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The Crossing of the Rhine
In the middle of March, 1945, the
35th Division, having been relieved on the out skirts of Wesel,
was now quartered in an area of scattered brick and stone
buildings and houses about seven miles South of Venlo and
just inside the German border, about 30 miles southwest of
Wesel, and about 20 miles West of the nearest bend in the
Rhine River, and next to the 8th Armored Division which was
bivouacked between us and the river. We were part of the XVI
Corps commanded by Gen. Anderson, along with the 8th Armored,
and our old friends from Mortain, the 30th Infantry, the 79th
Division, and the 75th Division. The 30th was on the left
and the 79th on the right along the Rhine, and the 75th was
northeast of us by the British Zone. While Ninth Army, of
which we were a part, was re-equipping, being resupplied and
munitioned, and awaiting orders, this two week period provided
the G.I.s with their first R&R (Rest and Recuperation),
clean uniforms and the opportunity to visit Brussels on one
day passes. No passes were given for the neighboring German
towns. The civilian population was being evacuated for several
miles along the West Bank of the Rhine. We experienced some
unneighborly visits from the Luftwaffe and watched flights
of Allied bombers and fighters high above headed East, and
occasionally V-1 robot bombs erratically directed to our rear
echelon areas and Antwerp, and wherever.
Numerous of our sick and wounded had recuperated enough to
be sent back to the front, along with some replacements and
several officers. We still were not at full strength, but
had more of a veteran feel, and found an excess in T/O of
young officers. The buildup in the area was reminiscent of
the June preparations for D-Day, with truck convoys bringing
all kinds of supplies including bridge building equipment.
1,250,000 men made the West Bank seem like a huge staging
area. Morale was high and the end of the war seemed finally
in sight, together with milder weather and the first signs
of Spring. Our spirits were even higher when we learned that
the 30th and 79th Divisions would be making the first wave
assaults across the Rhine. We had expected that our past history
of river crossings might have qualified us to be selected
to lead the way. The expanding beachhead East of the Rhine
River at Remagen in the First Army area was tantalizing to
watch, and one of many htmects of the war to discuss.
Hands off warning around 240 mm
Gen. Montgomery, British Commander of the 21st Army Group,
and Gen. Simpson’s Commanding Officer, had been working
on plans for the crossing of the Rhine since January. The
Rhine River was the last great barrier protecting the heart
of the German homeland against invasion from the West. Since
the days of Caesar it had been the historic dividing line
separating Germany from its enemies in the West, and was the
classic river of Medieval song, mythology and fable, the subject
of the stirring German march of the 1870's and of World War
I, “The Watch On The Rhine”. East of the river
for some 60 miles lay the great industrial powerhouse of Germany,
the Pittsburgh of their country, known as the Ruhr. Huge factories,
coal and iron mines, thousands of skilled workers, many working
underground, were everywhere. This was the heart of Germany’s
war making capacity and our next target.
By March 22nd, 1945, the Allies all along the Western front
had closed to the Rhine with 90 divisions on line. The bulk
of the German Armies which could have been used now in their
defense of the Rhine were in cemeteries, or hospitals, or
in P.O.W. camps, the result of the failed Hitler battles West
of the Rhine and East of the Oder River along the bitterly
contested Russian front. The Fuhrer’s mystique on the
German people which had permitted Hitler to ignore the advice
of his generals and to rely on his own intuitions was rapidly
fading. Now, only the shattered remnants of the once invincible
Wehrmacht and a few Volkstorm or Home Guard Units were scattered
along the Eastern Banks of the Rhine. The embattled German
Armies on the Eastern front could only try to save themselves
and were unable to come to the support of the Rhine defenders.
Across the river from Wesel and extending southward along
the 18 mile front of our XVI Corps were two corps of the German
Parachute Army, including their 180th Division, and a makeshift
formation called the Hamburg Division, and the 2nd Parachute
Division, estimated at some 70,000 men and backed by a number
of field artillery units.
The Allied plan called for a general offensive all along
the Rhine, code names Operation Plunder, timed for March 24th.
The British, North and downstream of Wesel, and the American
Ninth Army South of Wesel were to carry the main effort. Within
Gen. Simpson’s Ninth Army were three corps, the XIIIth
which was to be more of a holding and feinting operation,
the XIXth Corps, which was to cross the river after bridgeheads
had been secured and attack to the East toward a line of Minster-Hamm
in the direction of Berlin. Our XVIth Corps was given the
main effort in the Ninth Army to cross the river and secure
bridgeheads and then push South and Southeastwardly into the
Ruhr. 35th Division was one of five divisions within XVI Corps
which included 54 field artillery battalions plus engineers
and attachments totalling some 120,000 men. Crossings were
to be in the Rheinberg area, and our part of the operation
was called flashpoint, and concentrated in an 8 mile section
of the river.
Medics take care of wounded
Tactical air activity preceded the crossings. On March 23,
at 1800 hours, British guns opened the bombardment of German
positions gradually increasing in intensity until 2300 hours
when one of their divisions entered assault boats and crossed
the river at Rees. They established a bridgehead and shortly
after were hit by the counter-attacking 15th Panzer Division.
At 2400 hours a British Commando Brigade stealthily slipped
across the river 2 miles West of Wesel, waited for a 15 minute
pounding of Wesel by 200 planes of the Royal Air Force Bomber
Command, and then moved in to take Wesel. At 0100 hours on
the 24th of March, another British Division to the North jumped
off along with our 30th Division North of Rheinberg and followed
at 0300 by our 79th Division crossing the river East of Rheinberg.
A three quarters moon lightened the night and aided not only
the troops but an appreciative audience in a church tower,
Generals Eisenhower and Simpson, who watched the three regiments
of the 30th Division enter assault boats following a full
hour of artillery fire as the front erupted in a thunderstorm
of sound, some 2,070 pieces in our sector alone. Every minute
for sixty minutes more than a thousand shells ranging in weight
from 25 to 325 pounds crashed on the East Bank on defensive
positions, a total of 65,261 rounds! At the same time 1500
heavy bombers hit a dozen airfields within range of the crossing
sites. Eachst assault battalion was organized into four waves
with two minute intervals between waves. Each storm boat carried
seven men, a crew of two, and powered by a 55 H.P. engine.
Double assault boats carried 14 and a crew of3 with 22 H.P.
motors. Engineers took long pontoons with them and bridge
erection materials to immediately start construction. Machine
guns fired tracers to guide the first wave and penetrate the
fog and smoke. Colored landing lights showed the way for those
who followed. The terrific bombardment and chemical smoke
pouring over and blinding the Germans stunned the defenders,
lifting just as the first wave hit the shore. Communication
wires were destroyed by the fire and kept German forward observers
from signaling fire missions. While some fire from mortars
hit around the assault boats only one was struck, and it was
daylight and after most waves had crossed before German shelling
in appreciable amounts struck the crossing sites, and created
severe problems for the engineers. As the infantry unloaded
on the East side they quickly reached a nearby dike, and then
a railroad track and established their beachhead, all at a
cost of less than the 21 casualties that Gen. Patton had experienced
28 hours before in his Third Army crossing at Openheim.
The 79th Division crossed the Rhine n somewhat similar fashion
at 2300 hours except that the fog and smoke generated in their
area later in the night clung to the river affecting visibility.
The extra hour of artillery fire had disabled most of the
enemy guns but small arms fire laced through the landing area.
Nevertheless the advanced planning in detail, rehearsal and
training on sand tables and in rear area rivers, the deceptions,
and close coordination with artillery, and the stunning and
intense barrage had paid off with much lower casualties than
expected. The crossing by both divisions had cost only 31
casualties.
Leading elements of both divisions swept past the railroad
lines and advanced two miles eastward to the outskirts of
Dinslaken, a city of 25,000 and the first of many Ruhr cities.
On the way G.I.’s effectively used 200 German Panzerfausts
(rockets which were good for one shot) against the defenders
in buildings and expedited their evacuation. 30th Division
took 1,500 prisoners and 79th added 700 more. Engineers worked
feverishly to erect pontoon bridges which the Germans attacked
with interdicting airburst fire. The engineers completed their
bridge at 1600 hours, a treadway bridge, and then had to rebuild
a part of it which was shortly thereafter damaged, but returned
to service a little after midnight. This would be the same
bridge the 35th Division would use during the next two days.
Gen. Montgomery had also planned for an airborne attack
to hit the Germans behind their front lines North of Wesel
and in the British Zone, for March 24th, and this turned out
to be a massive operation. Shortly before 1000 hours, the
first of 3,933 fighters, transport planes, and gliders swept
in from the West and over Wesel as the great air armada brought
21,680 paratroopers and glidermen from the U.S. 17th Airborne
Division and from the British 6th Airborne Division, the latter
coming in from England, for an air drop just East of Wesel.
For 2¼ hours the planes came, followed by 240 four
engine liberator bombers of the U.S. Eighth Air Force dropping
582 tons of supplies. Another 2,153 fighter aircraft formed
a protective umbrella over the target area and ranged over
Germany in quest of challenging German planes. In addition,
2,596 heavy bombers (some 600 from the 15th Air Force in Italy)
and 821 medium bombers attacked airfields, bridges, marshaling
and other targets East of the Rhine. The air drop was watched
by the British Prime Minister Churchill and Field Marshall
Sir Alan Brooke, and by Airborne Commanders Gen. Ridgeway
and British Gen. Brereton. A few of the 35th Division were
also observers on the dim horizon some 30 miles away. Just
before the arrival of the planes, the U.S. Ninth Air Force
and British Second Tactical Air Force sent in medium and fighter
bombers for 30 minutes of fragmentation bombing on anti-aircraft
batteries in the drop and landing zones around Wesel.
This tremendous spectacle was awe-inspiring as one of the
mightiest artillery and aerial shows of the war and to Sante
Fe men, each bomb dropped, each shell fired, could lighten
our approaching commitment by that much, and perhaps reduce
the defenders when we hit the German lines in the next 24
to 48 hours. Casualties among the Airborne were much heavier
than those to our ground troops in our corps. In the 17th
Airborne, 159 were killed, 522 wounded, and 840 missing, of
whom 600 were later returned to duty as they found their way
back. The air drop was deemed successful as all objectives
were reached, 3500 prisoners taken, the German 84th division
overrun and eliminated, with all of their staff officers,
many tanks and artillery units destroyed, and an opening for
the British troops to break out to the northeast.
In the Ninth Army Zone, March 25th saw the continuing expansion
of the bridgeheads to the East and southeast, but a stiffening
of German resistance in front of the 30th Division who reported
units of the German 116th Panzer Division on their front.
This was the same tank outfit that had tangled with the 30th
Division so viciously in the hedgerows of Normandy. The 79th
Division was changing the direction of its attack to the southeast
toward the Rhine-Herne Canal and into this developing breach
between those American divisions was sent one of our regiments,
the 134th Infantry, fighting as a task force “Miltonberger”
were the first 35th Divisionnaires to enter the battle. The
resistance in front of 30th Division continued to intensify
as veteran German soldiers began to arrive in the front lines
to block what the Germans perceived to be a threatened American
breakout from the extending beachheads.
In the afternoon of March 25th, Task Force Miltonberger, containing
in addition to the 134th Infantry, a tank company, a T.D.
company, and the 127th Field Artillery Battalion, leaving
gas masks behind, moved by trucks to the Rheinberg area, dismounted
and moved on foot and with equipment to cross the Rhine River
on Love Bridge, a floating treadway, at 8 p.m. after dark,
and experiencing some aerial strafing while crossing the bridge,
and taking our first casualties. Our 35th Division artillery
had participated in the artillery barrage the night before
but had taken no casualties. Now the task force continued
to march for five hours through the night by the light of
burning buildings, covering 12 miles to an assembly area just
East of Dinslaken, and moved into the front line beside and
to the left of the 79th Division, and receiving its attack
orders for 0800.
The Sante Fe men looked out over gently rolling ground, soggy
fields, small villages and a woods toward an uncompleted section
of the first of the super highways, the Reichsautobahn. Following
a field rationed breakfast, the infantry moved out in attack
formation as scheduled and quickly attracted artillery fire,
88's and 20mm cannon which contested their 3,000 yard advance
as ordered. Sherman tanks in support, while handicapped by
the muddy ground, helped drive the enemy back and some 41
prisoners were taken representing an odd assortment of soldiers
from the 146th infantry, and 116th Panzer Divisions, flak
battalion men, former Luftwaffe pilots and tankers and even
some Navy men, evidence of the deterioration of the Wehrmacht
defense. Still the defense was stubborn and we took casualties,
although in military terms they were considered “light”.
By evening the rest of the 35th Division came up, having followed
the same route, and entered the front line, relieving a part
of the 79th Division which shifted further to our right. The
orders to the 35th Division were to enter the fight for the
Ruhr and specifically to peel off to the southeast to block
toward the Ruhr. Task Force Miltonberger was relieved of its
temporary attachment to the 79th Division and the full 35th
Division prepared for its attack southward the next morning
at 0600 hours, March 27th.
The Ninth Army bridgehead extended to eleven miles wide and
thirteen miles deep, four bridges were in operation over the
Rhine, and two were being built by the Americans in the Wesel
area. The XVI Corps had most of its troops across the river,
with the arrival of a regiment of the 75th Division attached
to the 30th Division, and most of the 8th Armored Division
in an assembly area just five miles behind the 30th Division.
Nightly aerial attacks by the Germans on the floating bridges
had been frustrated by the heavy anti-aircraft defense battalions
and barrage balloons, and by fighter planes from the Air Force.
Gen. Patton’s troops had moved 40 miles out of their
bridgehead in the south and were spreading out. 17th Airborne
was moving steadily toward Munster and the XIX Corps was preparing
to break out behind the XVI Corps and head eastward. Spirits
of the troops were rising and the air of optimism increasing.
Yet some of the hardest fighting still lay ahead, three weeks
of it, and we were still two hundred miles from Berlin. And
could there be a Russian problem?
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