Rhinelander (Kirov Series Book 40)

by Schettler, John

  Chapter 30

  On the 18th of October, Major Paul Weller, Operations Officer for the 180th Infantry, watched the last truck from his division pass by the old citadel Napoleon had built on the west bank of the Rhine at Wesel, then called Fort Blücher. In modern times it is an old crumbling ruin, haunted by thousands of bats, but in 1944 the Germans had thought to stage their last defense there with a garrison of 200 men, until von Rundstedt quashed the idea, ordering all troops east of the Rhine.

  Major Weller stood for some time, listening to the sound of the truck’s engine fade away, until a tense silence fell around him. It did not last long. Off in the distance, the dull rumble of Allied bombers could be heard, for the raids had been intensifying in recent days at all the key cities just east of the Rhine. Then, in the quiet of a lull, he heard the sound of more vehicles, and off down the road came dark shapes. He could not make out exactly what they were, tanks, armored cars, or merely trucks, but in any case they were certainly the enemy.

  He had little time to waste, but something in him prompted him to pull out his pistol. There he stood, beneath the metal arch of the bridge, his legs planted firmly and his arm extended as he took aim. He knew he would never hit anything at this range, for the vehicles must have been over two kilometers away, but he still squeezed the trigger and fired. Five defiant rounds cracked the silence, salving his pride much more than any harm they might have posed to the enemy. Then, with great urgency, he ran to his staff car and started the motor, speeding over the bridge, the last German soldier to evacuate the west bank of the Rhine.

  He reached the far side, giving the signal to the engineers crouched by their equipment. Then, one by one, the thunder of explosions broke the heavy silence, and the ground beneath him shook with the violence of those detonations. He could hear the crack of concrete, the squeal of the metal girders twisting in plaintive metal misery as the bridge began to fall, along with the Hamburg-Venlo rail bridge. Steel and stone plunged into the dark waters of the Rhine, sending up great splashes of water, before finally fountaining down again, into the long, endless flow of that great river.

  That day, which was later referred to as “Operation Nero” by the Allies, would see every bridge on the Rhine then under threat of capture destroyed—even the famous bridge at Remagen. If the enemy wanted to cross here, they would have to come in rafts and boats, or build their own bridges, all under the guns of the German Army…. And that was exactly what Eisenhower and his lieutenants were now planning to do.

  * * *

  As they crossed the river, the very sight of the Rhine gave the German troops heart. The few Panzer divisions still available in the West could now be pulled off the line again, for with the great barrier of the river impeding any sudden enemy advance, the infantry could be relied upon to hold the front. Bittrich would take all that was left of the 9th SS and roll it into the 10th, with the former division effectively disbanded, never to be rebuilt again. That would at least put one strong SS Panzer division in the north behind the Ijssel.

  Bayerlein was relieved on the line and pulled his Lehr Division into reserve. The two Brandenburg Brigades were also taken out of enemy artillery range behind Emmerich. South of Kleve, only the 116th and 2nd Panzer Divisions would remain to backstop the Rhine from Dusseldorf south through Remagen. The brigades of the Führer Sturm Division would also stay here in the West, along with the 105th Panzer Brigade.

  The debacle in the East had stolen away the Lion’s share of all the mobile reserves that von Rundstedt and Guderian had been counting on in the West. Since that heady hour when Guderian launched his Operation Rhinelander , ten German mobile divisions had now departed for the Ostfront , never to return. These were: 1SS, 2SS, 12SS, the 16th and 17th SS, 7th Panzer, 15, 25 and 90th Panzergrenadier Divisions, and finally the Hermann Goring Division. Five more infantry divisions that had come West during the lull in Soviet operations were now pulled out as well, but enough infantry was held to secure the Rhine.

  As October faded into November, a lull descended on the Western Front, but it was only a great pause before the next storm. For months, planning had already been underway for the operations that would breach this last defensive water barrier guarding Germany. The knock out punch was always thought to be the occupation of the Ruhr industrial zone, a warren of steel and concrete that had been the heart of Germany’s war machine for years. It produced 65% of its steel, and 56% of its coal, and there was no doubt that it would be stubbornly defended.

  Yet Eisenhower had no intention whatsoever of plunging across the Rhine to fight what looked to be an endless series of Aachens lined up one after another: Bonn, Koln, Dudsseldorf, Duisberg, Essen and so many others crowded into the Ruhr region. South of the Ruhr, the terrain was densely wooded hills, with few good roads. Instead, his plan had always been to enfilade and cut off the Ruhr zone, thus effectively ending its usefulness to Germany. Once this was done, collapse was certain to follow, or so all the planners believed.

  Looking over the possible crossing sites on the Rhine, Eisenhower’s eyes moved north, where the British bridgehead at Emmerich was already a foot in the door, and where O’Connor had strong forces on the Ijssel, north of the main Rhine River itself. It was therefore decided that the main effort for the final big push over the Rhine would come north of the Ruhr, and be delivered by the British 1st and American 9th Armies.

  Patton finally had Julich, and then Duren, but before he could trap the enemy in the Hurtgenwald, the 12th Volksgrenadiers and 275th Infantry pulled out for the long march to the river near Bonn. The mobile divisions were able to fend off any major breach, and the retreat was made in good order. So there would be no great breakout or mad dash for the Rhine. Patton’s 3rd army would just advance to claim the ground being given up, as supplies were finally running low after the Clipper offensive.

  The General was already looking ahead, his staff starting to plan his crossing anywhere between Köln and Koblenz, with Bradley moving up south of that city, and eventually linking up with Montgomery, who had only just taken Saarbrucken. It was the threat of being flanked in the north that also compelled the Germans to abandon the Saarland, another great source of industrial coal and power production.

  Monty would spend some weeks “tidying up” the front before he finally began to move again, sending Dempsey to Mannheim while he pushed up toward Mainz-Wiesbaden and began mulling over his own set-piece operation to cross the Rhine there. All this combined to make for a series of operations that eclipsed both the initial landings in Southern France and the subsequent landings in the Pas-de-Calais, in complexity and resources required.

  This would not be a case of a few battalions making a cross river assault in small boats to scratch out a toe hold. Quite the contrary, it would involve much more massive boat and shipping requirements. To begin with, 24 LCVP's and 24 LCM's (landing craft, medium), would be moved by rail to be used on the river. These would be augmented by hordes of naval engineers operating “Seamules,” which were 38-foot tug boats, that could push or tow rafts and barges with their twin 143 horsepower engines. They would be invaluable for maneuvering pontoon bridges into position for the rapid bridging of the Rhine when necessary. More of the same was requisitioned for the British, and assault boats would be stockpiled by the thousands.

  Simpson’s 9th Army would accumulate nearly 140,000 tons of supplies, with the average division estimated to need about 540 tons per day. That would be enough to power the twelve US divisions assigned to the operation for twenty days, though not every division would be in offensive mode during that time. So he figured to have a good long month to lock horns with the Germans. O’Connor would need a similar amount of supply, all coming to him from Amsterdam and Rotterdam, a total of 128,000 tons to be delivered to his front.

  To move all this supply, engineers worked round the clock to improve roads and lay more track for rail movement. Trains and tank movers were to be used to bring up the larger landing craft, and more of the amphibious “Buf
falos” would be assigned to the infantry. In some cases, barges and river ferries were used on the Waal, chugging up river to Nijmegen. The forward depots established behind the Reichswald and Kleve were massive, with 60,000 tons of crated ammunition stacked shoulder high on either side of roads and stretching for ten miles. The fortified city of Goch was another major road hub, and any bunker that had not been leveled in the fighting there was now packed with supplies.

  When it came, the crossing would be a massive enterprise, using numerous infantry divisions to storm the Rhine. At the same time, General Brereton had returned from the Pacific and taken charge of the three US Airborne Divisions now held in theater reserve. With the prospect of another German counterattack on the scale of Rhinelander much diminished, and eager to get into the war, Brereton was now pushing hard for another cross Rhine airborne operation as an adjunct to the river crossing. History, however skewed, had a way of stubbornly grasping the same ropes as it climbed this last cliff. Brereton was calling his masterpiece Operation Varsity.

  When Eisenhower heard of the plan, he was still skittish. The fluid situation of the last weeks was like a shell game, as intelligence tried to keep up with German movements and locate their major assets. Ike did not like the idea of an airborne force dropped well beyond the Rhine, and vulnerable to attack, as had been the case with Operation Starfall.

  “If we get hung up in this big river crossing operation, for whatever reason, those troops would be out there just like the last operation at Rees.”

  “That’s not the plan,” said Brereton. “In fact, the parachute landings don’t even go until the river crossing is successfully made. We kick off Operation Plunder first, and Ike, if you like what you see, you just give me the go ahead. I’ll then put two divisions over the Rhine, but in close. The mission will be to block any German forces maneuvering to counterattack the river crossing operation, and to knock out all their artillery in those rear areas. We’ll grab all the turf right behind the crossing point, and your bridgehead will be nice and thick the instant you link up. Don’t you worry about my boys, they won’t be more than a few kilometers from the river bridgehead.”

  That was the same plan Montgomery had developed when he finally approved the airborne element in the old history, even though it had taken the disaster at Rees to force it onto the planners drafts here. Brereton was eager to get into action, and his troops would be carrying in more firepower than ever before. The US had developed two new recoilless rifles, weapons that had been used for years as the primary armament of the Siberian and Orenburg airship fleets. Here they would field a lightweight 57mm rifle, weighing just 45pounds, and a larger 75mm rifle that weighed only 114 pounds. Those were light enough for infantry teams to easily move, and that would eliminate the needs for dangerous glider landings that required open fields that were too often open fields of fire. Brereton was planning to go with an all parachute force, and only had to nail down the final selection of the drop zones.

  That would now depend on the river crossing sites chosen by the land element. But on the German side, they were going at the problem the other way around. While the airborne drop was an add-on in the minds of Allied planners, the Germans, particularly Student and Schlemm, believed that a major airborne operation would be at the heart of the impending Allied attack. The two Generals were pouring over the maps, looking for ground they would have chosen for a parachute landing, and with the lessons of Comet and Starfall in mind.

  “Their operations to seize Antwerp and Emmerich were quite daring,” said Student. “Frankly, I am amazed they have not pushed harder at Emmerich for a breakout, which is why I believe they will continue with the same thinking we have confronted in the last month. O’Connor will stage a big attack to cross the Ijssel in the north, and I believe they will then stage their airborne landing here, north of Emmerich—about four miles northwest of Anholt. The ground there is ideal.”

  “I can see why you would say this,” said Schlemm, “but I have chosen a different location. We are seeing entirely too much activity along the river between Rees and Wesel, and even preparations being made south of Wesel in the Rheinberg area. However, if I were in command, I would want to dramatically widen and deepen the Emmerich Bridgehead. Therefore, I would choose a landing site northeast of Rees, here, right in the center of this triangle formed by Rees, Bocholt and Hamminkeln. If I am correct, then the activity we have heard and observed predicts a crossing between Rees and Wesel.”

  “Also a logical choice,” said Student. “Well, we have little in the way of mobile reserves now, and we cannot afford to ignore either landing site. We must guard both. Given that the flooding we created on the south bank of the Rhine near Emmerich has been a great hindrance, I can easily see why they would choose the area you predict. We will therefore post our mobile reserves at the points of that triangle, with the two Brandenburg Brigades at Anholt and Hamminkeln, and Panzer Lehr at Bocholt. I will propose this to von Rundstedt.”

  It was a remarkable assessment, working backwards from the likely airborne drop zones to predict the river crossing sites, which was the opposite of how the Allies had actually planned the operation. But the math the Germans had used worked. They were correct….

  * * *

  The first week of November would see the final stages of the plan hammered into shape, even as temperatures dropped. A tentative kickoff date of November 15 was selected, for Eisenhower could see that the dark, cold days of winter were coming, and he wanted to get over this last water barrier before the weather became one more obstacle. Tens of thousands of winter coats were among the tall stacks of supply crates, along with much needed boots, socks, scarves gloves and mittens.

  The Army would need them sooner than anyone believed.

  On the 12th of November, a cold front set in, and what should have been a driving rain soon became sleet. Temperatures continued to drop, which was unusual for this time in the Rhine River Valley, and then something happened that no one had counted on in all their careful planning—another east wind from the heart of Eastern Europe, cold, heartless and cruel.

  Part XI

  Plunder

  “Out of the bosom of the Air,

  Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,

  Over the woodlands brown and bare,

  Over the harvest-fields forsaken,

  Silent, and soft, and slow

  Descends the snow.”

  —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Chapter 31

  It would fall for three days, covering the war torn landscape like a white bandage, draping the broken cities, crumbled church towers and houses, and the rubble strewn streets. None of the weather forecasters had predicted it, though they knew the front was coming. Cold rain was thought to be the worst of it, but at night, temperatures plummeted below freezing, and hung on near that mark for much of the morning. There would be a brief interval of relief from the mud, which hardened to rutted frozen ground at night, and heavy frost lay on the land. It was the harbinger of winter’s wrath, chilling everything down, and sending the troops into huddled groups that looked for any shelter they could find for relief from the cold.

  Eisenhower hoped it was a fluke, surprised by reports that thin ice had set up overnight along the riverbanks, cracking and breaking by mid-day. Was he too late? Should the operation be postponed until the spring? Such questions were floated, but quickly discarded. No one thought the weather would persist, and the main channel of the river was ice free and flowing as normal. The snow and ice made things difficult, the roads slippery, and descending into a morass of slush near the river, but weathermen pointed out that, in this case, the cold was their friend. It would see the ground hard and firm in the early hours of the morning when the crossing was to be made.

  So Operation Plunder would not be called off. Preparations for the offensive had now reached a fever pitch, all masked by an enormous veil of manmade smoke and fog. The engineers employed all of 8,500 Zinc-Chloride smoke generators, and 45
0,000 gallons of fog oil to create an unbroken wall that extended all of 60 miles along the river, completely impenetrable to observers on the east bank. Operation Plunder was now in the final stages of completion, as the air force ramped up its “Ruhr Bombing Plan” to pound cities, roads and rail lines behind the Rhine, laying waste on an unprecedented scale. The unfortunate city of Wesel, where Major Weller had been the last German to cross the Rhine, was utterly devastated. The bombs fell so heavily that virtually nothing was left standing, the craters overlapping one another in places to create a moonscape of destruction.

  After the bombers were through, units began to prepare to move to their jump off points, and the massive operation would proceed right on schedule, 15 November 1944, just a whisker over four months before the real spring offensive was launched in the old history. The early landing in Southern France, and the anemic German counterattack that might have been a much lengthier ‘Battle of the Bulge’, had shortened the war by four months.

  It was a massive plan, basically an extension of O’Connor’s Operation Nordland with the addition of two full Corps from Simpson’s 9th army to make the Rhine crossing as phase I. O’Connor would begin in the north, with his main effort aimed at bulling his way over the 400+ foot wide flow of the Ijssel River between Doesburg and Zutphen. Once the infantry of the 43rd Wessex Division secured a lodgment, the bridging engineers would quickly span the river, and Adair would send in the Guards Armored.

  Further south, all lined up in long steel columns on the road from Arnhem, Roberts’ 11th Armored waited to be the exploitation force. He could chose one of two routes over the river, depending on which seemed more promising. Since the Germans had given up the salient at the confluence of the Ijssel and Waal near Arnhem. The 49th West Riding Division had crossed to occupy that turf. That put General Barker’s 49th east of the Ijssel, and in a good position to strike at the flank of the Emmerich Bridgehead. If they won through, Roberts was poised to quickly take that route. Otherwise, he could simply follow Adair and the Guards.