World War II Remembered

The Bitter End

78 When the whole world changed on December 7, 1941, I was a senior in chemical engineering at Purdue University in Indiana and only five months away from graduation. I had already accepted a position at a Union Carbide Research and Development Facility in Bound Brook, New Jersey. Six days after graduating in June 1942, I reported to the Lab and was assigned to the group working on developing plastic materials to replace natural rubber, which was not available. As casualties mounted in both Europe and the Pacific, I was drafted into active military service. At the same time that I was going through basic training in the heat of Camp Wheeler in Georgia, the Third Armored Division, which I was destined to join four months later, was landing on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day+15. This memoir is about one of the several dramatic adventures that I experienced during that awful period. Like many other WW II survivors , I have buried these things deeply in my memory and have not The Bitter End • Robert P. Stambaugh U.S. Army The Bitter End: Robert P. Stambaugh 79 allowed them to surface for more than 60 years. Now in our waning years, many of the forbidden memories are bubbling up and we want to talk about them. The incident described here took place during the very last days of the War in Europe. It happened on the Mulde River in Central Germany on April 11, 1945. The Beginning The Third Armored Division was a very large fighting force of over 15,000 men. It contained all the elements needed to operate as an independent unit. After regrouping on the plains above Omaha Beach, the Division had been immediately committed to action at St. Lô, and then through the murderous hedgerows of Normandy. Over the following months, it continued the attack through Northern France, Luxembourg , and Belgium and then breached the formidable defenses of the Siegfried Line at the German border. When the little German town of Eupen was captured, it was the first time since the days of Napoleon that German territory had been occupied by a foreign army. The offensive continued against fierce resistance, capturing the city of Aachen and then the town of Stolberg. In Stolberg, the Third Armored finally got relief from its five months of continuous combat. It was replaced by the 104th (“Timberwolf ”) Infantry Division and placed on reserve status to rebuild its strength. Replacements of every kind came pouring into the town, including new tanks and personnel. I was one of those replacements. I became a member of the second platoon of Fox Company of the 36th Armored Infantry Regiment. It was early November of 1944, the time when my war really began. I had missed the first half of the War in Europe but certainly was not going to miss the second half, which was about to begin. At first, life in Stolberg was really pretty good. Each squad had “requisitioned” its own house, and hot meals were picked up from a central field kitchen set up in the town square. Morale was further raised when all troops were served an old-fashioned Thanksgiving dinner, complete with turkey and all the trimmings. Many of the veterans from the battles in France were given passes to Paris or Holland. However, there were plenty of reminders that a war was still going on. Therewereoccasionalroundsofincomingartillery,andasmallGerman 80 World War II Remembered reconnaissance plane dubbed “Bed-check Charlie” flew over every night at about ten o’clock. It was also necessary to maintain the security of our area by manning two-man foxholes around our perimeter, with an hour on and an hour off for each partner. The tanks and infantry spent many hours in the fields around Stolberg in training for the functioning of an armored division. It was during one of these exercises that a jeep came speeding across the fields with a loud speaker ordering immediate return to quarters. We were moving out—not toward Berlin, as planned, but back the way we had come. The Germans had mounted an all-out surprise attack into Belgium. The date was December 16, 1944, and the “Battle of the Bulge” had begun. The Ardennes Campaign, as it is properly called, lasted for only about 40 days, but it seemed like forever. We were actively engaged for all but a few of those days...