Aachen: The U.S. Army's Battle for Charlemagne's City in World War II (27 page)

With stiff resistance and little gain being made inside the Rimburg woods, Colonel Sutherland made the decision to move Lieutenant Colonel Cox's 2nd Battalion up toward Ubach. From here, Companies E and F would turn south and first reduce several pillboxes along a stretch of gently sloping ground just outside of the woods. Sutherland hoped that this would finally help out Herlong's rapidly depleting forces and also accelerate the drive to Herbach. This movement got off to a bad start, however. At the intersection of the Rimburg-Ubach road Captain Toler was wounded; command of Company E shifted to Lieutenant Parker.

With Ubach still under counterattack and confused congestion at the time, both companies ran into heavy artillery fire as they got closer to the village—“really big stuff that came in like an express train,” according to later accounts.
⁶¹
Further casualties were few, fortunately, but instead of attacking southward that afternoon, Parker's and Lieutenant Arn's men
dug in just to the south of the main road in Ubach. Tanks and TDs joined them here for what would now be an attack the next morning.

But all was not quiet during the night. Lieutenant Parker sent out four- to five-man patrols to see how close they could get to the pillboxes; one patrol led by Pfc. Lane E. Gluba actually returned with fourteen prisoners, but he could not identify on Parker's overprinted photomap the pillbox from which his patrol had taken them. Parker then decided to send another patrol into the vicinity where Gluba thought the box was, and after they jumped off, these men, commanded by Sgt. Robert R. Allen, spotted Germans heading toward it. Racing to see who could get there first, Allen's patrol won, but in doing so they also created some anxiety for Lieutenant Colonel Cox. Word of their success had not been sent back, so Cox got what little sleep he could—assuming through the night that the entire patrol had been captured.

Lieutenant Colonel Brown's 3rd Battalion never made contact with Herlong's 1st Battalion companies in the Rimburg woods on 4 October. “Battalion was convinced that our company could not move,” recalled Company L's Lieutenant Knox. “Lieutenant Colonel Brown convinced regiment of the same thing, although Captain Stanford continually sent out patrols to see if they were near us.” Brown later ordered one of Captain Hopcraft's Company K platoons to move back to the Rimburg Castle to help with the reorganization of Captain Palmer's badly battered Company I, leaving a second platoon to the right of Stanford's Company L. A third Company K platoon went back to the regimental CP, now also in the Rimburg Castle, to be a security force on the bridge for Colonel Sutherland and his staff.

The German command decided to bring more units into the area of the XIX Corps’ penetration before 4 October ended.
General der Infanterie
Köchling ordered three units from the sector of
Oberst
Engel's 12th Infantry Division southeast of Aachen to the Ubach area: a
Landesschuetzen
battalion, an assault gun brigade, and a howitzer battalion. From the 246th Division in Aachen, he ordered up an antitank company equipped with six 75mm guns and a tank company, somewhat curiously named as such since its weapons were actually touchy remote-controlled robotic assault guns. Köchling also decided to restore the boundary between
Generalleutnant
Lange's 183rd Division and Macholz's 49th Division, removing the single command he had entrusted to Lange because the anticipated additional forces would be unmanageable under him alone.

Uncertain that these units would be able to assemble and move quickly enough before the day was over, Köchling took further steps to gain an even greater concentration of troops to stop the Americans. This time he decided to relieve the entire 404th Grenadier Regiment from the 246th Division in Aachen, and at the same time free up Lange's 343rd Grenadier Regiment opposite the 29th Division northwest of Geilenkirchen so this unit would also be available for the fight around Ubach. With ten batteries of 105mm howitzers and seven batteries of 150mm howitzers currently at his disposal, Köchling nevertheless determined that he needed additional artillery support. By 6 October he hoped to have another twenty-seven 150mm guns and thirty-two 88mm antiaircraft weapons to assist in throwing the Americans back into the chilly waters of the Wurm River, bringing the total number of artillery pieces at LXXXI Corps’ disposal to nearly 120.

General der Infanterie
Köchling had not made these decisions independently. With the severity of the situation raising alarm, he had visitors at his command post in Niederzier that day. Commander in Chief West Model and
General der Panzertruppe
Brandenberger, commander of 7th Army, gained the impression that Köchling's expected force strength was still insufficient. To remedy this, Brandenberger lined up additional ground forces for transfer; two were from noncommissioned officer training schools in Dueren and Juelich, another an infantry unit from the 275th Division then fighting southeast of Aachen in the Huertgen Forest under LXXXV Corps, and the last a fortress machine-gun battalion. To augment Köchling's artillery strength even more, Brandenberger also promised an additional artillery brigade with two batteries of 150mm howitzers and one battalion of very heavy howitzers.

The morning sky revealed signs of clearing weather for 5 October. It also undoubtedly brought discomfort to Köchling for it meant that American artillery and air reconnaissance would likely interfere with the troop movements he had planned. This proved true. VII Corps artillery delivered heavy fire on the
Landesschuetzen
battalion, delaying their arrival after they detached from the 12th Infantry Division. The NCO trainees from Dueren and Juelich promised by Brandenberger were tardy,
not arriving until after first light in the area of Lange's 343rd Regiment, thus preventing this unit from disengaging and moving south to reinforce the area north of Ubach. The 404th Regiment of the 246th Division did reach the front, but not until after noon. Like the day after the Americans first broke through the
Westwall
, Köchling lost the chance to deliver an early ground strike on 5 October; he would again be forced to commit his units piecemeal, depending on the direction of the American attacks.

This direction was now more evident to the Germans. The 49th Division's
Generalleutnant
Macholz later revealed why:

From entries on a map, captured in the counterattacks on 4 October, it was now evident that the enemy, after having succeeded in breaking through the Westwall, intended to continue the attack toward Alsdorf with the aim of encircling Aachen from the north and east, while covering his left flank toward the west. This meant the division's front would be rolled up from the north. [We were,] therefore, greatly concerned about the future.
⁶²

“Alsdorf was a ghost town when we came in. It was so damn quiet it scared you.”

CAPT. JOHN KENT, COMPANY A, 117TH INFANTRY REGIMENT

T
he 117th Infantry Regiment's new objective on 5 October was indeed to seize Alsdorf, which would cut off one of the two main highways running northeast out of Aachen. Colonel Johnson's initial plan called for Lieutenant Colonel Frankland's 1st Battalion to relieve McDowell's men in Ubach and then attack south, but during the night he revised this to have the battalions attack abreast. When morning dawned, Captain Spiker's Company B started working its way through Ubach to take up positions to the right of the 3rd Battalion on a grassy ridge just outside the village; Captain Kent's Company A had already assembled there. Ubach still proved to be difficult to get through, even in the early hours of the new day. Spiker was delayed; his men had to leapfrog in small groups from house to house to avoid renewed enemy artillery fire. Kent's men had avoided these volleys by moving through an orchard just to the south. After starting out, Stoffer's Company C was held up near battle-torn Palenberg, and both shelling and congestion also slowed these men up as they tried to reach the assembly area. Consequently, Frankland's companies were not ready for the attack.
¹

Instead, hasty changes by Colonel Johnson now had Lieutenant Colonel McDowell's 3rd Battalion launching a coordinated strike from Ubach with just Companies E and F of Cox's 2nd Battalion. The first objective was the small village of zu Ubach, just to the southeast of
Ubach. Lieutenant Thompson's Company I and Company L had been selected for the lead and these men attacked astride the main road while Wild Man Culp's Company K was held in reserve. Five tanks accompanied Thompson's platoons; the tanks drove on the road surface and the infantrymen moved on the right side of the roadway. Lt. Richard C. Timpe's 1st Platoon led the assault but the Germans that the battalion had met the day before in Ubach, the 2nd Battalion of the 149th Regiment, spotted these men as soon as they reached the far edge of the village. After letting the American platoon advance, mortar, small-arms, and machine-gun fire came in from the barracks building just to the southeast, forcing the soldiers to dive for the banks of the road, seeking cover. “Much of the machinegun fire was coming from the second story windows and was whistling 50-feet over our heads,” Timpe remembered. “But there was also enough close to the ground to keep our heads down.”
²

“The Germans had all the road exits from Ubach well-blocked,” a later report added. “Nobody seemed to be able to bypass the enemy's direct fire weapons.”
³
When the tanks tried to move up to assist the infantry, all five were hit. Three erupted in flames; another was hit in the rear engine compartment and the fifth directly in the driver's compartment. Three men were killed and four were wounded.
⁴
One TD from the 803rd Tank Destroyer Battalion in Ubach tried to help, but as Lt. James Cushing, the commander of this unit, recalled, “The 2nd Armored Division was still in the area and the roads were clogged. So we tried to sneak the TD around to the east and deliver some flanking fire on the enemy weapons, but they were dug in and too well protected. It was also hit and burned.”
⁵

Neither Company I nor Company L was able to reduce or outflank the Germans as the morning wore on. McDowell later noted that his battalion moved a mere 800 yards on 5 October. Enemy artillery fire increased throughout the afternoon, leaving Lieutenant Thompson to later remark, “Timpe's platoon was pinned down practically all day; it was more or less isolated. The worst problem was trying to keep an OP long enough to direct friendly artillery fire on the enemy strongpoints. Every time an observer mounted the second story of a house, the Germans would shell it with artillery.”
⁶

Lieutenant Colonel Cox's 2nd Battalion did better that morning. He elected to have Company E lead the assault; Lieutenant Parker chose his
2nd and 3rd Platoons for this assignment, and these men were to the right of Lieutenant Arn's Company F when they jumped off. Seven tanks and four TDs accompanied the assault force; the TDs were given the mission of protecting the battalion's left flank so the tanks could work directly with Parker's infantry.

Their line of departure was just to the south of the main drag through Ubach. Lieutenant Parker's plan called for the pillboxes they were attacking to be approached in an order laid out by code on his photomap; he would accompany the 2nd Platoon, but Sgt. Harold L. Holycross of Perryville, Indiana, would provide its direct command and control. A number of these pillboxes were on higher ground before the terrain sloped downward into a steep draw about a half kilometer away. Two other pillboxes were scattered farther back between the high ground and the draw. Parker felt it was essential to capture the latter two in order to prevent any counterattacks; he was certain the Germans in these pillboxes would have the drop on his men. In all, there were about a dozen pillboxes that had to be reduced. But Lieutenant Parker had a more immediate problem with which to contend first.

“When we got ready to attack, there wasn't a flamethrower or pole charge in the company,” he remembered.
⁷
Instead, his men improvised and used the tanks. When they emerged from their dug-in positions at 0700 to start the assault, Sergeant Holycross had one tank lay anti-phosphorous ammunition on the first pillbox. He then directed another tank to put heavy explosive against it at the same time, close enough to have the fire ricochet and hit his opposite numbers in the box's adjoining trenches. They achieved the desired result. The heavy explosive fire scared the Germans and they dashed inside the concrete shelter; the anti-phosphorous fire actually penetrated the box's embrasure. Holycross and four of his men had rushed forward underneath the trajectory of this deadly fire and when they got within 100 yards of the box, he ordered the fire lifted. Pfc. John Perez threw a grenade into the aperture as he closed in. When the smoked cleared, a white flag was lazily waving from the doorway. “We just held the bag as they surrendered,” one of the Americans wryly noted.
⁸

During this time Lieutenant McAuley's 3rd Platoon had been working on another nearby pillbox. Parker had already radioed him and suggested he use the same methods that had reduced the first box; they worked and the Germans surrendered, with the assaulting squad not
suffering a single casualty. As luck would have it, the pillbox just to the south of this one proved to be the box captured the night before, so Parker moved over and used this as a command post to deliver further orders. He put McAuley's 3rd Platoon on the defense, and then told Sergeant Holycross it was now his men's honor to attack the next group of pillboxes.

Enemy artillery fire had found his squads by this time, so Sergeant Holycross made the decision to leave two of them behind. Jumping off with a single squad of four men, he first directed the tanks to fire not just on the next pillbox, but on all four pillboxes farther to the south. Advancing under the loud, friendly fire as they had done before, the squad reached the first box and the Germans here “poked a white flag out the door and meekly surrendered.”
⁹
By this time the confident American tank gunners had their fire roaming from box to box; one pillbox turned out to be empty, but between forty and fifty prisoners were taken from the others. Holycross later pointed out, “In each case the white flag was displayed after the tank fire ceased, as the Jerries in the pillboxes were apparently afraid even to open the door to show their readiness to surrender until this fire was lifted.”
¹⁰

Sergeant Holycross's attention now shifted to the pillboxes down the slope before the steep draw, from which he feared a counterattack might start. This time when he requested supporting fire, the tanks became timid because of the risk of
Panzerfaust
fire; accounts even said they “almost refused to go on unless the draw was cleared.”
¹¹
Lieutenant Colonel Cox responded by ordering Company G, his reserve company in that day's operations, to come up and clean out the draw.

Lieutenant Colonel McDowell's 3rd Battalion of the 117th Infantry Regiment was attacking to Company E's left at the time. Sketchy reports had also been coming in saying that the 120th Infantry Regiment had already reached Herbach, the day's objective for the 119th. This proved to be false, but for Lieutenant Parker it meant that he couldn't call on any artillery fire to help his men with what was left of their mission because of the proximity of friendly forces.

There was a hutment area just to the northeast of Herbach, so Parker instead ordered McAuley's 3rd Platoon to move over there and clean it out. These men did so with little difficulty, even though there were just thirteen men left in the platoon by this time. Sergeant Holycross,
meanwhile, had built up their flank with his own men. Now, with the boxes reduced by the 3rd Platoon, this permitted him to use their men for flank protection and he led the attack on two more pillboxes. Stronger enemy fire was coming in from a wooded area to Holycross's front. Lieutenant Parker's answer was to call for the company's weapons platoon to fire their machine guns into the woods. Searching and traverse fire found the Germans and silenced this threat; Holycross and his men were then able to reduce the next two pillboxes.

Company E had now captured more pillboxes than it had strength to defend, so Lieutenant Colonel Cox ordered Lieutenant Arn's Company F to take over. “They were doing such a good job in capturing the pillboxes that Colonel Cox did not want to change over,” remembered Arn. “But at 0900 Company F was given the mission of occupying the pillboxes Company E had captured.”
¹²

In doing this, the only opposition consisted of artillery fire from the southeast. This, however, was extremely heavy and forced the advance elements to move by rushes from one foxhole to another. The foxholes were those previously dug by Company E. In the late afternoon the 3rd Platoon was given the mission of cleaning out the woods. After a small patrol had been sent out and reported finding no Jerries, Staff Sergeant [Roger B.] Todd and a complete squad were sent out to outpost it.

Loaded with grenades, M-1s, BARs, and machine guns, the remainder of Company F had few problems securing the pillboxes. In all, Parker's Company E captured eleven pillboxes; Sergeant Holycross's group was responsible for taking eight of these, even though the supporting tanks were low on HE and out of AP ammunition when he was going after the two pillboxes back in the draw. The company suffered only one casualty during the day's attack. Company E had pushed all the way down the ridge to a point just to the east of Herbach. Only one pillbox remained on the tip of the high ground fronting the village. Lieutenant Parker wanted to take it, but without tank support he had to let this pillbox wait until the next day.

The 3rd Battalion of Colonel Birks's 120th Infantry Regiment, commanded by Lt. Col. Paul W. McCollum, had been attached to the 119th
Infantry Regiment at 1530 hours on 5 October; this was the unit that was reported to have already reached Herbach. But McCollum's mission was to first cross the Wurm at Rimburg, and then attack south to fill the gap between Cox's 2nd Battalion and Herlong's 1st Battalion, the latter still heavily engaged in the dank Rimburg woods. McCollum's forces did make it to the line held by Lieutenant Parker beneath Herbach, where they consolidated for the night. Absent was Lieutenant Colonel McCollum. The North Carolina native had been killed by artillery fire while returning to his CP after inspecting one of his company positions; his executive officer, Maj. Howard W. Greer, was now in command.
¹³

Without armored support, it indeed was another very rough day in the Rimburg woods for Lieutenant Colonel Herlong's 1st Battalion. Captain McBride remembered, “The attacked jumped off at 0700 with Company C on our left. When we advanced about ten yards, intense fire from two mutually supporting pillboxes 50 yards to our front forced the company to return to its original position.”
¹⁴

Lieutenant Bons's Company C was also unable to make any immediate progress. After both companies made several more futile attempts to gain ground, Herlong pulled them back approximately 75 yards and then called for artillery and mortar fire on the enemy positions. This fire was delivered on a time schedule, and the moment it was lifted both companies rushed forward but were again stopped by hostile fire. Friendly artillery was again called for while the heavy weapons men also lobbed their 81mm mortars at the Germans this time. But the rifle companies made no progress. “This procedure was repeated several more times without success,” Captain McBride recalled later. “It became apparent that when the artillery began falling the Germans would move into their pillboxes and dugouts. Then as soon as the artillery lifted they would rush back and man their positions.”
¹⁵

McBride was obviously not satisfied with this predicament. He was also convinced that Company C was not being aggressive enough, so he decided he would have one of his own rifle platoons assault the high ground that Bons's men were supposed to take. The Company B captain only had about twenty soldiers apiece in each platoon at his disposal, so this was a daunting challenge. Captain McBride's plan boldly called for both platoons to move forward while rapidly employing marching fire as
they dashed toward the pillboxes. He wanted the element of surprise and speed. There were just two light machine guns left with the weapons platoon; he decided to have both gunners fire from a hip position and accompany the platoon on the left; their mission was to take the higher ground in front of Company C. The heavy machine gunners would fire on the flanks of both platoons as they advanced, and then swing their fire at the pillbox embrasures when the riflemen closed in. To strengthen the attack, McBride also determined that he needed flamethrowers to accompany each platoon. There was one problem—he had no one in his own ranks to carry the flamethrowers; no one knew how to use them.