They had reached home. Men who saw no point to fighting to retain Hitler’s conquests in France were ready to fight to defend the homeland. The German officer corps began organizing the terrified survivors of the rout in France, and suddenly what had been a chaotic mob became an army again. Meanwhile, the armies of the AEF were coming to a halt. On September 2 Third Army requested 750.000 gallons of gasoline and got 25,390. The next day it was 590,000 with 49,930 received. After September 7 Patton got a trickle only. A handful of advance patrols had made it across the Moselle River north and south of Nancy, but Patton’s men were still far short of the Rhine and the Siegfried Line protecting it.
On September 12 the 4th Division, First Army, to the north, managed to get through the Siegfried Line. Lieutenant George Wilson led a reconnaissance platoon into the defences. He saw a German soldier emerge from a mound of earth not 100 metres away. “I got a slight chill as I realized I might well be the first American to set eyes on a pillbox in the famous Siegfried Line.”
Looking around, he saw mounds of earth everywhere, each of them a concealed machine-gun emplacement with cement walls one metre thick and roofs from three to four metres thick. They had large iron doors at the rear, which were mostly rusted and off their hinges. Almost all were unoccupied. The 4th Division could drive right on through the Siegfried Line, at least at this spot.
By September 14, elements of the division were fanning out on top of the Eifel hills, a heavily wooded rough country that was an eastward extension of the Ardennes. But the division was almost out of gasoline. It had to pull back.
ANOTHER problem: crossing northwest Europe’s many rivers was causing delays. The Germans had not mounted any defence at all on the east bank of the Seine, but that still left the Meuse, Moselle, Sarre, Rhine, and their many tributaries to go. And the closer the Germans got to home, the more they drew on their last bit of strength and their experience.
Along the Moselle the Germans mounted an effective defence. It fell to Patton’s 80th Infantry Division to defeat it. By September 11 the 80th was prepared to force its crossing near the village of Dieulouard. The leading companies began the crossing shortly after midnight. Nine battalions of artillery began shelling the 3rd Panzer Grenadier Division, giving protection to the rubber-and-plywood assault boats. Resistance was spotty and ineffective. That afternoon engineers began building a pontoon bridge. They completed the work just before midnight.
At 0100, September 13, three battalions of German infantry, supported by tanks and assault guns, launched a counterattack. By daybreak the Germans had driven the GIs back to within 100 metres of the crossing site. Engineers threw down their tools, took up M-ls and machine guns, and joined the fight to defend their bridge. At 0600 the Americans stood fast. The Germans were too bloodied and tired to press on. A stalemate ensued.
On the west bank a council of war was held by four generals. Also present was Lieutenant Colonel Creighton Abrams, commanding the 37th Tank Battalion. Abrams, a 1936 graduate of West Point, was two days short of his 30th birthday.
The generals were worried about sending Abrams’s tanks over the pontoon bridge. The bridge might be destroyed by German artillery. The tanks could be cut off. Besides, the bridgehead was so constricted the Shermans wouldn’t be able to manoeuvre. They were short on fuel. Finally the generals asked Abrams for his opinion.
Pointing to the high ground on the other side, Abrams told his superiors, ”That is the shortest way home.”
At 0800 the Shermans rumbled over the bridge and began blasting the Germans with cannon and machine guns. Infantry from the 80th Division crossed and joined the attack. By nightfall they had regained the position held the previous day.
But this was a different German army from the one that had pulled out of France so ignominiously. By that afternoon six German battalions were on the march towards Dieulouard. Over the next three nights the Americans held their ground, but they could not expand the bridgehead.