He was one of the last Germans to escape. The Americans had taken 250,000 prisoners and killed or wounded almost as many. More than twenty divisions had been effectively destroyed. The Allied air forces were taking full advantage of lengthening days and better weather, blasting every German who moved during daylight hours, flying as many as 11,000 sorties in one day.
On the first day of World War II, then Colonel Eisenhower had written to his brother Milton: “Hitler should beware the fury of an aroused democracy.” Now that fury was making itself manifest on the west bank of the Rhine. The Allies had brought the war home to Germany.
Chapter Eleven
Crossing the Rhine: March 7-31, 1945
THE RHINE was by far the most formidable of the rivers the GIs had to cross. It rises in the Alps and flows generally north to Arnhem, where it makes a sharp turn to the west. It is between 200 and 500 metres wide, swift and turbulent, with great whirlpools and eddies. The Germans on the far bank were disorganized and demoralized but still determined and capable of utilizing the natural advantages the Rhine gave them to defend their country. There were only two or three places from Cologne south that were possible crossing sites. Worse, along that stretch there were no major objectives on the east bank inland for some 50 kilometres, and the hinterland was heavily wooded, undulating, and broken by narrow valleys.
North of Cologne, Montgomery’s Twenty-first Army Group had many suitable crossing sites, good terrain for a mobile offensive, and major objectives just across the Rhine in the Ruhr Valley. Beyond the Ruhr, the plain led straight to Berlin. So while Elsenhower’s heart was with Bradley, Hodges, and Patton, his mind was with Monty. SHAEF G-3 had decided that north was the place for the main crossing. Eisenhower agreed, but warned that “the possibility of failure cannot be overlooked. I am, therefore, making logistic preparations which will enable me to switch my main effort from the north to the south should this be forced upon me.”
As MONTGOMERY’S armies were closing to the river, he began to build his supply base for the assault crossing. Altogether he required 250,000 tons of supplies for the British and Canadian forces and the US Ninth Army and 17th Airborne Division. Ninth Army had been part of Twenty-first Army Group since the preceding fall; the 17th Airborne Division had arrived in Europe in December.
Montgomery’s planning for the Rhine crossing was almost as elaborate as for Overlord. Eighty thousand men, slightly less than half the number of men who went into France on June 6, 1944, would cross the Rhine by boat or transport aeroplane on the first day for Operations Plunder (the crossing by boat) and Varsity (the airborne phase), with an immediate follow-up force of 250,000 and an ultimate force of 1 million.
Montgomery set D-day for March 24. For the two weeks preceding the assault he laid down a massive smoke screen that concealed the buildup- and gave the Germans ample warning about where he was going to cross. The air forces pounded the Germans on the east bank with 50,000 tons of bombs. Monty invited Churchill and other dignitaries to join him to watch the big show.
Beginning February 28, Ninth Army had been pushing east. Company K, 333rd Regiment, received orders to take the village of Hardt, between the Rur and the Rhine. After an all-day march through mud and cold, followed by a few hours’ rest, the company formed up an hour before dawn. Everyone was groggy, exhausted and wary, since they knew their flank was open, yet they were pressing on deeper into the German lines.
The company moved out to Hardt, attacked, and got stopped by machine-gun fire and a shower of 88s. Two men were killed. The others hit the ground. Sergeant George Pope’s squad got caught in the open. “We were all pinned down,” he remembered. “It was flat as a floor. There wasn’t a blade of grass you could hide under. I’m yelling ‘Shoot, you sons of bitches!’ That was a tough time.”
Lieutenant Bill Masters was in the edge of a wood with half of his platoon. The remainder of his men and other platoons were getting pounded out in the open flat field. Masters recalled: “I decided I had to get these guys moving or a lot more were going to get killed.” He ran forward, swearing at the men to get them going as he passed them. “I got up as far as a sugar-beet mound that gave some cover, close enough to toss a grenade at the German machine gunner right in front of me. But I couldn’t get the grenade out of my pocket-it was stuck.” A German tossed a potato masher. “It landed right next to me but didn’t explode.”