THE RHINE

The regiment left Tohogue on February sixth and moved to the vicinity of Maastricht, Holland, in reserve. The Ruhr had been crossed so the next major objective was the Rhine river. The Rhine had always been sacred to the Germans and it was expected that they would defend it with the limit of their strength. How great this was after the Battle of the Bulge was still to be determined. The 329th was not committed to the Rhine attack until February twenty-eighth. It was then given the mission of capturing the city of Neuss, opposite Dussoldorf on the Rhine, with the two other regiments of the division on its right and left. There was considerable skirmishing with German outposts in the villages of Tits and Loveling, and when the 1st Battalion reached the outskirts of Neuss darkness was falling. It was decided to capture Neuss with a night attack, using limited objective procedure.

Night attacks are much less costly than day attacks if the soldiers are sufficiently battle-hardened to stand a night operation. The defenders know they are being attacked but they can't see the attackers and can be overrun before they can put up much resistance. Only veteran troops are normally used, recruits are so frightened that they are as ineffective as the defenders. In Normandy everybody was so scared that we buttoned up at night and shot anything that moved.

The 1st Battalion reached the rail line that encircled the city at dusk, and the 3rd Battalion was put in on its flank. The main streets paralleled the river and about every third street was used as a check-up line to keep the battalions abreast. By daylight they had reached the eastern edge of the city. Between them and the river was a broad plain, checkered with German entrenchments protecting the bridge across the Rhine to Dusseldorf. At daylight the bridge was still standing, and the 2nd Battalion was alerted to cross and capture the other end when the defenses on this side had been overrun.

After the trenches had been softened up with a three-hour artillery concentration, Speedie's 3rd Battalion opened the attack on the defenders of the bridge, using "I" and "K" Companies, which were pinned down almost immediately by rifle and machine gun fire from the German trenches. "L" Company was formed in one wide front at the edge of the town and Speedie's tank platoon interspersed its four tanks with the riflemen. Just as "L" Company's attack was ready to jump off, the tank platoon commander was killed by a German shell, but his platoon sergeant took over without a pause. The line of "L" Company started forward, using assault fire; the tanks added their machine guns; "I" & "K" Companies joined the line of "L" Company. The bullets cracking across the top of the trenches was too much for the Germans. They came out with their hands up -- about two hundred of them.

At this point the Germans attempted to blow up the bridge. As we watched from the east edge of Neuss, there was a loud explosion and a big chunk was blown into the air from the center of the bridge. Major Sharpe's 2nd Battalion was ready to cross and secure a bridgehead on the east side but the blowing up of a chunk out of the bridge brought up problems. Would it stand up under tanks? There was another span beyond the main river span. Had it been blown? Could the regiment risk the entrapment of the 2nd Battalion? We had been two days and nights without sleep. We took the easy and regrettable way out we did not cross. The following night the bridge was completely destroyed. Ten days later, at Remagen, another outfit took better advantage of its opportunity and secured a crossing -- the Remagen Bridge.

We settled down to pacifying Neuss. It had been very fortunate for us that we had captured the city in a night attack. The following morning a reconnaissance of the approaches to the city revealed four concrete-emplaced 88's set to sweep the flat approaches to Neuss. They were in concrete emplacements so that only their barrels were above ground, and they were well supplied with ammunition. Any advance across the open in daylight would have been very costly. Apparently their gun crews had abandoned them when they were bypassed by our troops in the dark. We encountered a new form of resistance in Neuss. Civilians wearing armbands that said, "Volksturmer" were holed up in some of the houses and business establishments. They were armed with rifles and some of them shot at our troops. This was not for long. Our men just shot anybody who either had a gun or was wearing an armband, and after one day of this they had enough. We also received some nuisance shelling from Düsseldorf across the river. Along the river dikes the bridge defenders had emplaced some six-inch rockets that were electrically fired. The regiment's advance had been too rapid to give the defense force an opportunity to fire them and they were still in place. Captain Dan Gust, our antitank officer, turned them around so they pointed toward Düsseldorf. Whenever we received an artillery concentrations, Gust would reply with a few rockets. When one of the rockets hit in Düsseldorf a building collapsed. It didn't take them long to get the message. Lieutenant Magill crossed the Rhine one night with a squad of his I&R platoon. He reported that the opposite bank of the river was lightly defended but we received no orders to cross.

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