WWII Memoirs: Part 3 – The Siegfried Line

On January 15, the 345th Regiment again climbed on trucks and in freezing cold headed for the Duchy of Luxembourg along with the rest of the 87th Division to relieve the 4th Division, which had been on the southern shoulder of the Bulge. K Company occupied Berdorf near the west bank of the Sauer River.

The 346th Regiment’s Bloody Capture of Hill 648 and Goldbrick Hill

Towering over a vast stretch of eastern Germany, the hills looked down on cities, rivers, mountain passages and tactical and strategic sites. Most significantly, Hills 648 and 649 were bastions of Germany’s Siegfried Line, a series of heavily-armed and mined bunkers dug into the hillsides.
After helping to free the besieged city of Bastogne, Belgium, during the Battle of the Bulge, the 87th Infantry Division soldiers were exhausted. And their ranks had been thinned of experienced infantrymen. Yet, acting under orders from Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr., the two towering hills were the 346th Regiment’s newly-assigned targets.

A Daylight Reconnaissance Patrol

February 1945 Somewhere in Belgium or Germany near the Siegfried Line   One day the captain of our company summoned and ordered me to lead a daylight patrol in thick woods, which I believe were in the Ardennes Forest. He told me to pick five men and lead a...

Minefield Rescue

It was at the end of February that I was assigned to two engineers. We were to blow a path through a minefield. The engineers found out they could not make a path through the area so they decided to go around the site. The platoon following us walked into the...

Goldbrick Hill, Germany

Immediately following the Battle of the Bulge my Division, the 87th, had plunged far into the Siegfried Line. We had outrun our supplies and the totally ruined roads of Belgium and Germany did not permit our adequate re-supply. We were, therefore, in a comparatively...