Aachen: The U.S. Army's Battle for Charlemagne's City in World War II (42 page)

Captain Smoot's Company E had cleared the buildings east of Adalbertstein Weg by this time; the process had been painfully slow, but methodical. The combined tank/infantry tactics anticipated during the planning for the attack paid off; the accompanying tank used delayed-fuse heavy explosive shells, allowing time for their entry through windows, doors, and even lighter outside walls before exploding. The armored vehicle's personnel then joined with Smoot's heavy machine-gun crews and riddled snipers in windows, Germans on rooftops—anything in the way of the infantry. Concussion grenades often convinced their opposite numbers to give up. But they had expended a tremendous amount of ammunition through the morning, and Captain Smoot had to temporarily suspend his attack while more ammo was sent up; Lt. Ladimer F. Jelnick's A&P platoon, consistent with Daniel's planning, delivered the necessary loads shortly after noon.

Still, not all had gone according to plan. A disturbing announcement was made by the BBC before Lieutenant Colonel Corley's 3rd Battalion jumped off from the factory district; it was first overheard on a radio station at the division CP a little after 0900. It stated: “Strong U.S. patrols were in the factory area and were meeting stiff resistance.”
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The BBC report should not have revealed U.S. troop locations, even though the local Germans opposing the Americans certainly knew they were there. An intelligence officer on General Huebner's staff also knew he had the basis for a “serious accusation,” but he wanted “something to back it up first.” This concern had merit. The possible entry of enemy reinforcements through the factory district weighed heavily on the minds of the commanders, both in the CP and on the ground. Plans to protect the area were quickly put in place, but it would be hours before a composite unit from Colonel Smith's 18th Infantry could be put together and rushed down from Haaren to fill the gap.

By this time Lieutenant Colonel Corley's forces were already pushing west into an area of congested apartment buildings. Captain Botts's Company I, first advancing along the railroad tracks out of the factory district, was soon clearing the structures to the north. One of his platoons split off at a bend in the line and headed toward Gruner Weg; the rest of the company veered south onto Lombardenstrasse. Stiff resistance started interfering soon afterward and shell fire began raining in from what appeared to be an artillery piece on Observatory Hill, but the German aim was off; five to six of their own were wounded by what was supposed to be friendly fire. Thirty others from the 6th Company of the 352nd Regiment were taken prisoner.
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Captain Corwell's Company K at the time was going down Julicherstrasse intent upon making a turn onto Thomashofstrasse, but a 20mm antiaircraft gun firing down Josef von Gorres Strasse slowed the men. Then a German using his
Panzerfaust
managed to hit both of the tanks accompanying Corwell's lead squad; one immediately erupted in flames. The shocked tankers in the other were evacuated by Texas native Alvin R. Wise, the sergeant leading the squad.
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Wise returned to the tank while under hostile enemy fire, mounted it again, and made his way to the machine gun; now he fired through the holes that had been blasted into the nearby houses before the tank was set on fire. While Sergeant Wise was emptying this gun, Privates Brown and Gafford used its noisy and
lethal cover to rush up and join him; they emptied the tank of its burning equipment. Soon Wise was out of ammunition, so he dismounted, grabbed a light machine gun and this time remained in an open position while continuing to neutralize the enemy fire. Incredibly, Brown and Stafford were able to grind the tank back to the relative safety of Julicherstrasse while Sergeant Wise again covered them. Neither had ever been in a tank before; they had no way of knowing how to start it, or operate it, but somehow they did both.

Company L was moving down Julicherstrasse at the time with the mission to clear out the apartment buildings southward toward Talstrasse, and then along Peliserkerstrasse. This street overlooked the Karhol Friedhof cemetery and was the boundary between the 2nd and 3rd Battalions on 13 October. Chaplin had first moved all three of his platoons out abreast, but there was too much fire coming down Julicherstrasse so they had to split up. One platoon went after the pillboxes in their paths; another went around the back of the apartment buildings that all seemed to butt up against one another, and got over their walls to attack. The third platoon raced through holes that had been blasted by the armor in the front of the houses. By noon, three pillboxes near Blucher Platz had been reduced and seven prisoners, including the commanding officer of the 8th Company, 352nd Regiment, were taken.

During the noon hour, the Americans made several adjustments and tackled various problems. Calls from both battalions came in requesting more ammunition. The rail underpass at the Rothe Erde station still needed to be cleared and more armored vehicles were desperately required in the city. Prisoners had been flowing into the regiment's POW cage all morning, but the real problem was the numerous civilians seeking refuge from the attacks. Many had described conditions inside the shelters: They leaked badly and some were submerged in a foot of water; no windows or ventilation made for terrible problems; plumbing was essentially nonexistent; sanitary facilities were limited; the stench was sickening. German soldiers who had deserted their units were masquerading as civilians; many of obvious military age wore ill-fitting clothing that made them instantly suspicious. Lieutenant Colonel Corley's forces were running into enemy troops of higher caliber than they expected. The concealed artillery pieces on Observatory Hill needed to
be silenced. The BBC was still reporting Corley's movements, prompting one intelligence officer upon learning from prisoners that their commanders had no way of communicating to quip, “The BBC was taking care of that for them.”
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Then at 1250 hours a report came into Daniel's CP telling him that Captain Weeks's Company F had run into real trouble. His 2nd Platoon had come under heavy mortar and machine-gun fire from the vicinity of Josef von Gorres Strasse and Stolbergerstrasse; crossfire had taken a toll. Two Americans had been killed and eight wounded, including the platoon sergeant and one of his squad leaders. Their accompanying tank had been knocked out by a
Panzerfaust
. The 1st Platoon was in a fight on the edge of the cemetery, and in a clash here the platoon leader was killed. Then word came that Weeks had been mortally wounded while he was directing a firefight around some tombstones in the cemetery.
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All hell had broken loose; prisoners revealed that the 7th and 8th Companies of the 352nd Regiment had bolstered their defenses just to the northeast of the cemetery. Adjustments were now mandatory; Company F had actually been stopped.

By this time a plan was evolving to bomb the artillery position behind Observatory Hill. Just before 1400 hours, Lieutenant Colonel Corley was contacted by Major Clisson, who asked if it was safe for planes to come in from the northeast and drop their loads. Corley responded favorably and urged it go off right away, but it took another forty-five minutes before the first plane hit the area and the results were uncertain. Another flight came in after artillery marked the target with red smoke, this time nearly an hour later. Then more flights soared in right behind the first fighters. Clisson, who had stayed in contact with Corley during this time, evinced both of their concerns about the danger of the bombs hitting their own men, so when the air liaison officer contacted regiment and said they could bring in more planes, the S-3 said, “Anything you want; just keep it west of the east edge of that green hill. It's OK to strafe if they come in and break out to the west. That last flight did a good job.”
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Another round of red smoke, actually remembered by the men on the ground as “lots of smoke,” was on its way within the hour. Twelve planes roared in low, making down-the-groove maneuvers so their pilots
could get good bursts of machine-gun fire on the hostile artillery position. They pulled up to avoid any ground fire and zigzagged westward to become just distant dots in the sky outside of harm's way; the mission was over in less than fifteen minutes. Botts's Company I was also working its way westward at the time, and enemy mortar and artillery fire began to slacken; the last air mission had been very effective.

At this point Corley wanted to get his companies linked up for the night. Chaplin's Company L men were still on Perliserkerstrasse being held up by Germans who were using increasingly clever ways to survive; they had been working their way through the underground maze of sewage systems, often popping up behind the advancing Americans who had no choice but to double back and drop grenades into the smelly sewers before manhandling covers back over them. This had been very time consuming. Companies I and K finally met up at 1725 hours on Passstrasse next to Farwick Park. Corwell's men halted on the east side of the street, but had outposts on the other side closer to the park; Botts got his forces completely across Passstrasse. Chaplin's men had no choice but to stay on Perliserkerstrasse, protecting the rear of the other rifle companies while having to watch their own when they spotted any Germans moving about over their shoulders.

At 1900 hours, Lieutenant Colonel Corley ordered the battalion to button up for the night; he reported to regiment that he had a solid line in place, but that there was an enemy company in the park that appeared to be equipped with mostly automatic weapons. Lieutenant Nechey's 81mm mortars were set up in the road junction at Lombardenstrasse and Ungarnstrasse, behind Corwell's and Botts's men; Nechey's heavy machine guns were emplaced on the flanks of both companies, providing an all-around defense. Corley later reported that Chaplin's men had actually made contact with some of Lieutenant Colonel Daniel's Company F squads during the afternoon; they had been fighting Germans in the same buildings on Perliserkerstrasse.

But neither badly battered Company F nor Captain Smoot's Company E had reached the 2nd Battalion's phase line objective; this was Victoriastrasse, and it ran perpendicular to and due south of the Karhol Friedhof cemetery below where Adalbertstein Weg and Stolbergerstrasse came together. Lieutenant Colonel Daniel desperately needed to get more tank and TD support up to his men and to commit Lieutenant
Walker's Company G, but it wasn't until late afternoon that the engineers found a way to get the armor through the underpass; they had instead demolished walls and busted down doorways in the railway station itself. Now Daniel needed to consolidate his companies nearer to Victoriastrasse. He sent up Company G, and they got a block short of there after being slowed by scattered resistance and taking over fifty Germans prisoners. Smoot's men converged on Victoriastrasse at about the same time the two weakened platoons of Company F did; the other platoon would spend the night getting what sleep they could among the graves in the cemetery. At 1910 hours, Daniel reported to regiment that he had a solid front flanked by tanks and TDs on his first day's phase line objective. The 1st Battalion's Company C had his men's back; they had moved up to guard the underpass and to keep any enemy units from entering Aachen by way of Rothe Erde.

The open door through the factory district now behind Corley's 3rd Battalion was finally closed closer to 2100 hours. Colonel Smith had been able to cobble together a composite company within the 18th Infantry that was made up of men from his mine platoon, the regiment's Intelligence and Recon Platoon, and a squad from the 634th Tank Destroyer Battalion; these men were not expected to fight their way into Aachen. Their sole mission was to block to the west and northwest “to prevent any infiltration of stuff driven down by the 30th Division.”
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By this time, 139 prisoners had been processed to the POW cage by Corley's men, and 30 more were inbound; all were from the 5th, 7th, 8th, and 14th Companies of the 352nd Regiment.
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Daniel's 2nd Battalion had bagged 138 Germans from Companies 6, 8, and 14. The 689th Regiment Headquarters Company, their Training Company, and the Stoss Company were also represented in the prisoner ranks. One soldier taken from the 404th Regiment confessed during his interrogation that two companies of this regiment had snuck in from Würselen through the railroad station outside the factory district; this likely took place before Colonel Smith's composite unit arrived. Perhaps the most discouraged POWs were nine Aachen policemen still in their normal duty uniforms who had been forced to fight as German infantry.

Later that night Lieutenant Colonel Corley was questioned by an operations officer at division as to whether a SP-155 gun might work on the apartment buildings along Peliserkerstrasse that had proven to be a
real problem for his Company L during the day. These tracked, self-propelled vehicles were normally used for long-range indirect support, so the idea was very intriguing. Corley offered, “I don't know; the tanks and TD's don't even bother the buildings, but I'll let you talk with Chaplin; he can give you an eyewitness view.”
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Chaplin was quickly patched in and he stated; “I watched the firing on the buildings and it didn't even bother the enemy troops; they just stay there and take it. 155's might work. They have a terrific blast.”

The operation officer then promised to “take the matter up with the general,” cautioning that he would ask for a couple of 155s, but Corley would have to commit to keeping them well protected since they had no armor plating. It did not take long to get an answer. At 2215 Corley got another call, this time saying the DIVARTY commander, Gen. Clifton Andrus, had bought in, but he was only committing one gun. The Ivy League–educated Andrus, a native of Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and who was stationed at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, added this when he spoke to Corley:

I think it would be best if you fired it through the windows with a quick fuse. The blast should drive them out. I do not want it closer than 400 yards. If that doesn't work, we can adjust 8-inch on it and you can get an observer out there and we can creep back on it until we make a hit. The gun section has been alerted and an officer will be right over.
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