Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II

by Belton Y. Cooper

  Now that all of the Allied armies were drawn up along the Rhine, the situation changed drastically. As of February 23, when the major offensive in the Rhineland started, the Germans had seventy-three divisions opposing seventy Allied divisions. Although the German divisions were greatly weakened, they still held a large portion of the Siegfried line to the south and were still capable of putting up a great fight. Since the later stages of the Battle of the Bulge, practically all production of Panther and Tiger tanks had been committed to the western armies. The Germans were now desperately defending their homeland, and many were determined to carry out Hitler’s orders to yield no ground and fight to the last man.

  In the early planning for the Rhine crossings, there appeared to be little advantage in attempting a crossing in the Bonn-Remagen area. The hills on the east bank were high, and observers on them could completely dominate the flat, rolling plains on the west bank. The terrain was similar to that in the Ardennes. The limited road nets required penetration of some fifty miles before the troops could swing north and east.

  In spite of the Remagen bridgehead, Field Marshal Montgomery insisted on even more control and urged Eisenhower to transfer Hodges’s First Army to the 21st Army Group. Although Eisenhower believed that the main effort should come north of the Ruhr in the 21st Army Group area, he was reluctant to take the First Army from Bradley.

  Although Eisenhower’s head may have been with the logic of a strong offensive north of the Ruhr, his heart remained with the 12th Army Group and his American troops. He suspected, according to many historians, that by turning the First Army over to Montgomery, he would have held it back, and the 21st Army Group would have advanced beyond them toward Berlin to gain more glory for the British.

  General Marshall, back in Washington, also opposed this move. Eisenhower finally told Montgomery that he would consider giving the First Army a more northern role in the final offensive, provided it remained under the 12th Army Group. Montgomery said he would rather go without the First Army under those circumstances.

  March 23 was the date for the 21st Army Group’s massive assault across the Rhine River. While all of the big preparations were to assist the 21st Army Group, Patton’s Third Army made a quick, unexpected crossing at Oppenheim. This undoubtedly miffed Montgomery as the Third Army had stolen his thunder a few hours prior to his gigantic crossing.

  Bradley had two armies across the Rhine, the First at the Remagen bridgehead and the Third in the area of Oppenheim. Eisenhower now unleashed the 12th Army Group with priority equal to that of the 21st Army Group. This was all Hodges and Patton were looking for. The SHAEF plan for the final assault on Germany called for the 21st Army Group to cross the Rhine north of the Ruhr. The American First Army was to break out of the Remagen bridgehead south of the Segan River. The VII Corps, on the northern flank of the First Army, was to drive due east across the Dure River, continue until it could swing north and envelop the southern flank of the Ruhr Pocket, and eventually meet up with the Ninth Army coming from the north. The Third Army, breaking out of its bridgehead at Oppenheim, would swing north and east to secure bridgeheads across the Main River. The First and Third Armies would then proceed from Frankfurt and Kassel to the north and east. From this point on, the objective of the 12th Army Group was to seek out and destroy all German forces.

  The Remagen Bridgehead

  The 3d Armored Division left Cologne on March 20 to assemble near Honnef, preparatory to crossing the Remagen bridge. Our division artillery had accumulated considerable ammunition, because it was normal practice when a division was in a holding position to fire at German targets of opportunity. Not wanting to exhaust the combat load of ammunition in the ready racks, we stored the extra ammunition on the ground. When the division was ordered to move, the division artillery commander was not about to leave this ammunition there, because 105mm ammunition was hard to come by. A quartermaster truck company was ordered up from COMZ to haul the additional ammunition.

  The main road to Remagen ran down the west bank of the Rhine, an area of mostly flat plains, a few low-lying hills, and numerous villages. The column sometimes had to proceed under direct observation of German artillery observers across the river. Where the road was exposed, engineers had improvised camouflage nets hung from telephone lines.

  After our columns passed down this road, they were followed by the quartermaster truck company bringing the ammunition. About halfway between Cologne and Bonn, the German artillery had knocked down a telephone pole and brought the camouflage net down for a distance of some two hundred yards. When this happened, the infantry captain in charge of the area told the lieutenant in charge of the village just north of him to send the trucks. They waited until just after the German shells landed, then released the trucks one at a time, hoping they could get across the open area before the next round came in. This procedure worked well for a while, but their luck soon ran out.

  As one particularly slow truck reached the halfway point, a German shell exploded directly in front of it. The driver panicked and slammed on the brakes, and the crew hit the ditch on the side away from the river. From his position a hundred yards to the south, the captain called for the crew to come down the ditch toward him. The crew panicked and froze in place. The captain realized that if they stayed there, the truck would be hit, and if the ammunition exploded they would be killed instantly.

  The captain crawled down the ditch himself and told the men to follow him. At the same time, a second round hit to the rear of the truck, and the explosion set the tarp on fire. Just as they got back to the village, the truck exploded. Fortunately, the captain and the truck crew had reached a safe position, and no one was injured.

  The truck crew was really shaken; this was the first time they had encountered direct enemy fire. As COMZ troops, they were used to working in relative safety, and it never occurred to them that they would be exposed to this type of danger. Not until they were in the relative safety of a basement in the village did they feel secure.

  The 3d Armored Division moved into an assembly area southwest of Bonn near Königswinter. Although First Army had attempted to expand the bridgehead, the bridge was struck numerous times by direct fire from German 88s and by indirect fire from larger artillery. Many air attacks had been made, although the antiaircraft battalions discouraged German planes from making a pass at the bridge itself. The Germans even fired a V2 rocket from the Netherlands and struck a house in the village nearby. Although engineers erected several pontoon bridges, they made a valiant attempt to save the Ludendorff bridge. The full span on the upstream side was still intact, and the signalmen had run numerous communication wires across the bridge. In spite of these efforts, the weakened bridge collapsed on March 15, carrying a number of engineers and signalmen to their deaths.

  We crossed into the bridgehead on the morning of March 23 on a pontoon bridge at Honnef. The engineers lashed large pontoons close together with treadways to make rafts to carry the heavy M26 tanks. Our Super M26 made the crossing in good shape. The division joined the VII Corps, which was massing its strength on the north side of the bridgehead.

  Envelopment of the Ruhr Pocket

  With the Ninth Army bridgehead north of the Ruhr and the First Army bridgehead south of the Ruhr at Remagen, the Allies were now prepared to launch a massive double envelopment. The 2d Armored Division (Hell on Wheels) would lead the assault on the north. The VII Corps of First Army led by the 3d Armored Division (Spearhead) would lead the assault on the south.

  The 2d and 3d Armored Divisions were the only heavy armored divisions left after the 1943 reorganization converted the remaining divisions into light armored divisions. The heavy armored divisions had 232 medium tanks compared to 168 medium tanks for the light armored divisions. The tanks plus the accompanying maintenance and supply organizations gave the heavy armored division much greater staying power.

  Since Normandy, these two divisions had worked closely in every major operation. The men of these divisions k
new that they were part of the first team and were destined to become the main effort of the Allied armies in the west until the end of the war in Europe.

  Plans for enveloping the Ruhr Pocket were highly innovative and brilliantly carried out. Normally, the flank penetration would be limited to ten to twelve miles. In the envelopment of the Ruhr Pocket, we were planning an entirely different ball game. The armored columns would move out rapidly and make extremely deep penetrations along relatively narrow fronts. Air cover would let them know what was ahead and alert them to any serious threats to their flanks.

  The First Army assault from the Remagen bridgehead, with VII Corps in the lead, started on March 25. The attack concentrated on a narrow area between the Segan River and the Land River. The Germans opposed our corps with elements of three volksgrenadier divisions, one parachute division, and three panzer divisions plus separate armored groups and combat engineers. The German units had been decimated, and few were anywhere near full combat strength.

  The 3d Armored Division, leading the VII Corps, moved out at dawn on March 25 in four columns. Combat Command B took the two northern columns and CCA took the two southern columns. Combat Command R followed the two middle columns, and the 83d Recon Battalion followed the north column of CCB. The division was virtually back to full strength in tanks and other equipment. The older men who had survived combat felt like veterans and took great pride in imbuing the new replacements with the accomplishments of the Spearhead Division. Morale was good, but we knew we had a tough fight ahead of us.

  Although the Germans had been greatly weakened, they were now fighting desperately for their homeland. The rugged terrain afforded them excellent defensive possibilities. The division had been heavily bloodied so far, which humbled the survivors. We had also sustained great losses in tanks and other combat equipment. The battle-hardening experience of recovery, evacuation, repair, maintenance, and replacement had developed a strong mutual respect between the combat soldiers and the maintenance soldiers, who depended on one another for their survival.

  The division’s new objective was Altenkirchen, headquarters of the 15th German Army. Combat Command A immediately ran into heavy tank and antitank fire on the southern flank. Combat Command B, on the north, ran into even heavier resistance from a kampfgruppe of Panther and Tiger tanks, which outgunned our M4 Shermans. Although CCB had three of the new M26 Pershings spread out between the two columns, they did not begin to match the twenty to thirty Panthers and Tigers.

  The M26 Super Pershing was in this group, but the maintenance crew had to nurse it along because it was overheating. The extra weight of the armor and the extremely rugged terrain put a much heavier load on the engine. The maintenance crew constantly adjusted the V belts on the coolant fans to try to rectify the problem. This helped somewhat, but it was not until we got into open country that the tank became fairly reliable.

  Late on the afternoon of March 25, I left CCB in the Altenkirchen Woods, north of the city, and headed back to the maintenance battalion near Honnef. We had had considerable losses that day, and I wanted to submit my combat loss report in order to get replacements as quickly as possible.

  I was traveling with CCB on the northern route just south of the Sieg River. The 78th Infantry Division was deployed along the south bank of the river. A regimental combat team of the 1st Infantry Division was traveling eastward in a truck convoy along the same route as I tried to head west. At one point, the road crested the top of a hill where the trucks were exposed to observation from the Germans across the river to the north. The Germans started interdictory fire.

  Normally, the trucks would slow down in the defiladed position, then race rapidly across the open space one at a time. Due to the traffic jam farther down the road, the trucks were bumper to bumper on top of the hill. The infantrymen bailed out and took cover on the south side of the road. One of the trucks had already been hit and the top was blasted off.

  I reasoned that sooner or later the Germans would score a direct hit on the trucks and set them on fire, and I would not be able to get across the road. I figured that the Germans were firing a single 155mm howitzer because of the size of the explosion and time interval between rounds—approximately twenty to twenty-five seconds, which was all the time I had to get across the four-hundred-yard opening. I looked at the sweep second hand on my watch, gave Wrayford the countdown, and sure enough the next round came in right on time.

  Wrayford already had the Jeep in four-wheel drive in low gear. We took off in a cloud of dust and screamed across the top of the hill. We crouched down in the Jeep to where we could barely see over the windshield. After a lot of skidding on the soft, loose dirt on the shoulder, we reached the crest in about eighteen seconds. We heard the next round coming in and ducked as low as we could. As we passed through a slight depression, with our heads just below the level of the edge of the embankment, the shell exploded about fifteen feet from the edge of the embankment, and the blast went over our heads. Wrayford was driving like a runaway racehorse and never veered off his course for a second. The concussion seemed to move the Jeep to the side, but we screamed along amid a cloud of flying fragments and falling clods of dirt. When we reached the other side, we kept on going.

  By this time, VII Corps had shattered the northern flank of the German 15th Army, and the division started moving much faster. The situation now became highly fluid, similar to that after the breakout in Normandy, but the conditions were different. The terrain was still rugged, and it was difficult to maintain contact among columns. German communications were still somewhat intact, and they continued to put up numerous roadblocks and counterattack from the flanks.

  First Army’s overall tactical plan called for a deep penetration so rapid that we would get completely through their advance communication zone. By the early morning of March 28, the division had slashed through Herborn and Marburg and was ready to swing north. In less than three days, it had driven seventy miles (more than a hundred miles by road), which was farther than the Germans had driven in the first three weeks of the Battle of the Bulge.

  The division was ordered to move rapidly to the north to meet up with the Ninth Army in the vicinity of Paderborn. The 2d Armored Division was driving hard across the northern border of the Ruhr. We knew that if we could connect with the Ninth Army, we would completely cut off major elements of the German army in the Ruhr Pocket. The division fanned out, each of its six columns with four P47 dive-bombers over it during the daylight hours.

  Even though we were deep inside German territory, our complete domination of the air gave us tremendous superiority. All opposition was bypassed where possible, and if a column became bogged down another would outflank the roadblock. Additional battalions from the 1st and the 104th Infantry Divisions were assigned to the task forces.

  On the night of March 28, I left CCB with my combat loss report. On the morning of the twenty-ninth, I returned to Marburg and headed north, traveling alone, to try to catch up with the division. Whenever I left the combat command in the evenings, I always made it a practice to go by headquarters and look at the G2 map. It was important to know the next day’s objectives and the routes the columns would follow. When I made the return trip, I wanted to follow the road the combat command had been on. In a fast-moving situation such as this, the Germans were cleared only to the hedgerows. As a liaison officer traveling alone, I knew I was particularly vulnerable.

  About ten miles north of Marburg, with the windshield down and Wrayford driving at our top speed of sixty-five miles an hour, we suddenly came to a Y in the road. For a moment I was not sure which was the main road and which was the secondary road. I took a guess and told Wrayford to turn to the right. We had gone about a hundred yards when it hit me and I screamed, “Stop! Dammit let’s get the hell out of here fast!”

  Wrayford slammed on the brakes, turned so fast that he nearly flipped the Jeep, then headed back at top speed in the opposite direction. When we got back to the road junction, we stopped t
o look at the map again.

  I heard a voice call out, “Are you from the Third Armored?”

  I looked in the direction of the voice, and on a knoll about fifteen feet above the road to my right I saw a couple of GIs in their armored car. They were too well camouflaged to be seen when we came down the road the first time.

  “Yes, we’re with CCB and we’re trying to catch up with the column,” I replied.

  The sergeant, from the 83d Recon, told me I was on the right road but had taken the wrong fork. The road to the left was the main road, and the column was somewhere between this point and Paderborn. Had we continued down the road to the right another hundred yards, we would have met a German roadblock that faced our roadblock back at the Y. They were sweating each other out.

  As we headed north up the main road, I contemplated what had just happened. Why had I suddenly decided to tell Wrayford to stop and turn around? It finally dawned on me. The road that we had taken was covered with dust. A main paved highway would never be covered with dust unless no traffic had been on it for some period. Had our tank columns taken this road, the dust would have been blown to one side and we would have seen evidence of tank tracks. I was so used to this that I had taken it for granted. My thoughts had undoubtedly saved our lives. Many times, God, in his infinite mercy, has strange ways of communicating with us.

  The division launched its attack at 0600 from Marburg on the morning of March 29 and continued to attack relentlessly until 2200 that evening. The division traveled in four roughly parallel columns from three to five miles apart. By 2200, elements of the division had driven 90 miles north (118 miles by road). In the history of land warfare this was the longest armored advance against an enemy in a twenty-four hour period. Even Desert Storm could not equal this record.

  Taking advantage of the rugged country, the Germans put heavy roadblocks in the narrow defiles between the hills. Combat Command B, on the extreme right, was alert to possible counterattack from a German volksgrenadier division reported somewhere to our east. One CCB column suddenly found itself in a narrow defile under heavy fire from German automatic weapons and panzerfausts.