THERE COULD BE NO CROSSING OF THE RHINE UNLESS THE Allies could breach Hitler’s infamous Siegfried Line, a nearly four-hundred-mile fortification of bunkers, pillboxes, and tank traps, stretching from the Netherlands on the north to Switzerland on the south.
After the D-Day invasion, Hitler ordered the line, also called the Westwall, to be refortified and strengthened, primarily with slave labor. Constructed of concrete and steel, the barrier was formidable. It was protected by minefields and rows of “dragons’ teeth,” small pyramid-shaped fortifications made of reinforced concrete designed to impede the movement of tanks. Troops who managed to get beyond these defenses faced concrete pillboxes housing machine guns that could sweep vast areas of land.
When the 45th Division began its assault on the line on March 17, the 179th Infantry Regiment was at its center. An account of that day was captured in Thunderbird: A History of the 45th Infantry Division by Guy Nelson:
[The] assault was slow and deadly. Under a protective artillery and tank barrage leveled at gun emplacements, tanks and infantry advanced on the dragon’s teeth. Infantry units blasted openings in the concrete rows and the tanks moved through. The tanks then leveled their firepower at the concrete pillboxes and infantry units moved up to [take them out] one by one.
By day’s end, twenty-four pillboxes had been knocked out.
The resulting gaps created openings that the troops capitalized upon the following day. Each regiment methodically blasted its way forward through the line against withering opposition. By the end of the second day, eighty-six more pillboxes had been destroyed and two hundred and sixty-eight German soldiers had been taken prisoner. Despite some occasional counterattacks, the Germans were clearly on the defensive — the backbone of their defenses was shattered.
On March 19, Teen Palm found a moment to write to his mother:
I am battling my way through Germany and doing OK. It’s a case of these people getting a dose of their own medicine. The towns we have captured so far have taken a beating and we had to put up a good fight to get in.
On March 20, the German Army abandoned its positions. Throughout the day, the German withdrawal became more and more disorganized. Large columns of troops were captured as the retreat became a rout.
The 45th Division renewed its attack and quickly overtook the Germans, capturing nearly two thousand soldiers who were attempting to flee.
“All three 179th battalions sped after the enemy, taking 451 prisoners of war in the day,” wrote Nelson. “They assaulted the city of Homburg, fighting through it street by street and house by house, until finally, in the late hours of the night, all enemy soldiers had been captured or killed.”
That night, Palm wrote to friends in Salisbury, asking a favor — to buy Helen “the biggest and nicest orchid in town for Easter.”
Now, the 179th headed for Bliesbruck, fifteen miles southwest of Homburg. The only route was across an open field. The soldiers were greeted with heavy bursts from a machine gun in a concrete bunker as well as sniper fire. After several minutes, a soldier crept next to the side of the machine-gun bunker and tossed in a grenade. Then he moved in and gunned down the four German soldiers inside. With the machine gun silenced, Palm’s Company B moved into town. For several hours, it moved house to house, killing German soldiers and taking others prisoner until the town was secured.
Teen described the battle in a letter to Helen:
I have been riding on tanks, fighting from town to town in a fast push which has put us a good ways into Germany.
I can tell you our first battle in Germany and the toughest so far was at Bliesbruck. We fought like mad for two days against an SS company and when we finished, the town was leveled by tanks. We left it a ghost town. We finally broke the back of the Siegfried line.
Up next was the Rhine River.
The Allied Command ordered a series of crossings at different locations along the Rhine. In a daring stroke, on March 7, 1945, the 9th Armored Division seized the Remagen Bridge, the only viable standing bridge across the river, and quickly rushed across to establish a beachhead. The 5th Infantry Division, part of General George S. Patton’s Third Army, crossed at Oppenheim on March 22.
The 45th Division was ordered to cross the Rhine on March 26 near Worms, a formidable task because the river at that location was one thousand feet wide and seventeen feet deep.
Captain Robertson summoned Palm and ordered him to organize Company B into boat teams. Palm had to combine some platoons because the battalion had suffered serious casualties during the assault on the Siegfried Line and was depleted. He called the platoon leaders together and handed out boat assignments and maps.
He explained that upon crossing the river, the men would have to traverse a narrow strip of open land before being confronted by a fifty-foot-wide canal. Beyond the canal was a heavy patch of woods. Here, according to aerial reconnaissance, Germans were dug in and had machine guns in positions so they could easily cover all river approaches. The Americans’ mission: clear out the Germans from beyond the canal and sweep through the woods.
At 8:00 p.m. on March 25, Company B was loaded onto trucks and driven to the village of Osthofen. From there the men moved on foot to an orchard bordering the river. The crossing was set for 2:30 a.m. Eighteen boats were already in place at the edge of the woods, stashed under trees and camouflage netting.
The moon was obscured by clouds, but there was still enough light for the men to make out forms moving in the darkness. The troops huddled under cover of the orchard. For several hours, they could only wait. They were prohibited from speaking out loud — all commands and instructions had to be whispered — for fear of giving away their location.
As they waited, the men heard the sound of approaching aircraft — German bombers flying so low that the troops could see fire squirting from the exhaust pipes of their gasoline-powered motors. The planes dropped scores of flares, lighting the sky. As the planes flew into the distance, several were hit — it was impossible to tell if they were attacked by other planes or hit by antiaircraft fire. One plane exploded in the air.
Anxiously, the silent soldiers wondered whether the Germans were trying to signal that they knew the river was about to be crossed. Some feared they were headed for a slaughter. One soldier panicked, shot himself in the foot, and was immediately dragged out of the orchard. Every man held his breath, wondering if the gunshot had given away their presence.
Palm stood under an apple tree, going through a mental checklist. Two years earlier, he would have been craving a cigarette, but he had kicked the habit many months before. Many of his men — boys, really — had only taken up the habit since they had arrived at the front. There would be no smoking on this night, however.
Palm was soon joined by Robertson, and both hunkered down to rest and wait.
Robertson had given his orders earlier. “On reaching the shore, the 1st and 2nd Platoons will go to the bank of the canal. The 2nd will make an end run, skirting the canal, on the right to a bridge which spans the canal. They will cross the bridge, move through the woods and set up a line of defense at the woods furthest from the river. The 3rd Platoon will follow and secure the woods facing downstream.”
Robertson had then paused.
“There can be no alternate plan,” he said. “No withdrawal.” At 2:20 a.m., messengers were sent among the troops, alerting them to start for the boats, which they were to carry fifty yards to the water’s edge. As the boats launched, their fifty-five horsepower motors sounding like a million swarming bees, the 157th Infantry Regiment opened up with supporting machine-gun fire that sent thousands of bullets screaming over the heads of the men as they sped toward the far shore. The glare of the gunfire gave the men an eerie glow as they clenched the gunwales of the boats. As they approached, white tracers from German guns pierced the darkness.
Robertson’s boat arrived first and idled in the water just short of the river bank so he could fire a flare. This was a signal for the supporting machine gun fire to halt so the soldiers would not wound or kill their comrades. Enemy rifle fire began to erupt from the shore. One American, part of the 2nd Platoon headed for the bridge over the canal, avoided the sudden burst of German machine gun by diving into a ditch. There he landed on top of a German soldier, who promptly surrendered and pointed out the position of the machine gun. Moments later, the gun was silenced by grenades.
Swiftly, hundreds of men hit the banks and moved forward. The assault was so effective that some Germans surrendered while still in their foxholes, as their positions were overrun in the darkness. Two soldiers were assigned to escort seven prisoners to a boat, but as they walked to the shore, they were ambushed by other Germans. Both Americans were shot and killed. Troops sent to the rear recaptured the prisoners and caught the attackers.
Palm moved stealthily and steadily into the woods, firing at anything that moved. Robertson directed the men through the woods and into the nearby town of Gross Rohrheim, which had already been secured by Company A.
Company B lost two men — both killed — but was otherwise intact. The company had killed five Germans and captured twenty-two. By dusk that day, March 26, more than two hundred Germans had been captured.
The advance gained momentum. Town after town began to fall as the 45th Division picked up speed. By April 6, the 179th was hard at work evacuating three thousand five hundred prisoners of war taken in just a few days. Because transport vehicles were in such demand for hauling supplies and men, when some German soldiers threw down their weapons and raised their arms, American troops took the weapons and ordered them to march to the rear. The Americans didn’t want to spare a fighting man to guard prisoners.
On April 12, there came a report that gave all pause: Franklin D. Roosevelt was dead.
“In the foxholes of Germany there was shock, disbelief, silence,” the regimental history of the 179th regiment noted. “The American soldier had lost his [Commander in Chief] on the threshold of final victory. But more than that, he had lost his greatest exponent of humanity and peace, his spokesman for order and sanity in the coming chaos of the post war world. He had lost the man who knew what he was fighting for.”
In response, the 45th Division seemed to fight with increased fury, according to the regimental history: “The Germans countered with flak wagon fire, machine gun fire and every field gun they could hurriedly bring up. Their infantry fought stubbornly.”
And then came German jets, aircraft so fast that Allied antiaircraft guns were useless. “In one moment American bombers glittered in the sunlight overhead, droning on toward their targets, in the next, three were hurtling down to death and two jet-propelled enemy aircraft were already disappearing — specks in the blue,” the regimental history noted.
It was perhaps part of one final, if loud, gasp. According to Allied Intelligence, Hitler was likely consolidating his remaining troops and armaments. American troops felt an urgency to drive through southern Germany, reach Munich, and capture Hitler before he and his generals could make one last and certainly bloody stand.