoon. Lieutenant Ortega was nevertheless able to make contact with the left platoon of Simmons's Company A by nightfall.
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Lieutenant Colonel Herlong did not commit his reserve company, Captain McBride's Company B, on 2 October. As McBride later recalled, “He had no room on the left to maneuver or employ [the company] due to the fact that the 2nd Battalion was immediately left of the 1st Battalion.”
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After considering the possibility of committing us on the right of Company A, he decided against this course of action because it was his opinion that we would be subjected to and stopped by the same fire which had stopped the other two companies. For these reasons he had decided to hold Company B mobile and to have Companies A and C continue their efforts to advance. At the first indication of any weakening of the enemy defense, Company B would have been committed immediately against that point. The battalion commander was also of the opinion that, when the tanks were able to cross the river and move to positions where they could deliver direct fire on the enemy, both companies would have little difficulty in penetrating the enemy defenses.

Despite direct enemy observation over the assault area, the men of Major Sterba's 105th Engineer Battalion—covered by friendly artillery smoke screens—had been able to construct a 45-foot treadway bridge over the Wurm in the 1st Battalion zone of operations by 1555 that afternoon. Herlong's hoped-for fire support by the two platoons of tanks faded quickly, however, when the lead vehicles crossed over the Wurm an hour later and became mired on the muddy east bank of the river.

Back in the 119th Infantry command post, Colonel Sutherland had been under more pressure from division to “hurry up” throughout the afternoon. At 1315 he wanted to get all of Company B across the river so
he could start Lieutenant Colonel Brown's 3rd Battalion down to the right of Herlong's men. He told Herlong this while he was in his command post, a small room on the first floor of a private home in Groenstraat. By 1440 Sutherland was aware that neither of the 1st Battalion companies had been able to cross the railroad tracks. Then he received a report indicating that the tanks were ready to roll across the treadway bridge the engineers had put in, even believing much as Lieutenant Colonel Herlong did that “things will begin to crack when the ‘cans’ get across.”
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Still optimistic about this, Colonel Sutherland contacted Lieutenant Colonel Brown at 1559 and gave him an alert order to have his 3rd Battalion be ready to move out.

But a little over an hour later more bad news dampened everyone's mood. At 1715 hours Sutherland learned from D-Day Normandy veteran Maj. Vodra Phillips, the S-3 of the 743rd Tank Battalion, that three tanks were now bogged down on the east side of the treadway bridge. Much like it had been for the 117th Infantry Regiment, the 119th Infantry would be unable to use the planned tank-infantry tactics in their zone of action. But the higher ups did not care. Under continued prodding from General Hobbs to move aggressively, at 1728 Colonel Sutherland finally told his commanding officer “[I] am now going to send Brown ahead without tanks.”
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Lieutenant Colonel Brown, also present in the command post at this time, got confirmation of the regimental commander's order to start his offensive just two minutes later.

Deployment of the 3rd Battalion did not completely achieve the desired results, however. Only one of Brown's rifle companies, Clay City, Illinois, native Capt. Leslie E. Stanford's Company L, was able to cross the Wurm. Lt. David P. Knox, the company's Executive Officer, remembered:

We started out; down the road across a field we went. Everyone was well spread out. The duckboards that had previously been brought down to the edge of the creek were now thrown across. That is, one of them was used; the rest fell in the creek. We crossed the Wurm River…. The 2nd Platoon, under Lt. John Tullbane, was leading and [Lt. George A.] Hager's men were on the right. They were just about across the railroad track when one of the men hit a mine. This was the signal; the Germans threw in plenty. The company had to dig in here for the night.
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Brown's other rifle companies remained behind the Wurm. His two attached tank platoons were later joined by other tanks from the 803rd Tank Destroyer Battalion's Company B; they were placed in defiladed positions west of the river to help block the possibility of enemy forces approaching up the Kerkrade valley from the south. Company K, commanded by Capt. Harry J. Hopcraft, made contact with Company L at about the time Colonel Sutherland reached Brown and told him to also “get into a good position and try to help Herlong on the left; your two battalions must be tied in.”
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Given the difficulties the 1st and 3rd Battalions experienced all afternoon, Colonel Sutherland had come to realize that the responsibility for gaining any meaningful bridgehead across the Wurm would have to fall to Lieutenant Colonel Cox's 2nd Battalion. First word of the battalion's progress after Captain Reisch's Company F crossed the river came into Sutherland's command post at 1350. The battalion was getting a lot of small-arms fire from the upper stories of the Rimburg Castle; moreover, their view of the castle itself was obstructed so they had been unable to use their attached tanks to knock out the opposition and subdue the incoming hail of bullets.

“The enemy made a determined stand at the Rimburg Castle,” a later report noted. “He also delayed us with extensive mine fields along the road on the west side of the castle and had these mines covered by approximately 10 machine guns in addition to about one platoon of infantry, well dug in along the sides of the road.”
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By 1420 Lieutenant Colonel Seawright's 258th Field Artillery Battalion was making efforts to get direct fire on the castle, but soon afterward it was reported that his batteries had not even been able to get their guns into a position to do this. Meanwhile, Reisch's 1st Platoon, commanded by Virginia Polytechnic Institute reservist Lt. Thomas J. Bugg, was starting to assault the same pillbox that Company C to their right was attacking at the time—the box disguised as a stucco building. This platoon's work was made easier when a soldier in the 2nd Platoon threw a white phosphorous grenade into the pillbox. The seven Germans in the fortification surrendered.

Captain Toler's Company E lead men were still pinned down not just by enemy artillery volleys, but also by automatic-weapons fire from
the front wall of the castle. The wall stood beside the east-west road where the ten enemy machine guns and an infantry platoon were positioned; the roadway ran for just 50 yards from the east bank of the Wurm to the castle gate, and the only cover for the men consisted of a few trees and bushes. “For a time the old dark castle seemed to be seeping smoke from every one of the slits that forgotten masons had cut for medieval archers,” Drew Middleton later told readers of his New York paper.
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German forward artillery observers in the castle presented another challenge. “Artillery reaction on the 2nd Battalion was heavy and concentrated,” a report noted later. “Here, for a period of forty minutes, the enemy put over a battery concentration every five seconds.”
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“The enemy artillery made a vain attempt to stop the company,” another account noted.
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Captain Toler, commanding from the front, had lost contact with the rest of his platoons still down at the bridge crossing; he sent Pfc. Lazarus C. Montalvo for them. “Moving back, he was fired on at the bridge and the flat open ground nearer the river. Nevertheless, he brought the platoons up one by one. After the platoons were in position he returned with instructions for the tanks and to bring back additional medics. On the way a bursting shell knocked him down and wounded him in the left arm and right hip. Handicapped and suffering from the pain, he still managed to limp on and accomplish his mission.”

Spurred on by actions such as this, the company gradually worked its way up to the front of the castle but instead of finding resistance by the Germans manning the wall, Toler's men discovered most of them had decided to quickly retreat into the castle itself. The 1st Platoon of Captain Reisch's Company F, commanded by Lt. Franklin H. Masonheimer, had driven these defenders away; his whole platoon actually got inside the wall by going through the stone-arched main gate before Toler's Company E men got there. Inside the U.S. soldiers “cleaned the Germans out, room by room, with grenades and bayonet in a desperate hand-to-hand struggle which was more like a battle in the time of Richard the Lion-Hearted than in the day of General Eisenhower.”
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Unfortunately, bridging operations to support the 2nd Battalion back at the river were still faltering. Colonel Sutherland learned of this from his S-3, Major McCown, at 1557 hours. Continued heavy enemy artillery and small-arms fire had hampered the effort. A little less than an hour
later, the decision was made to feed Lieutenant Colonel Cox's supporting tanks, the 743rd Tank Battalion's Company B, across on the treadway bridge already in place and supporting Herlong's 1st Battalion. Fully realizing the soft footing of the Wurm could still set back even farther the overall timetable of the day's attack if the armored vehicles got bogged down here, Sutherland determined that the infantry “must go ahead.”
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At 1732 hours, he gave Cox this order: “You are to concentrate on getting [a] bridge in at Rimburg and on tying up E and F with the 117th at north edge of woods. Idea is to hold a secure bridgehead for the night.”

Cox immediately issued corollary orders to both Captain Reisch and Captain Toler. Reisch, in turn, called his platoon leaders back to a barn on the bank of the river where he had established his command post, and gave them their missions for the night. The company soon had outposts behind the castle. The 2nd Platoon even found and cut wires running from the castle back to the enemy positions in the woods; this line had been used to adjust artillery fire on the Americans. The 1st and 2nd Platoons of Toler's Company E built up their line on the west side of the castle, tying in with Company F. Toler's 2nd Platoon, commanded by Lt. John A. McAuley, was charged with the mission of protecting the bridge site while the engineers concentrated on completing its construction. After discovering a route with good footing around the soft, muddy ground near the 1st Battalion's treadway bridge, Lt. Robert Howell was able to get four of his Company B tanks into supporting positions just off the road fronting the moat of the castle.

At 1819 hours, Colonel Sutherland told Cox, “the success of the entire operation depends on securing the bridgehead and the successful completion of the bridge at Rimburg tonight.”
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The regimental commander most assuredly was comforted when he learned at 2045 hours that the Rimburg Castle was now empty of Germans and completely surrounded by American infantry and tanks. At 2400 hours, the engineers began constructing the treadway bridge to span the blown gap over the Wurm at Rimburg. By 0800 the next morning, Sutherland finally learned that the 60-foot expanse was in.