A Machine Gunner's War by Ernest Albert "Andy" Andrews;David B Hurt;

Author:Ernest Albert "Andy" Andrews;David B Hurt;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781636241050
Publisher: Casemate Publishers & Book Distributors, LLC
Published: 2022-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Eilendorf: September 15–18

Early on the morning of September 15, just after breakfast, enemy artillery began hammering our position. There was nothing for us to do but take cover as best we could while H Company awaited orders to resume its advance.

Finally, about two that afternoon, squad leaders, gunners, and assistant gunners set out aboard our company’s jeeps, while the rest of the outfit moved out on foot. With the enemy’s artillery shells continuing to explode around us, we pressed forward a short distance to the northern outskirts of Brand.

After pausing awhile at this location, our column of jeeps took off in a hurry, hoping our speed would make it hard for the enemy to target us. As we raced the mile or so north toward Eilendorf, German snipers, tanks, and artillery kept us under a terrific hail of fire, directed by enemy observers who had a clear view of the entire area.

Upon reaching our objective on the outskirts of Eilendorf about four miles east of the center of Aachen, we immediately took up a defensive position with orders to remain alert for possible German attempts to infiltrate our lines.

By nightfall on September 15, troops from our 2nd Battalion had entered Eilendorf and captured a number of pillboxes in the Schill Line east of the town. Part of the main belt of the Siegfried Line fortifications, this sector of the Schill Line ran along the Verlautenheide Ridge, the high ground that extended southeast from the village of Verlautenheide down toward the town of Stolberg. While our rapid advance left Aachen surrounded on the west, south, and east, the Germans were putting up stiff resistance and pouring reinforcements into the area in an effort to prevent the city’s full encirclement and capture.

On the following day of September 16, 2nd Battalion infantry finished clearing Eilendorf of enemy troops and H Company shifted its command post into the center of town. But while we were working to secure our newly won position, the Wehrmacht still possessed one big advantage.

With the Germans still holding the high ground in the nearby village of Verlautenheide, a little over a mile northwest of Eilendorf, and Crucifix Hill (Hill 239) a further half a mile northwest of that, enemy observers possessed superb vantage points from which to monitor our lines, exposing our whole position to highly accurate enemy shelling.

At our machine-gun platoon’s new front-line position in the hilly ground just east of Eilendorf, German mortar fire was especially heavy and deadly. Unlike the whistle of an incoming artillery shell that could be heard before it exploded, the hissing sound made by a descending mortar round often came too late for us to take cover.

During a pause in the German shelling, we watched as American and Luftwaffe pilots fought running dogfights through the skies overhead, but our interest in the aerial spectacle quickly faded when enemy fire resumed. That evening, brilliant flashes lit the horizon as our mortar and artillery crews engaged their German counterparts in an intense, thunderous exchange of fire.

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