CHAPTER 41

Crossing the Roer

“Take your clothes off, Rugg.”

Ruggiero looked at the churning, icy waters of the Roer and replied, “Jesus, we’ll freeze our asses off.”

“No, you won’t,” McBride insisted as he began pulling off his own boots and socks.

“We got to the river, and we had to cross it. There was no damn way of crossing it without getting wet,” recalled Ruggie. While most of the men kept their uniforms and boots on, McBride and Ruggiero and a few others took them off. “For most of the guys, it was up to their waists. For me, it was up to my neck. Most of the guys kept their pants and their boots on, which was the worst thing to do. You could get frostbite,” Ruggiero later pointed out.

When he stepped into the cold, rushing water of the river, Ruggie’s thoughts went back to the day of the landing at Pointe du Hoc. “Jesus, I thought the water was cold on D-Day at forty-two degrees,” he thought to himself. “This is like ice!”

Dog Company forded a section of the river that was about thirty feet wide. They crossed carefully, holding their weapons above their heads. Once they got to the other side, the few Rangers who decided to strip felt justified in their decision. Ruggiero recalled, “When I got across, I had all my clothes. As wet as both of us were, we put our dry clothes on, even though we were wet. The clothes felt warm.”

For two weeks prior to the crossing, Dog had conducted extensive reconnaissance patrols on the other side of the river to size up German strength. The Germans were dug in but were slowly exiting the area, leaving token forces behind. Soon after the crossing, Dog encountered one such member of a remaining squad, a lone German soldier carrying a handkerchief. He offered to surrender. His unit had left him behind with a handful of other men to serve as a doomed rear guard.

As the Rangers advanced on the eastern side of the Roer, they met little resistance. One of the few casualties Dog suffered after crossing the river resulted from a mine. The esteemed Joe Stevens, known for his ever present, unlit cigar, had recently received a battlefield commission as second lieutenant. While leading a patrol, he stepped on an antipersonnel mine known as a “Bouncing Betty.” When the Ranger’s foot touched the mine, it triggered the device, unleashing deadly metal shot packed inside. It sprayed the air, severely wounding the newly minted Ranger officer.

After crossing the river, Dog joined Easy and Fox and once again formed into Task Force Slater, retaining the name they had used during the Brest campaign, this time attaching to the 102nd Cavalry Division.

Without infantry support clearing the way, columns of tanks are extremely vulnerable to antitank guns, mines, and infantry wielding deadly Panzerfausts. The 102nd had scouted out the positions ahead of them that needed to be cleared of German infantry equipped to destroy tanks. The 102nd was a venerable cavalry unit that had long since traded in its horses for half-tracks, armored cars, and light tanks as they advanced through Europe. The 102nd would depend on the Rangers to lead the way for the tanks.

Attached to the cavalrymen, the Rangers rode in armored half-tracks. Earlier, during several days of practice, the men had rehearsed dismounting and attacking a mock German unit, reminding them of their days working with a similar unit near Brest. Now in February, the mock exercises had become reality. Dog would speed along, and upon hitting German resistance, they would barrel out of the half-tracks and engage the Germans. After clearing the area, the men would mount back up and push deeper into Germany. The cav’s light tanks utilized their main guns, and the half-tracks provided fire from .30- and .50-caliber machine guns. The unit included M5A1 Stuart tanks, M8 Greyhound armored cars, and M3 half-tracks. The 102nd was also equipped with the newest and most advanced tank in the American arsenal: the extremely fast and agile M24 Chaffee tanks, which boasted 75 mm guns.

Through the first week of March, one of the coldest European winters on record continued to torment Dog Company. Snow pelted Task Force Slater as they continued to penetrate enemy territory.

Countless times, cavalrymen and Rangers would screen ahead of V Corps’ advance and dismount when they encountered German troops. “It was one town after another,” recalled Ruggiero. “We’d get into a German village, and we’d see German people—not too many of them—putting up white flags. We’d tell them, ‘If you have any weapons, bring them here. If we go looking through the houses, and if we find anything, you’re in trouble.’”

One town in particular stood out in the former tap dancer’s memory. His squad was going through the village, checking the buildings for weapons. On the way back, the street went around a bend. To ensure they wouldn’t be ambushed from the rear, the veteran Ranger trailed behind. He told the rest of the men, “You guys go ahead; I’ll bring up the rear.”

As soon as the other Rangers made the turn, Rugg looked back and saw two German soldiers in uniform, one carrying a machine pistol. Dog’s expert marksman dropped to his knee and took the hundred-yard shot. But that day, he was just carrying his carbine, which was only accurate to forty-five or fifty yards. The two rounds he fired “sailed slightly above their heads. When that happened, the taller one dropped his machine pistol and put his hands up.”

Hearing the shots, the other men in the patrol came running back from around the corner.

“What’s going on?”

“You see those two guys over there—go get ‘em,” directed the sergeant.

The Rangers quickly returned with the “soldiers” in tow. “Hey Sarge, you’re going to be surprised when you take a look at these two guys,” one said.

Ruggiero’s jaw dropped as he saw them close up. “Oh, my God!” he exclaimed. Quickly, he asked one of the German-speaking Rangers to ask the young men some questions. The translator queried, “How old are you?” The tall one responded, “Twelve.” The shorter one responded, “Nine.”

“What the hell are they doing?” stormed Ruggiero.

The boys responded through the interpreter, “This is what the Führer asked us to do.”³⁶

In another town nearby, Bill Petty came upon a startling discovery:

There was an enormous, one-story house that was large enough to billet troops. I flanked it and entered through the rear. The rooms were large, spacious, expensively furnished. It was vacant, and I walked toward the front door to get back to the outfit. As I went, I had another look at the rooms, wondering who could afford to live in such a home. When I came to the finest room near the door, I discovered a shocking surprise. At first, I thought that a beautiful little girl was asleep in a large bed. I moved closer to wake her softly so she could not be frightened. I wanted to find out where her parents were. But she could not tell me. She was not asleep, and she would never be again. Nor could I frighten her. That was all past, for she was dead. She was laid out for burial in a white dress that reached beyond her feet. Five red roses rested across her young breast. They must have indicated her age, for she looked about five. Beauty had not left her at death.

I stood motionless and quiet by the bed, as though I too was dead. I sort of wished I was at that moment. I wished I could take her place, leave the lovely child to play, to run and jump, and to giggle and laugh. As I was having these thoughts, I saw the cause of death. Shrapnel. She must have been outside playing when the shell landed, for the house only had minor damage. Shrapnel it was. The left leg was missing from the knee down. The left arm was gone at the elbow—thus, the need for the long dress and the roses where the forearm had been.

The war had not bothered me much throughout the months of combat, except when friends were killed, and certainly not much concern for myself. To me, it was a miserable and horrible affair that involved the Germans trying to kill us and we attempting to do the same to them. No thought had ever entered my mind pertaining to the terrible results to helpless and frightened children as we struggled throughout our own madness until this day. While scrutinizing the little girl’s wounds and their source, I realized the predicament that thousands of children were trapped if they were unfortunate enough to live in active battle zones. Many had already, and still more would meet the same fate as the beauty lying motionless and alone in the large bed. These facts, as I absorbed them, upset me deeply. I still think about them at seventy-four.

In another nameless town, Task Force Slater encountered more German holdouts. “They told us to go in and wipe ‘em out. We went in there like hell, you know, storming in there. We had no problem taking the town. We went in maybe about 5:30 or 6:00 P.M. and kicked their ass out of there and took the crossroads,” recounted Vince Hagg.

Dog Company then headed for an empty field just outside the village and dug in for the night. However, having occupied the village for some time, some of the recently displaced German soldiers had girlfriends among the civilians. What happened next reminded the Rangers of the incident at Loc Maria near Brest. “When it got dark, the girlfriends went back to the Germans and told them where we were,” Hagg remembered. “We got pounded by artillery. We got hit the whole night. Men were constantly yelling, ‘Medic! Medic! Medic!’ They answered the call. They had to have guts to do that. When daybreak finally broke, we stuck our heads out of the foxhole. I was spitting blood from the concussion, that’s how bad it was, the whole night.”

Hagg continued, reflecting on the memory, “The shelling would get to you, being in battle day in and day out. Have you ever seen a shell-shocked guy? It is something to see. It’s scary. They’re half crying; their eyes are way open. They’ve just gone berserk.”

The heavy shelling aggravated an old wound inside Hoffman. “I heard the shell come in. It must have triggered something.” In his mind, Hoffman was back on Hill 400 where an artillery round nearly killed him. The incident in the Hürtgen had been so traumatic that he just blocked it from his memory—until now. Under the constant shelling, Hoffman relived his traumatic, devastating experience at Bergstein. With his nerves at the breaking point, his eyes grew to the size of saucers, but the stunned Ranger couldn’t see anything. He sat in frozen silence. A combat medic tagged him as “severe psycho-neurosis” and brought Hoffman to a rear area.

For what seemed like eternity—it could have been hours or days—he lay on the stretcher in the back of an ambulance. Eventually, when the rear door was opened, Hoffman emerged. “The bright sunshine and cold air hit my face.” To his horror, Hoffman saw a uniformed German soldier looking down at him. Jolted by the sight, the Ranger’s brain took several seconds to register what was going on: The German orderly was a POW pressed into service. Hoffman realized that he and the other wounded soldiers were still in American hands. Eventually, the Army sent him back to Paris, where a psychiatrist evaluated him and stamped his papers for evacuation to the United Kingdom.

Hoffman would never return to Dog Company. Instead, he would spend most of the remaining months of the war in Britain as an MP. Recovered from the trauma, he would later retire from the U.S. Army as a master sergeant.

On March 30, the enemy suddenly ambushed trailing elements of the 102nd, seizing the cavalry’s kitchen truck. Fanatical elements of the SS still had sufficient strength after multiple attempts to clean them out had failed. The attack began when “an enemy bazooka shell struck a light tank, instantly killing three Rangers.” As the Rangers pursued, the Germans opened up “with machine guns, mortars, and antitank fire.” Task Force Slater was facing two hundred SS troops from the 6th SS Mountain Division. The Rangers were “pinned down, and tanks had to be used to evacuate the wounded.” Eventually the Rangers broke off the attack and continued pushing forward. But with their newly captured American booty, the SS undoubtedly ate well for the next few days.

Despite this brief German victory, the food-truck skirmish was not emblematic of what was happening in the rest of the Third Reich. Germany was collapsing. The enemy’s resistance seemed to melt away in front of Task Force Slater as the Germans made a headlong retreat toward the last major, natural barrier on the western front—the Rhine River. The rest of the massive German army sat encircled in the Ruhr Valley, and the Russians were breaking through in the east, driving towards Berlin.

Task Force Slater pushed further and further into Germany, traversing via the infamous autobahn network of highways. Along the way, Dog, Easy, and Fox captured a German airfield, including several operational aircraft.

The Rangers eventually crossed the Rhine River at night on March 26. Quite anti-climactically, the Rangers rolled easily across one of the largest pontoon bridges ever created; another unit had secured the historic waterway days earlier.

The long, brutal march from Pointe du Hoc to final victory was almost over.