Endkampf: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Death of the Third Reich

Chapter 6

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6 ACROSS THE FRANKENHÖHE Having broken the Steigerwald defense line at both its eastern and western ends, American troops noted a steady withdrawal of scattered German units under cover of the rain-soaked darkness during the night of April 12–13.As GIs of the Twenty-third Tank Battalion and 101st Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron set out in pursuit on the morning of April 13, however, two German infantry companies, supported by eight Mark V Panther tanks, launched a furious counterattack at Buchheim, a few miles west of the strategically important city of Bad Windsheim. The German tanks had hardly left their concealment, remembered Emil Gabriel, a gunner on one of the Mark V’s, when they ran into defensive fire from roughly forty American tanks. Racing across open fields toward Buchheim, a Sherman scored a direct hit on Gabriel’s tank, setting it afire. As the tank commander scrambled to escape through the turret, machine gun fire killed him,his mangledcorpse blocking the exit.Gabriel crawled quickly through the burning tank toward the loading bay, struggled out, and dropped to the ground at the rear of the blazing Mark V. Although himself suffering from second- and third-degree burns on his face, hands, and legs, Gabriel attempted to get away from the immediate area, since antitank rounds were still slamming into the burning hulk. As he sprang from cover, though, machine gun fire caught him ENDKAMPF 160 across both legs. Badly wounded and crying for help, Gabriel lay unattended in the field for hours. That evening, using the clock chimes from the Buchheim church for orientation, he crawled forward, in excruciating pain from his burns, until he collapsed in a ditch, totally exhausted. Only after eighteen hours had passed did a local farmer find Gabriel, barely alive, and take him to an American aid station.1 What locals remembered as the “tank battle of Buchheim” barely registered in the larger consciousness of the war, Panzerkampfgruppe Hobe drily reporting that two Shermans and two Mark V’s had been lost, while American sources claim the destruction of three enemy tanks and approximately fifty German casualties. To Gabriel, though, who suffered through an agonizing train journey to a hospital and then a POW camp, the action represented an“irresponsible,suicidal undertaking.”The fighting in Middle Franconia largelyended as it had begun,with pitched battles at fiercely contested road junctions and river crossings, along with a continued senseless loss of life. As the Third, Forty-second, and Forty-fifth Infantry Divisions approached the outskirts of Nuremberg, units of the Twelfth Armored and Fourth Infantry Divisions turned on April 14 in a southerly direction with the objective of blocking any large-scale German retreat by seizing Danube River bridges as quickly as possible. Although a continuous line of German resistance had largely ceased to exist, hastily assembled ad hoc battle groups nonetheless fought a skillful rearguard action. Stoutly defending roadblocks with cleverly hidden 88mm antitank guns and well-placed small arms fire, they inflicted casualties out of proportion to their strength. Large numbers of displaced persons and liberated foreign laborers also clogged the roads and hampered movement, as did the ubiquitous passive defense measures of the Germans, such as trees felled across roads, mines, and blown bridges. Indeed, the Germans so effectively utilized these obstacles that some American units found themselves working all day to remove or bypass the impediments. On one occasion, an American unit reached a roadblock and began removing it, only to find the felled trees stretching into the distance. A reconnaissance patrol sent down the road to discover the lengthof theblockreportedback,amazed,thatGermantroopswerebusily chopping down trees and extending the barricade even as the GIs tried to clear it.2 As a result, American units advanced slowly over the next few days, in a grinding combat routine that frazzled the nerves of the average ACROSS THE FRANKENHÖHE 161 American soldier. Armored columns normally would start their operations around 8:00 A.M., advancecautiouslybecauseof thenumerousmines laid at crossroads and at the entrances and exits to towns, seize farm villages along the main line of march, and then cease operations by 5:00 P.M. Defensive positions would be established in the last town taken in anticipation of local counterattacks, and prisoners would be put in temporary “stockades” (usually barns), while individual GIs would avidly search hen houses for fresh eggs and butcher shops...