February 1996 - World War II History Round Table
October 1998
Volume 7 Number 1
Published by The WW II History Roundtable
Edited by Jim and Jon Gerber
Welcome to the 12th year of the Dr. Harold C. Deutsch World War II History Roundtable. We are very pleased with the continued interest in preserving WW II history as shown by the capacity crowds at our meetings. The following is the 1998- 1999 season of programs. We hope that you will find them interesting and attend regularly and bring along a friend.
October 8
From Aachen to Marburg - 104th Infantry Division and 3rd Armored Division.
November 12
The Secrets of Ultra - Rhone Valley Campaign and the Battle of the Bulge.
December 10
To Save Bastogne - The Center of the Bulge.
January 14
Marine Operations on Tarawa and Bougainville.
February 11
15th Air Force - Victory in North Africa and Italy.
March 11
The Battle of the Coral Sea - The Victory of Naval Aviation.
April 8
Merchant Marines - Delivering the Arms of Victory in Seven Seas.
May 6 (1st Thursday - Please note date change.)
Omaha Beach - A Hard-Won Victory
For those of you who are interested in an excellent book on what it was like to be a US infantryman in WW II, I highly recommend a book that I read this summer. The name is: The Deadly Brotherhood by John McManus. It covers everything about the American infantryman from his weapons and food to how he felt about his enemies on the battlefield. The author interviewed hundreds of veterans to be able to give their first-hand accounts of WW II.
Ghost of the Ardennes
The following story comes a book called The Unexplained Mysteries of WW II. The men of Co. B of the US 87th Mortar Battalion were holed up in the old wood and stone houses in the hamlet of Sadzot, Belgium, on the northern shoulder of what became known as the Battle of the Bulge. Five days earlier on 12/16/44, the outfit had been pulled from the Aachen sector 25 miles to the north and rushed to Sadzot, which was directly in the path of German spearheads that were charging toward their initial objective, Liege.
It was eerie in Sadzot. The mortarmen had been sitting on a powder keg for three days and nights without seeing a sign of a German soldier or hearing a shot fired. Where was the enemy spearhead that was supposed to be coming toward them?
An hour before midnight on Dec. 27th, Corporal John Snyder was hunched over his communications radio and heard an alarming report.
“ A large formation of Krauts are headed through the woods directly for your village!” the voice on the radio warned.
Capt. James Marshall, the company commander, alerted the entire unit, whose members rushed to defensive positions along the front of the village. The GIs anxiously awaited the attack but there was no enemy activity to be seen. After two hours, the alert was canceled and all but those assigned to outpost duty went back to bed.
Back at the command post, Capt. Marshall asked his radio operator who at battalion had sounded the alert. “I don’t know,” corporal Snyder replied. “The guy simply came on the air and started talking.”
An inquiry was made at battalion. No, the call had not come from there. Where did it come from? The radio wavelength connected only the mortar company and the rifle battalion. If the caller had been an American from some other unit, how had he known the radio frequency? How had he been aware that there was a mortar unit in Sadzot? And how had he known that the German force was heading for that particular hamlet?
On the other hand, if the mystery caller had been an English-speaking German, how had he known B Company’s wavelength? And would such a person have been likely to warn the Americans that they were about to be struck by a major offensive?
Capt. Marshall contacted other higher-level headquarters in the region. None of them had made the warning call.
About an hour later, all was quiet in Sadzot. Most of the 65 men were sleeping soundly. Suddenly, pandemonium reigned. From out of the forest on three sides of the village charges hordes of wildly yelling foot soldiers of the crack 2nd SS Panzer Division. There were explosions, small arms fire and bursting grenades. Grabbing their weapons, the GIs dashed outside to do battle against the overwhelming force of an estimated four hundred SS men.
Flames from burning houses cast eerie, dancing shadows. Such was the confusion of the savage nighttime hand-to-hand fight that it was as though all of the combatants on both sides had been dumped into a gigantic tumbler by some supernatural force, then been thoroughly mixed and redeposited randomly throughout Sadzot.
The death struggle lasted only about a half hour. Seventeen GIs managed to get out of the village alive. The remainder of the company was killed, wounded or captured. Among the survivors was Captain James Marshall, who still wondered about the ghost voice.
Who had made that call would forever remain a mystery.
National Best
The greatest opposed single day’s advance in the history of the US Army is probably the ninety-odd miles covered by the 3rd Armored Division as it drove across the Rhineland on March 28th, 1945, under the able leadership of Major General Maurice Rose, one of the highest-ranking Jewish officers in the army, who was killed in action four days later while trying to avoid capture.
Further reading on tonight’s topic:
Lightning Joe
by J. Lawton Collins
Presidio Press, Novato, CA
1979
Timberwolf Tracks
by Hoegh & Doyle
Infantry Journal Press, Washington
1946
The Siegfried Line Campaign
by Charles B. McDonald
US Army Center of Military History
Washington 1963
Order of Battle US Army, WW II
by Shelby Stanton
Presidio Press, Novato, CA
1984
Conquer,The Story of the Ninth Army
by US Army
Infantry Journal Press, Washington
1947
Spearhead in the West, The 3rd Armored Division
by Franz Joseph Henrich
Druckerel und Verlag, Frankfurt
1945
Against the Panzers
by Vannoy & Karamales
McFarland Press, Jefferson, NC
1996
Bloody Aachen
by Charles Whiting
Leo Cooper, Ltd., London
1976
See you in October for the next presentation in the Dr. Harold C. Deutsch Lecture Series.
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