After The Battle 161 - The Battle of Metz

THE BATTLE OF METZ HIROHITO’S HEADQUARTERS No. 161

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NUMBER 161

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THIONVILLE

METZ

US ARMY OFFICIAL HISTORY

© Copyright After the Battle 2013 Editor: Karel Margry Editor-in-Chief: Winston G. Ramsey Published by Battle of Britain International Ltd., The Mews, Hobbs Cross House, Hobbs Cross, Old Harlow, Essex CM17 0NN, England Telephone: 01279 41 8833 Fax: 01279 41 9386 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.afterthebattle.com Printed in Great Britain by Warners Group Publications PLC, Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PH. After the Battle is published on the 15th of February, May, August and November.

CONTENTS THE BATTLE FOR METZ JAPAN Hirohito’s Underground Headquarters WAR FILM Fires Were Started

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Front Cover: The Battle for Metz in 1944 — then and now. On November 20 a 90mm antitank gun from the 807th Tank Destroyer Battalion fires at the Préfecture, one of the last German strongholds in the city. The building stands on the Île de la Préfecture, a small island in the Moselle river in the centre of the city, and the gun, emplaced on the Place de Chambre, was firing at it from across the Pont de la Préfecture bridge (see page 32). (USNA/ATB) Back Cover: The common grave of West Ham Firemen Harold Huggett and Arthur Goreham in the City of London Cemetery at Manor Park. (ATB) Acknowledgements: The Metz story is largely taken from The Lorraine Campaign (Washington, 1950) by Hugh M. Cole, a volume of the Official History of the US Army in World War II published by the Office of the Chief of Military History. Some parts are used in their entirety, others are condensed and abridged. For their valuable assistance with the Metz story, the Editor would like to thank Sebastien Wagner, Thierry Simon, Gérard Klein, the Thanks GIs Association (www.thanksgis.com) and also the Moselle River Association (www.moselleriver1944.org). For assistance with the story on Hirohito’s Underground Headquarters we thank Yukiyo Bayly. Photo Credit Abbreviations: BA — Bundesarchiv; ECPAD — Médiathèque de la Défense, Fort d’Ivry; USNA — US National Archives.

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The Western Front on September 1, 1944. On the last day of August, the lead units of the US Third Army crossed the Meuse river at Verdun and Commercy. The following day, cavalry reconnaissance patrols arrived at the Moselle, thus reaching the western edge of the Alsace and Moselle regions which had been claimed by Germany in 1940. Following their earlier annexation back in 1871, the Germans had built strong defences along the new frontier, from Luxembourg in the north to Mulhouse in the south. The centrepiece of the line was the so-called Mosel-Stellung, with eight fortresses surrounding Metz and three around Thionville. When Julius Caesar conquered the Gaul in 52 BC, the town that was to become Metz was the oppidum (defended settlement) of the Celtic Mediomatrici tribe. Integrated into the Roman Empire, it quickly became one of the principal towns of Gaul under the name of Divodurum Mediomatricum, meaning Holy Fortress of the Mediomatrici, soon evolving to Mediomatrix. Then came the barbarian depredations and transfer of the town to the Franks about the end of the 5th century when the name evolved to Mettis, which gave rise to Metz. When Charlemagne died in 843 and the Holy Roman Empire was divided among his three grandsons, the realm of Lothaire reaching from Frisia to Rome was called Lotharingia and Metz became its capital. Otto the Great restored the Holy Roman Empire in 962 and Lorraine remained a duchy within. In 1552, in exchange for support from Henri II, King of France, in their fight against Emperor Charles V, three princes of the Holy Roman Empire ceded the bishoprics of Verdun, Metz and Toul to France. Emperor Ferdinand I made several attempts

to regain the Three Bishoprics but his troops were defeated by the French in 1554. The Empire finally acknowledged their incorporation into France in the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which ended both the Thirty Years’ War in the Holy Roman Empire, and the Eighty Years’ War between Spain and the Dutch Republic. Small principalities of Lorraine still part of the Holy Roman Empire gradually came under French sovereignty and the region was finally incorporated into France in 1766. Following the French defeat in the FrancoPrussian War of 1870-71, the newly created German Empire annexed all of Alsace and the northern part of Lorraine, the Moselle department. Chancellor Otto von Bismarck was opposed to the appropriation, knowing it would provoke permanent French enmity, but Kaiser Wilhelm I eventually sided with the military circles who saw the shifting of the frontier far away from the Rhine as a decisive strategic advantage over the French. Also, from a nationalistic perspective, the transfer seemed justified, since most of these lands were populated by people who spoke Alemannic dialects.

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THE BATTLE FOR METZ ever more worried about renewed French patriotism.

By Jean Paul Pallud

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The new border between the Reich and France mainly followed the geo-linguistic divide between Roman and Germanic dialects, with sizeable exceptions like the city of Metz, the towns of Château-Salins, Vicsur-Seille and Dieuze, and some valleys on the Alsatian side of the Vosges mountains, which were all annexed despite the fact that people there spoke French. The Reich gave the residents until October 1, 1872 to choose between emigrating to France or remaining and having their nationality changed to German. By 1876, about 100,000 inhabitants of Alsace and Moselle, i.e. some five per cent of the population, had moved to France. However, in 1900 some 11.6 per cent still spoke French as their mother tongue. The territories were not organised into a separate state, but administered as the Reichsland (Imperial Province) ElsassLothringen under a governor directly appointed by the Kaiser, without any parliamentary representation. Only in 1911 was the province granted some degree of autonomy, including its own flag and anthem. When war broke out again in 1914, the question of the annexed provinces became a ‘front’ in itself. While the French authorities arrested Alsatians living in France and placed them into camps, the Germans quickly turned to erasing French influence in the annexed territories. French street names in Metz, until then displayed in both languages, were suppressed in January 1915, and six months later German became the only official language, leading to the Germanification of all town names. This further increased the exasperation of the population and German authorities became

In the autumn of 1944, the US Third Army fought a series of difficult and costly battles for Metz, the capital of the Lorraine region in north-eastern France. Having reached the Moselle river north and south of the city in early September, it took the Americans until late November before they could subdue the enemy defending the stronghold. It was only after American divisions had crossed the Moselle in strength on either side of Metz and enveloped the city to the east, and other units had captured or besieged the 19th-century forts that ringed the city, that troops of the 5th and 95th Infantry Divisions managed to enter and clear up the city, forcing the Germans to finally capitulate on November 20. Here troops of the 2nd Battalion, 377th Infantry, 95th Division, advance along Rue Henry de Ladonchamps in the suburb of Woippy during the final stages of the battle. The picture was taken by Army photographer Lieutenant John J. Oakes of the 166th Signal Photo Company. 3

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In November 1918, in the general revolutionary atmosphere of the expiring German Reich, Marxist councils of workers and soldiers formed in the large towns of Alsace but the arrival of French troops soon stabilised the situation. By the end of November, the French Army had re-occupied the disputed territories and on December 5 France proclaimed their re-annexation to France. This would gain international recognition with the signing of the Versailles Treaty in 1919. The French Government soon started to expel those Germans whom the Reich had settled in the annexed territories since 1871 and over 200,000 of them had been forced out by the time the campaign ended in 1920 after the signing of the Versailles Treaty. Twenty years later, following the defeat of France in June 1940, the contested territories were once again annexed by Germany. In July, guards began to be deployed along the ‘border’ and Moselle was soon combined with the Saarland into a Reichsgau named Westmark, while Alsace was amalgamated with Baden. The French language was once again banned and education at German schools made compulsory. French-speaking families were expelled to France, some 270,000 persons being forced to leave. THE METZ FORTS Following the annexation of Alsace and Moselle in 1871, the Germans began building a strong fortress line along the new frontier, from Luxembourg in the north to Mulhouse in the south. Construction mainly took place between 1899 and 1912, the centrepiece of the line being the so-called Mosel-Stellung, a group of 11 new fortresses surrounding Metz (eight forts) and Thionville (three forts). The eight forts at Metz were positioned in an offset ring eight to ten kilometres away from 4

statue of the Germans’ ‘Iron Soldier’, together with an equestrian statue of the German Emperor Wilhelm I.

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Metz had reverted to France at the end of the First World War and on November 14, 1918, young French patriots toppled the

Though the ornamental pond remains — albeit temporarily devoid of water — as do the stones and iron barrier lining Boulevard Poincaré, the statue was never replaced. However, just a short distance away (behind the photographer), a bronze statue of the French ‘Poilu’ of the First World War was put in place of that of Wilhelm I. This statue was inaugurated in 1922 but the Germans removed it in 1940, allegedly to make use of the metal. A replacement was erected in the 1950s. the city centre. West of the Moselle river, anti-clockwise from the north, were (German/French names): Feste Lothringen/Fort Lorraine, Feste Leipzig/Fort François de Guise, Feste Kaiserin/Fort Jeanne d’Arc, Feste Kronprinz/Fort Driant.

East of the Moselle, clockwise from the north, were: Feste Generalfeldmarschall Freiherr von der Goltz/Fort La Marne, Feste Prinzregent Luitpold/Fort l’Yser, Feste Wagner/Fort l’Aisne, Feste Graf Haeseler/Fort Verdun.

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hill near Verny, ten kilometres south of the city, and visits are run every Thursday in the summer and on the first Saturday and Sunday of the month from May to October. This is one of the fort’s 100mm steel turrets, restored to running order.

Left: In August 1940 orders were given to expand InfanterieRegiment Leibstandarte-SS ‘Adolf Hitler’ from a regiment to a brigade. The various elements of the new unit were assembled in Metz and in September Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler

arrived in the city to personally review the brigade. Right: Jean Paul found the spot in Rue des Clercs. The building now houses the tax office. The large gate is still there but shut yet there was still enough scope to take this comparison.

Built according to the latest principles of fortified defence, each fort had two to four batteries equipped with rotating steel turrets, each armed with a 100mm or 150mm gun. The large blockhouse-style barracks had three-metre-thick reinforced-concrete roofs with two-metre-thick walls. Long lengths of underground tunnels connected all of the structures. Each position was surrounded by ditches or concrete trenches, with shelters and observation cupolas. A large barbedwire belt, defended by machine-gun and rifle positions, completed the defensive system. To reinforce this main line of forts, the Germans added some secondary works — over 20 infantry forts and casemates –, mostly west of the city, like the WolfsbergStellung (Fort Kellermann) built between Feste Lothringen and Feste Leipzig, or a series of seven small defensive emplacements built in a line between Feste Kaiserin and Feste Kronprinz. The latter had only weak defensive strength and the Americans who fought for them in 1944 referred to them as ‘the Seven Dwarfs’. In addition, the Germans also took over the so-called Séré de Rivières fortifications built by the French just prior to the FrancoPrussian War. At Metz, these comprised some ten forts in a ring approximately four

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The outer perimeter of Metz was defended by a series of eight forts built by the Germans between 1899 and 1912. Today, all are closed to the public with one exception: Feste Wagner or, to give it its French name, Fort l’Aisne. It stands on a wooded

PK photographer Karl-Gustav Lerche pictured the Leibstandarte commander, SS-Obergruppenführer Sepp Dietrich, decorating some of his men. On the left is SS-Sturmbannführer Wilhelm Mohnke, the II. Bataillon commander. 5

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The parade was held in the fort’s main courtyard. Following Himmler as he reviewed the troops were Dietrich and SS-Hauptsturmführer Joachim Peiper, Himmler’s adjutant. In May 1945 the Standarte des Führers was found by the Russians in the Leibstandarte barracks in Berlin-Lichterfelde and it was taken to Moscow as part of the huge collection of German standards that Red Army soldiers symbolically cast down at the foot of Lenin’s tomb during the Victory Parade on June 24 (see After the Battle No. 50). The standard is now on display together with other trophy flags in the Central Armed Forces Museum in Moscow.

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kilometres out from the city centre. Most were still incomplete but the Germans finished their construction and increased their armament, like at Feste Alvensleben (Fort de Plappeville) where they added two concrete batteries, each with four steel turrets armed with a 150mm howitzer. The Metz forts saw no action in the First World War and were bypassed in the 1940 Blitzkrieg. After the French defeat, the Germans removed many guns and armoured plates from them to reinforce the Atlantic Wall. Also, steel cupolas were moved bodily to the Ruhr and Rhineland industrial areas as part of the German air defence program. In July 1944, with Allied attack from the west threatening, a few hundred civilian labourers were drafted to refurbish the Metz fortifications, but they lacked equipment, concrete, wire and steel, and in the end accomplished little, leaving the forts in a poor state of repair. Most of them lacked usable guns, ammunition and fire-control equipment and by September only Fort Driant (Feste Kronprinz) had its two 150mm batteries re-armed with barrels recovered in the fortress museum in Metz. However, no 100mm gun could be found, hence only one battery was re-armed with old short 100mm howitzers. No German shells were available, so old French stocks were used, which proved unreliable. The forts were manned by skeleton garrisons and some of the lesser ones had no occupants at all. Communications between them were poor if existent at all. At best they were only strong points on which the infantry could base their defence.

helmet). The party parked their cars in front of the main gate on the fort’s eastern side, then walked across the bridge over the moat to reach the centre of the fort where several hundred men were drawn up.

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Left: On September 7 Himmler presented the Leibstandarte with a new regimental standard, the Standarte des Führers. PK Weill pictured him arriving at the Fort de Plappeville (Feste Alvensleben to the Germans) together with Dietrich (wearing a

Left: In addition to the regimental standard seen here, the Leibstandarte was also presented with colours for its infantry battalions and banners for its artillery battalions. Right: The fort is still an army installation and, though giving the appearance of 6

being abandoned, it is still on care and maintenance and the central courtyard is kept weed-free. Even so, warning signs about ‘no trespassing’ adorn the many barriers and fences one has to pass or even climb over in order to reach this spot.

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GERMAN DISPOSITIONS IN THE MOSELLE SECTOR In the first few days of September the German front in the West had begun to stabilise itself somewhat, although a co-ordinated and homogeneous defence was still lacking along the 650-kilometre line. From the North Sea to a point south of Nancy, Heeresgruppe B (Generalfeldmarschall Walter Model) commanded four armies: from north to south the 15. Armee, the 1. Fallschirm-Armee, the 7. Armee, and the 1. Armee. Further south, Heeresgruppe G (General der Panzertruppen Hermann Balck) was establishing a front west of the Vosges mountains from Nancy to the Swiss border. Facing the Third Army, the 1. Armee (General der Panzertruppen Otto von Knobelsdorff) had retreated across the Meuse in the last days of August with a force comprising only nine battalions of infantry, two batteries of field guns, three Flak batteries, ten tanks and ten 75mm anti-tank guns. Advance detachments of two veteran formations from Italy, the 3. and 15. Panzergrenadier-Divisions, had arrived in time to see some action during the withdrawal and their main bodies arrived on September 1-2 to take up positions along the Moselle’s east bank. Retreating from Châlons-sur-Marne, the exhausted 17. SS-Panzergrenadier-Division had arrived in the Metz area for rest and refitting although on August 31 the situation was so worrying that two of its battalions were hastily sent to form an outpost line west of the city. Contrary to American estimates, Hitler and his military advisers had no intention of withdrawing the forces in the MetzThionville area to the Westwall (Siegfried Line) — or even so much as retreat behind the Moselle. Instead, reinforcements, though weak, were sent. On September 1, the 559. Volksgrenadier-Division began unloading east of Metz while the 553. VolksgrenadierDivision was detraining at Saarbrücken, en route to Nancy. The lull in the first days of September permitted these divisions to assume positions along the front. By September 5, some order had been brought out of the chaos, stragglers had been returned to their proper units, and an organised front was in place to counter a continuation of the American advance. However, the forces represented a hodgepodge of miscellaneous battalions, detached regiments, and understrength divisions, which varied greatly in training, armament and combat value. In the 1. Armee’s centre, defending the Moselle river position from north of Thionville to south of Metz opposite the American XX Corps, stood the LXXXII. Armeekorps (General der Artillerie Johann Sinnhuber). On its right wing, between Longuyon and Thionville, lay remnants of the 48. Infanterie-Division, which had taken a severe beating in the retreat from Chartres and was due to be relieved as soon as fresh troops could be procured. South-west of Thionville the new 559. VolksgrenadierDivision had two of its regiments in the line. To its left, a miscellany of school and fortress troops, grouped together under the staff of Division Nr. 462, was charged with the defence of Metz. This ‘division’ was actually an organisational makeshift, commanded by the faculty and administrative personnel of Schule VI für Fahnenjunker der Infanterie (Infantry Officer Candidate School No. 6) located at Metz, and lacking both the service units and heavy weapons organic to a regular division. However, the student troops, mostly picked for officer or NCO training after having demonstrated superior abilities in the field, were among the elite of the Wehrmacht. West of Metz, on the left of Division Nr. 462, small units of the 17. SS-Panzergrenadier-Division formed a covering force deployed along the Abbéville–Mars-la-Tour

Grouped together under the staff of Division Nr. 462, a miscellany of school and fortress troops was charged with the defence of Metz. This much-decorated Obergefreiter pictured with a Panzerschreck in Maizières-lès-Metz, ten kilometres north of the city, was probably from the Fahnenjunker School whose students were mostly soldiers picked after having demonstrated superior abilities in the field. road. However, with Ob. West anxious to reconstitute reserves, orders had been given for the SS division to be pulled back behind the Moselle into a reserve position south of Metz and there refit. This move began on September 2, with Division Nr. 462 taking over the major share of the security line west of the city. Control of this central sector of the 1. Armee would pass on September 7 from the LXXXII. Armeekorps to the XIII. SSArmeekorps (SS-Gruppenführer Herman Priess), the staff of the former moving north to assume command on the army’s right wing. On the 1. Armee’s right flank, facing the American V Corps between Sedan and Montmédy, stood the LXXX. Armeekorps, comprising five weak battalions of police and security personnel and a newly arrived regiment of the 15. Panzergrenadier-Division. The army’s left wing was held by the XXXXVII. Panzerkorps, whose sector extended along the Moselle from Arnaville to Bayon, roughly opposite the American XII Corps, and was manned by the 3. Panzergrenadier-Division, one regiment of the 15.

Panzergrenadier-Division and the new 553. Volksgrenadier-Division. The only reserve available to the 1. Armee commander was the untried Panzerbrigade 106 assembling in Luxembourg. In addition, the 19. and 36. Volksgrenadier-Divisions were en route to the army front by rail. The 1. Armee possessed very limited means of anti-tank defence. The volksgrenadier divisions had not yet received their assault guns and none of the panzergrenadier divisions had their organic tank battalion. At best they retained only a few self-propelled guns. Artillery support was limited to the few guns spread along the front. Communications were extremely poor. However, the ground west of Metz gave considerable advantage to the defender. Long, open slopes provided a natural glacis in front of the main German positions. Wooded crests and ravines screened the movement of troops and supply from the eye of the attacker. Broken terrain permitted the most effective use of small defending groups. Ravines, draws, and thick wood lots offered ample opportunity for counter-attack tactics, both in force and in patrol strength. 7

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The drive towards the Moselle and Metz in September 1944 was carried out by Major General Walton Walker’s XX Corps, which comprised the 5th and 90th Infantry and 7th Armored Divisions. Initially halted due to a lack of fuel, on September 5 enough gasoline reached the corps to start the 5th Division THE END OF THE PURSUIT Following the Allied break-out from the Normandy bridgehead in early August 1944 and the swift pursuit of the withdrawing German armies across northern France, the leading units of the US Third Army crossed the Meuse river at Verdun and Commercy on August 31 (see After the Battle No. 119) and by September 1 small cavalry patrols had arrived on the west bank of the Moselle. However, as a result of the decision by the Allied Supreme Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, to make the main effort in the north, the priority on fuel was then assigned to the US First Army, which left the Third virtually immobilised from September 1 to 5. On September 4 Eisenhower confirmed the priority that the forces operating against the Ruhr north-west of the Ardennes ‘must first be adequately supported’, but gave a green light for the Third Army ‘to occupy the sector of the Siegfried Line covering the Saar and then to seize Frankfurt’. Lieutenant General George S. Patton, the Third Army commander, had been waiting for just such an order and indeed, on the afternoon of the 4th, had already given Major General Manton S. Eddy, the XII Corps commander, permission to start the 80th Infantry Division toward the Moselle 8

eastwards along three axes on the corps’ right and to despatch one regiment of the 90th Division, the 357th Infantry, on the left wing. Meanwhile, various cavalry reconnaissance squadrons, notably of the 3rd and 43rd Cavalry Groups, were probing ahead of the main columns.

north of Nancy. Late on the 5th, he ordered Major General Walton Walker to begin an attack at once on the army’s left with the XX Corps. Patton’s foresaw two phases in the forthcoming advance. In the first the Third Army would attack to seize a bridgehead over the Moselle. In the second the advance would be continued to establish a bridgehead over the Rhine. The latter river seemed not too distant and Patton’s orders optimistically called for his army’s cavalry squadrons to cross the Moselle ‘and reconnoitre to the Rhine river’. Neither Patton, nor his staff, nor his commanders anticipated any stubborn German resistance on the Moselle. On September 5 enough fuel was reaching the XX Corps to permit General Walker to begin a concentration east of the Meuse. The 5th Infantry Division moved forward from Verdun and assembled along the line Jeandelize–Saint-Maurice, screening the assembly areas around Verdun and Etain occupied by the 7th Armored Division. One regiment of the 90th Infantry Division and the 90th Reconnaissance Troop advanced from Reims to cover the corps’ left wing northeast of Verdun. Bridging equipment and the corps artillery were brought forward. By then, small cavalry detachments had already pushed out to the wings. South of Metz a task force of the 3rd Cavalry Recon-

naissance Squadron succeeded in getting a few vehicles into Arnaville, but was driven out by artillery fire. North of Metz the 43rd Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron had no better luck. However, these cavalry actions had located possible fording sites south of Metz and had finally determined that all bridges in this sector were demolished. Early on the morning of the 6th, a strong combat reconnaissance force under Lieutenant Colonel Vincent L. Boylan, commanding the 87th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron (part of the 7th Armored), set out toward the Moselle in four parallel columns, with orders to seize any intact bridges in the neighbourhood of Metz. The four columns quickly struck a German security line manned by elements of the Fahnenjunkerschule, supported by anti-tank guns, which poured in a heavy fire. Boylan decided that his separate columns were too weak to advance alone, and about 1400 hours he shifted those on the left to reinforce the two on the right in an attempt to push through and join the cavalry south of Metz. At this same hour the rest of the 7th Armored Division began to advance, moving on an axis along the highway linking Verdun and Metz, with Combat Command A under Colonel Dwight A. Rosebaum in two parallel columns on the left, Combat Command B

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General Patton conferring with Major General Manton S. Eddy of the XII Corps (left) and Major General Horace L. McBride of the 80th Infantry Division at the latter’s command post near the Dieulouard bridgehead across the Moselle on September 27. The three mountain peaks seen on the division patch worn by McBride symbolise the three ‘Blue Ridge’ states of Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia, from which the majority of the 80th Division personnel had been drawn in the First World War. tank fire. Erlenbusch withdrew the tanks and sent Company B of the 23rd Armored Infantry forward in an attempt to reach and cross the river under cover of night. The riflemen reached the canal west of the river but as daylight came on September 7 the German troops in Arnaville and Novéant, discovering the Americans between them, concentrated their fire on the exposed company, causing heavy casualties. On the morning of the 7th a part of CCB shook itself free from the Gorze defile and joined Colonel Allison’s force on the riverbank near Dornot. The combat command had no assault boats save the three with Allison and, indeed, was hard pressed to hold on the near bank as the German fire intensified and counter-attack followed counter-attack from Ars-sur-Moselle, north of Dornot. General Thompson, anxious to ease the pressure on his left flank, asked the division commander to lend him CCR to launch an attack toward Ars-sur-Moselle. General Silvester agreed but the combat command was only halfway to the river when General Walker, the corps commander, ordered the column to halt, in order to let the 5th Infantry Division through; CCR was to return to corps reserve.

THE DORNOT AND ARNAVILLE BRIDGEHEADS SOUTH OF METZ At noon on September 7, word reached the 5th Division commander, Major General S. LeRoy Irwin, to move through the 7th Armored Division and force a crossing of the Moselle at Dornot, south of Metz. He sent the 11th Infantry forward, CCR vehicles pulling over to the roadside to let the infantry through. Late in the evening Walker told Irwin to cross the river on the following morning and use the 23rd Armored Infantry Battalion of the 7th Armored Division to augment his own infantry. In the morning of the 8th the 2nd Battalion of the 11th Infantry, chosen to make the first crossing, was in position to embark. However, with all chance of success by speed and surprise vanished, General Irwin decided to postpone the attack until artillery was available. Three battalions of 105mm howitzers finally were brought into position to support the assault, and about 1045 the crossing began just east of Dornot. By 1320 hours Companies F and G, reinforced by a few armoured infantrymen, together with heavy machine guns and 81mm mortars were across the Moselle. Here the assault force

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under Brigadier General John B. Thompson deployed in the same fashion on the right, and Combat Command Reserve under Colonel George H. Molony following CCB. In the first hours only scattered German outposts were encountered but about 1800 CCA found the Germans entrenched near SainteMarie-aux-Chênes. Here the defenders fought stubbornly and the battle continued through the night. Late in the morning of the 7th, the left column of CCA broke through to Mondelange, ten miles north of Metz, and turned south along the riverside highway leading to Maizières-lès-Metz with the intention of finding a suitable site for a crossing attempt. All the bridges in the sector had been destroyed, but a crossing site was found near Hauconcourt. The command advised it had found a possible crossing site and waited for bridging materials and further orders, all the while under artillery fire from across the river. Over to the right, CCB in the late afternoon of September 6 met part of Boylan’s force engaged in a firefight with German 88mm guns west of Gravelotte. Major General Lindsay McD. Silvester, the 7th Armored Division commander, ordered General Thompson to swing his combat command to the south of Boylan and continue toward the river. Just as night was coming on, Lieutenant Colonel Leslie Allison arrived with a part of the 23rd Armored Infantry Battalion, which had finally obtained fuel for its half-tracks. Thompson at once ordered them to push on to the river. The main road from Gravelotte to the Moselle descended through a narrow gorge which was strongly held by the enemy and heavily mined. Allison’s scouts discovered a parallel road running through the woods on the right, and under cover of darkness the battalion fought its way along this woods road. About 0400 on September 7, the 23rd Armored Infantry reached the hamlet of le Chêne, on the river just north of Dornot. As daylight came the Germans opened up with mortar fire and bullets from both sides of the river, while Fort Driant rained in shells from the heights on the far side of the river. Colonel Allison turned the battalion to clear out Dornot, from which the fire was particularly deadly, and late in the afternoon the armoured infantry attempted to put a patrol across the Moselle in three assault boats but this was driven back by direct machine-gun fire. Farther to the south another column, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Robert C. Erlenbusch, met shell-fire as it approached the village of Gorze, which blocked the entrance to another narrow defile leading to the Moselle. One company of the 31st Tank Battalion attempted to thread a path past the village but was stopped by mines and anti-

Advancing eastwards towards the Moselle river, the 5th Infantry Division pushed through Jarny, Mars-la-Tour and Chambley (see map opposite). However this GI from the division still found time to court a charming local girl.

With the road sign in the 1944 photo, it was easy to locate the old Calvary which turned out to be in the centre of the hamlet of Urcourt, some five kilometres east of Jarny. Sadly the old cross has now fallen into disrepair. 9

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Two days later, on September 10, the division’s 10th Infantry established another bridgehead at Arnaville, five kilometres further south. A treadway bridge was ready on the 12th, followed by the heavy pontoon bridge seen here, which was completed some 400 metres further upstream on the 14th.

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reformed in a patch of trees close to the river bank. German fire thus far was sporadic. Companies E and K crossed during the afternoon. In the late afternoon the two assault companies moved out and began a slow advance up the slope toward Fort Verdun (Feste Haeseler) overlooking the bridgehead a little over one mile to the east. The attackers came to the wire surrounding the fort and had started to cut it when they were suddenly hit by a battalion from SS-PanzergrenadierRegiment 37 which swept in on both flanks and filtered through to their rear. Companies E and K were called forward from the east bank but they could not advance through the heavy enemy fire. Companies F and G began to withdraw, running the gauntlet of enemy fire and leaving dead and wounded marking the path. Most of the survivors did not reach the clump of woods near the river until 2300, here joining the rear companies in the defence of the minuscule bridgehead, now only 300 yards deep and 200 yards wide. During the night General Irwin decided to commit the 10th Infantry in another crossing two and a half miles south of the 11th Infantry. About 0200 on September 10, the 10th Infantry sent its first boatloads across the river at a site near Arnaville. The crossings were made quickly and easily, catching the Germans by surprise. In short, sharp attacks the 1st Battalion on the right took Hill 386 and the 2nd Battalion on the left occupied Hill 370. The Germans then counter-attacked from Arry with tanks and infantry from the 17. SS-PanzergrenadierDivision, striking the two companies on the right flank. A wild melee ensued, but the Americans finally beat off the tanks with bazookas and dispersed the infantry. About noon, the Germans launched another attack with a battalion of infantry and a score of tanks or assault guns and this time the 1st Battalion was forced to give ground. Through the afternoon the enemy threatened to roll up the south flank of the 10th Infantry, launching attack after attack but to no avail, for across the river 13 artillery battalions now were in position to support the bridgehead force. Some P-47s arrived on the scene late in the afternoon to bomb and strafe the attackers. During the night of September 10/11 the 1103rd Engineer Combat Group began to put in a bridge, a task that had proved impossible in daylight under the accurately directed enemy artillery fire. A ferry was started and worked steadily during the night, bringing in all of the battalion 57mm antitank guns, as well as extra bazookas and ammunition, and evacuating casualties.

the morning, before the artillery supporting the assault had opened up. Four companies were soon across and in the afternoon Companies F and G began to advance up the slope on the east bank, seen in the background. Right: Dornot stands unchanged after seven decades. This is the main street, pictured from outside No. 50.

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Left: On the morning of September 8, the 11th Infantry of the 5th Division carried out an assault crossing of the Moselle at Dornot, ten kilometres south-west of Metz. Here men of the 11th Infantry move down Dornot’s steep main street on their way to the river. The picture, by Signal Corps photographer Lieutenant Mark A. Freeman, was most probably taken during

A memorial to the 5th Infantry Division (just off to the left in this comparison) now stands at the site of the heavy pontoon bridge.

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While the 10th and 11th Regiments were fighting at Dornot and Arnaville, the 5th Division’s third regiment, the 2nd Infantry, kept up the pressure on the German forces on the west bank of the Moselle to prevent them from being shifted to attack the bridgeheads further south. The regiment’s operations were supported by the XIX Tactical Air Command. Here P-47 fighter-bombers attack German-occupied farmhouses on the outskirts of Malmaison.

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A plan to sideslip the meagre forces in the 11th Infantry bridgehead opposite Dornot, and join them with the 10th Infantry at Arnaville was abandoned when the regimental commander reported ‘the men are all shot’. Instead, General Irwin ordered the evacuation of the Dornot bridgehead. Two men swam the river to carry the order and the evacuation began at dark on September 10, under cover of an intense protective barrage, and was completed about midnight. Losses in the three-day action at Dornot had been very heavy, casualties in the 2nd Battalion, 11th Infantry, numbering over 300 and those in the 23rd Armored Infantry Battalion, which had fought on both sides of the river, 200. Though Irwin had given orders that ‘at all costs’ a bridge must be put across the river at Arnaville before morning, no bridge was in position when daylight came on September 10. A fording site was ready about noon but, while permitting passage of dismounted troops, it was unusable for vehicular traffic. At dawn on September 11, the Germans again struck at both flanks of the Arnaville bridgehead with infantry and tanks but in bitter fighting the Americans managed to drive back both attacks. Meanwhile, reinforcements had crossed into the bridgehead and in the afternoon the 3rd Battalion of the 11th Infantry pushed toward Corny under the fire of the German batteries at Fort Driant, some 4,500 yards distant. Casualties were heavy, but the battalion managed to reach the edge of the village. The Germans resumed their assault on the bridgehead early on the 12th, using troops and tanks from the 3., 15. and 17. SS-Panzergrenadier-Divisions. Fighting raged throughout the night, sometimes hand-to-hand, but the Americans threw the attackers back and when daylight came they were still in possession of the bridgehead perimeter. During the night the engineers had laboured to complete a bridge, all the while under fire from Fort Driant and enemy assault guns. At noon on the 12th, the span was completed under fog-smoke and the 31st Tank Battalion plus a company of tank destroyers, both from CCB, joined the troops in the bridgehead. On September 13, Walker directed the 5th Division to expand its bridgehead to the south-east and then attack north towards Metz, thus permitting the 7th Armored Division to break out for the projected end run around the city. Postponed one day because of rain, the attack went in on the 15th. The 10th Infantry finally captured Arry, so long a thorn in the flesh, and, on the right wing, CCB took Mardigny and Vittonville but the subsequent attack to skirt the forts bogged down on the west bank of the Seille river which was stubbornly defended by the 17. SS-Panzergrenadier-Division. The battles for Pournoy-la-Chétive, Coin-sur-Seille and Sillegny raged for days, with heavy losses, ranking among the most bitterly fought actions in the whole Lorraine campaign. By the third week of September Allied offensive operations were again feeling the pinch of an unfavourable logistical situation and on September 22 the Third Army was directed to discontinue its attack east of the Moselle. The next day, Patton was ordered to release the 7th Armored Division and send it north to the First Army. He had no choice but to abandon the projected drive east of Metz. The 5th Division took over from the 7th Armored as it left the Arnaville bridgehead. A shortening of the front by a limited withdrawal was necessary and the two villages which had cost so much to take — Corny and Pournoy-la-Chétive — were abandoned. The new main line east of the river was held by the 11th Infantry on the north wing, the 10th Infantry in the centre and the 2nd Infantry in the south.

The hamlet of Malmaison is located just north of the town of Gravelotte and some 15 kilometres west of Metz. A costly battle was fought in this same sector in August 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War and monuments commemorating that event abound in the area. THE BATTLE WEST OF METZ On September 8, General Walker had practically created two commands: while attaching CCB of the 7th Armored to the 5th Division for the bridgehead operation on the right, he attached the 5th Division’s 2nd Infantry to the 7th Armored in the corps centre, west of the Moselle. There, the regiment was to continue the frontal attack and by constant pressure contain the German forces west of the city, forces that might otherwise be shifted to meet the American threat at Dornot and Arnaville. The attack, initiated by two rifle battalions along the Amanvillers–Vernéville–Gravelotte line on September 7, met mines, concrete bunkers and pillboxes, accurate and sustained artillery fire, and repeated counter-attacks by the Fahnenjunkerschule and others elements of Division Nr. 462 and detachments of the 17. SS-PanzergrenadierDivision. Limited intelligence information and inadequate ground and air reconnaissance during the hurried drive to the Moselle forced the regiment to attack blindly, groping in the midst of battle to feel out the contours

of the German defence line. All the advantage was on the side of the defenders who knew every yard of the ground, held the main heights which gave observation over the area and were fighting from steel and concrete. Early on the morning of the 8th a large German raiding party filtered into the lines of the 1st Battalion and killed or captured two officers and 66 men before it could be driven off. Some time elapsed before the regiment could reorganise to continue the attack, and when its advance began, now with all three battalions in the line, the going became progressively tougher. At the end of the day the 2nd Battalion, in the centre of the line, held Vernéville. The 1st Battalion reached the edge of Amanvillers but suffered such heavy losses from hostile artillery fire that it could not drive into the village. General Silvester, the 7th Armored commander, then detached Task Force McConnell from CCA to support the 2nd Infantry and a new plan called for the task force to turn the north flank of the German forces with a semi-circular sweep out of Saint-Privat around to the east of 11

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For some reason now lost to history, Pfc Walter Szymanski, Corporal Raymond Gaskamp, Private John Widock and Private Bill Utter decided to lavishly decorate their Dodge ¾-ton truck, even going as far as looting pieces from a local cemetery like the crucifix seen on the mudguard and the ‘Aux morts’ (To the dead) fastened to the radiator.

A perfect comparison at Rezonville, located on the Metz road between Mars-la-Tour and Gravelotte. This road is part of the Voie de la Liberté (Liberty Road), the commemorative route set up in 1947 to mark the route of the Third Army across France from Normandy to Metz and then northwards to Bastogne. Each of the 1,146 kilometres of the route is indicated by a stone marker or ‘Borne’. Amanvillers and back toward Montigny. During the morning of the 9th American artillery, tanks and tank destroyers blasted away at the known locations of German fortifications and batteries, and at 1330 the infantry and armour moved into the attack. Task Force McConnell proceeded only a short distance down the road east of Saint-Privat before coming under fire from the heights in the Bois de Jaumont and the guns in Fort Kellermann (Wolfsberg-Stellung). The German batteries knocked out seven tanks and two self-propelled guns and forced the column to fall back. The 1st Battalion, still fighting to enter Amanvillers from the west, lost some ground during the day to counter-attacks on its right flank and was pinned down by artillery fire from the forts. The 2nd Battalion, driving east of Vernéville, made several hundred yards’ gain through a weakly held section of the German line, but at the close of day was checked by fire coming from a sunken road to the west of Fort François de Guise (Feste Leipzig). On the right wing, the 3rd Battalion 12

attacked east of Malmaison toward Moscou Farm, but soon ran into a nest of pillboxes and bunkers, and came under cross-fire from the draw south-east of Gravelotte. On the night of September 9/10 Colonel A. Worrell Roffe, the 2nd Infantry commander, reporting to General Silvester, told him that his regiment had lost 14 officers and 332 men, and protested against sending the infantry ‘uselessly’ against ‘20 odd forts’. The 1st Battalion was in very bad shape, had suffered 228 casualties in the bloody fighting around Amanvillers, and in spite of its efforts had made hardly a dent in the German positions. Artillery, argued Roffe, was futile in dealing with these enemy fortifications. Aircraft and heavy bombs were needed and without them the infantry could make no further progress. On September 10 three squadrons of P-47 fighter-bombers from the XIX Tac tical Air Command (XIX TAC) were sent against the enemy holding up the advance near Amanvillers. The planes hit their targets, but the 500-pound bombs had little

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Left and above: GIs queuing up for their mid-day chow in the main street of Vionville, four kilometres east of Mars-la-Tour.

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Another comparison right on the Voie de la Liberté but unfortunately at a point where there is no commemorative marker. effect on reinforced concrete, and the ground attack begun at 1800 met as stubborn resistance as before. Despite mounting losses, the infantry pushed slowly forward, fighting to reduce each knot of pillboxes and every individual strong point in the way. Task Force McConnell meanwhile switched around to the south flank of the 1st Battalion, and at 2100 the tanks and infantry finally paused about 100 yards from Amanvillers. In the centre the 2nd Battalion gained some ground and consolidated for the night on the high ground east of Vernéville. The 3rd Battalion continued a see-saw fight east of Gravelotte and Malmaison. Since earlier combat patrols had been unable to push across the draw in the face of machine-gun positions on both banks and enfilading fire sweeping the bottom of the draw, the battalion tried to work its way around this trap by attacking through the Bois des Génivaux. But each attempt failed: whatever ground was taken was soon lost to small German detachments seeping back into the woods. Having extricated from the jammed road leading to Arnaville, CCR assembled at Sainte-Marie-aux-Chênes behind the left flank of the 2nd Infantry. The command was directed to make a hook from near Roncourt, eastwards, to close in behind the German positions holding up the 1st and 2nd Battalions, while at the same time the infantry executed a frontal attack. At 0630 on September 11 the armour moved east, through sporadic artillery and anti-tank fire, along the road to Pierrevillers. Near the village the head of the column ran into concrete road-blocks, covered by anti-tank guns, and swerved south toward Semécourt. There intense fire checked its advance. Artillery fire was causing heavy 14

casualties, and the enemy guns, skilfully camouflaged, could not be located. Colonel Molony, commander of CCR, was wounded and Lieutenant Colonel Norman E. Hart, on whom the command now devolved, shortly after 1100 sent his troops up the wooded slopes north-west of the village of Bronvaux. The men won a toehold on the higher ground but the hook designed to pierce the German flank had been blunted and deflected by the enemy fortifications, and could only glance back to the west, short of its objective. The 2nd Infantry assault, timed to follow the armour at 0800, was delayed by a series of German counter-attacks that disrupted the American lines and forced the left and centre battalions to give ground. About 0400 two green flares were fired in front of the 2nd Battalion and German infantry poured in on its right flank. In the bitter struggle that followed, the Americans were driven out of their positions and forced back south-west of Montigny, where they dug in and held. Late in the day the 2nd Battalion recovered much of the lost ground, under cover of artillery fire and smoke shells laid on the German fortifications to the east; again the determined enemy counter-attacked and drove back the battalion. About midnight one more German assault came in, but the 2nd Battalion, which had lost half its men during this day of battle, stood fast. The 1st Battalion, at the edge of Amanvillers, was also hard hit. Intense shelling and small-arms fire made the American position untenable and the battalion pulled back about 500 yards under a thick smoke-screen laid down by its artillery support, but only with much difficulty and many casualties. Attempts to follow up an air strike on Amanvillers, made about 1400, were checked by a furious barrage.

Two further days of bitter fighting redressed the 2nd Infantry lines and brought the 2nd and 3rd Battalions up to the hedgerows around Montigny Farm, abreast of Amanvillers. The infantry were blind with fatigue after fighting for two days and nights without rest, their bodies so numbed that officers and men could no longer trust their sense of direction. Meanwhile, General Irwin sought to get the attack called off and on September 14, orders to halt the attack reached Colonel Roffe. A good news noted the journal of the 3rd Battalion, ‘this is sure a hell hole’. The 90th Division was ordered to take over the sector north and west of Metz from the 7th Armored Division and the 2nd Infantry, the relief taking place that same night. The following morning, September 15, the division joined in the corps attack, assaulting with the 357th Infantry on the left and the 359th Infantry on the right. Each regiment committed one battalion but the attack made little progress in front of the difficult terrain — the ravine of the Mance, east of Gravelotte — backed by fortifications — the western approaches to Fort Jeanne d’Arc (Feste Kaiserin) and the Seven Dwarfs — and determined German defenders — troops of the Fahnenjunkerschule. The division commander, Major General Raymond McLain, reported that a full-dress assault on the western defences of Metz was ‘out of the question’ unless additional troops could be committed. He instructed his two regimental commanders to ‘nibble’ at the German positions in limited-objective attacks, which they did on the 16th and the 17th, but these attacks proved costly and gains could be reported only in terms of yards. General Walker then agreed with General McLain that the operation should be discontinued.

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When the makeshift Division Nr. 462 was formed in early September 1944, the personnel of the Fahnenjunker school and its 2,000 trainees were organised into an Infanterie-Regiment under Oberst Joachim von Siegroth, the school commander. Left: The school’s teacher of tactics, Hauptmann August Weiler (seen here in 1943 at Metz), was appointed commander of the III. Bataillon. He was instrumental in hastily re-arming Fort Driant where all the guns had been removed by the French after 1918. Some old guns dating from 1903-04 were discovered in the fortress museum at Metz and were re-installed in the turrets, but, as

sisted of three stages: preparatory attacks by heavy bombers; advance by the infantry to the line of departure under cover of a bombardment by medium bombers and artillery fire; then the final infantry assault, supported by direct-fire weapons and artillery. Fighterbombers from the XIX TAC were to furnish continuous support. Colonel Charles W. Yuill, commanding the 11th Infantry, had argued that Fort Driant could be taken by storm and seems to have been instrumental in selling this idea to the corps and army staffs. General Walker, who was not too impressed with

the strength of the fortified works around Metz, made no special arrangements to reinforce the assault force earmarked for the attack on the fort and proposed to use only the 2nd Battalion, 11th Infantry, which had been left to contain the fort while the main body of the 5th Division battled east of the Moselle. From September 19 onward the 2nd Battalion was alerted almost daily to begin the attack but numerous factors conspired to delay the operation, particularly several days of bad flying weather and a continued shortage of artillery ammunition.

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THE ATTACKS ON FORT DRIANT On September 17, having secured strong air support by the Ninth Air Force, General Walker issued a tentative and secret plan under the code-name Operation ‘Thunderbolt’. The attack would turn inward toward Metz, generally following the axis of the Moselle, with the river tentatively marked as the boundary between the 90th and 5th Divisions, the two formations selected to make the main effort. The operation, which was to start on September 21, was divided into three phases, of which the seizure of Fort Driant would be the first. Each phase, in turn, con-

Weiler testified after the war, only six of them could be brought into action before the Americans attacked. Its officer trainees graduated and dispatched to divisions on the Western Front, the Fahnenjunker school was moved to Meseritz in Prussia late in September but Hauptmann Weiler kept on as battalion commander in Grenadier-Regiment 1215. In mid-November he was awarded the Ritterkreuz (right) by Generalleutnant Lübbe, the then commander of ‘Fortress Metz’, for his brilliant defence at Fort Driant. From November 1, Weiler and his battalion fought at Maizières-lès-Metz where they were eventually captured.

The central bastion on the western side of Fort Driant as it looked in December 1944 after the fortress had surrendered.

Trees now cover the whole site so Jean Paul had to take his comparison from closer in. 15

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On September 29, Lieutenant Freeman took a ride in a light observation aircraft to picture the American artillery shelling of Fort Driant (note the smoke). The view is looking eastwards with the Moselle river in the background and Ars-sur-Moselle on the left. the fort, and the inefficacy of tank destroyer fire against reinforced-concrete works forbade a continuation of the action; at 1830 General Irwin gave Colonel Yuill permission to withdraw the assault force to its original positions. Losses had been slight however — only 18 men in the two infantry companies. On the following day General Patton met with Walker and Irwin to consider the situation. Patton did not press Irwin to continue the Fort Driant assault, but Walker sharply insisted that more-aggressive personal leadership should have been shown by the regimental and battalion commanders responsible for the attack. Irwin, however, noted that the difficulties encountered had been greater than anticipated, and reminded the corps commander that the air photos had shown neither the intricate wire entanglements nor the large number of pillboxes around the fort. There was as yet no talk of abandoning the Fort Driant enterprise, and Irwin and his staff continued with plans based on the experience of September 27 for a systematic reduction of the fort. Final approval was given by Patton on the 29th. Irwin and his staff worked overtime to make the next assault a success. They planned carefully, amassing ammunition and

various types of new equipment which was just arriving at the army depots. Two items seemed well adapted to an attack on a fortified position, the tankdozer and the ‘snake’. The first, it was hoped, would be able to fill in the moat under fire, while the snake, a long pipe or tube filled with explosive, was designed to be pushed through barbed wire or minefields and there exploded. Although Irwin’s division was spread over a very wide front, with little infantry left over for the Fort Driant attack, he had been given substantial artillery support; all the corps artillery had been moved into position to support the 5th Division, leaving the 90th Division to rely upon its own divisional guns. The plan of attack was carefully worked out. The 2nd Battalion of the 11th Infantry was again designated as the assault force, but this time reinforced by Company B of the 1st Battalion, a company of combat engineers, and 15 Sherman tanks from the 735th Tank Battalion. On October 3 Company B would attempt to gain entrance at the south-western edge of the fort, Company E would attack at the north-western corner, and Company G, in reserve, would be used to exploit whichever penetration was successful. Tanks and engineers were equally divided among the three infantry companies.

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By September 26 the static situation in the 5th Division bridgehead promised a little more freedom in the use of artillery ammunition, and General Walker, more and more impatient with the delay at Fort Driant, ordered the attack to begin the following day, with or without air support. Virtually nothing was yet known of the detailed construction of Fort Driant, or the field fortifications around it. American patrols had made numerous attempts to work their way into the fort area only to be stopped each time by German outposts and ranging fire from the main works. Air photos showed little but the outlines of the casemates, bunkers, connecting trenches and the surrounding moat. Detailed ground plans of the works would only reach the 11th Infantry on September 29. On the morning of the 27th the skies cleared, and General Irwin, anxious to give his air support as much time as possible, ordered the assault battalion to jump off late, at 1415. In the morning, the first P-47s dropped 1,000-pound bombs and napalm as a starter but with negligible results. Other squadrons of P-47s followed in the early afternoon, dropping napalm and high-explosive bombs on the trenches and bunkers, and strafing the interior of the fort. The effort failed to damage the fort. The artillery, which fired two concentrations prior to HHour, had no better luck, for the enemy guns and mortars were quieted only briefly. Fire from the 155mm howitzers of the 21st Field Artillery Battalion and emplaced tank destroyers, when directed against the pillboxes dotting the forward slopes, failed to penetrate or destroy these outworks. At H-Hour, Company E moved out of the woods south of the fort under cover of a smoke-screen. Company G and a company of tank destroyers from the 818th TD Battalion followed. Short of the fort the infantry came upon a moat, or ditch, and heavy wire entanglements, the whole covered by outlying pillboxes. The Germans in the fort had been relatively quiet during the American approach, but now they opened up with small arms, machine guns and mortars. Two platoons worked their way around to the west side of the fort, where a causeway gave entrance to the enceinte itself, but were driven to earth some 300 yards from the moat by a hail of small-arms fire. The tank destroyers engaged the outer German pillboxes and the machine-gun embrasures in the main works, but, despite what appeared to be accurate laying, could not put the enemy crews out of action. The mass of wire entanglements, fire from numerous and previously undiscovered pillboxes surrounding

The XIX Tactical Air Command provided continuous support for the XX Corps, bombing and strafing the fortresses. Left: A bomb has just exploded on Fort Verdun as another P-47 comes 16

in to make its attack. Right: This shot was taken later in October as men of the 11th Infantry advanced on Fort Driant while P-47s bombed a ‘woodland area’.

COLLECTION THIERRY SIMON

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Left: The 735th Tank Battalion deployed 15 Sherman tanks in the second assault on Fort Driant on October 3, 11 of them armed with 76mm guns and four with 105mm howitzers, plus two tankdozers. Six of the tanks were lost and Sergeant Ralph

the day, had scattered wherever they could find shelter from the enemy fire — in abandoned pillboxes, ditches, shell-holes and open bunkers. However, the Germans again came out of the underground tunnels and threw the attackers into confusion. As daylight came on October 5 the guns of the surrounding German forts opened a heavy fire on the troops in and around Fort Driant. American artillery observers crawled forward and tried to locate the enemy guns, but a thick haze lay in the Moselle valley and counter-battery work brought few results. Although the stationary pieces in the casemates in Fort Driant could not be brought to bear on the Americans in the fort area, two howitzers finally were depressed so as to give bursts in the trees fringing the fort. Their effect was deadly. By mid-afternoon Companies B and G were reduced to a combined strength of less than 100 men; Company K also was growing weaker. Irwin decided to strip the division front still further, and organised a task force under the assistant division commander, Brigadier General Alan D. Warnock, to continue the fight. During the night of October 5/6 the 1st Battalion, 10th Infantry (minus Company A), went in under Warnock’s command and relieved Companies B and G on top of Fort

Driant. Fortunately, German fire was light, for the relief was difficult, many of the original assault force having to be carried down from the fort on stretchers. At noon more reinforcements from the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Infantry (minus Companies I and K), arrived to join Task Force Warnock. With these troops in hand, plus the entire 7th Combat Engineer Battalion, Warnock gave orders for a resumption of the attack on the 7th, his intention being to drive the Germans out of the south-east section of the fort and force an entry into the main tunnel system. A plan was prepared for the task force and showed a tunnel running from the area held by the Americans, underneath the southernmost casemates, there connecting with the main tunnel system which branched out to all the casemates, the bunkers and the central fort. At 1000 on October 7 the 1st Battalion, 10th Infantry, opened the attack. One rifle company slowly worked its way eastward about 200 yards, taking three pillboxes in the process. This brought the lead infantry into a deadly cross-fire coming from the southern casemate and Battery Moselle, an outlying battery just to the south-east of the main fort. Orders were given for the company to reorganise and hold on to its gains, but the ground was too hard for digging and the captured

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Air support had been promised by the IX Bombardment Division for the morning of October 3 but because of bad weather the bombers did not arrive, and finally at 1200, unwilling to wait any longer, Irwin gave the order for the attack to begin. Corps and division artillery laid a barrage ahead of the advancing infantry, two companies of 4.2inch mortars spread a pall of smoke over the valley between Fort Driant and Ars-surMoselle, and tanks ahead of the infantry line pulled and shoved to get the unwilling snakes into position against the German wire. The snakes broke almost immediately and the wire was finally cut by high explosive fired by the American artillery. The two tankdozers were halted by mechanical failures. Company E was stopped at the wire by intense German artillery fire and entrenched infantry. Company B was more successful and at 1400 had fought its way around the end of the moat, through the wire, and into the fort. Here the infantry and supporting tanks proceeded methodically to clear the Germans out of the ditches and bunkers, harassed the while by machine guns, mortar fire and German riflemen who would pop out of tunnel entrances to give fire and then quickly retreat below ground. Engineer squads, working on the nearest casemates, tried again and again to blast an opening with demolition charges, but the heavy walls were as impervious to TNT as to shells and bombs. At dark the reserve company and its tanks came in through the gap made by Company B. Two platoons began to thread their way through the barbed wire and small-arms fire to assault the two northernmost casemates, which lay clear across the fort surface. This attack failed: the platoons were badly shot up and forced to withdraw when the Germans came up from the tunnels and filtered into their rear. All through the night small enemy groups continued forays into the American positions. Four Shermans were knocked out by bazooka men, and by dawn the Americans in the fort were badly disorganised. In the morning General Irwin ordered Colonel Yuill to hang on and extend his hold on top of the fort area; then he sent in Company K, 2nd Infantry, to stabilise the line and plug up the holes left by the 110 casualties lost in the first 24 hours of the operation. Futile attempts were made during the day to break into the central fort, but the German snipers systematically picked off the men carrying flame-throwers and explosives. The few who reached the large steel doors at the rear of the fort found them covered by protruding grillwork that made it impossible to put the charges against the doors themselves. When the second night came attempts were made to reorganise the troops who, during

Butterfield later pictured three of them — a 105mm and two 76mms. Right: Remains of the Shermans could still be seen in 2003, like this running gear pictured by Thierry Simon at the fort’s south-western corner.

Fort Driant’s Kaserne 5 pictured shortly after Company B, 11th Infantry, had fought its way through the wire at the south-western corner and into the fort on October 3. However this attack was soon to be aborted and the last American troops pulled back from Fort Driant on the night of October 12/13. 17

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The failure at Fort Driant was the first publicised reverse suffered by the Third Army. From Colonel Charles W. Yuill, the 11th Infantry commander, up to Generals Irwin, Walker and Patton, the American commanders proved unable to quickly adapt to the new realities of the campaign that confronted pillboxes were open on the side now exposed to the Germans. About 1615 the Germans came to the surface and counter-attacked. The company commander and the two forward platoons were cut off and lost. The survivors fell back to the original positions. One platoon had been sent into the tunnel, entering at a concrete bunker which was already in American hands. This passageway was very narrow and was barred close to the entrance by an iron door. Engineers blew a hole in the door, but found the other side blocked with pieces of machinery and some old cannon. This block could be moved only if the wrecked iron door was first cut away. During the night an acetylene torch was brought up and the tunnel door cut down. By the middle of the morning of October 8 the rubble and debris had been cleared away; it was believed that the next door ahead would lead into the southern casemate. The men in the tunnel had heard sounds of digging; fearing that the Germans were preparing to blow in the tunnel walls they rushed up a 60-pound beehive charge and exploded it. This detonation released carbide fumes and for the next two hours no one could re-enter the tunnel. Ordinary gas masks were tried but failed to protect the wearer. An engineer officer finally groped his way through the tunnel and found that the first charge had made only a small hole. When the fumes began to clear, more explosive was brought in, but the Germans opened fire with a machine gun and rifle grenades. There was nothing left to do except hastily erect a parapet of sandbags, mount a machine gun, and engage in a desultory exchange of shots. The Germans next set off a counter-blast in the tunnel, killing some men of Company C and driving the rest into the barracks. General Warnock, having decided earlier that more troops were needed to clear the surface of the fort area, during the previous night had moved up the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Infantry, to the cover of the concrete barracks. The fumes from the tunnel, seeping up into the barracks, overcame some of the men and they were forced to take turns at the firing slits in order to fill their lungs with fresh air. With many of the troops hors de combat and a general state of confusion prevailing, the attack against the two southern casemates scheduled for the night of October 8/9 was cancelled. By October 9 the situation at Fort Driant was confused beyond belief. Manoeuvre space atop the fort was far too limited to permit the full-scale reorganisation of the heterogeneous units crowded into the bunkers or in such other scanty cover as could be found. Daylight attack had proved too costly 18

them at Fort Driant, and their conduct of operations was definitely poor. Left: A Jeep making its way to the main entrance after the garrison finally capitulated on December 8. Right: Old barbed wire and uncleared mines and explosives still present a real danger and the fort is strictly off limits to the public.

in the face of the cross-fire sweeping the surface, and night attacks had quickly become disorganised when the Germans erupted from the tunnels onto flank and rear. The American troops were jittery and in some companies their officers believed it questionable whether they would stick much longer. At noon on October 9 Brigadier General Hobart R. Gay, the Third Army deputy Chief-of-Staff representing the army commander, and Generals Walker, Irwin and Warnock met to discuss continuance of the operation. Warnock candidly said that further attacks within the fort area would be far too costly and gave as his opinion that Fort Driant must be surrounded, the enemy all driven underground and there destroyed. Since this plan required an additional four battalions of infantry it was immediately rejected. General Gay ordered the fort to be evacuated and the operation abandoned, although he gave Walker permission to make one more attempt to blast a way through the tunnel. This attempt was not made; on the night of October 12/13 the last American troops left the fort without a shot being fired by the enemy. The total casualties for the Driant operation numbered 64 killed, 547 wounded and 187 missing in action. While the 5th Division was assaulting Fort Driant, the newly committed 83rd Infantry Division assumed responsibility for protecting the north flank of the XX Corps, which gave the 90th Division the possibility to shift its 357th Infantry Regiment southwards. Having gained control on October 3 of a long, high slag-pile which overlooked Maizières-lès-Metz from the north-west, the 357th Infantry attacked in the morning of October 7 and quickly captured the northern part of town. The Germans hastened to reinforce the troops in the town during the night and the garrison turned to convert each of the houses into miniature forts with wire and sandbags. For days the 2nd Battalion fought its way slowly into the factory area and the centre of the town, using demolition charges and flame-throwers, while field guns and tank destroyers fired constantly to interdict the German supply route leading in from Metz. However, by October 11 optimism engendered by the success of the initial push into the town had dissipated and on the night of October 12/13, the worn 2nd Battalion was relieved by filtering the 3rd Battalion into the line. The grim fight was resumed on October 26, heavy shells smashing the houses to bits ahead of the advancing infantry and by the night of October 30, the 357th Infantry finally held Maizières-lès-Metz and the approaches to the south.

THE NOVEMBER OFFENSIVE Strengthened by the arrival of two new divisions, the 95th Infantry Division and the 10th Armored Division, on November 3 the XX Corps headquarters issued an order that set the mission of the corps as ‘the destruction or capture of the Metz garrison, without the investiture or siege of the Metz Forts’. The initial envelopment of the Metz area was assigned to the 5th Division, encircling the city from the south, and the 90th Division, forming the arm north of the city. The 10th Armored Division, after crossing the Moselle behind the 90th Division, was to close the pincers east of Metz, while simultaneously pushing armoured reconnaissance columns east toward the Sarre river. The 95th Division was to contain the German salient west of the Moselle. Then, as the concentric attack closed on Metz, the division was to drive in the enemy salient, cross the Moselle and capture the city proper. Meanwhile there had been developments on the German side too. When the September offensive against Metz tapered off into the October lull, the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW — German Armed Forces High Command) instructed General Balck of Heeresgruppe G to immediately begin to set the Metz salient in a state of defence in anticipation of the resumption of the American attack. Considering that the Metz fortifications were ‘out of date’, Balck and his staff wanted to evacuate the city as soon as the remainder of the Moselle line fell to the Americans. Also, Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt, the Oberbefehlshaber West, was sceptical about the tactical value of the Metz bridgehead. Twice during October he suggested that Metz be abandoned, as part of his scheme for a general withdrawal by Heeresgruppe G back to the Westwall. Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel, Chief-of-Staff of the OKW and probably speaking for Hitler, refused to allow the withdrawal. However, it was not until November 9, the day before the renewal of the American offensive, that Hitler specifically ordered the Metz garrison to submit to encirclement and to hold its ground ‘to the last man’. Balck must have anticipated that Hitler would eventually sacrifice the force in Metz for the troops added to the garrison during October were mostly fortress units, generally poorly armed and of indifferent combat value. Balck refused to send any of his precious tanks or assault guns to reinforce the garrison and no sizeable stores of mines and barbed wire were sent to Metz, despite the orders he himself had given for strengthening its defences.

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Left: On October 11, General S. Leroy Irwin, commander of the 5th Division, points out the details of Fort Verdun to General George C. Marshall, the US Army Chief-of-Staff who was on a visit to the European Theater, at the 5th Division headquarters at Château Leisne near Prény, five kilometres south of Arnaville. Generals Patton and Walker look on. Fort Verdun played a In October, Division Nr. 462, which had defended Metz so ably in September, was upgraded to the status of an infantry division — 462. Infanterie-Division — and given a normal complement of divisional engineers and artillery, plus an additional infantry regiment. However, by then the officer and NCO trainees, who had formed the core of the defence in September, had all graduated and been sent as replacements to other divisions on the Western Front. The gaps in the ranks of the 462. Infanterie-Division now were filled with over-age and poorly trained troops from fortress battalions, sick battalions and the like. At the end of October, the motley infantry elements of the division were reorganised and promoted to the status of Grenadier-Regiments, each with two battalions. The troops from the Fahnenjunker school, known for a time as Infanterie-Regiment Stössel (after their commander Oberst Arno Stössel von der Heyde), formed Grenadier-Regiment 1215. Infanterie-Regiment Wagner, another ad hoc unit formed from an NCO Candidate School (Unterführerlehrgang XII), became GrenadierRegiment 1216 and Sicherungs-Regiment 1010 and other elements were consolidated into Grenadier-Regiment 1217. Generalleutnant Vollrath Lübbe, in reserve since July 1944 because he had suffered a stroke, was called back to command the 462. Infanterie-Division on October 9 and soon named commander of Metz. He was given no specific orders on how to conduct the defence of the city, only that he was to hold on, even when surrounded, and counter-attack at all points where the Americans threatened to break through. The strength of the Metz garrison at the beginning of the November offensive was probably not much over 14,000 officers and men. Its combat strength was somewhat lower, between 9,000 and 10,000. The 462. Infanterie-Division, forming the bulk of the garrison, numbered approximately 7,000 — a force too small to properly man all of the permanent works around the city. On the night of November 11/12 the 1. Armee evacuated Metz, leaving the defence of the city to General Lübbe, with the 462. Volksgrenadier-Division (as it was renamed on November 8) and the hodgepodge of

major part in the failure of the crossing at Dornot in September and an elaborate model of it was constructed to plan its capture. Fort Saint-Blaise can be seen in the foreground with Fort Sommy behind. Right: Generalleutnant Heinrich Kittel assumed command of ‘Fortress Metz’ at noon on November 14 with the order to hold to the last man.

fortress units grouped under his command. The 17. SS-Panzergrenadier-Division pulled back still farther from the Moselle, leaving the gap south of the city to be filled by fortress machine-gun units. The code-word for evacuation was passed to Nazi party members and officials, a sizeable group inasmuch as Metz had been an important administrative centre, and they began an exodus toward Germany. Hitler, now taking a very personal interest in the defence of Metz, reiterated the order to hold to the last man and passed down word that the garrison must be reinforced, provisioned for a long siege, and provided with Panzerfausts and other antitank weapons for close combat. Worried that Lübbe’s ill health might make him unfit for such a desperate command, Keitel told Balck to submit another general to replace him. After some teletyping, Generalleutnant Heinrich Kittel, then commanding the 49. Infanterie-Division, was given the post. Kittel arrived in Metz and assumed command at noon on November 14, while Lübbe took over the 49. InfanterieDivision. Not too pleased with this new assignment, Kittel protested to Knobelsdorff, the 1. Armee commander, against the injustice of linking his name in military history with ‘Fortress Metz’, which, in his opinion, was not a fortress at all. Although the new commander received daily messages exhorting him to hold ‘each work and each strong point’ to the last, there was little interference with his tactical dispositions for there was little choice as to the manner of defending the city. Kittel determined to hold on to the west bank positions as long as possible, thus protecting the bridges leading into Metz proper; as a last resort, he would defend Fort Jeanne d’Arc and Fort Driant, two forts of the outer belt, and Fort de Plappeville and Fort SaintQuentin, two forts of the inner belt, all of which so sited as to deny the use of the Moselle crossings in their vicinity. Kittel found his new command with less than two days’ rations, but on the night of November 14/15 a train got through to the Metz station with sufficient provisions for two or three weeks. The same train brought in 48 light infantry howitzers of German and Italian types, with ammunition. There was

sufficient small-calibre ammunition for rifles and machine guns, but only 4,000 rounds all told for the fortress artillery. The divisional artillery had enough shells for three days of heavy fighting. Kittel sent out a hurry call for a labour force of 12,000 civilians to work on the defences, but higher headquarters refused to take a single worker from the Westwall. Requests for mines, barbed wire and a small armoured assault force were equally fruitless. The plans for the forthcoming Ardennes offensive loomed too large in OKW calculations, and Kittel would have to defend with what he had. No sooner had he taken over the command in Metz on November 14 than he ordered a general counter-attack to be made on the following day with a main effort west of the city. In order to regroup and concentrate for this effort he directed a number of the smaller works around Metz to be evacuated on the night of November 14/15, while reducing the garrisons in others to a skeleton force. However, the available reserves were simply too small to organise any sizeable counter-strike. In the west, Füsilier-Kompanie 462 attempted to launch an attack around Fort Jeanne d’Arc, but failed. In the north, under pressure from the American 377th and 378th Infantry Regiments driving forward on both sides of the river (see below), Grenadier-Regiments 1215 and 1216 were equally unable to launch any co-ordinated strike. On the right flank, SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 38 (loaned by Balck for the counter-attack) holding astride the Nied river, was not able to disengage from its positions in front of the 10th Infantry and its attack achieved no success either. By the night of November 15 it was all too obvious that a larger counter-attack was simply impossible to man. Balck ordered Kittel to prepare new positions in the rear and hold as long as possible at the existing main line of resistance. Symbolic of the hopeless state of the Metz defences, 400 men of the local Volkssturm, wearing brassards in lieu of uniforms and armed with old French rifles, were marched by police officials through the night and put into the lines between Fort Saint-Privat and Fort Queuleu. After one night in the rain and snow they were finished. 19

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On November 8, the Americans began the envelopment of Metz from the north when the 90th Division crossed the Moselle downstream of Thionville and began to push southwards. Elements of the 25. Panzergrenadier-Division launched two strong counter-attacks in an attempt to contain the bridgehead. On the 12th, a Kampfgruppe attacked near Kerling aiming for the bridge at Malling and on the 15th another battle group struck from Metzervisse, leading to a fierce battle in the village of Distroff. Having driven back the Germans, the Americans captured Metzervisse on the 16th. The following day Signal Corps photographer Warren J. Rothenberger pictured men of the 358th Infantry moving through the village.

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ENVELOPMENT FROM THE NORTH On November 8, the 95th Division (Major General Harry L. Twaddle) established a small bridgehead across the Moselle at Uckange, south of Thionville and 12 miles north of Metz, with the 1st Battalion of the 377th Infantry. On the same day, the 90th Division (Brigadier General James A. van Fleet) made a major crossing between Cattenom and Malling, another eight miles further to the north. Both enterprises were badly hampered by the river then reaching flood proportions, swamping its banks, inundating the road approaches and swirling along at a speed that made the flimsy assault boats unmanageable. However, the overflow also helped flooding the German minefields along the eastern bank so that the assault boats just passed over them with impunity. For some days, the high water practically isolated the assault troops across the river and supplies had to be flown to them by small liaison planes, which dropped medical supplies, sleeping bags, explosives, ammunition and other necessities almost into the American foxholes. Attempts by the engineers to build and launch rafts and bridges were frustrated by the turbulent river and German gun-fire. A first pontoon bridge was finally completed at Malling on the night of November 10/11 but the causeway leading to its western end now lay under five feet of water and it would be some hours before trucks, tanks and tank destroyers could start rolling across. The pontoon bridge at Cattenom was ready on the morning of the 13th but it was then found that its eastern end lay in the midst of a minefield which had been covered by the flood waters, now receding. For five hours, the engineers went about the hazardous task of probing under water for the mines, and at 1645 the bridge was finally opened. On November 11, the 95th Division established an additional bridgehead with the 2nd Battalion, 378th Infantry, at Thionville, then on the 14th pushed south to link up with the 377th Infantry’s small lodgement opposite Uckange. Early on November 12, a battle group from the 25. Panzergrenadier-Division — Panzergrenadier-Regiment 35 and some ten tanks and assault guns — struck the lines of the 90th Division’s 359th Infantry near Kerling, pushing to Petite-Hettange with the intention of launching a blow against the Malling bridge site. A fierce battle raged near the village but the German attack was thrown back and by late afternoon the 359th had restored its lines. By November 14, the 90th Division had extended its bridgehead to Kerling, Inglange and Distroff, four to five miles from the river, and its cavalry reconnaissance troops had pushed westwards and joined with 95th Division troops in the Thionville sector. That afternoon, CCB of the 10th Armored crossed into the bridgehead via the bridge just completed at Thionville — the largest Bailey span built so far in the European Theatre — and before daylight on the 15th, had assembled near Kerling, on the left wing of the bridgehead, while CCA crossed over the Malling bridge. Early on the 15th, the 10th Armored, with CCA on the right and CCB on the left, began to push south-eastwards, beginning the drive that was to form the northern pincers around Metz. That same morning, a few miles to the south-west, the Kampfgruppe of the 25. Panzergrenadier-Division, now reinforced by a battalion from Grenadier-Regiment 74, launched a counter-attack from Metzervisse, hitting the 2nd Battalion, 358th Infantry, east of Distroff. A fierce battle raged in the village, the American fighting the attackers from doors, windows and rooftops with pistols, rifles and bazookas. This attack was the last to strike the 90th Division during the envelopment of Metz.

The same junction at the eastern end of the village, looking down the Kédange road, with the road to Metzerresche branching off to the right. THE PUSH AGAINST THE SALIENT WEST OF METZ By mid-November, with the flanking movements north and south of Metz well under way, Major General Harry L. Twaddle, the 95th Division commander, and his staff began planning a series of attacks to erase the German bridgehead west of the Moselle. The operation was to begin on November 14 when, on the division’s right wing, the 379th Infantry would launch an attack to penetrate north of Fort Jeanne d’Arc and overrun minor works in the Seven Dwarfs chain. The final objective of this attack would be the eastern slopes of the heights bordering the Moselle near Jussy. Then, only the river would separate the 95th Division from Metz. Before dawn on the 14th, the 359th Field Artillery Battalion opened up on the Ger-

man works with its 105mm howitzers and all battalions of corps artillery within range joined in. After 30 minutes of this artillery preparation the 2nd Battalion, on the 379th left, moved into the assault along the road between Fort François de Guise and Fort Jeanne d’Arc. Fifteen minutes later the 1st Battalion jumped off in an attack to cross the deep draw east of Gravelotte, the scene of so much bloody fighting in September, which lay directly in the path of the advance to the Seven Dwarfs. The 3rd Battalion, holding the regiment’s right flank, took no part in the initial attack. Both assault battalions came under shellfire from Fort Driant and its Moselle Battery during the early stages of the advance, but the German infantry in front offered only slight resistance. By 1100, Companies E and F of the 2nd Battalion had worked their way around Fort Jeanne d’Arc and were on the

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wooded high ground about 500 yards northwest of Rozérieulles, well to the rear of the fort. Here they were counter-attacked. The enemy, beaten off, stubbornly returned to the assault twice in the course of the afternoon, only to be driven back with considerable loss. On the right, Companies A and B of the 1st Battalion found the going slow and difficult, having to cut through the German outpost line on the west side of the draw. Having done that, the attackers climbed down into the draw and up the opposite side, all the while under a merciless flanking fire from the guns at Fort Driant. The Seven Dwarfs were only lightly garrisoned, however, and shortly after 1400 the three northern works, Fort Saint-Hubert and the two Jussy forts, were taken. Company A then swung south and about 1600 launched an assault against Fort Bois la Dame. Some of its men reached the top of the works but were driven off by fire from Fort Driant before they could pry the garrison loose. By late evening, however, the situation of the 379th Infantry was critical. Both attacking battalions had incurred a high number of casualties. The two companies of the 1st Battalion were cut off by a large force from Füsilier-Kompanie 462 that had filtered back into the draw east of Gravelotte. The 2nd Battalion was somewhat disorganised due to the loss of its commander, Lieutenant Colonel J. L. Golson, who was seriously wounded. The only supply road leading to these forward units was interdicted by Fort Jeanne d’Arc, and although artillery liaison planes had dropped ammunition and supplies just before dark such air service provided a very thin link with the rest of the regiment.

Later, in December, just after the fort had finally surrendered, Signal Corps photographer Pfc Gilbert Horton pictured the bodies of two American soldiers who had been killed during the November assault.

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On November 18, the 1st Battalion of the 378th Infantry, 95th Division, assaulted the Fort de Plappeville, managing to get right onto the fortress, but they were withdrawn at nightfall in order not to expose the men to a counter-attack during darkness.

Jean Paul discovered that the picture was taken on the eastern side of the fortress, not far from its main entrance, which can be seen in the left background. A section of the wall has since collapsed into the moat but the old narrow-gauge railway line has helped to shore up the bank. The following day, November 15, the pressure on the two isolated battalions eased when the 379th’s sister regiment, the 378th, attacked in the adjacent sector just to the east. In the morning, Companies C and L began to fight their way across the draw in an effort to join up with the two companies of the 1st Battalion. Once more the enemy took

advantage of this natural defensive position to make an obstinate stand, but just after midday Company C reached the 1st Battalion. However, an attempt to push on to the final regimental objective was held in check. On November 15, the other two regiments of the 95th Division — the 377th and 378th Infantry (each minus one battalion) — 21

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Advancing towards Metz from the north-west, men of the 2nd Battalion, 377th Infantry, 95th Division, crossed the city limits in the suburb village of Woippy on November 15. Signal Corps photographer Lieutenant John J. Oakes was there to record the historic moment.

Rue Henry de Ladonchamps, looking westward. New dwellings now fill the field on the right but the buildings further down the street remain as before.

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widened the divisional attack by starting a co-ordinated advance against the northern and north-western sectors of the German bridgehead. The 378th Infantry, in the divisional centre, led off with a flanking attack on Fèves ridge and the series of forts on top of it; the 377th Infantry, on the left wing, followed up to make the main effort with a push south along the west bank of the Moselle. At 0800, after a 15-minute artillery preparation, the 1st Battalion of the 378th and Company B, 778th Tank Battalion, moved forward to attack Fort le Fèves. The morning was foggy and wet, and smoke placed on the forts clung persistently over the German positions. Company A, leading the assault, was briefly checked when its commander was hit, but the company pushed on to the tip of the main ridgeline and around to the rear of the fort. By 1100 this key work, commanding the approaches to Metz from the north and north-west, was in American hands, and the attack rolled on toward the high ground south-west of the Bois de Woippy, which was the regimental objective. During the afternoon troops of GrenadierRegiments 1215 and 1217 made several furious but fruitless attempts to wipe out the American penetration. As each wave debouched from the German works it was cut down by fire from the lines of the 1st Battalion. By mid-afternoon the two German regiments had had enough and were evacuating the line of fortifications in disorderly fashion. At 1600 the 3rd Battalion passed through the gap made by the 1st Battalion and when night fell its troops were on the regimental objective. The main divisional effort began at 1000 on the 15th when the 377th Infantry drove south of Maizières-lès-Metz into the positions of Grenadier-Regiment 1215 — now at only half strength. The attack, spearheaded by Shermans of the 778th Tank Battalion, made steady progress. At twilight the 3rd Battalion held la Maxe and the 2nd Battalion, to the west, was fighting hard in the town of Woippy — less than three miles from the heart of Metz — where one battalion from GrenadierRegiment 1215 held on stubbornly. Turning the north flank of the bridgehead west of the Moselle and threatening to cleave a corridor straight to the Metz bridges, this American attack was a great menace and Generalleutnant Kittel sent what reinforcements he could find to aid the force fighting to hold Woippy. All he could disengage from the battle along the Metz perimeter was one rifle company of SSPanzergrenadier-Regiment 38. Kittel instructed Grenadier-Regiment 1217 to fall

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Left: Shermans from the 778th Tank Battalion, supporting the 377th, follow the infantry into the city. Above: Rue Henry de Ladonchamps, now looking in an easterly direction. The house in the background was demolished some years ago but the wall on the right is still there, now adorned with murals. This is the same section of street as seen on page 3. 22

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The next day, Signal Corps photographer Pfc Cyril F. Colwell was on hand to picture men of the 377th’s sister regiment, the 378th Infantry, in Woippy. Right: This is today Rue Général de Gaulle in the centre of what is now an outer district of Metz.

Left: Another shot by Colwell of a GI of the 378th Infantry ‘sheltering from sniper fire’. As the village was cleared the day before, this is certainly a posed shot. The two soldiers strolling down the street in the background and the group casually chatting in a doorway in mid-distance prove that

there was no longer a threat from snipers. The small wall across the street in the background is the bank of a canalised stream that crosses the town. Right: The same view today, Rue Général de Gaulle, looking south at the junction with Rue Maréchal Leclerc.

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Left: The following afternoon, November 16, the 377th Infantry drove out the last defenders of Woippy — elements of Grenadier-Regiment 1215 reinforced by one company from SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 38 — and cleared the village.

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back to an east-west line through Fort de Plappeville and Fort Lorraine (one of the ‘new’ German works of the outer belt) was evacuated without a fight. Late on November 16 the reinforcements from SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 38 were withdrawn from the Woippy sector, and with their withdrawal all resistance by GrenadierRegiment 1215 collapsed. During the night the attacks by the 377th and 378th Infantry turned into a pursuit along roads strewn with abandoned equipment, half-loaded trucks and artillery pieces. The following day the two regiments mopped up the German works which had been bypassed, although Fort Gambetta was merely contained after the failure of an initial assault by the 3rd Battalion of the 377th. Early on the morning of the 18th the Germans blew the demolition charges on the Moselle bridges west of the city, destroying all but one, which apparently was left intact for the troops retreating from the bridgehead. The 377th Infantry, having reached the suburb of Sansonnet the previous evening, rushed a company of infantry and a few tanks across the bridge to a small island in between two arms of the Moselle, taking some 250 prisoners there. Just to the west, a patrol from the 3rd Battalion of the 378th Infantry drove back a small force of Germans guarding the western end of the Pont du Sauvage, which led to another island, the Île Saint-Symphorien. A platoon of Company I then charged across but the structure was blown while the Americans were on it. Eight men were killed and five who had already crossed were temporarily stranded. 24

infantry and a few tanks across a bridge that the Germans had not yet blown, thus gaining a foothold on the east bank. The following day both the 377th and 378th Infantry Regiments entered Metz proper.

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Men of the 377th Infantry making their way into Metz on November 17, pictured by Lieutenant Oakes. That evening, lead elements of the regiment reached the bank of the Moselle. Next morning they were able to rush a company of

The tower of the Temple de Garnison in the background enabled Jean Paul to pinpoint the comparison to Quatre-Bornes, a major road junction on Rue de Metz in the suburb of Woippy. The 378th’s 1st Battalion, meanwhile, made a full-scale assault against Fort de Plappeville around and in which huddled the remnants of Grenadier-Regiment 1217 which had been unable to make their way back across the river. At 1600 the Americans made a rush which carried them up and onto

the fort, but the Germans were able to beat them off. A second attack was more successful and all the defenders above ground were killed or captured. However, the battalion commander was unwilling to expose his men to the risk of a counter-attack from the tunnels during the hours of darkness and the

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About noon on November 19, the leaders of the 95th Division met patrols from the 5th Division coming up from the south. As with every meeting of units closing a pincer manoeuvre, there were many encounters at various places along the front, each outfit claiming to be the first one to close the trap. This photo

TASK FORCE BACON PUSHES DOWN FROM THE NORTH On November 15, the 95th Division combined all its troops then on the east bank of the Moselle — the 1st Battalion of the 377th Infantry, the 2nd Battalion of the 378th Infantry, the 95th Reconnaissance Troop, two companies of tank destroyers, one company of tanks, plus some artillery — into a special task force under Colonel Robert L.

Bacon. Their task was to attack south towards Metz, clearing the enemy from the east bank of the river as they went. The operation was to begin on November 15, timed to coincide with the parallel attack by the 377th and 378th Infantry west of the river, but since the fight to free the 1st Battalion of the 377th in the Bertrange sector consumed most of the day, the drive south did not begin until the next morning.

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force withdrew at nightfall leaving its supporting artillery to work on the casemates and pillboxes. The next day, November 19, General Walker sent orders that all the forts that still held out were to be contained and not subjected to direct assault. The 379th Infantry was left to contain Fort de Plappeville and the 377th and 378th Infantry entered Metz proper.

taken by Pfc Billy Newhouse at Vallières (Wallern to the Germans) on the north-eastern edge of Metz of Staff Sergeants Henry Tackett, Leonard Malicole and Frank W. Smith and Tech/5 Ancil T. Horbison ‘shaking hands after their mission has been accomplished’ is certainly another staged shot.

Left: In the same area, a Signal Corps photographer pictured what he captioned a ‘Nazi cavalry school’. Right: Built by the Germans in 1903 as the Dragoner-Kaserne, the barracks was taken over by the French in 1918 and then became the Caserne Bridoux. In 1993, having been vacated by the Army, the barracks were converted

into a university, appropriately named the Campus Bridoux. The particular building from where the photographer took his picture now houses student apartments and Mrs Brigitte Heimermann, manager of the university housing service, allowed Jean Paul access to the very same window to take a perfect comparison. 25

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Above: On November 13, General Walker telephoned General Irwin to compliment him on the performance of his division and to tell him that he had adjusted the boundary between the 5th and the 95th Divisions so as to permit the 5th to play its rightful part in the final capture of Metz. And so on November 18, while the 2nd Battalion, 10th Infantry, remained deployed to contain the garrison of Fort Queuleu still not subdued in the southeastern suburbs of the city, the regiment’s 1st Battalion crossed the Metz city limits and started mopping up the southern half the city. There was no real house-to-house combat and this shot taken on the 19th by Lieutenant Freeman of men of the 10th Infantry ‘taking shelter from some desultory fire’ was obviously another shot staged for the camera. Right: Jean Paul discovered that it had been taken at the southern end of Rue de Tivoli in front of what was then the Grandmaison Military Barracks. The buildings still survive, albeit converted into apartments.

Another posed action shot taken just across the street from where the previous one was taken. 26

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This German fell on the pavement of Rue de Queuleu close to the point where it joins Avenue de Plantières.

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Colonel Bacon’s tactics were simple. The advance was made in two columns, moving along parallel roads on a narrow front, with tank destroyers and tanks — later reinforced by two self-propelled 155mm guns — at the head of each column, and with the infantry following in trucks and on foot. The firepower in front blasted enemy strong points along the road. Then the infantry stepped in to mop up, or launch an assault, according to the degree of stubbornness shown by the German defenders. When the terrain and the enemy combined to slow down one column, the second column hooked around the position into the German flank and rear. Occasionally these tactics were varied by a concentric attack in which both columns swerved to make a close-in envelopment of some centre of resistance. On the 16th Task Force Bacon advanced four and a half miles at the expense of Grenadier-Regiment 1216, whose connection with the 19. Volksgrenadier-Division on its right had now been broken. The German regiment was thus forced to fight an independent delaying action with only such strength as it could muster after the reverses suffered in the Bertrange sector. Colonel Bacon, believing that his left flank was exposed and that the screen originally provided by elements of the 90th Division had not been pushed south to keep pace with his task force, then halted the advance with the open flank of his columns resting on the village of Trémery. The task force continued south on November 17, pushing its self-propelled guns forward to engage defended road-blocks and bunkers at ranges as short as 200 yards. At dark the task force columns converged along the main river road within sight of Fort Saint-Julien, less than 4,000 yards from the centre of Metz. Colonel Bacon decided to send the 2nd Battalion of the 378th up against the fort, whose strength and controlling position on the main highway made an assault imperative. At the same time he planned to switch the 1st Battalion of the 377th around past the fort in an attempt to keep the advance moving. Under cover of the early morning fog on November 18, the assault battalion moved silently off the road, circling into the sparse woods west of the suburb town of SaintJulien-lès-Metz, and at 0700 attacked east toward the rear of the fort. However, a fortress battalion, which Kittel had sent north the day before, was in the houses and along the streets between the woods and the fort. A sharp fight raged up and down the streets during the rest of the morning but by noon the Germans had been driven back into the fort and the Americans closed in with tanks, tank destroyers and the ubiquitous

probably true as the gun was sited at the junction of Rue de Tivoli and Rue de Queuleu, positioned to fire up the latter street at vehicles on the main Avenue de Plantières.

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Left: According to the official caption, these anti-tank gunners were firing on German patrols that were trying to escape from the encircled fortress during the night. Right: The caption is

New development along the Avenue de Plantières now mostly hides the large building in the background but the doorways and the pavement ventilation grating along the Rue de Queuleu remain the same. 27

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This proved a very difficult spot to locate as there are dozens of similar houses in the suburbs of Metz. In the end Jean Paul found it in Rue Jean Burger at its junction with Rue François Simon. The view is westwards and the wooded area seen in the left background is in fact the northern side of Fort de Bellecroix.

Left: Completed in 1740, Fort Bellecroix became obsolete in the 1860s after the construction of the new belt of fortifications by the French just prior to the Franco-Prussian War. Nonetheless, following their annexation of Alsace and Moselle in 1871, the Germans added a new facility along the boulevard that runs along the Seille river, calling it the Steinmetz Barracks. The 377th Infantry captured the fortress on the morning of the 18th, the garrison of about 100 defenders emerging with white flags just as the 1st Battalion was about to launch the final assault. A few

hours later, two terrific blasts suddenly shattered part of the fortification, raining debris on the startled Americans moving along the nearby street. Company C, which was closest to the explosion of one of the fortress magazines, suffered 57 dead and wounded. Right: Fort Bellecroix was partly demolished in the 1960s when apartments were built on top of it although some of the old fortifications can still be seen with explanatory signs. The Steinmetz Barracks were redeveloped in 2011-12 into a commercial and business centre with an associated housing estate.

Left: The northern end of the barracks (outside the picture to the left) was too damaged by the huge detonations to be repaired. Right: An eagle-shaped memorial to the 95th

Infantry Division — today known as The Iron Men of Metz — now stands in an empty space beside the Boulevard de Trèves.

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As the 10th Infantry Regiment was clearing the southern half of the city, the 377th Infantry entered the north-eastern quarter where this 88mm anti-tank gun was pictured having been abandoned there by its crew although there was no clue as to where the photograph had been taken.

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The scene of devastation on the north-western side of the fort following the explosions of November 18.

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Above: Men of the 377th Infantry ‘patrolling a section of Metz in search of snipers’ were pictured by Pfc Billy Newhouse of the 166th Signal Photo Company. After having moved to the other side of the group, Newhouse took a second shot (not shown here) looking in the opposite direction so it would appear that in reality there was no real danger here at this stage of the battle from sniper fire. Right: The comparison in Rue de la Grève was also not easy to find because the area has seen great change since a main thoroughfare was cut through on the eastern edge of the city, the street being closed and a building constructed across what had been the old Rue de la Grève. Nevertheless, Jean Paul discovered that a photograph looking west gives a remarkable comparison, with two of the old trees still standing in what is now a public garden and children’s play area, although the massive wall that lined the street in 1944 has disappeared. 29

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from taking an exact comparison but he still achieved a fairly good match from outside No. 39 on Rue Lothaire near the crossing with Avenue André Malraux.

Above: At 2 p.m. on November 19, the main railway line crossing the southern part of the city were set as the final boundary line between the 95th Division in the north and the 5th Division in the south (see the map on pages 12-13). Although there was no large-scale fighting inside the city, here and there small groups of Germans held out trying to defend particular buildings or headquarters. This M-36 tank destroyer from Company C of the 607th TD Battalion has taken up position to control a junction on Hermann-Göring-Strasse. This was in the sector of the 95th Division, just a few hundred metres from the railway station and the boundary with the 5th Division. Unfortunately, the Signal Corps photographer failed to remove the plate from his Speed Graphic camera before making a second exposure so what would have been a good picture now appears overlaid with ghostly pieces of railing and pavement! Right: Its German name now long forgotten, Avenue Foch remains unchanged. The view is looking northeast along Rue François de Curel. 30

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Left: In the meantime, the 5th Division continued clearing the southern part of Metz, pictured here in the Sablon quarter just west of the Seille river. Right: New buildings prevented Jean Paul

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These men of the 377th Infantry were pictured by Pfc Rothenberger cautiously moving forward with a .30-calibre machine gun.

The buildings in the foreground have all been demolished, as has the whole row of houses in middle distance, but it was the building in the right background which enabled Sébastien Wagner to pinpoint the location at the southern end of the Pont Saint Georges.

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self-propelled guns for the final assault. For an hour the heavy weapons, their fire thickened by 240mm howitzers brought into play by the corps artillery, shelled the stronghold. When the fire lifted, the first assault was launched in an attempt to breach the rearward wall. Fort Saint-Julien was an outdated work with high, thick walls surrounded by a moat some 40 feet wide. From the west, or rear side, the moat was bridged by a walled causeway leading into an open area-way. The first men across the causeway were hit by fire from the loopholes in the enceinte which overlooked the access ramp. Two light tanks then were run up to the causeway to provide covering fire for a tank destroyer which mounted a high-velocity 90mm gun. The crew took their gun to within 50 feet of the great iron door in front of the area-way, but their fire could not breach it. At dusk one of the self-propelled 155mm guns was run forward. This did the job, ending most of the enemy resistance. Next morning the engineers sent in to blow up the works with TNT took 200 docile prisoners out of the network of tunnels below the fort. While its sister battalion was fighting its way toward Fort Saint-Julien on November 18, the 1st Battalion of the 377th Infantry had bypassed to the west and marched through the suburbs of Saint-Julien-lès-Metz. Barring the north-eastern entrance to the older portion of Metz lay another large but outmoded work, Fort Bellecroix. Just as the battalion started forward for the assault, a column of about 100 German infantry came hurrying out of the fort with white flags in their hands. About 1400, as the battalion was moving along the street by the fort, two terrific blasts shattered the heavy masonry walls bringing the debris down on the startled Americans and leaving 57 dead and wounded in Company C, which at the moment was closest to the fort. The rest of the battalion threaded its way through the rubble. As the day ended, patrols from the task force began to mop up the scattered centres of resistance at the northern edge of the city. As these events were unfolding in the 95th Division sector, the 90th Infantry and 10th Armored Divisions were continuing the wider envelopment north and east of Metz, pursuing the retreating German columns. To speed up the advance, General Van Fleet of the 90th Division threw the 359th Infantry into the chase, relieving the 358th, which was badly in need of a rest, as soon as it reached the town of Luttange. Specific objectives were no longer assigned, the general mission being simply to close the gap east of Metz

Left: Another shot by Rothenberger of combat engineers on the look-out with an M1917 Browning machine gun. Right: This picture was taken at the northern end of the Pont Saint Georges (which lies just off to the right), the clue being the

tower of the Temple de Garnison faintly visible in the distance. The row of houses seen on the left in the wartime photograph is the same one as that which can be seen in the picture at the top of the page. 31

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Displaying white flags of surrender, prisoners are being marched away from the fighting in the direction of the gun. The large white arrow painted on the wall points to an underground air raid shelter.

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and join hands with the 5th Division advancing from the south. The infantry moved forward in trucks when they could, and marched when trucks were lacking or when blown bridges and craters cut the roads. Often the speed of the advance overran the German rear-guard demolition details before they could blow the bridges. At the end of the first day of this pursuit, November 18, the 359th Infantry had troops across the Nied river at Condé, 12 miles east of Metz, cutting one of the main escape routes from the city, while the 90th Reconnaissance Troop held Avancy, blocking another exit road. Through the night the Americans fired on the exit roads with every weapon they could bring to bear. The cavalry alone counted 30 enemy vehicles destroyed and took more than 500 prisoners. On the 19th the 359th Infantry pushed on to Les Etangs, cutting another of the Metz exit roads, after an advance in which planes of the XIX TAC worked directly with the infantry, swooping down as close as 100 yards in front of the American patrols to strafe the fleeing enemy. At 1030 the 90th Reconnaissance Troop met a company from the 735th Tank Battalion, supporting a battalion from the 5th Division, north of Retonfey, thus completing the encirclement of Metz.

Destroyer Battalion has been placed on a corner of the Place de Chambre to cover the German-held buildings across the Pont de la Préfecture. Right: This street, then Rue du Pont de la Préfecture, was renamed Rue Paul Tornow in 2011 in honour of the German architect who, after the German annexation of the Moselle, worked for 30 years on the restoration of the Metz cathedral.

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By the evening of November 19 the Germans were only holding out in two places: on the Île Chambière — a large island in between two arms of the Moselle — and on the Île de la Préfecture which is a small islet in the centre of Metz. These photos were taken on November 20 when the Préfecture stronghold was cleared. Left: This 90mm anti-tank gun from the 807th Tank

Left: Their fighting spirit broken, the last of the defenders finally give up. Note that all have discarded their steel helmets before surrendering, replacing them with their service caps. The Préfecture buildings, damaged by the last-ditch battle, can be seen on the far side of the river. The body lying in the foreground is that of Alfred Wojtecki, an FFI resistance fighter killed during the fighting. The man in the light-coloured overcoat is Colonel Guy de la Vasselais, a French liaison officer 32

attached to XX Corps headquarters. He had taken such an active part in the fighting in Metz that he was awarded an immediate Silver Star by General Walker. After the war, he was one of the main instigators behind the creation of the Voie de la Liberté, the commemorative route of the Third Army across France. Right: Rue Paul Tornow, looking at the Préfecture. The anti-tank gun on Place de Chambre was firing across this bridge.

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Left: The American photographers enjoyed taking numerous pictures of this particular, yet un-named, German officer ‘being ousted from his comfortable headquarters’ in the Hotel Royal. Not willing to displease his captors, he played his role with quiet indifference. Above: The hotel at the junction of Avenue Foch and Rue Charlemagne, not far from the main railway station, is still in business although it has since been renamed the Hotel All Seasons. The M-36 tank destroyer that we saw on page 30 was positioned at this same junction.

The original building in the background has gone but the houses lining the street remain the same.

Left: Here comes the cavalry! While their comrades look on, two GIs enjoy a ride on a pair of white horses taken from a German supply column that they just found abandoned in the city.

Again, the white arrows on house façades point to air raid shelters. Right: The same view today on Place Jean Moulin, in the 5th Division sector.

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Prisoners being marched away in the Rue des Augustins in the sector of the 95th Division.

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Here another group of prisoners is being marched eastwards to a POW stockade outside the city. The building on the right was the municipal burial records office.

This is Rue de Strasbourg, on the eastern outskirts, with Rue de la Croix de Lorraine in the background.

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THE 5th DIVISION’S DRIVE INTO METZ After a general regrouping south of Metz the 5th Division resumed its attack toward the city on November 16. The whole operation was slowed by the inability of the 10th Infantry to make a rapid forward move while the bulk of the 2nd Infantry was held at the Nied river. In the afternoon the latter’s 3rd Battalion pushed north toward Frontigny and came abreast of the right-flank battalion of the 10th Infantry, which thus far had been echeloned to the rear. Marly, the scene of bitter fighting on the previous day, was finally cleared of the last enemy. The 11th Infantry meanwhile found itself in a hornet’s nest at the Frescaty airfield, where a German fortress machine-gun battalion was deployed, and both the 1st and 2nd Battalions had to be thrown in to drive the Germans from the hangars and bomb shelters surrounding the field. In the meantime, the 3rd Battalion was left behind to contain Fort Verdun (Feste Haeseler) manned by Festungs-MG-Bataillon 48. This was finally encircled on the night of November 16/17. As the day ended, the left and centre of the 5th Division were only about 4,000 yards from the centre of Metz. The bag of prisoners was swelling rapidly, but thus far the defenders showed no signs of abandoning their attempts to hold at each step of the way. With the withdrawal eastwards of SSPanzergrenadier-Regiment 38, however, German resistance weakened on November 17 and the 2nd and 10th Infantry, minus the battalion across the Nied, were able to move more rapidly. The minor forts lying in the path of their advance were quickly overrun or found unoccupied, and by mid-afternoon patrols from the 10th Infantry were at the Metz city limits. The general advance was stopped by Fort Queuleu, which the enemy apparently intended to defend. This was one of the old works on the inner ring of forts. South-west of the city, the two battalions of the 11th Infantry, aided by tanks of the 735th Tank Battalion, continued the fight at the Frescaty airfield. At the end of the day only a

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Right: All the fighting inside the city ended at 2.35 p.m. on November 22, and it is recorded that some 3,100 German soldiers surrendered on that last day. At the final count, XX Corps claimed a total of 14,368 taken prisoner (in addition to 3,800 men killed and 7,904 wounded). The 462. Volksgrenadier-Division and the fortress units holding the fortifications — Festungs-MG-Bataillon 45 and 53, Festungs-Artillerie-Abteilung 1311 and 1519, and Festungs-Pionier-Bataillon 55 — had all ceased to exist, and the other German divisions employed in trying to defend the city were all severely decimated.

‘Slightly damaged, this highly important communication point is working for the Allies’, noted the original caption to this photo as engineers cleared the city’s main railway station. 34

The construction of Mettis, a new tramway system, had turned much of Metz into construction sites when we visited the city in the winter of 2012-13.

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An intelligence officer interrogates the two high-ranking captives. Note that the censor has deleted part of the picture before releasing it for publication.

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Above left: As far as is known, no photo exists of Generalleutnant Kittel, the commander of Festung Metz, lying in the underground field hospital where he was found by the Americans. However, photographers were at hand to picture Oberst Constantin Meyer, the town military commander, captured on November 20 as he tried ‘to escape from the encircled fortress by a road he believed to be safe’. Meyer had received his Ritterkreuz in 1942 when in command of Infanterie-Regiment 257. Above right: Also captured that same day, in a brewery in the Sablon quarter that had just been abandoned by SS troopers after a fierce defence, was SSBrigadeführer Anton Dunckern. A longtime Nazi and Gestapo officer, he had been Befehlshaber der Sicherheits polizei und des SD (Commander of the Security Police and Security Service) in Saar-Lorraine since 1940. Being the highest-ranking SS member to have been captured within his area of command, Patton took it upon himself to interrogate him personally. Though he could speak German fluently, he chose to question the SS officer through an interpreter because, as he noted, he would not give Dunckern the honour of talking to him directly. Patton: ‘I have captured a great many German generals, and this is the first one who has been wholly untrue to everything; because he has not only been a Nazi but he is untrue to the Nazis by surrendering. If he wants to say anything he can, and I will say that unless he talks pretty well, I will turn him over to the French.’ Dunckern stated he had received orders to defend a sector of the Metz fortress, which he had done, and that he had surrendered when there was no possibility to continue fighting. Patton replied he was a liar, and pointed out that ‘If he wanted to be a good Nazi, he could have died then and there. It would have been a pleasanter death than what he will get now.’ Insisting that he had ‘to be considered a prisoner of war of the American forces’, Dunckern stated confidently: ‘No one will be able to stand up against me to testify that I did anything against the rules of humanity or human treatment’. He was taken first to England and then on to the United States to POW Camp Clinton. He finally appeared before a French Military Court in Metz in 1953 and was sentenced to 20 years of hard labour. Granted an early release in 1954, he died in Munich in 1985.

Dunckern and Meyer made it quite clear that they disapproved of each other, some even claiming that Meyer refused to sit in the same Jeep as Dunckern. 35

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to the 2nd Battalion of the 11th Infantry on December 7. Right: Although still an army installation today, the fort is no longer in use.

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Left: Four of the Metz forts — Driant, Jeanne d’Arc, SaintQuentin and Plappeville — held out for another three weeks after the fall of the city. Fort Plappeville was finally surrendered

After the fortress commander had addressed his men one last time (photo at the top of this page), the garrison — 200 men according to an intelligence report compiled for the Metz operation by the 379th Infantry but more according to other sources — was marched out of the fort. Here they are crossing the moat.

few Germans were left to defend the hangars on the north-eastern edge of the field and the fight shifted toward Fort Saint-Privat, whose fire checked a further advance on the right. The reinforced battalion holding the bridgehead east of the Nied began a withdrawal to the west bank on orders from General Patton, leaving CCR of the 6th Armored Division to hold the bridges while the 5th Reconnaissance Troop patrolled along the west bank. Patrols from the 5th Division had reported earlier that the Germans were escaping ‘in droves’ through the gap still open east of Metz, and this may explain why the Third Army commander decided to assemble the entire 2nd Infantry west of the Nied. All through the night the 2nd Infantry fought its way toward the north, prompted by exhortations from Patton and Walker to speed up the advance. On the morning of the 18th the key road and rail centre at Courcelles-sur-Nied fell into American hands. General Irwin thereupon ordered the 2nd Infantry, now with all three battalions in line, to push hard on its left so as to aid the advance of the 10th Infantry into Metz. This attack had reached and captured Ars-Laquenexy when, about 1945, Walker phoned Irwin and ordered him to press straight to the north and there meet the 90th Division, thus cutting the last escape routes to the east. Colonel Roffe, the 2nd Infantry commander, detached his 1st Battalion, reinforced by a company of tanks, for the mission. About 1030 on November 19, these troops joined hands with cavalry elements of the 90th Division north of Retonfey. Over in the 10th Infantry sector on November 18 the 1st Battalion bypassed the 2nd Battalion — which was deployed around Fort Queuleu — and entered Metz. At 1140 the next morning the 10th Infantry met patrols from the 95th Division near Vallières, just south of Saint-Julien-lès-Metz. The 11th Infantry also crossed the Metz city limits on November 18 and by the night of November 19 had mopped up most of the streets and houses between the Moselle and the railway loop in the south-west quarter of the city. The 2nd Battalion, however, continued to be held in check by the stubborn defenders at Fort Saint-Privat.

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Left: Having had to climb over a twometre-high gate to reach this location, Jean Paul was somewhat stressed as he had to lie low in the forbidden area of the fort, waiting for the sun to brighten the scene. Finally the sun emerged from behind the clouds so he quickly took his photo and made a hurried departure although still anxious should guards chase him with their dogs! 36

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Left: The very last fort to capitulate, Fort Jeanne d’Arc, surrendered on December 13 to the 26th Infantry Division, part of the US III Corps, which had taken over the Metz area on December 8. Here Brigadier General Harlan N. Hartness, the 26th Division

Assistant Commander, greets the German emissary carrying a surrender note from the garrison commander. Right: General Hartness, Colonel Walter T. Scott, commander of the 101st Infantry, and Captain Angelo J. Mantenuto, reading the note.

CAPITULATION On November 16 Generalleutnant Kittel committed the last of his sparse reserves to defend on the north, south and west of Metz. The eastern side of the city was undefended, except by the few troops maintaining a tenuous connection with the field forces of the 1. Armee. Now General Knobelsdorff sent word to the beleaguered commander that on November 17 the 1. Armee would detach itself from the Metz garrison and begin a withdrawal to new positions farther east, thus leaving Kittel’s command to its fate. During the night SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 38 made its move east through the narrowing escape route, acting on Hitler’s earlier order that no part of the 17. SS-Panzergrenadier-Division (already on the roster of units for the Ardennes counteroffensive) should be entrapped inside of Metz. No word of this withdrawal reached Kittel until the morning of the 17th when he suddenly was informed that the regiment had deserted the Metz garrison.

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Right: Hartness then went out to meet the German commander, Major Voss, to explain the American surrender terms. Voss, a teacher at the Metz Fahnenjunker school, commanded the I. Bataillon of Infanterie-Regiment Stössel.

Left: General Hartness taking his leave, saluted by the garrison’s assistant commander. Right: Some 500 men surrendered at this

fortress, many of them not having seen the sky for five weeks, trapped as they were in the subterranean tunnels. 37

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The surrender complete, another party then climbed to the grass-covered roof of this same block to raise the Stars and Stripes on top of the captured fort.

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Pleas for help from all the forts and sectors of the Metz front then flooded his headquarters but there was nothing left for him to do, however, but give orders that the Moselle bridges be blown and make preparations for a house-to-house defence of the city itself. There was no longer any thoroughgoing plan, nor was further co-ordination between units possible. The remnants of GrenadierRegiment 1215 were hemmed in around the Saint-Quentin works. Grenadier-Regiment 1217, which no longer had any semblance of organisation, clustered around Fort de Plappeville while elements formed a line of defence around Fort Driant. Füsilier-Kompanie 462, having given a good account of itself, had withdrawn to Fort Jeanne d’Arc, where it was joined on the 17th by most of the staff of the 462. Volksgrenadier-Division. Festungs-Regiment 22 had splintered into fragments with detachments in and around the forts at Saint-Privat, Queuleu, and SaintJulien. About 400 stragglers had been gathered to defend the barracks on the Île Chambière, a large island in between two arms of the Moselle in the centre of Metz and downstream. On the evening of the 17th the central exchange for the underground telephone system, located on the Île Chambière, ceased to function and Kittel’s overall command ended. A few of the Germans outside the forts tried to make a fight for it in these last hours, but most were content to fire a few shots and then march into the American lines with their hands in the air. No real house-to-house battle was waged in the city of Metz, despite futile attempts to defend some of the headquarters buildings. By the night of November 19/20, mopping-up operations were well along. On the 21st a patrol from the 95th Division found Generalleutnant Kittel in an underground field hospital, badly wounded (he had been fighting in the line) and under morphine. The next afternoon hostilities formally ceased — although a number of the forts continued to hold out. The 462. Volksgrenadier-Division had ceased to exist. German sources later estimated that casualties in the defence of Metz had been 400 dead and some 2,200 wounded, about half of whom had been evacuated before the city was encircled. These estimates are probably too low while the XX Corps estimates of 3,800 killed and 7,900 wounded are certainly too high. Moreover, to these losses must be added those inflicted on the 416. Volksgrenadier-Division, the 19. VolksgrenadierDivision and the 17. SS-PanzergrenadierDivision during the fight to envelop Metz. No casualty figures for these units are obtainable.

Careful examination of the damage caused to the block’s façade indicated that the surrender scene was pictured here at Caserne No. 5 on the south side of the fort.

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Showing a white flag, a party from the 101st Infantry approaches a huge fortress block to announce Major Voss’s surrender to this part of the garrison.

In spite of trees and bushes having invaded the roof of the fort, a nice comparison can still be achieved although rusty barbed wire and metal picket posts strewn in the undergrowth present a real danger.

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‘Only the hunger was to blame!’ Deep inside Fort Driant, a last-minute slogan written by one of the German defenders on December 8, the very day of the fort’s capitulation. The garrison had suffered from a total lack of food for several days before surrendering.

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Since General Walker had forbidden direct assault against the holdout forts, and since artillery ammunition had to be carefully conserved to support the projected XX Corps drive to the Sarre river, the German garrisons still holding the isolated forts were left to wither on the vine. Fort Verdun surrendered on November 26. Fort Saint-Privat capitulated with its garrison of 500 on November 29, after four American field artillery battalions and three 155mm self-propelled guns had shelled the redoubt. At the end of November Forts Driant, Jeanne d’Arc, Saint-Quentin and Fort de Plappeville still held out, forcing General Irwin to use most of the 2nd Infantry and one battalion of the 11th Infantry to contain them. To this extent at least the Metz garrison carried out the orders given by Hitler. Short rations and general demoralisation eventually took their toll even in those forts where determined German officers were able to keep their men in hand. On December 6, Fort Saint-Quentin surrendered with a sizeable garrison under Oberst Stössel. Fort de Plappeville capitulated on December 7 and Fort Driant followed at 1545 the next day. Officered by the 462. VolksgrenadierDivision staff, Fort Jeanne d’Arc was the last of the forts to fall on December 13, surrendering to the US III Corps, which by then had taken over the Metz area.

These were Casernes Nos. 3 and 4 in the bastion on the eastern side of the fort. Altogether, the seven fortified barracks of Fort Jeanne d’Arc had a capacity of over 2,500 troops.

COLLECTION THIERRY SIMON

This GI was pictured inspecting storage racks which appear to contain metal rods. No doubt he was wondering what their use might be.

Left: A symbolic scene at Fort Saint-Quentin on December 6 as Oberst Stössel von der Heyde hands his pistol to Lieutenant Colonel Dewey B. Gill, CO of the 2nd Battalion, 11th Infantry.

Right: At Fort Driant, the grave of a US soldier buried by the Germans bore witness to the heavy losses suffered in the illadvised American attacks in September and October. 39

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A perfect comparison taken inside the Hôtel de Ville, which is located on Place d’Armes.

Général Dody awarding General Walker with the Légion d’Honneur. Prefect Rebourset stands on the left.

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Top left: At 10 a.m. on November 22 — even though at that moment the last Germans were still holding out in the SaintVincent quarter of the city — General Walker formally presented the liberated city back to the French on behalf of the US Army. He was then in turn awarded the Légion d’Honneur. Here Walker decends the stairway inside the Town Hall accompanied by the newly-appointed French authorities: Général Marcel Dody, military governor of Metz and Verdun, and Marcel Rebourset, the Prefect of the Moselle department. More Légions d’Honneur and Médailles Militaires were awarded one week later to American officers including Brigadier General William A. Collier, Chiefof-Staff of the XX Corps, and General Irwin of the 5th Division. The official US Army historian Hugh M. Cole summed up the Metz battle as follows: ‘The credit for the envelopment of Metz and the final reduction of its defences must be given to the combined ground forces which took part in the operation, since continuous bad flying weather had permitted only occasional intervention in the battle by the air arm. This operation, skilfully planned and marked by thorough execution of the plan, may long remain an outstanding example of a prepared battle for the reduction of a fortified position. However, determined enemy resistance, bad weather and attendant floods, plus a general tendency to overestimate the strength of the Metz fortifications, all combined to slow down the American offensive and give opportunity for the right wing of the 1. Armee to repair the tie between the LXXXII. Armeekorps to the XIII. SS-Armeekorps in time for an organised withdrawal to the Sarre river. German commanders who took part in the Metz campaign are generally of the opinion that the November operation should have been concluded by the Americans in less time than that actually taken. Such testimony, in part at least, is suspect as being proffered to bolster up the thesis common to many defeated commanders, namely, that their own forces were so lacking in materiel and so heavily outnumbered that naught but failure was possible. However, it is true that the events of September and early October had made the Americans wary of high losses and dramatic failures, such as the first attempt to take Fort Driant, and prompted a widespread use of cautious and slow-moving tactics in which crushing superiority in men, guns, and tanks was concentrated wherever the enemy showed signs of standing his ground. It must be added that mud and rain contributed greatly to slowing the American advance.’

The Place d’Armes, with the Corps de Garde — the city’s 18th century guardhouse (and today the Municipal Tourist Office) — and the cathedral on the left.

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The Town Hall lies at the southern end of the Place d’Armes. The cathedral is behind the photographer.

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Top left: American troops lined up in front of the Hôtel de Ville for the ceremony. Today a plaque mounted on a monument in the square records (in French): ‘On November 22, 1944 on this spot, General Walker, commanding the XX Corps of the Third Army, handed over to the French authorities the city of Metz liberated by his troops’. Right: General Patton certainly deserved to share in the victory that had been won at Metz, hence this photo taken one year later, on November 25, 1945, when the first anniversary of the liberation of the city was celebrated. A major parade was held on the Place de la République, a few blocks south of the Place d’Armes, when Patton was made an honorary citizen of the city. General Walker was once again a guest. Although the general conduct of the battle on the American side had been poor, this analysis had not yet been established in 1945. In any case, the French authorities were eager to honour the American generals who had liberated their city. Tragically, only a fortnight after this event, on December 9 a US truck collided with Patton’s staff car at Mannheim causing him an injury that resulted in his death 12 days later, on December 21 (see After the Battle No. 7).

This is the north-east corner of the square, looking east. The street on the left is now Rue Winston Churchill. 41

In November 1944, the Japanese Imperial Army began construction of a series of subterranean tunnel systems at the remote town of Matsushiro to serve as a secret and bomb-proof shelter for the Imperial Headquarters and several other vital government agencies. These were to be used as the central command post from which, in case of an Allied invasion of the Japanese mainland, the final last-ditch defence was to be led. In March

1945, with the Allied bombing of Tokyo providing an increasing danger and with an Allied invasion of Japan’s home islands imminent, it was decided to include in the proposed redoubt a residence for Emperor Hirohito and his wife. The provisional Imperial Palace was incorporated in the above-ground buildings outside the Imperial Headquarters tunnel complex below Mount Maizuru. This is how that site looked on September 30, 1945.

HIROHITO’S UNDERGROUND HEADQUARTERS Confronted by the inexorable advance of US forces across the Pacific, in 1944, the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) began preparing for the eventual invasion of the Home Islands. In addition to relocating essential war-related industries to the safety of central Japan’s mountainous Nagano Prefecture, work also commenced on a vast underground network at Matsushiro to accommodate Emperor Hirohito, the Imperial Headquarters and other vital government agencies. From within this vast subterranean nerve centre — known as Matsushiro Daihon’ei — Japan’s decisive last stand, or gyokusai, would be directed. JAPAN’S ALPINE CITADEL During the early years of what the Japanese referred to as the Greater East Asian War, Nagano Prefecture was a secluded and sparsely-populated alpine region in the centre of the main island of Honshu. Both an unattractive target for aerial bombing and far away from likely invasion sites, by 1945 Nagano had become a refuge for nearly 600 war-related factories such as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (fighter aircraft and weapons production in several underground facilities), Suwa Seikosha (precision instruments) and Nihon Musen (wireless instruments). Certain elements of the Imperial Japanese Army were also relocated there from Tokyo including the clandestine Ninth Army Technical Research Institute, more commonly known as the Noborito Research Institute (responsible for a range of covert spy tools as well as the balloon bombs 42

released against North America) and some 3,000 cadets from the Military Academy and their instructors. A remote Nagano mountain village was also chosen to hide Ba Maw, the fugitive former puppet Prime Minister of Burma. By far the largest and most ambitious project in Nagano, however, was the construction of a new underground Imperial Headquarters. The chief proponent of the ambitious undertaking, Major Masataka Ida, together with Major Sadaaki Kurosaki, combed the country before selecting Matsushiro, a small and unimportant former samurai castle town 135 miles north-west of Tokyo, in May 1944. An ideal location for the army’s alpine citadel, it was well served by a nearby airfield and adjacent to a cluster of mountains that would permit the tunnelling of several large underground shelters. It was initially believed that the area would provide an abundant labour force; the townsfolk deemed honest enough to keep the project secret. A further deciding factor in the selection of a divine Emperor’s new residence was the region’s auspicious former name — Shinshu — meaning ‘God’s land’. As the massive project gathered momentum, it became apparent that earlier mobilisation had already stripped Matsushiro of its able-bodied labourers. With the army forced to look elsewhere, some 6,000 to 7,000 mostly unskilled Korean workers were forcibly brought to Japan under a compulsory labour law as well as a number of experienced miners who willingly travelled with their families. Two Eastern Army special

By David Mitchelhill-Green construction companies, under Captain Eiichi Yoshida, arrived in Matsushiro in September 1944 to prepare basic accommodation for the foreign workforce. Arriving with only what they wore, the displaced Koreans found the conditions in the 150 hastily-built ‘barracks’ miserable. One former labourer recalled how they resembled ‘pig-pens’ on ‘swampy paddy fields; wind blew in, rain leaked hard . . . the water for drinking and cooking was very bad’. Meanwhile, local villagers and landowners gathered in a school hall on October 4 to listen to army representatives announce how their rice fields and woodlands were now central to the war effort. In light of the emergency war situation, 124 households in 109 dwellings reluctantly consented to vacating their properties for the building of what was vaguely referred to as a ‘warehouse’. In reality, the principal tunnels of the secretive complex would stretch for kilometres beneath three local peaks: Mount Maizuru (known as Zone Ro), which would accommodate the Imperial Headquarters; Mount Zozan (Zone I), which would house NHK (nippon hoso kyokai or Japan Broadcasting Corporation) and the Central Telephone Office; and nearby Mount Minakami — literally ‘all gods’ — (Zone Ha), which Major Ida designated to be a fortified stronghold, though some historians believe this particular tunnel system was intended to house families loyal to the Emperor.

MATSUSHIRO

MATSUSHIRO MOUNT ZOZAN

MOUNT MINAKAMI

MOUNT MAIZURU

The town of Matsushiro is located in Nagano Prefecture in the mountainous areas of central Japan on the main island of Honshu, 200 kilometres north-west of Tokyo. An ancient samurai castle town, it had once flourished as a centre of learning under the ruling Sanada Clan.

Three tunnels systems were built in three different mountain peaks on the outskirts of Matsushiro — one under Mount Zozan (known to the military as Zone I) in the southern part of town; one under Mount Maizuru two kilometres farther to the south-east (Zone Ro), and one under the slopes of the volcanic cone of Mount Minakami, another two kilometres to the north-east (Zone Ha). Because of its proximity to the adjacent town and railway station, the entire underground system was known as Matsushiro Daihon’ei Ato (Matsushiro Imperial Headquarters Site).

‘IT WAS HELL ON EARTH’ Construction of the underground complex began on November 11, 1944, the first stick of dynamite being providentially detonated at 11 a.m. Overall responsibility for the project rested with the Kajima and Nishimatsu Construction Companies with experienced Japanese railway engineers employed to oversee the tunnelling of individual sections. The tunnelling was done either by hand or by boring holes into the rock face using drills powered by compressed air. Dynamite was then inserted into the cavities and detonated, the rock fragments smashed into smaller pieces by hand using chisels, hammers and iron bars (called kosoku). Carried away in bamboo baskets and small railway wagons pushed along rails, the debris was dumped outside where school children would camouflage it with grass to avoid aerial detection. The feverish pace of tunnelling was inherently dangerous and without rest. No special clothing was provided apart from a poorAbove: The building project was led and supervised by a special army staff under Captain Eiichi Yoshida. On arrival at Matsushiro in September 1944, he set up his headquarters at the Matsushiro business school, where this group portrait was taken on November 20. Seated in the front row are (L-R): Technician Sano (who would be killed on March 10, 1945 during the massive Tokyo air raid), Captain Yoshida, Technician Miyamoto and Corporal Sato. Standing at rear are (L-R) Workers Kaneno, Ishikawa, Ryuzaki, Kakiuchi, Oishi and Kuwahara, Technician Ohara and Chief Engineer Sato. Left: Among the units sent to the site to speed up the work was the 3rd Special Engineer Company, which arrived in April 1945. Officers and men of the company posed for a picture at the Sairaku Temple in Nishijo village (in Zone I) near Mount Zozan on August 1. The officers in the front row are (L-R): Chief Engineer Takahashi, Platoon Leader Sato, 3rd Lieutenant (Warrant Officer) Kuramoto, Captain Kanbara (company commander), Technician Hayashi, Chief Engineer Takayama, and two others unidentified. 43

Right: Of the three tunnel systems, that under Mount Maizuru was to house the Imperial Headquarters. As finally completed it consisted of two parts: a main tunnel, comprising three galleries 400 metres long (expanded to five galleries in the deeper part of the mountain), linked by seven connecting galleries and with several entrance points; and a much-smaller minor tunnel comprising just one gallery of 150 metres with a parallel part 75 metres long. Outside the minor tunnel were three long buildings that were to house the Emperor’s residence and offices, the idea being that he and his entourage would only seek shelter inside the tunnels in case of danger.

MINOR TUNNEL 1

2

TUNNEL ENTRANCE

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ENTRANCE

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quality pair of rubber shoes easily torn apart on the sharp rock edges. Bleeding feet were simply wrapped in rags. Before his death in 1991, Choe So Am, the only Korean labourer to remain in Matsushiro after the war, recounted how ‘work shoes were torn within half a day. But only one pair was rationed per month. The ground was covered with pieces of razor-sharp rock . . . We thought about escaping. But [we] had no way of running away. [We were] completely guarded. Those who entered [the tunnels] were unable to leave’. Cave-ins were frequent, especially under Mount Minakami, an extinct volcano with brittle rock, which was unsuited to tunnelling. Workers accidentally buried in underground explosions were ignored, their compatriots unable to dig their bodies out for burial under the gruelling schedule. Choe So Am recalled one particular accident: ‘At 9.30 a.m. I heard an explosion. Since it was not the right time for dynamite blasting, I felt suspicious. I went to the location of the blast but I couldn’t find the four men who were working there. Instead I found their dismembered bodies. I gathered all [the flesh and bones].’ Mirroring the privations of prisoner of war camps, the Koreans were pushed to work two, sometimes three shifts a day, subsisting on only a bowl of kaoliang (a form of

MAIN TUNNEL

An artist’s impression of the complex as it looked in 1945. In addition to the three blocks built into the slope of the hill there was also a cluster of traditional wooden houses, seen on the left, 44

which was to serve as temporary lodgings for the Emperor while the permanent residence was being built. The sketch also shows the half dozen entrances giving access to the tunnel system.

Building No. 1 (furthest on the right) was to be the Empress’ residence, Building No. 2 (centre) the Emperor’s dwelling and building No. 3 (left) mainly offices.

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sorghum cereal usually given to animals) plus small quantities of rice, soybeans and radishes. It was, according to Choe So Am, ‘not a place for men to live’. With medical care practically non-existent, a ‘person was not able to consult a doctor even if he was in an unhealthy condition or had a high fever. Unless he was dying, a doctor was not seen. When we were lying on the floor [through illness], the director of the Nishimatsu Construction Company would come around and shout “Get up! If you are truly sick, you can’t use your voice, can you?” So he would pour water on us, whether it was winter or not, and then drive us to the construction site.’ Several workers were shot for merely requesting better treatment while an unknown number committed suicide. Brutal punishment was meted out to those caught escaping in front of their fellow workers with ‘much striking and kicking’. In one instance ‘they put a big iron bar on the back sides of both legs and rode on both ends. We heard the crack of bones. And they did not give any meals as long as one week or ten days, and he died. It was a hell on earth.’ As well as the large male labour force, four Korean comfort women (the name given to females forced into prostitution by the Japanese military) were also brought to Matsushiro where they were housed in a requisitioned barn. Local resident Masako Yamane, a young girl born to Korean parents, remembered ‘the whores’ shuffling along the street. ‘Painted white to the neck . . . they were always drunk. They walked along, spreading wide the bright red lower parts of their kimonos.’ As US forces steadily closed on Japan, additional Japanese workers were rushed to the site in early 1945. Engineers and students arrived at the burgeoning project in March, followed by the Army’s 3rd Special Engineer Company and staff in April and a Field Battle Construction Unit from Manchuria in May. Further help was given by boys mobilised from the Tokyo Railway School plus university and high school students while local children collected river pebbles for use in concrete-making. Some of the country’s finest craftsmen were expressly employed to complete the interior of the Emperor’s residence. During the busiest construction period from April to May 1945, an estimated 7,000 to 8,000 Koreans plus a further 3,000 Japanese toiled on the project. Underground cables linking the various shelters were laid by 1,600 Japanese personnel organised into a signal corps based in an elementary school at the base of Mount Kanda. Work on several ancillary facilities began in March with new tunnels dug beneath Mount Kanda (Zone Ni) in Suzaka City to house transmitting facilities and Mount Saijo (Zone Ho) to hold a receiving station, though hostilities ended before the aerials were installed. Extra tunnels were also started in

Today, the three buildings are occupied by the offices of the Matsushiro Seismological Observatory. Established on May 1, 1947, this institute monitors the many seismological events in this region dotted with active and extinct volcanoes. June under Mount Karida (Zone Ho) and Mount Garyu (Zone He). The Imperial Japanese Navy similarly began excavating its

Left: The Emperor’s quarters located in Building No. 2 comprised semi-underground concrete bunkers with a traditional Japanese tatami-floored room decorated with the finest cypress. The quality of the wood befitted the divine resident,

own underground shelter in Koichi, Nagano City, though only modest progress was accomplished before the surrender.

being specially selected to make sure that the grain was parallel and devoid of knots. Right: The same room today, viewed from the opposite corner. Part of the Observatory offices, it is not open to the public. 45

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Another view of the provisional palace, with the Emperor’s quarters on the left and the Empress’ dwelling on the right.

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With trees now masking much of the view, David was unable to match up both Building No. 2 (left) and No. 1 (right) in one shot.

Building No. 4, the wooden house that was erected as provisional palace for Hirohito and his wife while the permanent lodgings were being built, stood close to the western-most entrance to the main tunnel system. This led to the complex’s underground water reservoir. 46

In 1946 a local Buddhist association received permission to convert the whole palace complex into an orphanage for war orphans. The plans were debated throughout 1947 but did not materialise. Today the Keiai Gakuen, a school for disabled children, occupies the site of Building No. 4.

At war’s end, the tunnel system under Mount Maizuru comprised three kilometres of galleries 95 metres below ground. appraisal of the war on June 8, the Imperial Conference elected to continue fighting. Amid calls for ‘supreme self-sacrifice’ and the ‘honourable death of a hundred million’, a costly, protracted fight on home soil was being planned. In secret, a band of bellicose senior army officials formulated plans to move the Imperial family to Matsushiro aboard a specially converted armoured train. Army Minister, and key cabinet member, General Korechika Anami visited the construction site on June 13 to inspect progress. The three accompanying members of the Imperial Household Agency were quick to discover a glaring omission: the absence of a kashikodokoro — a secure repository, separate to Hirohito’s residence, to protect the Imperial Regalia should an unfortunate mishap befall the Emperor. Sacrosanct, the Imperial Regalia, also known as Japan’s Three Sacred Treasures (sanshu no jingi), comprise the most

sacred objects of the Shinto religion: a sword (Kusanagi) representing valour, a mirror (Yata no Kagami) representing wisdom and a jewel (Yasakani no Magatama), representing benevolence. Symbolising the Emperor’s legitimacy, these divine symbols of the Japanese Imperial throne were presented to Japan’s first Emperor, Jimmu, by the Sun Goddess; the 2600th anniversary of which was celebrated in 1940. Fresh orders to build the kashikodokoro under Mount Kobo were issued on July 26, the same day the Potsdam Declaration (or the Proclamation Defining Terms for the Japanese Surrender) was announced. The chief of construction, Captain Yoshida, later recalled how imperial household officials stressed that the sacred site could only be excavated by ‘pure Japanese’, the youth of the Atami branch of the Railroad Ministry training institute pressed into service. Meanwhile in Tokyo, Hirohito mused whether to

The unfinished tunnel system is today being used by the Seismological Observatory, a whole range of monitoring instruments having been set up in the galleries. The remote site, 60 kilometres inland and far removed from noise and vibration produced by roads and railways, is an ideal location for this kind of work. This is the stairway descending to the inner depths of the mountain.

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SAFEGUARDING THE EMPORER AND THE IMPERIAL REGALIA Secret orders were issued in March 1945 to expand the scope of Matsushiro Daihon’ei to include a provisional Imperial palace for Emperor Hirohito in the eastern wing of the Imperial Headquarters (a command post in the event of an invasion) in Zone Ro beneath Mount Maizuru. Local villagers originally informed that the army was merely excavating a series of storage facilities began to suspect otherwise the following month with the arrival of timber bearing the chrysanthemum — the Imperial Seal of Japan — for Japan’s 124th Emperor. In the interim, Japan’s fortunes continued to ebb. The battle for the Home Islands began with the US invasion of Okinawa, the southernmost of Japan’s 47 prefectures, on April 1, 1945 (see After the Battle No. 43). For the Japanese military, surrender was unimaginable and in the face of a particularly negative

Multiple tunnel entrances were dug to afford emergency access in the event of enemy bombing. One of them can be found halfway up the slope above the Observatory offices. 47

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The largest subterranean complex constructed at Matsushiro was that beneath Mount Zozan, designed to house the Japanese Government, the Japanese broadcasting corporation NHK and the Central Telephone Agency. Altogether there were 20 main tunnels mined parallel to each other at relocate. Confiding in Marquis Kichi Kido, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal and his closest wartime advisor, the Emperor outlined his intentions on July 31: ‘It would be best to move these [divine] symbols from the Ise Shrine and the Atsuta Shrine near myself, to

intervals of 20 metres, with secondary tunnels running perpendicular to the primary ones every 50 metres. Each tunnel measured four metres wide and 2.7 metres high. With a total length of nearly six kilometres, it gave a floor space of 2,300 square metres.

guard them with my body. I intend to remove them to the Shinshu district.’ A specially built armoured vehicle was on hand to transport Hirohito around Matsushiro and plans were underway to evacuate the other members of the Royal family, the prince and the imperial

dowager to an unused, but furbished tunnel in Zone Chi. With the Emperor and key commanders safely ensconced at Matsushiro, away from the influence of peace supporters, the military hardliners would be free to continue a long and bloody war.

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ENTRANCE

Left: Vertical shot of Mount Zozan taken by a US photo-reconnaissance aircraft in 1947. Following the end of hostilities, US occupation forces transported debris from the Matsushiro 48

tunnels to Tokyo for road-making and airfield construction. Right: The same view today. Since 1990 a section of the Mount Zozan tunnels, some 500 metres in length, has been open to the public.

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A survey by Japan’s Ministry of Construction in 1975 listed 3,394 wartime tunnels scattered throughout the country, those at Matsushiro being the largest in size and scope. Here a guide explains the tunnels and their purpose. newspapers imploring the populace to continue the struggle: ‘Even though we may have to eat grass, swallow dirt, and lie in the fields, we shall fight on to the bitter end, ever firm in our faith that we shall find life in death.’ Ample evidence exists that civilians would have followed the military to death. Propaganda filmmaker Kurosawa Akira (later to achieve fame as one of Japan’s best-

known post-war film directors) for one believed that as the Emperor had decreed, so the Japanese ‘people probably would have done as they were told, and died. The Japanese see self-assertion as immoral and selfsacrifice as the sensible course to take in life.’ Amid the dogged commitment of the populace, the fanatical urging of the military hardliners and the contrasting view of the

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THE FINAL DAYS General Anami revisited Matsushiro on August 5, the day prior to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima (see After the Battle No. 41), to finalise preparations for the Emperor’s transfer. A fervent advocate of Japan’s imperial institution, on no account was he willing to accept any change to his country’s national polity. Moreover, as Army Minister he was averse to a situation in which the Imperial Japanese Army would collapse as the Kaiser’s army had done in 1918. Having studied the option of withdrawing troops to Nagano as a base for protracted guerrilla warfare, Anami began concentrating his forces in southern Kyushu and the Sagami Bay region to deliver a decisive blow against invading US forces. In the face of further setbacks, the Soviet offensive in Manchuria on August 8 and the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, the Imperial Conference of the same day reaffirmed the preservation of kokutai — the concept that Imperial Japan was unique among nations because of a divine Emperor — and the safeguarding of the imperial house. While Hirohito reportedly could not see how Japan could possibly continue to fight, others thought differently. Quick to dismiss the threat of America’s atomic bomb, Yosuke Matsuoka, Japan’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs (best known for his defiant 1933 speech at the League of Nations that severed Japan’s participation as well as being an architect of the Tripartite Pact and the Japanese–Soviet Neutrality Pact), met with Anami on the night of August 11 to discuss a new Matsuoka-led cabinet. A statement concurrently issued by the War Ministry in Anami’s name, but drafted by intransigent junior officers, appeared in

The tunnel descends gradually before reaching the main grid of perpendicular galleries.

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Visitors to the complex enter via an entrance at Nishijo on the eastern side of the mountain spur.

Traces of unfinished tunneling in the wartime construction remain such as this drill left by one of the miners which is still embedded in the rock ceiling . . .

. . . and the grooves in the floor where sleepers once carried the track for the small railway wagons used to haul away the loose rock from the blasting. 49

incumbent cabinet under Admiral Kantaro Suzuki, which favoured accepting the Potsdam Declaration, Anami met with Hirohito on the evening of August 11 to discuss the mooted Matsuoka cabinet. Hirohito, however, saw no alternative other than to end hostilities. During the Imperial Conference of August 14, he called for ‘bearing the unbearable’; ‘I repress my tears and approve the draft plan’, Kido chronicled. While Hirohito cast the pivotal vote for Japan’s acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, a fervent band of militarists under Colonel Aroa Okikatsu (allegedly) plotted to kidnap Hirohito and incarcerate him at

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Responsible for carrying out the mining project, under Army supervision, were the Kajima and Nishimatsu Construction Companies. They employed Japanese railway engineers to design the tunnels and experienced Japanese miners to do the technical part of the tunnelling. However, most of the hard manual labour was done by a force of about 7,000 Korean slave labourers, who worked under gruesome conditions. Despite their awful treatment of forced labourers during the war, the Kajima Construction Company saw fit to proudly reproduce in their official two-volume history certificates of appreciation from the Army honouring the company’s wartime service for the building of the Burma-Thailand Railway (see After the Battle No. 26) as well as the Matsushiro tunnels. Above: Characters scrawled by the Korean workers with kerosene soot remain in the tunnels. Right: A memorial to the Korean slave labourers who perished during construction of the Matsushiro Headquarters today stands outside the entrance to the Mount Zozan tunnels and a memorial service to remember the Korean victims is held here on November 11 each year. In 1990 the Japanese Government finally ceded to demands by Korea and published a list of 90,804 Korean slave labourers brought to Japan during the war, though only 78 were listed as having been taken to Matsushiro. US estimates after the war placed the figure of Korean workers in Japan at 667,684, though the real number has been estimated at nearly double this. The majority of the surviving Korean workers were shipped home after the war. Matsushiro while the war was continued under his name. Major Ida was one of the leaders of an attempted rebellion to occupy the Imperial Palace on the morning of August 15 — the day the war ended — and prevent the broadcast of the Emperor’s (prerecorded) surrender speech before abducting the Emperor. The attempted coup, however, quickly crumpled; the ringleaders, including Anami, committed seppuku (ritualised suicide by disembowelment). Meanwhile at Matsushiro, some 40 boys from the Railway Ministry training school were about to begin tunnelling under Mount Kobo when news of the surrender was

received. Work across all sites in the area ceased the same day. The 46 Koreans engaged in building the Imperial chamber vanished without trace, presumably murdered. Since the start of construction ten months earlier approximately 75 per cent of the project, roughly ten kilometres of tunnels, had been completed at a cost of 200,000,000 yen. The human cost was also high. Without surviving records, estimates vary as to the number of Koreans who perished, some reports state up to 1,500. Local townsfolk recalled after the war how up to five or six workers died each day, a tragedy manifest in the unbroken plume of smoke seen rising from the town’s crematorium.

The foundations of the diesel generators and air compressors used in the tunnelling project can still be seen near the entrance to the Mount Zozan tunnels. 50

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POST-WAR DENIAL Controversially spared from war crimes prosecution, Hirohito publicly renounced his divinity and embarked upon a national tour of his war-ravaged country. As a ‘symbolic Emperor’ under a new constitution, by coincidence he was in Nagano when Marquis Kido was taking the stand as a Class A war criminal at the International Military Tribunal at Tokyo (on October 14, 1945). While Kido was defending himself from charges of guilt as the Emperor’s closest advisor, Hirohito disingenuously asked the prefectural governor, Hayashi Torao: ‘Where are the useless holes dug during the war?’ — a statement at odds with Kido’s voluminous and detailed diary and an affront to those who had toiled and died on the massive project. Left: Except for the official visitors entry, all other entrances to Mount Zozan are sealed off with steel gates while the third tunnel complex at Matsushiro — that under Mount Minakami — is closed altogether for safety reasons. An extinct volcano with brittle rock, part of its tunnels collapsed during a series of earthquakes from 1965 to 1970.

All the firemen appearing in Fires Were Started were depicted as members of the Auxiliary Fire Service, but by the time filming started in February 1942, all the brigades had been amalgamated into the National Fire Service which was created in August 1941. Fires Were Started, produced by the Crown Film Unit in 1943, is one of the best-remembered wartime films documenting the London Blitz. The film focuses primarily upon the firemen of the Auxiliary Fire Service of Sub-Station Y of the main Fire Station 14 in East London, as well as the men and women of their support network – many of whom had served through the Blitz of 1940-41. By the time it was released in 1943 all the separate fire services had been merged into the National Fire Service, and a graphic clarifying this change is placed at the beginning of the print, in part because the cast are wearing AFS uniforms. In brief, the story falls loosely into three parts with part one inevitably setting up the story. The viewer is introduced to the eight main characters; crew training with fire-fighting equipment; and the character ‘Johnny’, played by Fred Griffiths, showing ‘Barrett’, a new entrant played by William Sansom, around the docks within their station’s operating area. Part two commences at sunset, and with the coming of darkness the anticipation of air raids alters the mood of the station. To lighten the atmosphere Sansom vamps an improvised rumba-type hand-me-down on an old piano, to which some of the men jokingly perform a bizarre dance whilst putting on their fire-fighting attire. And as a means to re-introduce the men to the viewer before they depart the station Sansom, with Griffiths singing, performs One Man Went to Mow as their colleagues appear one by one. An air raid siren momentarily terminates the horseplay, but then they continue with a popular song of the period, Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone, the lyric of which is meant to point toward their mortality. With that grim thought in mind they depart for their vehicles and head for their station’s assigned fire. From then on there is all the chaos associated with aerial bombing virtually until dawn: the control room is hit and one of girls on the telephone is thrown to the floor, gashing her forehead, but then recovering to complete the call; a terrified horse gallops out of control down a street; the water supply for the hoses is cut off; and one of the firemen, ‘Jacko’, played by Johnny Houghton, is killed falling into a burning building.

‘Jacko’ Jackson (played by Fireman Johnny Houghton) was one of the crew of the Heavy Unit from Sub-Station ‘14Y’ who is seen to lose his life in an effort to save Sub-Officer George Gravett.

FIRES WERE STARTED Part three begins at dawn: Barrett has proved his worth and in doing so has earned his place within the group, and the fire has been contained. The film then cuts from character to character showing their various ways of dealing with the aftermath of the night’s events, including Jacko’s widow. Finally, the men of Station 14Y are seen bearing Jacko’s coffin to the church. In January 1941 the Public Relations Committee of the Civil Defence had considered that a film drama portraying reconstructed events from the London Blitz (at that time

By Trevor Popple still in progress) would be good propaganda. And the Ministry of Information thought it essential for one of the characters to be seen to die on the basis that people had to accept that ‘sacrifice was necessary’. The Crown Film Unit, formed the previous year, took up the project (dubbed the NFS Film), with Humphrey Jennings being assigned as director in September that year, though shooting would not take place until February 1942.

The film by the Crown Film Unit, the movie-making arm of the Ministry of Information, was initially titled I Was a Fireman but changed on its release in 1943. Here the director, Humphrey Jennings (standing right), uses the roof of the Fordson 7V Heavy Pump Unit as a camera platform alongside the wall of the London Docks. 51

WELLCLOSE SQUARE

On the outbreak of war, the London Fire Brigade covered an area of some 120 square miles, divided into several divisions. ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’ lay north of the Thames, ‘D’ and ‘E’ to the south with the river having its own formation using fireboats. The 65 fire stations were provided with six sub-stations, each with five to ten pumps and 60 Auxiliary Fire Service personnel commanded by two regular officers. In total, there were 390 stations in London with 25,000-30,000 men and women in the AFS. The National

52

FLUTIST

Wellclose Square — the oldest and arguably the most important historically in East London — was completely demolished under a Compulsory Purchase Order in the late 1960s. Taken two years after the filming, this photograph shows the doorway where the flutist (inset) is seen playing in the movie. Ship Alley is off to the right.

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Jennings had joined the GPO film unit in 1934 as a designer and editor, the unit being absorbed into the newly formed Crown Film Unit in August 1940. His first success was a film about the Blitz, collaborating with Harry Watt on London Can Take It. The 20-minute Listen to Britain came next in 1942, and is considered to be the first of his three most revered works, followed by Fires Were Started in 1943 and the third, The Silent Village, released the same year. William Sansom, writing in the early sixties in Film Quarterly, paid a brief tribute to Jennings who died in an accident in Greece on September 24, 1950. From Sansom’s point of view, and that of the rest of the cast, they only saw him in relation to shooting the film and came to like him very much. What went on beyond that in terms of organisation and technical preparation was of no consequence. Jennings selected his cast from stations all over London, which provided them with a break from duty for the duration from early 1942 up until the summer during which time the bombing had tapered off to some degree. As it happened most of them had so far got through the bombing without a scratch, but working with recreated fires proved somewhat different. According to Sansom members of both cast and crew, including Jennings, got burned. Operating in empty warehouses, the fires they lit were always intended to be restricted, but there were the inevitable exceptions, and one got out of control next to a champagne depository causing the real fire brigade to attend. He also refers to a pickle factory – a twostorey building with a flat roof on top of an eight-storey warehouse. Its roof provided a location for the high fire scenes but on one occasion the unit set fire to a staircase within it. Sansom was required to climb it while it was burning and his fireman’s attire was adequate enough to protect him provided he moved quickly. For additional protection an assistant was instructed to douse him down with a bucket of water. Regrettably, what was used was a bucket of paraffin employed to start the fires. The smell from the lingering smoke suppressed the paraffin odour so nobody spotted the error and luckily Sansom ran up the staircase without becoming a human torch. Another stunt of sorts occurs in an exterior scene where Griffiths and Sansom are seen running across a railway track at the docks with Sansom leaving it a little late as a locomotive bears down upon him, its driver grinning!

Fire Service split No. 5 London Region into five Fire Force areas, numbered 34 to 38, each being sub-divided into divisions, B1 Division in No. 36 covering Whitechapel. Jennings’s Sub-Station ‘14Y’ was totally fictitious but he did use an actual station — B1W. At first this was located in Gooch’s Wool Warehouse on The Highway in Stepney, but it later moved to Wellclose Square, Wapping. Left: The street plan seen in this still from the film is a fictitious amalgamation of different Ordnance Survey sheets.

Fortunately the railings around the centre of the square still survive.

Several of the personnel from ‘14Y’ are seen walking to the sub-station. Above: This shot was filmed in King Edward Memorial Park, now under threat of a huge sewer project by

Thames Water. Right: With the closure of the up-river docks, the scene is now dominated by the commercial complex at Canary Wharf.

Two more firemen are seen entering Wellclose Square from Ship Alley which has now completely disappeared. Filming, planned to start on February 5, began two weeks late and the schedule was destined to inevitably spread, the fire sequence by itself taking six weeks. But as one author comments: ‘[It yielded] what must be the most recycled, however much reconstructed, images of the Blitz ever made’. Vehicles were organised for the film: a Heavy Unit, a fire float, turntable ladder, an ambulance, an auxiliary towing taxi, five trailer pumps and a mobile canteen. As it happened this collection proved inadequate when dealing with the film’s fire effects as according to Fred Griffiths, ‘Humphrey used

to set the building alight so much that he had the Fire Brigade down here five or six times. We had the appliances and we were real firemen but we never had the gear to put it out.’ Interior scenes were filmed on sets built at Pinewood. Edward Carrick was the designer and it was he who had designed the enlarged replica of the Operations Room at Bomber Command’s Headquarters, with a hugely exaggerated order of battle board displayed on the walls, in Harry Watt’s Target for Tonight. Filming had been scheduled to end on May 2 but although Jennings was promising that the end was in sight, filming continued until July.

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By January 1942 the script was ready at which point Jennings then turned to the matters of locations and casting, etc. Apparently petty bureaucracy reared its head between the fire brigades, municipalities and central government as all were then squabbling about who paid for responding to calls, including the cost of water. However, for Jennings’ purposes, water used during filming was to be regarded as a fire drill, thus incurring no cost. As to locations, the base for Sub-Station 14Y was in a primary school in Wellclose Square in East London. Trinidad Street was another as was a warehouse near St Katharine’s Dock.

Most sub-stations were located in schools, B1W being situated in St Paul’s Primary School. The ‘14Y’ Heavy Unit is seen driving into the playground. The school was built in 1869

following the demolition of the Danish Church which had stood in the centre of the square since 1696. Today it is St Paul’s Whitechapel Church of England School. 53

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With so little to relate past to present, we were thrilled to see the tell-tale repair indicating the position of the wartime entrance. With photography complete on Fires Were Started Jennings went to Wales to begin work on The Silent Village, even though he was working with Stuart McAllister, editing the film (under the provisional title I Was a Fireman). A problem arose in December as the commercial distributors did not like it, considering it ‘much too long and slow’. A report from one previewer said it was ‘deplorably slow for the first half-hour, although the fire was felt to be particularly good’. More worrying for Jennings was that he had a rival film to contend with as a feature, The Bells Go Down was also in post-production and whichever film was released first would garner the profits and the publicity. So a hasty re-edit was set in motion. No whole scenes were cut, instead they made modest, subtle cuts within scenes: a shot here, a fragment of dialogue there. So by March 29, 1943 Jennings could say the film -– now titled Fires Were Started -– had been shown on the big screen. Dilys Powell in The Sunday Times led the media’s enthusiastic appreciation for it, with only the Daily Telegraph carping at a lack of pace and fires. Two weeks later The Bells Go Down was released and was inevitably compared with Jennings’ film, but it lost out because, as The Times commented on Fires Were Started: ‘it was acted by men who actually were in the NFS [and] is superior at nearly every point’. And it was this film that — 57 years later — first led Stephanie Maltman to decide that something must be done to record the bravery and sacrifice of those wartime fire crews who had lost their lives. She felt that the

The Commanding Officer (‘Sub-Officer Dykes’) on the far right — in real life Station Officer George Gravett who had served 22 years with the London Fire Brigade — with his crew of ‘14Y’, all of whom were serving AFS firemen. places where they had been killed should be marked in an appropriate way by the erection of memorial plaques which led to her founding Firemen Remembered (see issues 111; 144, page 24 and 155, page 50).

It was largely due to the inspiration of Cyril Demarne, a Sub-Officer at West Ham at the beginning of the war and later Chief Officer of the West Ham Fire Brigade, that a national memorial to all members of the Fire Service who had been killed during the war was unveiled in the City of London in 1991. 54

The most recent incident to be remembered is one close to the heart of Winston Ramsey as it occurred within a few hundred yards of our first office on Plaistow Road in East London, as Stephanie explains:

Cyril lived to the remarkable age of 103 and before he died Stephanie Maltman asked him about the filming of Fires Were Started. He told her that he loaned the film company the turntable ladder (left) and also revealed that he even made a brief appearance in one scene — the tall fireman at the rear (right).

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The scene in 1941 depicted by Leslie Baker in his illustration: ‘3 a.m. in the Plaistow Road’.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013 with firemen in attendance from the Stratford Fire Station.

‘On the night of March 19/20, 1941 — which, due to the intensity of the raid, later became known in West Ham as ‘The Wednesday’ — the warning sounded at about 7.30 p.m. The police report states that at least 50 high-explosive bombs, 15 parachute mines and about 2,000 incendiaries fell on the borough that night. By midnight it was obvious that things were becoming so bad that help was needed. A call for reinforcements was directed to the Beckenham and Bromley area (south of the River Thames) and a convoy consisting of crews from West Wickham and Bromley quickly directed to the Silvertown area to assist. Because the tunnels under the Thames were closed that night — as they often were during a heavy raid due to the danger of flooding — their journey was much longer than usual and necessitated taking a roundabout route crossing via either Tower or London Bridge. Thomas Webb, now sadly no longer with us, was an Auxiliary Fireman based at Bromley during the war and was part of the convoy that night in the appliance travelling behind the West Wickham crew. Just before midnight they found themselves driving south along Plaistow Road. “We came to this point where the road was covered. There was hose and debris everywhere, we couldn’t move,

and they [the bombs] were still coming down and we were being strafed every five minutes from the planes up there. I said to my driver, ‘This is no good, we’ve got to get out of here’, and the bomb fell just after that.” ‘The bomb exploded between the two appliances, the one in which Tom Webb was travelling and the one in front containing the crew from West Wickham. The force of the explosion threw Tom back into his seat and injured his back, an injury that continued to trouble him for the rest of his life, but its main impact was on the appliance in front. Tom, finding it difficult to continue at this point in the story, recalled that the men from West Wickham were smashed to bits “and they didn’t die quickly, and they didn’t die quietly”. ‘Just before midnight five of the West Wickham firemen were found dead in the roadway: Charles Drew, 29; Denis Fitzgerald, 28; Stanley Short, 36; Frederick Moore, 35, and Lesley Palmer, 31. At 6 p.m. the following day the body of Fireman Harold Huggett from the West Ham Brigade — who actually lived at No. 110 Plaistow Road — was discovered nearby. ‘All the West Wickham firemen were buried in a single grave in the churchyard of West Wickham Parish Church and their

funeral on March 27 was attended by the Mayor of Beckenham and the Bishop of Croydon plus many local dignitaries and representatives from the Fire Service from as far afield as Chingford, Harrow, Barking, East Ham, West Ham and Erith. The procession with five hearses, each draped in the Union Jack and bearing hundreds of wreaths, stretched for almost a mile as it made its way from the fire station to the church accompanied by the band of the Bexley Auxiliary Fire Service. ‘The body of another West Ham fireman, Arthur Goreham, a good friend of Harold Huggett and who lived just off Plaistow Road, was not recovered until 4 p.m. on March 21. Mr and Mrs Huggett kindly offered to have both of them buried together and on March 27 they were laid to rest in the same grave in the City of London Cemetery at Manor Park (see rear cover). ‘Although Goreham’s date of death is recorded on the Civilian War Dead Roll as the 20th, at this distance in time it is not possible to confirm the precise circumstances. However, when Cyril Demarne wrote up the Plaistow Road incident in his book The London Blitz — A Fireman’s Tale, he did not include his name as one of the casualties and, as West Ham’s fire chief, he undoubtedly knew first-hand what had happened.’

The five West Wickham firemen were interred together in their parish churchyard and Harold Huggett was buried in the City of London Cemetery along with his friend Arthur Goreham (see back cover).

On the 72nd anniversary, Firemen Remembered organised a service at Stratford Fire Station for the crewmen that were killed that night in 1941. Stephanie Maltman explained the events of ‘The Wednesday’ after which we moved to the scene of the incident in Plaistow Road. Roy Goodey and Neil Bloxham, dressed appropriately in AFS uniform, then unveiled the plaque which included a dedication to Cyril Demarne. 55

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