Aachen: The U.S. Army's Battle for Charlemagne's City in World War II (26 page)

Lieutenant Colonel Mayer, commander of the 118th Field Artillery, offered his impression of just how devastating the German shelling was at the time. “The Germans must have finally gotten ahold of a copy of our field manual because they were firing 70–100 rounds at once in large battalion volleys. The bulk of the enemy artillery coming in was 105 and 150mm, with some 170mm and 210mm dropping. Unfortunately, the weather was not clear enough because of clouds and haze for us to spot these enemy batteries. [Their] artillery, however, was displaced in a wide arc around us, and they knew by previous observation precisely where to concentrate their fire.”
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Lieutenant Colonel McDowell later lent this perspective to his battalion's setbacks in the face of these heavy enemy concentrations; his observations were viewed through the lens of adjustments he made to finally thwart the German ground forces:

Although the 3rd Battalion was originally slated to continue attacking southeastward, the counterattacks, enemy artillery and the continued congestion with the 2nd Armored Division in the area caused a holding up of the plan. These counterattacks had early success because the enemy infantrymen were regularly picking off our bazooka men, thus allowing some Mark IV tanks to roam around at will. We finally stopped this by systematically eliminating the German infantrymen, forcing the tanks to withdraw because they lacked their own infantry personnel.
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At approximately 0300 that same morning, enemy artillery started falling on the 119th Infantry Regiment positions in the woods south of Rimburg. An early casualty was the forward observer of the regiment's Cannon Company, Lt. Seymour Shefrin; he was wounded in both legs, his left arm, and on his face. He refused evacuation; first aid was instead given to him before two men helped him over to a nearby knoll. From here Shefrin somehow expected to “adjust fire by sounds of movement and German voices,” but his eyesight had been severely diminished by his facial wounds; he still remained on the knoll, forcefully refusing to be taken to the rear.
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Two hours later, two companies of the 2nd Battalion, 149th Regiment of the 49th Division with Assault Gun Brigade 902 launched a vigorous counterattack from the eastern edge of the woods aimed at Captain Palmer's Company I. Several Mark IVs first fired into the woods from hull defilade positions before spraying fire from their machine guns as they burst forward into the open in front of their ground forces. Advancing boldly with their tanks now, the German soldiers succeeded in overrunning Company I's defenses, even forcing Palmer's command group out of the pillbox they had been using as a CP; they had to run for it, leaving the position from which Lieutenant Shefrin was blindly “observing” unprotected. “The attack came over to him, and the last thing we heard was his voice over the radio calling for more fire on his position,” a later account sadly noted.
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The few Company I soldiers who were able withdrew back to the Rimburg Castle. Many others were taken prisoner after a German tank drove up to the pillbox they were in, trained its guns on the embrasure, and ordered surrender. Company B men saw a steady stream of other casualties coming through their lines. Lieutenant Knox of Company L was back in Lieutenant Colonel Brown's 3rd Battalion command post after these attacks and he recalled, “While I was at battalion I heard them frantically calling for Company I. I later learned that they were really broken up; one officer, Captain Palmer, was left. The company had been practically all captured or killed.”
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Lieutenant Bons's Company C was also driven back approximately 150 yards before Simmons's Company A and Captain McBride's Company B finally stopped this horrific counterattack. Bons's men had
bravely attempted to hold their positions; they first allowed the rushing Germans to get within 75 yards of their perimeter foxholes before they started firing back. They could only get a round or two off at a time because the German fire was so intense. There was another very brave incident at the time:

Pfc. Harmon W. Butler and Pfc. Ray Tucker of Company D, attached to Company C, left their foxholes to man their machineguns in spite of the intense enemy fire. They were alone manning their guns, for the other members were firing rifles to build up a section of fire line against the enemy. Private Samuel A. Breyer had a foxhole between the two machineguns, and by running out under terrific fire he kept them supplied with ammunition. Small arms fire struck the cradles of both guns, damaging them in such a manner that they could only be traversed by dragging their tripods from side to side. They fired 5,500 rounds with the enemy dead piled up as close as 15 yards.
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DIVARTY had also been of valuable assistance, but it was the Germans’ own artillery fire that finally did them in. American artillery was falling on the rear of their positions, but as Captain McBride remembered, “Their own artillery was getting beautiful tree bursts on the leading elements which were immediately in front of our 1st Battalion positions. At 0940 American planes on armed reconnaissance inflicted more casualties on the enemy, and even knocked out several tanks in Merkstein-Hofstadt.”
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Bons's Company C, right after he reorganized his platoons, retook some of the ground they had lost, including the pillbox near the road where Palmer's Company I had had its CP. “After fire from this pillbox was silenced, we blew the door open with a satchel charge and took three prisoners,” Lieutenant Bons remembered.
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Unfortunately, the day's stubborn fighting had produced numerous casualties for the 1st Battalion. Captain Simmons lost seven men; McBride's Company B suffered twenty-four losses and Lieutenant Bons experienced another seventeen casualties. Two enlisted men from the 743rd Tank Battalion were killed when a friendly air strike strafed too close to their positions; another three were seriously wounded. Seventeen machine gunners and mortar men from the battalion's heavy weapons
Company D who were with the rifle companies were also lost during the day.
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Generalleutnant
Lange later claimed to have personally overseen the counterattacks on 4 October from a command post in the gallery of the Boesweiler mine some three miles southeast of Ubach. About these attacks, Lange also offered his impressions of their outcomes:

Most of the troops of the adjacent divisions took part in the attack. [Lange is presumably referring to the 49th and 246th Divisions, the latter arriving later in Ubach.] It was extremely difficult to get prompt cooperation from all units engaged in the attack. However, in spite of these difficulties the counterattack was carried out. The eventual success was merely a narrowing and sealing off of the penetration. When viewed objectively, more could not have been expected under the circumstances, especially with the proportion of strength. The engineer battalion [in Palenberg] suffered especially heavy losses and did not recover from the blow.
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The armor congestion that had helped divert German aggression during the counterattacks McDowell faced in Ubach was partially attributable to Task Force 1 under Colonel Disney. During the day, his armored vehicles rolled by the northwest edge of Ubach to take over the mission for McDowell's 3rd Battalion and cut the Geilenkirchen-Aachen highway 800 yards to the north. Originally scheduled to cross the Rimburg bridge, Disney's task force drew heavy artillery earlier in the morning and had to wheel north to the Marienberg bridge to get across the Wurm. As a result, Major Jenista's 1st Battalion of the 41st Armored Infantry Regiment had to give operational priority to the task force's armor, delaying their crossing while they waited by dispersing into the hills on the west side of the river. One prong of the German counterattack hit Disney's tanks just outside of Ubach, first forcing his armor to fight it out with seven self-propelled guns, which were all destroyed with the loss of just two of his own tanks. By the end of the day, Colonel Disney was just a few yards short of the highway; his task force had still paid a price for this ground. The short advance caused stiff personnel casualties and the loss of eleven medium tanks, but the German infantry they
hit suffered far more. They were crushed by the weight of the American armor attack and whittled down to just twenty-five men.
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Task Force 2, under Colonel Hinds, had the important mission of anchoring the northern flank of the bridgehead by seizing the high ground near the settlement of Hoverhof, a mile north of Ubach, that afternoon. Major Jenista had used the time his armored infantry was waiting on the west side of the Wurm by making a personal reconnaissance into Ubach with his S-1, Lt. Kenneth W. Woods. This paid dividends. His assault, mop-up, and support teams moved to the village without attack or casualties after they finally got the go-ahead to cross the Marienberg bridge at 1200. However, enemy artillery that participants stated was of “greater intensity than any of the men had seen before” greeted their arrival in Ubach just over an hour later. The infantry had to take cover in houses.

The yeoman's work by Major Jenista in helping his men avoid casualties up to this point took an ironic turn shortly afterward. The attack toward Haverhof was scheduled to go off at 1500, but it had to be delayed when Jenista himself was struck by shell fragments while he was helping his jeep driver change a tire. He was evacuated; Lieutenant Woods went back to the rear command post in Marienberg and brought up Capt. R. A. Williamson, the battalion's executive officer, to assume command.

The fortunes of war dealt another blow after the assault forces finally jumped off at 1600. Williamson, with a group of other officers, was in an orchard just to the north of Ubach watching the progress of the attack when a concentration of shells hit. He was severely wounded; two company commanders became casualties, the driver of the jeep when Major Jenista got hit was also wounded this time, and the radio operator of an accompanying tank was killed. The battalion surgeon, although he had also been struck and wounded by shell fragments, managed to give aid to the others and direct their evacuation. Only Lieutenant Woods and a motorcyclist escaped injury.
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For a second time that day, Woods returned to the rear, this time only to Palenberg, to bring up a new commanding officer. Captain Hastings, who led Company B, came up to Ubach, where the pair found Colonel Hinds and Lieutenant Colonel Wynne. At the time, no word had come back on how the assault was going, so Hastings went forward to see for himself. He came back encouraged.

When the advance began, forward artillery observers riding in tanks called for fire to drive the enemy out of the trenches and pits around the pillboxes along the Ubach-Hoverhof road. Wynne's armor followed closely, moving 100 to 150 yards behind the friendly shells with Hastings's infantry trailing, followed by TDs to provide flank protection. Lt. Michael Levitsky of 1st Platoon, Company A, commanded an assault team—comprised of tanks, infantry men, engineers, heavy machine guns, and a tank dozer—which had moved up the road to a point just east of a hill close to the village when heavy enemy artillery fire suddenly came in. There were several pillboxes nearby and, suspecting the occupants included German forward observers who were calling down his men's location, Levitsky ordered everyone off the road. He then wisely decided to bypass this hill altogether.

This move enabled his team to work their way even closer to Hoverhof, where the men turned abruptly to the west to attack three pillboxes which they quickly captured. Then they reversed direction and overtook three more 300 yards to the east, above Haverhof. The hill on which the pillboxes were situated overlooked the village so Lieutenant Levitsky's men, having accomplished their mission, stopped there. A second assault team, commanded by Lt. Andrew P. Smith, had also advanced north of the village; these men turned west and captured seven additional pillboxes before they occupied a second hill looking into Haverhof. The mop-up team, commanded by Lt. Joseph T. Harper, captured many of the enemy personnel that the assault teams had not killed or wounded. Most of these Germans had hidden in the pillboxes’ sleeping quarters.

In just one hour and fifteen minutes, Captain Hastings experienced his first assault as an acting battalion commander with fifteen pillboxes seized and not a single friendly casualty. He captured five German officers and seventy-five other enemy combatants. His men had also progressed 1,000 yards farther north than planned. It was also Hastings's last drive. At 1830 Maj. John W. Finnell, who had been the executive officer before he was wounded and then the Assistant S-3, came forward to take overall command of the armored infantry.

By this time Lieutenant Colonel Herlong's forces had renewed their attack in the Rimburg woods, but with little success. “We were supposed to meet tanks that would support us where the road from Rimburg
crosses the railroad tracks,” remembered Company A's Captain Simmons. “But no tanks appeared. Between 0900 and 1000 three TD's did show up, and they agreed to help us. They got into position in the field to the west of where the road crossed the railroad and covered the pillbox just north of the tracks with fire.”
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Simmons had no more than a platoon and a half with which to attack, however. The company was still able to take this first pillbox, but only because the Germans retired to another box behind it when the TDs opened fire. Company A simply did not have enough strength to strike at this second pillbox; the enemy soldiers capitalized on this, counterattacked, and took back the first box. The cost to Simmons was high. “After this engagement, during which we took additional casualties, we only had 22 fighting men left,” he explained later.
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Flanking fire had also raked the company from the high ground in front of Lieutenant Bons's Company C during the enemy counterattack; this was because Bons had instructed his platoon leaders not to move forward until Company A had advanced farther. Instead, Company C built up a line along the road that ran through the high ground they were on and held here for the night; his men dubbed this location Shrapnel Hill. Captain McBride's Company B tied in along the road to the left; Herlong suspended operations at 1830.