"SEND ME"

COMBAT HISTORY OF THE 44TH INFANTRY DIVISION

"Also I heard the voice of the lord saying, who shall I send, and who shall go for us, then I said, here I am, send me." -Isaiah 6:8

From the Beachhead News, Volume II, Number 25 - Sunday June 10, 1945

By Bill O'Hollaren

44th QUICK TO JOIN RANKS OF VETS

You can start an arrow on the map a few miles east of Luneville, France, and send the arrow shooting across Alsace - Lorraine, over the German border, across the Rhine to Mannheim, east to the Wurzburg area, south through Ulm and into the Austrian Tyrol. That arrow will represent the campaigns of the 44th Infantry Division. But of course the arrows don't really tell the story. The arrows won't show which towns were bitterly defended. The arrows move in a smooth line, a horizontal plane, and the infantrymen who made the route climbed hills and waded rivers; churned mud and stumbled over their own dead to keep the arrows advancing. The 44th wasn't fighting for real estate anyway. It was fighting to destroy the German armies. In a little more than 6 months of combat, the 44th took more than 44,000 prisoners and inflicted uncounted thousands of killed and wounded on the enemy. But here again the big picture doesn't tell the story. The sergeant who wiped out a machine gun nest with his rifle only, killed 4 Germans and was killed himself. Yet it is his story and his actions, multiplied sufficiently, which makes the totals. It is only by understanding him, and his story, that you can feel and appreciate the combat record of the 44th Division. The unit was in France 5 weeks when it moved into the line in the Parroy Forest, near Luneville. It was October and the Vosges foothill country was greasy black with mud and biting cold. The infantrymen knew how to dig a foxhole to protect them from shelling, but they didn't know how to dig a foxhole that gave anything approaching comfort. The mess sergeants were a little uncertain about getting hot meals up front and no one was quite sure what the difference in sound was between a German mortar and an 88. For three weeks the 44th held a stationary front. They got their first shellings, sent out their first patrols, stumbled into their first mines, clubbed out their first German counterattacks, heard their first German propaganda ("Come on over to us, soldiers of the 44th, and have a hot meal"). They chewed their K-rations, plastered the propaganda speaker with artillery, and captured Germans who hadn't eaten for days. In those three weeks the infantrymen learned a lot about war.

LEARNED HARD WAY

They learned so much that they were assigned to spearhead the November 13th attack. Alsace-Lorraine had to be cleared, and at sundown the day before, the artillery announced that the big show was starting. 25,000 rounds were tossed out by the 156th, 157th, 217th, and 220th FA Battalions, plus reinforcing Corps artillery. It snowed that morning, the first real winter snow. The 71st and 324th Regiments climbed the ridges, skirted edges of woods, maneuvered against pillboxes and dugouts, fell into trenches left from the last war, and squirmed into the mire when German 88'scracked. They flung their strength at the Germans in the particular little hells that only infantrymen fighting their lonely individual fights in mud and shell bursts can ever understand. The Germans held the first day, they were defending from pillboxes and dugouts, warm and dry, well planned and cleverly placed. Like every combat unit, the 44th suffered from trench foot, too. Pvt. Anthony Bierylo, Detroit Michigan, a 71st aid man had one man come to him with feet so badly swollen that his shoes had to be cut off and the soldier marched two miles barefoot to the battalion aid station - through the snow. The 71st Infantry reached Leintrey and the 324th was soon several thousand yards past it's jump off line. A gap was discovered in the enemy front and Col. Robert R. Martin snaked two battalions of his 114th Regiment through on the night of November 14-15. The next morning the infantry was tearing up the German's rear - and the breakthrough was on. The 44th had proved itself in it's first offensive. Meanwhile, the 324th had reached the edge of Avricourt, an anchor point in the Germans defense system. Avricourt was the center of a saucer and the rim was a series of hills neatly catalogued by German mortarmen. The 324th took the hills to the north, then drove through the town from the west. But Colonel Kenneth S. Anderson's command took Avricourt, after killing or capturing hundreds of Germans. Now the Division could strean east with the German border the goal. The enemy was off balance after Avricourt. Within a week of the jump off the 71st was fighting inside Sarrebourg. It was the Divisions first taste of city fighting. Snipers were plentiful and persistent in Saarebourg, but in one day of ruthless hunting, Col. Ercil D. Porter's command cleared the ancient city. That night a German officer was told Saarebourg had fallen. The German held his head in his hands and muttered, "Ach, my poor Germany."

HELP IN STRASBOURG

The French were dashing toward Strasbourg. They asked for an American infantry battalion to accompany them. A few days later word was flashed that 2nd battalion, 324th Infantry was in Strasbourg and that Capt. Delbert O. Barry's Easy Company was the first American unit to reach the Rhine in World War 2. Barry's mortarmen tossed a few rounds across the river and became the first Americans to fire across the Rhine - two among many combat firsts for the 44th. The crack 130th Panzer Lehr Division, a Panther outfit used to teach tank tactics to the Wermacht, was summoned from it's north German training grounds in Westphalia. The 130th was to slash through the 44th lines, recapture Saarebourg and slice off all troops east of the Vosges. The 130th was the first division to be taken from the great Panzer army which later made the Ardennes attack - and it's removal meant that the Ardennes offensive was that much weaker. The Panthers hit the 44th left flank the morning after Thanksgiving. The 2nd battalion of the 114th, assisted by division artillery and the 776th TD Battalion, had marched all night to form against the threat. At mid-morning the Panthers hit George and Fox Companies, the great weight striking Capt. Richard Roman's George Company. Infantrymen in shallow foxholes were pounded by machine gun and 88 fire from tanks not 60 yards away, tanks that were point-blanking at individual foxholes. The German infantry huddled behind the tanks, waiting for the 114th to break and run. The infantry didn't budge. Men like S/Sgt. Joe Quelch, South Belmar, NJ.; S/Sgt. Bob Rihnig, Centuria, Wis; and S/Sgt. George A. Franklin, Chicago, Ill., not only stuck it out, but kept firing at the enemy. The tanks couldn't go forward without infantry support, and the 2nd Battalion was damned if it was going to let the German foot soldiers advance an inch. The battle lasted all day, with the 44th Artillery and TD's getting in gradually heavier licks at the Panthers, and the stubborn, heroic infantry sticking it out, keeping a curtain of fire in front of the German infantry. The attack broke before sundown with the Germans losing half their tanks and hundreds of infantry. The 2nd Battalion got a Presidential citation for that job and General Alexander Patch was to say months later deep in Germany that "The seventh Army wouldn't be where it is today if it hadn't been for the heroism of the fighting men of the 2nd Battalion."

HIT MAGINOT LINE

The 44th was pushing faster and eastward against a defense that was sometimes foolish, sometimes skillful; often fanatical. On the fanatical side the Germans made a bid to erase the 3rd Battalion, 114th Infantry CP in Weisslingen one morning. Six halftracks and a hundred infantry dashed towards the little village just before dawn. Cooks and clerks of the battalion, then commanded by Major Edward M. Minion, now a Lt. Col. and CO of the 1st Battalion, went into action, and routed the German infantry. Sgt. Luther B. Tunney, a radio operator, put a Browning automatic rifle into action. The TD's destroyed four half tracks just as they entered Weisslingen. The attack was squashed. Volkesberg and Enchenberg were the next stops, and at both the fighting was bitter. At Enchenberg, a fortress city, the 114th spent two days cleaning out fanatical resistance. It was mid-December when the 44th hit the Maginot line, still spearheading the Seventh Army drive to Germany. The 44th was assigned Fort Simserhof, a virgin fort that the Germans hadn't been able to take in their 1940 offensive. Simserhof consisted of ten steel and concrete blockhouses, perched on commanding Vosges hills. The 71st and their supporting tanks, TD's and engineers had to come through open valleys to get at the forts. The blockhouses themselves were tough enough to withstand several rounds of 240mm howitzers before showing damage.

TNT IS BROUGHT UP

Brig. General William A. Beiderlinden's Division Artillery poured HE and AP shells on the forts until they weakened. The engineers and infantry clambered through mine fields and machine gun fire to plant TNT charges against the turrets. As always, doughboys had to finish the job. Lt. Don E. Bourne, Portland Oregon, led Easy Company in a charge against the personnel entrance, and other 71st doughboys stormed the remaining blocks. Simserhof, the boasted impregnable fortress, fell. It was mid-December when German General Gerd Von Rundstedt's Ardennes offensive compelled shifts along the Seventh Army front. The 44th was sent to the Sorreguemines area with a mission of holding a 16 kilometer front. Infantrymen were digging in on their new front on Christmas day. The Germans had correctly anticipated a thinning of the Seventh Army front after the Ardennes smash, and they decided on a supplementary offensive aimed at the Seventh Army rear. That area was the 44th's zone. Three divisions, spearheaded by the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division, were to hit the 44th.

HE FORGOT NEW YEAR'S

Sgt. Luther G. Ott, Cleveland, Texas, who was plowing through the snow in front of Fox Company, 71st, had half his mind on his patrol mission and half his mind on New Years just a few minutes away. He topped a small hill, and took a look into the valley below. What he saw made him forget about New Years for a long time to come. It was " the biggest swarm of krauts I had ever seen in my life. They were all in white, moving in a kind of triangle formation with the base of the triangle heading right for my company." A minute later Capt. Robert Sidenberg, New York, had the news and within minutes the entire 44th front was ready. All three regiments were on the line. The krauts had been given an extra ration of Schnapps, and were inflamed with alcoholic dreams of victory and loot. They swung along almost shoulder to shoulder shouting " Happy New Year, Yankee bastards!" There had been no artillery preparation and these great herds of heinies in the snowy valley were like scenes from a fantastic dream. When the range was right, doughboys let them have it. " It was like a scene from a Civil War movie showing Picketts Charge " said Sidenberg. The three German divisions never began to make a breakthrough. They would push a battalion back a few hundred yards at one spot, only to lose at another. The 324th staged an "Eliza-on-the-ice" scene with the Germans in rubber boats attempting a crossing of the half frozen Blies River. The regiment opened fire from the banks and the krauts never got across. All together the Germans made 20 separate attacks along the division front. All failed, and a conservative estimate of enemy casualties was 2,500 killed, 3,000 wounded and 400 prisoners. Adding insult to injury, T/Sgt. Earl Dunnick, Indianapolis, Indiana - Sgt. Robert Brindle, Marshalltown, Iowa - and Pfc. Harry Lee Daffin Jr., Baltimore, Maryland, from the 114th Able Company, went out a few nights later and captured Standartenfuhrer Hans Lingner, commander of the 17th SS. The very unhappy Lingner was the first SS division commander nabbed on the western front. For the next two months the 44th held the long line. These were the winter months, the days of gray cold and the snow-and-sleet nights. Along that winter front there was only the same cold foxhole, the same artillery from the krauts, the same dangerous patrols, the same frozen guns. The German is always an enemy hard on the nerves and there were the long nights in which any of those shadowy forms, those strange noises out front, might be an enemy combat patrol or some fanatical Boche attack. February 15th the division made a one-day line straightening attack that totaled 600 prisoners and brought the famous Bellvue and Marionviller farms under 44th control.

CLAIM UNBROKEN RECORD

Early in March, the division was relieved after 144 days in combat. It was one of the longest periods of continuous combat that any American unit has ever encountered in any war. When the great allied drive into Germany got underway, the 44th was called from it's brief rest, hopped across the Rhine and was soon striking for the industrial city of Mannheim. The 71st took Mannheim after a tough, two day battle in which snipers pinged from tenement and factory windows and German artillery across the Neckar pounded steadily. Published reports said Mannheim surrendered by telephone, but the report was optimistic. The Burger-meister tried, but the Nazi commander fought it out to the bitter end, and the 71st won it the hard way. A few days later combat team 324 was sent along the Blaufelden-Crailsheim road on the vital mission of re-opening the 10th Armored Division's main supply route. The 10th Armored Division had made a lightening thrust to Crailsheim and the desperate Germans had struck at the supply road supporting the 10th, hoping to pinch off the tankmen. The 324th jumped off April 9th and cleared Reidbach, Blaufelden, Staigerbach, Zaisenhausen, and Adolzhausen, in addition to clearing enemy pockets in the surrounding woods. The 44th Division advance had left an extremely long left flank, and the 114th Infantry found itself in some of the bitterest fighting of the war protecting the flank against marauding bands of Germans, bent on breaking through and cutting the supply lines to the 71st and 324th. The regiment beat off all attacks and it's actions made secure the ever increasing tempo of the divisions drive. On April 24th, the 324th Infantry and the 10th Armored Division drove into Ulm, historic Danube city. They mopped up scattered bands of fanatics and crossed the Danube River into New Ulm. The two divisions drove straight into the Austrian Tyrol, averaging an easy 15 miles a day and destroying remaining units of the 19th German Army faster than Field Marshal Kesselring could commit them.

REACH FARTHEST POINT

The 44th Division was fighting to the last. Regiments were climbing Tyrolean peaks and skirmishing through Alpine forests on the day the 19th Army surrendered ending the European war. The 324th infantry was in Landeck when the 19th surrendered, the farthest point of advance reached by the division in combat. The same day the regiment made contact with the 5th Army of Italy, the logical climax of a campaign that saw the 44th fight it's way across Alsace-Lorraine, Germany, and Austria. The supporting units of an infantry division don't take the risks that a doughboy takes, and seldom get the credit they deserve, but the individual soldiers of the 44th would be the first to credit their helpers - to the signalmen who kept communications open - to the erstwhile recon troops whose total exploits sound like modern tales of Rogers Rangers - to Quartermaster - to the ever faithful medics - to the combat engineers who removed mines and cleared the way for the infantry time after time - to ordinance and every unit in support. Most of all, infantrymen are loud in their thanks to the artillery which laid the carpet of fire which made every advance possible, and to the supporting armored battalions, the 772nd Tank and the 776th TD, which fought for and with the individual rifleman.

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