Engineer
I believe we had some
of these distributed among the three regiments. We had
several problems. One, there was a levee system on that part of the Rhine, which was
back from the river a quarter to a half a mile, depending on exact location. Once you
crossed that levee, you were in a flood plain, which was open country and subject to
visibility from the enemy side.
This led to the decision that the crossing would be at night and would be protected by
very heavy artillery fire. It was one of our more detailed planned operations. I
remember that over 50 battalions of artillery fired in direct support of the crossing. In
order to guide the initial crossing limits, we devised a scheme of setting machine guns
on the river bank firing tracers to define the limits of each assault unit sector.
We also used a system of colored lights so that after each boat reached the far shore it
could return to its proper area for the next load. Insofar as I know, it's the only time
that such a scheme was used. But in those days outboard motors were nowhere near
as dependable as they are today.
In order to try to ensure that these motors, which couldn't run for at least two days
before their assault use, would start when required, I got from the medical battalion
enough chemical heating pads to provide two for each motor. About an hour before
time to go, a small amount of water put in the pad initiated the heat source of the pads.
By putting the pads on the motor blocks, the blocks were warmed. We did not have a
single failure to start at the time we made the initial crossing and didn't lose a single
boat in the first wave.
Our major problem on the crossing came considerably later when the support engineer
unit, which had done a very good job of ferrying some of the tanks across initially,
continued to operate the ferry too long hoping to get one more tank across. The
floating bridge was being put in by supporting corps engineer units. Contrary to
instructions, the ferry continued to operate. Just about the time the bridge was
essentially complete, the motor quit on one of the boats pushing the ferry. The ferry hit
the bridge and knocked it out. It took another 12 hours to make repairs and complete
the bridge. That was the major adverse event during the crossing. It certainly reinforces
the idea that it is very undesirable to operate ferries upstream of a floating bridge.
However, the floating bridge was still completed in less than 24 hours after the initial
troop crossing.
Q.
Even with the accident?
A.
Yes. However, it took longer to get the bridge back after the accident than it had taken
to put it in. My memory is that it was essentially completed in 8 hours, or a little over,
and that it took 12 hours to put it back in after the accident,
46
Previous Page
