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| Merode Castle was a German strongpoint, but American artillery and air bombardment reduced it to this ruin. |
Chapter 8
Back in Germany, VII Corps took over much the same sector it had held in December before the bitter interlude of the Ardennes. Its two front-line divisions, the 8th and 104th Infantry Divisions, held sectors along the west bank of the Roer River with little enemy contact. Enemy forces opposing them were generally inactive, but were being reinforced as troops shifted north from the Ardennes sector to bolster the Roer defenses against the inevitable attack across the Cologne plain.
While VII Corps continued its inactivity, the XVIII Airborne Corps on its right attacked to seize the Roar River dams, to force the enemy's hand with respect to this continued threat of several million gallons of water. Efforts made to capture the dams had so far been unsuccessful, and aerial bombardment of the largest dam by special units of the British RAF had only pocked the huge earth-and-concrete structure. Now the barriers must either be captured or be blown up; in either way the threat would be removed. The enemy resisted bitterly, as before, but the attack was not to be denied, and slowly but surely the Americans closed in. Finally on February 11th the Germans destroyed the outlet gates on the largest dam, releasing the water, but not fast enough to cause the devastating flood that had been feared. The Roer rose until it filled it banks brimful with the swift-flowing waters, and for several days it continued to present a formidable obstacle for our advance, but the uncertainty of the threat had been removed. The attack of Cologne could go on as soon as the water receded.
During this quiet period in the VII Corps sector, troops were being regrouped and plans completed for the river crossing and the drive to the east. The 3d Armored Division and 4th Cavalry Group moved back into Germany from their Belgian rest areas, and the 99th Infantry Division joined our forces.
6,000 Allied airplanes began on February 22d a series of mass attacks against German transportation, bombing and strafing railways, roads, and canals. German units had been moving from one threatened area to another as Allied and Soviet pressure increased or lessened, and to prevent this shuffling of troops it was necessary to paralyze German transportation. In two days of the operation, planes of the IX Tactical Air Command flew hundreds of sorties in front of the First Army sector, destroying 481 railway cars, damaging 556 others, exploding 52 locomotives, and cutting rail lines in over 100 places.
Before daylight, 23 February 1945, the Ninth U.S. Army opened its drive to the Rhine and the Ruhr industrial area, and at 0330 hours on that date VII Corps attacked across the Roer River to protect its right flank. The 8th and 104th Infantry Divisions crossed the still swollen stream with some difficulty because of the speed of the current. In the Timberwolf zone, downstream, the bridgehead was established quickly and bridges were soon carrying supporting weapons and supplies east of the stream, but Brig. Gen. Gryant E. Moore's 8th Division had trouble bridging the swifter current. Several attempts to build crossings failed when enemy artillery and the fast moving water combined to prevent their completion. However, by February 25th all units held their initial bridgeheads and crossings.
The 8th quickly occupied Duren, and both divisions attacked off across the plain against an enemy defending the villages with intense fire from self-propelled guns, dug-in tanks, and artillery. The technique of attacking over the open plain by night and mopping up resistance in the villages by day, first exercised to any great extent by the 104th Division, paid big dividends as the advance pressed forward with a minimum of losses. The 4th Cavalry joined the attack east of the river, and on the 26th the armor was committed to spearhead the drive to the northeast, gaining 5 miles that day in spite of poor roads and heavy mud. Air assistance, both in close support of the attackers and on armed reconnaissance in the zone of the Corps' advance, continued whenever the weather permitted.
In the first four days of the attack, VII Corps advanced 15 kilometers, cleared the city of Duren and 25 other towns and villages, and took 3,500 prisoners. Although forced to withdraw east of the Erft River, German troops defended every foot of the way to the maximum extent of their ability, using all their known available forces west of the Rhine in a desperate final defense of the approaches to Cologne and the Ruhr.
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| Merode Castle was a German strongpoint, but American artillery and air bombardment reduced it to this ruin. |
The Erft River and canal system proved no barrier to our infantry and tanks. The German Air Force made a desperate bid to destroy our bridges and bomb our troops along the waterways, but the attempt was costly. 34 planes were shot down by our antiaircraft defense and 10 more were probably destroyed, yet our troops suffered no damage or casualties in any of their attacks.
The advance of Ninth Army was progressing well, and Maj. Gen. Walter E. Lauer's 99th Infantry Division was committed to protect the Army's right flank and to keep contact with the remainder of VII Corps as its uninterrupted advance rolled on across the plain. III Corps units on our right, crossing the Roer in the VII Corps bridgehead, widened the First Army's hold east of the river and drove Rhineward along with our units. Prisoners were take by the thousand on all fronts as scores of villages were cleared in spite of their stubborn defense.
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| Major General Maurice Rose, commanding the 3d Armored Division, compares notes on the situation with one of his commanders. |
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| German prisoners taken in the drive across the Roer River are guarded by an MP of one of the attacking divisions. |
Elements of 3d Armored Division reached the Rhine on March 4th, then the tanks swung southeast to join the infantry of the 104th Division, fighting their way into Cologne on the 5th. Backed against the Rhine and forced to yield the high ground which was the last natural barrier before the river, the enemy who had fought so tenaciously to defend the approaches to Cologne were unable to prevent our entry into the city. Now a pile of rubble from thousands of tons of Allied bombs, this had once been the Queen City of the Rhine, the third largest city in Germany, and was the largest German city* to fall to the attack of British or American forces in this war.
Enemy resistance west of the Rhine and north of Cologne was quickly mopped up, and the city was cleared after 57 hours of street fighting, but the 8th Division was still fighting farther south as the enemy attempted to hold open the ferry sites which provided their only escape routes across the Rhine.
On March 8th the 1st Infantry Division was attached to our Corps, and we were given the added mission of taking Bonn, the university city. The 1st met stubborn resistance in and around that city as the enemy made a "last ditch" stand, but on the next day all resistance in the VII Corps zone ended as Bonn fell. Since the attack began on February 23d, VII Corps units had captured over 18,000 prisoners and had cleared 84 kilometers of the west bank of the Rhine.
Suddenly the military world was electrified by the news that on March 7th elements of the 9th Armored Division (III Corps) had seized intact a crossing over the Rhine - the Ludendorff railway bridge at Remagen, a few miles south of our Corps sector.
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| 4.2" mortars of the Corps chemical mortar battalion can fire either high explosive or smoke shells. |
* Berlin, the largest city, was captured by Soviet forces, and Hamburg, second largest, was declared an open city in the face of the British advance, so was not attacked.
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From the Roer ... to the Rhine |