American losses were heavy, over 5,000. The 30th and 1st divisions were exhausted, used up. They were in no condition to make a dash to the Rhine. German losses were 5,000 casualties and 5,600 prisoners of war. Aachen was destroyed, with the exception of the cathedral, which housed Charlemagne’s coronation chair. It escaped major damage.
OUTSIDE AACHEN, Dawson’s company continued to hold. After Aachen fell, there were fewer, less vigorous German attacks. On October 22 reporter W.C. Heinz of the New York Sun got to Dawson’s headquarters to do an interview. Dawson summarized the action simply: “This is the worst I’ve seen. Nobody will ever know what this has been like up here.”
Heinz arranged to stay a few days to find out. The dispatches he filed beginning October 24 give a vivid portrait of a rifle company commander in action in World War II. Of them it can be truly said that they held the most dangerous and difficult job in the world.
Dawson’s HQ was in a cellar in the village. There was a kerosene lamp, a table and some chairs, a radio playing classical music, and a couple of lieutenants. Heinz got Dawson talking about what it had been like. “And the kid says to me,” Dawson related, ” ‘I’ll take that water to that platoon.’ And he starts out. He is about fifty yards from this doorway and I’m watching him. He is running fast; then I can see this 88 hit right where he is, and, in front of my eyes, he is blown apart.”
Dawson spoke of other strains. “I had a kid come up and say, ‘I can’t take it anymore.’ What could I do? If I lose that man, I lose a squad. So I grab him by the shirt, and I say, ‘You will, you will. There ain’t any going back from this hill except dead.’ And he goes back and he is dead.”
Dawson sighed. “He doesn’t know why, and I don’t know why, and you don’t know why. But I have got to answer those guys.”
He looked Heinz in the eye. “Because I wear bars. I’ve got the responsibility and I don’t know whether I’m big enough for the job.” He continued to fix his eyes on Heinz. “But I can’t break now. I’ve taken this for the thirty-nine days we’ve held this ridge and I’m in the middle of the Siegfried Line and you want to know what I think? I think it stinks.”
Dawson began to shed tears. Then he jerked his head up. “Turn it up,” he said to a lieutenant by the radio. “That’s Puccini. I want to hear it.”
Two GIs came into the room. They were apprehensive because Captain Dawson had sent for them. But it was good news. “I’m sending you to Paris,” Dawson announced. “For six days. How do you like that?”
“Thanks,” one replied reluctantly.
“Well. you had better like it,” Dawson said, “and you had better stay out of trouble, but have a good time and bless your hearts.” The men mumbled thanks, and left.
“Two of the best boys I’ve got,” Dawson told Heinz. “Wire boys. They’ve had to run new lines every day because the old ones get chopped up. One day they laid heavy wire for two hundred yards and by the time they got to the end and worked back, the wire had been cut in three places by shellfire.”
Dawson told Heinz that he had men who had been wounded in mid-September, when he first occupied the ridge, who returned four weeks later. They had gone AWOL from the field hospital and made their way back, “and the first thing I know they show up again here and they’re grinning from ear to ear. I know it must sound absolutely crazy that would want to come back to this, but it is true.”
The following morning one of the lieutenants told Dawson, “Captain, those wiremen, they say they don’t want to go to Paris.”
“All right,” Dawson sighed. “Get two other guys-if you can.”
THE BATTLE of Aachen benefited no one. The Americans never should have attacked. The Germans never should have defended. Neither side had a choice. This was war at its worst-wanton destruction for no purpose.