March 13, 1945 — Phil and his men prepare for the final dance of WWII
March 13, 2025On March 14, 1945, the Dogface soldiers gathered behind the border to Germany like an angry rattlesnake, poised and prepared to strike a venomous and final blow at their enemy. [1]
That evening, Phil’s 3rd Battalion (30th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division) trucked about ten miles to an assembly area just outside the village of Epping, France, where they awaited the signal to ruthlessly attack the Germans’ vaunted Siegfried Line[2]—located about a mile inside the German border.
The mission: Destroy the defensive line and put a dagger in Hitler’s thousand-year Reich.
The defensive line itself was between 500 to 600 yards deep, though additional well-camouflaged pillboxes in secondary positions dotted knolls and rises for several kilometers. Most of the dug-in, concrete fortifications were covered with earth and vegetation. The entrance tunnels giving access to the pillboxes were as much as 150 meters to the rear.
The anti-tank obstacles were three- to four-foot-tall pyramidal fortifications of reinforced concrete called “dragon’s teeth.” Laid between the individual teeth were countless land mines and endless strings of razor-sharp barbed wire to inhibit infantry, along with diagonally placed steel beams to thwart Allied tanks.
Similar to Anzio and in the Vosges, the enemy had ample time to prepare. During the stalemate of the previous two months at the Colmar Pocket, the Germans feverishly improved their defenses.
But the greatest danger during the first days of the attack would come from the tens of thousands of deadly mines[3] scattered in front of the German’s main line of resistance (MLR). The entire front, especially the usual avenues of approach, was heavily mined up to over on mile from the German border back to the Siegfried Line.
Phil and his men were rightfully, very concerned. But they were prepared and ready to end this infernal war.
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[1] Larimore, At First Light, 213.
[2] The Siegfried Line was a German defensive line Hitler had built in 1938 so that the perpetual German fear of fighting on two fronts, East and West, could be obviated. The German military fortified nearly 400 miles of its western boundary that stretched from the Netherlands to Switzerland. The Siegfried Line featured more than 18,000 bunkers, 14,000 reinforced concrete pillboxes and bunkers, tunnels, and tank traps.
[3] The Germans lay two types of mines designed to mutilate GIs rather than killing them: the S-mine or “Bouncing Betties” and the Schützenmine 42, which consisted of a simple wooden container the size of a box of kitchen matches containing seven ounces of TNT. A slot in the lid pressed down on a detonator, and the explosion could tear off a foot. With little metal, it was almost impossible to detect with metal detectors.
[4] Larimore, Ibid, 213-214.
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