Aachen: The U.S. Army's Battle for Charlemagne's City in World War II (24 page)

During this time Captain Palmer's Company I had been advancing through the upper (east) half of the woods and encountering little
resistance. On the lower (west) side of the woods, however, McBride's Company B was meeting hardened fire from pillboxes and other emplacements. Pvt. Joseph P. Mehelich, one of the company's medics, was wounded twice, first in his leg and then in his shoulder. He ignored orders to withdraw for treatment, and instead “stumbled and crawled about the area under fire,” rendering first aid to six other wounded men.
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Only then would Private Mehelich seek aid for himself by coming back to McBride's CP in a captured pillbox, but still not until he had first arranged litters to evacuate the others.

Nearby, the fighting went on. Then, at 1512 hours Captain Palmer reported to Quinn that his company was completely through the woods and on their objective. This did not prove to be correct. It was later learned that Palmer was confused and his Company I was north of the Rimburg-Merkstein-Hoffstadt road about 500 yards short of his reported position.
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Unaware of this, Colonel Sutherland reached Lieutenant Colonel Quinn and told him to make contact with Herlong's 1st Battalion. A few minutes later, Sutherland radioed Herlong to relay the same order, telling him this time that “he must get up through the woods and contact Quinn's force as soon as he can.”
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Then at 1522, Quinn in turn contacted McBride and requested Company B's location; the Company B commander told him that the leading elements of his company had beaten back the resistance in the pillboxes and were now engaged in cleaning out the enemy positions in front of Captain Simmons's Company A, but the two companies had not yet made contact.

Task Force Quinn was essentially dissolved a few minutes later after Sutherland told Quinn that McBride's Company B and the platoon of tanks would revert “at once” from regimental control back to the 1st Battalion. Herlong got word of this at approximately 1525 hours. Quinn was also directed to release Palmer's Company I back to Lieutenant Colonel Brown's 3rd Battalion, which had spent the day being constantly prodded by Colonel Sutherland to make contact at the south edge of the woods with the now defunct task force.

It had been a very bad day for Brown and his men. They lost a very capable Company L man earlier that morning, Sgt. Richard O. Linehan, who “could have handled the company under any situation by himself.”
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Shrapnel from artillery hit Linehan; the medic “knelt down beside him, but knew by his face and reactions that nothing could be done.” They
pulled Linehan's raincoat over his head, took his maps and shovel, and sought cover. Artillery and mortar fire came in fast and heavy all day; the company's men escaped from it by sheltering in a small storehouse that was only slightly below ground level. “We threw out the items and kept finding room for one more person,” remembered a participant. “It just wasn't safe to move around. The Jerries had plenty of stuff and could observe us, that was certain.”
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Sutherland's hoped-for results were not achieved; his two forces never got close. Task Force Quinn had only cleared out the woods on a line that intersected to the south with a pillbox just to the east of the Rimburg Castle.
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Although the 2nd Battalion's executive officer, Major Laney, believed Task Force Quinn's operations were helpful, others were more critical. Captain McBride felt that the task force was prematurely dissolved, even stating later, “It is my opinion that if the task force had not been dissolved, it would have been able to accomplish its mission before the hours of darkness on 3 October.”
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Major Wayne, the 1st Battalion's executive officer, even offered that the task force's fear of enemy antitank weapons made their tanks “timid” and thus positioned in the wrong place to render more effective support for the attack.

Even if it was unduly dangerous for the tanks to operate in such close proximity to the woods, [they] could have moved south on the west side of the railroad and found suitable crossings in [Lieutenant Colonel Brown's] 3rd Battalion's sector. If they had done this, they would have gotten into position to fire on the pillboxes in the fringes of the woods, probably without even having to doze a crossing of the anti-tank ditch. The main hazard to such a maneuver would have been artillery fire, but artillery fire is not as great a hazard to a moving tank and is a great deal more dangerous to exposed infantry. Actually, the Jerries in the woods either did not have, or did not use anti-tank weapons.
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At about 1530 McBride switched his SCR 300 radio back to the 1st Battalion channel to request further orders; Herlong now advised him to hold up where he was until Simmons's Company A and Bons's Company C had passed through. Both of Captain Bons's assault platoons had crossed the railroad by this time and were waiting to receive the order to
attack south when Herlong suddenly changed it to attack east. Bons later recalled, “The men went through the woods [after we got the order] without difficulty; no artillery nor small arms fire resistance was met. But on approaching the east edge of the woods, direct fire—the type of which we had never encountered before—was received.”
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Simmons's Company A had followed Company C by first pushing through the route on which Bons's platoons had advanced, but weakened by losses earlier in the day in his 3rd Platoon, which was practically wiped out, combined with the loss of half of his 1st Platoon, Captain Simmons could offer little help this late in the day.

Captain McBride later offered this perspective in explanation for the failure of these attacks:

Approximately 45 minutes had elapsed between the time that Company B had been ordered to hold up and the time that Companies A and C attacked. Thus the enemy was given ample time to reorganize his strength and positions.

In the middle and lower half of the woods, [both] companies were able to advance only 20 yards beyond the line held by Company B before they were stopped. On the upper edge of the woods, elements of Company C moved to the rear of Company I. When [we] attempted to move out of the woods to secure better fields of fire the company was immediately subjected to grazing machine gun fire and direct tank fire from the high ground to the east and also from positions in the vicinity of Merkstein-Hofstad. The battalion was also subjected to the most intense artillery fire it had received in the whole attack so far. During one period of 40 minutes an enemy battery concentration landed on the battalion every five seconds.
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When Captain Toler's Company E and Company F finally launched their coordinated attack, the Germans also caught both companies with tank and artillery fire as they approached the east edge of the woods. Losses included Company E's executive officer as well as ten other casualties. “Tree bursts from the enemy's artillery were rugged along the edge of the woods,” remembered Lieutenant Parker. “Hence, both companies advanced their lines onto the open ground farther to the east.”
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Company F's Captain Reisch had also become a casualty. An artillery shell killed him while he was in his command post back in the barn nearer the river before the Rimburg Castle was taken; Lt. Edward C. Arn had assumed command, and he never forgot the moments before Reisch was taken down:

Captain Reisch and I were standing in the huge double doorway of the U-shaped barn studying our map and trying to decide what to do next. We knew that the enemy was in that castle [Rimburg Castle] and in strength. We could even see an imposing Tiger tank drawn up in front of the main entrance. We were also aware that some of our people had reached a group of outlying buildings that, I later learned, comprised a combination of apartments and the castle gatekeeper's quarters. Just a few moments before, Reisch had motioned to me to crawl over to him on the enemy side of the barn's south wing. He pointed to the heavily wooded high ground to the left of the castle. I noted movement in the underbrush at the base of the trees.

Reisch always carried an old, well-oiled, and super clean Springfield, bolt-operated ‘03 rifle. The piece was even equipped with a special telescope sight mechanism. Reisch was an expert, an excellent shot. A German soldier was crouched in the coloring foliage. He had little idea that he was about to take leave of this mortal earth. The captain calmly balanced his ‘03 on the rusting spokes of a hay rake's wheel, took aim, and squeezed the trigger. I would guess his target was about two hundred yards away. The unfortunate Kraut never knew what hit him. His body tumbled in the river.
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Not long afterward, artillery found Captain Reich and he, too, fell. That night the 1st Platoon had just sixteen men left. Most of the men were lost on the edge of the woods where the determined enemy artillery had stopped the day's attack. Nevertheless, both Arn and Toler made contact and patrols sent out eventually met up with Captain McBride's Company B. Palmer's Company I, although not where he thought he was a few hours earlier, had by this time located on higher ground to McBride's right.

The S-3 of Lieutenant Colonel Brown's 3rd Battalion reported at 1619 that he was “in touch by radio; I Company about 700 yards away.”
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At 1700 all of Brown's units were ordered to consolidate their positions. One platoon from Captain Hopcraft's Company K and another from Stanford's Company L were still holding their positions and protecting the right flank of the regiment; one platoon found refuge in a pillbox with thirty-six bunks in it. “It was a bad situation,” remembered an officer. “The mortar and artillery fire were really rough.”
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That night Colonel Sutherland ordered Lieutenant Colonel Herlong and his 1st Battalion to continue cleaning out the entire woods east of the railroad before proceeding to Herbach.
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This order came following a call General Hobbs made to Sutherland a little after 1800, during which he told him that his men “had done a bang-up job” and advised they “tuck in for the night.”
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Hobbs had been quite optimistic overall, perhaps prematurely but nevertheless exuberantly so when he talked with General Corlett a couple of hours earlier. “We have this thing busted up,” he told the XIX Corps’ commander. “We just intercepted a German document that says we busted up 39 pillboxes; we have broken this thing.”
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When Corlett asked if he could report this to Army, Hobbs ventured: “We are sitting on high ground and looking south; if that isn't busting through, I don't know what it is.” A short time later on another call, Hobbs boldly told Corlett, “I don't think it too early to advise our neighbors on the right [referring to the 1st Infantry Division] to start their thing tomorrow. We are headed in that direction; they have to apply pressure south so nothing comes our way.” The conversation then closed with an understatement when a somewhat dubious Corlett told Hobbs that “General Harmon says it's sticky around Ubach.”

When Lieutenant Colonel McDowell's 3rd Battalion of the 117th Infantry started across the Marienberg bridge earlier that morning toward Ubach, enemy artillery fire was falling only intermittently. The leading companies, Capt. Wayne Culp's Company K and Company L, quickly pushed forward into Palenberg, which was not completely cleared out. At first only small-arms fire proved problematic, but when the leading platoons reached the eastern part of town, determined German artillery and mortar fire started to slow the advance. Small-arms fire
was also coming from a pillbox firing northward from the 119th Infantry sector, but astute thinking by the commander of the antitank platoon, Lt. Robert Peters, led to the removal of this threat.

Our men shot at the pillbox from 300–1,000 yard range, firing from the northeast of the pillbox over a small ridge which barely gave them mask clearance. The first shot from their 57mm anti-tank gun was about a foot high, since they were trying to clear the ridge. The second shot scored on the aperture and the top of the concrete was seen to fall down. One man quickly ran out of the pillbox and was squelched with a round of HE. No further moves were taken, as the fire had ceased coming from that sector.
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Still, it was not until nearly 1300 before the battalion got between phase lines 8 and 9, a little less than a quarter of a mile from the western fringes of Ubach. At this time both companies were astride the main road leading into town, with squads on nearby side streets cleaning out resistance in houses; the Germans had boarded the doors, so tanks were first used to blow them open. At 1315, Colonel Johnson learned from Lieutenant Colonel McDowell that the lead companies were still being hit by mortar fire coming from the center of the village. Turning to his staff after the call ended, Johnson quipped with undoubted certainty, “McDowell's got Wild Man Culp up there, with Company K in the lead. This is good, because if you get Culp mad he'll go places.”
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Company K did, as did Company L. Colonel Johnson learned five minutes later that McDowell had one company on each side farther up the “main drag,” Company L still to the north and Culp to the south. At this point, however, the fight for Ubach evolved into “a slugfest with house-to-house fighting, the enemy giving ground inch by inch.”
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Conversations at Colonel Johnson's command post partially revealed why the situation changed so quickly. At 1325 he told his staff, “Powerhouse ran into the rear of the 3rd Battalion and was stopped cold. Do those tanks need a ribbon along the road to show them where to go?”
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Powerhouse was the code name for the lead elements of General Harmon's 2nd Armored Division Combat Command B (CCB), the 2nd Battalion of the 67th Armored Regiment. A few minutes later, the regimental commander talked again to Lieutenant Colonel McDowell,
telling him, “I want to get the armor to make an end run around the town. There is no reason they have to wait for us. Get to the head of your column and see if you can push them a little.”