Timeframe:  11/24/1944 - 12/24/1945

Excerpt from the book "Paths of Armor: The 5th Armored Division in World War II" - Chapter XVII

Combat Command B

In early December Col. John T. Cole received orders to move his command into the Huertgen Forest. Its mission: to clear the Germans from the area extending from Kleinhau to Winden, a town on the Roer River. The area was one of the last and most stubborn pockets west of the Roer. The fight to clear that few square miles of ground was the hardest and bloodiest the men of CC B were ever to tackle. On 9 and 10 December the tanks and halftracks rumbled up the tortuous, muddy trails of the shell-scarred forest. The combat command assembled in the woods just west of Kleinhau and started to dig in. Almost immediately they were strafed and bombed by German planes flying at tree-top level. The medics counted 18 casualties. Light snow covered the ground the morning of 11 December when riflemen of the 15th Infantry Bn. dismounted from their halftracks and prepared to attack. At 0745 they moved out, passed the battered town of Kleinhau and advanced toward the high wooded ground a mile to the northeast.

Supporting each infantry company was a platoon of tanks from each of the line companies of the 81st Tank Bn. On the right flank were riflemen from A and B Troops of the 85th Cavalry Recon. Squadron. F Co. of the 85th was attached to the 4th Cavalry Group, working further south. Artillery support was supplied by the 71st Field Artillery Bn.

The reports that the area up to the line of departure had been cleared of all Germans had been highly inaccurate, for when the doughboys started across the exposed ground, a heavy barrage of artillery and mortar fire was laid down on them. They also received accurate small arms fire from their right flank from three machine guns, two bazooka teams and German riflemen concealed in a thick patch of pine trees. One of the first casualties was the commander of the 15th Infantry Bn.'s A Co., Capt. Donald K. Krafts, who was killed.

The assault wave pushed on, but when forward elements started up the slope of the hill, heavy machine gun fire pinned down the attackers.

Despite flying shell fragments and machine gun bullets, S/Sgt. Louis J. San Martino of the 15th Infantry Bn.'s A Co. continued to crawl forward. When he was certain he had located the exact position of the German machine gun emplacement, he signaled to Pvt. Wade N. Spruill who had set up his mortar in a shell hole.

Pvt. Spruill realized he was in full view of the German forward artillery observer and that when he put his mortar into action he would become the special target for enemy shells. Without hesitating, however, he started lobbing shells into the enemy position. His sixth round was a direct hit, destroying the machine gun nest.

Attack! Attack!

The riflemen trudged forward again and advanced until A Co.'s 2nd Platoon, which was in the forward elements, lost its platoon leader, Lt. Bass Redd, who was killed, and its platoon sergeant, T/Sgt. Richard Rosner, who was wounded. When these key men were hit, the other members of the platoon became hesitant and disorganized. The attack bogged down.

S/Sgt. Frank M. DiTaranto immediately assumed charge of the platoon. Exposing himself to heavy fire, he crawled forward from man to man and organized the scattered remnants into a fighting unit. Charging forward again, they reached the edge of the woods.

The 15th Infantry Bn.'s B Co. commander, Capt. Arthur Elmore, was also wounded in the assault, but Lt. Merle S. Power quickly took over, reorganized the company and resumed the attack. He led the assault by preceding the leading elements of the attack wave and continued to push forward until he was killed by a German machine gun.

By now A Co. alone had suffered 60 casualties. Every line company commander in the 15th Infantry Bn. had been killed or wounded.

Darkness came early that cold winter night and the riflemen dug into the frozen ground to hold their positions. Through the long night spent in their foxholes they had only their overcoats to keep them warm.

Intense artillery and mortar fire made it impossible for trucks, peeps or other thin-skinned vehicles to haul badly-needed supplies up to the front. The 81st Tank Bn.'s D Co. was called on to do the job with its light tanks. Lt. Benjamin T. Potts had the men in his platoon load rations, water and clothing on the rear decks of their tanks and they started toward the forward positions.

In the darkness they missed the guide who was to show them where to unload the supplies. Going beyond the outposts, they went into territory still held by the enemy. Fired on by small arms and mortars, they turned around and started back up the road.

Going back, they found their route around two knocked-out Shermans was now blocked by a light tank from their platoon which had hit a mine. Climbing out of the turret, Lt. Ports got in front of his tank and started to lead it between the two Shermans when it, too, struck a mine. The explosion killed him and seriously wounded his driver, T/4 Peter J. Thauwald.

Heroes Are Made

During the next two days, riflemen from the 15th Infantry Bn. and 85th Reconnaissance Sq. and tankers from the 81st Tank Bn. continued to clear infiltrating Germans from the woods and to hold the high ground despite extremely heavy artillery and mortar fire. Each day the troops hacked their way forward a few hundred yards against bitter enemy resistance. Every advance of a hundred yards meant another foxhole. Every foxhole meant back-breaking hours of work digging through the foot-thick frozen crust of earth.

Heroism was accepted as nothing less than duty in Hurtgren Forest during those days. When he saw his squad leader fall wounded on a patch of open ground, Sgt. John Tivvis of the 15th Infantry Bn.'s C Co. crawled forward to an exposed position and put fire on enemy snipers so that aid men could get to the wounded soldier. He then helped evacuate the man across several hundred yards of ground under shellfire.

Wounded during the first day's attack and evacuated to the aid station, C Co.'s S/Sgt. William Carter returned to the fight and was wounded again the second day. Both times he was told at the aid station to wait for the ambulance which would evacuate him to a field hospital, but both times he slipped off and returned to his company. When he turned up at the aid station the third time the surgeon knew that Sgt. Carter would not go back to his company again. He had been wounded in the foot and could not walk.

The enemy's intense shelling took a heavy toll again the second day. The 15th Infantry Bn.'s new A Co. commander, Capt. Roderick Smith, had his command only a few hours before he, too, was wounded and evacuated. Command of the company fell to the only remaining officer, Lt. Francis C. Darby.

That night, three days and two nights after they had pushed off, the 15th Infantry Bn. reported the strength of its three line companies at four officers and 170 enlisted men. At full strength they had 18 officers and 735 enlisted men.

Reinforcements Arrive

Just before dusk that night Lt. Miles Light moved his machine gun platoon from the 15th Infantry Bn.'s headquarters forward to support the line companies. As they were digging in on the high ground a German soldier came out of the woods and surrendered. It was too late to take the prisoner back to the rear that night so Lt. Light bedded him down in a large foxhole between himself and another member of the platoon. In the morning when Lt. Light checked the other foxholes in the area to make certain his men were awake, he found three sleeping Germans in one hole and four in another. The fighting was that close in Huertgen Forest.

The difficult job of supplying the dug-in troops in the line continued to be handled by the light tanks of Capt. Harold M. Schiering's D Co. The tanks rolled forward with loads of rations, water and clothing, and returned with wounded doughboys stretched out on their rear decks. Mines planted by infiltrating Germans were always a serious threat to the tanks. This problem was quickly solved on one run by Lt. Henry V. Plass. Pulling his tank up behind a knocked-out engineers' bridge truck which lay at the side of the road, Lt. Plass converted the truck into a mine sweeper by pushing it ahead of him the rest of the way to Strass, where he delivered his supplies.

On the third day of the battle the 15th Infantry Bn.'s anti-tank platoons left their 57 mm. guns in the rear and went forward as riflemen to reinforce the dwindling rifle platoons. The 2nd Bn. of the 83rd Infantry Division's 330th Regiment had been attached to CC B on 12 December. The next day the 81st Tank Bn.'s C Co., commanded by Capt. William L. Guthrie, was ordered to support the 330th Regiment which was holding the sector around Strass on the left flank.

Two of C Co.'s platoons moved out in the early morning. When the tanks reached Schafberg, on the road to Strass, they were fired on by anti-tank guns. Mines prevented the tanks from deploying. In rapid succession four tanks were hit. Three of them burned and the turret was jammed on the fourth.

Although the tank commanded by S/Sgt. Raymond W. Beltz was hit three times, he continued to shell the enemy position until a fourth German projectile whined across the contested ground and ripped into the barrel of his gun. When the men removed the round they had intended to fire, they found a piece of shrapnel from the German shell sticking in its nose. The scheduled attack by the 330th Regiment was cancelled and the C Co. tanks were ordered to their assembly area.

Medics! Medics!

CC B was now out of contact with the 330th Regiment and it was vitally necessary that communications be re-established. Lt. Carlo Lombardi of the 81st Tank Bn.'s D Co. was asked to attempt to reach the attached battalion with his radio-equipped tank. Between his tank and the 330th Regiment lay a stretch of open mined ground that was covered by direct fire of the anti-tank guns which had knocked'out the C Co. tanks. Lt. Lombardi's driver, T/4 Roy P. Rusteberg, ran the gantlet successfully, and communications were re-established with the isolated unit.

The men continued to fight forward, yard by yard, but every few yards they advanced cost them heavy casualties. Medical officers and aid men worked unceasingly to treat and evacuate the wounded. At the 15th Infantry Bn.'s aid station the medical officers, Capt. Leroy Holbert and Capt. George Tempel, and their assistants were red-eyed and exhausted. In their medical dressing tent and on all sides of it they treated casualties from all of the units fighting on this sector. During the first day they had cared for 150 wounded men, 200 the second day and 100 the third. When the wounded started pouring in during the first day, the little detachment found that it could not treat all of them without assistance. Help was sent from their Service Co. and from B Co. of the 75th Medical Bn. S/Sgt. Edmund W. Harrigan led four peeps up the shell-torn road the first day and evacuated the wounded who were scattered in the fields on both sides of the road. But when the companies pushed further ahead, only tanks could be used to get the wounded out of the cold, muddy fields where they had fallen and bring them back through the concentrations of artillery and mortar fire. Up with the rifle platoons the 12 medical aid men, only two of whom finally came out of the battle without being casualties themselves, worked day and night bandaging up the wounded and starting them on their difficult trip to the aid station. After making three attempts to crawl out into an open field to evacuate a casualty and each time being driven back by sniper fire, Sgt. Leon Kraskin, an aid man, stood up and walked to the wounded man. The sniper fired again and the bullet grazed the back of his head, driving a piece of the helmet into his scalp. But Sgt. Kraskin disregarded his own wound and after applying compresses to the infantryman's wounds, dragged him across a hundred yards of ground to safety. Working right along with the medics were the chaplains of the Combat Command. One G. I. expressed the surprise and lift it gave him in this way: "I looked up from my foxhole and there was ol' Chaplain Parmer. 'You'd better get down in here,' I said to him. 'You do the shooting and leave the praying to me,' he told me, and I'm damned if he didn't crouch right there in the open and say one. It made me feel a hell of a lot better!"

Pfc. L. T. Gotchy, another aid man, worked continuously without rest for two days and nights and finally, against his wishes, had to be evacuated himself. Not only did he care for the wounded, rescuing men from open ground considered untenable by infantrymen, but he also helped them dig foxholes and led tank convoys to and from the rear with loads of rations and water.

Despite the tremendous casualties, lack of sleep and rest and exposure to the bitter cold, the men continued to push forward. It was slow, agonizing fighting. By now the command had worked themselves forward almost to the edge of the woods. Ahead of them lay 1200 yards of open ground, covered by a dozen German guns.

Open Ground is Hell On the Infantry

During all this time, Lt. Col. Glenn G. Dickenson, 15th Infantry Bn. commander; Maj. Charles I. Webb, battalion S-3, and Maj. Emerson Hurley, then assistant S-3, had stayed in the forward positions, encouraging and helping the men. The sight of their battalion officers checking the furthermost outposts and undergoing the same dangers and hardships they were enduring gave the riflemen a morale boost that nothing else could have done at the time.

On the morning of 14 December, CC B attacked across the open ground. B and C Cos. of the 15th Infantry Bn. led, with A Co. in close support. Their objective was a quarry which was in another woods directly across the exposed ground. They planned to assault the quarry and push on quickly to the high ground northwest of Bilstein. A and B Troops of the 85th Reconnaissance Sq. were on the right flank. Each company of the 15th Infantry Bn. was supported by one platoon of tanks from each of the 81st medium tank companies. Ahead of the riflemen, artillery and mortar barrages were laid down by the 71st Artillery batteries and 81st Tank Bn. Mortar Platoon.

As the infantrymen moved down out of the woods to the open ground in the draw, the Germans turned every available mortar and artillery piece on the area. Pfc. Harry Grubert of the Infantry Bn.'s A Co. saw his squad leader killed by a mortar shell. Without hesitation he assumed command of the shaken and disorganized squad.

The forward observer for the 71st Artillery Bn., Lt. William S. Martin, was directing the fire of his batteries on enemy positions when an enemy shell crashed through the underbrush and dug into the ground beside him; it was a dud.

Sgt. Robert Rufiange saw ten members of his platoon fall seriously wounded when his 15th Infantry Bn.'s C Co. reached the draw. He administered first aid to them until all available bandages were exhausted and then under fire he went back and located two aid men. With their help he was able to evacuate the casualties.

Extensive mining and the boggy condition of the ground frustrated all attempts to use the tanks. Three Shermans were disabled by mines and the 81st Tank Bn.'s A Co. commander, Capt. Robert M. McNab, was wounded.

An infantryman who had been hurt when one of the tanks backed up lay 150 yards from the edge of the woods, completely exposed. When he called for help, Lt. Light and Sgt. Clarence H. McNeely crawled out, treated the man and pulled him back to the shelter of the woods.

Artillery, mortars and machine guns blasted and pounded the open ground over which the men were trying to attack. To advance was impossible. Nothing could live in that open field more than a few seconds. The men slowly pulled back from the exposed ground into the woods, carrying their wounded with them.

Speed and Surprise Do the Trick

That afternoon Thunderbolts and Lightnings were called in from the Tactical Aid Command to strafe and bomb enemy positions above the quarry. Sixteen 500-pound bombs were dropped. The bombs landed only a few hundred yards from CC B's forward positions. Blast from the explosions blew in the 75 mm. gun muzzle cover on a tank commanded by Sgt. Salvatore Candito.

The afternoon of 14 December, Col. Cole and Lt. Col. Le Roy H. Anderson, 81st Tank Bn. commander, came to Lt. Col. Dickenson's command post in the forward lines to confer and plan another attack.

The open ground had to be crossed. Col. Cole decided the only possible way to cross it was to mount the remaining infantry on the rear decks of the tanks and depend on the tank's speed to get them across. The attack was set for 0830 the following morning.

Next morning the tanks pulled up to the edge of the woods in a rough V formation, infantry mounted on the rear decks. The tanks roared across the open exposed ground. Churning faster and faster, they reached the halfway mark in the clearing and rolled toward the far edge. They had caught the Germans by surprise. Few shots were fired at them. As the tanks approached the quarry area, they opened up with their tank and machine guns, riddling the forest in front of them. Infantrymen jumped from the tanks and ran toward their first objective with its six antitank guns. They found the guns abandoned or destroyed. The bombing, heavy artillery and crushing tank fire had forced the Germans to retreat. The tankers and infantry moved on quickly toward their next objective, the high ground beyond the quarry.

There's Always Another Objective

Meanwhile the attached 330th Infantry Regiment, supported by the first and third platoons of the 81st Tank Bn.'s B Co., had pushed forward toward their objective, the town of Bergheim. They reached the town at noon.

At first it was intended to advance on the third objective, the high ground southeast of Bergheim, the same day. But little daylight remained of the short December day in which to organize and execute the plan. Riflemen did not jump off, therefore, until just before dawn the next morning. Because the two infantry battalions, the 15th and the 2nd Bn. of the 330th Regiment had suffered such heavy casualties, the attack was carried out by A and B troops of the 85th Reconnaissance Sq.

At 0900 Capt. Weldon M. Wilson, whose 81st Tank Bn.'s B Co. tanks were supporting the 85th, reported that all Germans had been cleared from the objective. He was then ordered to return with his tanks to the assembly area.

Late that afternoon a handful of men, all that was left of the 15th Infantry Bn.'s C Co., supported by the 2nd Platoon of tanks from the 81st Tank Bn.'s A Co., jumped off to attack the little town of Bilstein on the right flank.

As the tanks rolled toward the objective, S/Sgt. James P. Davis, who had become leader of the platoon after its lieutenant was wounded, noticed that only three of his five tanks were grinding across the open ground toward the town. He was unsuccessful in his attempts to make contact with the missing tanks by radio.

Later, when T/4 Herman Hawkins and Pfc. Arthur Medaros crossed the same mined field under fire, Sgt. Davis learned from them that their tanks had been disabled by mines.

Despite the heavy shelling, the riflemen cleared the town just before dark, flushing 17 prisoners out of the basements with grenades.

In one of the basements we surprised a band of Krauts preparing a hot meal. They had fresh steaks from a cow they had just slaughtered," said Lt. Robert H. Hoffman, commander of the 15th Infantry Bn.'s C Co. "After we sent the prisoners back to the PW cage, we made certain the dinner wasn't wasted. It was our first hot meal in seven days."

After taking its objectives, the 15th Infantry Bn. dug in, and each morning repelled an enemy counterattack. On 19 December the battalion was attached to CC A and the next morning attack orders came down to them again. Their mission was to overrun the remaining enemy positions on the high ground west of Winden.

No Rest for the Engineers

"When we heard that order, we thought the jig was really up," said T/Sgt. William H. Guinn of C Co., 15th Infantry Bn., who had during the action on this front gone from squad leader to platoon sergeant, to platoon leader and finally to leader of the combined remnants of two platoons. "There were only 32 of us left in our company and we thought this attack would certainly finish off the rest of us." On 20 December at 0915 they jumped off. B and C Cos. and the Machine Gun Platoon led the attack and A Co. was in reserve.

By 1100 they had taken their objective, killing the Germans who put up a fight and driving the rest into Winden. This same morning the 330th Regiment advanced southeast against Untermaubach, but because of the terrain conditions, a cliff on one side of the town, and extensive mining of the approach route, it was impossible to bring up tanks to support the infantry. They were unable to get beyond the outskirts of the town. B and C Troops of the 4th Cavalry Group, however, were successful in taking Bogheim. After the infantry, without tank support, made another unsuccessful attempt to storm Untermaubach on 21 December, Capt. Rolf E. Mickelson, commander of B Co. of the 22nd Engineer Bn., received orders that his outfit would have to clear the road to the town that night at all costs. Seven attempts had been made during the day and each one had failed because of the heavy concentrations of mortar and artillery fire that the Germans laid down on the road. That night the enemy guns continued to pound the road with interdictory fire, but Sgt. John J. Morgan and his crack mine-sweeping squad went to work with detectors and probes, determined to open an attack route for the tanks.

Earlier, Sgt. Lee Serratt and his crew had cleared the road from Bergheim to Bilstein so that bogged-down tanks could be evacuated. They had completed their mission in spite of the bursting shells of searing white phosphorous which the enemy had thrown in on them. There had been no rest for the B Co. engineers during the entire action on this front. In one two-day period they had removed 450 mines, which included wooden box and S type mines and booby-trapped Teller mines. While mine-sweeping teams were busy digging mines out of the supply and attack routes, the rest of the company, working in day and night shifts, cleared the wreckage and debris from the roads. In six days they hauled 45 truck-loads of rubble out of Hurtgen and Kleinhau to repair roads into Obermaubach. Sgt. Morgan and his men succeeded in lifting all of the mines from the Untermaubach road that night and early the next morning the tanks from the 2nd Platoon of the 81st Tank Bn.'s B Co. rolled into the town, blasting paths for the infantry. Rumbling up to each house in town, the tanks fired a high explosive shell into the front door and literally blew the defenders out into the hands of the infantry.

North of the town, on the road from Winden, a heroic stand was being made by A Troop of the 85th Reconnaissance Sq. By putting themselves into a pocket from which there was no withdrawal, they blocked every attempt by the Germans to reinforce the Untermaubach garrison from the north and made the successful assault on the town possible. For this action they received the "Presidential Citation."

Untermaubach fell at 1600 on 22 December. Two hundred prisoners were marched back to PW cages.

Out of the Line for Christmas

That night, after 12 days of the most bitter fighting, news came to the companies that they would be relieved immediately. Under cover of darkness they were to move out of the front lines and start toward a rest area in the rear.

"When the Germans heard the movement behind our lines, they decided to take advantage of the confusion and launch a local counterattack in our sector," said Lt. Warren A. Hedlin, commander of the 15th Infantry Bn.'s B Co.

In the darkness T/Sgt. Anton J. Kembic could hear the enemy soldiers coming up the hill, clicking the bolts of their guns. Crawling silently forward, he watched the Germans set up a machine gun which was to be the backbone of their attack. Retiring to his foxhole again, he waited for them to fire first so that he could be certain of the gun's position. Then he opened up, knocked out the gun and broke up the counterattack.

CC B was relieved on the night of 22 December, but two days later, on the morning of Christmas Eve, a few infantrymen from the 15th Infantry Bn. were still in the line. On the high ground overlooking Winden, eight men from C Co. huddled in foxholes, wondering how much longer they would be able to hold out. For four days they had been there, suffering from the cold and sweating out the enemy shells and small arms fire that was thrown at them. During this time their only food had been a loaf of German bread which they had found in one of the foxholes. To quench their thirst they had licked icicles which had frozen on the edge of a piece of canvas.

At headquarters they were listed as "missing in action." No one knew they were there because the officer who had posted them had been evacuated as a casualty.

When in the early light of the morning they saw doughboys and frost covered tanks emerge from the forest behind them, Cpl. Richard Stephen remarked, "Well, it's another attack."

Grabbing their rifles, they prepared to join the assault. But when the attackers reached their positions, they saw that these men were strangers. It was then that they learned their company had been relieved two days before. Picking up one member of their squad whose feet had been frozen, they headed home to their company for Christmas.

Alerted for Ardennes

The division was pulled back on 24 December to an assembly area in Belgium and was placed in 21st Army Group reserve. CC B bivouacked about four miles northeast of Verviers. On Christmas Eve all units were placed on a two-hour alert. They were ordered to be prepared to move south, if necessary, against the northern edge of von Rundstedt's salient on the Western Front.

Although snow suits were issued and vehicles painted white, the call to go into action against the German "bulge" did not come. Two days after Christmas the 71st Artillery Bn.'s Lt. Alexander D. Eraser and his driver, Sgt. Harold D. Freeman, were killed during a German air attack on Verviers, Belgium. Also killed in this bombing was CC B's Signal Officer, Lt. George M. Willets.

There was more enemy air activity on 31 December when a 500-pounder was dropped in the 71st Artillery Bn.'s area, but it caused no casualties. Then, on New Year's Day, seven ME 109's attacked the CC B area. Five were shot down.

Top of Page

Sitemap