Some of the German troops who escaped the Ruhr Pocket headed eastward and established themselves in the heavily wooded Harz Mountains north of Nordhausen. This posed a serious threat to the northern flank of VII Corps. General Collins dispatched troops northward to join with troops from XIX Corps and the Ninth Army coming southward. They surrounded the Harz Mountain Redoubt and penetrated its outer defenses. In certain local areas, the fighting became extremely heavy; however, we gradually isolated the German troops into smaller pockets. Here again the original estimates of some 20,000 to 30,000 Germans in the pocket turned out to be in gross error. The final count was 84,000 Germans.
With this threat to our northern flank neutralized, we proceeded eastward toward Sangerhausen, twenty miles away, to join the column; the division trains moved forward to Duderstadt. As we came downhill into the small village, we saw a Panther tank that had just been knocked out. We stopped a moment to check it out, and Wrayford climbed on the glacis plate to look into the turret. There were no bodies in the tank or lying on the ground, so we assumed that the crew had survived. Before I could stop Wrayford, he crawled inside the turret through the cupola hatch. I was leery of getting inside German tanks because of the possibility of booby traps; however, the crew apparently had abandoned the tank too rapidly to think about this.
Wrayford soon poked his head above the cupola. I knew from the broad grin on his face that he had found something interesting. When he was back on the ground, I noticed a bulge beneath the hand-warming slot in his combat jacket. He pulled back the edge of the slot.
Out poked the head of a small hound puppy, no more than two to three weeks old. He had found her in a shoe box in the sponson. He had also found a complete set of electric train equipment. It appeared that some German tanker had picked this up and was taking it home to his young son.
There wasn’t room in the Jeep for the trains, but Wrayford put the puppy in his pocket and away we went. He named the dog Jeannie, and she immediately became a full-fledged member of our crew. Wrayford thought of her as Private Jeannie; he wanted to outrank at least one member of the crew.
I couldn’t help but think that somewhere in Germany a small boy was going to miss getting a puppy and an electric train from his daddy. In fact, there was a strong possibility he might not get his daddy back. 1 was sad for the child, in spite of being hardened by stories of children in the Hitlerjugend who killed American soldiers. They were no longer innocent children; they had become pawns of a vicious despot.
We were now approaching the heart of Germany. Within sixty miles there were three major metropolitan areas: Berlin, Dresden, and Halle. Once the heavy bombing of German cities started, the Germans began to develop a highly concentrated and well-organized antiaircraft defense system. In addition to the numerous fighter fields in this area, there were also antiaircraft guns. The key weapon was the dual-purpose 88, which was located in large clusters along the bombers’ approach routes.
One of these 88mm gun clusters was on a hill just north of Sangerhausen. The division’s main line of advance was now northeast toward Eisleben. The main tank elements of the lead column passed this point without noticing it, but as soon as the half-tracks and trucks loaded with infantry started passing, the German guns suddenly opened fire.
Several trucks and half-tracks were hit and set on fire, which resulted in heavy casualties. Fortunately, our 391st Armored Field Artillery Battalion had not passed this point. Within a matter of minutes, the entire eighteen-gun battalion went into position and started firing for effect. Using proximity fuses, and firing at a rate of ten rounds per minute per gun, they laid three thousand 105mm shells on the target before a cease-fire was ordered. The entire cluster of twelve to eighteen 88s was devastated. This was actually overkill, but we did not realize the true nature of the target.
The next town we came to was Polleben. It was declared an open city, and we captured it without further ado. We found a British POW camp there and liberated 450 British soldiers, some of whom had been there since Dunkirk. One British major reportedly broke down and cried when he saw the first Sherman tank come into view.
The next town of Koethen had a large German air base, which was also a Luftwaffe training ground. There were hundreds of fighter planes and light bombers there and at other nearby airfields. The Germans not only faced a severe aircraft fuel shortage, but pilots were virtually nonexistent; air force ground crews, along with officer candidates and naval personnel, had been combined to form infantry divisions.
For the 3d Armored Division, the war was now reaching a critical and final stage. The division had advanced rapidly and was now spread over a front of some forty miles. We had bypassed numerous small towns where enemy troops were dug in, and our infantry divisions had not had time to come forward and clean out these pockets of resistance. The supply convoys and liaison officers had to be on constant alert; even though townspeople may have put out white flags and surrendered when the troops came through the first time, there was no assurance that German soldiers hadn’t reoccupied the town and blocked the entrances to it again.
In anticipation of such moves, SHAEF had printed a bulletin in German, English, French, and Russian and posted it on the door of the burgermeister’s office of each small town that surrendered. The bulletin stated that once a town surrendered, it came under the protection of the Allied occupation forces, and all weapons, including firearms, swords, daggers, and any other military paraphernalia were to be turned in within twenty-four hours. Once the white flags had been put out, any attempts to rearm or generate further resistance either by civilians or military would be dealt with severely.
Just east of Koethen, I stopped at a task force headquarters, and a messenger on a motorcycle came in. He had just returned from a column on the other side of the next village. He excitedly reported that the village, which had put out white flags and surrendered, had opened fire on him.
The task force commander called a light tank company commander and told him to send a platoon to retake the town. The platoon leader had new M24 light tanks with 75mm guns and took along a platoon of armored infantry. He moved the tanks five hundred yards south of town. Although there were several white flags still hanging from the upper windows of the farm buildings, the troops started receiving fire immediately. German soldiers came out of the basements and fired some panzerfausts, but they were out of range.
The platoon fired a salvo of white phosphorus into the village. Several of the buildings and some of the adjacent haystacks caught fire, and the civilian men, women, and children together with some German soldiers came screaming out of the village with their hands up. That ended the resistance there, and I’m sure the word got around to other villages.
This highly fluid situation presented opposing contrasts. When a major German combat group was defeated, some of the soldiers would surrender and others would break into small task groups. At the same time, we had overrun many POW camps with Russian, Polish, and other east European prisoners of war. After suffering years of deprivation in these German camps, the men readily vented their spleen against all things German, both military and civilian.
We were traveling east on the road from Koethen. The countryside was flat, open farmland, and the road was straight as an arrow with a few occasional trees on either side. As we approached a clump of trees, I noticed two figures; one appeared to be jumping up and down, raising his hands, and hollering. I told Wrayford to slow down. The man yelled for us to halt. He was dressed in heavy gray German infantrymen’s trousers and heavy black infantry combat boots. He had on an old, worn farmer’s coat and a farmer’s hat. The other man, who was much larger, wore a tattered Russian uniform.