Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II (30 page)

The German had apparently disguised his identity with a farmer’s coat and hat. Not willing to parade around without pants or shoes, he had kept on his soldier’s pants and combat boots. He realized that any German soldier captured behind American lines in civilian clothes could theoretically be shot as a spy, but at the same time, if he continued to insist that he was a civilian, the Russian was going to kill him. The German kept repeating,
“Nein, nein, me no soldat, me civil, me civil.”
This infuriated the Russian, who raised his bayonet and seemed ready to cut the man’s throat.

The young German panicked and in a violent surge broke loose from the Russian’s grip and jumped on the back of my Jeep, screaming and hollering,
“Ya, ya, me soldat, me soldat,
me Deutsch soldat.”
He evidently figured that he would have a better chance with the Americans than the enraged Russian.

I hollered halt and the Russian stopped his advance toward the Jeep. The young German soldier was trembling all over and burst into tears. In my best German, I told him that the Americans would not kill him. We drove him about a mile down the road, where I turned him over to the MP guards at a POW camp. He seemed relieved when he saw his fellow prisoners and realized that some of them had on all types of clothing, both civilian and military. He had a wan half smile on his face as he departed with the MP, and he raised his hand slightly as if to say
danke schön
. He realized that his life had been spared and he had now become a survivor.

The division had moved about three hundred miles in continuous combat since jumping off from the Remagen bridgehead. The men were thoroughly exhausted. There seemed to be no letup, and it appeared that the enemy was determined to fight until every square foot of Germany had been conquered.

The strain of the long march also had a telling effect on the equipment. Any M4 tanks that had survived since Normandy (and there were very few) were badly in need of track changes. Because there had been no chance to do routine heavy maintenance, many crews and maintenance mechanics did their best to keep everything patched up and going.

To make matters worse, we faced a severe shortage of fiftyweight engine oil for the tanks. Both the R975 Wright engine and the V8 Ford engine used this oil in their crankcases; they also required five gallons of it for the oil bath air cleaners. This was primarily a logistic problem; we had moved so rapidly that it was becoming increasingly difficult for the supply truck convoys to get to us. We had to let the air cleaners go and do the best we could to ration what oil we had. By this time, the maintenance people had learned how to improvise in the field under difficult conditions and had become an extremely efficient, well-coordinated organization.

It was difficult to determine whether the small villages were occupied by our troops or the Germans. The situation could change several times in a single day. In one incident, Maj. Bill Derner, division headquarters liaison officer to the maintenance battalion, and Capt. Bob Grindatti of the maintenance battalion were proceeding back to division trains at Sangerhausen. They came to a fork in the road where the paved road led north to Quellendorf and the dirt road led west. They decided to take the road to Quellendorf and proceeded with caution.

As they went up the road, they encountered a detachment of American engineers with a bulldozer removing a German roadblock. They asked if the road was cleared to Quellendorf and were told yes, that the company commander had just proceeded up that road a few minutes ago.

Thinking that Quellendorf was in American hands, they headed out, with Captain Grindatti’s Jeep in the lead. Just as they approached the outskirts of the town, they encountered heavy small-arms fire. The major realized that they were surrounded and ordered his group to surrender. Captain Grindatti had been hit several times in the stomach and was bleeding severely.

The Germans apparently were just going to walk away and leave him there; however, Major Derner insisted that his captors take care of the wounded man. They reluctantly agreed and took Grindatti into the village, where a German medical officer attended to his wounds. One of the division’s task forces overran Quellendorf that afternoon; Captain Grindatti was liberated and sent back to an army base hospital. In the meantime, Major Derner and several other prisoners, including the captain who had commanded the engineers south of Quellendorf, were imprisoned at Alten-Grabow until May 3, when the British captured the town.

The division’s next objective was Dessau, a medium-sized city on the Elbe River near the confluence of the Mulde and the Elbe. The end of the war in Europe was rapidly approaching, and rumors abounded. There was considerable speculation that Hitler and some of his staff would withdraw into the Berchtesgaden area in the Alps and set up a strong defensive position there.

A move in this direction, however, had been frustrated by the rapid movements of the Third Army and the Seventh Army to the south, which isolated this area. The next question was, would we go into Berlin? The XIX Corps of Ninth Army, north of us, had already established bridgeheads across the Elbe River. The answer to this question appeared to be yes, and the VII Corps received its final field order. Our objective was to establish bridges across the Mulde and the Elbe and attack Wittenberg, forty miles southeast of Berlin.

German resistance had apparently stiffened considerably in these last few days, and the Germans reacted furiously with heavy artillery barrages when our engineers started to put a bridge across the Mulde. The engineers sustained a number of casualties. My friend Lieutenant Frost was killed during one of these barrages. He was one of my liaison buddies with CCB, and was with me when we got lost going into Airel our first night in Normandy. The loss of any life is tragic, but to lose one’s life after making it all the way through the war up until these last few days seemed almost incomprehensible.

Although it would seem natural for a soldier to hesitate taking risks as the war drew to an end, by this time we had learned to take things one day at a time. For a man living between life and death, there is no tomorrow. Living in the present helps a soldier survive emotionally.

The division now found itself stretched somewhat precariously. At the leading edge of the VII Corps, it occupied a forty-mile front from just southeast of the Harz Mountains to where the autobahn crossed the Mulde River. The 1st and 9th Divisions were still cleaning up the Harz Mountains, although a couple of battalions of the 1st Infantry had been assigned to CCA and CCR. The 104th Division, to our south, was committed to capture Halle, and one battalion had been assigned to CCB.

The Germans had organized three new divisions to oppose us: the Potsdam, Scharnhorst, and Ulrich von Hutten Divisions. Personnel were mostly the remnants of shattered units plus air force ground and flight personnel, although the Germans did bring in a number of veteran officers and noncoms with combat experience. These three divisions were the outer defense line against an assault on Berlin from the southwest. Hitler reportedly visited these units on April 13 and told them they would soon be the focus of a major German counteroffensive.

With our division spread out and opposed by three new divisions, our situation was critical.

The Final Assault

The battle of central Germany now reached its final stage, although the situation was vague as far as we were concerned. We understood that the Allied powers had agreed at Yalta on the final occupation of Germany, but we knew nothing of the details. We assumed that the Russians would occupy eastern Germany, which probably would include Berlin. Because the VII Corps had been ordered to put a bridgehead across the Elbe and advance to Wittenberg on the main road to Berlin from the southeast, and because the Ninth Army already had bridgeheads across the Elbe south of Magdeburg, it was assumed that we would advance on Berlin and meet the Russians in that vicinity.

I went to CCB headquarters, just south of Dessau, to look at the situation map in the G2 trailer. It was covered with a sheet of clear plastic on which were marked locations of all friendly and enemy troops in the area. Blue grease pencil was used to mark the American units and red to mark the German units. I was curious to see if there were any markings for the Russians. I saw none, so I asked one of the G2 lieutenants where we were supposed to meet the Russians.

He said he didn’t know. “We can pick up their voices on the radio and know they must be within a range of fifty miles. We’ve assumed they’re on the other side of the Elbe River to the east of us.”

I realized that high-level decisions must have been in progress. This uncertainty was compounded by rumors: Certain irresponsible and uninformed commanders were making brash statements that we could go into Berlin tomorrow without any trouble. The press picked this up and magnified it even further.

Although I had no idea what was transpiring at the high levels of command, I felt that the frontline combat troops had been stretched to the limit. The 3d Armored Division had spearheaded the VII Corps, which had in turn led the First Army across central Germany. Since crossing the Roer River at Düren on February 23, the VII Corps had captured Cologne, crossed the Rhine River at the Remagen bridgehead, and completed the envelopment of the Rose Pocket. The division had then led the corps eastward and enveloped the southern flank of the Harz Mountains. They arrived in the vicinity of Dessau on April 16 and attacked and surrounded the city; by April 21 it surrendered.

We now awaited orders to advance toward Berlin. We had lost many tanks and other armored vehicles, and all the equipment was in dire need of heavy maintenance. The personnel casualties had been heavy, and the men were completely exhausted.

General Eisenhower supposedly asked General Bradley what it would take to capture Berlin. Bradley reportedly said it would take 100,000 British and American casualties. Some felt that Bradley’s estimate was high; however, it cost the Russians at least this many. Because the Russians had already been slated to occupy the territory around Berlin, Eisenhower had obviously made a wise decision not to attack Berlin.

When the order came to cease the attempt to bridge the Elbe River, a great relief came over the troops. Many remained in the vicinity of Dessau until April 26. We spent these last few days examining the airport and the surrounding facilities.

We discovered a gold mine of German military secrets. Dessau appeared to be the main Luftwaffe research and development center. The airport, hangars, and surrounding buildings were filled with models and experimental aircraft. Partially completed drawings were still on the boards. The cabinets were filled with drawings, letters, documents, and research reports describing in detail many advanced weapons systems.

The Germans left so rapidly that they apparently did not have time to destroy these secret documents. We immediately impounded them and put guards on them. Our ordnance reports went back to the First Army G2, and they immediately sent military intelligence people to collect these documents before we turned the area over to the Russians.

The division held its position in Dessau at the confluence of the Mulde and Elbe Rivers and for an area several miles south of there. A large Agfa film factory at Tornow had been set on fire. In spite of the flames and fumes, some of our troops managed to get into the factory and evacuate considerable quantities of film and other photographic equipment before the plant was consumed. Because such equipment was considered military contraband, it became “legal loot” and could be confiscated and used by our troops.

On April 26, our troops had drawn up along the west bank of the Mulde River; the Russians were about twenty miles away on the east bank of the Elbe River. We had been ordered to hold these positions until further notice.

That morning, a lieutenant from the 69th Division, just to the south of us, took a patrol across the zone between the Mulde and Elbe Rivers at Torgau, which was supposed to be strictly off-limits. He contacted the Russians, in the first joining of Russian and American forces in World War II. This joining eliminated any possibility of the Germans withdrawing from Berlin.

On this same date, the division was finally relieved by the 9th Infantry Division, and we withdrew to the vicinity of Sangerhausen. The 3d Armored Division had fired its last shot against the German army.

V-E Day

Our feelings were mixed as we withdrew from the line “for the last time,” because we were not sure that it would be for the last time. We were delighted to move out of the range of enemy artillery; however, pockets of Germans holed up in small villages fought bitterly to the very end. Our answer was to overwhelm these villages with our highly mobile and devastating artillery fire.

The Germans’ resistance reinforced the idea that the war wasn’t over yet. There were rumors that Hitler and his entourage escaped from Berlin to Berchtesgaden, his summer hideaway. Previous experience had taught us that fighting in the mountains can be vicious and drawn out, and a relatively small force can extract enormous casualties.

The maintenance battalion headquarters company moved into an old sugar mill in Sangerhausen. For the next two weeks, we relaxed in relative ease. We lived inside covered buildings, and no one worried about digging foxholes every night. The maintenance battalion was busy getting our vehicles back in shape for whatever came next. There was a large German minefield on the forward slope of a hill in front of the sugar mill and the remains of an 88mm antiaircraft battery on a hill behind the mill. This battery had been neutralized by our artillery when we came through Sangerhausen the first time.

We cautioned the men about the possibility of booby traps in the minefield and the battery. Although the looting instinct was uppermost in the minds of some GIs, and the demand for Lugers, P38s, and other weapons was great, most of the men realized the danger of rummaging around in these abandoned German positions. The words of caution must have been taken seriously, because no one in my battalion was injured by these mines.

During this period, First Army sent ordnance intelligence people to Dessau to examine in detail the Luftwaffe research and development facilities we had reported. They searched the hangars, model shops, and drawing rooms. Several of the drawing rooms contained safes, and these were blown open. Anything that appeared to have any ordnance intelligence value was taken. Thousands of drawings, files, and models of all types and descriptions were crated and loaded on the trucks. Our men realized that anything left there would be turned over to the Russians.

Back at Nordhausen, the collection of ordnance intelligence data was on a much larger scale than at Dessau. Colonel John Medaris, First Army’s chief of ordnance, immediately recognized the bonanza we had uncovered at the V2 rocket manufacturing and supply center. The group he sent to study the installations found that the underground plant was more extensive than we had thought. The tunnels extended in layers some six hundred feet below the surface, completely impervious to bombing. The V2 had been in full production, and thousands of them had been turned out. Prior to our capture of the plant, London and the south coast of England had suffered devastating damage from the rockets. Now, however, all the launching sites in France, Belgium, and Holland had been taken.

Medaris organized a massive effort to load fifty railroad cars with rockets and rocket assemblies. In addition, there were many truckloads of smaller rocket motors, parts, and documents evacuated before we turned the area over to the Russians.

After the war, Medaris was promoted to major general and organized the Army Ballistic Missile Agency at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. Working with him in developing ballistic missiles and the nucleus of our space technology was the group of German rocket scientists, led by Dr. Werner von Braun, who had surrendered to our troops in southern Germany as we were evacuating the V2 assembly plant material from Nordhausen. Although the cost of capturing these facilities had been high, the action allowed the United States to win the Cold War and develop a space program.

Because the division constantly sent information to the troops, and we could pick up the BBC news broadcasts, we knew that the Russians had reached the outskirts of Berlin and had begun the final assault on the city. The rubble of a heavily bombed-out city can make formidable defense positions, and the Germans loyal to Hitler made the Russians pay dearly. We were glad that it was the Russians instead of us doing this fighting. Finally, we heard that the city had fallen to the Russians and that Hitler was dead.

My first reaction was that Hitler had been killed by the Russians; I learned later that he had died by his own hand. On May 7 we got the word that General Jodl had surrendered. On May 8 the ceremony was repeated in Berlin for the Russians. For the 3d Armored Division, the war in Europe had finally come to an end.

Darmstadt and the Army of Occupation

Shortly after V-E Day, the division was ordered south to Darmstadt. We proceeded down the autobahn over the gently rolling hills of western Germany south of Kassel.

The road was intact except for the bridges. Most of them had been blown; in some instances only one span going north was gone. Perhaps the Germans didn’t have time to mine both spans. It was a simple matter to cross over to the other lane of the road.

When we reached the northern outskirts of Frankfurt, it was obvious that the city had been heavily bombed but had not taken as much punishment as Cologne. The primary streets had been cleared of rubble, and we continued south past the railroad station to the Main River.

In moving through the northern part of the city, we passed near a large, low-lying brownstone complex that had been the headquarters for I. G. Farben, the largest chemical company in Europe. The complex was soon to become SHAEF headquarters. We crossed the Main River on a Bailey bridge, reinforced to take our M26 tanks. All the bridges across the Main had been blown, and our engineers were working feverishly to replace the major ones as quickly as possible with temporary bridges.

After crossing the river, we passed a large airport. The woods around it had numerous small indentures cut into them about two hundred feet wide and six hundred feet deep. The tarmac had been extended into the indentures, which were used to park aircraft. Although the airport had been bombed and strafed, more than two thousand planes, including Me109s, FW190s, and Ju88s, had survived in these spaces completely unscathed. I was amazed that with this many planes intact, the Luftwaffe didn’t put up a better showing in combat during the last days of the war. Although there was a shortage of aircraft fuel, it appeared that the shortage of pilots was the main reason for the collapse of the Luftwaffe.

As we threaded our way through Darmstadt, I was shocked to see the degree of destruction. The British had bombed the city during a night raid in February. The target was the Merck Chemical Works, on the northern outskirts. On the night the raid took place, strong winds blew from north to south, carrying the flares that were dropped over the chemical plant southward over the center of the city. When the first bomber dropped its incendiaries and started fires in the center of the city, the remaining bombers dropped their incendiaries on the same flaming targets.

Once a fire of this size got started, the tremendous heat generated by the flames caused the smoke and other combustion gases to rise rapidly. This in turn caused air to rush in, bringing in oxygen to further accelerate the rate of combustion. This miniature hurricane, known as a firestorm, not only consumed all the oxygen from the area but replaced it with carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. These combustion gases, being heavier than air, cascaded around the entire area surrounding the fire. In the residential area that we moved into, approximately a mile south of the fire ring, the people either suffocated or were asphyxiated by the falling gases. The effect was devastating. Of a total population of about sixty thousand people, more than forty thousand died in this inferno.

The maintenance battalion moved into a lovely suburban residential area about a mile and half south of the damaged city. We set up our shop in a large, modern brick and stone building that had been designed as a repair garage for the city streetcar system. Across the street from the shop was a handsome park with a large swimming pool surrounded by numerous playing fields. Adjacent to this was an arboretum of several acres with numerous walking trails.

Many tasteful homes surrounded this park, and we took them over as our living quarters. Most had been abandoned because the people who lived here were high in government and business circles, and with their Nazi connections they were afraid of American reprisals.

We lived in a large home near a swimming pool that was half full of water with a lot of dead leaves and tree branches in it; we were afraid to swim in it because of possible contamination. Battalion headquarters took over the largest home in the area, across the park from us. It had been the home of the Merck Chemical Works director general and was probably one of the finest homes in Darmstadt.

After ten months of combat, we tried to relax in our new quarters and take advantage of every amenity. Captain Ellis, commander of headquarters company, obtained the services of two Latvian women to cook at the officers’ mess. They were both large, heavyset peasant women who had been taken forcibly from their homes and made to work as slave labor in German war plants. Not knowing the whereabouts of their families or friends, or if any of them had survived, they were waiting to return home. They soon became good cooks and learned to speak passable English.

One day a German woman in her middle thirties came to the back door of the officers’ mess. Although her dress was somewhat shabby, she looked neat and composed. She asked to speak to the commanding officer. The cooks called Captain Ellis, and he talked with her. The army had imposed a strict ban on any contact with German civilians unless it was absolutely official. The nature of her request appeared to be official business. She spoke good English and was obviously educated.

She said that this had been her home and that her father, now deceased, had been the director general of Merck Chemical Works. She was living with the nuns at the Catholic hospital nearby and was helping take care of wounded German soldiers. While living in this house, she had planted a vegetable garden in the backyard and wanted to know if she could tend the garden and take some of the vegetables back to the hospital to supplement her patients’ diet.

She seemed immensely grateful when Ellis gave her permission to do this. She came every day thereafter to weed and water the garden and keep the edges neatly trimmed.

Although we were not supposed to fraternize with German civilians, it was difficult to ignore her, and gradually her tragic story came out. Her father’s position was comparable to that of the president of a corporation in the United States. All high-ranking German industrialists were either members of the Nazi Party or were strong Nazi supporters. As the daughter of a relatively high German official, she had grown up in an aristocratic society. She had attended the best schools in Germany and as a young lady had gone to both France and England to attend finishing schools. She was fluent in French and English. After school in England, she returned to the ranks of high Nazi society. She married a young captain in the German army and had two daughters. While her husband was away on the Russian front, she and her young daughters lived in this house with her mother and father. They received word that her husband was killed on the Russian front a few months prior to the end of the war.

Her father had been convinced by Hitler and the continuous stream of German propaganda that Americans were barbarians. He was told that if the Americans ever occupied Darmstadt, he and his entire family would be brutally tortured and put to death. He, his wife, and daughter made a pact that if such came to pass, they would all take cyanide capsules before the Americans arrived.

In late February 1945, when the American Third Army crossed the Rhine at Oppenheim, her father called the family together in the living room. He told the daughter to leave the two little girls, approximately three and five years old, in one of the bedrooms behind a closed door. He then distributed five cyanide capsules. The mother and father took their capsules and died quickly. She took the capsules for the children and put them in candy that she had prepared. She gave the candy to the children and stayed with them until they became unconscious. When she was convinced they were dead, she took her capsule and collapsed.

Shortly afterward, American troops reached Darmstadt and found the five bodies in the house. She apparently had regurgitated the capsule in her unconscious state and was still breathing when the troops arrived. The medics revived her, then took her to the Catholic hospital and turned her over to the nuns. When she finally revived sufficiently to realize what had happened, she was in a state of shock. How could she possibly have believed the Americans were barbarians when they instead had saved her life. She had become such a pawn of Nazi propaganda that she had killed her own children. This was more than she could cope with, and she cut her wrists with a razor. The German nurses found her in a pool of blood and managed to save her again.

It’s relatively easy to accept the fact that propaganda can be a powerful weapon among backward, uneducated people. This young woman, on the other hand, had had all the privileges of an aristocratic upbringing in a modern nation and had even gone to school in France and England. How could she possibly believe Americans were barbarians who would torture and kill her little girls?

One would think that after ten months of combat, nothing would shock you. As I was fortunate not to have been a tanker or infantryman exposed to terror on a twenty-four hour basis, I was perhaps more sensitive to shock. In any event the death camps in Nordhausen, Belsen, and Auschwitz and incidents such as this were bound to shock even the most insensitive person. How could any civilized people, on the face of this earth, possibly have been brought to do what the Germans did in this war? Man’s inhumanity to man seemed limitless. To this day, I’ve never heard a reasonable explanation of how this could have happened in a modern civilized world. I have no answers to this terrible question.

After two weeks at Darmstadt, we had caught up on our maintenance and had time to relax. The photographic equipment we had found in the Agfa plant came in handy. We set up our own lab and started developing pictures, not just our own but also film that we had found in many captured German cameras.

One roll of film, apparently taken by a German guard in one of the death camps, showed the slave workers in the process of burning the bodies. The corpses were stacked in piles along the wall at the end of the crematorium vault. There appeared to be fifteen to twenty furnaces in the crematorium. The workers used large clamps to grab the head and feet of the naked corpses and drag them across the floor to a small conveyor in front of each furnace. They loaded the corpses on the conveyor head first and used a long poker in the crotch to push the bodies into the furnace.

As soon as the first conveyor was loaded, the workers would load the next one. By the time they had loaded all the furnaces, they would come back to the first one and start all over again. Any bits of bone or residue remaining on the conveyor were brushed into the ash pit. The workers’ faces appeared void of any emotion. Several years after the war, a set of these pictures appeared in the holocaust museum in Atlanta, Georgia.

Major Arrington had us bring our final combat loss reports up-to-date. He told each liaison officer to review his records and those of the maintenance battalion shop work order clerk to make sure we had not missed anything. We went through all the records and tried to recount as accurately as possible every incident of vehicles being knocked out or damaged and repaired. After many hours, the final record was compiled and turned over to the division, which in turn sent it to the War Department for historical documentation. A summary copy of these records appeared in the 3d Armored Division history, entitled
Spearhead in the West
.

During this period, I received a ten-page V-mail letter from my Aunt Betty in Nashville, Tennessee. She was my grandmother’s youngest sister, and I had fond memories of the summers that she and the young grandchildren spent together in my grandfather’s house on the mountain in Huntsville. She would show us postcards of her trip to Europe many years before and would tell us stories about castles on the Rhine and knights and their exploits in great battles in the glorious past. Little did I realize as a little boy that I would someday be involved in similar exploits in this same land.

In her long letter, Aunt Betty described a trip she had taken with her father to Germany in the early 1890s, when she was seventeen years old. They had been invited to visit the family of a German music teacher in Rüdesheim, a small village on the east bank of the Rhine across the river from Mainz. The day they arrived in Rüdesheim on the train from Berlin, the Germans were celebrating the dedication of the Germania Denkmal (monument), a huge bronze statue cast from French cannon captured by the Germans during the Franco-Prussian war in 1871. The statue represented Germania, the German goddess of war, and was the largest statue in the world at the time.

The American ambassador and his daughter, who had been invited to participate in the dedication, were supposed to arrive on the same train from Berlin but had missed the train. My great-grandfather and aunt were mistakenly identified as the ambassador and his daughter and were given seats as guests of honor. While the
bürgermeister
and other high German officials gave numerous speeches, my aunt was given a beautiful bouquet of flowers and a red, white, and blue cockade to wear on her hat. Not until the ceremony was over did she finally comprehend what had taken place.

After reflecting on this event for some fifty years and through two world wars, she felt that this statue represented the height of German-Prussian militarism and wanted me to blow it up. This was the purpose of her letter. I was shocked to read that the woman I had regarded as a sweet little old lady music teacher had harbored such aggressive thoughts all these years. I looked at my map and discovered that Rüdesheim was only about seventy-five miles from Darmstadt. I decided to go there.

My aunt had described in the most minute detail the layout of the village and gave me the address of the house where she had stayed, number ten Schmidthoff. I soon found the street and the little courtyard with a small chapel and a fountain, which my aunt had described; she remembered having seen it from her bedroom window. I went around to the front of the house and found the number ten almost covered by an overhanging thatched eave. I took several pictures of the house, clearly showing the address.