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 five of twelve.

On Nov. 16, 1944, the recent honeymoon of inactivity was over. The Allied Forces launched a major offensive all along the front. The nearest objective in our immediate area was the town of Immendorf. Two other nearby villages, Floverich and Loverich, which were in a roughly northwest-southeast alignment with Immendorf, were attacked at the same time. Emmendorf was situated on both a main, generally east-west trending, highway and a railroad line.

The next major objectives after Immendorf were several other towns on the way to breach the nearby Siegfried Line fortifications. The 2nd battalion, in Task Force Ten of which the 406th was a part, was to attack on the left thus securing the flank of the neighboring Task Force Two. Once the town was reached tanks would take the lead, followed by foot soldiers, to furnish cover in house-to-house fighting and to mop up any remaining enemy.

The Siegfried Line was a generalized 940-mile line of defense built by the Germans. It was placed at varying but relatively short distances inside their western border. It was not one continuous line but a series of fortifications reaching from Kiev, near the Netherlands, down to the southwestern part of Germany which was a short distance north of Basal, Switzerland. There were 20,000 bunkers. Most were concrete pillboxes arranged so that machine gun, mortar or rifle fire from one would intersect with that of its neighbor, thus an area would be completely covered by this interlocking field of fire.

There were also areas occupied by artillery and antitank placements. Trenches, concrete “dragon’s teeth” tank barriers, barbed wire and mines fields were abundant. Some of the pillboxes were sealed air tight with a series of pipes running between emplacements to let in fresh air when necessary. Narrow slits were built into the pillboxes for the placement of machine guns, or even 88-millimeter rocket launchers. Located above the slits were three-inch-thick metal covers that could be lowered over them. Inside the larger pillboxes were tracks upon which heavy machine guns could be moved quickly from one slit opening to another. The pillboxes had a major defect: air ducts that exited directly above for use when no enemy was threatening. When the enemy was knocking at the door, these ducts could be forced open and explosives dropped inside.

The value of this line of defense depended largely upon reserve units that could be moved into position when needed. By now, however, the Nazi did not have unlimited mobile reserves to use for this purpose so the line was only a shadow of the impenetrable defense that it was originally planned to be. Allied troops captured some, blew up others and bypassed many in their swift advance in November 1944.

Many of the details have escaped my memory but, as I recall, we were in the town of Waurichen before the jump off to capture Immendorf. At the time, the name of towns did not mean a thing to us except that those ahead of us had to be captured. Forgive me if I sometimes do not correctly remember either the names of villages or the order in which they were taken.

`We waited for our initial attack to start. The date was Nov. 16, 1944. It had been scheduled for the Nov. 10, but bad weather precluded the use of support bombers deemed necessary to help with the job.

There was a lot of built-up tension among our soldiers. No one knew what it would be like to attack since our outfit had never been ordered to be that aggressive up until then. The adrenalin coursed through our bodies. But we were as ready as we ever would be. I had spent about one and one-half years preparing for this while many others in our outfit had more time in the service than that.

At a time like this, several things enter the mind of each individual. Will I be a coward? Will I be able to shoot another human being if I meet him face to face? Will we, as a unit, prove our worth against the enemy who are probably much more experienced soldiers than we are?

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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 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 Eleven

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

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