Battle positions:
In early morning of the 19th I received orders to position my 30 cal water cooled machine gun in the edge of the woods overlooking Schönberg. I was high on a hill, overlooking a slope leading into a valley. I could see, about 1,000 yards to the Northwest, the house tops of Schönberg.
Company M, 423rd Regiment, my unit, was assigned to support L Company, a rifle company, who were preparing to enter Schönberg. They were advancing down the slope, attempting to enter Schönberg along the Bleialf-Schönberg road which was several hundred yards in front of my gun position, in the edge of the woods. The town and area was infested with Germans, but from my position I saw no sign of them. I saw little, except the roof tops of Schönberg ahead of us, and a few of our troops on the slope below us.
A rifle company to our rear, Company I, 423rd, were waiting on orders to proceed down the hill in support L Company. It was about 0900 when we were suddenly hit by very heavy artillery fire. It seemed that all hell had broken loose. The shells were exploding all around us, on the ground and in the trees. Men were screaming for Medics. I heard during the day that M Company's Commander, Captain Hardy, had been killed and the Executive Officer, Captain Wiegers was blinded by a tree burst. There was a terrible lot of confusion at that time. I thought to myself that the officers could be from one of the rifle companies. That was not so, our officers were hit by tree bursts. This turned out not to be all true - Captain Hardy was killed by the very first tree burst as the German shells landed in the woods around us. Captain Wiegers, although hit, was not blinded. I learned in 1988 that he rode a tank out of the officers camp, Oflag 13C, Hammelburg, during an attempted break-out. Read the book about Patton's raid on the Hammelberg Oflag, where he tried to rescue his son-in-law. The name of the book is Raid. Hammelberg was about 80 miles behind the existing front lines. Most of our officers ended up being held at Oflag 13C. After the aborted attempt by Patton to liberate the camp, the Germans put all the officers on the road, marching in the direction of Bavaria. Colonel Cavender, 423rd Regimental commander, was wounded on that march. He and others were caught in the target zone of hundreds of bombers. Cavender spent several months in the hospital as a result of his leg wounds..
During the day, Smitty, my gunner was injured in the leg by an artillery shell. I was hit on the backside of my right boot on the same burst. My right overshoe and combat boot were ripped. I sustained a small wound in the area of the right Achilles tendon. (In the excitement and trauma that followed, I did not realize I had been hit.)It was not serious enough to prevent me from walking and eventually healed. I learned later, after returning home, that Smitty had his leg amputated in a German hospital and had also suffered stomach wounds. His stomach wounds caused him to be unable to continue to work after 1963. He is one of the first men I discovered in 1987, after reading MacDonald's book that I mentioned earlier.
The first hostile artillery barrage, at 0900, was unbelievable in its magnitude. It seemed that every square yard of ground was being covered. The initial barrage slackened after forty-five minutes or an hour. I could hear men from "L" Company, on the slopes below, screaming for medics. Shortly after that the shelling started again. The woods were being raked throughout the day by a constant barrage of small arms and artillery fire. We were pinned down in the edge of the woods and could not move. I found some protection in a small trench, by a tree, as the shelling started. It must have been scooped out by one of the riflemen the night before. The front of the trench, pointing towards Schönberg, was deeper than the back. My feet stuck up above the ground. I suppose that was the reason I suffered a leg wound. At one point during the shelling, I heard a piece of metal hit the ground. It was a large jagged, hot, smoking piece of shrapnel, about eighteen inches long and four inches wide. It landed a foot or two from my head. After it cooled off I reached out and picked it up. I don't think is was a mortar or a 88mm shell. It might have been flak from an antiaircraft shell. I read in 1987, in MacDonald's book, that the Germans had many antiaircraft guns (88s and 128s) with them during their Ardennes Offensive. They were for protection in case the weather turned better. They knew for sure that the Allied air support would eventually come. The German antiaircraft gun is capable of being used to support ground troops. This is done by elevating the guns downward, and firing timed bursts or tree bursts into the trees that explode on contact. There is very little protection as the fragments rain down from above. They also had 20mm antiaircraft guns, mounted on quad mounts and half-tracks. They were fired into the tree tops, and sometimes at point blank range, causing severe damage to our troops. The tree bursts, exploding high in the trees, were hard to hide from. They caused many casualties. There is no doubt that they were used to our disadvantage.
The weather was overcast and foggy and did not turn to the better until December 21st or 22nd. The sky cleared and it got much colder, as we were then walking, as prisoners, back into Germany. When the weather did clear, the Germans had the opportunity to use those antiaircraft guns for their intended purpose, for there was much Allied air activity. There is no doubt that it was their fortune in having their antiaircraft battalions near Schönberg, as we approached it from the East. Those guns were a decisive factor in the outcome of the battle for that city. We had very little artillery support. I learned after the war that the 423rd's artillery support, the 590th Field Artillery to the rear, was overrun by the Germans troops that were fighting westward towards Schönberg along the Bleialf-Schönberg road.
On the Schönberg Hill, rifle companies, mortar and machine gun squads were being pinned down in the woods. In the confusion, caused by the demoralizing artillery fire, they were being separated from each other. The 422nd and 423rd Regiments lost track of each other. The day was going bad. There were no targets in view, at least from my point of view. The Germans were waiting for their artillery to neutralize us, before they moved. With the ravaging artillery fire, and no chance of counter artillery, we were literally sitting ducks. There was some action on the edges of the perimeter. From my position I could see two German tanks. They were scouting around the area, in the edge of the woods near Schönberg. One of them threw out a smoke grenade. I was not able to identify any German infantry troops, prior to being captured. I learned later that the tanks I saw were mopping up troops that were pinned down in the fields and road below. Most of the action occurred early in the fight, between the rifle companies below us and the Germans across the road. L Company, in trying to push into Schönberg, was caught in the ditches and fields. It was their men that I could see and that I could hear screaming for help. They were being ripped to pieces by the tremendous artillery barrages. Unfortunately our machine-guns, at least mine, was placed too far back of the infantry company as they attempted to get into Schönberg. Normally, we would have moved forward, but the same artillery that was destroying L Company was also hitting us. At the same time German troops coming up the road from Bleialf were hitting us from the rear. This trapped some of the reserve companies who were preparing to come forward to assist L Company.
One of those rifle companies was I Company, 423rd. In 1987 I acquired a list of the 106th Division members belonging to "The Veterans of the Battle of the Bulge. I called one of the listed men, Harold Gene Songer of Danville, Illinois. (6/4/87) He as a former member of I Company, said, " Yes, I was in the woods - don't know exactly where. He sais, "I" Company was being slaughtered. A sniper was killing a lot of them. We had spotted the sniper, nearby, in a clump of bushes. The range was too short for the elevating mechanism. My squad leader (mortars) was trying to elevate the mortar, by holding it vertically. He was killed by a bullet in the temple. Another mortar man and I grabbed the mortar and dropped three shells in the area of the sniper, killing him. "Songer, like myself, was captured. He ended up at Stalag IV-A, Hohenstein, near Dresden".
From Norman Gruenzner's Postal History of American POWs: World War II, Korea, Vietnam [State College, Penn.: American Philatelic Society, 1979].
Stalag IV-A was located close to Hohenstein, near Dresden. The American camp population in December 1944 was 300. In February 1945 it reached 2,217. There were several work detachments, living in a variety of places. One group lived in Dresden. There were eleven British work detachments, but only three or four American work groups. The camp was closed in March 1945. Songer asked, " Were you in the prison train that was bombed on Christmas Eve?" My answer, "I was in a small barracks in Dockweiler, east of Pruem, on Christmas Eve. We were not put into box-cars until 30 December, at Limburg."
The German troops advancing from the Southeast, along the Bleialf- Schönberg road were the ones who took over ourartillery battalion. I remember throughout all the shelling watching a Tech Sergeant, I thought from one of our mortar platoons, walking and running through the woods giving orders. He was trying to get troops moving. The mortar, antiaircraft and artillery fire was fierce. Trees flying through the air, shell were bursting every where. I hope he made it. He was a very brave soldier, but was exposed to fierce, ravaging artillery fire. At one point, as I looked to the right along the edge of the woods, I saw six or eight ground bursts, probably 88's. They hit in a small area along the tree line where several soldiers were trying to find protection. One of those men was hurled through the air and his body was wrapped around a tree trunk several feet off the ground. There were continuous cries from the wounded screaming for Medics. The woods and open areas on the slope leading to the road, was littered with dead and wounded. Some time between 1600 (4 p.m.)and 1630 (4:30 p.m.)an American officer, accompanied by a German officer told us we were surrounded. He told us that we were cut off from the other battalion, the 422nd, and that our Regimental Commander, Colonel C. C. Cavender, was ordering us to surrender.
As the history of this battle shows, we were surrounded on all sides by German troops. They were heavily armed, with many mortars, antiaircraft guns, assault guns and artillery pieces. They were being reinforced by more and more troops from the Southeast and there would have been no possibility of reversing the battle situation. We disabled our weapons by breaking them on tree trunks or by taking them apart and throwing the parts in different directions. After that the Germans led us to a clearing in the forest and directed us to throw down our equipment. E.g.: ammo belts, packs, hand-grenades and trench-knifes. I quickly disposed of the German binoculars that I had found earlier. We were lead in a small column down to the Schönberg-Bleialf road in front of the rifle companies. There were Germans on one side of the road and Americans on the other. They had been facing each other, in a fierce fire fight, from ditch to ditch. There were many dead, both Americans and Germans. The wounded were still crying for help. As we approached the Schönberg road, it seemed that hundreds of Germans rose up out of the field.
There was a German truck burning in the middle of the road. Behind the truck was an American infantryman lying in the middle of the road. He was dressed like an officer, but with no insignia, as would be normal in combat. His was wearing his winter uniform, a heavy winter coat, ammo belt and canteen. He was lying on his back, as if he were resting. The body had no head or neck. It was as if somebody had sliced it off with a surgical instrument, leaving no sign of blood. All my life I have had flash backs of that scene and I still find it hard to believe. I always wonder how it happened. He was the only soldier, either American or German that I saw laying on the road. There were many wounded and dead in the ditches and fields as we were led out of the woods. The Germans then walked us in columns to Bleialf (recorded in my diary as "St. Beliath"), where they herded us into a church court yard. I probably recorded the church name by mistake. It had turned dark and the temperature was dropping. Most of us were without overcoats. We had only our field jackets and our winter issue of "Olive Drab" uniforms with long johns. I recall that I wore two pair of pants, my longjohns and my field jacket. We had to sleep on the ground. I remember how nervous I was. Every little sound was amplified. I wondered what was going to happen to us when day break came. We had nothing to eat since early morning, December 18th. (remember, the pancakes).
Additional Sources:
www.mm.com/user/jpk/battle.htm
fas-history.rutgers.edu
www.ehistory.com
www.grunts.net
www.militaryunits.com
www.usarc.army.mil
ardenne44.free.fr
www.pbs.org
www.angelfire.com/va2/worldwar2family
www.mm.com/user/jpk
www.europeanmilitarytours.com
