The 78th Division was part of the Ninth Army's XIX Corps during its second attack on Kesternich. The detailed plans called for each rifle squad in the attacking battalion, the 2nd Battalion of the 311th Infantry, under Lt. Col. Richard W. Keyes, to take a specific building. The maps had each building designated by number. The town was divided into nine sub-objectives to ease reporting and command and control concerns. The 736th Tank Battalion and the 893rd Tank Destroyer Battalion provided support. Captain Thomae's battalion was still in position and formed the major element of the German defense.
The American plan called for Company G, commanded by 1st Lt. Clyde H. Trivette, to lead at first, on the battalion right in a column of platoons. Company F, led by Captain William J. Curran, and an attached platoon of tanks would move on the left with platoons on line. Once in town, Company F would allow Company G to pass through and follow the main street. Company E, led by Captain John V. Rowan, Jr., would then pass through the gap created by the other companies to take the eastern end of town.
78th Infantry Division
"The Lightning Division"
The attack began at 5:30 a.m. on January 30, 1945. Unfortunately, the detailed plans quickly fell apart. Snow covered the landmarks. Many tanks lost traction on the frozen earth and could not keep up with the infantry. Other tanks hit mines--usually no tankers were injured, but infantrymen always were. Company F lost precious time bringing up equipment to breach a wire obstacle, and the leader of the company's assault platoon climbed aboard a tank that was still in action and directed it himself until it hit a mine. The concussion threw him to the hard ground, but he soon found a Bangalore torpedo and blew a gap in the obstacle. He was later wounded leading soldiers while mounted on a tank. At about 7 a.m., Company F reported that some of its men had entered houses in the town, but that the unit was receiving heavy small-arms fire. By 9 a.m., Captain Curran reported he had men on Kesternich's main street.
Direct fire, meanwhile, had knocked out at least two of the attached tanks. One crewman, Sergeant Leonard S. Kizzer, dismounted to repair his tank, and, after several hours dodging rounds, got it back into action. Company G's lead platoon exploited the gap made by Company F, entered the town and started to swing south. Unfortunately, the next platoon ran into a minefield and also took flanking machine-gun fire; only 15 men survived. Ladd committed Company E in midmorning, but heavy machine-gun fire halted it in the center of town. Colonel Chester M. Willingham, commander of the 311th Infantry, told Keyes to "keep pushing, [the troops are moving] too slow," and not to hesitate committing the reserve tank platoon. Keyes then went forward to check the situation and found that radio communication between the infantry and the tanks was beginning to fail. Keyes later recalled that the situation was confusing: "The battle had lost its coordination and the fighting had become piecemeal....It was very difficult to pick out specific buildings indicated on the sketch. Most of them had either been demolished completely, or had lost their form....Many elements of the companies were scattered and difficult to control....The tank-infantry coordination was not favorable. The tanks seemed to expect the infantry to lead them and the infantry was prone to wait for the tanks."
Keyes rejected Captain Rowan's suggestion to halt and reorganize the battalion. Instead, he ordered the company commanders to renew the attack at 3 p.m. "Advance by marching fire," he added.
Although the battalion was tired, continuing the attack kept the Germans from taking any rest. The infantrymen had to root out the defenders from the rubble while dodging snipers and running from one water-filled crater to another. One officer later remembered, "Where there were two buildings, one behind the other, [a] tank would fire at the first building and, as the infantry started to mop up, the tanks would open fire on the second building." Keyes halted the attack at dark. In some places, the two lines were only 150 yards apart.
The attack continued at 8:30 a.m. on the 31st, and at least 15 more buildings fell within three hours. But Company G hit a strongpoint, and the frustrated Keyes was prepared to take it by "weight of numbers rather than by fire and maneuver." It finally fell to massed tank fire. During this phase of the battle, a soldier yelled that German tanks were approaching from the rear. Another soldier, riding on a tank, yelled for the tank commander to traverse his gun and fire. He did--and a high-explosive round hit the front slope of an American tank destroyer not more than 100 yards away. There were no injuries to the crew. According to one report, some German soldiers who had apparently captured an American radio broadcast during the battle in broken English, "Tankers....What are you trying to do, fight the war yourselves?"
Several soldiers, including Colonel Keyes, mounted tanks to direct their fire. To get the attention of a buttoned-up tank commander, they often had to bang on the turret or cover the periscope. The infantry found that the phones mounted on the rear of the tanks had usually been torn away by shell fragments. Clearly, there were significant tank-infantry coordination problems, but under the circumstances the tankers probably did the best they could. Colonel Willingham, however, later stated, "Hesitation and lack of aggression on the part of this tank unit, in my opinion, resulted in over 50 unnecessary casualties. A tank unit that is not aggressive is a detriment to the infantry."
German indirect fire streamed into Kesternich all morning, though the Germans had lost most of the town by midday. Staff Sergeant Jonah E. Kelley, a squad leader in Company E of the 311th, had been wounded in the back and left hand, but had refused evacuation. Unable to hold his rifle with both hands, he rested it on rubble or on his forearm. Despite the wounds, he rushed a house alone and killed three Germans on the 30th. On January 31, he again ordered his men to remain under cover while he charged a building. He was hit several times as he ran across open ground, and he fell mortally wounded just yards from the enemy. Before he died, he killed the enemy soldier who had shot him. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.
The 224 additional men who fell at Kesternich in late January brought the 78th Division's casualty total to more than 1,000. But at least Kesternich was in American hands, and the way was finally clear for the final attack on the Schwammenauel Dam, which fell on February 9.
272nd Volksgrenadier Division
The troops called it "Little Aachen." Keyes called it a "dog-eat-dog fight." Without Kesternich, the Americans could not have safely crossed the Roer River. The bitter fighting at Kesternich has been overshadowed by the Bulge and assault crossings of the Roer and Rhine. A new division had paid a high price for its blooding at Kesternich, but it had done very well indeed.
Having finally captured Kesternich, men of the 311th Infantry pause next to the body of a German soldier on February 1, 1945.
Almost a half century later, in June 1993, elderly German and American veterans gathered in Kesternich to dedicate a small monument to the 78th Infantry Division and the 272nd Volksgrenadier Division. Few of the Americans had been to Germany since the war. Many veterans of both sides had spent years trying to forget the events that had originally brought them together. The large crowd of veterans, their families and residents of Kesternich listened reverently first to Alte Kamaraden, then to taps. There were speeches. Young German and American soldiers stood with their national colors unfurled. And nearby, German school children listened silently as the elderly warriors reminded those present that they should not forget what happened in that little farming village in the miserable winter of 1944-45.
Additional Sources:
home.scarlet.be/
www.hurtgen1944.homestead.com
users.adelphia.net
e.herr.home.att.net
gateway.ca.k12.pa.us
www.army.mil
www.5ad.org
www.ncweb.com
www.techwarrior.cx
2rct.valka.cz
www.ordinateurslaval.ca
