Although it would seem natural for a soldier to hesitate taking risks as the war drew to an end, by this time we had learned to take things one day at a time. For a man living between life and death, there is no tomorrow. Living in the present helps a soldier survive emotionally.
The division now found itself stretched somewhat precariously. At the leading edge of the VII Corps, it occupied a forty-mile front from just southeast of the Harz Mountains to where the autobahn crossed the Mulde River. The 1st and 9th Divisions were still cleaning up the Harz Mountains, although a couple of battalions of the 1st Infantry had been assigned to CCA and CCR. The 104th Division, to our south, was committed to capture Halle, and one battalion had been assigned to CCB.
The Germans had organized three new divisions to oppose us: the Potsdam, Scharnhorst, and Ulrich von Hutten Divisions. Personnel were mostly the remnants of shattered units plus air force ground and flight personnel, although the Germans did bring in a number of veteran officers and noncoms with combat experience. These three divisions were the outer defense line against an assault on Berlin from the southwest. Hitler reportedly visited these units on April 13 and told them they would soon be the focus of a major German counteroffensive.
With our division spread out and opposed by three new divisions, our situation was critical.
The Final Assault
The battle of central Germany now reached its final stage, although the situation was vague as far as we were concerned. We understood that the Allied powers had agreed at Yalta on the final occupation of Germany, but we knew nothing of the details. We assumed that the Russians would occupy eastern Germany, which probably would include Berlin. Because the VII Corps had been ordered to put a bridgehead across the Elbe and advance to Wittenberg on the main road to Berlin from the southeast, and because the Ninth Army already had bridgeheads across the Elbe south of Magdeburg, it was assumed that we would advance on Berlin and meet the Russians in that vicinity.
I went to CCB headquarters, just south of Dessau, to look at the situation map in the G2 trailer. It was covered with a sheet of clear plastic on which were marked locations of all friendly and enemy troops in the area. Blue grease pencil was used to mark the American units and red to mark the German units. I was curious to see if there were any markings for the Russians. I saw none, so I asked one of the G2 lieutenants where we were supposed to meet the Russians.
He said he didn’t know. “We can pick up their voices on the radio and know they must be within a range of fifty miles. We’ve assumed they’re on the other side of the Elbe River to the east of us.”
I realized that high-level decisions must have been in progress. This uncertainty was compounded by rumors: Certain irresponsible and uninformed commanders were making brash statements that we could go into Berlin tomorrow without any trouble. The press picked this up and magnified it even further.
Although I had no idea what was transpiring at the high levels of command, I felt that the frontline combat troops had been stretched to the limit. The 3d Armored Division had spearheaded the VII Corps, which had in turn led the First Army across central Germany. Since crossing the Roer River at Düren on February 23, the VII Corps had captured Cologne, crossed the Rhine River at the Remagen bridgehead, and completed the envelopment of the Rose Pocket. The division had then led the corps eastward and enveloped the southern flank of the Harz Mountains. They arrived in the vicinity of Dessau on April 16 and attacked and surrounded the city; by April 21 it surrendered.
We now awaited orders to advance toward Berlin. We had lost many tanks and other armored vehicles, and all the equipment was in dire need of heavy maintenance. The personnel casualties had been heavy, and the men were completely exhausted.
General Eisenhower supposedly asked General Bradley what it would take to capture Berlin. Bradley reportedly said it would take 100,000 British and American casualties. Some felt that Bradley’s estimate was high; however, it cost the Russians at least this many. Because the Russians had already been slated to occupy the territory around Berlin, Eisenhower had obviously made a wise decision not to attack Berlin.
When the order came to cease the attempt to bridge the Elbe River, a great relief came over the troops. Many remained in the vicinity of Dessau until April 26. We spent these last few days examining the airport and the surrounding facilities.
We discovered a gold mine of German military secrets. Dessau appeared to be the main Luftwaffe research and development center. The airport, hangars, and surrounding buildings were filled with models and experimental aircraft. Partially completed drawings were still on the boards. The cabinets were filled with drawings, letters, documents, and research reports describing in detail many advanced weapons systems.
The Germans left so rapidly that they apparently did not have time to destroy these secret documents. We immediately impounded them and put guards on them. Our ordnance reports went back to the First Army G2, and they immediately sent military intelligence people to collect these documents before we turned the area over to the Russians.
The division held its position in Dessau at the confluence of the Mulde and Elbe Rivers and for an area several miles south of there. A large Agfa film factory at Tornow had been set on fire. In spite of the flames and fumes, some of our troops managed to get into the factory and evacuate considerable quantities of film and other photographic equipment before the plant was consumed. Because such equipment was considered military contraband, it became “legal loot” and could be confiscated and used by our troops.
On April 26, our troops had drawn up along the west bank of the Mulde River; the Russians were about twenty miles away on the east bank of the Elbe River. We had been ordered to hold these positions until further notice.
That morning, a lieutenant from the 69th Division, just to the south of us, took a patrol across the zone between the Mulde and Elbe Rivers at Torgau, which was supposed to be strictly off-limits. He contacted the Russians, in the first joining of Russian and American forces in World War II. This joining eliminated any possibility of the Germans withdrawing from Berlin.
On this same date, the division was finally relieved by the 9th Infantry Division, and we withdrew to the vicinity of Sangerhausen. The 3d Armored Division had fired its last shot against the German army.
13
The Aftermath
V-E Day
Our feelings were mixed as we withdrew from the line “for the last time,” because we were not sure that it would be for the last time. We were delighted to move out of the range of enemy artillery; however, pockets of Germans holed up in small villages fought bitterly to the very end. Our answer was to overwhelm these villages with our highly mobile and devastating artillery fire.
The Germans’ resistance reinforced the idea that the war wasn’t over yet. There were rumors that Hitler and his entourage escaped from Berlin to Berchtesgaden, his summer hideaway. Previous experience had taught us that fighting in the mountains can be vicious and drawn out, and a relatively small force can extract enormous casualties.
The maintenance battalion headquarters company moved into an old sugar mill in Sangerhausen. For the next two weeks, we relaxed in relative ease. We lived inside covered buildings, and no one worried about digging foxholes every night. The maintenance battalion was busy getting our vehicles back in shape for whatever came next. There was a large German minefield on the forward slope of a hill in front of the sugar mill and the remains of an 88mm antiaircraft battery on a hill behind the mill. This battery had been neutralized by our artillery when we came through Sangerhausen the first time.
We cautioned the men about the possibility of booby traps in the minefield and the battery. Although the looting instinct was uppermost in the minds of some GIs, and the demand for Lugers, P38s, and other weapons was great, most of the men realized the danger of rummaging around in these abandoned German positions. The words of caution must have been taken seriously, because no one in my battalion was injured by these mines.
Back at Nordhausen, the collection of ordnance intelligence data was on a much larger scale than at Dessau. Colonel John Medaris, First Army’s chief of ordnance, immediately recognized the bonanza we had uncovered at the V2 rocket manufacturing and supply center. The group he sent to study the installations found that the underground plant was more extensive than we had thought. The tunnels extended in layers some six hundred feet below the surface, completely impervious to bombing. The V2 had been in full production, and thousands of them had been turned out. Prior to our capture of the plant, London and the south coast of England had suffered devastating damage from the rockets. Now, however, all the launching sites in France, Belgium, and Holland had been taken.
Medaris organized a massive effort to load fifty railroad cars with rockets and rocket assemblies. In addition, there were many truckloads of smaller rocket motors, parts, and documents evacuated before we turned the area over to the Russians.
After the war, Medaris was promoted to major general and organized the Army Ballistic Missile Agency at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. Working with him in developing ballistic missiles and the nucleus of our space technology was the group of German rocket scientists, led by Dr. Werner von Braun, who had surrendered to our troops in southern Germany as we were evacuating the V2 assembly plant material from Nordhausen. Although the cost of capturing these facilities had been high, the action allowed the United States to win the Cold War and develop a space program.
Because the division constantly sent information to the troops, and we could pick up the BBC news broadcasts, we knew that the Russians had reached the outskirts of Berlin and had begun the final assault on the city. The rubble of a heavily bombed-out city can make formidable defense positions, and the Germans loyal to Hitler made the Russians pay dearly. We were glad that it was the Russians instead of us doing this fighting. Finally, we heard that the city had fallen to the Russians and that Hitler was dead.
My first reaction was that Hitler had been killed by the Russians; I learned later that he had died by his own hand. On May 7 we got the word that General Jodl had surrendered. On May 8 the ceremony was repeated in Berlin for the Russians. For the 3d Armored Division, the war in Europe had finally come to an end.
Darmstadt and the Army of Occupation
Shortly after V-E Day, the division was ordered south to Darmstadt. We proceeded down the autobahn over the gently rolling hills of western Germany south of Kassel.
The road was intact except for the bridges. Most of them had been blown; in some instances only one span going north was gone. Perhaps the Germans didn’t have time to mine both spans. It was a simple matter to cross over to the other lane of the road.
When we reached the northern outskirts of Frankfurt, it was obvious that the city had been heavily bombed but had not taken as much punishment as Cologne. The primary streets had been cleared of rubble, and we continued south past the railroad station to the Main River.
In moving through the northern part of the city, we passed near a large, low-lying brownstone complex that had been the headquarters for I. G. Farben, the largest chemical company in Europe. The complex was soon to become SHAEF headquarters. We crossed the Main River on a Bailey bridge, reinforced to take our M26 tanks. All the bridges across the Main had been blown, and our engineers were working feverishly to replace the major ones as quickly as possible with temporary bridges.
After crossing the river, we passed a large airport. The woods around it had numerous small indentures cut into them about two hundred feet wide and six hundred feet deep. The tarmac had been extended into the indentures, which were used to park aircraft. Although the airport had been bombed and strafed, more than two thousand planes, including Me109s, FW190s, and Ju88s, had survived in these spaces completely unscathed. I was amazed that with this many planes intact, the Luftwaffe didn’t put up a better showing in combat during the last days of the war. Although there was a shortage of aircraft fuel, it appeared that the shortage of pilots was the main reason for the collapse of the Luftwaffe.
As we threaded our way through Darmstadt, I was shocked to see the degree of destruction. The British had bombed the city during a night raid in February. The target was the Merck Chemical Works, on the northern outskirts. On the night the raid took place, strong winds blew from north to south, carrying the flares that were dropped over the chemical plant southward over the center of the city. When the first bomber dropped its incendiaries and started fires in the center of the city, the remaining bombers dropped their incendiaries on the same flaming targets.
Once a fire of this size got started, the tremendous heat generated by the flames caused the smoke and other combustion gases to rise rapidly. This in turn caused air to rush in, bringing in oxygen to further accelerate the rate of combustion. This miniature hurricane, known as a firestorm, not only consumed all the oxygen from the area but replaced it with carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. These combustion gases, being heavier than air, cascaded around the entire area surrounding the fire. In the residential area that we moved into, approximately a mile south of the fire ring, the people either suffocated or were asphyxiated by the falling gases. The effect was devastating. Of a total population of about sixty thousand people, more than forty thousand died in this inferno.
The maintenance battalion moved into a lovely suburban residential area about a mile and half south of the damaged city. We set up our shop in a large, modern brick and stone building that had been designed as a repair garage for the city streetcar system. Across the street from the shop was a handsome park with a large swimming pool surrounded by numerous playing fields. Adjacent to this was an arboretum of several acres with numerous walking trails.
Many tasteful homes surrounded this park, and we took them over as our living quarters. Most had been abandoned because the people who lived here were high in government and business circles, and with their Nazi connections they were afraid of American reprisals.
We lived in a large home near a swimming pool that was half full of water with a lot of dead leaves and tree branches in it; we were afraid to swim in it because of possible contamination. Battalion headquarters took over the largest home in the area, across the park from us. It had been the home of the Merck Chemical Works director general and was probably one of the finest homes in Darmstadt.
After ten months of combat, we tried to relax in our new quarters and take advantage of every amenity. Captain Ellis, commander of headquarters company, obtained the services of two Latvian women to cook at the officers’ mess. They were both large, heavyset peasant women who had been taken forcibly from their homes and made to work as slave labor in German war plants. Not knowing the whereabouts of their families or friends, or if any of them had survived, they were waiting to return home. They soon became good cooks and learned to speak passable English.
One day a German woman in her middle thirties came to the back door of the officers’ mess. Although her dress was somewhat shabby, she looked neat and composed. She asked to speak to the commanding officer. The cooks called Captain Ellis, and he talked with her. The army had imposed a strict ban on any contact with German civilians unless it was absolutely official. The nature of her request appeared to be official business. She spoke good English and was obviously educated.
She said that this had been her home and that her father, now deceased, had been the director general of Merck Chemical Works. She was living with the nuns at the Catholic hospital nearby and was help
ing take care of wounded German soldiers. While living in this house, she had planted a vegetable garden in the backyard and wanted to know if she could tend the garden and take some of the vegetables back to the hospital to supplement her patients’ diet.
She seemed immensely grateful when Ellis gave her permission to do this. She came every day thereafter to weed and water the garden and keep the edges neatly trimmed.
Although we were not supposed to fraternize with German civilians, it was difficult to ignore her, and gradually her tragic story came out. Her father’s position was comparable to that of the president of a corporation in the United States. All high-ranking German industrialists were either members of the Nazi Party or were strong Nazi supporters. As the daughter of a relatively high German official, she had grown up in an aristocratic society. She had attended the best schools in Germany and as a young lady had gone to both France and England to attend finishing schools. She was fluent in French and English. After school in England, she returned to the ranks of high Nazi society. She married a young captain in the German army and had two daughters. While her husband was away on the Russian front, she and her young daughters lived in this house with her mother and father. They received word that her husband was killed on the Russian front a few months prior to the end of the war.
Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II Page 34
