Dog Company

One of the CCR officers described the arrival of the Rangers: “We sat down for the counterattack, which we expected would come in the [next] morning. We had a faint promise from [V] Corps of the Second Rangers, but we weren’t too hopeful. About midnight, a guy came down the road, and two others—each one five yards behind the other. They were three Ranger lieutenants. They asked for enemy positions and the road to take. They said they were ready to go. We talked the situation over with the officers. They stepped out and said, ‘Let’s go, men.’ We heard the tommy guns click, and without saying a word, the Rangers moved out. Our morale went up in a hurry.”

The CCR had defended Bergstein valiantly, but they were a spent force by the time the Rangers arrived. The Combat Command had suffered many casualties and was greatly reduced in strength.

In the early morning hours of December 7, Dog Company and most of the 2nd Ranger Battalion started filtering into the cellars of Bergstein. With just a small part of the town under American control, the Allied position resembled a very thin stiletto that had pierced the German lines. Only the road back toward Brandenburg was available for withdrawal. German troops surrounded the U.S. troops on three flanks.

Accompanied by F Company’s “Big Stoop,” Lomell attempted to find Duke Slater, who had set up Ranger headquarters in one of the cellars. After wading through several flooded basements, Lomell and Masny eventually located Slater. From his watery command center, The Duke ordered a reconnaissance patrol to determine the best way to attack the hill. “I was given that patrol,” Lomell explained. “As the patrol leader, I was to take five men with me. F Company was also to choose five men. It was led by a young lieutenant, McClure was his name. This was about 3:00 in the morning of December 7. We were to go reconnoiter Hill 400 and its environs—the approach to it, and everything—and bring back that information to the staff officers at battalion headquarters who were in a cellar nearby. My duty was to take my patrol and reconnoiter the right side of Hill 400. Visualize it cut in half—F Company on the left and us on the right.”

Lomell’s five-man patrol took off down the street. Crouching low and hugging the buildings to avoid detection, they moved into German-occupied Bergstein. Passing a partially burned building, Lomell turned around and noticed that one of his men’s flashlights had started shining in the hip pocket of his combat jacket. Sternly, Lomell whispered, “Mack, for God’s sake, put out that light.”

Quickly, the man doused the light, but within fifteen seconds, three mortar rounds landed where the light—and the patrol—had just been. The men scurried down the street towards the edge of town, near a stone Catholic church dedicated to the men who had died in the Crusades: the Church of Moorish Martyrdom.

As the small group approached the church, they ran into what they thought was an American outpost. Lomell asked the GI manning the position if there were any Germans between him and the church. The GI responded that he didn’t think so and that he didn’t think any Germans were left in the town. The group then proceeded to the church where they were greeted cryptically by a low voice saying, “Halt.”

Sensing that the speaker was probably German, Lomell chose to ignore the command. The patrol made their way down toward a sunken road in front of Hill 400. Named by the Allies for its elevation of 400 meters, Hill 400 loomed in front of them like an “upside down ice cream cone.” Hill 400 was the crucial promontory in the Brandenberg-Bergstein ridge, the “most commanding terrain in the vicinity.”

Lomell recalled, “When we got there, the two patrols, we decided to do it a little bit differently. In each group, we decided to leave three down below, which would total six to patrol the base of the hill to determine where the German machine guns were positioned or any other positions. We were to do this and not be caught or be heard, not be seen. It was supposed to be very quiet. We moved very silently and didn’t breach security at all. I took a couple men and went up the right side and McClure took a couple men up the other side. We went up towards the top of the hill, at least as far as you could get without getting caught. After we reconnoitered, we decided to make our way back to the base of the hill.” The ten-man group from F and D Companies then made its way back to Slater’s command post and reported its findings.

Based on the Corps’ and Lomell’s reconnaissance reports, Slater decided that the best way to attack would be to approach the hill in a frontal assault, since it “offered the best chance of success,” rather than hit it from the sides, which had been heavily mined. Like Pointe du Hoc, it was to be a frontal assault—another potential suicide mission.

According to the plan of attack, Easy Company would jump off at 5:40 A.M. to clear out the rest of Bergstein. Fox Company and Dog Company would move up to the sunken road. At 7:30 A.M., Fox and Dog would cross the hundred-yard field to assault Hill 400.

As Easy Company pushed through the town early in the morning, they “surprised a number of the enemy at breakfast in a Bergstein home. One grenade burst sufficed in the taking of thirteen prisoners.” While Easy Company secured Bergstein, the men of Dog Company, sheltering in the town’s cellars, prepared for battle. Bill Hoffman recalls descending into a cellar. “It was like a swimming pool with a house on top of it. It had eighteen inches of water in it with a concrete floor. The water was up over the top of my Corcoran jump boots. I will never forget how dark it was in there.”

While stuck in the watery cellar, Hoffman experienced an inconvenient need to defecate. “Where am I going to go? I don’t have any toilet paper. So I got my pants down, and I just squatted down and let her go. I think I got it on my legs, I don’t know. I used my handkerchief—threw that away.”

Sitting near Hoffman, Bud Potratz perched on a pile of coal. “We took off our packs and our overcoats and we cleaned our weapons and got ready.” Potratz could smell the heavy odor of cigarette smoke. He had recently received a carton of cigarettes from his aunt for Christmas and had distributed them to his squad. As the men were smoking and cleaning their weapons, Potratz’s squad leader turned to him and said, “We’re going to attack something called ‘Sugarloaf Hill’ [Hill 400].”

Sergeant Hank Zyrkowski or “Zeke,” a replacement who joined Dog Company’s mortar platoon near Brest, also sat nearby. He later reflected, “The basement was flooded with water from the rain and snow. The homes were hit and they were opened right down to the basement. We got down there and I just tried to stay dry, but my boots and legs were in water.”

As Potratz looked down at his watch, he noticed the hand approaching 7:30 A.M. Sharik then shouted, “Let’s go!”

Vince Hagg later described the scene: “When the guy opened the door on top of the stairs, it seemed the Germans knew we were coming. Flares all over the place. The artillery came in like hell. I started down the street. A shell came in. Kenny Harsch was hit. The lieutenant behind me was hit. Captain McBride shouted: ‘Hagg, take care of Harsch.’”

The men of Dog Company clambered up the stairs of the cellars. “The minute that we came out of the buildings, it was daylight,” Ruggiero remembered.

In his mind’s eye, Ruggiero can still see the picture of the first platoons heading for the hill in his mind. “My God, I don’t think anybody is going to get through this as far as the church,” he thought. “Guys were getting hit. Guys were crawling, holding their leg in their arm. That’s when McBride said, ‘Are you ready, Ruggie?’

“I’m about as ready as I’m gonna be.”

Potratz passed Captain McBride, who pointed at Hill 400 in the distance and said, “There it is.”

As Dog Company hit the streets, German shells and mortar rounds rained down upon them. Potratz recalled that “it was coming down from all sides because Bergstein was like a finger” poking into the German lines.

Fox Company’s Herm Stein recalled crouching in a street next to a burned-out house, “Captain Slater was dashing up and down the column with words of encouragement. . . . He outwardly had more dash and abandon than Rudder, but not the caring and concern and that know-how of the right decision.”

A shell landed in a squad of Dog Company men, striking Bill Hoffman, Lieutenant Lawrence Schelper, and Kenny Harsch.

Hagg saw Schelper lying on the ground. “I asked him if he was hurt or anything. He couldn’t hear. He was lying there in a position where he was shaking.” Also stunned by the shelling, Bill Hoffman blacked out. With the help of several of his foxhole buddies, Hagg got Schelper, Harsch, and Hoffman into the house. Harsch had sustained a massive wound on his face, gouging out his eye. Inside the house, they ran into Zeke Zyrkowski.

Harsch turned to Hagg, “Vince, I think I lost an eye.”

Hagg played down the wound, saying “You’ll be OK,” but knowing full well that the injury would end the promising baseball career Harsch had begun before the war.

Shell-shocked, Hoffman wouldn’t wake up until two days later. “I remember somebody saying sleep was the answer. I spent two days sleeping in our rear area [at Hill 400], remembering nothing.” He returned to Dog about a week later.²⁷

“The Germans were using white phosphorous in their shells,” remembered Zyrkowski. “It burned right through one man’s overcoat, but it didn’t penetrate to his skin.” To avoid the fire, Zeke and his companions quickly dodged into another house.

“Holy crap! That was close!”

D Company continued moving toward the jump-off point near the base of the hill. They saw several German soldiers with their hands behind their heads, surrendering as they ran toward the rear.

The Rangers passed by the Church of Moorish Martyrdom. As Morris Webb turned to his left, he noticed three dead Germans sprawled across the stones steps leading into the church courtyard. The men passed under a Gothic archway and looked up, noticing that the church’s steeple resembled a witch’s hat. They made their way toward their next objective, a sunken road near the foot of Hill 400.

Dog moved through the cemetery adjacent to the church as German artillery fell on them. Potratz noted the constant need to keep running: “We lost a lot of men in the cemetery from German mortars. I remember the tombstones were knocked over; some of the graves themselves were ripped open. We just kept moving. It was touch and go all the way. . . . I could see our aid man . . . coming up. . . . He was patching these guys up. We just kept moving.”

D Company started to line up on the right side of the road, while F Company took the left. Within a few minutes, the companies were in place. Looking ahead, they could see an open field. Potratz recalled, “The terrain was about 75–100 yards of open field. There were two buildings over there that were pretty much gutted from shellfire.” Despite the heavy mortar fire raining down on the field, Dog could see their objective—Hill 400.