ONE

He had always wanted to be a soldier, a leader of men. As a boy in his native Munich he had volunteered for the Bavarian Army immediately he came of age. In a training battalion he had made it as far as officer-cadet, but, to his chagrin, the First World War ended before he could be sent to the Western Front. Thereafter his ‘combat experience’ had been limited to those notorious Saalschlachten (beerhouse brawls) that the Party, which he had joined almost immediately it had been founded, constantly fought with its political opponents. But even there he could not gain the decorations he so coveted. Try as he might in those nightly brawls with the communists and socialists, he never seemed able to qualify for the Party’s Blutordnen (Order of the Blood) granted to those National Socialists who had had their head split open or nose broken by some Red wielding a beer mug!

By 1945, after five years of war, the second most powerful man in the Third Reich had one single decoration adorning his skinny chest, the Sports Medal in Bronze – and even that had taken some doing for the weedy Reichsführer! On 10 December, 1944, however, the man who lusted for the Knight’s Cross, was granted his first army command by a grateful Führer. Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Reich’s dreaded police apparat and the one-million-strong Armed SS, was given command of Army Group Upper Rhine. That meant he was in control of all forces on the opposite bank of the Rhine and of General Wiese’s 19th Army surrounded in the Colmar Pocket.

Hostile critics such as Colonel-General Guderian, head of the Wehrmacht’s Armoured Force, were appalled. He wrote later: ‘He (Himmler) harboured no doubts about his own importance. He believed that he possessed powers of military judgment every bit as good as Hitler’s and needless to say far better than those of the generals.’¹ Guderian felt that Himmler ‘completely underestimated the qualities that are necessary for a man to be a successful commander of troops. On the very first occasion when he had to undertake a task before the eyes of the world – one that could not be carried out by means of backstairs intrigues and fishing in troubled waters – the man inevitably proved a failure. It was complete irresponsibility on his part to wish to hold such an appointment; it was equally irresponsible of Hitler to entrust him with it.’²

Now the sallow-faced Himmler, who looked like a provincial teacher with his pince-nez and prissy little clipped moustache, decided that the time had come to take advantage of the confusion reigning in Devers’ command on the opposite bank of the Rhine. His spies had kept him well informed of the situation in Strasbourg. He knew that the US 3rd Infantry Division had gone and that the town was now defended by a motley crew of ill-armed French irregulars, grandly named the ‘Guards.’ He knew, too, that the whole length of the Rhine was virtually wide-open, some sectors being solely patrolled by American reconnaissance units, the front being thinned all the time as Devers moved troops to the hard-pressed northern flank and de Lattre’s French failed to fill the gaps. The situation was ripe for exploitation. From the north Blaskowitz’s Army Group, G, already heavily engaged in the lower Vosges, would make another thrust. This time it would be armoured: a three-division attack driving in the general direction of Wissembourg. Simultaneously, in the south, Himmler’s 19th Army would break out of the Colmar Pocket. There the 198th Infantry Division and the Feldherrnhalle armoured brigade would attack towards Benfeld.

While all this was going on, Himmler would launch a third operation. His 553rd Volksgrenadier Division was to make an assault crossing of the Rhine at Gambsheim. Himmler reasoned, as did Hitler, that if all these drivers linked up successfully, the whole of Northern Alsace would be cut off. If they failed and the advance westwards was stopped, at least Strasbourg would be reconquered. What a tremendous shot in the arm it would be for the German people if Himmler could announce that Strasbourg was German again on that most significant day in the yearly calendar of the National Socialist Party – 30 January, 1945, the twelfth anniversary of Hitler’s take-over of power in 1933! Although Ultra had long alerted Devers to the fact that the Germans might attempt another surprise attack elsewhere along his huge front, the commander of Sixth Army Group was caught by surprise. For days now General Linden’s defence of the Rhine in the Gambsheim area had been limited to daily reconnaissance patrols run by the 94th Mechanized Reconnaissance Squadron of the 12th Armored Division. These motorized patrols were sent out to check the riverside villages, most of them pro-German, and sweep along the banks of the Rhine. On the early morning of the 5th one such patrol failed to return at the appointed time. Hastily another patrol of armoured cars and half-tracks was organized and sent to the same area. They soon came back, bringing with them alarming news. The Germans had made a surprise crossing of the Rhine the previous night, gaining footholds at Gambsheim and further on at Herrlisheim, most of whose farmers were definitely pro-German!

Surprisingly enough the Commanding General of the 12th Armored Division did nothing. Nor did higher headquarters. According to the Divisional History of the Twelfth: ‘Higher headquarters was apparently convinced that this force was small and of inferior quality and that its mission was merely to occupy the ground the Allies would give up in their anticipated withdrawal to the Vosges mountains.’³ As a result the ‘Hellcats’, as the men of the 12th liked to call themselves, were not alerted for a counterattack until the morning of 6 January. That ‘small and inferior’ force was going to give the ‘Hellcats’ a bloody baptism of fire they would remember for the rest of their fighting career.

Meanwhile Himmler, jubilant at the lack of opposition, continued to build up his bridgehead, ferrying over not only the infantry, but elements of the very experienced 21st Panzer Division, which had taken the first brunt of the Allied landings in Normandy the previous June. It seemed that another disaster in Alsace was in the making.

The US 79 Infantry Division, the ‘Cross of Lorraine’ as it was known from its divisional insignia, was another of Devers’ few veteran formations. Formed in June, 1942, it had gone into action for the first time in August, 1944, fighting its way under Patton’s command right across France. In spite of the fact that its commander, General Ira Wyche, had been wounded in the leg right at the outset of the campaign, he had set a cracking pace and had led the Division in its assault crossing of the Seine.

Up to now the Division had not been involved in any really serious fighting in the Battle of Alsace under its new army commander, General Devers. On 2 January it had withdrawn to fortified positions in the French Maginot Line. Two days later it had taken the completely inexperienced Task Force Linden under command. Now, in the framework of the transfer of the Rhine front to de Lattre’s First French Army, the French 3me Division d’Infanterie Algeriénne, which was scheduled to take over from Task Force Linden, was also placed under General Wyche’s command.

When higher command had sat on its thumbs for hours, General Brooks woke to the danger which the new German attack presented. He rang Wyche, who was not at all pleased with his huge front and the motley force now under his command, and told him urgently, ‘Get out in there and get it cleaned up, it’s got to be cleaned up pronto! We can’t let them build up there!’⁴

Wyche sprang into action. He ordered the men of 42nd Division’s infantry, which made up Task Force Linden, to attack astride the road from Weyersheim to Gambsheim. But although these men bore the insignia of the old Rainbow Division, which had won immortal glory in France in the First World War, they were greenhorns. Kicking off their attack at a quarter to four that Friday afternoon, they immediately became bogged down at the Landgraben Canal. Himmler’s Grenadiere held them easily with automatic fire. After a while, however, they managed to slip across the Canal on the right flank and reach the Kleingraben Creek, between the canal and the town. But as it began to grow dark and the men on the right flank lost contact with the right, confusion and uncertainty set in. As the history of the Seventh Army puts it delicately: ‘Darkness and loss of contact . . . forced a withdrawal to the west bank of the canal for reorganization.’⁵

It was the same in the other areas in which the Americans were attacking the new bridgehead. North of Kilstett men of the Task Force were held up by heavy artillery fire. Further attacks in two-battalion strength were stopped at Bischwiller and the Americans could do little more than dig in. Suddenly Wyche was no longer attacking – he was defending! And all the while the Germans were building up their bridgehead with amazing strength, putting more and more troops across on barges and makeshift bridges. By nightfall they had a bridgehead five miles long and two miles deep, with nearly two divisions of troops across. Himmler might win that coveted Knight’s Cross yet. Soon a hard-pressed Wyche would be telling General Brooks that things were not going at all well in the Gambsheim Bridgehead: ‘The real trouble is this mushroom organization, plus the greenness of the troops, and the lack of communications. . . . I’m very sorry to have to present this situation, but that’s the way it is.’⁶

All that Friday morning alarming messages had been reaching the headquarters of the 275th Infantry Regiment, desperately trying to hold on to Philippsbourg, or that part of it in American hands: ‘Corps states enemy may attack Rothbach and Zinswiller any time now’; ‘Elements of German 951st Infantry just west of Baerenthal’; ‘Seventy vehicles, column of 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division six miles north of Philippsbourg’; ‘A lot of stuff is coming from the north.’⁷

Now it was generally anticipated that the enemy was going to mount a three-division armoured thrust from the north. Frederick, of the 45th, his corps commander Brooks, and half-a-dozen other generals were busy trying to work out what was going on; while in the battered little town itself the helpless survivors waited for orders. Surprisingly enough they were to attack, not to defend!

So the wearisome business of the previous day began once again. The attackers were to advance out of Philippsbourg and run the last of the German defenders out of town. But almost at once, as the German gunners began shelling the Americans, the attackers ran into trouble. Suddenly the tankers who were accompanying the attack became ‘gun-shy’. As the Regimental Colonel, Colonel Malloy, recalled afterwards, ‘A tank leader came forward in his tank to the corner where three of us were in a shed. He said he wouldn’t advance.’⁸

Malloy’s Irish temper flared. He whipped out his forty-five and told the unknown tank officer to move out to the attack – or else! That did the trick. The tank officer moved out.

Now Malloy personally took charge of the attack. He bumped into a group of frightened Americans busily engaged in ‘withdrawing’. Again Malloy’s temper flared. He gave them a tongue-lashing and threatened them with his pistol. They moved back into the attack. Heavy enemy fire held it up for a while, but a Lieutenant Heck, using a light machine-gun, firing it from the hip like an automatic, got the attack moving again, while Malloy exclaimed, ‘Who is that crazy guy? Let’s get him a medal!’

The attackers now began to find the survivors of their first failed attack who had been in hiding for a couple of days. A medical officer and a GI were brought up from a wine cellar, unshaven and starving. They told the attackers they had hidden in the back of a chicken coop at the far end of the cellar. One of them had had a very bad cold and he had to time his coughing with the cackling of the chickens. He said he had almost choked to death holding back his coughing.⁹

Now the steam was going out of the attack and Malloy had trouble with gun-shy tankers again. He came across them bickering with the weary, sweating infantrymen. They would only advance down the street, where they were sitting ducks for the Germans’ deadly panzerfausts (a kind of bazooka), if they were accompanied by foot soldiers. Malloy gave them a direct order to advance. Reluctantly the Shermans began to roll once more. Behind them the infantry men sheltered, crouched as if against heavy rain. Malloy went with them, in spite of the fact that he had now been wounded in the shoulder.

Suddenly a shell exploded nearby. Metal fragments hissed through the air. Malloy howled with pain and went down. He had been hit in the leg and could not walk. A sergeant and an officer helped him into the basement of the nearest house. Jack Malloy’s part in the Battle of Phiippsbourg was over. As soon as the tank commander saw what had happened, he reversed and disappeared down the street, leaving the infantry to their fate.

But in Philippsbourg itself the Germans’ resistance was almost over. Lieutenant Brogan, who had led the attack the previous day, waited in a foxhole for the order to attack a nearby ridge. Next to him in the two-man foxhole, his platoon sergeant, Martinez, snored loudly, completely worn out. Suddenly a shell exploded nearby and Martinez woke with a start. Next to him Brogan yelled, ‘I’m hit!’

With trembling hands Martinez began to cut away the officer’s uniform to ascertain the extent of his injuries. Then he gasped with horror.

‘As I cut away I could see this red gooey mess.’¹⁰ Lieutenant Brogan had suffered that fate dreaded by all combat soldiers, worse than death itself. His balls had been shot off!

However, Martinez continued to cut ‘and somehow the red, gooey stuff didn’t seem like flesh and blood any more. It was too sticky, and there seemed glass fragments mixed in with it.’¹¹ Finally Martinez figured out what had happened. Brogan had been carrying a jar of strawberry jam in his overcoat pocket when he had been hit. The shell fragment had gone through the jar and its contents and still had enough force to nick him in the inside thigh. ‘It had made a small hole but not the horrible one that he and I imagined,’ Sergeant Martinez recalled. All the same Lieutenant Brogan was evacuated and the 70th Division lost another brave leader.

At Wingen, in spite of the new threat and the American High Command’s realization that, whether they liked it or not, they would soon have to withdraw even further the 70th Division was attacking there too.

While Colonel Cheves’ E and F Companies moved up to take over the attack from his G Company which had borne the brunt of the fighting so far, a strange thing happened. The weary men of George stood by, watching the new men move up. They were tired and short-tempered. They felt they had been doing all the fighting by themselves. Suddenly, as one of their NCOs recalled afterwards, ‘I saw the fellow in front of me drop and hit the ground. Everybody in turn dropped just like a long row of up-ended dominoes, each domino knocking down the one behind it!’¹² They had not been hit by enemy fire. What had happened was the result of a battlefield psychosis. As the sergeant explained: ‘We were all sheepish when we realized that nothing was wrong, just some guy up front with the ‘willies’. Fighting makes you that way, on edge, quick-acting.’¹³

That incident seemed symbolic of the whole confused irrational mess at Wingen that Friday. Just as Cheves’ other two companies moved into the attack, an American tank started to blast away at Cheves and his staff. ‘As I watched, almost petrified, it let go with a broadside into the trees all around us. It was a terrible feeling to lie there hugging the ground while that monster blasted away.’¹⁴

Now the Colonel moved on again to see ‘a platoon of American infantrymen make a most amazing attack across an open field directly in front of us, the like of which I doubt has ever been duplicated since the Revolutionary days when soldiers marched into battle keeping a straight line while the drummer boy beat away on his drum.’¹⁵

Suddenly the German machine guns burst into fire. Simultaneously the whole line went down. ‘It was impossible to ascertain how many had been hit, for the entire line lay still, flat on their bellies while the enemy guns continued to rattle away.’¹⁶

That day Sergeant Richard Armstrong was a platoon guide in the 276th Infantry’s A Company. Just before the company had gone into the attack, their mess sergeant had tried to feed the infantrymen a superb roast turkey dinner. But after a week on cold ‘C’ and ‘K’ rations their stomachs had shrunk so much that, to Sergeant Armstrong’s disgust, he could only eat a small portion of the hot food. For many of the men it would be their last ever meal, hot or cold.

All day they had attacked, losing more and more men all the time. Now the company, what was left of it, was readied to attack yet another hill. The survivors had been told that there would be a preparatory artillery barrage on the German positions before they attacked. In due course, the ‘barrage’ arrived, all four rounds of it. ‘Just enough to wake the Krauts up,’ Armstrong said grimly.

Then they were moving forward up the hill in a slow, careful skirmish line, with bayonets fixed. Up in the lead, as scouts, were Armstrong and his friend, Dave Peirotti. They flushed out the first of the enemy. Most of them surrendered quickly. Then the German artillery opened up and Pierotti was hit. His jaw hung from his face by shreds of gory flesh. He disappeared to the rear. Another rifleman, Pfc Kufersen, advancing next to Armstrong, was hit by a German who popped up from a hole only ten yards away. Instinctively Armstrong fired from the hip and the German went down. Armstrong turned to the wounded Kufersen. ‘Joe,’ he told him, looking down at the ashen-faced youngster, ‘you’re heading back to the States.’ He looked up and said weakly, ‘Dick, I’m too young to die.’ Armstrong never saw him again.

Armstrong’s CO, Lieutenant Doegnes, known behind his back as ‘Dogears’, ordered him to find the Company’s 2nd platoon and flank the German positions on the crest from the right. Armstrong doubled off to carry out the order, but when he reached the platoon he found that there was only one man left on his feet with a squad capable of still fighting, Sergeant Red Shelander. Together, the handful of men and the two NCOs attempted to carry out ‘Dogears” order. But by the time they had reached the crest, Armstrong and Red were the only two left; the rest had fallen in the snow behind them.

A tremendous artillery barrage now descended on the two lone noncoms. Armstrong flung himself behind two huge boulders and Red hid behind a snowbank. As the snow blackened around them and the shells stripped the branches off the pines in a shower of green rain, German infantry began to advance on the two survivors. But they were still full of fight. Armstrong kept popping up and loosing off a quick burst with his M-1 and ducking again, with the result that Red, whom the Germans could see, received all their return fire. Exasperated beyond measure, Red shouted across to his comrade during a pause in the fighting, ‘Armstrong, you fire one more goddam shot, and I’ll shoot you myself!’

But in the end they had to abandon their positions. They retired down the hill, finding the area ‘devastated, bodies everywhere’, until they found an officer, Lieutenant Arnest. He sat propped against a tree, a shrapnel wound in his stomach, hands clasping it, red with blood. He told the two NCO’s ‘Take the walking wounded and get the hell back to the battalion CP!’

Armstrong picked up Curly Uczunski, who had been shot in the leg, while Red selected Pfc Theo Renk, who had a ‘million dollar wound’. He had been hit in the buttocks, or so they thought. Now as Arnest held off the Germans with his carbine, the two NCOs staggered off with their heavy loads through the deep snow. Within minutes they were lathered with sweat and gasping like old men. So they decided to lighten their loads. They flipped a coin and Armstrong lost. He threw away his rifle but kept his cartridge belt, while Red dropped the latter and kept his rifle. They stumbled from the scene of the disaster, passing dead and wounded GIs every few yards, the cries for help getting fainter and fainter until they vanished.

They struggled on, occasionally putting Curly down in the snow and dragging him like a sledge by his collar. All the time Theo Renk moaned that he wanted ‘to take a piss’. But every time they set him up he confessed that he couldn’t urinate. Soon they’d find out why. And all the while the Germans opened fire on them every time they crossed a ridge-line. Once a shell slammed into the snow close by, but it was a dud and the NCOs shook their fists at the unseen enemy gunners.

In the end they reached an aid station and delivered the two wounded men to a doctor. But it was already too late for Theo. He was dead. The doctor showed them the tiny shrapnel wound in his stomach. It had done terrible damage to his lower body – hence his inability to urinate. He had been dying all the time they had fought to bring him in. The two NCOs and six other wounded men were the only survivors of 180 men of A Company who had landed so confidently at Marseilles only four weeks before.¹⁷

And so it went on through a day of confused horror and purposeless slaughter. As it drew to a close, ‘Big Jim’ Reed of B Company started handling out rations to the weary survivors, tears streaming down his unshaven face. Finally he came to the last man in the line, Sergeant Leroy Rowley. But Jim choked, knowing that the full company numbered over a hundred, ‘God, there are only thirty-eight of you left.’¹⁸

Colonel Cheves was similarly affected. His father had died in the First World War and he remembered his grandmother’s tales of the Civil War in Virginia: ‘a cannon ball down the chimney and dead soldiers on the porch’. His sergeant from the aid station came in to report the day’s casualties: ‘There’s a lot of men getting hurt up there, Colonel,’ he said. ‘Four killed and twenty-four wounded, most of them in George Company.’

‘The cold figures depressed me, for I hadn’t realized that so many had been hit. I didn’t dare say anything for a few seconds as I stood there, staring at the light in the far corner. It all seemed like a dream.’

But now his sadness turned into a burning anger. ‘I know it,’ he snorted to the medic, ‘and a lot of them could have been prevented if there hadn’t been so damn much confusion up there. I’ve never seen so much mess in all my life. Nobody knows what they’re doing!’¹⁹

Now it was to be the turn of the French. On that afternoon of Friday, 5 January, as de Lattre’s First Army prepared to withstand the expected German attack out of the Colmar Pocket and, further north, to take their part in the Allied attack into the new Gambsheim Bridgehead, the American Inspector-General of the Sixth Army Group reported to SHAEF on the state of a typical French formation: ‘It is not in a condition to be used in an offensive role until it has received suitable equipment and has been trained for a period of not less than four months!’²⁰ In spite of de Gaulle’s bold words to Eisenhower at the 3 January conference, de Lattre knew just how true the unknown Inspector-General’s report on his army was. Even as he prepared to fight, the hook-nosed Army Commander, running his force from the comfort of the Hotel de la Balance in the town of Montbeliard, well away from the fighting, knew that his First Army was heading for a crisis.

‘King Jean’, at the age of 55, was at the height of his career in January, 1945. At last he had achieved the dream of every regular army officer: he commanded a whole army. ‘King Jean’ made the most of it, too. He loved glittering uniforms, decorations, parades and ceremonies and thought nothing of making his soldiers wait for hours for his appearance on the parade ground. If he wanted something in the middle of the night – a drink, an aspirin (for he was often ill) – he would not hesitate to ring for his orderly although the object needed might well be on his bedside table. He was a terrible stickler for discipline and correct appearance; and it was said that his hawklike gaze, just like Napoleon’s, could strip a man naked, physically and mentally.

In 1940 he had been a mere colonel, chief-of-staff in the armoured division commanded by de Gaulle. But unlike his chief, he had not gone into exile at the defeat of France. Instead he had sworn an oath of loyalty to Marshal Pétain and had tamely served for two long years as a divisional commander in Unoccupied France, while elsewhere total war raged. In November, 1942, however, when the Germans had marched into Unoccupied France as a result of the Allied invasion of French North Africa, he had been the only senior officer in Pétain’s army to offer them resistance. He had subsequently been arrested by the French authorities, but had escaped to England by submarine. From there he had made his way to General de Gaulle and offered to join the Free French Army in the fight against the Boche. There, in Algiers, it was said, de Gaulle had greeted him with ‘You haven’t changed.’

His one-time Chief-of-Staff grinned, accepting the proffered hand, and replied, ‘You’ve got bigger’.²¹

Thereafter, following two years of inactivity, de Lattre’s career had taken off. In Italy he had fought as a corps commander with distinction. In August, 1944, he had been given command of the First French Army for the invasion of Southern France, where he would lead it successfully for four months until finally the Germans stopped him at Colmar. Typical of ‘King Jean’ was the order he had given to his generals on the eve of that Southern France invasion. He had told them, ‘Whatever you do, don’t crush the vines!’²²

But over the long months of fighting (even years in the case of those who had supported de Gaulle from the first) his men had become demoralized, feeling that they had been abandoned by the bulk of the French people. At the beginning of the Ardennes offensive, de Lattre had written to de Gaulle: ‘Among all ranks, but particularly among the officers, even at a high level, there is a general impression that the nation is ignoring them and deserting them. The basic cause of this malaise rests in the apparent non-participation of the country in the war’.²³

De Lattre was right, of course. The French wanted to get on with living again, just as they had done back in 1939, or even up to June, 1944. Most of them had led a good life prior to the Allied invasion, especially those who lived on the land. All that Paris saw of the war now was the US black market between the Opera and the Madeleine and the drunken GIs with their whores in ‘Pig Alley.’

For most French civilians, the soldiers of de Lattre’s army were playing games there in Alsace, doing nothing but guard a lot of crazy Boches in the Colmar Pocket. So the men of the First felt themselves as much divorced from their country as did the GIs whose homes were three thousand miles away across the Atlantic.

Now this demoralized army, ill-equipped with obsolete Allied cast-offs, was to face an all-out attack by the best army in the world. That day de Lattre seemed to realize that he could not hold the line against the Boche unless he received American aid. More, he needed the moral support of the surety that the Americans would not retreat in the north. Plagued by doubts and fears, de Lattre made the journey to Devers’ headquarters at Vittel.

‘Our conversation at once took a lively and frank turn,’ he wrote after the war. ‘The man was direct, but this realist hid a sensitive nature under a sometimes rough exterior. We passed events in review; then I told him of my preoccupations, reminding him that he was himself the grandson of an Alsatian woman. Much moved, he assured me that, despite the risks, the US 6th Army Corps would cover the left flank of the 1st Army and would fight on the Maginot Line.’²⁴

Although de Lattre had Devers’ promise, there was still the question of Strasbourg. On the whole length of the Rhine above the Alsatian capital there were only a handful of troops, American and French. But such considerations did not seem to bother de Lattre at this moment of crisis. He ordered his dashing Gascon corps commander, General de Monsabert, who three years before had been fighting American troops in North Africa to ‘defend Strasbourg at any price!’²⁵

One consideration, however, which seems to have escaped de Lattre as he ordered the last ditch stand in the face of imminent German attack was: if de Monsabert, bold and gallant as he was, failed to hold the Germans to the south of the capital, where were the troops to come from to defend Strasbourg? The manpower barrel in the Allied camp was scraped clean.