“That might sound corny,” Underkofler said in a 1996 interview, “but it was sort of a symbolic expression of attitude. Morale was extremely important. I mean, man alive, the conditions were often so deplorable that we had nothing else to go on but your own morale. You know, you’re sitting there in a foxhole rubbing your buddy’s feet, and he’s rubbing yours so you don’t get trench foot. That’s only an example of the kind of relationship and camaraderie we had.”
THE STRAIGHT line between Aachen and Cologne lay through Diiren, on the east bank of the Rur River. But rather than going directly, Bradley ordered the main effort made through a corridor some seventeen kilometres wide, south of the dreaded Hurtgen Forest. By so doing, the Americans would arrive at the Rur upstream from the dams and, once across the river, be free to advance over the Cologne plain to the Rhine without danger of controlled flooding. The first task was to get through the Siegfried Line. And every man in an ETO combat unit was well aware that this is where the Germans stopped them in September 1944.
The generals were all enthusiastic for this one. General Walter Lauer, commanding the 99th Division, paid a pre-attack call on Sergeant Oakley Honey’s C Company, 395th Regiment. Honey recalled that Lauer stood on the hood of a jeep and gave a speech, saying we had fought the enemy “in the woods and the mountains and had beaten them. Now we were going to get a chance to fight them in the open.” Honey commented, “Whoopee! Everyone was overjoyed. You could tell by the long faces.”
On February 4, C Company pushed off into the Siegfried Line. Honey recalls “charging into a snow storm with fixed bayonets and the wind blowing right into our faces. After moving through the initial line of dragon’s teeth we began encountering deserted pillboxes. At one command post out came ten Germans with hands in the air offering no resistance.”
Private Irv Mark of C Company said the enemy troops “were waiting to surrender and the one in charge seemingly berated us for taking so long to come and get them. He said, ‘Nicht etwas zu essen’ (nothing to eat). Strange we didn’t feel one bit sorry for them.”
Few companies were that lucky. Sergeant Clinton Riddle of the 82nd Airborne was in Company B, 325th Glider Infantry. On February 2 he accompanied the company commander on a patrol to within sight of the , Siegfried Line. “The dragon teeth were laid out in five double rows, staggered. The Krauts had emplacements dotting the hillsides, so arranged as to cover each other with cross fire.”
Returning from the patrol, the captain ordered an attack. “It was cold and the snow was deep,” Riddle recalled. “There was more fire from the emplacements than I ever dreamed there could be. Men were falling in the snow all around me. That was an attack made on the belly. We crawled through most of the morning.” Using standard fire-and-move-ment tactics, the Americans managed to drive the Germans beyond the ridge. “When we reached the road leading through the teeth,” Riddle said, “the captain looked back and said, ‘Come on, let’s go!’ Those were the last words he ever said, because the Germans had that road covered and when he was half-way across he got hit right between the eyes. There were only three of us in our company still on our feet when it was over.”
Another twenty-five men turned up, and the new CO, a lieutenant, began to attack the pillboxes along the road. But the Germans had been through enough. After their CO fired the shot that killed the American captain, his men shot him and prepared to surrender. So, Riddle relates, “when we reached the pillboxes, the Germans came out, calling out ‘Kamerad.’ We should have shot them on the spot. They had their dress uniforms on, with their shining boots. We had been crawling in the snow, wet, cold, hungry, sleepy, tired, mad because they had killed so many of our boys.” The Americans were through the initial defences of the Siegfried Line, and that was enough for the moment.