After the Battle of Kreuzau...

(Source)

Sgt. Doug Harrell's tank, Misfit II, was positioned not far from the disabled Box o' Nuts. He had two of his crew helping Sgt. Ken Boyd's wounded, Pfc. Lawrence Bradley, Pvt. Cody O'Neal, Pvt. Anthony Potter, over to his tank. Word had come down that they were moving out, the same message brought the glad news that the Krauts were falling back willy-nilly.

Harrell dismounted to talk with Boyd, "You don't wanna torch her, Ken?"

Boyd had debated the idea of destroying his tank so that the Germans couldn't haul it off and use it. But seeing as how they were retreating, he had decided to leave Box o' Nuts intact. "Nah, Doug, replace that transmission, seal the hole in the front, she'll be as good as new. No point setting her on fire, there's no one around but us. Krauts are high-tailing it east."

"How are your guys?" Harrell had to ask, Boyd's driver, Pfc. Larry Bradley, looked pretty bad, he was soaked with blood from the waist down and in a great deal of pain. The assistant driver, Pvt. Anthony Potter, was also in considerable pain, he couldn't walk on his own and his left leg was barely attached.

"Potter and Bradley need a doc, quick, we stopped the bleeding, but..."

"O'Neal looks pretty beat up."

"Yeah, he took a steel splinter in the arm, and another in the leg when the transmission got hit. He's a tough guy, I told him to milk it for all it's worth. Who wants to die at this stage of the game?"

"I hear ya. Okay, the wounded are loaded up, let's get out of here."

5th Company had fallen back nearly seven kilometers, to the vicinity of Vettweiß. Leutnant Manfred Sauer had ordered a halt in order to collect the fragments of his company. There were a large number of stragglers who hadn't made the rendezvous. Only three vehicles from 3rd (Heavy) Platoon had survived the fight outside Kreuzau. The platoon leader's 251¹ had survived but, one of the mortar carriers and one of the cannon-armed halftracks had been destroyed with most of their crews.

While the platoon leader's vehicle had made it out, the platoon leader had not. Oberfeldwebel Ernst Mayer had been badly wounded in the American artillery barrage and had died soon after Leutnant Sauer had arrived on scene to determine why that portion of his two-pronged attack on Kreuzau had not moved.

Unteroffizier Jens Voigt now commanded 3rd (Heavy) Platoon, he and four corporals were all that remained of the unit's NCOs. He had made a list of casualties for his platoon: nine dead, four wounded. Sauer had been surprised that the dead had outnumbered the wounded by so many, Voigt had explained that most of the men were in their vehicles when the Ami artillery had saturated the area. The men who survived from a destroyed vehicle were always wounded and were, in most cases, extremely lucky to have survived at all.

"Unteroffizier, what of the Drillings assigned to support your unit, there were two, yes?"

"Jawohl, Herr Leutnant. One came back with us, the other, Unteroffizier Hartmann's vehicle, was destroyed by a direct hit. None of the crew survived." Voigt looked at the ground for a moment, Hartmann had been a good friend and comrade. The shock of seeing his friend's vehicle come apart like a toy stepped on by a giant was still with him.

"Has Feldwebel Haasen's platoon reported in? I saw at least two of his vehicles hit. One by artillery, the other, I think, by tank fire coming from the town." Voigt needed a drink, a stiff one.

"Yes Voigt, he lost two vehicles. He has seven dead and one wounded man as well. The Sani says the wounded man is going to be okay. Minor burns, he was lucky to be away from his 251 when it was hit." Sauer dismissed Voight, told him to report to the Sanitäter. He had a nasty looking cut on one cheek, the man didn't seem to notice that he had been injured.

(Source)

S/Sgt Jack Wilson was walking towards 2nd Lt. Stephen Hernandez' Kübelwagen, seemed like the L.T. loved the damned thing. It bugged Wilson that his boss didn't have a proper Jeep. Ah well, if the Army wanted his platoon commander to have a Jeep, they would have issued him one.

The platoon had moved north from Kreuzau and was now bivouacked outside Niederau, waiting for the rest of Charlie Company to cross the Roer and join them, their five halftracks had come over that morning. The pontoon bridge they had used was now jammed with traffic from an armored division hurrying to the Rhine River.

Hernandez looked up and saw his platoon sergeant, he knew that Wilson had the casualty list with him. Time to tally up the cost.

"How bad is it, Top?"

"Three killed in action, nine wounded, and six missing. Judd Maxwell's .30 cal team was hit hard, Krauts dropped a mortar round damned near right on top of them. Judd's dead, Weber and Hawkins are wounded, they've been evacuated to a battalion aid station, not ours, they're still on the wrong side of the river. Two men missing from Judd's team - Pacheco and Manderson. Don't hold out too much hope for them, there may not be enough of them left to identify the bodies."

"Judd's dead?" Hernandez knew that Sgt. Maxwell's .30 cal MG team had been attached to 2nd Platoon since before he'd joined the platoon. Maxwell was a good man, he would be missed. "How did Weber and Hawkins get out?"

"Judd sent 'em back after they both got hit by a near miss, fragments tore up Weber's right arm pretty bad, Hawkins wasn't as bad, but bad enough that he needed treatment. As those two guys withdrew to the rear, they heard another incoming shell, so they jumped into a crater."

"That round killed Judd?" Hernandez asked.

"Yes Sir, probably Pacheco and Manderson too, Pacheco was on the gun right next to Judd, Manderson was handling the belt."

"Shit. I guess I better go talk to Herm, he'll want to know about his guys." 2nd Lt. Herman Jacobsen was a friend, commander of Weapons Platoon, the platoon Maxwell's machine gun team belonged to, Hernandez hated having to tell Jacobsen the news, but it would be better if it came from him.

"Anything else, Top?"

"Yes Sir, we lost one tank, Boyd's tank. S/Sgt Woodstock says it's reparable."

"What about Boyd's crew?"

"Three wounded, but they'll live, two of 'em are going home. Million dollar wounds."

"It's one thing to survive, Top, it's quite another to go through life crippled."

"Yeah, I get that L.T., but they're alive. Boyd's driver, Cpl. Jon Riggs, he's probably going to lose a leg, maybe two. Doc wasn't sure."

"Shit." Was all 2nd Lt. Hernandez had to say.

"Pvt. Rudy Stanley from 2nd Squad and Pvt. Juan Estrada from 3rd Squad are dead, Stanley was near the edge of the Kraut mortar attack, a shell dropped near the foxhole he and Pvt. Kurt Perkins were occupying. Perkins was wounded, Doc says he'll be okay. Rudy was unlucky as Hell, shell fragment just under his helmet, killed him instantly." Wilson consulted his list, he knew these men, he felt terrible discussing their deaths and injuries like this, but hey, it's why the Army paid him more.

"3rd Squad had two other wounded, Pvt. Robert Dumas, he and Flowers killed a StuG just before he got hit and Pvt. Randall Phillips has a nasty gash on his left forearm, he's already back on duty."

"Scotty Caldwell in 1st Squad caught a mortar fragment, but Doc says he'll be okay." Wilson continued.

"Where did Scotty get hit?" Hernandez asked out of curiosity.

"In the ass, they were shifting position, him and Pvt. Javier Gomez, after the round hit, Caldwell couldn't see Javi, we're pretty sure he's dead, we just haven't found a body."

"Privates Eric Allen, 1st Squad, Wayne McBride, 2nd Squad, and Kenneth Webb, also 2nd Squad, are all missing. No one has seen them since the attack started." Wilson looked up from his list, this business sickened him.

"Dead in the barrage, prisoners, deserters, any thoughts on that, Top?" Hernandez hated the not knowing when a man went missing, he couldn't believe anyone in 2nd Platoon would run. But then again, some of them had run at the crossroads. Every man had his limits, sometimes a fellow's courage just ran out.

"No idea, L.T., Stump wants to take a patrol back to Kreuzau, see if he can find them and the other guys who went missing. Their buddies are pretty sure they're dead. Those Kraut AA halftracks were laying down some pretty good heat at one point. Twenty millimeter tends to tear a body apart."

"Okay, tell Stump to take one of the halftracks and his squad, check it out, I want to know, so do the men I suppose." Hernandez was tempted to go himself, but he knew he needed to stay with the bulk of the unit.

"Roger that, Sir, on it. Can I...?" Wilson began.

"No, you may not, Sgt. Gentile can handle it, you're a platoon sergeant now, Jack, not a squad leader."

"Yes Sir, sorry."

"Carry on Staff Sergeant."

Recognizing that his commander was in a bad state, Wilson left to get Gentile's patrol on the road.

All told, the Battle of Kreuzau² was a minor affair, no great issues were decided. A small American unit found a way over a river, a small German unit attempted to push them back over that river. Events elsewhere overshadowed the fighting around Kreuzau, but for fifty-six men, eighteen American and thirty-eight German, their lives were either changed forever, or ended in the small town of Kreuzau and in the nearby fields and forests.

The casualties:

American

Pvt. Rudy Stanley, KIA

Pvt. Juan Estrada, KIA

Sgt. Judd Maxwell, KIA

Pvt. Scott Caldwell, WIA

Pvt. Kurt Perkins, WIA

Pvt. Robert Dumas, WIA

Pvt. Randall Phillips, WIA

Pfc. Jim Weber, WIA

Pvt. Allan Hawkins, WIA

Cpl. Jon Riggs, WIA

Pvt. Cody O'Neal, WIA

Pvt. Anthony Potter, WIA

Pvt. Javier Gomez, MIA

Pvt. Eric Allen, MIA

Pvt. Wayne McBride, MIA

Pvt. Kenneth Webb, MIA

Pvt. Steve Pacheco, MIA

Pvt. Troy Manderson, MIA

German

Obergefreiter Heinz Leonhart, KIA

Grenadier Erhard Fleischhacker, KIA

Grenadier Alfons Hartig, KIA

Gefreiter Walther Wolfram, KIA

Grenadier Kurt Baier, KIA

Grenadier Sigfried Schimmelpfennig, KIA

Grenadier Siegfried Ritter, KIA

Oberfeldwebel Ernst Mayer, KIA

Unteroffizier Hans König, KIA

Grenadier Niels Hahn, KIA

Grenadier Markus Neumann, KIA

Gefreiter Werner Gantzmann, KIA

Unteroffizier Jörg Keller, KIA

Grenadier Tim Wolff, KIA

Grenadier Christoph Groß, KIA

Gefreiter Fritz Schäfer, KIA

Unteroffizier Marcus Hartmann, KIA

Obergefreiter Lukas Berger, KIA

Grenadier Klaus Krause, KIA

Grenadier Daniel Hoffmann, KIA

Panzeroberkanonier Hubert Hering, KIA

Gefreiter Viktor Hanneman, KIA

Gefreiter Leo Grasshoff, KIA

Panzeroberkanonier Bodo Baumer, KIA

Panzerkanonier Michael Günther, KIA

Grenadier Hans Egner, WIA

Grenadier Paul Kaiser, WIA

Grenadier Ernst Berger, WIA

Grenadier Karsten Horn, WIA

Grenadier Patrick Albrecht, WIA

Obergefreiter Anton Krausse, WIA

Gefreiter August Koch, WIA

Grenadier Klaus-Peter Kühn, MIA

Grenadier Jochen Wagner, MIA

Grenadier Lukas Meier, MIA

Gefreiter Hans Scholz, MIA

Grenadier Tobias Stein, MIA

Grenadier Markus Jung, MIA

Some gave all...

¹ The 251 was the German Sd.Kfz. 251 halftrack

² I should fess up here and say that the Battle of Kreuzau exists only in my imagination. It represents the many small actions which together made up the conflict we remember as World War II.

Link to all of The Chant's fiction.