Aachen: The U.S. Army's Battle for Charlemagne's City in World War II (7 page)

This reconnaissance platoon then left Hahn, reached the main street through Breinig, and discovered this village was also clear of Germans; they only found three tanks, and Breinig's citizens had rushed to the safety of basements and underground shelters. By 1500 Task Force Lovelady was rolling again and the head of the column caught up with the reconnaissance force. Lovelady then pushed his advance units over the next hill and down into the Vicht valley where they started toward a stream near a gasworks.

Lovelady had planned to cross on the Derichsberg narrow-gauge railway bridge, but it had also been blown up by the Germans. Captain Amborst's Company D infantry was instead sent across the stream to secure the steep wooded slope on the other side, but trouble waited there. Small-arms fire greeted Amborst's men as they started up the slope and into the tree line, so they advanced no more than a hundred yards. After the engineers determined that it would take most of the night to construct a crossing, Lovelady ordered the main elements of the task force to coil back in Breinigerberg. The infantry set up outposts just across the stream, while the engineers waited for more material to be brought up to construct the bridge.
¹⁹
Despite the sudden halt, Lovelady had swept over four miles of rolling countryside south of Aachen, and his task force was now close to the Vicht River just to the southwest of Stolberg.

Task Force Doan left Nutheim at about noon with orders to also move four miles northward to the vicinity of Eilendorf, which was midway between Aachen and Stolberg. Except for a brief skirmish at Brand, they encountered little fighting and by 1930 the task force reached Eilendorf where they leaguered for the night.
²⁰

Major Adams's 1st Battalion of the 26th Infantry Regiment was still consolidating its positions in Nutheim when Doan's tanks rolled out.
During the previous night, engineers had brought up welding torches and cut off the iron rails cemented in the nearby roadblocks. Shortly before dawn, Adams's first vehicles poured through the antitank barriers, bringing up rations and ammunition. Captain Simon's Company B had taken over the key crossroads in the village and these men set up strongpoints to defend against possible counterattacks. Shortly afterward the Germans indeed attacked, and they suffered heavy losses; twenty-two prisoners were also taken.

Captain Anderson's Company A sent reconnaissance patrols southeastward some 1,000 yards into Walheim. It turned out not to be a good way to start the day for these soldiers. As the patrol entered the village, a large volume of small-arms fire forced the men to retire after a brief skirmish. When the full company moved up to subdue this fire, they found an abandoned enemy 88mm gun and three antitank mines on the German's main position; prisoners captured stated that the weapon had been placed with only twelve rounds of ammunition and that they were instructed to destroy the gun if they had no means to take it away. Tanks accompanying the American company made this destruction unnecessary; one armored vehicle rendered the breach block of the 88 useless with a round of its own fiery 75mm armor-piercing ammunition.

During the day most of the heavier fighting fell onto the shoulders of Captain Ferry's Company C, whose mission was to clear the pillboxes bypassed during the previous night. Accounts written shortly after the fighting recalled:

Most of these pillboxes were not mutually supporting, but those with embrasures permitting crossfire proved hard to attack with hand grenades or anti-tank rockets. Various combinations of fire and movement were [first] tried. One successful method was to position riflemen to shoot into each and every opening to suppress shoulder-fired anti-tank weapons, and to roll up a tank to shoot into the embrasure.
²¹

Crossfire from enemy machine guns may have prevented the infantry—even with tank support—from reaching some of the pillbox openings, but Ferry's men now had one significant advantage. This time
they were attacking the pillboxes from the German side of the line, and the Americans quickly innovated to capitalize on this. Another report of the day's action noted:

[Reducing other pillboxes] was accomplished without engineers, but with the aid of a 155 rifle mounted on a M-12 chassis. The infantry discovered the blind spot of the pillboxes, and moved in to assist the approach of the 155. Then a pillbox was fired upon from the rear at a range of 100 yards. The result was to shake the guns loose inside the box and induce the occupants to surrender. Most of the pillboxes were large, holding twelve to fifteen men. Without having broken through [the previous day], allowing approach of the pillboxes from the rear where there were no fields of fire, the assault of the infantry would have been extremely difficult.
²²

Instead, concrete penetrating shells drove about 18 inches into many of the pillboxes. From one box, a white flag was quickly hoisted. In this case, “the concussion was such that guns within the structure were jarred from their position. All 35 prisoners taken had blood running from [their] eyes, ears, nose and mouth.”
²³

In the 16th Infantry zone of action on 14 September, Lieutenant Colonel Hicks's 2nd Battalion cut off the Aachen-Brand Road, a main artery into the city. The weather had been miserable all day. Journals indicated that the men “were deployed in mostly thick wooded areas where it was cold, wet and uncomfortable. Jeeps were getting stuck when they got off paved roads. The gasoline situation was becoming quite acute.”
²⁴
By this time the expenditure of ammunition also had to be cut.

For Colonel Smith's 18th Infantry Regiment west of Aachen, 14 September was relatively quiet. They encountered very little enemy activity and no artillery fire in Lieutenant Colonel Peckham's 3rd Battalion area. During the night the Company L commander, Ohio native Capt. George D. Folk, sent a patrol out to try to penetrate into Aachen, but these men got into a firefight between Blumenthal and the outskirts of the city and had to withdraw. Two prisoners were taken; the patrol suffered no casualties. Just after midnight, Smith received a request from the
16th Infantry commander, Colonel Gibb, to move Lieutenant Colonel Learnard's 1st Battalion closer to Gibb's own 1st Battalion to support a fire mission the latter unit was putting on as they were establishing defensive positions east of Brand.

On 14 September Brand was in the zone of the 9th Panzer Division. During the day,
Oberst
Mueller reported to the command post of Seventh Army south of Julich. Field Marshall Walter Model, commander in chief of the
Heeresgruppe
, happened to arrive here at about the same time. Instead of being relieved, Mueller was allowed to retain his command of the 9th Panzer Division. He then spent most of the day bringing up a replacement battalion that had arrived in Duren and was comprised of six hundred men before he returned to his division command post, which had been moved to Weisweiler that afternoon.

This new unit had just three machine guns used for training purposes, but twenty other guns with ammunition were later moved up by truck. This gave the battalion roughly six light machine guns for each of its four companies. Mueller remembered what little fighting power this would add to his division:

No further troops of the 9th Panzer Division were available nor could any be expected owing to the lack of fuel, according to the commander of the 2 Pz Grenadier Regiment, who at the request of the division had reported this on 14 September—with the exception of some tank crews who were awaiting a few newly manufactured tanks at Duren. On the contrary, half of the stationary 88mm anti-tank guns had to be transferred to another sector, which admittedly had not received any guns, but which on the other hand had not been attacked. These had to be withdrawn from the front line prior to the imminent enemy attack in spite of [my] objections. With [the replacement battalion], which naturally had very limited fighting value, the sector commander was to protect the second Westwall line.
²⁵

By this time,
Oberst
Mueller had received an order issued by
Generalfeldmarschall
von Rundstedt, Supreme Commander West. Just before noon on 14 September, Model had also appeared at LXXXI Corps
headquarters. The field marshal had telephoned
General der Infanterie
Hans Krebs in Berlin to describe the situation around Aachen, which he assessed as “dangerous.”
²⁶
He then requested more reinforcements, “lest the loss of the city be risked.” During an evaluation in the Führer Headquarters, Hitler said that same morning, “Hold the Westwall or go down with the Westwall.” Rundstedt had issued a corresponding order. It is unlikely Mueller was inspired by this directive, and he undoubtedly realized its futility.

There was just cause.
Generalleutnant
Schack even remembered this day as one where “the enemy pressure was exerted along the entire southern front of LXXXI Corps as far west as Aachen, apparently with the intention of enveloping the city from both sides. The enemy made slight penetrations southwest of Aachen and deeper penetrations south and southeast. The weak forces of the 116th Panzer Division were not able to clear up this breach. In the evening the situation on the left wing was no longer clear.”
²⁷

Colonel Gibb's 16th Infantry Regiment had passed through the deep southern flank of Panzer Grenadier Regiment 60 during the day. The area in Colonel Smith's 18th Infantry Regiment sector had been defended by Panzer Grenadier Regiment 156 and two companies of Infantry Replacement Battalion 453. The 116th Panzer Division historian agreed with Schack about the left wing of the LXXXI Corps zone being troubled, as he stated, “On the evening of 14 September the biggest danger was at the border between the 116th Panzer Division and the 9th Panzer Division, between Eilendorf and Stolberg.”
²⁸
However, in defense of his Greyhound Division he offered that the countermeasures of Armored Reconnaissance Battalion 116, which had been pushed back during the day on the Corps’ left wing by Huebner's 1st Infantry Division, “succeeded in at least establishing a new front line during the night along the embankment of the Aachen-Duren railroad.” Somber in his assessment of the day's losses, however, he also recorded, “It was only a matter of time before the enemy appeared ahead of the second [
Westwall
] position between Busbach and Verlauntenheide.”

Generalleutnant
von Schwerin was relieved of his post during the evening of 14 September and command of the 116th Panzer Division was first given to
Oberst
Fritz Voigtsberger before
Oberst
Siegfried von
Waldenburg assumed this duty position on 19 September. For Count Schwerin, this was not the first time the German command had relieved him. While “impressed again and again with his personality”
²⁹
and first welcomed to his reconstituted division with “music and flowers” on 3 May 1944, Schwerin—to his disservice—was often stubbornly loyal to his men. This loyalty had first cost him his command back on 9 August after he tangled with his then-immediate superior,
General der Panzertruppe
Baron von Funck, the commander of XLVII Corps, over a failed attack by Panzer Grenadier Regiment 60 two days earlier.

When he was relieved again on 14 September, Schwerin was ordered to report to Headquarters, Seventh Army. Here, he and
Oberst
von Osterroht were interrogated about the evacuation of the Aachen citizenry. Without mentioning the “famous lines” in the letter he wrote to the U.S. commander, Schwerin explained himself sufficiently for
Generalleutnant
Schack to take responsibility for his actions in his own report to Seventh Army. Still, the letter soon became known to the much-feared Himmler, and an investigation pursuant to court-martial was initiated.

Schwerin could not easily be found to answer any charges; he had literally gone into hiding. Initially protected by his staff, who from the “youngest private to the oldest commander”
³⁰
would not divulge his whereabouts, it took several days and the prodding of
Generalleutnant
Schack himself to finally motivate Schwerin to no longer compromise his men and surrender. This occurred following a face-to-face meeting arranged by Schack on 18 September. Schwerin came out of hiding, and both generals drove off together accompanied by a motorcycle unit of the division, followed by an armored reconnaissance platoon with orders to “stay close to him and report anything unusual and if necessary prevent Count Schwerin from falling into the wrong hands.”
³¹

Schwerin faced seven interrogation charges the next day, including sabotage of a Führer order, aiding and abetting the enemy, undermining military effectiveness, defeatism, desertion, and unauthorized absence. Eventually all these charges except one—undermining military effectiveness—were dropped. His subsequent trial for this charge before the Reichs War Tribunal was dismissed.
³²

Generalleutnant
Schack remembered the morning after Schwerin was relieved from the 116th Panzer Division—15 September—as a time when
“major engagements south of Aachen flared up anew.”
³³
At 0800 Task Force Mills moved out of its bivouac area on the hill southeast of Kornelimunster, and then passed through the village before turning north and advancing unopposed past Busbach. At 1000 the task force reached the high ground south of Bauschenberg and started over a hill that commanded views of the Vicht River and the picturesque valley to the northeast. At this point heavy artillery fire came in, forcing the head of the column to stay at the crest of the hill while the rest of the task force coiled for three-quarters of a mile behind the lead elements. Jeeps were even abandoned as small-arms fire forced their occupants into ditches. Fortunately, causalities were few. Mills remembered, “The enemy artillery continued to fall on the column, but it was apparently unobserved since it hit the crest in front of the task force and continued to pound that area without searching in any other position.”
³⁴