On March 15, 1945, we began preparations for the attack on Bitche, which town had almost become an obsession after the many earlier frustrations. Knowing this was IT, I carefully cleaned the machine gun, and loaded the belts with the most wicked incindiary and armor piercing bullets I could find. In reassembling the weapon, my assistant gunner and I each assumed that the other had replaced the extractor. As as far as I know it still rests on a stump near Bitche.
[For those who are not impressed by this, I have some advice: When you clean a gun, it is VERY IMPORTANT to put ALL of the pieces back. With a machine gun, it is MOST IMPORTANT to put back the clawlike device known as the extractor. This device pulls a bullet from the belt and inserts it into the breech, and the gun is useless without it]
The next day at 0500, while the Second Battalion had a fire fight near Forts Schiessick and Fruedenberg Maginot fortresses that were given up when the Division withdrew after the Bulge, we advanced past the now-impotent Fort Freudenberg, through a solid mine field. That night, we dug in to set up a defensive line.
[I put the gun in position, loaded the belt and was reminded about the extractor. It was several days before some kindly tankers gave me a spare. In the meantime I borrowed an M-1 for protection, not entirely from the Germans. Why the M-1? As I implied before, it was a matter of official records that the only way I would ever hit anything with a pistol was to be inside a red barn. That brand new .45 was as useless to me as a machine gun without the extractor, but it sure was pretty].
On March 17-18, we alternately climbed up and down mountains, dug in, moved out, were pinned down by sniper fire (MG still useless) for three hours under and old foot bridge. The 3rd platoon took Fort Petite Otterbile, cutting the supply line to Bitche. B Company cleaned out Grande Otterbile and moved into Bitche (!). Company A stayed in position and watched three divisions go by. I never got to see Bitche. We knew then how Moses must have felt about the promised land.
March 19, 1945. We rode tanks to a Ghost Town, and slept in a cellar (Shades of Wingen!) There was lots of evidence of Germans, including many schu mines, but no casualties except a cow.
March 20, 1945. We practiced pillbox fighting in preparation for breaching the Siegfried Line. This exercise struck me as being an odd thing to be doing, only a mile or so from the real thing.
On March 21, 1945, we entered Germany on trucks, with no resistance at all from the dreaded Siegfried forts. Most of the pillboxes were blown up, dragon's teeth and wire destroyed and there was no sign of Germans. Those three divisions had done their job. We spent the night in Kaiserslautern.
On March 22-23, 1945, we rode trucks to Ludwidgshaven and spent the night on the banks of the Rhine, watching and listening to 88's and our 105's trading fire.
Then we walked, not rode, on asphalt pavement about ten miles to Schifferstadt, a trip that wouldn't have fazed us the year before, but now, the weather was getting too hot for winter uniforms, and our feet had grown accustomed to sitting around and riding in trucks during the winter of inactivity. Luckily, we were able to liberate a truck loaded with wine, but soon found to our dismay that wine is not really the drink of choice while marching in hot weather and hot clothes. It did, however, tend to make us forget until the next day the blisters on our tender feet from too many hours in shoe packs and riding in trucks.
The week of March 24-31, 1945, Company A was in reserve, and I think we were being used to clean out pockets of resistance and secure supply routes. We searched houses for weapons (found a surpising number, for a country that was supposed to be so opressive) and generally cleaned up Schifferstadt. We even took a few prisoners.
But the end of the war was near at hand: We practiced close order drill on the 30th and had an inspection on the 31st!
This was one of the few occasions that I used the machine gun for hostile purposes. We had moved into a town and had set up defensive positions on the far side, so the gun was set to cover an open field. I loaded the belt the night we moved in, so it would be ready for instant use, and didn't unload it when we went to sleep. Important Lesson II: The web belt tightens when it gets wet, so you must keep it in the can and load it only when it is needed. This point had escaped me at the time, eager as I was to shoot at something with the damned gun I had drug half way across Western Europe. The next morning, we were wakened by shouts saw some people running across the field at a semi crouch, like attacking Indians in a movie. We yelled for them to stop, but they kept running. I swung the gun into position to help repel this attack, and pulled the bolt back. It wouldn't go back. It was stuck. So THAT'S why they say not to leave the belt in the gun! The runners across the field turned out to be townspeople, trying to get home.
It seems now that all of this was probably a side show to keep us busy while they built a Bailey bridge across the Rhine. It was finished on March 31, and we crossed the Rhine on April Fool's day on trucks and went through Heidelberg to Bad Wimphen, on the Nekar River. The general objective in coming here, we were told, was to cut off the German army from using the road system to retreat into Hitler's announced last fortress in the Bavarian Alps, where the easily fortified terrain could allow them to hold out for years.