The Russian had the German by the scruff of his neck and was shaking him violently. The Russian had a bayonet in his hand and threatened to kill the German. As we approached, the Russian lowered the bayonet but maintained his grip on the German’s collar. The conversation that ensued was a mixture of English, German, and Russian. It did not require expert knowledge of the languages to grasp what was going on.
The German had apparently disguised his identity with a farmer’s coat and hat. Not willing to parade around without pants or shoes, he had kept on his soldier’s pants and combat boots. He realized that any German soldier captured behind American lines in civilian clothes could theoretically be shot as a spy, but at the same time, if he continued to insist that he was a civilian, the Russian was going to kill him. The German kept repeating, “Nein, nein, me no soldat, me civil, me civil.” This infuriated the Russian, who raised his bayonet and seemed ready to cut the man’s throat.
The young German panicked and in a violent surge broke loose from the Russian’s grip and jumped on the back of my Jeep, screaming and hollering, “Ya, ya, me soldat, me soldat, me Deutsch soldat.” He evidently figured that he would have a better chance with the Americans than the enraged Russian.
I hollered halt and the Russian stopped his advance toward the Jeep. The young German soldier was trembling all over and burst into tears. In my best German, I told him that the Americans would not kill him.
We drove him about a mile down the road, where I turned him over to the MP guards at a POW camp. He seemed relieved when he saw his fellow prisoners and realized that some of them had on all types of clothing, both civilian and military. He had a wan half smile on his face as he departed with the MP, and he raised his hand slightly as if to say danke schön. He realized that his life had been spared and he had now become a survivor.
The division had moved about three hundred miles in continuous combat since jumping off from the Remagen bridgehead. The men were thoroughly exhausted. There seemed to be no letup, and it appeared that the enemy was determined to fight until every square foot of Germany had been conquered.
The strain of the long march also had a telling effect on the equipment. Any M4 tanks that had survived since Normandy (and there were very few) were badly in need of track changes. Because there had been no chance to do routine heavy maintenance, many crews and maintenance mechanics did their best to keep everything patched up and going.
To make matters worse, we faced a severe shortage of fifty-weight engine oil for the tanks. Both the R975 Wright engine and the V8 Ford engine used this oil in their crankcases; they also required five gallons of it for the oil bath air cleaners. This was primarily a logistic problem; we had moved so rapidly that it was becoming increasingly difficult for the supply truck convoys to get to us. We had to let the air cleaners go and do the best we could to ration what oil we had. By this time, the maintenance people had learned how to improvise in the field under difficult conditions and had become an extremely efficient, well-coordinated organization.
It was difficult to determine whether the small villages were occupied by our troops or the Germans. The situation could change several times in a single day. In one incident, Maj. Bill Derner, division headquarters liaison officer to the maintenance battalion, and Capt. Bob Grindatti of the maintenance battalion were proceeding back to division trains at Sangerhausen. They came to a fork in the road where the paved road led north to Quellendorf and the dirt road led west. They decided to take the road to Quellendorf and proceeded with caution.
As they went up the road, they encountered a detachment of American engineers with a bulldozer removing a German roadblock. They asked if the road was cleared to Quellendorf and were told yes, that the company commander had just proceeded up that road a few minutes ago.
Thinking that Quellendorf was in American hands, they headed out, with Captain Grindatti’s Jeep in the lead.
Just as they approached the outskirts of the town, they encountered heavy small-arms fire. The major realized that they were surrounded and ordered his group to surrender. Captain Grindatti had been hit several times in the stomach and was bleeding severely.
The Germans apparently were just going to walk away and leave him there; however, Major Derner insisted that his captors take care of the wounded man. They reluctantly agreed and took Grindatti into the village, where a German medical officer attended to his wounds. One of the division’s task forces overran Quellendorf that afternoon; Captain Grindatti was liberated and sent back to an army base hospital. In the meantime, Major Derner and several other prisoners, including the captain who had commanded the engineers south of Quellendorf, were imprisoned at Alten-Grabow until May 3, when the British captured the town.
The division’s next objective was Dessau, a medium-sized city on the Elbe River near the confluence of the Mulde and the Elbe. The end of the war in Europe was rapidly approaching, and rumors abounded. There was considerable speculation that Hitler and some of his staff would withdraw into the Berchtesgaden area in the Alps and set up a strong defensive position there.
A move in this direction, however, had been frustrated by the rapid movements of the Third Army and the Seventh Army to the south, which isolated this area. The next question was, would we go into Berlin? The XIX Corps of Ninth Army, north of us, had already established bridgeheads across the Elbe River. The answer to this question appeared to be yes, and the VII Corps received its final field order. Our objective was to establish bridges across the Mulde and the Elbe and attack Wittenberg, forty miles southeast of Berlin.
German resistance had apparently stiffened considerably in these last few days, and the Germans reacted furiously with heavy artillery barrages when our engineers started to put a bridge across the Mulde. The engineers sustained a number of casualties. My friend Lieutenant Frost was killed during one of these barrages. He was one of my liaison buddies with CCB, and was with me when we got lost going into Airel our first night in Normandy. The loss of any life is tragic, but to lose one’s life after making it all the way through the war up until these last few days seemed almost incomprehensible.
Although it would seem natural for a soldier to hesitate taking risks as the war drew to an end, by this time we had learned to take things one day at a time. For a man living between life and death, there is no tomorrow.
Living in the present helps a soldier survive emotionally.
The division now found itself stretched somewhat precariously. At the leading edge of the VII Corps, it occupied a forty-mile front from just southeast of the Harz Mountains to where the autobahn crossed the Mulde River. The 1st and 9th Divisions were still cleaning up the Harz Mountains, although a couple of battalions of the 1st Infantry had been assigned to CCA and CCR. The 104th Division, to our south, was committed to capture Halle, and one battalion had been assigned to CCB.
The Germans had organized three new divisions to oppose us: the Potsdam, Scharnhorst, and Ulrich von Hütten Divisions. Personnel were mostly the remnants of shattered units plus air force ground and flight personnel, although the Germans did bring in a number of veteran officers and non-coms with combat experience. These three divisions were the outer defense line against an assault on Berlin from the southwest.
Hitler reportedly visited these units on April 13 and told them they would soon be the focus of a major German counteroffensive.