On the morning of 16 December, the well-orchestrated German attack in the Ardennes “Wacht am Rhein” was launched. The name was a subterfuge to hide their offensive intentions behind a pretended defense. Hitler suspected a security leak within his Wehrmacht and so he limited disclosures of the attack plans to his most trusted generals. He was unaware that the British had broken his Enigma Code, even though some of his advisors had suggested that this may have happened–“Impossible” said der Fuehrer! There were so few radio intercepts concerning the upcoming Ardennes offensive that our top level commanders were caught off guard—even though many of us at lower levels were antsy about all of the enemy activity in the Ardennes. In general, the Wehrmacht followed the mandated radio secrecy orders, but there were enough slip-ups by their air force and civilian transportation units to have given our commanders sufficient insight had they not been so overconfident. About then, we heard that Glenn Miller had been lost in the English Channel on 15 December—a sad, sad day! About 10 December 1944, as a nervous .tag-along-member of a six man patrol from the 38th Cavalry Squadron—forward of the front near Bullingen and east of Malmedy—we found plenty of German activity across the bottom of a tree-filled canyon. Trees were being cut down with saws and axes, and tanks and other heavy motorized equipment were moving around over straw covered trails, to muffle their sounds. While watching this activity from a concealed position two hundred yards away across the canyon, we listened to the big tank engines and sensed that “something unusual was afoot”. On our return the cavalry troopers used pull-igniters to anti-personnel three Tellermines left by a German patrol that was chased off the previous night, while attempting to infiltrate their lines. Several enemy were killed when they tried to reclaim those mines.
When information regarding all of this German activity was sent to higher headquarters, their response was that this was only a feint to trick us into pulling our troops away from our planned offensive in the Hurtgen Forest near Schmidt. If it had not been so serious, an almost comical ploy at that time was our leaders attempt to enhance our apparent troop strength in this area of the Ardennes to draw more Germans troops from the front further north at Aachen. They conjured up a non-existent infantry division to further promote that deception (HEARD, But NOT VERIFIED).
As a result, our high-level commanders were not suspicious when the Germans began bringing in more and more troops prior to the Bulge–this is exactly what our leaders had hoped—and they happily believed that their scheme was working to perfection. There surely were more than a few red faces at the higher headquarters when the axe finally fell! We at the lower levels were unaware of these machinations, but were kept on edge by all of the rumors that were floating around. My 3rd Platoon; B-Co, had laid AT mines along the road shoulders near Bullingen a few weeks earlier, but that was probably done to deter small-scale penetrations or counterattacks. Bullingen was on the route taken by Kampgruppe Peiper and was where his force captured a large quantity of American gasoline before heading west through Malmedy towards the Meuse River
Our 146th Engineer Combat Battalion was bivouacked at Mutzenich Junction, three miles west of the front at Monschau–which was at the northern shoulder of the German build-up. Captain Arthur Hill–H & S Company commander; CWO Wm Langhurst–Assistant S-l; and CWO Al Sarrach–Assistant Motor Officer; dropped in at their favorite Malmedy restaurant on 16 December for dinner. This was the first day of the Bulge and the situation had not yet been sorted out. It was still being viewed by higher headquarters as a limited action to offset- the pressure of our attacks further north near Aachen. The restaurant- owner had just gotten in fresh steaks that afternoon so they all ordered steak. While waiting to be served, the owner requested that they move their jeep around to the rear so that the German soldiers who had seen in the vicinity would not shoot up his establishment. They complied, polished off their steaks in a hurry and then took off in a high lope for the bat talion about fifteen miles northeast. This was a smart move, as Malmedy was on the proposed route of Kampfgruppe Peiper!
At 1520 hours 16 Dec, V-Corp’s Colonel Pattilio called Major Willard Baker our S-3 and ordered 146ECB to immediately furnish a company of engineers to serve as infantry; to be attached to the 38th Cavalry Squadron at Monschau. A-company was in the Line at 1700 that evening, where they furnished support for the outnumbered troopers. The 38th Cavalry was at the northern flank of the Bulge and just north of the 3rd Battalion, 395th Regiment, 99th Infantry Division–who managed to hold their ground even though the remainder of the division was badly chewed up, and much of their command was shifted to the 2nd Infantry Division.
The aggressive patrolling of the 38th Cavalry Squadron was a key element in their defense of the Monschau area during the Bulge, when they repulsed a number of attacks by vastly superior German forces. Their aggressive patrolling allowed them to establish the likely enemy avenues of approach, while keeping the Germans from coming close enough to determine the cavalry’s defensive positions. While I occasionally had patrolled in areas forward of our front lines, I had never patrolled with the audacity of these 38th Cavalry troopers. They were fearless and not at all concerned about bumping into the enemy–in fact they may have welcomed the opportunity!
For several days this small force; plus 3rd Platoon, A-Co, 112ECB and attached 105mm and 155mm artillery, fought off several attacks by vastly superior enemy forces. Several times they called in artillery on their positions to thwart the attacks. Canister rounds (a cannoneer’s shotgun) were used with devastating effect when they were about to be overrun. For their stout defense, all three units were awarded the Presidential Unit Citation–the nation’s highest unit award. According to “Cavalry on the Shoulder”, the 38th Cavalry was the only cavalry squadron to be so honored in WWII. The 146th Engineer Combat Battalion had received a Presidential Unit Citation for D-Day on Omaha Beach, so this added an oak leaf cluster to A-Company’s PUC.
At 1525 Hours on 16 December, Colonel McDonough—the commander of the 1121 Engineer Combat Group—called our headquarters and ordered another engineer company to be deployed as infantry. The three B-Company platoons moved into position the next morning, and for several days formed a barrier line, a short distance behind the front between Monschau and Elsenborn. Our purpose was to slow the advance of the 6th Panzer Army, should they manage to penetrate our lines. The 3rd Platoon covered a 600 yard front in the snow, until relieved on 23 December. We set up three machine guns in defensive positions and patrolled between them, but being in a semi-wooded area we had inadequate fields of fire and would have been captured or bypassed by any determined enemy attack in force. Sylvin Keck manned a daisy-chain roadblock that was located on a nearby road. These are AT mines roped together, so they can be pulled across the road at the approach of enemy vehicles; but they are not effective unless adequately supported by covering fire. Several trees had explosives rigged to drop them and form an abatis on a nearby road.
While on outpost duty, the 3rd Platoon had no clue as to the German’s intentions or what was actually taking place nearby at the front. We were located in a sparsely woody area away from our headquarters; but the wealth of rumors and the actuality of the paratroopers and reports of Skorzeny’s men dressed in American uniforms kept us alert. Unconfirmed rumors abounded! Anyone moving around was challenged–this even included easily recognized generals. Lt Leonard Fox, a C-Company platoon leader, was taken prisoner by a patrol from the 38th Cavalry Squadron. He had not received the password for the day. After six hours, while his legitimacy was being confirmed, he was released. His problem was compounded by having grown up in Cuba and so did not have proper answers for his questioners regarding sports or hollywood personnel.
Lt Refert Croon led a patrol of Joe Manning, Marvin Lowery, Warren Hodges and about ten others, in looking for the paratroopers. Lowery was killed in an ensuing firefight that killed two Germans and wounded several more—the rest surrendered. A total of nine enemy were killed and about sixty were captured—all of these by C-Company and HQ-Company–as A-Company and B-Company were deployed elsewhere as infantry. In another action, Fred Matthews was captured by the paratroopers, but he managed to escape during a later firefight.
In Operation Stosser, Lieutenant Colonel Frederich-August von der Heydte’s 1,500-man parachute- force dropped into the Hohes Venn on the night of 16/17 December—a swampy area that is at the headwaters of the Roer River, in November, three of us tried to cross through this swamp. With our Jeep flat out in four wheel drive, we travelled 50 yards, before dropping it down to the floorboards. We then jacked it up and built a corduroy road to get back on solid ground. His parachute forces had fought several vicious engagements with the 101st Airborne Division in Normandy and again in General Bernard Montgomery’s Market Garden offensive in September 19444-as portrayed in “The Band of Brothers”.
The paratroopers were a day late because of glitches in having their gasoline delivered and in getting assembled. They were widely scattered from Eupen to Malmedy because of the wind, inexperienced pilots and minimal advance notice of the mission—as dictated by Hitler as a security measure. The twin “Jumo” engines of their planes were unsynchronized–thus giving them a slow beat frequency sound- We were ordered not to shoot at them, which would give away our defensive positions. Many parachutes were found after the drop- I rescued an undamaged white one, also a large section from a brown and green camouflaged model—both appeared to be silk. The camouflaged silk made fine neck scarves and several still reside in my dresser drawer.
General Dietrich’s 6th Panzer Army included four Panzer Divisions equipped with the latest tanks and weapons—including 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte Adolph Hitler–from which the 30 year old Colonel Joachim Peiper’s Kampfgruppe Peiper was to launch the lightning strike to the Meuse River near Huy, Belgium. He then would move north to Antwerp—thus enveloping our northern armies. Initially Dietrich’s forces were to have reached the Baroque Michel crossroads—midway between Malmedy and Eupen–on the 16th, which was to have been captured then by the paratroopers—but both failed to meet that time-table.
Had Dietrich been able to force his way through Monschau, he very well may have rolled up our front and then captured the large gasoline dumps near Eupen. This would have been a replay of their successful 1940 breakthrough in the Ardennes that had trapped the French and British armies. The 38th Cavalry’s stand at Monschau blunted this effort, so all of Dietrich’s forces were directed south toward Elsenborn, Bullingen and Malmedy. Had they overran Monschau, the German armies could have moved almost unimpeded north to Antwerp, and Hitler would then have been trumpeted as a great tactician. Despite all of the negative opinions about the stupidity of launching the Ardennes offensive by removing troops and materiel from the Russian. front; honesty must conclude that with just a few fortunate breaks, the Bulge could have been a phenomenal German success!
Also, had the Hofen pillboxes not been blown up with TNT and bulldozed full of dirt by our battalion, the enemy may well have reoccupied them during one of their forays into Colonel McClernand Butler’s 3rd Battalion, 395th regiment, 99th Infantry Division positions in Hofen and would then have been difficult to dislodge. Some of these attackers appeared to have been heavily into their schnapps and were oblivious to the withering rifle and machinegun fire. They kept coming until large numbers were killed, wounded or captured–or they may just have been fiercely loyal, highly motivated young soldiers–who is to say?
Early on the morning of 17 December, Sergeant Henri Rioux sent Nettles and another radio man “called Indian” to the battalion for breakfast. Later, we heard that the paratrooper’s planned assembly area was this battalion radio shack, six hundred yards from our bivouac area. It was located some distance away to keep from drawing artillery fire on our headquarters. When the two radio operators had not returned as expected, Rioux told Julius Mate and James France to go to breakfast and determine what had happened to them.
On their way, they saw a parachute with an attached bag hanging in a dead tree. Seeing evidence of the paratroopers was not surprising since they had heard the planes overhead the previous night. Mate attempted to recover the chute by pulling on the lines, but the rotten tree broke and the trunk fell across his ankle, pinning him to the ground. After working free, they continued on toward the headquarters and breakfast and then saw Nettles ahead acting very strange. When they ran up to ask what was happening, six paratroopers with machine pistols stepped out of hiding, took them captive, disarmed them and then threw their M-l Garand rifles into a nearby creek–where they were found later that day by a patrol led by Lt Refert Croon.
Nettles and Mate were directed to make a double-pole support to carry a paratrooper who had compound fractures of both legs. At the end of the day. Mate’s ankle was very swollen and painful, so France and Nettles then carried the wounded trooper. This small group kept moving during the day and slept under fir boughs at night. After wandering about for two days, they joined the main body of about 150 paratroopers and were then interrogated by a German officer who spoke impeccable English. He had studied at a Texas university and so not only knew the language–but also the American idioms and customs.
They were combined with twenty others who had been captured from a laundry unit near Eupen. At night they slept in a tight pile to keep warm, as it was very cold. After a time, when the body parts against the ground were growing cold, they all turned at a given signal. They kept up a running conversation to warn of the importance of moving, toes and fingers to avert frostbite. One of the captives, who understood German, heard their captors discussing how they should dispose of the Americans by throwing grenades into their midst while they slept. When a patrol from the 1st Infantry Division flushed out the paratroopers, the captives ran out waving their shirts and yelling “Don’t shoot-were Americans”.
The winter of 1944 was one of the coldest in many years, often dropping well below zero degrees Fahrenheit. However, except for those foot-freezing GI boots, we managed-even when touring around in Jeeps, always with the windshield folded down. Our battalion had few medical problems during this period, although some who failed to change their socks often, contracted trench foot—but none from the 3rd platoon. It was easily prevented by keeping a spare pair of woolen socks tucked inside of one’s pants.
Body heat dried them out, and they could then be swapped several times a day, while at the same time giving the feet a thorough massage.
During the Bulge our armies lost many men to this malady and especially men from the infantry who—because of an innate desire to keep from being spiculed, could not move out of their foxholes and exercise to keep warm. Our new battalion medical officer—Captain Goldman—reported several cases of combat exhaustion that he treated with a combination of sedatives and rest, followed by several days of heavy labor within the sounds of battle near the front. Apparently it was successful. To warm themselves, a group of B-Company men built a flimsy cardboard shack with a diesel-fired steel drum stove located in the middle of the floor. When one man tried to force his way into an already full shack, he was unable to do so and no one offered to swap places with him. Not to be deterred, he yelled “I’ll show you sons of bitches”, and he then threw a clip of M-l ammo into the flames. The mad scramble for the entry almost demolished the shack, after which the perpetrator was run down and pounded.
We must have been a bit odoriferous, as we rarely had an opportunity to shower. Whore baths—water heated in helmets over an open fire—was our only option for washing face, ears, neck, underarms, crotch and feet in that order. Our helmets then took on a dingy hue. We were usually able to shave daily—though our razors were not the sharpest ones on the planet. I often fantasized about luxuriating in a tub of steaming hot water, followed by a professional barber’s shave. When the opportunity arose later for a German barber to do the job, I had to mentally restrain myself to keep from bolting from his chair when I realized how close to my throat his straight-edge razor was operating! At night, I removed my boots and swapped socks before, crawling into a bedroll of several wool blankets, supported by a generous layer of interlaced pine boughs to provide insulation from the cold ground. During the coldest weather I slept in all of my clothes, changing underwear whenever possible. One morning I woke to find that a heavy wet snowfall had compressed the pup tent down around my body. Surprisingly, although we were often half frozen from riding in jeeps—always with the windshield down—or from sloshing about in the snow; few of us were ever sick with colds or flu. After most of the Bulge fighting was over and the weather had improved, we finally were issued insulated shoe-pacs in lieu of those foot-freezing leather boots. In his book “Citizen Soldiers”, Stephen Ambrose said the American command gambled that the war would be over in 1944 before we required shoe-pacs—in retrospect an error in judgment, but C’est la Guerre— you can’t win ’em all!
About 23 December while working on a large anti-personnel minefield near Elsenborn— designed to deny the Germans access to a natural infiltration corridor; a flight of British “Typhoons” came roaring in and rocketed a woods 800 yards to the east. We were a bit jumpy as their flight path was almost directly overhead and we thought that they might have mistaken us for Germans. That would not have been too unusual, considering the chaotic conditions along the front at that time. We saw no indication that German forces were there, before or after the strike, but since we were close to the front, that is a distinct possibility. A prominent radiator bulge under the engines gave them a distinctive appearance, and their engines made an unusual roaring noise–not at all like the sharp exhaust crack of the Rolls Royce Merlins in the Spitfires and Mustangs. I was told that these engines had 24 cylinders—four banks of six—as compared to the twelve cylinders of the Merlin. The twenty four exhausts blended the sound into the unusual roar—SINCE VERIFIED.
Christmas day 1944, on the way to our AP minefield, a doe and a yearling crossed in front of our truck 80 yards away. We stopped and I told the men in back to shoot her. After ten or more rounds had been fired, I yelled “cease fire”, just as the deer disappeared into the brush, because the firing may have been interpreted as a fire fight with a German patrol that would have initiated a wasteful response. The doe then wandered back across the road, so I shot her. There was a single hole in her hide–another indication of our superb American marksmanship!
The fresh meat was a welcome change from our recent diet. Several weeks previously, B-Co’s various work parties returned to the company bivouac area one evening with five hogs, two cows, and a deer. Someone had suggested that we have fresh meat, but had not coordinated the effort. The animals were a nuisance around minefields, walking into the trip wires, detonating the mines and killing themselves in the process—we only hastened their demise. The hogs were fried first and the pork fat was then used to fry the rest of the meat. The meat was chewy and tough—but the change of diet was appreciated. When we were able to get to our company kitchen for a hot meal, I piled most of the food together in my mess-kit (shit-skillet in GI parlance). Breakfast might include stewed prunes, oatmeal with reconstituted dried milk, scrambled powdered eggs, bacon and toast with jam. It did not look too appetizing when so intermingled- -but it tasted better than it looked, and it had a definite edge over those early gruesome K-rations. Also, having the food piled together helped keep it from freezing. Our cooks were artists in their ability to take smelly powdered eggs and powdered milk and turn them into something reasonably palatable. I am not sure what they used to perk up the powdered eggs, but added a bit of vanilla and a pinch of sugar to powdered milk. A vastly improved K-ration showed at about this time. It was far superior to the original—the crackers of which looked and tasted like lightly seasoned sawdust.
On the night of 26 December 1944, our bivouac area was shelled heavily for about thirty minutes. We were in an area of large trees, so there were many tree bursts. Heading for a safe refuge in a culvert (he called it a tin horn), Platoon Sergeant Homer Jackson ran into a truck tailgate and chipped off the corner of an upper front tooth. It was a tight squeeze as twelve others had beaten him there. I flattened myself on the ground at the base of a large pine tree away from the direction of most of the tree bursts, and was happy when the shelling ceased. We believed that the damage was done by our captured 105mm howitzers. The shelling probably stopped when the Germans ran out of ammunition. 99th Division 105s were overrun close-by near the Wahlersheid Crossroads and these may have been the culprits. They must have had forward observers—probably paratroopers—as they took very few rounds to register on our area. We believed that our position may have been pin-pointed by the paratroopers, because their designated assembly point was the forestry shack being used by our battalion radio operators—the three who had been captured.
Several trucks had flat tires and the driveline of one truck was completely severed. A shell fragment smashed through the front panel of a headquarters desk drawer and spinning around inside made a mouse nest out of the papers within. A number of shell fragments pierced the aid station tent—one striking Ernest K Hansen in the chest as he was holding a plasma bottle over one of our wounded. Although a number of men were wounded there were no fatalities. Lt Colonel Carl Isley was the most seriously wounded— wounded as he made the rounds to check on our casualties. He told Dr Stanley Goldman, our medical officer, “that last one really knocked the air out of me”. He was covered with blood and was given plasma, as blood for transfusions was unavailable in WWII. battlefields. His recuperation required many months in a stateside hospital. That night, the battalion was moved to Henri-Chapelle per Isley’s orders, before he was evacuated. Colonel Skorzeny’s “Americans”—who had infiltrated our lines and were captured wearing American uniforms and driving captured Jeeps—were executed by firing squads at Henri-Chapelle a few weeks later.
I arrived late at our bivouac area, but the only cover I could find was in the haymow of a barn. I did my best to find a spot to spread out, but as the space was completely filled with bodies, I could not find a bare spot. After someone offered to loosen all of my teeth if I didn’t quit stepping on him, I crawled back out and shivered in the Jeep until dawn. The next morning B-Company returned to our original bivouac area, and we continued working on the AP mine field. New Year’s Day morning 1945 was clear and very cold. While we were adding the metal red triangles to the barbed wire perimeter fence—to indicate an American anti-personnel minefield—the sky was suddenly filled with twenty eight Messerschmitt ME-109s flying northwest at 1000 feet. We later learned that they were part of Operation Bodenplatte–the plan to attack our airfields and destroy our planes on the ground—a continuation of the Bulge. A number of our airfields near the front in Belgium and Holland were successfully attacked that day, and several hundred of our planes were destroyed on the ground. German losses were about a third of ours but their losses–and especially losses of trained pilots–were losses that they could ill afford. Luckily for us, our P-47s were rendezvousing near Liege for a strike of their own, and they caught these Germans by surprise as they were coming in. It must have been some dogfight, but we saw only the tail end of the action from our work area.
In twenty minutes, as we watched in fascination, five ME-109s were shot out of the sky. The first one fell 1500 yards away, and they kept dropping closer and closer until the last one was only 300 yards from our work area. The script was almost the same in every case. The ME-109 pilots, who were flying southeast and very close to the deck heading for home, were being slaughtered by the P-47s. Our pilots were definitely more aggressive and must have had superior training and experience. We didn’t see any parts being shot off the 109s, but two were spewing smoke—before they crashed and sent up big black pillars. The fourth downed plane hit 600 yards away, and several of us headed out to see what we could find–such as 9mm Lugers or P-38s! We had just started off, when another 109 came limping toward us, smoking and losing speed and altitude. The P-47 kept boring in and firing short machine gun bursts. The 109 was hidden by a group of pine trees when the pilot finally hauled back on the stick in an attempt to gain enough altitude to jump. His plane rose only a few hundred feet and came back into our field of view and then stalled just as he bailed out. We charged down the hill to the crash site, fully expecting to find a dead pilot in or near the wreckage, since we were sure that he had lacked sufficient altitude to eject safely.
The pilot could not be found, but the ME-109 wreckage was on fire and its magnesium castings were burning brightly. We poked around in the wreckage until the machine gun and cannon shells began to cook off, and then cleared the area. We searched the surrounding area and finally found the pilot’s chute in a pine tree about one hundred feet back in the direction from which we had come. Landing in the tree surely kept the pilot from being severely injured or killed. The pilot had slipped his chute and had laid low until we passed and then had backtracked up our trail in the snow. We followed his tracks, but lost them at dusk in the area where the snow had been heavily trampled. After escaping death in such a remarkable exit by parachute, we were saddened the next morning to find the young pilot dead within our AP minefield. He had crawled under the wire barrier and suffered modest wounds when he detonated one of our anti-personnel mines. We surmised that he believed he would freeze to death before morning, so he killed himself with his 9mm P-38. (Mentioned in battalion records of 03 January 1945.)
By early January, we were gaining control after the Bulge had been suppressed; some of the captured Germans dressed in American uniforms from Colonel Skorzeny’s force had been executed by a firing squad at Henri-Chapelle, a few miles north of Monschau; and the paratroopers had been rounded up and shipped off to the PW cages. Our infantry was gaining control in the St Vith area and we had heard of the successful relief of our troops at Bastogne by General Patton. Although the news that funneled down to us seemed to be more favorable, all that it took to journey back to reality was to observe the graves registration men picking up the dead. One memorable corpse in the snow in front of a nearby pillbox was a big football lineman type infantryman. He was about 6’4” and 2501bs–probably a BAR candidate. Only stockings were on his feet so he probably was wearing shoe-pacs as no one would have gone to that much trouble to get those foot-freezing G I boots. At the site of one big tank battle near Bullingen, I had reason to be thankful that I was not a tanker. The bodies that were being removed from knocked out Sherman tanks—Ronsons by their deprecators, since they never failed to light when struck–were wrapped in sheets that looked like oversized diapers. The corpses were so badly burned that some had no apparent arms or legs. The stench of burned human flesh is an odor that is not easily forgotten!
General Bernard Law Montgomery’s self-serving news conference to the British press, emphasizing in detail how he had rescued Omar Bradley’s 1st and 9th armies containing eighteen American divisions—finally sifted down to us. This was during the Bulge, after the German thrust had formed a deep salient into our lines requiring an immediate restructuring of the command, because the Bulge had separated Bradley’s headquarters from his divisions. There is no doubt that Elsenhower’s decision was proper but that—coupled with Montgomery’s grand pronouncements—rankled Bradley, causing dissension between British and US commanders that almost gave Hitler a victory of sorts by splitting up the allies. Although Montgomery’s presentation was a bit too self-glorifying, it may have been Bradley’s thin skin and wounded ego that was a large part of the problem.’
I was then saddened to learn of Lt Trescher’s death just before the Bulge. He was platoon leader of the 2nd platoon B-Company, and was killed by artillery while attempting to determine the location of that enemy battery by analyzing the artillery burst patterns in the snow. I found it hard to believe that he was gone. He was such a fine caring gentleman who watched over his men like a doting mother–thus his nickname “Mother Trescher”. He was very old—about 32—and was a civil engineering graduate from MIT-Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Trescher had been at the Assault Training Center near Barnstaple in North Devon when I joined the 146ECB in December of 1943. He was also the QIC of Gap Assault Team #D on Qmaha Beach at dawn on D-Day, so we had been together for a year. He was more of a gentleman than the rest of us raunchy lieutenants—and although he usually tried to ignore our dirty jokes, he enjoyed a good laugh and was a fun fellow in his quiet droll way. R.I.P. “Mother Trescher”—you will be remembered always with fondness.
In January 1945, plans for a new Allied offensive were taking shape. In preparation for a proposed crossing of the Roer River, we built a quantity of duckboards that were to be used over pontoons in that assault. When our infantry outflanked the German positions and captured that area, the duckboards were not needed. Meanwhile, Ranger patrols were making nightly forays into enemy positions across the Roer River. On one trip, they found three Germans soldiers asleep in a Siegfried bunker. The two men on the outside were knifed, and the one in the middle was left untouched. Imagine how that poor soldier would feel upon awakening and finding out that he was alive only by a shake of the dice? That was a heavy-duty mind game, and one that would unnerve any normal human being!
In mid-January an infantry lieutenant was wounded near our work area by an “S-mine”–“called a Bouncing Betty”–and his men requested that our men sweep the area for additional mines. They became impatient with our slow mine-sweeping technique and ran on ahead down to where their lieutenant was lying. I carefully followed them, stepping in their tracks to avoid being an additional casualty. We each then grabbed an arm or a leg and carried the lieutenant to safety by retracing our footsteps. He was vomiting and one man kept his head turned to the side to keep the intracranial fluid from running out through the hole in the side of his skull. He was semi-conscious, and would have remembered nothing. I hope that he had a complete recovery.
That winter, I had seen an almost perfectly formed hemisphere of white brain tissue lying in the snow. A German soldier had been killed and apparently then had a mortar or artillery round burst nearby, which had blown away the side of his skull and dumped out the delicate white brain tissue. Had the brain tissue not been frozen, it would not have been so well delineated as unfrozen brains are not all that sturdy. The detail was almost as good as the photographs in anatomy books and was a cause for queasiness in this one, who was not an anatomy major!
After the Bulge had been contained and reduced, our offensive to the Rhine began in early February with “THE MAD MINUTE.” where every weapon along the entire V-Corps front fired toward suspected German concentrations for one minute. This included all of our rifles, machine guns, and mortars firing as many rounds as possible. Divisional and Corps artillery fired TOT (Time on Target), where all of their rounds hit the target area at the same time. This devastating fire did not allow any time for the Germans to take cover—it was all over before they could react.
We then worked our way east toward the Rhine and in March, assisted another engineer battalion in building a floating bridge at Remagen. We then passed through Kassel, Halle, Leipzig and on 05 May passed through Grafenwohr–the German army training camp–where Colonel Skorzeny’s “Americans” complete with American uniforms. Jeeps and cigarettes had prepared for their special Bulge mission. We were nearing Pilsen and “VE Day” was just three days away!