I feel like a lucky bystander, being a target several times, but always missed. I thank God for bringing me home safely. The following are excerpts taken from my WWII Memoirs written in 2004 for the Veterans’ History Project at the Library of Congress, Washington DC. Operation. Nordwind was the last major German assault, roughly two weeks after Dec.16.
After Basic Training and a furlough at home in San Antonio, Texas, I was sent to Europe with 5,000 others on the Queen Mary, converted into a troopship, leaving New York on Columbus Day, 1944. After about one month in Replacement Depots in England and France, I was in the 44th Infantry Division Replacement Depot in an orchard near Luneville, in Alsace France. It rained much of every day, making the ground very muddy. My combat boots were always wet and my feet were swollen.
On November 19th at assembly an officer called for everyone having trouble with their feet to step forward. The eight of us who responded were assigned to KP duty in the 44th Division headquarters kitchen, in Luneville. This got us out of the mud and rain and our feet improved rapidly. Being on KP while preparing and serving Thanksgiving dinner had both advantages and disadvantages. Just before Thanksgiving the 44th Division liberated the city of Saarbourg. After serving Thanksgiving Day dinner, the headquarters, including the kitchen and KPs relocated to Saarbourg, on the Saar River, Nov. 24th. The kitchen, supply depot and post office were all located in the Saarburg Town Hall, where we slept on the floor.
One night the replacements with whom I would have been, if not on KP, were quartered in another building and were killed by a shell from long range German artillery. (I never complained about KP after that.) The KP detail were issued a new shoe type, shoe-packs, consisting of a rubber bottom shell which turned up to be sewn to the leather top, supposedly to keep our feet drier; they were at least two sizes too wide for my size 11AA feet, requiring me to wear both pairs of wool and cotton socks (all four pair I was issued) at the same time, in an attempt to fill up the shoes. This left me with no change of socks to dry out.
After two weeks on KP, Dec. 5, 1944, I left the 44th Division Headquarters kitchen by truck to be assigned to a rifle company. As we entered a small village Northeast of Saarbourg, a German fighter plane strafed the two-truck convoy I was in. We all bailed out of the trucks and headed for the shelter of the buildings. No one was hit, and the plane did not make a second pass. About 30 minutes later in the next town, Sarralbe, I was introduced to the 1st Platoon, Co. G., 2nd Battalion, 71st Infantry Regiment. I was replacing one of the two casualties, which they suffered in combat during the previous week. I spent that night with the rest of my squad, sleeping on the concrete floor of one of the houses in the small town. This would be as good as it got for the next month, except when we were lucky enough to sleep in a barn, on hay.
We marched from town to town, in a northeasterly direction, with the Germans retreating, offering only occasional resistance. One day we advanced toward a town about 1/2 mile ahead. Two P-47 Thunderbolts dived over the town and dropped bombs, probably on German tanks in the town. They flew around and started a strafing run, with the second plane close behind and to the right of the first. I commented “They’re too close together” and a couple of seconds later the first plane was hit, went up and to the right, into the path of the second plane. They both went down, killing both pilots. I didn’t know at the time that these would be the only deaths I saw in WWII, and I really couldn’t see the pilots at that distance.
Another regiment of the 44th Division was the first U.S. unit to reach, and send a patrol across the Rhine River when they and a French Division captured the Alsacian city of Strasbourg. The 44th Division commander wanted to cross the Rhine and advance north along the east bank of the river, cutting off the German army’s retreat. But our supply lines, already too long, would have been unable to keep up, leaving the 44th Division stranded behind enemy lines.
Our advance was turned toward the back side of the French Maginot Line, near the German border, at the Ensemble de Bitche. These pill-box forts protected each other with overlapping fire and were supported by military farms which had supplied food and dairy products. On Dec. 14th the Battalion made an afternoon Infantry assault on the masonry buildings of the Freudenberg military farm, defended by German snipers and mortars. We took all buildings of the farm, with no casualties that I knew of. The pill boxes of the Maginot Line, just a hundred yards or so beyond the farm buildings, were shelled repeatedly by our 105mm and 155mm artillery, only occasionally chipping off very small pieces of concrete. This artillery barrage continued for two days, supplemented by an air strike of fighters dropping 500 pound bombs, still only chipping small pieces off the concrete.
Early in the morning of Dec 17th our squad attacked the pillbox nearest to the farm, receiving machine gun fire from the left flank where I was assigned. The Kraut bullets were falling short, but kicking dirt onto my shoulders and helmet as I was lying flat on the ground. I couldn’t see the other pillbox because of a low ground fog. Two old German soldiers, about the age of my grandfather, surrendered the pillbox after a smoke bomb and a fragmentation grenade were dropped down the air vent. Our platoon sniper, with his Springfield bolt-action rifle & scope, climbed into the steel turret of the pill box and shot several Germans who attempted a counter-attack.
G Company went into reserve, and celebrated Christmas in Saarguemines, France, a city at the German border. The town had been liberated from the Germans, only during the previous week by the Third Army. We were quartered in homes with the French families. The family living in the two-story house my squad was assigned to spoke no English and none of us spoke any French or German. They weren’t too happy about our taking over their home. On Christmas Eve we started singing Christmas carols, beginning with “Silent Night”; but because that was a German carol the French family didn’t look too happy about it. But “O Come All Ye Faithful” became their “Adeste Fidelis” and they joined in, singing in Latin. Because I had taken Latin in high school and had learned Adeste Fidelis, I switched to the Latin words and the French family really beamed with joy, we were now mon ami !
A turkey dinner on Christmas Day was served from kitchen jeep-drawn trailers in the middle of the street, with the temperature in the 30s, with no sun. The watching civilians thought our white bread was cake. All parts of the meal went into our mess gear, the roast turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, carrots, greens, with apple pie on top of it all. We enjoyed it anyway, since it was much better than the usual C rations. What little was discarded in garbage cans was sought after by the civilians who had little to eat. After eating Christmas dinner, that evening we moved back to the front.
Operation Nordwind:
After taking pillboxes of the Maginot Line, the mission of the 44th Infantry Division was changed from offensive to setting up new defensive positions about ten miles West. When the Battle of the Bulge started on December 16, 1944, many units of the Third Army were moved from the left flank of the Seventh Army to rush to Bastogne to stop the German advance. The Seventh Army spread out to the West to fill the vacancy left by the Third Army’s move. The Seventh was now occupying much of a two army front, with only two thirds the number of Divisions which had been there just a day before. Each division defended over a 15 mile wide front. A cold front brought bitter cold and snow to the Vosges Mountains in northern Alsace just after Christmas. The ground was frozen, under about a foot of snow, making it almost impossible to dig a foxhole with only our entrenching tools. It was well below freezing during the day and near zero during the nights, with a strong North wind.
The 2nd Battalion was spread thin along the border, across what should have been a regimental front, with almost everyone on the line, along a series of ridges overlooking the France-Germany border. Our intelligence warned us that a German attack in force was probable. Unlike the Huertgen Forest assault, where the Germans did not use radio communications when building up their forces, they did use radio when assembling units for Operation Nordwind and we were expecting the assault.
On the morning of Dec. 31st, from Brandenfingerhof Farm, 12 men of the First Platoon of Company G were sent as an outpost near Obergailbach near the border with Germany, on the battalion’s forward left flank, in existing fox holes about 100 feet apart along a thin hedgerow, with my hole on the open left flank; about 150 feet farther to the left was a reconnaissance jeep with a radio and 50 caliber air-cooled machine gun. We were probably at least 300 yards in front of the nearest U.S. forces. Each foxhole had 2 riflemen and a third with an automatic weapon, either a BAR or a submachine gun.
In the afternoon I was assigned to a 4-man patrol to see if the Germans had evacuated the town of Obergailbach, behind the ridge in front of us. The patrol found no German soldiers in the town, only civilians. Back in our foxhole we ate our dinner K rations, which included a can of beef & pork loaf with carrot and apple flakes, and a bar of dark chocolate. I shaved the chocolate bar into tiny flakes onto a piece of paper to make hot chocolate the next morning. It got dark about 1630 (4:30pm) and daylight around 7:00am.
About 2200 (10:00 PM) we could hear a train enter Obergailbach, behind the ridge in front of us. With the wind blowing from the North, the frigid air carried the sounds of German commands, whistles, etc. as they unloaded troops and marched up into the woods on the ridge about 300 yards in front of us.
After all units had reached the ridge, our artillery opened up on the woods with continuous fire for what seemed like about an hour, then, as the Germans advanced out of the woods, at about 2345, the artillery followed them with high explosive and white phosphorus shells which lit up the hillside, creating quite a fireworks display for a New Years Eve celebration! We could not see the enemy, who were dressed in white against the snow, but their use of tracer ammunition gave their positions away, bringing more U.S. artillery fire. Just as dawn was breaking the reconnaissance jeep fired several machine gun bursts and after a few quick words on their radio, they pulled back. We hadn’t seen anything to shoot at. There was frequent U.S. rifle, BAR and machine gun fire over 300 yards to our right-rear, coming from F Company’s area, but from our 3-man foxhole we saw no positive enemy target within range to shoot at with our BAR, grenade launcher and M-1 rifles, and none of the other members of the outpost had fired their weapons, even as daybreak illuminated the valley before us.
A couple of short bursts from a German machine pistol, or “burp-gun”, several 100 feet behind us, was our first indication the Germans had gotten behind our outpost. About that time Sergeant Gasperino ran up behind our hole yelling to follow him, the outpost had been pulled back over 15 minutes earlier, but the orders hadn’t been passed on to us in the last foxhole. I grabbed my M-1, with its grenade launcher, and grenades and took off, cussing because some @#$%&#$ German soldier was going to get my chocolate bar shavings which were left behind! As we ran in retreat through a wooded area we heard another burst from the machine pistol, but we were not hit, and we returned the thousand yards back to Brandenfingerhof Farm.
We later learned that, as part of “Operation Nordwind” a full regiment of the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division had attacked our Second Battalion front, attempting to reach Saarbourg and Nancy, the railhead about 50 miles to our rear. Over half of the Germans were killed or wounded by the artillery barrage before they even started the attack on that first night. Our artillery had just been issued proximity fused shells which, instead of hitting the ground before exploding and having little effect on prone soldiers, exploded at about 30 feet above the ground, spraying shrapnel down onto the prone soldiers. The U.S. 44th Division was attacked by the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division, 36th Volks Grenadier Division and 19th Volks Grenadier Division. New faster firing machine guns and semi-automatic assault rifles had been issued to the German units. Operation Nordwind, ordered by Hitler as a follow-up of their Heurtgen Forest breakthrough, involved about 15 German divisions against six U. S. divisions and one French division along a front extending along the French-German border from Saarguemines east to the Rhine River and south along the Rhine passed Strasbourg to near Colmar.
We moved to defensive positions, a secondary line of resistance, behind E and F Company and H Company, which caught the main force of the German attack, with E and F Company withdrawing and elements of H Company being surrounded. Other platoons of G Company had been moved up to help F Company during the night. With attacks and counterattacks, using tanks and other armored vehicles, by both sides, the battle moved back and forth during most of January 1st. U. S. machine guns, mortars and artillery killed and wounded several hundred Germans, with U.S. battalion losses less than two dozen killed or wounded.
We marched back to Moronville Farm. The First Platoon joined a force of at least 100 men of G Company, six 81mm mortars from H Company, with three Sherman tanks and three tank destroyers in support, defending the Moronville farm compound, consisting of two-story buildings continuous around a square, about 200 feet across, with gates on opposite sides. Many families lived here, with each living quarters next to their barn, with hay stored on the concrete second floor. F Company was driven back to the farm by repeated German attacks. The Germans attacked the farm after midnight, setting the hay in the buildings on fire with their tracers, 20mm cannon and mortars. The second floors of the whole community was on fire when we were ordered to pull out; my squad was assigned to accompany the last two tanks who covered the retreat. We were warned as we climbed aboard, not to touch the tanks with bare hands, only gloves, because our skin would freeze to the cold metal. We moved back to a new line of resistance about 800 yards south of Moronville Farm.
In the afternoon of Jan. 2nd, the First Platoon, with support from two tanks and a tank destroyer (with 90mm gun), retook a ridge overlooking the town of Gros Rederching, which the 44th Division had previously taken but was now occupied by the Germans. Several foxholes had been dug along the bare ridge; three German soldiers jumped out of one hole and ran down the other face of the ridge, with about 5 of the nearest GIs firing quickly at them but there were no hits. The other holes were empty. We spread across the top of the ridge, using available holes, but all I could find on the left flank was a shallow shell hole, not more than 8 inches deep in the center. An L-1 artillery spotter plane hovered overhead to direct artillery fire onto resistance from the town. Sporadic rifle fire came from the town, about 200 yards away in the valley. We were ordered to return the fire, without any specific targets. I fired three rounds at various windows, selected at random (the only shots I fired during the war). The Germans ran a rolling mortar barrage from one end of the ridge to the other and back again, with shells hitting about 50 feet apart. They got closer and the next one would be very close; I heard it coming in, but with an unusual fluttering sound. Instead of coming in straight it was spinning end over end. It landed within three feet of my head, kicking dirt and snow over me from the impact, but it did not explode! Every other shell in the barrage had exploded on impact with the ground.. When the barrage ended we pulled back off the ridge, apparently with no one injured. My feet hurt from blisters on my heels as we marched back to our line of resistance.
My squad spent that night in a snow covered clearing, in deep fox holes which had been dug by a supporting artillery unit; they and their guns had been pulled back to a safer location. The bottoms of the holes had been lined with empty brass 105mm shell casings, which offered a little protection from the icy bottom of the holes, that is until the ice broke, the shell casings sank and our shoes were 4 inches into the icy water. It was really hard to get to sleep standing up, with cold, wet feet I could hardly feel the blisters on my heels.
The next morning, Jan. 3rd, I complained to Sergeant Gasperino of the blisters on my heels where all four socks on each foot had worn through (the seam between the rubber bottom and the leather top of the shoepacks was in a bad location). He sent me to the aid station in Rimling, about a 1/4 mile walk. As they treated my blistered heels I asked where I could get more socks. The medic answered, “In the hospital; you have trench foot,” and put me on a stretcher and into an ambulance with another trench foot and two yellow jaundice cases. During this period the U. S. forces had more casualties from trench foot and yellow jaundice than from enemy action.
During the night of Jan. 3rd, F Co. was moving into Gros Rederching, then thought to be held by the French, when the Germans in the town opened fire. Before the Americans could withdraw several G.I.s were hit and were carried out, but in the confusion in the dark several Germans fell into line with the withdrawing Americans and were captured. The 71st Infantry Regiment and the 44th Division had stopped the units of Nordwind that hit us, but U.S. divisions to the east and along the Rhine River were pushed back from 10 to 20 miles. Three U.S. Divisions which had just arrived in Europe and had no battle experience were fighting back and forth almost continuously, inside towns [sometimes with U.S. troops and German troops occupying different parts of the same building overnight] and through woods and open fields, with infantry, tanks and artillery, suffering high casualties on both sides, for over three weeks before the Nordwind assault in their areas was finally defeated. Sometime years after the war the Nordwind offensive, and the Seventh Army resistance to it in Alsace was added to the Huertgen Forest (Battle of the Bulge) campaign star, to be added to the ETO/ North Africa Theater Medal ribbon.
I spent the next five weeks in the 21st General Hospital in Mirrecourt, France, recovering from trenchfoot, which is a breakdown of tissue cells from being cold and wet over a period of several days or more. Usually it can be prevented by daily drying and warming the feet and then putting on dry socks. Because my shoepacks were so oversize that I had to wear all four pair of socks there was no way to dry them out when I was wearing them, and during the last several days there was no opportunity to go without my shoepacks on my feet.. In the hospital I got warm, in addition to getting my first shower and haircut since leaving the United States, almost three months earlier.
by (Pfc) Harold L. Eiserloh, 1st Ptn, Co G, 71st Inf. Regt, 44th Inf. Div., 7th U.S. Army.
Some books about the resistance of U. S. Seventh Army forces against Operation Nordwind in the Vosges Mountains of Alsace, France:
The Final Crisis-Combat in Northern Alsace, January 1945 by Richard Engler, 1999. The Aberjona Press, Bedford PA.
When the Odds Were Even – The Vosges Mountains Campaign, October 1944-January 1945 by Keith E. Bonn, 1994. Presidio Press, Navato CA
Ordeal in the Vosges by Donald C. Pence and Eugene J. Peterson (Out of print)
Happy New Year Yankee Bastards By Vincent Priore, MSgt., F Co.,71st Inf. Rgt.,44th Inf.Div. (Out of print).