Four Hours of Fury

by James M. Fenelon

  Regimental briefings were conducted down to the level of company commanders, but it would be several weeks before the rank and file had their suspicions confirmed. They would receive full briefings once they were sequestered at the secure marshaling airfields. There they’d have a few days to conduct final preparations and memorize what would be expected of them once on the ground.

  The War Rooms attracted attention and generated more rumors. The bustle of officers making multiple trips to and from the briefing tents heightened the feeling that a major action was imminent, especially when visiting senior Air Force pilots were noticed.

  The need for repeated briefings and map study was best explained by an experienced airborne officer who remarked, “Never yet has [there] been an airborne operation in which every unit has landed in its proper area. . . . Every battalion commander must know the plan of every other battalion commander. . . . He must be prepared to undertake the execution of any of those other plans immediately upon landing as well as his own.”

  Private Paul Reed, a 513th paratrooper, was assigned a guard duty shift on the perimeter of his regiment’s War Room. He later recalled how he and another trooper “each marched half way around the tent, turned around and did it again.”

  “It wasn’t long though before we actually had something to guard. The regimental commander and his staff entered the tent and shortly after jeeps carrying the battalion commanders and their staffs arrived.”

  As he patrolled his monotonous route again and again, Reed strained to eavesdrop. He overheard two distinct comments: the regiment would get corps-level artillery support and they should expect 50 percent casualties.

  Turning the corner of the tent, the odds became easy to compute. Face to face with his fellow sentry, Reed realized, Fifty percent of two is one.

  Executing an about-face for his return route, he wondered to himself, Does that mean one of us is going to be part of that 50 percent?

  • • •

  The three regimental commanders and their respective battalion commanders had a week to prepare their plans before returning to division headquarters on March 8 for a coordination conference. In addition to his senior officers, Miley also hosted their British counterparts from the 6th Airborne Division.

  That same morning Eric Bols, the British general in command of the 6th, along with his retinue of regimental and battalion officers, boarded aircraft in England for the short flight to France.

  Among the entourage of British officers was Lieutenant Colonel Napier Crookenden, commander of the 9th Parachute Battalion, who’d donned his best service uniform to impress his American counterparts. But a sergeant with strict orders dashed Crookenden’s plans. Intercepted before boarding the aircraft in England, Crookenden had his red beret confiscated and the airborne patches roughly cut off his uniform by the sergeant wielding a pair of dull scissors. Embarrassed by a lack of headgear—a required part of the uniform in any army—and picking at the shabby red threads sticking out on both shoulders, Crookenden climbed aboard to find his peers’ uniforms had suffered similar wounds at the hands of the amateur haberdasher. The crude alterations were intended to conceal the fact that British airborne officers were meeting with an American airborne division.

  Arriving in Châlons, the British were driven through the main gate of Miley’s HQ, which was manned by a sharply saluting paratrooper standing guard in front of his red-and-white-striped sentry shack.

  Once inside, they were escorted past a cordon of MPs and down a wide hallway bustling with “clerks, orderlies and staff officers, going about their business very briskly.” Crookenden was impressed by their military bearing, which contrasted with his stereotypical impression of the Yanks’ more casual approach to authority. After a warm welcome from their American counterparts, the British filed into the briefing room and split up according to rank. The senior officers sat up front while Crookenden stood with the American battalion commanders in the back of the room.

  Miley started the conference by stepping up in front of several large maps flanked by enlarged reconnaissance photographs. Injecting bits of wry humor, he gave an outline of his plan before transitioning the brief to his chief of staff, who provided more detail.

  It was all very familiar to the British, who’d conducted similar briefings themselves. That changed when thirty-seven-year-old Colonel Edson Raff stood up in front of the map to brief his regiment’s plan.

  Despite his gruff manner, Raff’s “unruffled professionalism” during the Ardennes campaign had stuck out above “the less imaginative performances” of Miley’s other regimental commanders. The 507th would be spearheading VARSITY, and Raff intended to be the first man to land in Germany.

  Raff took in the assembled group and radiated back his own cocky confidence. Pointing to an area of open terrain to the east of the Diersfordt Forest he said, “The 507th are flying in west to east and jumping here. . . . And I jump Number One from the lead ship. . . . We get together here,” he added, his hand indicating the eastern edge of the forest. “In these woods are a bunch of Heinies and we sort ’em out.” He sat down.

  When everyone realized he was actually done, they burst into laughter. The British officers eyed one another in amusement; this sangfroid was certainly more in line with what they’d expected from the Yanks. For his part, Miley couldn’t have been surprised. He’d known Raff since early 1942, when he served as a battalion commander in Miley’s 503rd PIR. The other two regimental commanders briefed the assembly in more traditional detail, including how their battalion’s scheme of maneuver would unfold.

  British and American battalion commanders met after the group briefing to discuss specifics. Crookenden coordinated with Colonel Allen “Ace” Miller, the 513th’s 2nd Battalion commander, whose objective would border that of Crookenden’s 9th Battalion. The two officers confirmed where their units would establish contact on the battlefield to avoid fratricide.

  As the British contingent departed, Miley shook the hand of each man and presented him a bottle of liberated Luftwaffe brandy. If the fortunes of war were with them, they’d next meet in Germany.

  CHAPTER 6

  EVERY HOUR A GIFT

  Wiesental, Germany. Sunday, March 11, 1945.

  Two nights after Schlemm’s troops evacuated the Wesel Pocket, a chauffeured dark blue Mercedes-Benz limousine turned onto a narrow, forested road hidden under a web of camouflage netting and leading to Schloss Ziegenberg, the headquarters for the western front located sixty-two miles east of Remagen, atop a small spur at the foot of the Taunus mountain range. In the Mercedes’ backseat sat Generalfeldmarschall Albert von Kesselring on his way to assume the post of Oberbefehlshaber West—Commander in Chief West.

  As he ascended the stone steps to the main building, Kesselring would have noticed the towering keep silhouetted against the night sky. The five-story, circular stone edifice was the only surviving element of the original medieval castle. The headquarters offices were in an unremarkable adjacent three-story rectangular structure.

  The Führer himself had dismissed Kesselring’s predecessor, Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt, for the third and final time. With the Allies over the Rhine at Remagen, Hitler needed a scapegoat, and consequently Rundstedt’s fifty-two-year military career ended with a phone call from Berlin.

  Hitler now placed his confidence in Kesselring to reverse the current misfortunes on the western front. And the field marshal felt up to the challenge. Known as “Smiling Albert” for his omnipresent toothy grin, he greeted his staff with the quip “I am the new V3!” The comment was a reference to Hitler’s series of wonder-weapon rockets, an arsenal of vengeance to which Kesselring now added himself. But it would soon become clear that more than optimism and punchy analogies would be needed to halt the Allies’ grinding advance through western Germany.

  The fifty-nine-year-old field marshal sat down for a briefing by his old comrade and new chief of staff, General der Kavallerie Siegfried Westphal. The highly capable Westphal
had retained his post, providing continuity for the incoming commander and a valuable perspective on the current state of the western front. The two men had worked together in Italy, and Westphal provided a trusted, candid overview.

  Kesselring found the situation to be far grimmer than the Führer had led him to believe. He’d inherited a crisis: Berlin had just ordered ten panzer divisions, ten artillery corps, eight rocket launcher brigades, and six infantry divisions transferred from the west to the eastern front. With the Soviet Red Army just forty miles outside of Berlin, Hitler believed the more immediate threat lay to the east. Kesselring realized that his remaining beleaguered legions now consisted of fifty-five divisions. His celebrated smile continued to fade as Westphal revealed that even that number was misleading. Most of those divisions, still not recovered from their losses in the Ardennes, were down to 7,000 men each—about half strength. The good news? They had a formidable barrier between them and the enemy: the Rhine.

  To orchestrate his defense of the Rhine, Kesselring opted to relocate his staff to several outbuildings in a secluded wooded area a short five-minute drive from Schloss Ziegenberg. The complex, constructed by the Wehrmacht in 1940, was code-named Adlerhorst—the Eagle’s Eyrie. From the exterior, the cluster of buildings appeared to be traditionally built two-story timber-framed cottages with flower-boxed dormer windows. In reality, each was a fortified bunker protected by three-foot-thick walls of reinforced concrete. The interiors were simply appointed but far from austere. The floors were oak and the walls paneled in pine. Hunting trophies and ornately framed Teutonic paintings added visual interest. The compound, ringed by several anti-aircraft positions along the surrounding ridgelines, hosted a full-time garrison of over a hundred troops.

  Kesselring’s decision to vacate the main building would prove to be almost clairvoyant.

  • • •

  Kesselring’s two immediate tasks were obvious: halt—or ideally repel—the spreading American foothold at Remagen and protect the Ruhrgebiet—the Ruhr industrial area. The best way to defend the Ruhr was to prevent Montgomery from crossing the Rhine. But containing the Americans upriver required transferring units from somewhere else, thereby reducing the strength available to repulse Montgomery’s 21 Army Group.

  At Remagen, elements of four American divisions had managed to push across the Rhine before the Ludendorff Bridge collapsed. And still more tanks and infantry were crossing on hastily constructed pontoon bridges. While the rugged terrain and narrow mountain passes on the east bank hampered their immediate breakout, Kesselring knew it was only a matter of time before they amassed enough firepower for serious concern.

  Arguably, the Ruhr was Kesselring’s most pressing issue. While Berlin may have been the ideological heart of the Third Reich, it was the Ruhr’s 3,000 square miles of coal mines, factories, and industrialized cities that belched out the tanks, guns, and other materiel necessary to wage war. Prior to Germany’s expansion, the region produced 65 percent of its crude steel and 56 percent of its coal. After the Soviets seized Silesia, a resource-rich area on the border of Poland and Germany, and the Americans had overrun the Saar, the Ruhr became vital to continuing the war.

  • • •

  In the spring of 1945, in spite of their industrial losses, the Third Reich continued to crank out war materiel at an alarming rate. While Allied bombing had cut expected production in half and wreaked havoc on transportation networks, rapid reconstruction of damaged facilities and the shift to underground factories had allowed the Germans to maintain a steady stream of manufacturing output that peaked in late 1944. In November of that year, the Luftwaffe fielded over 5,000 operational aircraft, and factories were still producing them at a rate of over 4,000 a month. Every thirty days, the Kriegsmarine received 25 new U-Boats. Almost 1,600 tanks and self-propelled guns rolled off assembly lines monthly as well. If the Allies cut Germany’s industrial umbilical cord, the Third Reich’s forces in the field would wither and collapse. Hitler was relying on Kesselring to prevent that.

  For the last nineteen months Kesselring and his retinue had deftly kept the Allies at bay in Italy, a campaign marked by bitter battles of attrition for every hill and valley. With seas on both sides and soaring mountain peaks to their front, the Allies had been forced to claw their way north through Italy. But Kesselring knew Germany’s western frontier provided more open invasion routes than the constricting width of the Italian peninsula.

  To defend the Ruhr Kesselring would continue to rely on Blaskowitz’s Heeresgruppe H, already in position along the Rhine. And in turn it would once again fall to Blaskowitz’s most experienced commander, General der Fallschirmtruppen Alfred Schlemm, to bear the direct brunt of the fight when Montgomery attacked.

  Schlemm could take little satisfaction in having successfully withdrawn back across the Rhine. To repel the British he needed more time, more tanks, more munitions, and most of all, more troops—ideally, well-trained and well-equipped troops. What he had were the exhausted remnants of his combat-hardened I Fallschirmjäger-Armee. While establishing his defensive line, Schlemm knew he had to simultaneously be on guard in the event Montgomery attempted to force an immediate crossing. If the British pressed a speedy assault before he was ready, Schlemm would be hard-pressed to stop them.

  But Montgomery seemed willing to give him time; inexplicably, the British appeared to have paused at the Rhine. A relative calm had descended on the front with the collapse of the Wesel Pocket. Not knowing how long the lull would last, Schlemm focused on reinforcing his defensive positions and marshaling replacement troops to fill his depleted ranks.

  All things considered, Schlemm was faring better than expected. Through his decisive—if not subversive—maneuvering he’d escaped with almost all of his artillery batteries intact, much more than either Berlin or his adversaries had anticipated. Additionally, his casualties were lighter than he could have hoped and well below enemy intelligence estimates.

  Schlemm had ordered the construction of defensive positions along the east bank of the Rhine back in February. As he gradually moved troops out of the Pocket, combat engineers took charge of them on the far bank, organizing work parties to erect field fortifications, machine gun positions, tank barriers, barbwire obstacles, and minefields. But being short of concrete and construction equipment, Schlemm still needed more men and materiel to build a defense in depth worthy of halting the Allies at the Rhine.

  • • •

  Schlemm’s I Fallschirmjäger-Armee consisted of seven divisions and several anti-aircraft battalions, divided among three corps. He assigned each of his corps commanders a sector of the front; they in turn arrayed their divisions. Always mindful of their shortages, Schlemm and his staff shifted troops and heavy weapons, including precious batteries of artillery, to strengthen the units along their forty-five-mile front.

  Typical of the Korps taking up positions on the right flank was the 7-Fallschirmjäger-Division, one of the last units withdrawn across the Rhine. The paratroopers had doggedly defended the Pocket, exacting a heavy toll on the Allies, but in the process they’d also suffered severe losses. In spite of the casualties, the commander considered his men’s morale to be high, and they knew more fighting was expected of them.

  The center Korps anchored their sector with the 84 Infanterie-Division, commanded by Generalmajor Heinz Fiebig. He positioned his three regiments along the Rhine to the north of Wesel. A provisional division of assorted infantry troops occupied Wesel itself.

  On his left flank, Schlemm’s remaining Korps established positions down to Duisburg, arranging two divisions along the riverbank.

  Studying the map, Schlemm knew he had the front covered as best he could, but the lack of manpower nagged at him. Like Kesselring, he realized his divisions were that in name only. Most had made it back over the Rhine with barely 3,000 soldiers each. The three parachute infantry divisions on his right flank totaled just 11,000 men, essentially the number in a single, full-strength division.

  B
ut the Third Reich still had resources to draw on. Just two months earlier, in January, Hitler had increased the military service age limit to forty-five years. In February, eight new full-strength divisions had been drafted. But a significant portion of the new recruits were conscripted from previously reserved categories: workers whose factories had been destroyed, men previously designated as medically unfit, youths just entering their adolescence, or older men who’d hoped to enjoy their twilight years in front of a fireplace rather than in the front lines. Among the replacements were thousands of Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe personnel who were transferred into the Wehrmacht as Berlin stripped the idle from their branches of service for combat duty.

  And time was not on their side. The replacements received only rudimentary infantry training at best before being sent to the front. Schlemm integrated them into his existing divisions, hoping they would benefit from combat-experienced supervision and on-the-job training. Manning static defenses didn’t require as much training as assault tactics, but it did necessitate staying power. Rumors reflecting the gravity of their situation spread among the new rank and file: SS troops were setting up blocking positions to hinder any retreat and force deserters back into the fight if necessary.

  • • •

  Schlemm’s logistical problems were eased somewhat by the shortening of his supply line, which no longer had to traverse the Rhine, but Allied air attacks, intermittent since late February, were increasing in both intensity and tempo. Allied bombers targeted railroad lines, bridges, road junctions, and maintenance facilities. The ten bridges and viaducts supporting rail traffic in and out of the Ruhr were hit by dozens of attacks. Meanwhile, low-flying Allied fighters were on the prowl for targets of opportunity, pouncing out of the sky to strafe vehicles and trains. The marauders littered the countryside with the spoils of their victories, destroying over 100 locomotives and 3,000 railcars. The zealous attacks went after anything that moved, restricting most movement to the hours of darkness.