Aachen: The U.S. Army's Battle for Charlemagne's City in World War II (32 page)

Instead, the Americans attacked first at 0700; Colonel Johnson's 117th Infantry Regiment's objective for the day was Mariadorf and interdicting the Aachen-Juelich highway, the second artery for enemy supplies to reach the 246th Division in Aachen. The 1st and 3rd Battalions were selected for this assignment; Lieutenant Colonel McDowell chose to use Lieutenant Thompson's Company I and Company L. Captain Kent's Company A joined with Spiker's Company B in Lieutenant Colonel Frankland's zone of operations, which ran from the southeast edge of Alsdorf, then across an open field to a sunken railroad track several hundred yards in front of Mariadorf, and finally to the 1st Battalion's objective—the western half of the village.

At jump-off, McDowell's companies attacked to the left, their mission to take the small shop- and farmhouse-lined eastern side of Mariadorf; their right flank boundary was the railroad line running into the village from the small hamlet of Kol Kellersberg. The early going was slow. The rifle companies first experienced some problems cleaning out the southern part of Alsdorf, and then they ran head on into more stubborn resistance as they started across the open field and made their way toward the railroad tracks.

Thompson's Company I, leading the charge, first trailed and then got out ahead of its supporting armored vehicles when enemy antitank fire flared up. Then, heavy incoming machine-gun fire from the front of a slag pile beside a coal mine pinned them down. The tanks, attached to the 3rd Platoon of the 743rd Tank Battalion, experienced trouble getting at the Germans with their mounted machine guns; one tank crew instead hurled grenades into their foxholes. Three of the platoon's tanks were
soon knocked out, but their crews dismounted and continued fighting on the ground as infantrymen. Tank A-16 was the only tank operational so the unwounded crewmen from the other tanks soon mounted this armored vehicle and joined in the fight. By this time, Thompson's men were also fighting at close grips and at bayonet point in front of A-16. To their left, Company L's mortars were captured; the Germans were setting them up to fire back on the Americans. A hastily ordered counterattack proved fortuitous. The mortars were retaken at great cost to their opposite numbers. Close by, a Company I sergeant had been captured, but as he was being searched at rifle-point, one of his squad members fired his M1 and caught the German guard squarely between the eyes.

Frankland's 1st Battalion was experiencing similar problems. Captain Kent's Company A had been given the assignment of first clearing out the quaint stucco settlement houses originally built for coal mine workers in Kol Kellersberg, immediately southwest of Alsdorf, while Spiker's Company B attacked across the open field. During the early going their movement was less challenged than that faced by McDowell's companies and the men were able to reach the sunken railroad track fronting Mariadorf by midmorning. Kent's Company A had been held up in Kol Kellerberg; Captain Spiker's platoons still raced forward. But after they crossed the railroad track, all hell broke loose when a forceful German counterattack struck from the direction of Mariadorf; three supporting tanks were knocked out and casualties ran high in Captain Spiker's 1st and 2nd Platoons. “Lieutenant Burton's platoon was sliced off and he and his platoon sergeant and 25 others were captured or killed,” remembered Lieutenant Colonel Frankland. “The support platoon then built up with a section of heavy machineguns in the little village of Blumenrath and started to paste the enemy with small arms and some 60mm mortar fire.”
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Another thrust of enemy tanks and their infantry also circled up through the southern edge of Schauffenberg as McDowell's 3rd Battalion forces were fighting along the railroad tracks. Retaking Alsdorf was this force's objective and it was destined to threaten the battalion's outpost. It was about 1020 when this attack started, and Lieutenant Thompson would later say, “If we had been held up initially in our advance, we would have caught this force before it slipped behind us.”
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Once they got through, I contacted Colonel McDowell at his OP and asked him if Company I should pull back to cover Alsdorf. “Hell no,” he replied. “You go ahead and secure Mariadorf; I can take care of the situation here.”

McDowell later remembered the situation as “the toughest [his] battalion had encountered since the beaches.”
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His OP was in a three-story school building on the southeast edge of town where, while commanding from the upper floor, he could barely see the company of enemy infantry riding on four Mark IV tanks as they closed in through the mist.

The attack quickly swept into the edge of Alsdorf.
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With Lieutenant Colonel McDowell were two other officers, commander of Company M—Lieutenant Baran—and Lt. Samuel Kessler, Liaison Officer. Both departed the third floor of the building for the lower level to disperse the meager supply of firepower personnel on hand to the windows. Baran then returned to the top floor as the German attack started encircling the building. The defenders were just four strong: McDowell, his radio operator, Pvt. Roy C. Wheeler, and Lieutenant Baran. Some enemy soldiers had already managed to get behind the building; one Mark IV was also to the rear of the OP, ranging up and down the main roadway. One of its rounds had even set the battalion antitank gun's prime mover on fire.

Manning the lower floors of the school building were men from the battalion wire team, including Sgt. Melvin E. Morris, Pfc. Levi H. van der Kolk, as well as Privates Marta C. Spires, Howard W. Willingham, and Gerhart H. Housell. Also in place were Pvt. Tad Tragasz, a battalion runner; Privates Elmer Chlan and Robert F. Cooper, both members of the battalion Pioneer Section; and Pfc. Webster E. Phillips, a battalion intelligence scout. Lieutenant Kessler oversaw all of these men.

The all-around defense produced remarkable results. While the one Mark IV continued cruising deliberately to the rear as the others rolled toward his OP, Lieutenant Colonel McDowell, with just his M1, personally killed four of the German grenadiers and wounded at least three others. Lieutenant Baran was responsible for five more and Private Wheeler accounted for two casualties. Combined with the fire delivered by the men on the first floor, as well as tanks from the 743rd Tank Battalion that knocked out three of the Mark IVs, the attack was stopped by noon. Lieutenant Colonel Duncan noted:

Sergeant Donald L. Mason in A-16 observed the enemy vehicles, armor and infantry and called for and adjusted artillery fire. Sergeant Mason also notified the tanks of the 1st and 2nd Platoons and the command vehicle in Alsdorf by radio. This tank notified the 117th Regiment of the counterattack. It was the tanks from the 1st and 2nd Platoons that took the German tanks under fire and destroyed the three.
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After what was later recorded as “a field-day of pot-shooting,” McDowell conservatively estimated that twenty Germans had been killed or wounded near the OP. Machine-gun fire delivered from sections of the heavy weapons company with Thompson's Company I and other well-placed artillery rounds called in by the forward observer of the 118th Field Artillery mowed down more in the field outside of Alsdorf.

“The tankers knocked out the three vehicles to our front,” McDowell explained later. “But a fourth and another from somewhere wandered up and down the streets of Alsdorf all day.”
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Interestingly, one of these Mark IVs was dubbed “The Reluctant Dragon” by Regimental Headquarters, which was just 150 yards behind the school building that day. This tank, after eluding TD fire and traps by bazooka teams from Major Ammons's 2nd Battalion all afternoon, escaped later that night. The other had been finally chased out of town when the leader of the antitank platoon slipped up behind it and fired a round of bazooka ammo into its back end, damaging but not stopping the panzer from running.

Other battles raged on in the open ground southeast of Alsdorf and just north of Kol Kellersberg all that afternoon. Lieutenant Colonel Frankland's 1st Battalion managed to stop another drive the Germans made at Alsdorf in the early afternoon; this was brought to a halt by Captain Kent's 3rd Platoon. After this, Captain Spiker's assault platoons tried again to move forward from the railroad track, but as they approached Mariadorf they were stopped by very heavy artillery and small-arms fire. Many casualties were sustained; those who could went back to the depression near the railroad track where they set up a defense with just one supporting tank. Kent's 3rd Platoon, after spending the rest of their afternoon tangling with Germans in the heavy woods on the battalion's right flank, joined Spiker's depleted numbers at the rail line later in the day.

Lieutenant Thompson's Company I had also struggled to get into Mariadorf that afternoon. Trouble began right at the railroad tracks where the Germans had stationed machine guns on an overpass; Lieutenant Tempe's 1st Platoon was practically wiped out by this fire. Just six men returned that night, but those remaining fought on.

Believing, apparently, that the Americans were about whipped, a German officer rose to his full height and with a sweeping gesture in true Ft. Benning “Follow Me” tradition, waved his men onward in an open skirmish line. Company I held its fire for a few moments and then opened with every weapon, eliminating almost all of the “field manual” Germans.
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This attack having failed, the Germans tried to bring up tanks on Thompson's left flank. Luck was with the company this time. Lt. Dewey J. Sandell had been able a few minutes earlier to direct fire on a barn at the edge of Mariadorf, causing it to collapse. This distracted the enemy panzers. Although Thompson's men had been leveling ineffective bazooka and rifle grenade fire at these armored vehicles, he still remembered, “The tanks withdrew temporarily either in fear of the bazookas, or because the building suddenly caved in.”
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Sandell vainly attempted to adjust more fire right after this, but as he recalled later, “There was so much confusion over the 536 that nobody quite knew what or where the artillery was going to land. The first concentration dropped behind our positions. I called the artillery observer to raise it 800 yards and it was still short, so I had to raise it 800 again, then adjusted it to start chasing around after some tanks but I switched left and right so fast that the observer got pretty disgusted with me. But the artillery made the tanks retreat.”
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Later in the day, more German infantry wearing uniforms of captured Americans attempted to take the place of their tanks. Sneaking in on Company I's left flank again, Thompson took a few casualties before his alert men spotted the ruse; the enemy soldiers gave themselves away because they were carrying their standard yellow ammunition boxes. They were quickly mowed down by angry American rifle fire. Dusk fortunately set in shortly afterward, prompting Lieutenant Colonel McDowell to pull the battalion away from the much too close enemy heavy weapons to
better defensive positions north of the railroad tracks. Half a squad at a time cautiously withdrew under friendly rolling artillery barrages; it was impossible to recover any of the wounded until well after dark. Just thirty-three men from Company I made it back that night.

Colonel Sutherland's 119th Infantry Regiment continued to pierce the thin front held by the German 148th Infantry Regiment above North Bardenburg on 8 October. Lieutenant Colonel Brown's 3rd Battalion was first given the mission of clearing out the regimental right flank along the railroad line running into Hergozenrath; the battalion's Ammunition and Pioneer Platoon swept the roads for mines before Brown's companies jumped off and by 0805 all the pillboxes were emptied. Herlong's 1st Battalion mopped up the town itself and was halfway to Kamerhof by 0900 before encountering trouble. Numerous enemy-laid mines here became difficult to bypass, stalling his companies until Brown was ordered by Sutherland to move over and provide assistance. They removed the mines within two hours, permitting the 1st Battalion to continue down to the southern edge of Kamerhof; by noon, Herlong's men were fighting in the edge of the woods just to the east of North Bardenburg.

During the afternoon Colonel Sutherland decided to move Brown's companies over to the right of the 1st Battalion to take the small hamlet of Pley; they accomplished this despite increasing artillery fire, and Brown's forces were eventually able to get nearer to Huhnernest. By this time Herlong's companies were out of the woods and on the fringes of North Bardenburg, receiving mortar, machine-gun, and rifle fire. With enemy resistance now becoming more apparent, Sutherland ordered defensive positions put in place and contact established between the two battalions. They had done this by 1800, but as one 3rd Battalion officer recalled later, “The Germans were now really throwing in their artillery. All the troops took cover in what buildings they could find. At one point there were the larger part of three companies in one barn.”
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The southern division boundary had nevertheless almost been reached and the 119th Infantry expected to send patrols out to contact General Huebner's 1st Infantry Division. “Everyone in the [30th] Division thought a meeting would be made within two days at the most,” remembered Lieutenant Colonel Cox.
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But Cox also noted a problem when he added, “The 119th and 120th Infantry Regiments were
supposed to make contact near Bardenburg, but a gap existed between the two regiments.”

This gap was destined to be thoroughly exploited by the Germans in the days ahead. It was also recorded in their 49th Infantry Regiment's after-action report on 8 October: “In spite of the many tanks committed by the [Americans], he was prevented from crossing the big road.”
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Even though the long-anticipated attack to close the gap separating Aachen and its major supply line from the southeast had already commenced this very day in the 1st Infantry Division zone, it was now becoming more evident to the Americans that the linkup with the Big Red One would not happen too quickly.