Chapter 5

While the 9th Division and the strongly reinforced 4th Cavalry Group swung east to probe crossings of the Meuse River, the attack of the 3d Armored Division was temporarily halted near Mons by lack of fuel for its vehicles. The supply lines which furnished food, gasoline, and ammunition to the troops dashing across Europe were getting longer and longer, and in spite of every effort to move these very necessary items up more quickly, the trucks on the "Red Ball" highways could carry only a portion of what was needed. Units had to economize in using their vehicles, troops fed on captured German rations. So the Spearhead was stalled while the Corps collected the gasoline to move it.

As Major General Clarence R. Huebner's Fighting First Division moved north to relieve the armor around Mons, it encountered large numbers of enemy troops marching east, apparently unaware of the presence of American forces in the area. Long columns of motor vehicles and horse-drawn equipment approached from the west, and both 1st and 3d Armored Divisions were heavily engaged. Here was the German Seventh Army, retiring under orders to occupy the Siegfried Line and to keep the American forces out of Germany. During the next three days the carnage continued. Our road blocks and hastily constructed field fortifications stopped the enemy movement to the east, and in the fighting the disorganized enemy suffered heavy casualties, both in killed and wounded. Our artillery and airplanes pounded the long columns on the narrow roads, and the German retreat became a smoking ruin. Elements of 20 enemy divisions were captured or slaughtered as they moved straight into the fires of our troops.

A heavy machine gun crew rests for a moment while the infantrymen push on.

Meanwhile, the remainder of the Corps had moved east, occupying Namur and establishing crossings of the Meuse River there. Resistance east of the Meuse and south of Liege stiffened slightly, but our drive never slackened.

By the time the last remnant of the enemy force was mopped up at Mons, supplies had once more accumulated enough to support the continuation of our armored drive, and the 3d Armored tanks, closely followed by the 1st Division's infantry, moved quickly to Charleroi, then on to Liege, Verviers, and Eupen. The enemy had planned to set up a defensive line in the Verviers-Eupen area to keep the Americans off the "sacred soil" of Germany but our rapid advance completely disjointed all such ideas. We were there before he could do much of anything about it. His minefields and stubbornly defended roadblocks slowed our advance momentarily, but no definite line or organization of the defense was encountered. His lack of first-line troops in the sector was apparent, since he was using home guard,secuity, antiaircraft, radar, engineer, signal, military police, and training units in the vain attempt to stop the advance of American fighting men and equipment.

105mm howitzers provided the artillery support for infantry attacks.

Under orders to reconnoiter the defenses of the Siegfried Line, the 3d Armored and 1st Infantry Divisions crossed the border into Germany on September 12th, reached and probed the outer line of fortifications. On the following day, the entire VII Corps threw its weight northeast to crack the defenses of the world-famed West Wall in the area south of Aachen. Enemy delaying action was determined, but was soon overcome, and our tanks and infantry moved through the rows of tank traps into the pillbox defenses. Here the enemy fought stubbornly from as many pillboxes as he could find personnel to man, but many of the fortifications were found undefended, their machine guns still in place. This, then, was the decisive effect of our intercepting the German Seventh Army back at Mons. The German soldiers who were meant to man those guns and defend those bunkers were now on their way to Allied prisoner of war camps, their part in the fighting finished, their job left undone.

A General Sherman tank moves through the first series of tank obstacles of the Siegfried Line, carrying doughboys into Germany's so-called impregnable Western defenses.

By the 15th, VII Corps units had penetrated the Siegfried Line in three places and were advancing inside the defenses south and east of Aachen. Resistance was scattered but determined. The enemy was doing his best to bolster his defenses, but he couldn't stop the VII Corps. In fact, it took a much more powerful factor to halt that drive, but halt it did.

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