Page 25
September 23 – November 30, 1944
After retreating from the Wallendorf area the 5th Division settled down in the Diekirch area; its activities during the remainder of September were restricted to patrolling the border from Rodershausen on the north to Bollendorf, which is four miles south of Wallendorf. Fifth Armored men knew for certain that they were in for a winter campaign when, on 28 September, a convoy of 80 trucks left on the long trip to Normandy to pick up the duffel bags which contained each man’s winter clothing.
On October 3, 1944 the Fifth Armored then rolled north about 40 miles to the Faymonville-Waimes-Butgenbach area in Belgium.
On October 23rd, CC R’s 47Th Infantry Bn. moved into the 5,000-yard front and set up 27 observation posts. On November 19, CC R was attached to the 8th Infantry Division to take part in the drive through the Hurtgen Forest.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower said that veterans who participated in the Battle of the Hurtgen Forest place that struggle at the top of their list of hard fighting. Without hesitation men of the Fifth Armored put that ordeal at the head of their list. The month in the Hurtgen Forest was the darkest period in the division’s combat history.
In this dense and somber forest of pine, men battled snow and mud and frigid weather as well as an entrenched and fiercely resolute enemy, were prevented from maneuvering or deploying by the trees, the mud, the ravines and the extensive mine fields. Advances, therefore, had to be made in bitter yard-by-yard struggles against the well-placed Germans who fought here with savage tenacity. The attackers were subjected to tremendous concentrations of artillery and mortar fire directed from observation posts on high ground, across the Roer River. Foxholes offered little protection since the shells burst in the tree tops and sprayed the ground below with their fragments.
Page 26
After each long, miserable and sleepless night spent in the icy foxholes, men numb from the cold climbed out at dawn to begin another attack. As they pushed forward through the thickly sown mine fields, the bursting shells and sniper fire, they watched their numbers dwindle. Each gain of a few yards exacted a frightful price in dead and wounded. And to the collecting stations in the rear flowed the heartbreaking procession of the wounded, some walking and the others on litters.
The night of 24 November, 1944, was cold, black and rainy. Combat Command R started into the Hurtgen Forest. The mission was to take the German town of Hurtgen. The 95th Armored Field Artillery Bn. had gone into position five days earlier. First company to move was B Co. of the 47th Armored Infantry Bn., The infantrymen moved out of Rotgen in their halftracks, leaving their married B Co. of the 10th Tank Bn, behind, Too great a concentration of armor, it was felt, would attract heavy artillery fire. The Germans had sown the area heavily with schu and anti-personnel mines and almost immediately explosions and cries for “Medics!” filled the forest. At dawn the Germans began to pour in more and more artillery. Small arms fire increased. Casualties skyrocketed, and when the tanks arrived at the jump-off point at their scheduled time, 0730, the infantry company was badly battered.
Estimated Total Casualties – Hürtgen Forest
Side | Total Casualties | Killed | Wounded | Missing / Captured |
United States | 33,000–55,000 | 12,000 | 24,000 | 9,000 |
Germany | 28,000–35,000 | 12,000 | 20,000 | 3,000 |
Page 27
Just a few miles south of the Fifth Armored’s positions the Germans launched more than 400,000 personnel, more than 1,400 tanks and armored vehicles, 2,600 pieces of artillery, and more than 1,000 combat aircraft directly at a 75-mile (120 km) stretch of the front in the Ardennes in an offensive designed to punch through the Allied lines.
Meanwhile, the Fifth Armored’s combat commands to be committed in the Hurtgen struggle was CC R; it pushed toward the town of Hurtgen and then took Kleinhau, Brandenberg, and Bergstein. Near the end of November CC A entered the fray a little further to the north and nearer to the Roer River; it attacked through Gey, Horm and Kufferath to the banks of the river. CC B, which came into the fight in early December, also made for the river; it attacked through the towns of Langenbroich, Bergheim and Bilstein. After it completed its mission in the Hurtgen Forest, the Fifth Armored was pulled back into Belgium to help block the Germans’ drive toward Liege during the Battle of the Bulge.
The 5th Armored Division, including its Combat Command Reserve (CCR), played a key supporting and flanking role during the Battle of the Bulge (Dec 16, 1944 – Jan 25, 1945), though it was not in the direct path of the initial German offensive. Here’s a breakdown of their involvement:
Context Before the Bulge:
While the Fifth Armored was fighting its way through the Hurtgen Forest and across the approaches to the Roer River, the Germans on 16 December began their last desperate attempt to attain victory on the Western Front.
Page 27 B
Page 28
The post card below was sent in July 10, 1945, 2 months after my father “SMASHED HIS TRUCK” outside of GIFHORN, GERMANY. The war in Europe was over. This is the town of ZWEIFALL, population of around 900. My father went to Mass at the church pictured on the postcard on Christmas Day 1944.
Most of the correspondence between my father and his parents was in Lithuanian. Luckily this time he used English. Here is his message.
Page 29
Page 30
Page 31
In 1945, as Allied troops penetrated Nazi Germany, the SS began evacuating prisoners from concentration camps in outlying areas on death marches to the interior of the Reich. It was part of a desperate and hopeless effort to keep the war effort going and to prevent the inmates from falling into enemy hands, where they could testify against their persecutors.
Following the US Army’s crossing of the Rhine River and push into central Germany, the SS camp administration at Dora-Mittelbau ordered the evacuation of prisoners from the main camp and a number of its affiliated subcamps on April 3 and 4th. The goal was to transport the inmates by train or by foot to the concentration camps in Bergen-Belsen, Sachsenhausen, or Neuengamme. Within days, some 4,000 prisoners from Dora-Mittelbau, its satellite camps, and a Neuengamme subcamp arrived in the Gardelegen area. Greatly outnumbered by the prisoners, the SS guards began recruiting auxiliary forces from the local fire department, the air force, the aged home guard, the Hitler Youth, and other organizations to watch over the inmates. On April 13th, more than a thousand prisoners, many of them sick and too weak to march any further, were taken from the town of Gardelegen to a large barn on the Isenschnibbe estate and forced inside the building. The assembled guards then barricaded the doors and set fire to gasoline-soaked straw.
Those attempting to escape were killed by the guards. The next day, the SS and local auxiliaries returned to dispose of the evidence of their crime. However, the swift advance of the 102nd Infantry Division (part of the 5th Armored Division) prevented the SS and its accomplices from completely carrying out this plan.
On April 14th, the 102nd entered Gardelegen and, the following day, discovered the atrocity. They found the corpses of 1,016 prisoners in the still-smoldering barn and nearby trenches. They also interviewed several of the 11 prisoners that survived.
On April 21, 1945, the local commander of the 102nd ordered between 200 and 300 men from the town of Gardelegen to give the murdered prisoners a proper burial. Over the next few days, the German civilians exhumed 586 bodies from the trenches and recovered 430 bodies from the barn, placing each in an individual grave. On April 25, the 102nd carried out a ceremony to honor the dead and erected a memorial tablet to the victims, which stated that the townspeople of Gardelegen are charged with the responsibility that the “graves are forever kept as green as the memory of these unfortunates will be kept in the hearts of freedom-loving men everywhere.” Also on April 25, Colonel George Lynch addressed German civilians at Gardelegen with the following statement:
“The German people have been told that stories of German atrocities were Allied propaganda. Here, you can see for yourself. Some will say that the Nazis were responsible for this crime. Others will point to the Gestapo. The responsibility rests with neither — it is the responsibility of the German people….Your so-called Master Race has demonstrated that it is master only of crime, cruelty and sadism. You have lost the respect of the civilized world.”
Page 32
Within days, US Army Signal Corps photographers arrived to document the Nazi crime and by April 19, 1945, the story of the Gardelegen massacre began appearing in the western press. On that day, both the New York Times and The Washington Post ran stories on the massacre, quoting one American soldier who stated: “I never was so sure before of exactly what I was fighting for. Before this you would have said those stories were propaganda, but now you know they weren’t. There are the bodies and all those guys are dead.”
Page 33
During January, February, and March 1945, the 5th Armored Division, and specifically Combat Command Reserve (CCR), operated in Luxembourg, Belgium, and western Germany, as part of the U.S. push toward the Rhine after repelling the German Ardennes Offensive (Battle of the Bulge).
January 1945
February 1945
March 1945
Page 34
In April 1945, the 5th Armored Division, including Combat Command R (CCR), was conducting one of the fastest advances by any U.S. division in World War II. They were racing across central Germany, liberating towns, cutting German supply and communication lines, and pushing rapidly toward the Elbe River, west of Berlin.
🔹 Early April (April 1–10):
🔹 Mid-April (April 11–15):
Page 35
🔹 Late April (April 16–30):
Page 36
Page 37
The Battle of Berlin, a decisive engagement in World War II, unfolded from April 16 to May 2, 1945. Soviet forces, beginning the final offensive on April 16th, gradually took control of the city. The city’s garrison surrendered on May 2nd, marking a significant blow to Nazi Germany.
The U.S. 5th Armored Division was the closest American unit to Berlin at that point—within about 50 miles—but U.S. policy had already agreed to let the Soviets take Berlin to avoid unnecessary Allied casualties and political conflict. U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt was not interested in conquering Berlin. He wanted the Soviet Union as an ally in the war against Japan, and above all as a partner in the creation of a stable post-war world order.
On 16 April 1945, the Soviet forces started the final offensive against the German capital. They tried to encircle Berlin in a pincer movement. But the attempted fast breakthrough into Berlin did not materialize. Instead, it took them four days and many casualties to get past the Seelow Heights, situated about 70 km east of Berlin.
On 21 April, the first Soviet units finally entered Berlin. In house-to-house fighting the Soviet soldiers faced desperate German resistance. The Western Allies stopped their air attacks on 16 April 1945. The Soviet Union continued the air war to support the ground offensive in Berlin.
Page 38
On 2 May 1945, the Berlin garrison surrendered to the Soviet army. The Battle of Berlin resulted in a devastating number of casualties. Soviet forces suffered over 80,000 killed and 280,000 wounded, while German military casualties were estimated at 92,000 to 100,000 killed and 200,000 wounded. Additionally, the battle claimed the lives of an estimated 300,000 Berlin civilians.
Page 39