(SIBOL) ESPONJILLA COD 42981

Between September and December 1944 the Allies had slowly been moving forward along Germany's western reaches. Their dash across northern France and Belgium from Normandy and up from the French Riviera, had ended. The U.S. Third and Seventh Armies were bogged down, slugging their way through the Alsace-Lorraine region. The British and Canadians were cleaning out the Chan- nel ports of die-hard German garrisons and were regrouping along the Belgian- Dutch border after Operation Market-Garden. The U.S. First Army had made the first penetration into Germany and captured the city of Aachen, but it was pinned down by costly fighting in the Huertgen Forest. Just ahead of the First Army lay the key to the Reich's war machine—the industrial Ruhr district.

By October 1944, the First Army had ripped two big holes in the Siegfried Line, at Aachen and east of Roetgen. Having captured Aachen, the army was next scheduled to cross the Roer River on its way to the Rhine. It main effort was to be made toward Düren in the VII Corps' zone southeast of Aachen and then on toward the city of Bonn.

In keeping with these plans the VII Corps' 104th Infantry Division (the Tim- berwolves) was ordered to cross the Inde River. The key to this crossing was the village of Lucherberg, Germany, crowning a clifflike ridgeline a mile beyond the river. Lucherberg's western approaches are steep, gutted by strip mines with sheer walls and masked by a nest of factories. From the southwest and south, the village and the ridge were protected by the bed of the Weh Creek, a slag pile, and more strip mines, one of which had filled with water to form a lake. On the north, the approach to the village was more open as the ridgeline sloped gently northward, parallel to the Inde. The Germans had crisscrossed the northern approach with deep trenches and placed machine guns to provide grazing fire across the fields. Facing the Americans in this sector were elements of the LXXXI Korps (General Friedrich Koechling): 246th Volksgrenadier Division's (Colonel Peter Korte) 404th and 689th Volksgrenadier Regiments and the tough Third Fallschirmjäger (Para- chute) Division's (Luftwaffe Lt. Gen. Wadehn) Eighth and Ninth Fallschirmjäger Regiments, supported by an estimated eleven to twelve German artillery battal- ions, including the 403d and 405th Volksartillery Brigades located east of the Roer

River, capable of firing into the area. POW interrogation reports indicated that the 246th VGD had received 800 to 1,000 replacements in the ten days prior to the action.

The 104th Infantry Division commander, General Terry del la Mesa Allen, a strong believer in night combat operations, had planned for the 413th Infantry Regiment to force a bridgehead opposite the town of Inden while the 415th Infantry Regt. under Colonel John H. Cochran was to cross the river at Lamersdorf (just to the south of Inden) and seize Lucherberg; however, the 413th had become involved in severe fighting at Inden. Faced with the heavy losses at Inden, Gen- eral Allen instead directed the 4l3th Infantry to fall back as division reserve and ordered the 4l4th Infantry Regt. (Colonel Touart) to take over the assignment at Inden and the 415th Infantry to proceed as originally planned to accomplish the more critical task at Lucherberg.

Colonel Cochran had four days to plan and prepare for the river crossing before the final conquest of Inden gave the green light. He gave his officers and men an opportunity to conduct a detailed study of their roles and the terrain. Although aware of the obstacles to attacking Lucherberg from the west, Colonel Cochran was also aware of the defenses the Germans had erected along the northern approach. Confident of the ability of his men to conduct night operations, he believed they could get past the strip mines, the factories, and the clifflike portion of the ridge into Lucherberg before the Germans became aware of their presence.

Lucherberg was a small citadel town of some four hundred inhabitants in seventy-five buildings perched on a 500-foot height. A church spire dominated the town and surrounding area and consequently became a focal point of the fight- ing. A small town, Lucherberg was a mixture of farm buildings with courtyards, cowsheds, gardens, and brick and stone houses with reinforced cellars. In addi- tion, between the town and western cliff-face was an orchard that had been planted in a thick L-shape. At the inner corner of the L was a double house (duplex), standing alone about 75 to 100 yards west of the church. The house was a two- story brick building with an attic facing northeast and windowless sides facing northwest and southeast. Dominating the surrounding countryside, the town rep- resented the geographic key to the west bank of the Roer River between Schophoven on the north and Hoven on the south. From the hill observers could monitor the surrounding towns of Pier, Merken, and Echtz and the fields stretching east to the Roer. The town also dominated the country immediately to the west—the towns of Inden, Lamersdorf, and Frenz, and the Inde River lying within view of the hill. Before the U.S. VII Corps could gain control of the west bank of the Roer and assure communication and a supply route across the ground already occupied, Lucherberg had to be captured.

The Germans had constructed an elaborate and well-planned defensive sys- tem around the town. As the defenders knew, there were three routes the Ameri- cans could use to attack Lucherberg. On the south they could cross the fast-flowing Inde and move east either along an autobahn or across the open fields from the town of Frenz before swinging north. However, the lake hard by the southeast part of the town and a huge coal pit to the southwest formed an excellent natural barrier

against any attack from that direction. In addition, dominating the ground just south of the town was an old and very large mound of dirt (also referred to as the slag pile), apparently taken from the strip mine, that was the lake basin. It gave the Germans an excellent defensive position with observation, fields of fire, and natural obstacles.

If the attacking force tried to reach Lucherberg by approaching directly from the west, it would face both natural and man-made obstacles. The Inde River, though normally not more than knee-deep, was an obstacle to armor since the banks were soft and the prewar bridge had been blown. The flat ground between

The Battle of Lucherberg

the river and the factory area just to the west of the town would provide good fields of fire to forces barricaded in the large coal factory processing plant along the north side of the road from Lamersdorf to Lucherberg. The coal factory would make an excellent defensive position, its thick walls and heavy machinery provid- ing good cover. Even after the river had been crossed and the factory seized, an attacking force would still face difficulties in getting to the town. On the south (or right) of the Lamersdorf-Lucherberg road was the slag pile. Moreover, a row of stone houses along the south side of the road afforded protection for defend- ing infantry. The western edge of the town and hill overlooked the road in this area. On the north side of the approach road was a woods (reportedly heavily mined) extending from the factory to the hill, affording concealment to an advanc- ing force from eyes in the town, but not from observers on the brow of the hill. Artillery shells striking the area would almost invariably result in tree bursts, mak- ing the woods a death trap to attacking infantry. Moving from the coal factory to the town, an attacker would also have to cross some marshy ground before reach- ing the base of the clifflike hill.

In view of the difficulties of attacking from the south or the west, the Ger- mans set up their defenses to meet what they felt would be the most likely threat, an attack from the north, since this ground, though sloping, was generally flatter and open with no natural obstacles.

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