Flo titled this page of her album “With the Q.M. in all the best fields in Germany.“
The Quartermaster Corps was responsible for supplying the essentials—food, clothing, and equipment—to soldiers on the front lines. They ran supply depots, managed transportation networks, and made sure the troops had what they needed to keep operations moving.
Fritzie and BillTypical German village streetOur donut boysGerman shrineWith the QM in all the best fields in GermanyRelieving a patrol!The crew’s dog TD
This page of the album is packed with photos. What do they reveal on closer look?
Spring has arrived in 1945. The grass is green again, and Flo is wearing her summer uniform in one picture. Fritzie has a soldier boyfriend—or maybe a husband—named Bill! Even though the crew has its own clubmobile, they still rely on a team of “donut boys” to do the actual frying. These clubmobilers may never have had to cook donuts themselves. Which kind of makes sense; they gave out thousands of donuts daily and needed a whole crew to make them. Flo got to relieve a patrol—she’s still in the regulation Red Cross skirt. The dog, T.D., remains a star attraction. The group has been able to get into German towns. The pictures suggest that the women are camped here with the Q.M. They’re back to living in tents—or maybe sleeping in their clubmobile again.
Everyone knew about General George Patton’s infamous “slapping incidents,” when he physically attacked two soldiers under his command at hospital evacuation centers in August 1943. The episodes became international news — two among several erratic outbursts that may have led to his eventual removal as commander of the Seventh Army in Europe.
A woman sifts through the rubble of her home in Steinach. In the first half of April, 1945, the allies moved quickly through German towns, many already destroyed by bombing. photos: Dogface Soldier.
The men Patton slapped had been diagnosed with “exhaustion” and “psychoneurosis,” terms then used for what we now recognize as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). During the First World War, it was called “shell shock.”
Patton didn’t believe in shell shock.
Steinach saw a fierce battle on April 7 before the Nazis retreated. Photo: Dogface Soldier collection
In a directive issued to his commanders, he explicitly forbade “battle fatigue” in the Seventh Army:
It has come to my attention that a very small number of soldiers are going to the hospital on the pretext that they are nervously incapable of combat. Such men are cowards and bring discredit on the army and disgrace to their comrades, whom they heartlessly leave to endure the dangers of battle while they, themselves, use the hospital as a means of escape. You will take measures to see that such cases are not sent to the hospital but dealt with in their units. Those who are not willing to fight will be tried by court-martial for cowardice in the face of the enemy. — Patton directive to the Seventh Army, August 5, 1943
At the time, the Army Medical Department was beginning to study what would later be classified as PTSD, but most of the officer corps still regarded it as cowardice.
The devastation in Lohr was mostly caused by American artillery. Photo: Dogface Soldier collection
Audie Murphy, who saw more front-line combat than almost any other American soldier, witnessed many such breakdowns. As the war dragged on and he watched more men “crack up,” his own understanding and empathy evolved. The first episode he describes in To Hell and Back is met with derision from his men — and from himself:
“Olsen is the first to crack up. He throws his arms around the company commander, crying hysterically, ‘I can’t take any more.’ The harassed captain tries to calm him, but Olsen will not stop bawling. So he is sent to the rear, and we watch him go with hatred in our eyes. ‘If I ever throw a whingding like that, shoot me,’ says Kerrigan. ‘Gladly,’ I reply. ‘In North Africa I thought he was one tough boy.’ ‘Yeah, he threw his weight around plenty.’ ‘He seemed to be everything the War Department was looking for. He was my idea of a real soldier. Then one night that little Italian, Corrego, came in drunk; and Olsen beat him up.’ ‘He should have been shot right then.’”
Lohr saw heavy fighting as allies advanced on April 3. Photo: Dogface Soldier collection.
Later, Murphy watches another man lose his senses and die as a result:
“Staggering with weariness and snarling like wolves, we meet the Germans again… We slip within 200 yards of their lines before they turn the full force of their weapons upon us. Obviously, they intend our complete annihilation. Under the furious punishment, a man a few yards from me cracks up. He begins with a weeping jag; then, yelling insanely, he rises to his feet and charges straight toward the German lines. A sniper drills him through the head; and a burp gun slashes his body as he falls.”
Poppenlaur displayed flagsmade from any white fabric that could be found. Photo: Dogface Soldier.
Near the end of the war, Murphy’s tone shifts. He shows compassion and understanding when a soldier named Anders returns to the front, determined to stay with his comrades despite his shattered nerves:
“Before we have had time to regroup for instructions, the shells fall into our midst. Eight men are knocked out; and Anders cracks up. It is not his fault. He has courage to spare, but body and nerves have taken all they can stand. He has heard one explosion too many; seen one too many die. As we check the dead and wounded, his voice goes thick. I grab him by the shoulder. He shudders and begins to shake violently. ‘What’s the matter?’ ‘I’ve gone all to pieces.’ ‘Stay here and wait for the medics. You shouldn’t have come back up.’ ‘N-n-no. No. No.’ ‘You’re no good in that shape.’ ‘I’ll come out of it.’ ‘The hell you will. You can’t let the men see you in that condition.’ ‘I’ll be quiet. I won’t say anything.’ ‘You’re going to tell it to the doctor.’ ‘If you think so, maybe I should. Maybe I should.’ He rejoins us the next day. I curse him heartily, but he only grins. When we come under heavy artillery fire, that grin is quickly erased. His nerves collapse again… Whether or not he knows or wants it, he is through. Finished. This time when I send him to the rear, I also send the colonel word to keep him there.”
Photo: Wikipedia
Murphy himself suffered from PTSD for the rest of his life. After the war, he spoke publicly about it and tried to alert the Army to its dangers — but at the time, the brass didn’t want to hear it.
Meanwhile, during the war, doctors at an airbase hospital in Arizona began recognizing and treating PTSD with compassion rather than punishment or electroshock. Their pioneering work inspired the 1963 film Captain Newman, M.D., starring Gregory Peck, Tony Curtis, Angie Dickinson, Bobby Darin, and other notables. Five stars from me.
Searching through archives kept by my cousin Gail (our mothers were sisters), I was delighted to find two letters written by my mother, Flo, to her mother, Ruth–one in August, 1944 and the other dated February 1, 1945. These have helped to give a more personal perspective to the ARC women’s lives. Here Flo muses about death and war while describing everyday life of the clubmobilers in the French mountains. She reveals that the wedding rings her fiance Gene had ordered from home had arrived the day after he died.
February 1, 1945
Dearest Ruth:
“Your letter of December 4 just reached me a few days ago – mail has had no priority and many of my Christmas greetings and cards arrived just now. However, packages came through well and I had all of yours from home in time. Thanks for the grand gifts, Ruthie – they were so appreciated. The sweatshirt was the envy of everyone (we wear them with our clubmobile uniforms) and I love the slip and underwear. Was down to “Rock bottom.” Your cake was eaten so quickly, all I can remember was that it was very good.
(Flo admires pictures of Ruth’s three girls)
“Thanks for the sympathy and your philosophical comments. I’ve “recovered” if you can call it that, but it was a cruel shock, and I wouldn’t want to go through it again. We see friends “go” so often these days that death is close always, though it never ceases to be tragic and futile. Gene’s first sergeant, a fine, handsome boy, who has a lovely wife and darling three-year-old daughter, and who was always so good to me, has been killed in the last few days. That’s the way it goes – they leave one by one, particularly in a combat outfit like theirs and my division. The few who have survived almost 3 years of constant fighting, are very tired and should go home, but probably won’t until the war is over.
“Gene’s family write to me often and find it hard to believe he is gone. They are sending me the rings he bought and which arrived over here the day after he was killed and were returned to them. Somehow, I don’t want them, but they think I should have them.
“We are in the mountains and have had a lot of snow the last month but a very welcome chinook wind has melted much of it, which makes driving on these roads less hazardous. Evidently the French ski a great deal around here and there are some attractive ski places, as well as good slopes. I never seem to have time to try them out, but some of the boys did and had a fun time.
Drawing by Liz Elliottneeds no explanation
“Our infantry is “busy” as usual, and we are waiting to see them and feed them donuts again. It is always hard, after a session in the lines, to see them again and find friends are missing.
“After a brief session of gaiety in Strasbourg our social life has been reduced to practically nil. Contrary to many ideas, we do not indulge in much social activity; the men are pretty well occupied, you know, and it is only when they have a brief rest that we have a dance or two.
“We continue moving frequently and just made another one today. Lately we have been living in French homes and are coming to know the natives quite well. I can’t speak much French, but can understand it quite well when they slow down to 50 mph instead of 90.
“Right now we have rather cramped quarters in a home which is filled with refugees who were burned out of their homes when the Germans left. Many of these people have lost everything and many, of course, being Alsatian, are torn between being Frenchmen or Germans.
“We’ve been “up front” a few times – within a few hundred yards and within firing range, but it looks no different from any other place, unless the towns have been shelled (and most of them have). There are no trenches, like the last war, And much of the time, it moves so fast, there are no foxholes either, though they “dig in” if they are holding a line. We were shelled in one of the villages the other day, though it happened so quickly, we didn’t have time or sense enough to be frightened. It isn’t fun, even if it seemed funny afterwards.
“There have been setbacks for the Americans in France, but we are happier about the situation now and the Russian drive is encouraging too. I doubt if I will be home for some time yet, but then, I certainly won’t be among the first to leave.
“My package – sent to Mom – with gifts for you all should have reached you by now. I hope they serve the purpose; it is difficult to find anything worthwhile here – their stores and supplies have been hard-hit.
“I like to hear about your kids and other news of the people at home. Betty doesn’t write very often, but mom is wonderfully faithful and takes care of me over here almost as well as she did at home.
“If there are any of my clothes – hats, shoes etc. that you can wear and want to, help yourself, because they will be out of style when I get home and I’d like to have you get some use out of them. Just go down and see what you can use.
You had to be a mechanic too. Drawing by Liz
“Very seldom see a movie (last one was “A guy named Joe” which I saw with Gene and which he didn’t like; he was killed a few days later and the show haunted me).* They have very few good ones and very few period. Read seldom, too, and even more seldom hear a radio, so you see my mode of living and entertainment has changed considerably.”
*(This was a popular war movie starring Spencer Tracy, Irene Dunne and Van Johnson about an American pilot who is killed when his plane goes down after bombing a German aircraft carrier. Then he is sent by “the general” back to earth to train a pilot in the South Pacific war. At the end he’s still dead. The Irene Dunne character gets to fly planes too. The screenwriters were Dalton Trumbo and Frederick Hazlitt Brennan.)
“We have the fellows at the 2.M. (not sure what this means) in quite a bit, toot around the country in our jeep whenever we can and manage to never be bored, which keeps us happy, I suspect.
“I like the work and love the boys. Life gets very simple and fundamental, if you can understand that, and we share many of the same experiences, which makes everyone a friend.
“Eve was fine but busy, and Paris is the same lovely lovely city, though they have food shortages, little fuel and all that. It didn’t seem too unusual to see Notre Dame Cathedral on Christmas morning, but in years to come it will be quite a recollection. Eve and Janet were very good to me and it was like home to see them. Janet’s husband was wounded tho not seriously and she was quite upset. I hope to go back in the spring– It would be even nicer there then in the lovely park.”Maybe my own luck will change one of these days; at least I can share sorrow and sincerely sympathize with others who are hit by the tragedy of war. It makes me even a worse “softie,” but there are many to share itwith.”
Mom used to tell us kids stories from her time in the Red Cross in Europe and my brother Terry reminded me of a favorite.
Flo and her ARC team were driving their clubmobile toward the front lines to serve returning soldiers. Somewhere on a lonely French country road, far from anything resembling safety, the truck suddenly died. Though they’d been trained in basic vehicle repair, nothing they tried would bring it back to life. In the distance, artillery boomed, each blast sounding closer than the last. The four women stood with the hood up, poking and prodding, running through every trick they’d been taught.
Then an American Army jeep rattled up. The sergeant driving had such a thick New York accent they could barely understand him, but he clearly knew his way around an engine. He took a quick look under the hood and announced, with total confidence, “It’s the coils, goils.” The line struck them as so absurd they collapsed into hysterical laughter. The sergeant, baffled, had no idea what was funny. Moments later the truck roared back to life, and they got out of there as fast as they could.
First 3rd Division Medal of Honor Recipient Killed in Action
My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 55
Flo devoted a page in her album to the first Third Division Congressional Medal of Honor award recipient, Lt. David Waybur or Piedmont, California. She noted that he was killed in action near the end of the war in March, 1945.
Page in Flo’s album. Pinch out to read the whole story.
From the story: The Army, chances are, will never be a great writer. Its taciturn prose travels on a punchless belly. But some of the most spectacular stories of this war are being scribbled on battlefields in the sparse, lean, GI prose of army officers writing to headquarters of the heroism of men unto them.
Such a story is told in the recommendation for a citation for Lieutenant David C Waybur, 24… A graduate of Piedmont high school, a former grocery clerk, David Waybur enlisted in the army at the end of his second year at the University of California in 1940. Three years later, in the dead of night, young Waybur rode to army immortality at the head of a little fleet of three jeeps and fought, jeeps versus enemy tanks, a never-to-be-forgotten engagement beside a blown up bridge in Sicily.
Audie Murphy also received the Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest US military decoration for valor, awarded by the President in the name of Congress.
ARC Women the Only American Females to Shoot in WWII
My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 54
The page from Flo’s album
American women were strictly forbidden from shooting guns during WWII or serving in any combat position. The WACs, the Women’s Army Corps, were disparaged because Americans thought they would be too close to war and women should be protected from war. The ARC women flew under the radar because they were referred to as volunteers (even though it was a paying job), and as “girls” and because they primarily worked as nurses. Their carefully crafted image was as noncombatant helpers of soldiers, humanitarian aid workers, not fighters.
the American Red Cross worked hard to establish these women as safe and non-threatening to the social norms of the time. In so doing, it allowed them to gain access to battle and combat to an extent no American women had before.
The Allies and Germany had lost such extensive manpower during the First World War that women were allowed much more active military roles in the Second World War. Unlike American women, Soviet women were fighters on the front lines of the war.
“Janet and our jeep”
As it turned out, the ARC clubmobilers may have been the only American women in the war who actually shot guns. They were closer to the front lines of the war than any other women.
They also experienced many close escapes during their tour of duty with the Third Division.
Flo and her comrades got the chance to shoot in the freezing winter of 1944-45, during some of the hardest fighting of the war. In the Colmar Pocket outside of Neuf-Brisach they volunteered to go on patrol on the Rhine with an artillery and mortar FO (field operations) party. They also visited the mortar OP (observation post) and threw a smoke screen from the sand-bagged position.
Because the clubmobilers saw the soldiers and worked with them daily, the women were seen as part of the team. The men wanted to show them what it was like on the front line and the women wanted to be part of the action. Their comrades showed the women how to shoot.
Photos of her from that day show she was wearing the ARC regulation uniform—a skirt—while lying in a trench aiming a rifle.
“Ostheim, Alsace”
I don’t know whether Flo had ever shot a gun, but she was part of a hunting and fishing culture in the Northwest, so she may have. I have a picture of her posing with a deer carcass and holding a rifle taken after the war.
Flo was quoted in a newspaper article: “We all had a case of scratched knees, mud casts, and aching muscles after that.”
Still another time after they had sweated out the ride to the battalion CP (command post) the men refused to come out of their holes for donuts because of the heavy shelling.
It was during this trip while darting in and out of the smoke screen, that they went into a town that was ominously quiet. Recognizing the symptoms, they hastily left the place. That afternoon they found out the town had just fallen. It had been occupied by the Krauts during their visit.
When the Seventh Regiment was in Beblenheim, Alsace, the clubmobilers visited and fed a novel, so-called, “Doggie Rest Camp.” There two men at a time came in from their positions for a few minutes each to wash up, and put themselves in shape.
“Colmar”
According to the newspaper report, “The quartet is not now up to combat strength as Miss “Fritzie” Haugland, Berkeley, Calif. is hospitalized, but her three running mates are doing a fine job…. They are just what their patch proclaims—part of the outfit.”
The letter from another admirer Flo pasted on this page
Letters from Third Division friends confirm that the clubmobilers’ exploits were dangerous and put them in the line of fire.
On Jan 31, 1945, Lt. Col.Chaney wrote: Please don’t be as reckless as you have been, and stay out of range of shell fire.
Sincerely, Chaney
On March 5, 1945, Mel wrote:
Yes, I can well imagine your time is not your own, particularly when the Div. is getting their well-earned respite from the 88’s. Your own “combat time” was hardly a surprise to me. To me, you were the type that would do such a thing, just for the hell of it! Stick to your donuts, honey, and let others do the OP shift—I’d hate to lose such a good letter writer so soon—believe me!
After the war Larry Lattimore wrote:
Oh yes, Agolsheim, did you know that was the second big attack in which I had acted in the capacity of C.O.? Golly! But after things finally quieted down, I enjoyed that little town. That was the first time we ever had any fun on the Rhine River. About that big white goose—we did cook it, we did eat it, and it was good! Do wish Col. Chaney had let you stay long enough to have some. Do you remember that little courtyard in front of my C.P.? About 15 minutes after you left, three 120 MM mortar shells landed in the center of that courtyard. Lucky no one was hurt but those shells sure shot hell out of our rations. I shudder to think what would have happened had those shells come in while you were still there. C’est la Guerre!
Third Division fights its toughest battle of the war
My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 53
The fight for the Colmar Pocket rages through late January 1945, a brutal campaign largely overshadowed by the final days of the Battle of the Bulge. Audie Murphy, then a young lieutenant in the 15th Infantry Regiment, endures the worst days of his war.
Bailey bridge built next to the bridge over the Ill Riverdestroyed by a tank falling in. Photo: Dogface
Through the freezing night he and his men take turns on watch. He nods off, his hair freezing to the ground, and wakes with a jerk when gunfire cracks, leaving patches of hair in the ice. By morning, a bridge over the Ill River is finally usable; a few tanks cross to join them—comforting, but also a sign that there will be no retreat.
They form up for another attack. The quiet woods erupt—mortars, machine guns, rifle fire. Murphy watches two lieutenants leap into the same foxhole; a shell follows them in and ends their lives instantly. He is knocked down by another blast, his legs peppered with fragments, but still able to fight. Tanks push forward, only to be hit and burst into flames. Crewmen stumble out, burning, screaming, cut down by enemy bullets as they roll in the snow.
Communications wire strung over German materiel. Photo: Dogface soldier collection
By nightfall the company is shattered. They huddle in the cold, eating greasy rations, waiting for ammunition and replacements. Company B has lost 102 of its 120 men; every officer but Murphy is gone. With only seventeen men left in his zone, he receives orders: move to the edge of the woods facing Holtzwihr, dig in, and hold.
The ground is too frozen to dig, so they stamp along the road to stay warm, waiting for daylight—the most dangerous hour. Their promised support does not arrive. Two tank destroyers move up, but by afternoon the situation worsens. Six German tanks roll out of Holtzwihr and fan across the field, followed by waves of infantry in white snowcapes.
Crew with an 8 inch howitzer and a heavy machine gun. Photo: Dogface soldier collection
One tank destroyer slides uselessly into a ditch; the crew bails out. Artillery begins to fall on Murphy’s position. A tree burst wipes out a machine-gun squad. The second tank destroyer takes a direct hit; its surviving crew staggers away. Murphy realizes the line is collapsing. Of 128 men who began the drive, fewer than forty remain, and he is the last officer. He orders the men to pull back.
While directing artillery fire by telephone, he fires his carbine until he runs out of ammunition. As he turns to retreat, he sees the burning tank destroyer. Its machine gun is intact. German tanks veer left, giving the flaming vehicle a wide berth. Murphy drags the field phone up onto the wreck, hauls a dead officer’s body out of the hatch, and uses the hull for cover.
Loading an M-2 chemical mortar. Photo: Dogface soldier collection
From the turret he mans the machine gun, calling artillery on the field while firing into the advancing infantry. Smoke swirls; the heat of the fire warms his frozen feet for the first time in days. He cuts down squad after squad, sowing confusion; the Germans cannot locate him and expect the burning vehicle to explode at any moment.
When the smoke lifts briefly, he spots a dozen Germans crouched in a roadside ditch only yards away. He waits for the wind to clear the haze, then traverses the barrel and drops all twelve. He orders more artillery. Shells crash around him; the enemy infantry is shredded, and the German tanks pull back toward Holtzwihr without support.
A tank destroyer in the Colmar battle. Photo: Dogface soldier collection
Another bombardment knocks out his telephone line. Stunned, Murphy finds his map shredded with fragments and one leg bleeding. It hardly registers. Numb and exhausted, he climbs off the tank destroyer and walks back through the woods, indifferent to whether the Germans shoot him or not.
Stretcher crew of medics. Photo: Dogface soldier collection
Murphy was 19 years old.These are the actions that win him the Congressional Medal of Honor.
The only photo on this page, of the shelled St. Die, was presumably taken by Flo. There is also a copy of the Third Division FrontLine newspaper which tells the story of a soldier from Seattle who killed several Nazis in hand-to-hand combat. Probably Oscar Amundson was someone she knew from her home state of Washington.
Photo: Dogface Soldier Collection
The FrontLine newspaper was started in World War II. Published weekly, it is still the official periodical for the Third Infantry Division.
I assumed these landscape photos were pictures of the lovely French Alsace town of Sainte-Marie-Aux-Mines. That is until I turned them over and read, or tried to read, the captions. They describe Markkleeberg, a town in the Saxony region of Germany near Leipzig. It’s now described as a suburb of Leipzig.
According to AI, the captions on the back are in German, written in an old-fashioned cursive handwriting, and the captions read: “General view, War memorial, Old gatehouse, and Richter and Sons in Markkleeberg, December 1940”.
Professionally made photos with numbers in the right lower corner, they could be postcards. I can’t imagine who might have taken them, who wrote the captions, or why Flo put them on a page headlined Sainte-Marie-Aux-Mines. The Third Division had not yet crossed the Rhine into Germany, although Audie Murphy wrote that a number of Allied units had entered Germany by January, 1945.
The other three photos on this page are captioned Marie of Ville France; Lt. Reardon, me, Janet, Lt. Nelson. Fraize, France; and Sgt. Holbrook, St. Die France ad center.
Flo and crew attend officers party at Division Headquarters
My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 50
In January, 1945, the Third Division headquarters moved to the town of Sainte-Marie-Aux-Mines, known for its iron mines from the time of Roman occupation. This region of Alsace-Lorraine has been passed back and forth like a football between empires for centuries and is still characterized by a blend of German and French influences. After the 1870-71 Franco Prussian war, Alsace was annexed by Germany and became a part of the unified German Empire as a formal Reichsland, or imperial territory. After World War I the victorious Allies detached it from Germany and the province became part of the Third French Republic. Occupied and annexed by Germany during World War II, it was returned to France by the Allies at the end of the war.
I don’t see Flo in these pictures, so perhaps she was the photographer. She wrote that she was using a captured German camera so she may have had it at this point. There’s Liz sitting next to Gen. Iron Mike O’Daniel, who is also pictured dancing with two different women I don’t recognize. The other clubmobilers must have been there but their backs are turned to us.
After weeks in the hospital with a gangrenous hip wound, Murphy returns to the lines in late January 1945—just in time for the brutal fighting around the Colmar Pocket during the coldest winter in fifty years. Snow lies two feet deep, and the cold cuts through even the thickest layers.
Attack plan. The 3rd Division is with the 7th Army under Gen. Patch
By the time he rejoins his unit, the Third Division has pushed through the Vosges, smashed the German winter line, and reached the Rhine at Strasbourg. Germany lies just beyond the river, close enough to see, but still weeks—and many casualties—away from any attempted crossing.
The entire front is restless. To the north, the Battle of the Bulge is sputtering out. American units are crossing into Germany, seeking firm ground for the spring offensive. Columns of men and supplies move constantly across frozen French and Belgian roads. But the men at the front think only of the task immediately ahead: eliminating the Colmar Pocket, a heavily fortified German position stretching toward the Swiss border.
A supply convoy makes it way over a snowy road toward Colmar. Photo dogface soldier
The pocket is a dangerous bridgehead jutting west of the Rhine, fed by steady reinforcements from across the river. It threatens the Allies’ right flank and could serve as a launch point for a massive German counterattack. The Third Division has already trimmed its northern edge and now stands near Guémar, ready to strike at the center.
The terrain favors the Germans. Icy winds sweep down from the Vosges. Forest patches, open fields, and fortified villages form their defense. Tanks hide in the woods, covering the plains the Americans must cross. Temperatures rarely climb above fourteen degrees. Snow reaches to the knees. Even without enemy fire, the nights are a battle simply to avoid freezing.
Soldiers in snow cloaks on the way to Colmar. Photo: dogface soldier
Two rivers, the Fecht and the Ill, lie between the division and the enemy. At night, the 7th and 30th Regiments slip across the Fecht after breaching German lines. The 7th pushes south to strike Ostheim; the 30th clears a forest and captures a small wooden bridge over the Ill. That fragile track becomes the hinge of the entire operation.
The 30th crosses it and prepares to attack two small villages, Holtzwihr and Riedwihr, separated by a stretch of woodland. At 4:30 in the afternoon, disaster strikes: ten German tanks and tank destroyers smash into the 3rd Battalion near Holtzwihr. The infantry have no protection. The frozen ground is too hard to dig into. The tanks break the battalion into pockets and rake them with machine-gun fire.
Training for warfare in the snow. Photo: dogface soldier collection
An hour later, the 1st Battalion is hit near Riedwihr and torn apart in the same way. Survivors retreat toward the Ill, some swimming through the icy water, emerging with their uniforms stiff with icicles.
Murphy’s regiment, held in reserve, is rushed forward. At 3 a.m., the 3rd Battalion attempts to establish a bridgehead across the Ill. It gains ground until a counterattack with four German tanks drives it back to the river.
A grave registration unit operates 10 miles north of Colmar. Photo: dogface soldier collection
It becomes clear that without tanks of their own, the infantry are battering themselves against a stone wall. Still, the attacks must continue—the Germans cannot be allowed to maneuver freely or shift their strength. If given the chance, they could destroy the Allied forces piecemeal.
Behind the lines, engineers work frantically to build a bridge across the Ill. Murphy and the men of his regiment fight simply to hold the enemy back long enough for that bridge to be completed.
tradeswomn musings 