CHAPTER 28
Moving Out
“Rack it up! Get ready in twelve minutes!”
Feverishly, the men of Dog Company crammed their personal items into duffel bags and prepared for battle. They broke open crates and grabbed ammo bandoliers and fresh supply of Mk 2 olive drab pineapple grenades.
Dog Company got ready quickly and then waited. Several of the seasoned noncoms who had brought them this far disappeared into the company command post. There they received an urgent message from the commanding officer of the 28th Infantry Regiment: “Battalion alerted for movement to Bergstein.” The 2nd Ranger Battalion’s executive officer and Rudder’s replacement, Major George Williams, expanded on the new orders: “The battalion is to move to Bergstein with the mission of securing the town and taking the hill to the east. Companies A, B, and C will go into defensive positions in Bergstein. Companies D, E, and F will take and hold Hill 400.”
Lieutenant Len Lomell recalled, “They had a special mission for us.” After meeting to plan details, noncoms and officers from Dog Company emerged from the command post and ordered the battalion to “Mount up!”
Dog Company’s 1st Platoon climbed onto the olive-drab trucks of the 445th. The platoon was a shell of its former self. As rifleman Bud Potratz explained, “We had gotten a new sergeant named Mike Sharik—a staff sergeant. He was initially a sergeant in the 2nd Platoon, but we had so few men that we had a lot of replacements. . . . Our platoon leader [George Kerchner] was severely wounded in Brest. Then we received Len Lomell who took over our platoon. . . . Ed Secor [was] our BAR man, and his assistant [was] Johnny Goreman.”
It was a moonless night—perfect for hiding the movement of troops. But just as the men started to entruck, one of the mobile field kitchens burst into flames. The men worked furiously to douse the bright blaze, looking over their shoulders for the German artillery that they were sure would be landing any second. Luckily, the fire hadn’t caught any enemy eyes, and German guns didn’t respond.
At 11:30 P.M., the truck engines of the 445th roared to life. Stretching back over a quarter of a mile, a score of trucks carrying Dog Company and the rest of the battalion drove through the darkness. Lomell recalled, “We rode through the forest in darkness, lights out.” The trucks carefully maneuvered through the winding roads of the Hürtgen Forest.
The men of the 2nd Ranger Battalion rode for nearly two hours through the inky blackness of the forest. The trip was relatively uneventful until the lead truck became mired in the mud of a shell hole. Quickly, the Rangers clambered out of their deuce-and-a-halfs and attempted to push the truck out of the mud. Within moments, German antitank fire lit up the area, forcing the Rangers to abandon the lead vehicle. The rest of the convoy moved around it.
The cavalcade eventually reached the small German hamlet of Kleinhau. Leaving the relative comfort of the trucks, the men faced a grueling march through a sloppy, wet mess. Mud covered their boots up to their ankles. Sleet and rain pelted their faces.
Describing the march, Potratz said, “We had our packs on. We had a blanket bedroll over the tops of our packs and ammunition belts and grenades, bandoliers, [and] a rifle. And we all had overcoats on. When these things got wet, the wool overcoats became like a ton of bricks on your shoulders. We just trudged through that darkness.”
Bill Hoffman recalled, “If you didn’t see the guy in front of you, you didn’t know where you were going. If you dropped your rifle, you would never find it again because of the mud. It was deep mud.”
Suddenly, German artillery shells streaked through their position, lighting up the dark night sky. Someone hissed, “Spread out! Keep it spread out!” The men staggered about five yards apart—if they bunched up, a well-placed shell could take out several Rangers at once.
For many of the Rangers, one moment stood out on the long, dreary march toward Bergstein. As they left camp, a lone figure stood in the middle of the road and shook the hands of the men of the battalion as they passed.
“Good luck,” Rudder told each of them, also giving advice here and there.
“Good luck,” they replied.
As one of his last actions as their commanding officer, Colonel Rudder offered each Ranger words of encouragement. Even as he was leaving, Big Jim made time for the individual needs of his men. When Harry Fate passed, Rudder said, “Harry, I understand you are up for a furlough?”
“Well, I’m not sure I’m going take it,” Fate dithered.
“You are going to take it. I will make sure of that,” Rudder insisted,
24Universally, the men of the 2nd Battalion hated to see Rudder leave, but he had immediate orders to report to the First Army Headquarters. As they later learned, he would take command of the 109th Infantry Regiment, which was in desperate need of new leadership.
In the previous five weeks, Rudder’s new regiment had sustained 6,184 casualties fighting the Germans in the Hürtgen, racking up one of the highest casualty rates suffered by an American regiment in the entire war.
The distance between Kleinhau and Bergstein is only about a mile as the crow flies, but it seemed much farther to the Rangers, who traveled the route at a snail’s pace. They stopped and started frequently in order to avoid becoming an easy target for the German artillery.
When the gleam of a German flare outlined the charred silhouettes of several burned-out buildings, they came to a dead stop for five minutes.
The glowing embers, crimson and menacing, from one burning house were etched in Bud Potratz’s memory. “I will never forget the burning buildings there, and curtains were blowing through what was left of the window frames,” said Potratz. “It cast an eerie feeling. It was a haunting feeling. Very haunting. When we started to make the trudge to Bergstein, we saw hulks of destroyed American tanks. That was very disheartening. So was the sight of the GIs whose bodies were blackened and charred in the tanks.”
Being near tanks, even destroyed ones, meant danger. According to Bill Hoffman: “The first tank, I almost bumped into it. The Jeeps up there were burned out. There was something ominous and weird about seeing the blackened hulks of the tanks. If you are anywhere near a tank, you are going to draw artillery fire.”
“You don’t get immune to it,” Hoffman added. “For me, the worst was the smell, the smell of blood. That is a God-awful smell. One guy, two guys, and then you see a whole bunch. It’s not normal to see dead people. I remember seeing the body of a young guy, [a] German soldier.”
The Rangers were on their way to reinforce Combat Command R (CCR) of the 5th Armored Division, which was barely hanging onto its foothold in the German town of Bergstein in the face of fanatic German counterattacks.
CCR, originally a regiment-sized unit, had been reduced to the equivalent of a reinforced company after fighting through a gauntlet of German villages on the way to Bergstein. CCR’s capture of Kleinhau and the nearby village of Hürtgen marked the beginning of the end for one of the bloodiest battles in American history. Four American divisions and a host of attached units fought to seize the corridor of villages from Hürtgen to Bergstein running along a plateau that extended to the Roer River crossing. Bergstein and the high ground behind the town were crucial to the battle: “Possession of the two villages spelled control of a sizable segment of the only good road network between the Hürtgen Forest and the Roer [River] and . . . the Brandenberg-Bergstein ridge, the most commanding terrain in the vicinity. Capture of the ridge would enable the V Corps to gain the Roer [River] . . . and at last provide the long-sought secure right flank for the main drive of the VII Corps [into Germany]. The Brandenberg-Bergstein ridge also was important to any drive that subsequently might be aimed at the Roer River dams.”
The butcher’s bill for clearing Kleinhau and the nearby town of Hürtgen would end up costing approximately 1,247 American dead and wounded.
