He turned and gave orders to an aide. “Make sure the artillery welcomes 21st Panzer to the party. I wouldn’t want them to feel snubbed. Then I’ll want both Greenacre and Reeves to take their brigades across the Rhine into the bridgehead at Emmerich. Tell Erskine he’s to also take his armored brigade, and assume overall command of that entire force. Let’s kick off Operation Uppercut as soon as he’s ready—today.”
It had been planned for some time, the breakout attempt at Emmerich, but the German counterattack from the Hochwald Layback had interfered. Now seemed as good a time as any. 21st Panzer and Lehr were the two ready mobile reserves guarding that bridgehead, the cats were away….
Time for his mice to play.
* * *
O’Connor listened closely for any news that came in over the intelligence net. As he had predicted, the weight of the fresh troops and armor brought by 21st Panzer was bringing his push northwest of the canal line to a halt. The first elements of Panzer Lehr were also arriving according to reports, but he would know more on that after sunrise.
At Emmerich, General Erskine opened his preliminary artillery preparation for Uppercut before dawn, quick on the trigger. He would have a well-rested 15th Scottish Division, and three armored brigades to throw at the German defense there, hoping for good results. As insurance, he also gave orders to recall his motorized infantry brigade from the Hochwald area, which was no longer under any threat.
Erskine knew the morning would be the toughest fighting, for the Germans had plenty of time to dig in along a solid defensive line, and they also had local reserves, all part of Hoffmann’s 2nd Fallschirmjäger Regiment defending at the point of attack.
Due north of Emmerich was the town of Stokkam, and the Stockhammer Bosch woods behind it. Emmerich itself was ringed by a narrow canal where the Germans had established their line of defense. Just east of those woods, the ground beyond the canal was flat and open, just the sort of place for those armored brigades to have a good run. So Erskine would open with the gritty Scots, thinking they could open a few gaps so he could get across that canal with his tanks. The Neterdenscher Kanal, as it was called, was barely there, just a small 15 foot wide watercourse, if that. It could be quickly and easily bridged for the armor in a matter of minutes, so it would really pose no obstacle.
The first break in the defense came just north of the village that gave that canal its name, Netterden, about five kilometers northeast of Emmerich bridge. The Germans had done everything they could to try and destroy that bridge, sending divers, mines, even torpedoes rigged to explode and hidden among flotsam. They had fired V-1 rockets at it, and shelled it, but failed to score any hits that could not be repaired by the British. With four brigades of good British infantry dug in deep, the Germans could not attack it with any success, as the adventure in the Hochwald had proven earlier. Now the British were sallying forth from the castle they had set up north of the Rhine.
Erskine had been hasty, overlooking the fact that within Reeves’ 6th Guards Armored Brigade, there was an assortment of engineering tanks, AVRE’s, Flails, and Crocodiles that he should have put into the forward echelon of his attack. Unwilling to wait for them to arrive, he decided to go at first light with the Scottish 45th Brigade. By 11:00, he had the results he had been wanting. The Scots were masters of the canal, and across on a two kilometer front, with elements of the 8th Armored also crossing to find a gap and squeak through. Two recon companies of the Scottish Division led the way, and that set off alarm bells at von Rundstedt’s headquarters.
The defense at Emmerich had looked solid for some time, and it would have remained so were it not for the fact that all its mobile reserves had motored north to try and save Apeldoorn and keep the British west of the Ijssel.
Almost all of its reserves…. But not quite.
The moment that Erskine opened his pre-dawn barrage, von Rundstedt had been awakened with that news. Was this merely a feint, or a diversion aimed at trying to prevent reserves from going northwest? The Field Marshal decided to wait out the morning and see, and he allowed both 21st Panzer and Bayerlein’s division to proceed to reinforce Harzer as planned. Yet as a precaution he contacted Oberst Eberhard of the Duren Brigade, and told him to stop at midnight and wait for further instructions before proceeding to Zutphen.
The brigade was on the main road, just east of Doesburg when that order came to turn about and hasten to the Emmerich Bridgehead. Von Rundstedt was now convinced that the attack there was serious, and not a feint. At the same time, KG Becker with the 5th Fallschirmjäger Regiment was recalled from its reserve post behind von Tettau. The threat at Emmerich trumped anything else, and von Tettau would have to fend for himself.
In the north, Bayerlein had clamped an iron lid on the push by Adair and Thomas, and as long as they were present, O’Connor knew his offensive there had come to a halt. Now he was gambling on Uppercut to deliver a good body punch to the Germans, but it looked to be a “fair fight” with the arrival of these reinforcements. Erskine wanted to press his advantage while he could. By mid-day, he had opened a gap and was massing units to push through.
Up came the Duren Brigade, just when things looked promising, and they quickly deployed a line of Panzergrenadier companies to begin a counterattack. Word filtered back on the radio net to Colonel Reeves, who had just pushed his 6th Guards Brigade over the Rhine that morning. He pursed his lips, deciding something, then walked outside where his own private little army was always at hand in his HQ troop. There sat those last two Challenger II tanks, and all that was left of his recon battalion.
“Fire up the beasts,” he said quickly. “Erskine is breaking through, but the bloody Brandenburgers have come up on him, and it’s time we put those rascals in their place.”
Chapter 24
That threat would hold true for those few units Reeves and his Challenger II’s encountered when they went forward. But the Duren Brigade was a large formation, with five battalions fielding 16 well equipped companies. Learning that two companies of friendly armored cars out on point had been cut off and trapped at Gendringen, Reeves led the charge to break through and rescue them, but it cost him six of the nine Centurion tanks in his company, and a Firefly. The Challengers remained invulnerable, shrugging off several direct hits, but the action was just a tiny component of the overall battle. Reeves and his two Challengers were not going to win the war for the Allies, any more than Berg and his remaining Leopards would save it for Germany. He would not even have the ammunition to put a significant dent in the Duren Brigade, and it wasn’t alone.
Nothing rankled von Rundstedt more than the threat of a general breakout at Emmerich, so he had pulled in every unit posted in reserve. Arnhem was lost, but Panzer Lehr and the 21st Panzer Brigade stopped the envelopment of Apeldoorn. Now he sent the Freiburg Brigade of the Brandenburg Division in to finally stop Operation Uppercut . The attack had already been deflected by the arrival of KG Becker and the Duren Brigade. Facing a hard wall of resistance to any movement north, it flowed east towards the town of Anholt, which was about 15 kilometers east of Emmerich.
That was the only place where there was still an undefended gap, but the Freiburg Brigade was coming as quickly as the muddy roads would permit them. The British were just 1500 meters to the west when their recon battalion arrived at Anholt, in a driving rain. Three companies of Panzergrenadiers followed them, and the Brigade would now bring that westward lunge to a complete halt.
Operation Uppercut had nearly doubled the size of the Emmerich Bridgehead, but it would not achieve the dramatic breakout O’Connor had hoped for. He cursed the weather, which had largely grounded all his tactical air support throughout the entire eight days of operations. There had not been one good clear day in the lot.
In spite of that, Nordland and Uppercut had collected a few laurels, the capture of Arnhem, and without having to destroy the city, being high on the list. The British also controlled the west bank of the Ijssel south of Dieren, and O’Connor had both defende
d and then expanded the Emmerich Bridgehead. Lastly, the British had pushed the Germans out of all the heavy forest land south of Apeldoorn to Arnhem. While the Germans still held Apeldoorn, the terrain behind the rest of that front to the south was not conducive to a good defense. Only the Ijssel River now remained as one good barrier to a rapid advance should there be any breakout.
Yet the most significant thing O’Connor had accomplished was to pull in every last reserve element the Germans had north of Kleve and Emmerich. He now held Bittrich’s II SS Panzerkorps, Lehr , the Brandenburgers , and 21st Panzer Brigade in a tight embrace. Those excellent units were the only thing holding the front together, and without them, it would have certainly collapsed.
When heavy rain set in again on the afternoon of October 1st, Eisenhower suggested that the operation had run its course, congratulated O’Connor, and now looked to see what advantages it presented.
“That bridgehead is finally secure,” he said with a broad smile. “Now what I want to do is get Simpson’s 9th and Patton’s 3rd Armies up to the Rhine. It’s clear that we can’t leave the burden to O’Connor up north. He’s done all he could, and it was a fine job. Let’s get a meeting and see what the brain trust has come up with in terms of operational planning.”
* * *
With the threat in the north contained, von Rundstedt now looked to the health of the American front. He could also clearly see the liability the “Liege Salient” now represented for them, given the breakthrough and advance that Bradley had achieved in the Ardennes in September. There was also Montgomery to worry about in the south, and the commitment of 3rd Panzergrenadier Division near Duren had stolen away a reinforcement that General Brandenburger had counted on to help keep the British in check on that front.
So throughout the last weeks of September, OKW ordered the gradual evacuation of the Central Ardennes, intending to bring those troops east to a line running south from Verviers, through Spa, and on to Malmedy. As they did so, their line shortened and tightened up, which enabled them to make further unit transfers to balance the front better. The line of the Meuse would be abandoned, along with the ground taken by Manteuffel during Rhinelander . There seemed to be no further point to standing a watch on all the crossing sites along the Meuse, particularly in the Liege area, for Bradley had essentially flanked that entire defense with his move toward Bastogne.
That city was deemed important enough to warrant a stubborn defense, and so as these withdrawals commenced, the 17th SS was relieved of its duty as a sheep dog watching the infantry near Liege, and sent into the Ardennes to hold Bastogne, at least until the slower moving infantry could get back along the narrow forest roads and take up new positions.
The 245th took over the defense of Verviers, reluctantly ceded to them by the US 8th Infantry as Rhinelander ended. Its lines ran south as far as Spa, which had been a German forward supply depot for Rhinelander . One of the better divisions in the Ardennes, the 352nd, took up positions screening the approaches to Malmedy, and the weaker 183rd Volksgrenadier Division was sent into the gap between Malmedy and Bastogne. The movement of 17th SS to that city would now leave only the 2nd Panzer Division behind the front, backstopping the Elsenborn Monschau Gap.
So it was that the hand of fate drew the battle lines closer to the ground that had been made famous in the old Ardennes offensive, a mistake that the Germans under Manstein’s leadership at OKW now refused to make.
The key factor on the German side after Rhinelander’s brief spasm of offensive action, was the fact that virtually all the mobile divisions used remained intact, and were sound and fit for further offensive operations if those were deemed prudent. This would weigh heavily in the course of events as the nights cooled and the trees put on their dresses in ochre and scarlet to welcome the coming of Autumn.
* * *
Now the only exposed salient in the front was the deep penetration achieved by Abrams six week earlier when he first drove through Roetgen to breach the Siegfried Line. It was occupied by four US divisions, all assigned to Lightning Joe Collins (1st, 28th, 29th Infantry, 10th Armored, and the 442nd Independent Regiment).
The US recovery went faster than Patton thought, and tanks came rolling in to replace losses. Eisenhower seemed to be working magic, but in actuality, he was robbing Peter to pay Paul, as he often said. 11th Armored had been in reserve, and he and Marshall had been discussing reequipping it with all new T26 heavy tanks. One company was there at Cherbourg where the 11th had trained up 10th Armored. Now the troops were ogling the new tanks, eager to get their turn using the new armor. With deliveries bound for that port, it made no sense as Eisenhower saw things, to send the 11th up to the front until this TOE change could be made. In the meantime, its entire compliment of Shermans was just sitting there, and Ike seized upon it as a quick way to get replacement tanks to the divisions he already had forward on the front.
Now it was time to look at options for renewing the offensive and taking back the initiative. The Roer River Dams were no longer a military objective, but the Monschau Gap certainly was. A drive due south towards Elsenborn, for example, would serve to cut off the German 77th, 245th, 319th, and 352nd Divisions, and force them to withdraw all the way back to the Monschau and Arenberg Forests behind Elsenborn Ridge.
When Eisenhower met with his command chiefs in Brussels on the 1st of October, the decision was made not to stand down the Armies any further, but to begin renewed offensives as far as available supply would carry them. Yet when the Monschau Gap plan was presented, Ike balked.
“I like the push from Hofen-Alzen Ridge,” he said, “but I would rather delay it until Bradley can come up. I want to see a push through towards Malmedy from the southwest in conjunction with this drive south from Monschau. Then we might actually bag those infantry divisions, instead of herding them east to fight us somewhere else. George? What’s on your dance card?”
“The Roer River,” Patton said bluntly. “I’ve got to take back the ground we gave up when you pulled 4th Infantry back to the Schill Line. This time I want to make it a pincer attack, Operation Clipper . [3] 1st Infantry and 2nd Armored will attack again from Stolberg to retake Eschweiler. Provisional Armored will stand in reserve to reinforce this attack. After I get their attention there, I want to hit the line hard along the Wurm northeast of Gielenkirchen. That will involve 36th Infantry, 3rd Armored leading, and 5th Armored following. The Super Sixth stands as Army reserve.”
“That I like,” said Eisenhower. “How soon can you kick that off?”
“I can go to Phase I immediately, and I figure to launch Phase II a little later. That will give me more time to get supply forward there.”
“Good, I’ll support that operation. General Simpson? First off, welcome to the team. Everyone here has every confidence in you. What have you planned for 9th Army?”
“Thank you sir, we’ll do our level best to live up to your confidence. I have some fine units under command, and I want to use them in support of General Patton’s Phase II, with an operation presently code named Grenade . As you know, we still retain the Venlo Bridgehead, now held by 4th Armored, which puts it in position to lead off this attack. I want to push them into the gap in the woodland belt at Kaldenkirchen, and develop the operation towards the Dulken-Viersen area. Terry Allen’s 104th will follow to secure the left shoulder in the Kempen – Krefeld zone. This attack will be flanking their 226th Division on the Meuse River west of the Brachterwald, and we believe they will be compelled to withdraw. At that time, General Irwin’s 5th Infantry can cross to secure the right shoulder.”
“What’s in reserve?”
“The Rock of the Marne, General O’Daniel’s 3rd Division.”
Eisenhower nodded. “That’s a veteran division. Why not use them in place of the104th?”
“Sir, Terry’s Allen has the Timberwolves howling to get into this fight,” said Simpson. “It’s time we give them the scent of blood.”
“Fair enough. How will this develop?”
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br /> “The attack drives into the enemy rear areas behind Roermond, and as we approach Munchen-Gladbach from the north, they’ll have to give up all their positions on the Meuse. That’s going to allow my 44th Division to cross and join the 30th, and then, as the situation warrants, we have options to go due east for Krefeld and Dusseldorf, or to support General Patton’s Phase II Operation for an eventual push on Koln.”
Eisenhower was impressed. Now his only worry would be finding the supply to keep these offensives viable. Yet General William Hood Simpson was a stickler for logistics. He had meticulously husbanded all deliveries of artillery ammo, for he had a motto: “never send an infantry soldier to do a job that could be done with an artillery round.” Born in the lone star state, the General was appropriately nicknamed “Texas Bill.” He grew to a tall six foot three, ramrod straight, and was always clean shaven, even cropping his hair to a point where it could barely be seen. His hound dog face was dominated by a prominent nose and strong, high cheekbones, giving him the rugged aspect of a heavyweight boxer, and he was always ready for a good fight. Eisenhower would later say of him: “Alert, intelligent, and professionally capable, he was the type of leader that American soldiers deserve.”
“General,” said Ike, “You’ll need a little something more in the soup. I’m giving you 4th Armored Cavalry Group to ride shotgun with Wood’s 4th Armored. That will allow you some options for exploitation. That group has been assigned some new armor, the M22 light tank replacing the M5.”
“Much obliged, sir. I’ll put them to good use.”
“I’m sure you will. Alright gentlemen. I can support these operations, but be mindful of supply. We’re only now starting to get material into Rotterdam, and much of that needs to go to O’Connor so he can replenish after his Nordland offensive. I emptied out everything we had stockpiled at Cherbourg, and Rouen to fuel these operations, but I figure we have a solid ten days here to get results. After that, supply will be on an as needed basis only, with the men getting first downs receiving the ball. Understood? To make it plain, I’ve already received a letter from Montgomery lodging a complaint that deliveries to Toulon and Marseilles are tapering off. He wants to meet with me to ‘straighten things out and set the matter in order,’ or so he puts it. God knows I’m really looking forward to that.”
Rhinelander (Kirov Series Book 40) Page 20
