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battle
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THE ALLIED CAPTURE OF TRIER
NAMING THE IWO JIMA FLAG-RAISERS
THE SHELLING OF PATTON’S NANCY HQ
9
770306 154103
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No. 176
£5
NUMBER 176
© Copyright
After the Battle
2017
Editor: Karel Margry
Editor-in-Chief: Winston G. Ramsey
Published by
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BELGIUM
GERMANY
LUXEMBOURG
TRIER
FRANCE
The city of Trier lies close to the borders of Luxembourg and France.
The city of Trier, located in the Rhineland,
is the oldest city in Germany. Situated on the
banks of the Mosel (Moselle) river, just a few
kilometres north and downstream of its con-
fluence with the Saar, it was founded by the
Celts in the 4th century BC as Treuorum.
Conquered by the Romans and renamed
Trevorum or Augusta Treverorum (‘City of
Augustus among the Treveri’) in 16 BC, it
grew to become a main seat of the Roman
emperors and, from 316 AD, the capital of
the prefecture of the Gauls, overseeing much
of the Western Roman Empire. With a popu-
lation of 75,000 to 100,000 it was one of the
largest cities in the whole empire.
The city being the seat of a bishop since
Roman times, in the Middle Ages the Arch-
bishop-Elector of Trier was one of the seven
electors of the Holy Roman Empire. Rich in
historical and religious lore, Trier contains
more important Roman remains than any
other place in northern Europe. These
include the Porta Nigra city gate at the
northern end of the old town, the Basilica of
Constantine, an amphitheatre, two Thermae
(bath complexes) and the stone-arch Roman
bridge over the Moselle.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, Trier was
sought after by France, who invaded five times
and finally succeeded in claiming Trier (which
they called Trèves) in 1794 during the French
Revolutionary Wars. After the defeat of
Napoleon in 1815, the city passed to Prussia and
it became part of the German Empire in 1871.
Long since the administrative, commercial
and cultural centre of the region, by the start
of the 20th century Trier had also become a
traffic hub, particularly of rail transport, with
main lines running north-east to Koblenz
and Köln, south to Saarbrücken, west to
Luxembourg and south-west to Thionville.
Economically, it was a principal market and
distribution centre for the Moselle whine
region. Apart from a medium-sized tractor
works and a few smaller machine-building
factories there was little industry. The city
was also a main garrison town, featuring sev-
eral military barracks, most of them located
in the north-eastern part of the city, and a
military airfield at Euren in the south-west.
CONTENTS
THE ALLIED CAPTURE OF TRIER
PACIFIC
Naming the Iwo Jima Flag-Raisers
IT HAPPENED HERE
The Shelling of Patton’s Nancy HQ
CRIME IN WWII
Murder at Comrie Camp
2
22
32
47
Front Cover:
Troops of the US 10th Armored
Division re-enact the capture of the Römerbrücke
over the Moselle river in the German city of Trier
for the camera of Signal Corps photographer
Tech/5 Moll on March 5, 1945. The actual seizure
of the bridge had taken place in the early hours of
March 2 with no photographer present, hence this
re-enactment three days later. (USNA/Karel Margry)
Back Cover:
POW Camp No. 21 at Cultybraggan,
just outside the village of Comrie in West
Perthshire, Scotland — then and now. In
December 1944, the camp witnessed the murder
of one of its inmates by his fellow-German
prisoners who suspected him of being a traitor.
(Reproduced from GSGS 3958, 1943.)
Acknowledgements:
For assistance with the Trier
story the Editor would like to thank Tobias Teyke of
the Trier Stadtarchiv. For his invaluable help with the
Iwo Jima Flag-Raisers story, he thanks Stephen
Foley. For their assistance with the Shelling of
Patton’s Nancy HQ story, he is grateful to Peter
Hendrikx and Frédérique Claudon of the DSDEN
Nancy. For their aid with the Comrie Camp story he
extends his appreciation to Traugott Vitz, Matthew
Spicer, Kirsten Giersig of the Volksbund Deutscher
Kriegsgräberfürsorge, Bill Perry at the Wiltshire
Museum, Christian Campbell at the Comrie Heritage
Group, Matt Evans at Perth Crematorium and Isabelle
Hernandez at the Kensington Central Library.
Photo Credit Abbreviations:
BA — Bundesarchiv;
USMC — US Marine Corps; USNA — US National
Archives.
Like in all cities in Germany, the rise of Nazism brought Trier a multiplication of polit-
ical rallies and mass events. Here the SA, the Nazi Party’s paramilitary organisation,
marches through Simeon-Strasse on the occasion of the NSDAP-Kreistag (Nazi Party
Region Day) in July 1937.
2
STADTARCHIV TRIER
On March 2, 1945, the German city of Trier, located at the con-
fluence of the Mosel (Moselle) and Saar rivers, was captured by
the US 10th Armored Division of Lieutenant General George S.
Patton’s US Third Army. This was only made possible because
Patton, after having wrangled the 10th Armored from SHAEF
reserve, disobeyed strict orders not to use the division beyond
the Saar river, let alone to have it advance on Trier. The city
was a lynchpin in the Siegfried Line and its capture opened the
way for a Third Army drive to the Rhine, but this was not the
only reason why ‘Old Blood and Guts’ was so keen on wanting
to take Trier. To Patton — a man eager to follow in the foot-
steps of ancient warriors — the city was also important
because it was a venue of history, the oldest city of Germany, a
place conquered by the Roman legions of Julius Caesar. Here a
Sherman tank stands guard at the city’s most-famous relic of
its Roman past: the Porta Nigra city gate.
THE ALLIED CAPTURE OF TRIER
When in 1936 Nazi Germany began building
the Westwall along its western border, the
trace of this line of fortifications ran just a few
kilometres west and south-west of Trier. Fol-
lowing the line of the Sauer river (which at this
point forms the border with Luxembourg), the
belt of anti-tank obstacles and bunkers crossed
the Moselle immediately above its junction
with the Saar, moving further away from the
border as it followed the course of the latter
river southwards to Saarbrücken.
War broke out in September 1939, and
Trier — by now a city with a population of
77,000 — settled in its wartime role as
Wehrmacht garrison and training centre, its
adherence to the Nazi regime overseen by
the NSDAP-Gauleiter of Moselland, Gustav
Simon, the two local NSDAP-Kreisleiters —
Albert Müller for the city and Paul Wipper
Right:
Built in grey sandstone between
186 and 200 AD, the Porta Nigra (Black
Gate) was one of four entrances erected
at each side of the roughly rectangular
Roman city. Its name originates from the
Middle Ages, by which time the colour of
its stone had darkened from grey to
black. The best-preserved Roman city
gate north of the Alps, it is today a
UNESCO World Heritage Site.
3
for the surrounding countryside — and the
Nazi Oberbürgermeister, Konrad Gorges.
Predominantly Catholic, the Trier region
also was home to some 1,700 Jews, 800 of
whom lived in the city itself. Already beset
by anti-Jewish measures since 1933, between
By Karel Margry
1941 and 1943 over 600 of them were
deported to death camps in Eastern Europe,
where the vast majority of them perished.
ATB
USNA
Trier region had come to a standstill. After
that, and until its capture by the Allies two
months later, there were no more bomber
raids on the city, only dive-bombing and
strafing attacks, which however caused little
further destruction.
By war’s end, 41 per cent of Trier lay in
ruins and only 1,422 (15 percent) of the city’s
9.097 houses had suffered no damage.
Bombs had killed a total of 382 people (655
in the wider Trier area), with enemy shelling
adding another 54.
STATIC FRONT
The 5th Armored Division, whose pene-
tration of the Westwall at Wallendorf on
September 13 had caused the first shells to
fall on Trier, was part of the V Corps of the
US First Army. This first breach of what the
Allies called the Siegfried Line was heavily
counter-attacked, causing the corps com-
mander, Major General Edward H. Brooks,
to order the abandonment of the Wallendorf
bridgehead and a withdrawal behind the
Sauer river on the 21st.
Thereafter, this particular sector of the
Western Front — at its closest point only nine
kilometres away from Trier — became static,
lapsing into relative quietness that would last
for five months, until early February 1945.
The V Corps continued to hold the line, its
three divisions rotating their battalions in the
forward sectors, until it was relieved by the
VIII Corps in early October. From then on
until early December, the formation closest
to Trier was the US 83rd Division.
The onslaught of the German Ardennes
offensive just to the north, which began on
December 16, made it imperative to hold the
southern shoulder of the bulge that was
forming and precluded any moves, let alone
offensive action, in this zone. The only
change was that, with the northward shift of
Lieutenant General George S. Patton’s US
Third Army as it counter-attacked into the
left flank of the German armies in the
Ardennes, the sector opposite Trier was no
longer the responsibility of the VIII Corps
but was taken over by Third Army’s XII
Corps. However, like before, the formations
holding the line — the 4th Division (replaced
by the 76th Division in late January) and the
2nd Cavalry Group — limited themselves to
maintaining a lookout and sending out occa-
sional patrols across the Sauer. Any attack
towards Trier had to wait until the crisis in
the Ardennes was over.
USNA
Trier had suffered badly under the Allied bomber offensive, raids in August and
December 1944 destroying nearly half of the city. Particularly hard hit was the area
around the main railway station, pictured here in March 1945.
AIR RAIDS ON TRIER
Compared to other German cities, Trier
suffered not as badly from the Allied air
offensive. The first large attack occurred on
April 1, 1943 when 12 RAF Mosquitos
bombed the Reichsbahn-Ausbesserungs-
werk (State Railways Maintenance Works,
RAW) in the southern district of Euren and
the railway marshalling yards in the northern
district of Ehrang, causing little destruction
but killing 27 people. The Americans first
attacked Trier on May 11, 1944, when 60
B-17s of the 1st Bombardment Division of
the Eighth Air Force attacked the Ehrang
marshalling yards, causing considerable dam-
age.
The most-destructive raid happened on
August 14, 1944, when ten B-17s of the 29th
Bomb Group, returning from southern Ger-
many with bombs aboard and looking for a
target of opportunity, dropped 11,000 incen-
diaries on the old city. The resulting fires
destroyed the famous Basilika church and
heavily damaged the Dom cathedral, the
Frauenkirche church, the City Museum and
several other monumental buildings, and
destroyed or heavily damaged 182 dwellings,
leaving 1,200 people homeless.
Less than a month later, in early Septem-
ber, the Allied armies that had broken out
from the Normandy bridgehead were
approaching the German border. On Sep-
tember 13 and 14, the first Allied shells fell
on the city — a corollary of the piercing of
the Westwall by the US 5th Armored Divi-
sion at Wallendorf, 28 kilometres to the
north-west. A week later, on the 20th, the
main railway station and marshalling yards
were attacked by medium bombers of the US
Ninth Air Force, the beginning of bombing
and dive-bombing attacks that would con-
tinue throughout the autumn and winter.
From October 26, with the front having sta-
bilised along the Westwall, the city was
under regular artillery shelling, causing a fur-
ther steadily rising toll of casualties.
Worried by the danger from the bombing
and shelling, increasing numbers of inhabi-
tants decided to flee from the city, seeking
safety elsewhere. Then, in late October,
Gauleiter Gustav Simon ordered the com-
plete evacuation of the city, the only people
allowed to stay being a reduced staff of tech-
nical, medical, security and military person-
nel — some 3,000 persons in total. Thus from
the autumn of 1944 Trier was a near-empty
place, a ghost town practically devoid of
inhabitants.
4
That winter, Trier served as one of the rail-
heads bringing in troops and supplies for the
German counter-offensive in the Ardennes,
as a result of which it received special atten-
tion from the Allied air forces. No. 3 Group
of RAF Bomber Command carried out three
daylight raids, on December 19, 21 and 23,
which dropped a total of 1,281 tons of high
explosive on the inner city. They caused
great destruction and, despite the evacua-
tions, still killed 182 people and injured at
least 300. However, their useful effect for the
Allied ground troops fighting in the
Ardennes was negligible as the attacks did
not hit the city’s two road bridges over the
Moselle and the Ehrang railhead feeding the
German armies lay on the river’s west bank
anyway. The Americans did far better, the
Eighth and Ninth Air Forces in subsequent
attacks the following week destroying not
only the Ehrang yards but also the vital rail-
way bridges over the Saar at Konz-Karthaus,
seven kilometres south of the city, and over
the Moselle at Pfalzel, just north of it. By
January 2, 1945, all railway traffic in the
Rebuilt from the ground up after the war, the present-day Hauptbahnhof looks com-
pletely different from its predecessor. In contrast, the two buildings across the
square, apparently little damaged by the bombs, remain virtually unchanged.
ATB
REDUCING THE ORSCHOLZ
SWITCH LINE
As it finally happened, the attack that
would lead to the Allied capture of Trier did
not come in from the west but from the
south. And, contrary to what the Germans
expected, it came in ‘through the back door’,
approaching the city on a route east of the
Moselle instead of west of the river. The tak-
ing of Trier came about as a direct conse-
quence of the operations by the Third Army
to clear the so-called Saar-Moselle Triangle.
The triangle was bounded on the west by
the Moselle, the east by the Saar, and the
south by the so-called Orscholz-Riegel
(Orscholz Switch Line), an east-west exten-
sion of the main Westwall line, blocking off
the base of triangle with a belt of anti-tank
obstacles, bunkers and pillboxes (see
After
the Battle
No. 163). Some 27 kilometres long
from apex to base, and 18 kilometres wide at
the bottom, the triangle was bisected north
to south by a long hog-back ridge.
The Third Army had first approached the
switch line in mid-November 1944, but local
attacks in bitter fighting from the 21st to the
27th — by Combat Command A of the 10th
Armored Division and the 358th Infantry of
the 90th Division — had only made a few
indentions, near the villages of Tettingen and
Oberleuken, when all further offensive
action was cancelled due to mounting losses
and bad weather. The little ground won was
relinquished in December to free units for
the Ardennes. It was only in January 1945,
after the crisis in the Ardennes had been
overcome, that the Third Army could return
attention to the sector and start planning a
new offensive.
Like before, the attack was the responsibil-
ity of the XX Corps of Major General Walton
H. Walker. This time he had available a rela-
tively green formation, the 94th Infantry
Division commanded by Major General
Harry J. Malony. Moved into the line on Jan-
uary 7, the 94th’s front faced the entire 18-
kilometre stretch of the Orscholz Switch,
from the Saar in the east to the Moselle in the
west. As stipulated by Walker, the 94th was
to begin a series of battalion-sized, limited-
objective probes into the fortified line. The
idea behind them was partly to give the divi-
sion some battle seasoning, partly to contain
the Germans in the Orscholz position and
possibly draw reserves away from other sec-
tors, and partly to gain a foothold in the forti-
fied line for later exploitation.
Opposing the 94th Division, and responsi-
ble for defence of the whole Saar-Moselle
Triangle, was the 416. Infanterie-Division, a
relatively good formation commanded by
Generalleutnant Kurt Pflieger. It was subor-
dinated to the LXXXII. Armeekorps of Gen-
eral der Infanterie Walther Hahm, which
operated on the northern wing of Heeres-
gruppe G under direct command of the army
group commander, Generaloberst Johannes
Blaskowitz. Pflieger’s division had three regi-
ments but only two of them, Grenadier-Regi-
ment 712 and 713, manned the switch line.
The third, Grenadier-Regiment 714,
defended the Westwall beyond the Saar.
On January 14, the 94th Division began its
series of probing stabs, a battalion of the
376th Infantry (Colonel Harold H. McClune)
ploughing through half a metre of snow to
assault Tettingen, the first village behind the
dragon’s teeth. The attack went unexpect-
edly well and by nightfall on the second day
the regiment had seized three villages form-
ing the western anchor of the switch line.
However, the Americans were in for a
piece of bad luck. As it happened, Heeres-
gruppe G had chosen this very sector as a
corridor for a spoiling attack designed to
relieve pressure on the 7. Armee in the
Ardennes. It was to be carried out by the 11.
Panzer-Division, a recently refurbished unit
of considerable strength commanded by
Generalleutnant Wend von Wietersheim.
Although the American front line stood only nine kilometres west of Trier, the attack
that was to capture the city was launched from over 35 kilometres away and came
from the south. It was part of the American offensive to reduce the so-called Saar-
Moselle Triangle, the triangular territory bounded by the Saar river in the east, the
Moselle river in the west and closed off in the south by the so-called Orscholz Switch
Line, a fortified position built by the Germans as a westward extension of the
Siegfried Line.
Through lack of fuel and because capacity of
bridges over the Saar was limited, the divi-
sion’s 50 Panther tanks had to remain east of
the river, the raid now to be carried out by 30
PzKpfw IVs, 20 to 30 assault guns and two
panzer grenadier regiments.
The storm broke at dawn on the 18th.
Given ample warning of the approaching
enemy by American pilots, the 94th Division
was waiting as a long column of tanks, assault
guns, infantry-laden half-tracks and grena-
diers on foot came down the road from the
village of Sinz and struck at the Americans
dug in at Butzdorf and Tettingen. Close-in
fighting raged throughout the day as the
battle gulfed back and forth. Butzdorf fell
but Tettingen was held. During the night of
January 21/22, the Germans fought their way
into the village of Nennig on the Moselle
floodplain, but that was the end of their
armoured counter-stroke.
By then, General Malony had already
launched another of his limited-objective
attacks into the switch line, this time at its
eastern anchor, at the village of Orscholz
itself. Before dawn on January 20, a battalion
of the 301st Infantry (Colonel Roy N.
Hagerty) struck through the Saarburg Forest,
lying south-west and west of Orscholz, for a
surprise attack on the village. Advancing
through bitter cold and snow, one company
achieved a penetration but the other was
stopped by a minefield and came under with-
ering cross-fire from enemy pillboxes.
Attempts to reinforce the attack with a com-
pany from another battalion merely
increased the casualty toll and with daylight
General Malony ordered abandonment of
the attack. The lone company that had bro-
ken through was ordered to make its way
back to friendly lines but the company com-
mander radioed that he was ‘unable to com-
ply’ due to the many serious wounded;
because nearly all ammunition was spent and
because his men were completely pinned
down by enemy fire. Soon after, the entire
force, some 230 men, raised a white flag and
surrendered.
Despite the setback at Orscholz, a
renewed probing attack began early on Janu-
ary 23 when a battalion of the 376th Infantry
moved to retake Nennig, lost the preceding
night. It took all day to root out a stubborn
enemy from the damaged houses, the Ameri-
cans knocking out five PzKpfw IVs while
doing so.
5
THE LAST OFFENSIVE

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