Bob McCarty Writes

On the occasion of Memorial Day and in honor of all those who paid the ultimate price in service to their country, I decided to publish a series of war stories that hold a special value in my heart, because they were written by my father, Ted, who served as a low-ranking enlisted man in the U.S. Army during World War II. The stories appear in his 1992 autobiography, Some Events in One Life: Mine! Please know he captured these stories as a means to provide his children and theirs context for his participation in one of history’s most harrowing events, World War II, not for any commercial gain. This is part eleven of twelve.

When morning of the second day came, it was established by a reconnaissance party that most of the Germans had already left the city and moved across the river. A bulldozer filled a short section of the ditch, which had been established as a tank trap, and now the tanks were free to cross the averted trap and help the infantry again. After three days, Linnich was both captured and picked clean of snipers.

The tenacity with which the Germans defended Linnich gave warning that wresting these river towns – along the Ruhr or any other river – from the Germans would require our best effort. The Rhine would be the next river barrier after the Ruhr.

Another city our regiment helped the British capture, of which I do remember the name but not the date or sequence of capture, was the fortified, coal-mining city of Gelsenkirchen. This was a town of about 20,000 before the war. It was a major stronghold on the Siegfried Line and an important communications center. The town was situated astride a small river, the Wurm.

A Life magazine article at the time described the action for the city:

“Allied planes and guns battered the water soaked, coal-mining city of Geilenkirchen for three days before U.S. and British troops edged warily into the outskirts. Inside the town, buildings were completely demolished or turned into empty boxes of masonry. Outside, fields were pitted with hundreds of shell and bomb craters. The British first fought into Geilenkirchen at night but were thrown out by a German counterattack. U. S. and British troops had a firm hold on the city by noon the next day.

“In getting to the city of Geilenkirchen, the British had to fight their way through smaller towns. One of the towns was Bauchem. Before they assaulted Bauchen, they had pounded the town with a barrage of 10,000 mortar shells, reducing most of it to ruins.”

Actually, the British were not involved in the recapture of Geilenkirchen. The 102nd took it, with the help of 2nd Armored Division tanks and the Army Air Corps, sometime around Nov. 19, 1944. This town was taken during a cold, drizzling rain. From where I was on the edge of town, I could see a coal mine tipple located a few hundred yards or more outside the city limits. A tipple is the structure that serves as both an entrance via an elevator and as the place where the slag is brought to the surface and then dumped in an elongated, tall pile on the ground. It was about 45 or 50 feet high and the Germans were thought to be using it as an observation tower to direct their artillery fire. I watched a lone American dive bomber come in high, dive almost straight down then pull out of its dive after dropping its lethal load on the structure. It then went back for more bombs and returned to drop them also. This continued until the stipple was completely destroyed.

The streets were lined with continuous buildings that had touched one another before being partially demolished. Upon leaving the city, we were walking single file on the east side of a North-South street hugging a continuous wall of buildings, most of which in this immediate area had been left standing. Fallen roof slates lay broken on the narrow street. Each man was spaced about ten feet from the next. As we walked in a cold drizzle along the water-puddled street, the Germans opened up with a mortar barrage. You don’t hear a mortar shell until it is almost upon you, then you hear a brief ‘whoosh’ followed immediately by a big explosion. Mortar shells, coming in at random, hit buildings nearby, causing some of the roof tiles to again rain down onto the brick-paved street. This makes a heck of a racket. Then came a swoosh just before a round hit the side of a building directly across from me, a very short distance of only 15 feet or less away. It fell to the street, where it threw off a shower of sparks as it spun around. It was a dud which then lay there as useless as a discarded baby rattle.

Everyone had already hit the brick street, and it was as quiet as could be expected for a sergeant who kept yelling, “Stay down! Everybody stay down!”

That round, elongated piece of metal looked as big as a house to us for we fully realized its potential lethal power and its closeness. Everyone waited, hugging the wet bricks, some with hands over their ears, frozen in their position. Would it explode? Does it have some kind of a delayed fuse?

“Everyone up. It’s a dud. Let’s get out of here,” came the command from the sergeant, echoed by an officer.

The wet and chilled soldiers rose, looked at one another and walked away from the now- inert missile. Again, I, as well as many of my fellow soldiers, had been lucky, just plain lucky!

* * *

My Father’s War Stories From World War II — Part One

My Father’s War Stories From World War II — Part Two

My Father’s War Stories From World War II — Part Three

My Father’s War Stories From World War II — Part Four

My Father’s War Stories From World War II — Part Five

My Father’s War Stories From World War II — Part Six

My Father’s War Stories From World War II — Part Seven

My Father’s War Stories From World War II — Part Eight

My Father’s War Stories From World War II — Part Nine

My Father’s War Stories From World War II — Part Ten

My Father’s War Stories From World War II — Part Twelve