Rhinelander (Kirov Series Book 40) Page 5

  * * *

  The situation beyond Roetgen was equally dire. The combination of Abrams’ Provisional Armored Division and the Big Red 1 was relentless. The tankers had seized Lammersdorf, and pushed on through the fortified line into Simmerath. That sector was now being defended by the 275th Division, and on its left, the 319th had been extending its lines into the bunker zone reaching south to Monschau. First the recon battalion arrived, then the pioneer battalion. Finally, General Wulf ordered the MG companies from several battalions to hasten down the road from Eupen. They tramped all night through the sodden forest, and emerged three kilometers northwest of Monschau. From there, the road would take them due east to the Westwall.

  In making these reinforcements, Wulf had to pull back his line from an extension of the forest northeast of Eupen, so the base of the drive through Roetgen slowly widened. Dawn on the 8th of August would see the American offensive renewed with even more energy, the crisis points beginning to multiply for the Germans.

  The weight of Abrams’ armor was slowly breaking the defense of the 275th outside Simmerath. The 28th Infantry Division had massed its recon assets with the 744th Tank Battalion and 630th TD Battalion to create its own armored task for under Lt. Colonel Hurley Able. They were attacking west of the fortified line through lighter woods, putting a great deal of pressure on the reinforcements General Wulf had sent to that area.

  This push posed a direct threat to Wulf’s HQ at Neu-Hattlich, a small village on the road between Eupen and Monschau. It was, in effect, turning the right flank of his division, and his reserves were running thin. His choices here were difficult. If he held his position, covering the bulk of the lower Hurtgen Forest, an enemy breakthrough to Monschau would cut a major supply route and expose the Eifel country. If he yielded the forest to the enemy, and folded his right back to the woods above Elsenborn Ridge, he would be giving away prime defensive ground, the whole lower forest and all the Westwall fortifications running north from Monschau.

  Given the gravity of the general situation, he decided to be stubborn, and fight for that terrain as long as he could. Yet he thought it wise to get off the road to Eupen, and took his HQ and staff further south. Then he ordered all his division artillery to hammer that breakthrough zone being forced by 28th Infantry Division, to see if he might impede their advance.

  Meanwhile, in the Stolberg Corridor, 2nd Armored flanked Kornelimünster to the right and was threatening a breakthrough towards the town of Brand, while 3rd Armored turned its wrath of the Duren NCO School Battalion, seizing Vicht and breaking through the Schill Line on the main road to Duren. These attacks prompted General Simon to dispatch his Pioneer Battalion to Brand, and the situation on the main road called for Volker’s 105th Panzer Brigade to launch yet another counterattack.

  The US cleared Kornelimünster and now 2nd Armored was tangling with the troops from the Reichsführer Division sent from Aachen. The Germans could clearly see that the enemy was attempting to flank the city, as no attack at all had been mounted against their positions in the Aachen State Forest. So when another threat developed north of the city, they were not surprised.

  5th Armored had probed the Westwall near Steen and Horbach until they had been stopped by KG Wulf. Then farther north, TF Allen, being CCB of the 1st Armored Division, had crossed the insignificant stream of the Wurm River, and occupied the town that gave it its name. This small inroad was then quickly reinforced by Patton, who ordered General Taylor’s 4th Infantry Division to support the attack. Most of Taylor’s Division was on the line south of Gielenkirchen, so he sent his reserve 8th Regiment under McKee.

  The weather had cleared, and the fighter bombers were called in to add their thousand pound bombs to the fray. The attack pushed another kilometer, finding more enemy bunkers around the town of Beek. As the light faded, and air support thinned, Patton called Taylor to tell him he wanted a night attack there, and a clean breakthrough by dawn. He sensed that the Germans had strained to send all their reserves to the Stolberg Corridor, and in this he was correct. His next call went to General Robertson of the 2nd Infantry Division.

  “Walt? George Patton. It’s been quiet all along your front, but 1st Armored is across the Wurm and I want to reinforce that attack. Your 38th Regiment should move to your extreme right—tonight. Relieve CCA over there so Pritchard can roll them south into this bridgehead. Understood?”

  “Yes sir,” said Robertson. “But the 38th was my reserve. My other two regiments are on the line.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” said Patton. “You just get the 38th moving. I’m pulling CCA out as soon as possible.”

  Brigadier Oren’s CCA slipped away in the gloaming light, and it would be in position to attack in force in the morning. Feed a fire—that was Patton’s way of war. Wherever there was a prospect for an advance, he would find the necessary reserves to support it.

  His Chief of Staff, Brigadier General Hobart Gay, had been looking over the patrol reports from CCA, wanting to fill in Zwicker of the 38th Regiment on what he might expect. He saw something that surprised him.

  “General,” he said to Patton. “Have a look at this. Oren’s patrol reports say they spotted what looked like Tigers up on the Siegfried Line behind Wassenburg.”

  “Tigers? Where the hell is Wassenburg?”

  “Here sir, right where that woodland tails off northeast of Heinsburg where Pritchard set up his HQ for 1st Armored.”

  Patton had a look at the map. “Well it can’t be much,” he said, “but make sure the CO of the 38th knows about it. Did they get a unit insignia?”

  “No sir, they were observed at a distance, right on the edge of those woods.”

  “Well, if the weather’s clear tomorrow, put in a request for aerial recon flights to go in low and see if they can get some photos. Otherwise, it shouldn’t be anything the 38th can’t handle.”

  Patton’s confidence had been born of an unbroken string of victories since he landed at Casablanca over two years ago. He had licked the Germans time and time again, stopping Rommel at Kasserine, rolling them out of Tunisia and Sardinia, chasing them from Bayonne on the southwest coast of France all the way to the German frontier. He had every reason to expect that, no matter what the Germans had lurking in those woods, his men could handle it.

  Yet that day, he had ordered both reserve regiments of the 4th and 2nd Divisions into action, and the only reserve that remained in his bin was the 102nd Armored Cavalry Regiment resting at the Valkenburg Defile. It was a combination of hubris and overconfidence that was quietly playing into the hands of General Heinz Guderian, for that night he sent out the initial code word “ Herbstnebel ” to begin the concentration for that operation….

  * * *

  Early on the 9th of August, good news would chase out bad for the Americans. CCB of Old Ironsides had kept up its attack the previous night, and sent in reports that they had taken Beek and expanded their bridgehead over the Wurm. Then General Cota radioed in to say he had troops from his 28th Division in Monschau. Task Force Able had done the job, sweeping through the lighter woods and running due south to break through to the city. The Germans were still in the pill boxes stretching north from Monschau as far as Kenzen, but Abrams had pushed south from Simmerath as ordered, and so that defensive line was being flanked on two sides.

  Another task force from Abrams’ Division had taken Kesternich, and pushed on two kilometers until they reached the eaves of the forest. They were now only five kilometers west of Rhurberg near the Paulushof Dam, but the way there led along a narrow dirt road that climbed through heavy woodland. That was no place for a column of tanks, and all the infantry of the 442nd was six kilometers west near Kenzen trying to clear out those pill boxes. Abrams said he would most likely be in Steckenborn on the road to Schmidt by noon that day, which meant that except for the commitment of his infantry to go for those dams, he had obtained all his objectives as far as his armored elements were tasked.

  The coup de main at Monschau was the
real good news that morning. South of the city, the thin stream of the Schwalm ran through a deep gorge, and above it to the east, the towns of Hofen and Alzen gave their names to a ridge that harbored the continuation of the Scharnhorst Line, until it disappeared into the Monschau Forest. The German province of Westfalen lay beyond those woods, stretching all the way to Koblenz through difficult folded country that was heavily wooded.

  At the moment, Patton’s eyes were still on enveloping Aachen, and then reaching and crossing the Roer after the issue of those “Damn Dams” was settled. Abrams had put him well on the way to resolving that problem. Now all he had to do was get infantry in there to hump it up those last five kilometers.

  Heavy rain would chase the fighter-bombers from the skies that morning, and the battlefield became a dreary slog on all fronts. The push up the Stolberg Corridor had averaged two kilometers per day. Abrams had made about three kilometers per day as he pushed towards the dams. Progress in every action was now measured in meters or yards, and in the villages, a house by house advance that soon saw every building destroyed, as the fighting moving from one cellar to the next.

  Abrams would relieve the 442nd and start them marching east towards the forest, preferring to commit his heavier assets toward the push south to clear the Hofen-Alzen Ridge. Looking for a back way to come at the ridge, a small three company task force led with infantry down a secondary road through a three kilometer segment for the Monschau Forest. They had been told to keep out of the woodland, but when the infantry saw there were no Germans in sight, they pressed on, the tanks edging along behind them on that road.

  Everyone expected an ambush at any moment, but by 09:00 they had reached the end of the woods without a single shot being fired. They were two kilometers due east of the towns of Hofen and Alzen, having snuck in the unguarded back door, some four to five kilometers south of the German main line. That precipitated a big withdrawal of all those forces towards Hofen-Alzen ridge.

  It was a perfect example of how confusing it could be to fight in the forested area. In places, the Germans could completely block any advance, but they could not be everywhere, and that small American task force had simply found an open road and wiggled on through.

  After a rainy night, the morning of the 10th saw clearing skies, save for the return of the grey wings of the P-47’s. The German defense at all these crisis points was faltering under Patton’s relentless pressure, but that had not come without a cost. The divisions that had been in combat these last four days, were feeling the wear and tear, with stocks of mortar rounds, artillery and general supplies starting to run down. Today needed to be a day where things shook loose, or so Patton believed.

  He was through the Schill line with the 101st Armored Cav now flanking Stolberg to the right. The remaining Panthers of the Reichsführer Division had gathered to try and stop the advance on the city, but the 3rd Herd stampeded forward to take them on. The man who had once set his glittering eye on the great City of Light, Paris, was now squinting at the map and fingering the coal black chimneys of an old German mining town.

  Chapter 6

  The surprise maneuver along that empty road through the Monschau Forest would cut off five German companies that had thought to hold along the upper Roer, which flowed through another deep wooded defile as it made its way north of the woods, bound for the penned up waters before the great Schwammenauel Dam. Now they were scrambling back to try and reach the safety of the pillboxes on Hofen-Alzen ridge. A recon company of the 319th reached Hofen just as a company of 10 US tanks and three M8 Assault guns reached Alzen.

  The Germans had managed to hold onto the upper portion of the ridge, but the Americans had already bypassed that position and held the road below Alzen. That was the road that could take them many places, south to the Belgian Eifel, southeast into Nordeifel and Westfalen. The Americans were suddenly at the drafty entrance to the Monschau Gap, though at that moment no plans had been laid to enter that region. Had there been another division behind Abrams, fueled and ready to move, there’s no telling how far they might have gone, for in the whole of the Eifel, there was virtually no German presence at all—save one angry spider.

  That was where the worn down 2nd Panzer Division had gone when it withdrew from Liege, and it was now hidden deep in the Eifel, licking its wounds. There it had been slowly receiving new equipment and personnel from the Panzerschule in Germany. Since it had been on the line so long, it was coming late to the replacement cycle. So its Panzer Regiment was only able to receive three companies of Panthers, and three more of the older Panzer-IVH. There were no Lions left in the inventory, but it did also receive three companies of the new PzJag IV/70.

  Halftracks were available to flesh out the Recon battalion and one of the two Panzergrenadier Regiments, with the second regiment being motorized as was common throughout the army. Three batteries of the new Wespe guns were added, and one more tracked 150mm Panzerwerfer . All this had been accomplished in the last three weeks, as Guderian hastened to get his knights armored. The General had not expected the Americans to make such a deep inroad into the Hurtgen region, and now the question of what to do about it was on the table at OKW.

  “At the moment,” said von Rundstedt “this armored force they led with could go all the way to Koblenz, if it has the gasoline. Is 2nd Panzer just going to sit there and let them proceed?”

  “I doubt that they will move much beyond the Monschau Forest,” said Guderian.

  “You sound very confident of that. What if they do continue to press this attack?”

  “They are after the Roer Dams,” Guderian pointed to the map. “This action south to Monschau was simply meant to isolate them from further reinforcement by the 319th.”

  “Well, it has certainly done that. Do you intend to insist that we leave 2nd Panzer in its reserve post?”

  “Without it, the 6th Panzerarmee will have only two sharp teeth. I have already dispatched the 116th, and it is enroute to the assembly area for Rhinelander . A determination must be made concerning the Lehr Division, which is partly why we have called this meeting. If we can complete that assembly and launch our offensive, any further advance into the Eifel by the Americans will cease immediately.”

  “So you are saying as soon as the burglar hears the police sirens he will flee from the house. I hope you are correct. And need I mention that Patton is about to encircle Aachen as well? Are we going to accept that envelopment, and leave the troops defending there?”

  “Yes,” said Guderian. “Aachen must be held, and it has a strong enough defense to hold out for several weeks.”

  “The Reichsführer division, and that Panzer Brigade you sent me, were all that has prevented a breakthrough to the Roer River up until now. Himmler’s boys have been fighting non-stop for the last two weeks. I threw one battalion against this enemy bridgehead over the Wurm, but if they have anything else behind it, that will not hold. In that event, they will go for Julich, and that we must hold.”

  “Agreed,” said Guderian. “I will send a Panzergrenadier Division to take care of that, so you see, we still have enough to hold them at bay before Rhinelander launches.”

  “When?” Von Rundstedt’s impatience was obvious.

  “As soon as we can complete the assembly.”

  “There is another consideration in all of this,” said Manstein. “I have received reconnaissance reports from the Luftwaffe, and a most interesting picture is being painted. It seems the Allies are loading heavy cranes at Antwerp and moving them north. They have been sweeping the channels to Rotterdam and Amsterdam to clear mines the last ten days, and engineers have been clearing a lot of the rubble we made of old Rotterdam’s core when we bombed the place in 1940. It seems to me that they are abandoning Antwerp as a viable supply port, and now they are betting on those other two ports.”

  “Not surprising,” said Guderian.

  “Yes, well there is more. O’Connor is now reinforcing the Canadians. He has already moved his Guards Armored Divi
sion off the line, and one of his infantry divisions. Four American divisions have moved well north of Venlo to take over positions formerly held by the British. I think they have realized they have a much bigger bridgehead over the Rhine in north Holland than they do at Emmerich.”

  “Then you believe O’Connor is planning an offensive towards the Ijssel?”

  “That seems likely. Such an attack would flank Arnhem from the north, and as good as Student’s Paras are, I think we will need a Panzer division at Apeldoorn soon. That is good defensive terrain, but there will be penetrations and breakthroughs that will need a hammer to tamp down.”

  “What do you suggest?” asked Guderian.

  “At the moment, the Emmerich Bridgehead is secure, and the 26th Volksgrenadier Division took up positions on the Rhine between Emmerich and Rees. The bridge at Rees was blown, so that allowed Meindel to fold back his korps to the Hochwald position covering Wesel. That line runs through Udem to Weeze, then south along the Westwall. It is well forward of Kevelaer, but at the moment, two British Armored divisions remain in that sector, the 7th and 11th. They have also pulled their 1st Airborne Division out of the Emmerich Bridgehead, and replaced it with a regular infantry division. The paratroops are posted opposite our 26th Volksgrenadiers, covering the Rhine down to Rees. A pity that city was virtually leveled by Leibstandarte , which has now withdrawn to Koln to replace its losses. And Goring’s Division has moved behind Wesel.”

  “What about the two Brandenburg Brigades?” asked Guderian.

  “I know you wanted to lead with them for your offensive, but I’m afraid they have been fighting for the last two weeks and need rest. So I suggest they be sent to Apeldoorn. They can rest and refit there, and hopefully O’Connor will not be too hasty in the north. If they are ready by the time Rhinelander launches, they can be recalled, otherwise, they stand a good watch in the north.”