Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II (15 page)

The Division Regroups

The division was exhausted and had been heavily bloodied. Medics from the 45th Armored Medical Battalion did a fantastic job of patching up the wounded, but casualties among tank crews and other combat personnel had been much higher than anticipated. In addition, the loss in tanks and other combat equipment had been staggering. Of the four hundred tanks that had started in Normandy, approximately a hundred were still operational. Although ordnance had replaced most of the losses, the maintenance crews had to make an almost superhuman effort.

The maintenance men together with ordnance men, mechanics, and welders had long since become accustomed to working around the clock in blackout conditions. By using blackout curtains and small Onan portable generators, the crews could do a considerable amount of work at night. We normally didn’t like to weld at night, because from the air a flash could be seen in the darkness for several miles. Until the air force introduced the Black Widow night fighters, the only protection we had was from our own antiaircraft guns. Although we tried to do maintenance in areas not exposed to direct small-arms fire, these areas were always exposed to incoming artillery plus an occasional sniper.

The maintenance men quickly adapted to doing field maintenance under all conditions. After a little rain, an open plowed field that had been converted to a VCP became a quagmire once a few tanks and other combat vehicles had run through it. The maintenance men worked in pouring rain and deep mud up to their rear ends. In many small and subtle ways, a strong sense of mutual respect between the combat troops and the maintenance troops developed. Each knew that his survival depended on the other. This helped the division survive under the most horrible conditions.

The Battle of Aachen

The division had now entered a major regrouping. The 1st Infantry Division took over many positions of CCA to the north and shored up our left flank. The 9th Infantry Division shored up the right flank of CCB to the south. The 4th Infantry Division was moving up in the south through the Hürtgen Forest and was experiencing terrible casualties.

Our division had driven a deep salient into the German lines, outflanking Aachen to the southeast. Corps and army medium and heavy artillery was brought forward to join our division artillery supporting the 1st Infantry Division in its assault on Aachen. The XIX Corps of First Army with the 30th Infantry Division and the 2d Armored Division moved in on the northern flank of Aachen. The battle for the city had begun.

The first large city in Germany to come under siege, Aachen was a key strongpoint in the outer edges of the Siegfried line defense system. It was an old and historic city that had been the seat of Charlemagne’s government in the ninth century. Charlemagne’s body was entombed in the city’s historic cathedral. The Allies were determined not to destroy the cathedral if the Germans did not try to make it a strongpoint. Both sides apparently understood this, because the cathedral, although damaged, was left virtually intact. Aachen also contained the famous German Polytechnic Institute, one of the finest engineering schools in Germany.

The division trains moved forward, closer to the combat units, to perform their functions more rapidly during this buildup period. Maintenance battalion headquarters company moved into an area just north of Raeren. Its billeting officer must have had his head up his rear end because he could not have selected a worse site; it was about two hundred yards wide and situated between two army artillery battalions. To the north was a 155mm howitzer battalion and to the south was an 8-inch howitzer battalion. When I expressed my opinion as to the precariousness of our position, I was told that the move had already been made and we would just have to stay put.

Vernon and I put down our bedrolls beneath Major Arrington’s trailer. There were two large armor-plated doors on either side of the trailer that protected the batteries, and we lowered these until they practically touched the ground. We felt that this would make an ideal spot for our bedrolls. We decided that, with all this protection, it wasn’t necessary to dig a foxhole. I found out later that this was a big mistake.

The two artillery battalions were laying down intermittent fire in salvos lasting two to three minutes each. First, the 155mm howitzers would let go with a salvo and then stop; next, the 8-inch howitzers would let go with another salvo. This continued throughout the early hours of the evening and until well after dark. The blasts lit up the entire night sky very much like Roman candles.

Suddenly, there was a low whirring and swishing sound followed by a dull thud, then a tremendous crescendo of wracking and crunching. The lack of a high-pitched screaming noise indicated that this was not an 88 or smaller shell but was instead something quite large.

“Damn, Vernon, that’s incoming!” I said. “We should have dug that foxhole.”

We heard the sound of feet hitting the deck of the trailer above us, and I could hear Major Arrington screaming, “Cooper, what the hell was that?”

“Major, it’s incoming and it’s big,” I hollered. “You better get down here with us.”

Arrington came screaming out of the trailer dragging his bedroll and crawled under the trailer to get between the battery box covers with us. As he was straightening out his bedroll, another low, whirring noise started coming in much louder than the first. “Damn,” I yelled. “It’s right on top of us!”

This time there was no dull thud but instead a horrendous wracking, crunching noise. I felt as though my eardrums were about to burst. Fortunately, my Jeep was parked in front of the trailer and caught most of the blast. The windshield, although it was down and covered, was shattered, and the radiator and tires were destroyed. The entire front of the Jeep looked like a sieve. Part of the major’s trailer was also riddled with fragments.

Bitch was snuggled under Vernon’s arm, and I thought at first that she had wet the bedroll, but she hadn’t. I wasn’t sure that I hadn’t. There was no question that my Jeep and the armor-plated battery box covers had saved us.

The first round had come in north of headquarters company and just south of the 155mm battalion. The second round had come in on the southern edge of headquarters company, slightly north of the 8-inch howitzer battalion. I thought the next rounds would come right between, in the middle of headquarters company.

Sure enough, the Germans fired three more rounds in quick succession and they landed in the middle of the largest field, where headquarters company was bivouacked. Fortunately, the closest vehicles were about fifty yards away, and the damage was limited primarily to broken windshields and torn tarpaulins.

At daybreak, we could get a better idea of what had happened. The second round had landed across the highway about fifty feet from the major’s trailer. There was a railroad track on that side of the road, and the shell landed between the rails. Although this section of track was completely demolished, the combination of the steel rails plus the steel cross ties sometimes used on German rail lines seemed to muffle the effect of the blast. Although I had been correct in my warning about bivouacking between two artillery battalions, it did no good to push the point. I just hoped we all learned from that experience.

With the intermittent firing of the two artillery battalions some five hundred yards apart, the Germans’ flash detector was confused. The first round came in to the north of the battalion. The second came in to the south. They split the difference, and the next three rounds zeroed in on the middle, which happened to be right where headquarters company was located.

Examining this area, we found three large craters fifteen to twenty feet deep and forty-five to fifty feet across. The craters actually overlapped one another. We located the base of one of the shells, a 210mm projectile. The largest field artillery we had encountered at that time, the shell had been fired by a 210mm railroad howitzer, located on a track that ran into a tunnel near Eschweiler, eight miles away. The gun was pulled out of the tunnel at night, fired against our positions, then returned to the tunnel at daybreak. This went on for several days before the air force located it, then had P47s dive-bomb and destroy the gun and the tunnel. The ability to fire three large-caliber rounds with overlapping craters from an eight-mile distance was some indication of the extreme accuracy of the German fire control systems.

C Company moved to an area south of Raeren near an ammunition dump. The maintenance company of the 33d Armored Regiment bivouacked a few miles away, just south of Kornelimünster. When I arrived there the next morning to see Maj. Dick Johnson, who commanded the maintenance company and was also CCB’s maintenance officer, he was complaining that an 8-inch gun battalion had moved in just north of him.

“Cooper,” he said, “I was here first, and those bastards moved in here later and are just going to draw artillery fire on us and make it difficult for us to do maintenance.”

“Major, you probably outrank that battery commander captain, so why don’t you go over there and tell him to move the guns?” I suggested.

The major grinned and thought about it, although we both knew that the location of the artillery battalions was according to a corps artillery plan and had priority over maintenance. It was obvious, with the buildup taking place, that the areas were going to become even more crowded as artillery, ammunition, and supplies of all types moved as far forward as possible.

As we had predicted, the 8-inch guns fired various missions throughout the day and night. The German sound and flash systems would pick them up and return fire. The Germans had a methodical way of fighting wars, which must have been the result of their discipline. The method must have worked to their advantage many times, but it also worked to their disadvantage, because things tended to become routine. For example, if the Germans fired a mission on a certain target at 1100, they would fire every day at the same time. You could almost set your watch by it. This at least gave us some warning of when incoming artillery was to be expected.

A herd of German cattle occupied a field between the maintenance company and the 8-inch gun battalion, closer to the artillery. Whenever the Germans would start counterbattery fire, some of the rounds would land in the field and kill a cow. As soon as the fire lifted, the artillery troops and maintenance troops who had taken cover in their foxholes would dash into the open field to claim the cow. It was reminiscent of Normandy, when we had smelled the terrible stench of dead livestock in the field. The only solution was to immediately go out and butcher the cow and clean up the remains. This also put fresh beef on the table, which was extremely hard to find at the time.

On this particular day, our maintenance soldiers were determined to avoid the event of the previous day, when the artillery troops had beaten them to a fallen cow. When the counterbattery fire started, one of the maintenance men took his crew and got inside a T2 recovery tank instead of getting into a foxhole. They started up the engine and waited for the counterbattery fire to cease.

Sure enough, right in the midst of the barrage a large cow was fatally wounded. The sergeant immediately moved his T2 across the field while the artillery troops watched helplessly from their covered foxholes. The men opened the trapdoor at the bottom of the tank and one of them sneaked out with a rope sling and attached it to the fallen cow. He attached the other end of the rope to the end of the winch cable, then crawled back inside the hatch as fast as possible. They left the field with the dead cow dragging behind them. The maintenance company had a feast that night with fresh steaks for everyone. To the best of my knowledge, this was the first time in the history of warfare that a battlefield recovery under fire had been made for a dead cow.

As the buildup continued, Aachen was completely surrounded. An emissary under a flag of truce was sent into the city to demand surrender. The German commander refused, and the battle started in earnest. Task Force Hogan of the 3d Armored Division, attached to the 1st Infantry Division, proceeded to attack from the south and from the encircled east flank. The 30th Division of the XIX Corps, with elements of the 2d Armored Division, attacked from the north and northwest.

There was heavy fighting in some areas, particularly around the hills dominating the main roads in and out of the city. Aachen was pounded with artillery from four divisions plus heavy artillery from both corps and First Army. In addition, the 9th Tactical Air Force made a number of strikes at targets within the city. The German garrison was overpowered, and the commander surrendered after a tough fight.

The G2 received word that the Germans had developed a new secret weapon, a small, remote-controlled robot tank. It was about eighteen inches high, battery powered, and controlled by a wire that played out as the tank moved across open ground. The tank contained a thousand pounds of TNT and could be detonated by the operators, who could be several hundred yards away in a foxhole. A school had been established at Düren to train German soldiers to use this tank.

The G2 sent word to the combat troops to be on the lookout for any prisoners who might have attended this school. He was soon notified that a young captured German soldier appeared to have been a cadet at the robot tank school. He was brought to an abandoned schoolhouse in Mausbach where the G2 was interrogating prisoners. The young cadet, a tall Nordic blond product of the Hitler
Jugend
, turned out to be extremely arrogant and was humiliated that he had been captured alive and not allowed to die for the glory of Germany and his Führer. He refused to answer questions except to give his name, rank, and serial number, as agreed by the Geneva Convention.

Prisoners were sometimes required to do a few calisthenics to keep them in shape and loosen them up a bit. The GIs ran the young German prisoner up the stairway to the second floor of the schoolhouse, then made him jump out the window and slide down the flagpole located next to the window in an attempt to make him talk, but their tactic didn’t work. The prisoner continued to express his indignation.

One of the basic tricks when interrogating prisoners of war was to build up the prisoner, then suddenly break him down psychologically. This prisoner was brought down the next morning to where all the prisoners were lined up ready to be loaded onto trucks and taken back to the POW camp.

The young Jewish lieutenant who was in charge of this group had been born in Germany but left the country with his parents in the early 1930s to escape Nazi persecution. He spoke perfect German and understood thoroughly the psychology of the Hitler
Jugend
. When the prisoners were lined up in front of the schoolhouse, the lieutenant was given a list of the prisoners’ names. He took a few moments to look over the list, then addressed the prisoners in perfect German. He told them that although they were prisoners of war, the Americans always admired bravery and courage, even among the enemy. He called out the name of the tank school cadet and asked him to step forward. He proceeded to heap additional praise on him in front of his German compatriots. The cadet grinned from ear to ear and constantly swung his eyes to the right and left to make sure that the other German prisoners had understood what the American lieutenant said. The lieutenant then stated that because the Americans were particularly impressed with this type of valor, even from a German prisoner, the decision had been made to accommodate the young lieutenant’s wish to fight and die for his Führer. He would therefore be released and returned safely to the German lines.

With that, two MPs, each wearing Red Cross armbands, drove up in a Jeep with a Red Cross flag on it, walked over and grabbed the cadet, one on each arm, and started to escort him to the Jeep. The expression on the young German’s face turned from a grin to one of complete and abject terror. He broke down and started crying like a little boy. “
Nein, nein,
I don’t want to die for the Führer.
Nein, nein,
I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die!”