Aachen: The U.S. Army's Battle for Charlemagne's City in World War II (51 page)

Russell had seen this kind of attack before when he was a lieutenant with the company in North Africa; then it was the entire 10th Panzer Division at El Guettar in Tunsia. His men may have been initially shocked by the sheer size of the force attacking the company now, but their adrenaline-fueled spirit soon had them using their BARs, machine guns, small arms, and hand grenades to repulse their attackers. Eleven Germans who were close to one another fell quickly in front of pillbox 6; their bodies were piled up in a ditch. Farther out, fifteen to twenty more grenadiers were killed or severely wounded; they were strewn over each other in some places. But their superior numbers prevailed. Despite their casualties, the enemy forces retained possession of pillboxes 6, 3, and 4. To prevent more grenadiers from getting to the crest of the hill, Captain Russell had his other two undermanned platoons take up defensive positions on a line southwest to northeast. As he looked out from the hill, however, he could still see that even more grenadiers and their panzers were regrouping for another frontal attack.

It came at approximately 1000 hours. An estimated two of their platoons attacked Russell's 1st platoon on the left; they were greeted by withering fire and the Germans again suffered heavy casualties. Then another wave came, first covered by their tank and mortar fire. This time they went after pillboxes 5, 7, and 8. But Russell's men stopped them cold; the grenadiers were forced to withdraw, leaving most of their killed and wounded behind.

Lieutenant Colonel Peckham, commanding the 3rd Battalion, later recalled the difficult circumstances he was now confronted with:

Plowed fields, rain and open country made the hill an impassable mass for our tanks, TD's or anti-tank guns. We could not get anything on the hill that could live for anti-tank protection. Therefore, the hill had to be held by the infantry alone.
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Just before noon, Captain Miller's Company B was ordered out of Verlautenheide and over to the Ravelsberg to help out. By now Company K had suffered numerous casualties. But before Miller could get his men in position, the Germans again tried to gain entrance into Russell's lines on the hill; more high-volume rounds of American fire stopped them, but the grenadiers managed to retain possession of the three pillboxes on the forward north slope of the Ravelsberg as the afternoon wore on.

The fight for Farwick Park was well under way by this time. The area south of the tennis courts had again been worked over by the 81mm and 4.2-inch mortars; interdictory fire had also been laid along Ludwigs Allee and Kupferstrasse to deter movement of any enemy reserves into the park. Lieutenant Colonel Corley took advantage of the poor dawn light that morning and moved a platoon of Lieutenant Shepard's Company L opposite the main line of the German forces south of the tennis courts right after the mortars had performed their work. Corley had even held off artillery fire until Shepard's attack started in order to keep the enemy forces off balance. These maneuvers indeed caught Battalion Rink by surprise and completely demoralized its men who were occupying fixed positions in the center of their defensive line.

The SP 155 had also thrown its weight in. From the gun's position on the corner of Rolandsstrasse and Margratenstrasse, it fired fifteen rounds into the buildings suspected of housing German forces south of Roland Platz. Then Captain Botts's Company I moved out; their attack first went off smoothly, but slowed down as they approached Pippinstrasse. It was now nearing 0800, and by this time the 155 SP gun had been moved over to support Company L; it was emplaced south of the tennis courts, drawing some enemy fire, but as soon as the gun got off its initial shots there was no more trouble. A total of thirty menacing rounds
were fired into the Kurhaus and the Hotel Quellenhof, further demoralizing the Germans defending these positions. Combined with fire from the TDs and tanks, both objectives were neutralized. Lt. William D. Rachford's 2nd Platoon moved up at 0900 and entered the hotel's once ornate lobby; these men immediately started looking through the rubble for entrances to the basement where Battalion Rink's forces were suspected to be holding out in order to escape the tenacious American shelling of the upper levels.

By now the Kurhaus had been taken back; it turned out to be a command post. Captain Corwell's Company K platoons were also clearing out the elegant but heavily damaged homes on both sides of Monheims Allee by this time; snapped trees covered the strip of park between the two lanes of the boulevard and the Americans disposed of the Germans hiding there. The 155 SP gun had been moved again, to Rolandstrasse and Passstrasse. Here, the powerful tube was employed to neutralize a Battalion Rink outpost in the Church of St. Salvador on Salvatorberg hill; it was being used to spot American troop movements and to adjust artillery fire. All open enemy resistance ceased by 1030 hours, well ahead of the time Corley promised to General Huebner. Only the Hotel Quellenhof, its main lobby “a maelstrom of discarded clothing, weapons, food and broken furniture,” still held Germans.
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Rachford's men had by this time been through the main reading room where “not one of the oil paintings of hunting scenes had fewer than a half dozen bullet holes in them,” and found the three entrances that went into the basement; they quickly set up defenses to keep these Germans holed up where they were.

Company M's Lieutenant Nechey had accompanied Rachford's platoon when they came into the hotel; he was making a reconnaissance since his machine guns would be used for the continued defense of the area. By this time, some scattered fighting had broken out in the west wing of the lobby, where the 155 SP gun had blown a gaping hole in its outside wall; a few of Lieutenant Rachford's men had already started searching the upper floors of the hotel. Nechey decided he would see what he could do about clearing the Germans out of the basement.

He hastily organized a squad, and together they started down one of the stairwells into the basement; Nechey led. He was greeted by enemy fire, but avoided getting hit. One of the quick-thinking squad members threw a “potato masher” grenade that had been taken from a captured
German; the grenade looked like a stick and had a pull cord that ran down its hollow handle and detonated the explosives. A five-second delayed fuse first ignited its charge, and when it went off its blast effect scattered steel fragments everywhere. The Germans reciprocated by throwing several grenades toward the stairway, but by this time the Americans were safely back up in the lobby. Nechey had decided to go to another one of the entrances, bringing just two men with him this time; he left the others to guard the doorway they had just left. The trio quickly went through a second doorway at the other end of the lobby, with Nechey again the first to take the stairs down into the vast cellar. This time he threw several hand grenades as he descended, and when he hit the bottom stair he started firing his automatic carbine at the Germans. The men at the other entrance also raced down those stairs again while emptying their weapons, and this proved to be too much for their opposite numbers. All who were not wounded or killed in this creative double envelopment immediately surrendered; Nechey took fifteen prisoners, including two lieutenants.
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Lieutenant Rachford had by this time cleared out the upper floors of the hotel with his men. Some of the Germans had succeeded in setting their ammunition on fire before surrendering; a few others threw empty champagne bottles at the Americans. They found an abandoned 20mm antiaircraft gun installed in a second-floor window that must have been hand-carried up the stairways piece by piece. The hotel had become a “wasteland of torn walls, shattered glass, bodies and bloodstains,” an account noted. “The coppery stench of blood, along with the sulphuric odor of spent gunpowder and the dusty pall of fallen timbers and plaster, all permeated the hallways and rooms.”
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By nightfall all mopping up had been completed; the hotel and the rest of Farwick Park belonged to the Americans. Two TDs had advanced with Captain Botts's Company I through Roland Platz then down Rolandstrasse to Monheims Allee; every house on those streets had been emptied of Germans. The whole area between Monheims Allee and Krefelderstrasse, plus the circle west of Krefelderstrasse, was also firmly in American hands. Enemy losses were later tallied at 30 killed, 45 wounded, with 135 taken prisoner.
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Corley lost 2 men who were killed; another 19 had been wounded.

It had been an equally busy day for Lieutenant Colonel Daniel's 2nd Battalion. The area around the state theater had redeveloped into a strongpoint; the Germans set up machine-gun positions and moved
Panzerfaust
teams into places among the rubble and burned-out structures hit the day before. Daniel wasted little time over this; his 155 SP gun poured seven rounds in “to considerable effect” and this opened the way for a deeper drive into the cathedral area.
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But they confronted more trouble. This time Lieutenant Walker's Company G was held up by sniping rifle fire from a church that his men had already passed; believing that it had been emptied of enemy soldiers, a platoon circled back and conducted a more detailed search, this time discovering that they had overlooked the steeple. Walker ordered his tanks and TDs to take aim at it, which they did but to little effect because the steeple tower was heavy concrete. So the 155mm gun was brought up again, and it blasted the tower apart with a single shot.

Shortly afterward, Walker's men captured another air raid shelter in the area. “Civilians trudged through the wreckage to the safety of a little colony which had been established for refugees,” Don Whitehead wrote in a dispatch back to the States. “They came from the dank shelter like a procession of lost souls, pushing little carts filled with a few belongings. Here is a defeated Germany on parade.”
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Nearby, machine-gun fire coming from a convent slowed the Americans down; it took a combination of bazooka fire, rifle grenades, and tank fire to finally subdue this strongpoint. Lieutenant Webb's Company F encountered little resistance as his men worked their way westward on Adalbertstein Weg after finally breaking out from where they had been held up the day before along Lutherstrasse and Kaiser Platz.

But Daniel was confronted with two bigger problems as the day wore on; both of his flanks were dangerously exposed. “By night Company G had become so overextended that something had to be done,” he remembered.
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The quick but imperfect solution was to first have Walker's men bend their defensive line back to an area just west of the underpass on Wilhelmstrasse. Then good fortune came Daniel's way; the 2nd Battalion of the 110th Infantry, 28th Division, arrived and was placed on his south flank, covering most of the ground cleared that day by Company G, thus permitting these men to concentrate on driving farther westward.

Circumstances had also become challenging on his right flank. Smoot's Company E was assisting Captain Botts's Company I in clearing the area northeast of Monheims Allee and Krefelderstrasse for most of the afternoon, forcing Daniel to end operations by curving the battalion's line to the corner of Heinrichs Allee and Julicherstrasse in order to maintain contact with the 3rd Battalion. This line was now getting close to the foot of the Lousberg, but relief came later that night when Daniel received Company C of his own regiment's 1st Battalion to cover this flank.

It was near dark by the time Captain Miller's Company B finally reached Ravelsberg Hill. Nevertheless, Lieutenant Colonel Peckham already had a plan in place to retake the forward pillboxes lost earlier in the day. Accordingly, Miller moved his 2nd Platoon up to reinforce Company K's line near pillboxes 11 and 14; Company K's 1st Platoon took up the defense of Pillboxes 15, 16, and 17, but two of Miller's squads would assist Russell's 1st Platoon in retaking Pillbox 3. During the afternoon the Germans had managed to occupy a fourth pillbox on the hill's northern slope—Number 5. Company K men would wrestle with this one.

After Miller checked to be sure that his men were ready with their pole charges, bazookas, and grenades, the attack jumped off. Eleven prisoners were quickly taken from Pillbox 3; the pole charge alone had intimidated the Germans. No other shots were even necessary. But chaos suddenly enveloped Ravelsberg Hill. The grenadiers had been alerted by the attack on the box, and this made taking Pillbox 5 back more difficult. Worse, the Germans were now firing American machine guns they had captured from the outlying pits of Pillbox 6 into both companies’ lines.

Darkness was also enveloping the hill, but the fighting raged on; Pillbox 4 surrendered. Then, an individual action by one of Company K's noncoms exemplified courage above and beyond what could be expected from a single man during this kind of intense fighting. Earlier that afternoon, while he was removing one of his wounded men from the blood- and rain-soaked Ravelsberg, Sgt. Max Thompson of Haywood County, North Carolina, saw Germans moving in on the company's 3rd Platoon to his right. According to an eyewitness, “One of his guys mentioned surrender; Max said ‘When you're the last man up here, then you can do what you want, but until then we'll keep fighting.’”
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Thompson then moved quickly, ran to a nearby abandoned machine gun, and started firing on the swiftly closing grenadiers; he unloaded round after round until enemy return fire knocked the gun right out of his hands. Dazed and shaken, Thompson somehow regained his sense of purpose and picked up an automatic rifle lying in the grass; he then emptied several bursts into the remaining grenadiers now closing with their bayonets fixed.

But then the rifle jammed. Somehow Sergeant Thompson still managed to find an antitank gun, readied it, and took aim at the Germans and a light panzer that was supporting them. “I don't know how one guy could do it,” Staff Sgt. James E. Osborne, a nearby noncom later recalled, “But I can verify that he personally knocked out two of the tanks with rifle grenades and a bazooka.”
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