CHAPTER 29

Bergstein

Two days earlier, December 4, 1944, Combat Command Reserve’s attack on Bergstein

Task Force Hamberg, an element of a Combat Command Reserve unit (CCR), advanced up the road from Kleinhau to their objective—Bergstein. The officers dispatched a twelve-man patrol to locate barbed wire entanglements and mines and to determine the size of the German force in the town. Hugging the ditches to avoid the German mines and booby traps, the patrol crawled through the darkness until it reached the edge of Bergstein.

After mapping the location of the German observation posts and positions, the patrol returned to report and then waited for the jump-off time for the first attack.

Soon after, the attack on Bergstein began. GIs from several companies rode on the backs of M4 Sherman tanks moving toward the town.

The Germans were waiting. From their observation positions on top of Castle Hill, they fired a massive artillery barrage, forcing the American soldiers to dismount. The Germans had also positioned several 75 mm antitank guns in the town. A direct hit from one of those guns destroyed the task force’s lead tank.

“The companies plowed into Bergstein, firing with every gun they had, then veered to the left edge of town. The two platoon sergeants of the leading C Company platoons were killed in the attack and their platoons were disorganized.”

The fighting devolved into house-to-house and hand-to-hand combat. A German officer rose from his foxhole near one gun and “raised his gun to fire on the advancing infantrymen. Private First Class Lester Aurand shot him squarely in the forehead before he could aim his gun.” The GIs captured one antitank gun with a round still in its breach.

The German defense of Bergstein fell on the shoulders of the 2nd Battalion, Grenadier Regiment 980, which was led by a remarkably able officer, Captain Adolf Thomae.²⁵ Commanding from a reinforced-concrete Westwall bunker about one hundred yards north of Hill 400, Thomae attempted to defend the town from the Allied onslaught and later organized the German counterattacks following the loss of the hill. He would receive the Knight’s Cross, one of Germany’s highest military decorations, for the defense of the town.

Bergstein and the high ground behind it, Hill 400, or Castle Hill, were crucially important to the Germans. The American attack on Bergstein fell less than two weeks before the Germans were scheduled to launch Operation Wacht am Rhein, their major winter offensive in the Ardennes. As they continued to battle in the Hürtgen, the American army was completely unaware of Hitler’s imminent counteroffensive.

On a clear day, an observer on Hill 400 could see six or seven miles into the German rear areas, all the way to Düren, Germany, and other nearby towns, where a huge German force was secretly massing. American capture of Hill 400 could possibly expose the northern portion of the Wacht Am Rhein buildup to American eyes and spoil Hitler’s strategic surprise. If the Americans could reach and cross the Roer River, which was just beyond Bergstein and Hill 400, they could “jeopardize the execution of the Ardennes offensive.”

With the American penetration so close to the staging area for their upcoming offensive, the Germans immediately began a counterattack to take back Bergstein.