At 3:00 p.m., Danube 1 commander Hauptmann Koehl spotted enemy tanks advancing along the road toward Hammelburg. They were speeding along Reichsstrasse 27, having joined the highway a little east of Aschenroth. Koehl ordered his gunners to acquire targets.
Abe Baum had not been briefed on the precise location of his objective. He only knew that Oflag XIII-B lay a little to the south of Hammelburg. As his column charged along with Hammelburg now due east, Baum saw a track curving off to the right, going east up a rise. Captain Baum now decided to follow that road in the hope of finding the camp. Over his radio, he ordered the column to swing to the right once they reached the intersection.
As the column’s lead tanks neared the intersection, Danube 1 opened fire. Seconds later, 75 mm shells came whistling from the north and exploded all around the Shermans. But the column was moving so fast on the flat that not a single German round found its target. The lead American tanks immediately began returning fire, and their crews would feel certain that they had knocked out two of the tank destroyers. In fact, the American shells, hitting the hull-down Hetzers’ solid front armor, did little damage. The shelling did have one plus for the Americans: it hit telephone poles beside the road and brought down the local phone lines. At that moment, German staff who had remained at their posts at the Hammelburg post office found that all telephone and telegraph communication into the town from the west had been severed.
* * *
AT OFLAG XIII-B, the commandant, Generalmajor von Goeckel, summoned the senior Serbian and American officers to his office. Oberst Hoppe had informed the commandant of the approach of the American armored column and of his inability to guarantee that the Americans would not get through his ad hoc defenses.
When SAO Colonel Goode arrived at Goeckel’s office, the general had his German coal scuttle helmet on the desk and his automatic pistol holstered on his hip. The senior Serbian officer, Colonel General Brastich, had arrived ahead of Goode. Camp liaison officer Hauptmann Hans Fuchs proceeded to translate into English for Goode as the agitated commandant informed the pair that an American column was approaching the oflag with the probable intent of liberating it. As a consequence, Goeckel was intending to speed up the ordered transfer of prisoners from the camp.
The news of the approaching American column cheered Goode, but his Serbian colleague remained stone-faced. Goode proceeded to convince the commandant to stall the transfer of American troops for twenty-four hours, until the picture had cleared, rather than put prisoners in harm’s way outside the camp. Goode’s real motive was to ensure that he and his men were in the camp when American troops arrived to liberate it. But his argument rang true with the pragmatic German general. Under the Geneva Convention, POW camp commandants were required to take all steps to prevent their prisoners from becoming casualties should hostilities arise. To do otherwise would constitute a war crime.1
While agreeing to stall the American transfer, Goeckel warned both Goode and his Serbian counterpart that the camp would be defended by troops answering to Oberst Hoppe, not by the camp guards, and that the attacking Americans could be expected to fire into the camp in response. “I beg you to remember,” the commandant added, “that the Americans will be firing in your direction when they fire at us.”2
Pop Goode could only nod grimly.
Goeckel urged the two senior POW officers to get their men to take cover in either the camp’s air raid trenches or their barracks. As Goode and Brastich departed to warn their men, Goeckel ordered his guards to leave their posts and move to the neighboring Stalag VIII-B camp. He had orders from Berlin to march the Russian prisoners from Stalag VIII-B and relocate them to the north. For the march, he planned to combine his hundred guards from XIII-B with the guards at the Russian compound.
Goode left Goeckel’s office accompanied by Hauptmann Fuchs. Outside, both heard the sound of heavy guns firing beyond the hills to the west and looked at each other. This was the start of the engagement between Task Force Baum and Danube 1. Both men knew this signaled the approach of the American column, although that knowledge stimulated very different thoughts in each man’s mind. As Goode hurried to the American barracks to prepare his men for liberation, Fuchs went to the Serbian compound and sought out the Serbian adjutant, Dragon Yosefovitch.
When Fuchs found the Serb, he gave him the key to the camp armory. Fuchs knew that Yosefovitch was a royalist and opposed to Serbian communists in the camp. He told Yosefovitch to use spare rifles in the armory to arm his fellow royalists against the communists and keep order in their compound. Both men doubted that the US Army would be interested in liberating anyone other than Americans.
At this moment, the camp’s guards were coming down from their goon towers around the camp perimeter, bringing their heavy machine guns with them. At the same time, the recently arrived men of Signal Training and Replacement Battalion 10 were being joined by local men of the Volkssturm as they dug trenches outside the camp. The defenders set up machine guns and a 20 mm antiaircraft gun at the trenches and in stone houses nearby. Apart from Panzerfausts, this would be their only defense against the American tanks. What was more, few of these defenders had ever fired a shot in anger. Not in this war anyway.
* * *
FOLLOWING ABE BAUM’S orders, his column was turning right and pushing up the hill. But the new route put the American vehicles side-on to the Hetzers of Danube 1, and the gradient slowed them down, making them easier targets. German gunners zeroed in on the lead Sherman. Bracketed with shells, it took a direct hit, erupted in flame and halted. The next Sherman was also hit, but its crew managed to get it off the road before they bailed out. It would later be recovered and taken over by the crew whose Sherman had thrown a track earlier in the day.
Five hundred yards up the slope, the road widened at a prewar tourist lookout, and Baum ordered his three self-propelled guns to position themselves there, off the road, to lay down covering fire as the rest of the column labored up the hill. The lead Sherman, now burning fiercely and blocking the road, had to be shoved aside to allow this to happen. As the SPGs were getting into place at the lookout, another Sherman and a halftrack were hit by shells from the Hetzers.
Apparently there was not enough room at the lookout for all three self-propelled guns, for only two went into action. With other American vehicles struggling by behind them, the SPGs began firing at the Hetzers a thousand yards away, first with smoke shells to mask the American column, then with 105 mm armor-piercing rounds.
Twenty-four-year-old Technical Sergeant Charles Graham had been in command of the SPG troop for only two days. His predecessor, a lieutenant, had lost his life during the battle for Aschaffenburg. As Graham’s two 105 mm guns were pounding away at the Hetzers, he spotted movement on Highway 27. Heading toward the German tank destroyers’ position came a small convoy of German Hanomag halftracks. Graham ordered his gunner to alter range and target.
A minute later, a 105 mm round from Graham’s SPG plowed into one of the German halftracks. The vehicle exploded in a fireball that billowed into the afternoon sky. Engulfed in flames, it rolled to a halt. The explosion was so fierce that it detonated the loads of the remaining halftracks in the German convoy. All had been carrying gasoline for Hauptmann Koehl’s Hetzers. Graham felt the heat from the blazing German trucks all the way up at his lookout position. The exact number of halftracks destroyed is disputed. Graham put the number at six. German records say it was three. Either way, the Hanomags were in flames, and the Hetzers had been deprived of precious fuel.
Meanwhile, Captain Baum was having trouble keeping his column moving. Bumping back down the slope in his jeep, passing burning American vehicles, he found that the German fire had sent a number of his men bailing out of their halftracks to seek cover on the ground. Baum angrily ordered every driver back into his stationary vehicle. He finally got the column moving again, and it eventually cleared the hill and disappeared from the view of Koehl and his gunners, who ceased fire.
Task Force Baum left behind the wreckage of two Shermans, an M3, five halftracks and two jeeps, all chalked up to Koehl’s Hetzers. The American halftracks were burning brightly, for, like the incinerated Hanomags 1,500 yards away, they had been carrying fuel— fuel that was intended to get them all back to American lines. Task Force Baum’s only fuel supplies now consisted of the gasoline remaining in vehicles’ tanks and the fuel being carried in jerry cans on each.
The Hetzers now also pulled out. Hauptmann Koehl shepherded them back into Hammelburg, then northeast toward Euerdorf, a hamlet halfway between Hammelburg and Bad Kissingen. Unlike Baum, Koehl had the capacity to resupply. That night, fuel and ammunition would be sent by train from Schweinfurt to Danube 1 at Euerdorf. Meanwhile, up at his location at the lookout, Sergeant Charlie Graham held his position with two SPGs until the Hetzers had disappeared to the north. Because the SPGs were built on the chassis of Sherman tanks, Koehl would mistakenly report that, when he withdrew at 4:30, two American tanks remained in position, with their guns apparently positioned to cover Hammelburg’s Saale River bridge.
Once the tank destroyers disappeared from view, Sergeant Graham ordered his guns to follow the remainder of Task Force Baum.
* * *
HAD KOEHL FOLLOWED Hauptmann Eggemann’s orders and gone to Burgsinn via Gemünden, he would have missed Task Force Baum, as Kampfgruppe Gehrig did. At 4:00 p.m., Hauptmann Gehrig’s buses had reached Burgsinn only for the captain to be informed by residents that the American column had passed through the town hours earlier and crossed the Sinn via Burgsinn’s still-intact bridge.
Gehrig found Wehrmacht engineers at the bridge, belatedly about to destroy it, but he convinced the officer in charge to hold off. Believing the American column to be the advance guard of General Patton’s army, and thinking that more American forces could not be far behind, Gehrig, on his own initiative, began deploying his cadets west of the town in reconnaissance platoons to warn of the approach of more American tanks.
Shortly afterward, a dispatch rider arrived in Burgsinn by motorcycle, bearing new orders from Hauptmann Eggemann. He had by this time learned that the American task force was fighting outside Hammelburg. Eggemann also knew that in dispatching Gehrig to Burgsinn he’d sent the cadets on a wild goose chase. Eggemann now ordered the only combat group that was responding to his orders to tail Task Force Baum to Hammelburg and engage it. Gehrig recalled his recon platoons and again put them aboard the MAN buses. Kampfgruppe Gehrig then set off after the Americans, heading east.
* * *
FROM A PLATEAU atop the hill that his column had just climbed at great expense, Abe Baum surveyed Oflag XIII-B through binoculars. As he had hoped, by turning up the hill he had put the task force in sight of its objective. The sprawling twin POW camps of Hammelburg lay 1,700 yards below on a gentle slope.
On the plateau, the column reformed and waited for task force members who had earlier abandoned vehicles and now came in on foot, followed by Graham’s SPG rearguard. As Baum was briefing his remaining officers and senior NCOs, Bill Nutto came limping to join them. Despite the wounds he received at Gemünden, which had since been bandaged, the lieutenant was determined to again lead his tanks, and Baum was pleased to have him back. Baum now planned the assault on the camp.
The tanks would form a line with fifty to a hundred feet separating them from each other. The remaining M3s would be on the right, the six Shermans on the left. The infantry would be broken up into squads of six or seven men with each squad following close behind a tank in the formation. Major Stiller, the observer from General Patton’s HQ, volunteered to lead one of these squads. All other vehicles would remain up on the plateau with the SPGs poking their guns over the crest to provide covering fire for the advancing tanks and infantry.
* * *
JUST BEFORE 6:00 p.m., the four well-traveled gray MAN buses carrying Hauptmann Gehrig and his hundred officer cadets trundled into the village of Höllrich, five miles southwest of Oflag XIII-B. Minutes earlier, while on the road, Gehrig had heard the sounds of heavy guns firing in the direction of Hammelburg. So, here at Höllrich, Gehrig ordered his men to dismount and set up a roadblock on the northern side of the village.
While his cadets cut down pine trees to create the roadblock, trimming off their branches for use in camouflaging their buses, Gehrig set up a command post in a barn set back from the road. On trying to use a local telephone to contact the HQ at Lager Hammelburg to learn the situation there, Gehrig discovered that phone communication with Hammelburg was out. For the moment, he was totally in the dark about what was going on to the northeast.
Before long, a motorcycle dispatch rider found the cadet detachment. The dispatch, from Oberst Hoppe at Hammelburg, ordered Gehrig to move into the military training area to intercept the American column. But the vague order failed to specify either a route to take or a location to aim for. There were two roads into the training area. Gehrig knew that if he followed one, the Americans might use the other and bypass him. Worse, Gehrig had not been given any idea where the American column was, or where other German forces were in the area.
The order that Gehrig had received from Eggemann, Himmler’s representative, required him to destroy the American column. To Gehrig’s mind, this broad command allowed a certain amount of latitude. So, deciding to hedge his bets, he opted to remain at the roadblock with half his men and send the other half in two buses to Lager Hammelburg to satisfy Oberst Hoppe’s order.
Traveling via the uninhabited infantry training village of Bonnland, the buses would fail to encounter any elements of Task Force Baum en route. As the two MANs trundled away, Gehrig, aware that Höllrich was close to an intersection of the two roads out of the training area, sent a recon patrol on foot down the road south, toward the village of Hessdorf. His decision to stay put, and his choice of Höllrich for his roadblock, would prove key to the fate of Task Force Baum.
* * *
ON THE HILL outside Oflag XIII-B, it was around 6:00 p.m. when, with a waving arm, Captain Baum gave the signal to advance. At 5 mph, the tanks rolled down the slope, heading for the camp. Walking quickly in their wake with weapons ready, infantrymen bunched behind the tanks.
Graham’s SPG fired a 105 mm round over their heads. It hit a hay barn just outside the camp’s barbed wire perimeter fences, setting the contents alight. Graham’s crew cheered. The smoke from the burning hay soon obscured the field for both sides. There was no answering fire. Only once the line of tanks was 200 yards from the wire did the trainee signalers and pensioner militiamen in the foxholes in front of the camp open up. Spandaus jabbered. The light flak gun barked. Rifles snapped. Panzerfausts whooshed.
In response, the tanks’ machine guns raked the trenches, and their 75 mm guns boomed. As the SPGs continued to fire, the camp’s water tower was holed and began spewing water. The 20 mm flak gun took a direct hit. Its crew was wiped out. When figures in gray uniforms were spotted in the Serbian compound to the right, task force machine-gunners, mistaking Serbian prisoners for Germans, sent rounds in their direction, too. Serbs dove for cover, and tracer bullets among the rounds started fires in several Serb barracks.
Baum, from his jeep on the hill, saw concentrated fire coming from buildings to the left of his formation, and radioed Nutto to focus on them with his Shermans while the M3s held back. As Nutto complied, the Shermans turned farther to the left, exposing the infantry behind them, who were forced to scuttle around beside the tanks, which were now barely moving. Meanwhile, on the right, the M3s and their supporting infantry came to a halt.
This gave German defenders the impression that they had suppressed the American infantry until they realized that the Shermans were outflanking their men. The order to withdraw from the foxholes was given, and German defenders fell back from the trenches.
* * *
INSIDE THE CAMP, the American prisoners were hunkered down as the battle raged. At the hospital toward the rear of the compound, American medical personnel had removed all patients from their beds and laid them on the floor.
Accompanied by Johnny Waters, Pop Goode was sheltering in the SAO’s office adjacent to the hospital at the rear of the compound when he looked up to see a flushed General von Goeckel standing in his doorway with Hauptmann Fuchs at his side. Reminding Goode that the Geneva Convention prohibited fighting in POW camps, Goeckel called on him to ask the attacking Americans to cease fire. When Goode responded that he had no way of communicating with the American force, Goeckel said that he must do so.
“I am now your prisoner,” the general announced dramatically. “It is your responsibility.”3
Lieutenant Colonel Waters now volunteered to try to make contact with the American attackers and organize an end to the fighting. Goode was happy to let him try, and Goeckel ordered Fuchs to accompany Waters through German lines. The pair hurried away to accomplish the mission. While Waters located a homemade American flag that had been smuggled all the way from Schubin, Fuchs grabbed a bedsheet to use as a white flag. Three kriegie officers also eagerly joined the party—Captain Emil Stutter and Lieutenants Jim Mills and George Meskall. The five men, with Waters and Fuchs in the lead holding American and white flags high, made their way through the camp and out the gate, which had been unlocked on the commandant’s orders.
Across the road from the camp gate there stood a range of buildings, including the commandant’s residence. Turning left, the party was walking past the commandant’s house when a German soldier in camouflage smock, an enlisted man, appeared from around the building’s corner. He raised his rifle.4
“Amerikaner!” Waters called urgently to the soldier.
As it turned out, this was the worst thing Waters could have said. After all, the German signaler was defending the camp against attacking Americans. The soldier pulled the trigger. His round, fired from close range, hit the American lieutenant colonel below the right hip, and dropped him like a stone.
“Nein, nein, nein!” yelled Hauptmann Fuchs, rushing toward the private, white flag fluttering, just as the soldier was swinging his weapon toward the other members of the flag party, who were raising their hands.
“You son of a bitch!” thought Waters as he lay on the ground, unable to feel anything below the waist. “You’ve ruined my fishing.” Then he saw the German soldier grab his own officer with his free hand and push Fuchs up against a wooden guard box. An incredulous Waters was sure that Fuchs was about to be shot by his own side.5
Fuchs was talking fast, telling the soldier that General von Goeckel had authorized the party to make contact with the Americans outside the camp and secure a ceasefire to prevent casualties inside the camp. The soldier lowered his rifle but would not let the party proceed any farther. He ordered them back into the camp.
Stutter, Meskall and Mills quickly came to Waters’ side. They immediately realized he was in a bad way. While Meskall remained with Waters, Stutter and Mills dashed inside the commandant’s house, emerging with a blanket from Goeckel’s own bed. After easing Waters onto the blanket, the trio took hold of it and hurried back through the camp gate with the wounded man. As they set off, one of them thought to pick up the American flag that Waters had dropped when he went down. Fuchs brought up the rear.
Just inside the camp, they were met by Serbian adjutant Yosefovitch, who had been watching the party’s progress from a barrack window. Yosefovitch, who had befriended Waters after the American arrived in camp, sent for a stretcher. Two Serbian stretcher bearers took over carrying the wounded lieutenant colonel. With the remainder of the party following close behind, they took him to the compound hospital. It was overflowing with sick Americans, and they were waved away by a German doctor who said there was no more room, so they carried Waters to the hospital in the Yugoslavian army compound.
This hospital’s chief physician was a Serbian, Colonel Radovan Danich. With his assistant, a dentist, Danich removed Waters’ trousers and inspected the wound as the others crowded around. The doctor did not look hopeful. After entering Waters’ thigh, the signalman’s bullet had deflected off bone and, chipping the coccyx, had exited via his left buttock. Closer inspection later would confirm that, had the bullet entered a fraction higher, Waters might have been dead, or paralyzed for the rest of his days. Even now, without proper medical facilities, the chances of his surviving appeared slim.
But Yosefovitch was determined. “This officer must live!” he commanded.6