A Night in Hell

Grandpa Lee told of a few occasions during his tour of duty in which he was certain he would die. One of them occurred during a nighttime artillery bombardment outside of Frenz, Germany, on November

The few remaining members of first platoon pushed eastward toward Frenz and into an area between the towns characterized by large, open fields. This flat terrain made them an easy target. Frank Sabinski was shot and killed. They hurried into town, following in the wake of the 413th Regiment’s attack. The town had already been taken, with the exception of the eastern edge.

The men of F Company were extremely hungry. Few rations had reached them since they pushed off a week earlier, and they tried to find food wherever they could. However, it was quickly discovered that many of the homes in Frenz were booby-trapped. Captain Bowman threatened to shoot anyone who touched the jars of preserves outside of one particular house. They eventually stopped in a cellar for a rest and found some jars of cherries and preserves, which they decided to eat, poisoned or not.

As they approached the line, they were assigned a position on the left flank of the attack, placing them just to the north and east of the small, heavily damaged town. At this point the platoon was almost down to squad-strength, with only 12 remaining men: Lee McBride, Jim Allen, Frank Perozzi, Paul Cardon, Chester Nycz, Burjowski, Leach, Williams, Rife, Mariello, and two new replacements.

The men fanned out along the edge of town, and dug a line of 12 foxholes, each about 10 feet apart, facing the enemy. That miserable outpost night would live long in the memory of Lee’s platoon. As night fell, a German artillery emplacement to the east began to bombard the American line near Frenz. The bombardment would last most of the night. Lee recalled that the incoming shells landed at a rate of about one per minute, in some cases landing directly in foxholes.

Frank Perozzi’s memoir paints a terrifying picture of that experience. He indicates that among other weapons, the Germans employed a Nebelwerfer: a six-barrel rocket launcher that was capable of firing several 120mm shells in rapid succession. Known as “screaming meemies,” the Nebelwerfer’s shells made a shrill whining sound as they approached and a deafening concussion when they burst. The concussion was so powerful, Perozzi said, “I thought my body would explode.”

German nebelwerfers

Lee's own description of this terrifying night in a foxhole indicated that the artillery pounded them “with a frequency of one shell per minute.” He also remembered that more than once, “shells actually land[ed] in an individual's foxhole.”

At some point during the night, “after a volley of enemy mortar shells fell around us," Perozzi heard "Paul [Cardon] calling me for help. I jumped over into his foxhole and saw he was having trouble breathing and then noticed a big gash in the back of his heavy winter overcoat.... I peeled back the fabric of the overcoat, his inner jacket, shirt, and undershirt and saw his back had been cut open in a long vertical wound. Every time he inhaled, the wound would flap and flutter with air rushing in.”

There was little chance of finding a medic at that point. Just moments earlier, Perozzi had looked out of his foxhole and seen Private McBride walking by, out of his foxhole and exposed to potential fire. He indicated he had been searching, without success, for a medic to aid the wounded near his own foxhole. Perozzi later confided that he thought it was courageous of Lee to risk himself in that way, even if it was a little foolhardy.

When the shelling started up again, Frank instructed Paul to “sit with his back pressed against the side of his foxhole so he could breathe easier” and left for the safety of his own foxhole, promising to come back when the bombardment stopped again. About five minutes later, he returned to find Cardon sprawled on the ground 20 feet from his hole. Another company member who was passing by stopped, felt Cardon’s neck, and told the others he was dead. He “unbuckled Paul’s wristwatch and took it. I guess he thought someone else would take it anyway.”

Among those for whom Lee sought medical attention may have been 3rd squad leader Sgt. Chester Nycz, who was also severely wounded in the thigh during the bombardment. A litter bearer was located, and Nycz was carried back to a barn just behind the line, where a medic valiantly tried to save him. Sadly, the attempt failed, his injuries too serious to repair. He died on November 2x, just as his company was relieved from combat for a two-week stint in reserve. Sgt. Nycz’s brother, who served in a different infantry division, would attend Timberwolf reunions for many years following the war as a way of paying tribute to Chester and of thanking those who fought at his side and attempted to save his life.

The tragic loss of Sgt. Nycz necessitated the selection of a new leader for 3rd Squad. Captain Bowman’s choice was the relatively green Private McBride. He was promoted to the rank of Buck Sergeant and given the assignment of squad leader.

Sgt. Perozzi’s offered this grim summary of their night in hell: “50% casualties. Burjowski, Rife, Mariello wounded, Cardon & Nycz died. Williams missing. Six of us unhurt: McBride, Allen, Leach, me and 2 replacements. Sgt. Leach is close to ‘Battle Fatigue.’”

Lee reflected, “I was completely convinced in my own mind that there was no way I could make it through, and the feeling of peace, of calmness, and of lack of worry was something that was very striking. I knew that I was going to die, at least in my own mind, felt that if I died, I’d see my mother whom I hadn’t seen for many, many years. If I survived, I’d see my sweet wife and child again. But I had a very, very calm feeling, a very peaceful feeling in [this] instance and some others of like character.”

Nordhausen Concentration Camp

(Grandpa Lee wrote about what must have been an unforgettable and life-altering experience at the Nordhausen Concentration Camp. I have done my best here to reconstruct from various sources the events that led to his battle patrol's discovery of the camp.)

Private Joseph Galione2 was a Timberwolf and member of the 415th Infantry Regiment. In the early days of April 1945, he was assigned to conduct reconnaissance for his unit as they followed in the wake of the 3rd Armored Division spearhead. Acting on instinct, and following his sense of smell and some nearby railroad tracks, he walked several miles ahead of his unit into the vicinity of Nordhausen, a small town in Saxony.

As he made his way along a spur of the railway the evening of 10 April, he stumbled upon a large rail car piled with unidentifiable corpses. After a brief altercation with a retreating German soldier, he scouted the area and discovered, to his horror, a large concentration camp. Within this sprawling, fenced enclosure were dozens of shabby barracks huddled against the hills, the gaping mouth of an enormous tunnel bored into the side of a mountain, and dozens of gaunt, timid detainees peering at their unexpected visitor.

Konzentrationslager Mittelbau, known as the Mittelbau-Dora or simply the Dora Camp, had been established on the former site of a large gypsum mine in the Kohnstein, a mountain about five miles north of Nordhausen. Its creation was the direct result of the Allies’ discovery and subsequent bombing of the German rocket testing base on the small Baltic island of Peenemunde off the north-German coast. The bombing, which occurred in 1943, not only severely damaged the Germans’ ability to manufacture and test their nascent rocket technology, but showed the extent to which the security of the entire, intensely secretive program had been compromised. The decision was made to manufacture the rockets in a secure underground location, and the already partially excavated Kohnstein was deemed the ideal spot.

In the aftermath of Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s, Heinrich Himmler’s Schutzstaffel assumed the role of state police for all of Germany. Under their administration, several large prison camps were established to house common law criminals and domestic political enemies of the National Socialist regime. After the late-1930s attacks on Czechoslovakia, Poland, Holland, and France, the camps swelled with foreign prisoners who resisted German occupation and with victims of the cruel ethnic and social cleansing practices of the Nazis.

As the Allies engaged Germany in a savage two-front war and Germany’s workforce began to be depleted by conscription into the armed services, these camp interns played an increasingly prominent role as the labor force for Germany’s munitions and transportation industries. Concentration camp labor was used to an extent even at the Peenemunde base prior to its destruction, but with the relocation of the rocket manufacturing facility, slave labor was brought to bear in an unprecedented fashion to complete the excavation of the tunnels and carry out the assembly of the V1 and then-experimental V2 rockets.

The Dora camp (properly considered a labor camp as opposed to an extermination camp such as Auschwitz) was originally a Kommando or satellite worksite of Konzentrationslager Buchenwald, several miles to the south. Buchenwald prisoners arrived in large transports and were put to work completing the excavation. The overworked and starved inmates slept in unsanitary conditions in the tunnels during this period. As the work progressed and the size of the inmate population increased, a camp was constructed featuring all of the hallmark horrors of the Nazi concentration camps including a crematorium for the disposal of corpses. In the fall of 1944, with the completion of the tunnel factory and growing importance of the rocket program, Dora was made an autonomous camp dubbed Mittelbau, and oversaw several smaller satellite camps in the region. During its operation, the prisoners assembled thousands of V1 and V2 rockets. Between November of 1943 and April of 1945, the camp detained over 60,000 prisoners, more than 20,000 of which died due to exhaustion, starvation, disease, and violent treatment by the SS camp guards.

Private Galione, horror-stricken and fearing capture, retraced his route until he reached a small group of American troops that he had passed on his way to the camp. They took him to their commander and he related what he had seen. Galione, the commander and  a driver drove a jeep back to the camp, broke the heavy padlock on the gate, and entered the camp. The prisoners showed them to the Revier, or hospital barracks and they peaked inside. The putrid stench and the ghostly figures of the over 100 barely-living prisoners shocked the battle-hardened G.I.s. Frightened, and in need of help, they raced back to Galione’s unit, and instigated the mobilization of a rescue party of Timberwolf riflemen and medics.

In order to prevent being held up by a German ambush, they radioed ahead to the CP of Task Force Lovelady of the 3rd Armored to have tanks lead the way and eliminate any resistance. The tanks and supporting infantry rolled out at 4:30 AM the morning of 11 April, following the directions given by Private Galione. He recalled: “When I gave the Third Armored directions to Camp Dora, I failed to consider the direction they would be coming from. After all, I didn't take the road; I traveled through the woods. I was tired and forgot to tell them about the curve in the road.” Galione felt that this misdirection “was meant to be” and counted it a small miracle because of what they found there.

Sergeant Lee McBride was riding on one of the tanks in the first combat patrol to enter nearby Nordhausen. They approached from the southwest and arrived in town near the train station. After encountering some slight resistance in the form of machine gun fire, the infantry along with the tanks of Task Force Lovelady succeeded in subduing and capturing the 35 remaining enemy troops in town.

Late that morning, as they proceeded through the bomb- and fire-devastated city in search of the hillside camp and tunnels described by Galione, they were startled to discover a second prison camp, there amidst the rubble of Nordhausen. Galione himself would later describe conditions at this camp as “even worse than the one I found.”

The Boelcke Kaserne or Boelcke barracks (map here) had been constructed by the Luftwaffe and served as quarters for the pilots and technical staff that serviced a nearby airfield. It had been evacuated in the spring of 1944 and was converted into a satellite camp in the growing Mittelbau-Dora camp complex. Most of the prisoners at the barracks had been sent there because they were too ill, weak, or injured to continue working at the rocket assembly works five miles to the north at Dora. This accounts in part, for the wretched condition of the prisoners--these were the most feeble and helpless of the bunch. Furthermore, the camp had been the subject of several direct hits during the brutal RAF fire-bombing of Nordhausen the previous week, which claimed nearly 1,500 victims in the Boelcke Kaserne.

Lee described their arrival at the barracks, otherwise known as the Nordhausen camp: “These people were literally worked and starved to death. Some 5,000 bodies were discovered, many stacked like so much cord wood awaiting final disposal. Most were apparently French. As we came into the compound which housed the slave laborers, it was surrounded by a chain-link fence which I would guess to have been ten or twelve feet high. The French slave-laborers, when they saw who we were, literally climbed over that fence en masse and broke it down; just laid it flat, they were so happy to see us.”

Life Magazine photograph of prisoner remains at the Boelcke Kaserne shortly after the arrival of the combined 3rd Armored and 104thh Infantry.

The barracks consisted of five, two-story dormitory buildings and two, larger structures. The second story of each dorm was lined with three-level bunks, crammed with corpses and emaciated survivors.

Other Timberwolf units, including a medical battalion, soon arrived to help care for the survivors. In fact, VII Corps CO General J. Lawton Collins saw to it that as many soldiers under his command as possible were taken to the camp to witness firsthand the Nazi’s “Final Solution.” German civilians were recruited to bury the bodies of former camp inmates in mass graves.

While this sequence of events is sometimes called a “liberation,” it is important to remember that Germans soldiers had abandoned the camp by the time the Americans arrived and that the Allied bombing of Nordhausen had inflicted horrific casualties and killed many of the prisoners.

Like many U.S. soldiers who encountered such camps, the Timberwolves made their discovery of the camp the centerpiece of their postwar meaning making. From their perspective, it lent purpose and justification to a campaign that often seemed senseless. In the words of the 3rd Armored Division historian, the men “would never again doubt the reason for their fighting.”

The French government under Charles de Gaulle later awarded Lee a Battle Cross with Bronze Star (Croix de Guerre avec Etoile de Bronze) for his role as a member of that first patrol to arrive.

More photographs of Mullenark

Here are some nice, medium resolution photos of Mullenark Castle I found the other day. The first one is of the front of the building. Nothing new, but kind of a nice shot.

The second is interesting because it shows one of the front towers at the vantage from which grandpa's fellow platoon members would have seen them. Fairly imposing, when you consider, as Frank Perozzi said, there were snipers firing at them from the turrets as they dug their fox holes.

The third photo is of the mill house just to the southeast of the house. The moat ran right along this structure and it was positioned near the mill pond, too.

The last photo is of one of the walls surrounding the estate. These were the walls grandpa spoke of using to skirt the property and make their way into Schophoven to the northwest. According to the photo's description (as "translated" by Google), the damage to the wall was sustained during World War II. It's conceivable that the scars were inflicted by the artillery preparation that preceded the infantry assault on Mullenark the night of December 13, 1944.

Group Photo at Place de la Concorde in Paris

Once the Timberwolves reached Cologne, their advance halted for a few weeks. At the time, Cologne was Germany's third largest city. It stood on the west bank of the Rhine River, the last natural barrier between the Allies and what they anticipated would be a dagger to the heart of Germany: an attack on the industrial Ruhr region. Lee's battalion captured the small town of Efferen on the approaches to Cologne early in February 1945, then moved into a residential area in the southern part of Cologne on 8 February. While most of the division underwent a rigorous training routine and practiced river crossings in nearby lakes, Grandpa Lee took a trip to Paris. His account of this time reads:

"At this time there became available a number of 3-day passes to Paris. It seemed an opportunity worth accepting and so together with some 50 or so others it was back away from the front to France. It was cold and gray the whole time we were in Paris but it was also interesting to see the many sights—the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triumph, Cathedral of Notre Dame, Louvre etc. We had a group photo taken at the Place de la Concorde near the Arc de Triumph at the head of the Champs de Elysees."

Here is the photo (courtesy of Marilyn Hansen). Grandpa is the 7th from the right on the front row:

Here is a photo my kids and I took recently at the same fountain. Not much has changed since 1945:

Lee continued: "While 'enjoying' the sights of Paris we received word that a bridge across the Rhine had been captured intact. All passes were cancelled and it was back to Cologne on the first train." This of course was the bridge at Remagen. Upon his return, he joined his battalion in an assembly area near Bad Honnef (a few miles north of Remagen) and on Feb. 23 they crossed the Rhine on pontoon bridges. They were riding the trucks and tanks of the 3rd Armored Division. A fellow member of the 414th described the crossing: "The pontoon bridge over the Rhine was a carnival ride. The pontoon you were on was down in the water, the one in front of you was about 3 or 4 feet above you, and the one behind popped up as soon as you drove off of it."

Battle for Raguhn

The battle of Raguhn was where Lee earned his Silver Star. It is one of the few experiences of which he gives a detailed account. In addition to his account, we have his citation, and a retelling of the battle from the perspective of another Timberwolf, William Bracey, who also participated in the battle. I've done my best to reconstruct the events using these and a few other sources.

Raguhn sits astride the Mulde River, which splits in two channels at Raguhn, creating a substantial island in the center of the town. The portion of the town to the west of the river channels had been taken the previous day by a coordinated air-armor-infantry attack in which another company of 2nd Battalion 414th Regiment had participated. F Company "entered the city late in the afternoon and found a small tank repair crew with two partially disabled tanks already there." The Battalion CO, Maj. John Melhop ordered F Company to remain in Raguhn the evening of the 16th while some of the other units continued their mopping up of the area.

According to fellow platoon member Tom Lacek, the strength of F Company was about thirty men, down from a full complement of 180. Lee’s platoon had fared better than some—there were still about nine platoon members—but they were feeling decimated. At the time, 2nd Battalion was still attached to the 3rd Armored Division, and had been riding tanks from town to town in coordinated combat. They found a house near the railroad tracks, that run north-south parallel to the river on the western of side Raguhn and settled in for what they hoped would be a peaceful night.

They were in for a rude awakening. They were notified by the Battalion that intelligence indicated a German counterattack in the making. Raguhn and nearby towns Thurland (six miles to the west) and Siebenhausen, (about five miles south) were the focus of the counterattack late that night. The 2nd Battalion CP in Thurland was completely overrun, and the troops quartered in Raguhn were almost completely surrounded.

William Bracey of H Company (the only other company in town) was among the first who was aware that the attack had reached them. He heard shouting in German outside his door at No. 4 Markesche Strasse, on the western outskirts of town at about 3:00 the morning of the 17th. He reported that about “about 50 German infantrymen came by the doorway, in single file, close enough that I could have reached out and touched them.” He and his comrades were not detected because they had parked their Jeeps and half-track on the north and south sides of No. 4 behind high fences.

The map below shows the location of No. 4 in Raguhn, just east of the railway. Further to the east, you'll see the several branches of the Mulde:

View Larger Map

Word of the counterattack quickly reached the F Company men. As Lee put it: “Much to our chagrin we awakened in the morning to find ourselves, one infantry platoon plus the tank mechanics, surrounded by the enemy—cut off from our support.”

Lee’s “platoon leader at the time was unable to function due to battle fatigue.” As Assistant Platoon leader, Tech Sgt. McBride assumed command of the platoon. “We made [the Platoon leader] comfortable in a basement and went out to see what needed doing.” As a later citation recorded: “[Lee] voluntarily left his covered position and assumed command of a platoon which was attempting to dislodge the enemy from his newly won positions. After a fierce fight, during which he constantly exposed himself to withering enemy fire, Sergeant McBride’s men were surrounded by the superior enemy force.” Lee put it more modestly: “It was routine work clearing the enemy from all of the buildings in town with the exception of a large factory.”

It is apparent that this house-to-house fighting, though routine, was no walk in the park. Tom Lacek recalled that they were “up all night,” repelling the German counterattack. Bracey observing the action from the windows of his house added, “Our F Company riflemen soon engaged the Germans, forcing them into a factory, and house across the street from the factory.”

The factory was “a brick building of one story located at the extreme edge of town adjacent to open fields. The enemy command post was located in this building and the German troops were ‘dug in’ in the fields surrounding the town.” It was apparently very close to the house on Markesche Strasse.

Since an infantry attack on the factory would have a been a dangerous and costly endeavor, the F Company doughs decided to “bring one of the tanks down to the building as a persuasive force.” The tanks were several blocks from the factory, just east of the railroad tracks. McBride contacted the tank mechanics, who “were very reluctant to get involved but finally agreed to bring the better of the two tanks along and see if it could be of help.” He then “courageously ran a gauntlet of enemy fire to lead [the] tank forward.” According to his account, the then “positioned the tank close to a window of the building and placed the muzzle of the cannon directly facing the window. Fortunately there was nothing wrong with that part of the tank and we sent a round into the building. The shrapnel ricocheting about the inside of that building must have been somewhat disconcerting to the German officers inside. Another invitation to surrender was tendered. This time they offered to leave the town and take all their people from the fields about the town with them.”

Bracey, after attempting unsuccessfully to help clear the Germans from the house across from the factory, returned to No. 4 and watched the situation unfold: “Our tank moved into position to fire on the factory and house. At this point, a white flag appeared, and through an interpreter, the Germans asked for safe passage through our line to their positions on the island and east bank of the Mulde River.” According to Bracey's account, Lee, who was directing the fire of the tanks, replied: “What the hell do they think we are playing—checkers? Tell them to surrender or we’ll blow up the factory and them with it!”

Lee’s continues humorously: “We refused their generous offer and presented them with another round or two of fire from the big gun on the tank. After the reverberations died down we again invited them and all their men from the surrounding fields to join us with hands behind their heads. This time they agreed that might be a good idea after all and proceeded to line up the entire unit in the courtyard” across the street from the factory to the north.

They “sent to the basement room where we had left our platoon leader and had him come to accept the surrender of over a hundred German troops.” Lee noted: “You see, I was leading the platoon [but] as a non-commissioned officer was not worthy to accept the surrender of the German officers and their men.” Lee was awarded a Silver Star for this action, which he insisted, “should have gone to the platoon, not the Platoon Sergeant.” Here is the citation in full:

After the counterattack was squelched Major Melhop returned in a jeep to Raguhn where he found things under control thanks to the quick thinking and dash of those few remaining F Company members. Melhop took pictures of the large number of German bodies that had been placed in open graves victims of the house-to-house fight. The following is one of those pictures:

More on Müllenark

The word “Müllenark” in middle-high-German meant “mill dam.” The Müllenark estate was the location of a large mill, and the barons who lived there were known by the name Müllenark as early as the 12th century. The mill was operated by water diverted from the Roer River and retained in a mill pond just to the southeast of the house. The pond and moat mentioned in the various accounts of the battle were respectively the mill pond and the canal that diverted the river water to the mill works. Over the centuries, the Müllenark gristmill was used to grind grain, extract oils, and later to power saws, grinders and other machinery. At its peak, it boasted three large water wheels and serviced several towns in the area, including Schophoven. The mill works were located, in part, in the southern wing of the house, while the northern and western portions of the structure were residential. Most of the machinery operated by the mill in the early 20th century was located in the house located at the southwest corner of the great house. It is possible that the large cellar behind the house was originally used as cold storage for mill products such as flour and oil.

Just for fun, here is Lee's Bronze Star Citation earned at Müllenark on Dec. 13, 1944:

414th Regiment WWII Bibliography

I thought I might post a short list of recommended reading related to Lee McBride's unit and the campaigns in which he was involved. Published sources only:

1. Leo Arthur Hoegh, Timberwolf Tracks: The History of the 104th Infantry Division, 1942-1945. A great starting point. Gives a thorough, if sometimes jumbled account of the division's WWII history. Don't miss Sgt. Frank Perozzi's account of the Mullenark attack. Very vivid.
2. Derek Zumbro, Battle for the Ruhr: The German Army's Final Defeat in the West (Modern War Studies). This book takes the German perspective on the Ruhr encirclement. It is fascinating to read about what was happening on the other side of the receding German front, opposite the 3rd Armored spearhead. (Remember, Lee rode the tanks of the 3rd Armored during the Ruhr campaign, from late Feb. to April.)
3. Harry Yeide, The Longest Battle: September 1944-February 1945: From Aachen to the Roer and Across. The Roer ended up figuring in the battle plans of First Army a lot longer than anticipated. A very important look at a battle that is almost always neglected by popular histories of the war in Europe. A thorough account of the battle in the Eschweiler-Weisweiler corridor and the northern Hurtgen, the impact of the demolition of the Roer dams, and more. (In other words, the first month of Lee McBride's combat experience.)
4. Normandy to Victory: The War Diary of General Courtney H. Hodges and the First U.S. Army (American Warriors Series). Some interesting perspective on how First Army Commander General Courtney Hodges viewed the performance and accomplishments of the Timberwolves.
5. Gerald Astor, Terrible Terry Allen: The Soldiers' General. Allen was a soldier's general. He was incredibly popular with the men he commanded. They always knew Allen was looking out for them. This biography covers the Timberwolves' campaign in detail.
6. Andre Sellier, A History of the Dora Camp: The Untold Story of the Nazi Slave Labor Camp That Secretly Manufactured V-2 Rockets. Written by a French survivor of the Dora Camp near Nordhausen who went on to obtain historical training. Absolutely amazing account; provides not only a lot of first hand information and interviews but the single best statistical analysis of the grim mathematics of this Nazi death camp.
7. John A. Melhop, The Memoirs of a Maverick Major. This book was a self-published account of John Melhop's experiences that is now out of print. Melhop was a member of the 2nd Battlalion Staff and its acting commander for a period of time. The book contains detailed accounts and several photos.
8. Charles B. McDonald, The Siegfried Line Campaign. The official history of the battle. It has been posted online in its entirety.

Research Tip: Don't Neglect the Unit Journal

I love finding research tips and notes on other blogs and sites. I thought I would share a couple of ideas from my own experience that might be useful to someone. Especially if that someone is doing research on a family member who participated in World War II.

The National Archives II in College Park, Maryland is a fantastic place to study America's military history. It houses a massive collection of original documents ranging from Field Orders to After Action Reports to Combat interviews. It also has an enormous photograph collection of Signal Corps and other photography.

Chances are, if your grandfather or other family member participated in World War II, you'll find a wealth of information about his or her experience at Archives II. However, let me temper your expectations a bit: Do not go there expecting to find stories about your ancestor neatly written up for you. The material in Archives II is in a very raw state. It requires the hand of a patient researcher to coax out its treasures. The staff is very friendly and knowledgeable and can help you get started. From that point, you have to get a little creative.

The following presupposes that you know the unit, preferably the company (for example, Company F, 414th Infantry Regiment) to which your family member belonged. This information can be found on their service records, discharge papers, citations, pay stubs; just about any official document they may have saved.

There is a box or series of boxes containing the combat paper trail for each U.S. Army Division (my experience is with the papers of the 104th Infantry Division and the 3rd Armored Division). The boxes contain an eclectic mix of first hand documents. Some (regimental histories, after action reports) contain prose accounts of the dispositions, movements, and actions of the unit, and it is tempting to just order copies of those and call it a day.

My advice: Don't stop there. Infantry and armored regiments kept a Unit Journal. The main content of the Unit Journal is a minute-by-minute log of all of the company and battalion reports during combat. These terse, sometimes monotonous reports say things like "1230 F Co strafed friendly fire 100 yds S of 89" or "1845 1st Bl reporting A Co astride rd at 124." Obviously, the first part of the message is the time the report was received at regimental HQ. The subsequent information describes the disposition of a given unit at that specific time.

The beauty of these tweet-sized bits of information is that they are contemporary to the extreme. These reports were forwarded and logged in real time, making them incredibly valuable and usually very accurate primary source material.

Don't be daunted or discouraged by the sheer size of the Journal or the volume of messages it contains. Once you get the hang of reading them, you can very easily scan them to find the reports that pertain to the company to which your family member belonged.

Now for the fun part. The numbers designating the unit's location refer to numbered objectives that that were plotted on map overlays prepared during combat for the use of the unit commanders. The objectives were usually natural (ridges, hills, ponds) or man-made (bridges, crossroads, landmarks, towns) features of the landscape. These overlays (on vellum or tissue paper) and their corresponding maps are often included in the same boxes of materials as the Unit Journals themselves.

Using the maps/overlays and the Unit Journal, you can begin to plot very precisely the location of your family member at any given moment during during his or her tour of duty. Here are some possible uses for this kind of information:

1. Create an outline onto which you can graft your more anecdotal source material
2. Create and share a Google Map with the dates and locations of events
3. Clarify the sequence of events for certain battles
4. Organize a battlefield tour featuring blow-by-blow historical commentary

I have even been able to identify the location of certain stories in my grandpa's memoir based solely on the unit journal data and maps when the timing or physical features described were sufficiently unique.

Now, before you put the Unit Journal back in the box, peruse the appendices. You will usually find a list of combat casualties: the names and dates of battle deaths, injuries, and so forth. This can be helpful in several ways. Obviously, from the statistical perspective you get a very quick idea which were the hardest fought engagements.

I have also used these lists to pinpoint the dates and location of certain undated events in my grandfather's memoir, since he occasionally named individuals who died or were injured in his stories. Just locate their name in the combat casualties list and you have a date. Find the date on your Unit Journal plot and you have a location.

Müllenark

Here are the results of a lot of poking around looking for more information about infamous Chateau Mullenark where Grandpa Lee earned a Bronze Star. The top image is from a 1944 army map marked in early 1945 to show the disposition of German troops in the area of Schophoven immediately following the Bulge.

The map shows that the so-called moat was really an irrigation canal or ditch that serviced the fields in the surround area. It filled the role of a moat. You can see that the canal has been since filled in by looking at the last image, which is from a Google Maps satellite image.

Notice also the odd shape drawn behind (to the east) of the building. This appears as a cluster of dense woods and shrubs on the satellite photo. The three photos that follow are photos of that wooded area taken from three angles, all on the south side. The first was taken close to the southeast corner of the house. You can see that the cluster of greenery is actually mounded up and was used at one point as a kind of root cellar.

The following two photos help verify the angle of the first. The third shows the round brick tower. This is also visible on the aerial photo as is the stone structure in the background to the right. The fourth photo was taken from the east end of the mound looking back toward the chateau. In the distance you can see the chimneys of Mullenark. Those same chimneys are visible also in the fifth photo.

Using the distance measurement tool on Google Maps, I measured the distance from the chateau court to the middle of the mound at about 50 yards. If you take a moment to look at the area on Google maps you can make out the roof of the brick tower in the southeast corner of the clump of trees.

Read this quote from Lee's memoir: "As we continued around to the rear of the castle my first face-to-face confrontation with the enemy occurred. I stepped around a large clump of shrubbery and there was a German private, rifle in hand but with no heart for the fight. He became our first P.O.W. of the day. Situated on a direct line between the castle and the Roer River was a large storage cellar. Here we decided to stop, regroup and await the out come of the company's thrust against the castle itself. We were not aware of the desperate plight of our comrades. They had come under severe mortar and small arms fire and were pinned down on the banks of the moat. Our position was relatively strong and reasonably safe. The cellar was constructed of brick in the walls, a stone floor and a thick dirt covered roof. By now it was full day light and the German garrison in the castle sent a lone soldier from the rear of the castle toward the river and the main German lines. As he approached our position we invited him in and he wisely accepted. This same scenario was repeated over and over during the morning hours until we had collected twelve prisoners and had placed them along the wall on one side of the cellar. Finally the enemy came to realized what was happening and opened mortar fire on our position. They would drop a round at the doorway and the shrapnel would fly through the opening. We were protected by the heavy brick front walls which provided an area of safety on each side of the cellar. The day wore on and late in the afternoon we decided to leave the cellar and make our way around the back of the castle and into the small village on the opposite side."

It seems probable that the mound pictured in these photos is the cellar Lee mentioned: large, with heavy front walls, a thick dirt roof, on a direct line between the castle and river, and in proximity to clumps of shrubbery. Frank Perozzi added that is was a ground level storage cellar and had straw on the floors. It is also the right distance from the castle. The mortar squad was located in the courtyard of the castle.

Lee earned his star when he made the circuit around the castle the next night and helped evacuate his fellow infantrymen who were pinned down on the banks of the canal. Frank Perozzi said he always felt Lee should have received a Silver Star for leading his squad in the capture of the twelve prisoners.

Buck Private McBride

Grandpa Lee joined his unit (104th Division, 414th Regiment, 2nd Battalion, F Company, 1st Platoon) on November 16, 1944 in Stolberg, Germany. He had no almost no infantry training and was brought on as a replacement for some unnamed G.I. who was injured or killed during the 104th Division's (the Timberwolves') brief campaign in Holland. His new regiment was on division reserve that day, assembling and preparing to jump off on the attack the following day. They were near Busbach, a suburb to the south of Stolberg. Here, Lee was outfitted for combat, given a standard issue M1 rifle, and was given the assignment of platoon runner. His job was to relay messages from the Platoon Leader to the Assistant Platoon Leader (Platoon Sergeant).

The active regiments (413th and 415th) attacked on the 16th after the largest air bombardment of World War II. They made almost no progress that first day. The Corps commander, General J. Lawton Collins and U.S. First Army CO, General Courtney Hodges both expressed serious frustration with this relatively green unit's performance. Hodges commented, "The 104th still has a lot to learn." Collins visited the 104th Div. command post in Aachen and told Division Commander General Terry Allen in no uncertain terms to "get moving, and get moving fast."

On the 17th, the 414th was activated and began to advance toward the front line. Lee's company was on the regiment's right flank, fighting alongside the 3rd Armored Division. The battalion was given the assignment of clearing the high ground south and west of Hastenrath, Germany, a small town south of Eschweiler (which was the Division's first main objective).

Frank Perozzi, a member of Lee's platoon that day, remembered: "It was a sunny day of attack. We moved forward through a pine forest. It was very scary not knowing when we would be shot at." The photo at the top of this post was taken by an Army Signal Corps photographer on November 17, 1944. It is of F Company, about 1 mile from the front lines near Hastenrath. Buck Private McBride is one of those men trudging along through ankle-deep mud, approaching the dreaded front. I've wondered what must have been going through his mind at that moment. This move forward took place under intermittent air and artillery fire, which forced the men of the Company to hit the deck to avoid dreaded tree bursts.

F Company's first objective (labeled #18 on the battalion's map overlay) was a crossroads, just outside the small village of Werth. The satellite photo below shows that crossroad, the first (western-most) of two on the Hastenrather road between Albertshof and Werth. As they approached their objective, the began to draw heavy German artillery and mortar fire. As grandpa memorably put it: "I could hear things whizzing by my head and plunking into trees and later found out it was artillery. So you see, I had a great introduction into combat."

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Fortunately, the rifle he was carrying had a grenade launcher rather than a bayonet. When came within striking distance of the crossroads, Captain Bowman (F Company CO) ordered a bayonet charge, in which Lee could not participate. At one point during the fighting, an American plane strafed the road and the field to the north of the road with "friendly" fire. This near miss (F Company was dug in the field to the south of the road), prompted Capt. Bowman to use smoke to signal to the planes that they were not enemy troops.

The fight for the crossroads lasted the rest of that day, and most of the 18th. By the end of Lee's second full day, the company had reached objective 19, the crossroads just to the east. They buttoned up for the night on the outskirts of Werth, but were notified very early the next morning that they would be relieved by another unit and redeployed at the front and center of the regiment's attack on Hastenrath and Volkenrath.

As they approached Volkenrath, they were expecting a guide from the company they were relieving who was to show them where to deploy. The guide never arrived and they walked into the wrong part of town and were greeted by a well-entrenched enemy. The battle featured house-to-house fighting and some tank support from the 750th Tank Battalion. One tank almost backed over Jim Allen, one of Lee's good friends in the platoon. They spent the night after this attack lying in mud puddles and shallow foxholes (the ground was too wet to dig a proper hole), hoping they wouldn't get hit by artillery bursts, and listening to the screaming of those who were hit.

F Company edged slowly northward. They crossed the Inde River between Eschweiler and Weisweiler. The 413th Regiment was attempting to attack eastward toward Weisweiler but were being held up by Germans holding a position on a tall hill east of Eschweiler. The dominating German position had observation over the entire valley between the two towns, including the routes of the 413th Reg. and had made good use of this advantage by raining down mortar and machine gun fire on the road.

The hill, which was wooded around the base, was used as a slagpile for several of the many lignite (brown coal) mines in the area and there were tunnels and bunkers cut into the hill. The attack to the east could not continue until several companies of the 414th eliminated that enemy position. They attacked on November 12. Lt. John Light of E Company recalled hearing from some of his friends in F Company who participated in that attack. They threw explosives and grenades into the tunnels and holes, waited for the smoke to clear, and ran in to the flush the enemy out. By the time they seized the hill, all they found were some German civilians who were hiding in the tunnels. Most of the enemy soldiers had retreated.

The morning after this battle, F Company members enjoyed a breathtaking view of the industrial city of Eschweiler, from the top of the hill, looking back to the west. Eschweiler had been almost completely destroyed. There were still a few large buildings standing in the middle of town. Frank Perozzi remembered seeing large red crosses painted on the top of these buildings. Looking to the east, they could see across the valley to Weisweiler, and watched American fighter-bombers strafing German positions there. There were also fired at regularly by German 88mm artillery guns located across the way.