Spearhead Drive to Elbe

Spearheading with the Third Armored Division

Drive to the Elbe

Chapter 5 - One More River

The swift drive from the Remagen bridgehead to the Paderborn and thence to Lippstadt and a link-up with the 9th Army, was a high spot in 3rd Armored Division history. But there was more to come. After spending April 3 and 4 mopping up late gains, the 3rd was relieved from the defence of Lippstadt-Paderborn and prepared to jump off in a new offensive.

The goal was Germany's Weser River. On April 5, the two veteran combat commands, "A" under Colonel L.L. Doan, and "B" commanded by General Truman E. Boudinot, drove for the heart of Germany.

By dawn of the following day, Task Force Boles had taken Amelunken on the Weser, to find that enemy engineers had systematically blown all of the bridge spans. Task Force Kane's veterans ground ahead in the face of tank and infantry opposition to pocket a defending force at Tietelsen. Kane bypasses this resistance with one force while he pushed another group further south.

Within Combat Command Boudinot, Task Force Welborn knifed south of Kane and took Heerbruck. The entire division was moving swiftly: Task Force Lovelady cracked through stubborn resistance to clear Manrode.

During this period of battle, the "Spearhead" was encountering scattered elements of SS tank and reconnaissance training units which had been stationed in the Paderborn area, as well as several replacement battalions and parts of the 1066 and 661st Infantry Regiments of the 166th Infantry Division. Although the opposition was not of a caliber to be compared with Ardennes battle groups, a certain desperation and fanaticism produced bitterly contested local actions. In addition, the enemy still had a number of 128mm tank destroyers left in the area.

On April 7, all elements of the 3rd Armored Division had reached the Weser River. The enemy, still smarting from his costly blunder at Remagen, was now thoroughly blowing his bridges in this late stage of the campaign.

At the Weser's brink, Task Force Welborn's advance elements received direct fire from both sides of the stream. The town was Herstelle. Another of Welborn's probing spearheads reached Carlshafen, further east. Task Force Lovelady was slowed by soft terrain, but by the end of the day had succeeded in taking Helmarshausen.

Within Combat Command Doan, Lt Colonel Clifford Miller, the self styled "Army brat", and his task force, was slowed by a blown railway bridge at Godelheim. Task Force Orr found the river bridge at Wehrden blown and noted many barricades in the town. Kane's column bagged an airplane assembly plant in the town of Blankenau.

Mopping up along the river consumed a day, and then on April 9 a crossing was made. Resistance varied from moderate to stubborn, but 22 towns were taken before sunset. Task Force Hogan cleared Hardesen and Northeim as Combat Command Howze relieved Doan on the right. Doan's force went into reserve.

On the far side of the river, Task Force Richardson encountered 12 Panther and Tiger tanks. Wily Richardson bypassed the armor and drove south.

Liberation of the Death Camp Slaves

Continued advances were made through April 10. Thrusting toward Nordhausen, Welborn took Epschenrode. Task Force Lovelady, hampered by muddy terrain, nevertheless advanced beyond Grossbodungen. Colonel Sam Hogan, the colorful Texan, battled armor and mine fields to reach the small town of Zwinge.

Within Combat Command Doan, Task Force Kane was hampered by debris in Northeim, but destroyed two Mark-IV tanks and a pair of grounded airplanes during the day.

On the 10th also, a platoon of the 83rd Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, led by Lt Duane Doherty, cleared a V-2 assembly plant at Kleinbodungen. A number of the huge rockets, completed except for warheads, lay on jigs where they had been constructed. After taking a number of prisoners, one of Doherty's men discovered an underground shaft in the assembly plant. A later examination proved that he had uncovered one of the Nazis infamous underground installations. The reconnaissance soldiers were amazed to find thet the tunnels ran more than 640 meters beneath the surface, and radiated off through several kilometers of sandstone and clay formations. Although no machinery was set up in the tunnels, all available space was crammed with various types of high explosives.

During this period the 1st Infantry Division was coming up to the left rear of the 3rd. Attached to the "Spearhead" were: the 1st Battalion of the 18th Infantry, 1st Division; the 3rd Battalion of the 47th Infantry, 9th Division; and the 2nd Battalion of the 414th Infantry, 104th Division. There was no lack of crack doughboy support.

Although the taking of Nordhausen did not constitute the heaviest fighting of April 11, that city will live forever in the memories of 3rd Armored Division soldiers as a place of horror. Much bombed Nordhausen was the center of a concentration camp - slave labor system which, in its utter disregard for human life and dignity must rank with the hell holes of Maidenek and Buchenwald. The inmates of the city concentration camp, the former Caserne Boelcke, were representative of all nations: they were the political prisoners of Europe, the men who, so long as Nazi Germany ruled - were doomed to worse than death.

At Nordhausen, called the Death Camp by prisoners, hundreds of corpses lay sprawled over the huge compound's ragged acres. They lay in contorted heaps, half-stripped, mouths gaping in the dirt and straw: or they were piled naked, like cordwood, in the corners of great steel and cement barracks. Most horrible was the sight of the living among the dead. Side by side with the bodies of their comrades, sunken-eyed skeletons of men moaned weakly or babbled in delirium. In the filth of their own dysentary, systematically starved, abused, and finally abandoned to die unattended, those who still lived when Combat Command Boudinot sped through Nordhausen, were whisked off to emergency hospitals by American medical men. Many were without hope of recovery. Major Martin L. Sherman, a division medical officer, estimated that there was little chance of more than half of the pitiful starvation cases to survive.

From the concentration camp at Nordhausen, the political prisoners had worked in an efficient underground factory north of the city, called "Dora", and at the V-2 assembly works at Kleinbodungen. Under brutal and unsanitary conditions, the emaciated men had labored in the labyrinths of underground shafts which had been dug into a hill for a distance of more than two miles. Here they constructed V-1 robots and V-2 weapons as well as parts for Junkers airplane motors. Although V-3, purportedly a secret anti-aircraft device, was undergoing experimentation at Dora, few of the political prisoners were assigned to its development. Those who were put on V-3 manufacture, according to the eyewitness accounts, were segregated and finally murdered to preserve the secret of that which they had seen.

Working hours for these unfortunates were as long as 16 hours a day, and lagging was discouraged by beatings administered by SS guards, and by periodic hangings of alleged slackers as an object lesson. The starving prisoners, who were fed four ounces of black bread and a liter of soup each day, dragged themselves desperately until at last they collapsed, were allowed to die unattended, and then were shovelled into cremation furnaces on the premises. In the last week of its being, so many men had died at Nordhausen and Dora that the furnaces were unable to cope with all of the bodies. Thousands were therefore left in piles where they had been dropped.

Dora was efficient in a characteristic Nazi way, but to the shocked eyes of American fighting men, the camp was the most complete condemnation of Hitlerism yet exposed. The tankers of the 3rd would never again doubt the reason for their fighting.

While General Doyle O. Hickey, chewing savagely on his pipe, surveyed the gagging horror of Nordhausen, his old elite Combat Command "A" took Herzberg, reducing a strong roadblock in the process. Task Force Kane cleared Osterode in bitter fighting, using Thunderbolt bombers to attack defending tanks. Between Nordhausen and Osterode, Combat Command Howze swept the defences of several fortified towns. The Yanks were mad and mean after what they had witnessed. German forces attempted to halt the avalanche: reeled and fell back instead.

On the following day, April 12, the attack was again pushed. Advance elements sped through Sangerhausen and, on April 13, continued to the Saale River. Here again all bridges were blown, but the ground flattened as the 3rd Armored Division left the Harz mountains behind its left flank.

Britons Liberated

The town of Eisleben was declared an open city. At nearby Polleben a British prisoner of war camp was overrun, liberating many officers and men. Some of these Britons had been prisoners since Dunkirk, others had been taken in the Western Desert or in Crete. Several, who had accompanied the "Spearhead" columns for two days because of evacuation difficulties, wanted to continue with the division.

Task Force Lovelady encountered strong 88mm fire during the day and found the bridge blown at Laschwitz. Task Force Richardson advanced to Alsleben and was here taken under direct fire. The force was ordered back to use another bridge then in the process of building. Only Colonel Sam Hogan found a partially intact span, a damaged railway bridge at Netben, and was able to push infantry across.

On April 14, the division crossed the Saale on two bridges built during the preceding night by Lt Colonel Lawrence Foster's 23rd Armored Engineer Battalion. Task Force Welborn lanced straight into the blue, reaching the Mulde River south of Dessau, on that day. This force met elements of the Scharnhorst Volksgrenadier Division which had been formed, about Easter-time, of officer candidates and veteran personnel: the Potsdam and the von Hutten Volksgrenadier Divisions, also made up of OCS material and veteran frontkampfers. The men of these three divisions were as near to being crack soldiers as any battle formations committed by the enemy since the Ardennes.

On the same day, Task Force Lovelady struck heavy resistance, but continued to advance. Hogan hacked through stiffening lines of resistance to clear an airport in the outskirts of Kothen.

Bridgehead on the Mulde

Sensitive on the subject of bridges, German engineers left a wrecked span across the Mulde where Task Force Welborn halted on April 15. Infantry of his force, however, crossed and secured a bridgehead. Meanwhile, Lovelady's veterans cleared the towns of Thurland and Kleinleipzig (which later were the scenes of bitter fighting after German forces had infiltrated through the spearheading armor). Colonel Hogan cleared all of the north-east and Richardson secured the small town of Frenz and proceeded toward the larger place of Bernburg. He met fanatic resistance in Unterpeissen.

All along the division front resistance stiffened perceptably. Towns which had been bypassed and thought clear, suddenly disgorged a complement of German troops who harried supply operations in rear areas. Infantry from Colonel Boles task force was used to clear Meilendorf and Kornetz, Quellendorf and Reupzig. These places were defended by fanatics wielding panzerfausts and small arms for the most part. Colonel Orr's forces occupied several small towns, and the 83rd Armored Reconnaissance Battalion sent patrols which took Rendin, Thalheim and Sandersdorf. The recon troopers discovered that the larger towns of Wolfen and Bitterfeld, near the Mulde River, were more strongly fortified.

At this time the "Spearhead" Division was holding down a struggling 40 mile front with many uncleared, yet bypassed towns in the rear areas. The terrain, however, was favorable. It was flat farm country dotted by numerous small towns, all connected by excellent road systems. To the south of Dessau was a large patch of woods through which Task Force Welborn had advanced on the autobahn. To the division's north was the Elbe, and to the east, the Mulde. On this front the armor was facing the greater part of three divisions, each averaging 4,000 of Germany's last, well trained reserves, plus a scattering of other miscellaneous units. It was a condition which, even at this stage of the war, demanded prompt action and close attention. Fortunately, the division had sufficient mobility to strike the enemy before he could become fixed in any one position.

The Mulde bridge operation, meanwhile, continued to confront Task Force Welborn on April 16. Short of infantry to begin with, he found German artillery extremely heavy and accurate on the bridging site. After having considerable engineer equipment destroyed by enemy fire, Welborn was ordered , by Army, to discontinue spanning operations and to withdraw his infantry from the east bank. This he did on April 17.

While Colonel Welborn was sweating out his bridgehead on the Mulde, Task Force Lovelady cleared enemy resistance from Raguhn, west of the stream which divided the town, while Richardson entered Bernburg. The significance of these moves was that the Harz mountain pocket had been effectively sealed and the capture of the more than 80,000 troops in that pocket made inevitable. It was the second such pocket that the 3rd Armored Division had helped to close in a month of combat, the first being the Ruhr - named the Rose Pocket, in memory of Major General Maurice Rose, where 374,000 prisoners of war were captured.

Mop Up Before Dessau

Task Force Hogan continued to clear Kothen, while one battle group went to Klepzig, there to encounter a road block, artillery, mortar fire, small arms and bazooka defences. The German defenders were making good use of their big, clumsy, but often deadly panzerfausts. However, Klepzig was cleared and later, Merzein, too.

On the following day, Task Force Boles took Libbesdorf and Kochstedt, west of Dessau, encountering a mine field in the course of operations. Colonel Orr's men swept the woods south of Dessau.

During the early morning hours of April 17, Task Force Lovelady's CP in Thurland was overrun by 150 enemy infantrymen in a well planned and coordinated infantry-commando attack. The town was not retaken until late in the afternoon when men of the 83rd Armored Reconnaissance Battalion slugged their way back in.

Meanwhile, Hogan's elements had entered the town of Aken, on the Elbe, and Orr's battle group maintained pressure on a road junction near the town of Torten, south of Dessau.

Task Force Richardson, ordered to attack toward Bobbau-Steinfurth, promptly nicknamed "Bobby-sox" by the tankers, was counter-attacked from the direction of the town. Richardson parried the blow with artillery and fighter bombers, accounting for eight enemy tanks in so doing. By the end of the day his forces had reached Bobbau-Steinfurth.

Task Force Hogan took all of Aken on the 18th, and one of his battle groups contacted the XIX Corps in Poszig, near Bernburg. The 83rd, with Lt Colonel Miller's battle group attached, attacked toward Wolfen and Greppin. Miller's tankers took Rodgen and Thalheim against mortar and artillery fire, and the 83rd pushed through two towns to Renden. Here, the enemy counter-attacked with three tanks and about 50 infantrymen. The attack was thrown back and the town was taken. In Bobbau-Steinfurth, meanwhile, Richardson was experiencing another counter-attack. He also held firm and, on the 19th, mopped up the area.

Colonel Miller's forces entered Wolfen on the 19th, and Task Force Hogan sent a group to clean up the area between Wolfen and Bobbau-Steinfurth. The next day Wolfen and Greppin were firmly in "Spearhead" hands. The preliminaries were over. Commanders pored over maps and studied the blue phase lines and the routes into Dessau.

Dessau and The Elbe

To 3rd Armored Division Texans, April 21 was proper for the entry into Dessau: it was San Jacinto day! Task Force Welborn attacked from the south, and Boles spearheaded through Alten to enter the city. Hogan took Kleinkuhnau and Grosskuhnau, encountering road blocks, small arms, mortar and artillery fire. Richardson, another Texas tanker, drove into Jessnitz.

Resistance stiffened in Dessau on the 22nd of April, with shellfire and small arms the principal opposition, but on the following day all of the town was cleared. Sgt. Bill Wascom, of the 391st Armored Field Artillery Battalion, who had fired his outfit's first shell in Normandy, sent battalion's 170,100th 105mm projectile whistling into German lines. The campaign was over.

Campaign Kaput

Weary tankers, red eyed and grimy, tooled their big Shermans and Pershings back over the roads of conquest. The division, as usual, had been the cleaving edge of Major General J. Lawton Collins' crack VII Corps. As usual, the "Spearhead" came out of battle with high honors - and vacancies. Lt Colonel Prentice E. Yeomans, of the 83rd, had been killed in action at Zschepkau. Lt Colonel Matthew Kane had been wounded. Since crossing the Rhine there had not been a single division general staff section which had not lost an officer. Some of the latter were lucky enough to return safely after being retaken by friendly troops. Among them were Lt Colonel Wesley A. Sweat, G-3, and Lt Colonel Jack A. Boulger, G-1.

By April 25, the 3rd Armored Division was out of the line and out of contact with the enemy: it was one of the few in more than ten months of almost continuous battle. The 23,879 prisoners taken in the drive to Dessau, plus a number captured in rear areas, boosted division totals over the 75,000 mark - more than five times "Spearhead" strength! To the division's credit was another long drive, 145 miles from Paderborn to the Elbe. Here, to observe strategic coordination with advancing Russian armies, the American drive halted. At long last, Germany was breaking up. There could be no mistake: the war in Europe was very close to an end. Thirteen days later the end was officially announced. To the weathered veterans of battle, the news was almost anti-climax.

South of the Harz mountains in the Sangerhausen area, men of the 3rd Armored Division rested in comfortable billets, learned that reville is still practiced in the American army, and tried to forget about K-rations and foxholes.

These men who had come up the long, dusty roads from Omaha Beach and St. Jean de Daye, through France and Belgium and Germany, through the flaming towns and the best defences of a fanatic enemy, felt the comfortable relief of a hard job, well done. Now they might relax for the moment. They did. And they wondered, too - they wondered where the trail led from these quiet towns in occupied Germany....

There was always the far east. So long as the United States remained at war there would be need of tanks in the American scheme of battle. 3rd Armored Division soldiers knew that no fighting force in the world could claim supremecy over the "Spearhead". In view of that fact, whether the 3rd would again be called upon to lead the first Americans in total, irresistable combat, was a matter for God, and General Marshall to decide.

THE END

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[Appendix 1 - Units Referenced in this Document]
[Appendix 2 - Soldiers Referenced in this Document]
[Appendix 3 - Sites Referenced in this Document]

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