By Kelly Bell
On Sunday, September 10, 1944, all bridges over the German-Belgian border rivers, the Our and the Saur, were dynamited. Word circulated throughout western Germany that the Americans were coming. In some cases the battered remnants of German divisions were not given time to reach the eastern banks before the bridges were blown.
The Americans were closing in so quickly that any hesitation was thought foolish. Remaining occupants of the small towns dotting the rivers’ eastern shores were busy hauling in the final harvest before the ground war arrived. These residents were also burying valuables and nonperishable foodstocks while watching the streams of ox cart-drawn refugees flow back into the Fatherland. These once proud and haughty “settlers” had confidently followed the onrushing German Wehrmacht four years earlier as it stampeded to overwhelm Western Europe. Now they deserted their usurped holdings as the liberators from overseas bludgeoned their way ever closer.
The Allied bomber fleets swelled daily as they grumbled endlessly overhead. The big birds’ escort fighters habitually plunged from the heights to strafe whatever they caught in their crosshairs—soldiers, civilians, vehicles, trains, even livestock. The Americans were coming, and if the foot soldiers were anywhere near as bloodthirsty as their pilot comrades seemed to be, there was plenty to fear.
The women, children, and elderly in the border towns had no one to protect them. The young men were long gone, consumed mainly by the faraway Eastern Front. A few crippled POWs the Allies had returned told of limitless reservoirs of manpower and matériel, of supply and weapons depots so vast one could get lost in them, and how this was pouring into Europe from cargo fleets that stretched beyond the Atlantic Ocean’s western horizon. These reports were not the only ominous signs.
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My Uncle Sgt Mitchell L. Chapman was a gunner on a 1917 .30 cal machine gun in this battle.
My Dad, T/SRG Arlie Kisner (from WV)630th TD BN. Company C attached to 112th of 28 Division was there.
I found this article to be descriptive, informative and comprehensive – until the end when it devolves into what I consider to be lazy writing and bad editing. It goes from the battle of the bulge in December to the end of the battle by 2/23/45, with no information as to how such a deadly battle got there. And then it goes on to say, “Model was out of time”, and blew his brains out. A reader who knew little of Model and the events occurring in that area of Germany would infer that all of that happened at the same time. They did not. Model was far from out of time, as the planners of and the combatants in Operation Varsity and Plunder, begun 3/24/45, well knew. Model was in command of 300,000 men in 2 armies and a number of divisions in the Ruhr. Armies that still fought and killed the invaders. It wasn’t until 4/2/45 that those men were trapped by the 9th and 1st American armies. Trapped because Hitler refused to allow Model to breakout of the unfolding trap. Model refused to surrender to the American armies; instead, he dissolved his armies, leaving it up to individual commanders the decision to surrender or fight. (Most decided to surrender.) He committed suicide on 4/21/45, two months after this article implies that he did.