The following by Jack J. Herman, C/276, appears in the Spring, 1996 issue of the "Trailblazer", the association's quarterly publication; pages 6-9.

Introduction

The 276th had come up from Marseilles by 40-and-8 and went into prepared defensive positions on the west bank of the Rhine on Christmas Day, 1944. On New Year's Day as Operation Nordwind began, the regiment was moved westward, to meet the attacking Germans. After moving around the area for two days, Charlie Company came to an obscure village that none of them had heard of; Wingen-sur-Moder. The Germans had over-run it in the early hours of their offensive. (The 276th narrative report does not mention this action at all.) Herman picks up the account in the following copyrighted excerpt reprinted by permission: "Recollections of Charlie Company" by Jack J. Herman.

The Excerpt

Early on Jan. 5 we were issued more ammunition and rations and told to prepare for a long march and another attack. We never received very specific briefings, just a general idea of what to expect-I suppose to keep us from having information to give the enemy if we were captured. The communications sergeant and my de facto boss, Dick McCord, a thin blond man in his middle thirties from Montana, and I were detailed to follow the company, stringing and splicing wire we carried in several spools for a telephone line to Battalion headquarters. We skirted the eastern end of town and went north through the eastern underpass with the company. We fell behind as they left the road into the woods and hills to the west. The now familiar almost constant background noise of machine gun, rifle and mortar fire came from many directions, closest and most frequently from the center of Wingen. The woods were full of snow, but we followed paths made by our 160 men, laden with equipment and ammunition. Although I did not know it at the time, we started from the south and made a counter-clockwise circle around town, to attack from the north and take the high ground which dominated Wingen.

At the top of a ridge we unexpectedly came upon the frozen bodies of many men, scattered about, frozen in the snow where they fell. They were almost all in American uniforms. Some were still halfway in their tents and sleeping bags. Some were without boots. Gear and equipment were strewn about, but weapons, ammunition and rations had been removed. Despite the cold, the scene smelled of death and gunpowder. Trees had been shaved by bullets and in places spent cartridges had melted the snow. We did not count the dead, but the numbers overwhelmed us; there could easily have been 50 to 100, or even more, GIs, and only a few - maybe five or six - Germans.

We knew immediately that the American corpses had been in Co. B, which occupied the barracks next to us at Leonard Wood, marched ahead of us in formation and shared the ballroom on the West Point. We did not know what happened, but I realized what "wiped out" meant, and to the extent I could absorb it at the moment, what this war meant. McCord and I were silent for a long time, and I didn't know which of us emerged first from the shock, but we did not have time; we had to do our work and catch up with the company.

I didn't learn until 1990 what really happened to B Company. The official "Narrative Report of the 276th Infantry" was incredibly inadequate on this subject:

Regimental CP, having been notified at 1830 the night before (3 January 1945) that an enemy attack might be expected at Wimmenau and Kelsberg, had immediately notified all units and had disposed troops on Corps order in anticipation of the blow. The 1st Battalion was moved from Wingen to the vicinity of Wimmenau with Company B north of the tracks at Wimmenau and Company C on the high ground north of the tracks. First definite information that the enemy had struck in force came at 0510 4 January 1945 from Company B which was then engaging the enemy north and east of Wingen. At 0635 the 1st Battalion reported that casualties were 50 percent of all riflemen, but this was later amended to say that casualties were uncertain and could not be known definitely before daylight. Company A was sent to aid Company B and comb the area for patrols. At 0750 approximately 30 enemy were reported in Wingen. The I. and R. platoon was dispatched to Wingen at once to investigate.

There was no further report; this is all our Regimental headquarters said about Baker Company's disaster in its report to the commanding general of Task Force Herren on Jan. 31, 1945. The "Trailblazer's" is more comprehensive:

Around 6:30 on the evening of the 3rd, the 276th Regiment was warned to expect an attack. The Wriggle 1st Battalion, in reserve, was alerted. Company B was ordered to move eastward toward Wimmenau, setting up outposts on the high ground northwest of Wingen-precisely where the SS battalions were heading. The combat-wise Germans advanced with methodical determination. The Americans were untested in battle; their leadership, too, was inexperienced. At the top of the flat and wooded ridge, the GIs were ordered to set up the CP tent but not to dig shelters for themselves or their machine guns. The noise of digging would reveal their positions to the Germans. The Baker men went into the town to recover their overcoats and shoe-pacs, left behind earlier for unencumbered maneuverability. They had hardly returned to their hilltop positions before the Germans opened with psychological warfare... Curses and obscenities were punctuated by the opening of rifle and burp-gun fire. "OK, Americans," yelled the Germans, "Fire, so we can see where you are."... By now, Company B had lost most of its men and all its equipment; the Germans had encircled the company. The enemy turned captured GI weapons and vehicles onto their former owners with dire results.

A more personal report came from a Co. B survivor, Joseph Aceves:

"We were dug in overlooking a railroad embankment and their were rumors that an SS battalion was heading our way. We were roused out of our foxholes round midnight and were issued extra bandoliers and grenades. (I took four of them). We were marched through heavy snow in the woods for an hour or two then deployed defensively. We weren't ordered to dig in, though, or given any information.

"After a while I heard some equipment rattling and as I peered between the trees I saw a group in single file. It was too dark to identify them but almost immediately gunfire started. I jumped behind a tree. Later we learned that this was an element of that SS battalion. They appeared to be armed many automatic weapons, including burp guns. I could see German tracer bullets passing all around me. I tossed my grenades at the Germans directly in front of me whenever I had the chance, in the heavy gunfire, to look around my tree.

"During the early morning hours the battle seemed to have shifted out of the immediate area. As dawn broke, it appeared that the only ones alive in our area were part of our squad, the 3rd in second platoon. And we were the only ones who held our ground and weren't dispersed. (Our squad leader was Sgt. Sam Vaughan who was later killed in Korea.) Our area was littered with corpses, American and German, to manifest the intensity of our battle.

"The platoon sergeant had been shot through the foot and couldn't walk. He pleaded with us to leave him but we improvised a stretcher from an overcoat and a couple tree branches. He weighed more than 200 pounds and it was heavy going through the forest. Later in the day our small group made contact with some 45th Division men. We remained with that division for several days until we were reunited with what remained of Company B."

The 1st Battalion commander Maj. James Wilson, was evacuated "with extreme shock" on that same day. I don't know whether he saw the B Company corpses that we did the next day, but I suspect he did, because that scene could have caused an emotional breakdown in any commander who felt he was responsible for those men. The rest of Charlie Company must have seen the carnage, as McCord and I had, but I don't remember ever discussing it with them at the time. For some reason, when we were in combat we did not talk about things that affected us most deeply emotionally. The only consolation I can derive from this event was that Charlie Company never repeated those mistakes; we certainly never used tents or sleeping bags, or failed to dig in, post guards in all directions, and stand guards every night, two hours on and two hours off, until the war was over.

Unfortunately B Company (it could have easily been C Company) had camped directly in the path of the major German night thrust into Wingen. The more experienced Germans, well equipped with automatic weapons, were able to surprise and overwhelm them, and continued on to take the town.

It became essential to drive the Germans out quickly because they had cut an important road and railroad, and bypassed and endangered the 45th and 79th Divisions. If they could bring more troops and tanks into Wingen they might break out of the mountains into undefended level terrain, recapture Strasbourg, and cut off a large part of the Seventh Army. It seems that the German strength and numbers at Wingen were repeatedly underestimated by our regimental and task force commanders, and that no other counter force was available. This may explain why we few inexperienced and unsupported rifle companies from the 274th and 276th were ordered to attack the town again and again, for the next three days.

By the time McCord and I caught up, Charlie Company had already engaged the Germans. Along the top of another east-west ridge wounded men from our company were being bandaged, and others were checking and reloading weapons. Some were lying on the ground exhausted. We were told that the next ridge to the south (we didn't know it, but that was the long hill dominating Wingen) was heavily defended by machine gunners and snipers who had repelled the first attack. But that very soon we would attack it again.

Capt. William Greenwalt was bustling about deploying the platoons and giving detailed instructions. We hooked up the telephone line to Battalion, but I don't know whether he ever used it. Don Sundstrom told me with a worried look that our coming attack would be "suicide". I remember that word very clearly. I have had the feeling that was the time he gave me a small picture of his blond Nordic-looking girlfriend, which I carried for some time after the war was over. At other times I'm skeptical of such melodrama but he seemed frightened and in need of reassurance, which I did not know how to give him.

I asked what I was supposed to do; McCord told me to take my walkie-talkie and plenty of ammunition, stay with the second platoon messenger, Fitts (he was a veteran of the earlier attack and I was not), behind Greenwalt, and wait for orders.

Soon our Weapons Platoon began firing machine guns and mortars over our heads at the Germans. As I recall, a mortar shell hit a tree branch above us, and a fragment caused a flesh wound to Steve Mack of the 1st Platoon, a short, belligerent, Pole from Philedelphia (Mack would be wounded and come back three times before the war ended).

At the start of a whistle blast the rifle platoons started downhill and back up the defended hill.

We followed.

The Germans joined in the firing and soon dominated it; their machine gun fire was unbelievably loud and intense and seemed to echo from all directions. When the fire came in our direction, everyone dashed for cover; I dived behind the nearest tree. I could hear and feel the bullets whistling past my ears. When I dared to look around I saw trees splintering above me and objects on the ground being hit. I finally realized that I was just as vulnerable as all the people killed in this war. Somehow I shifted into automatic pilot - partly directed by my training but, I think, mostly by a newly discovered survival instinct.

Thinking a German might have seen me drop and was waiting with a rifle aimed at that spot for me to get up again, I crawled off in one direction or another before jumping up again, quickly looking for my next cover, dashing for it and diving, again and again. I used anything I could for protection - the base of a tree, a log, rock, ditch, or just a low spot. I kept losing Greenwalt and Fitts, finding them and losing them again. We continued moving forward that way, but in some places - one of them a deep gully between two hills - we were safe from enemy fire. We would pause there when Greenwalt was gone, try to calm down, and talk about what was going on, where the others were and what our next move should be.

The scene was total confusion. The noise level was overwhelming. Men were yelling and screaming, and running and ducking in different directions. I think I was bleary eyed with adrenaline. Wounded men were going back; others were lying dead. Greenwalt told me to call 1st Platoon, and I repeatedly yelled into my walkie-talkie, "Charlie 1, this is Charlie 6, over." But, ominously, Sundstrom did not answer - nor did anyone else. Greenwalt would tell us to wait for him or to meet him somewhere and disappear for long periods. I did not know what tactics we were using to get the Germans out of their positions; we were given very few orders and did not know what we were supposed to be doing. So we tried to keep alive and move foward, always a few steps at a time, to where we thought the rest of the company was moving.

I looked for Germans to shoot at, but never had a real target because they were clearly well dug in; but when I saw what looked like a flash coming in our direction from any sort of a firearm I fired at it, with no confidence that I would hit anything. (I have not analyzed where my eagerness to shoot at the enemy came from. Some expert wrote recently that most men in combat did not fire their weapons; I think the tension and stress are so intense that they would explode if they did not fire back.) We were pinned down a number of times; then it would seem that the Germans shooting at us had found other targets. It became more difficult each time we had to leave a safer area and plunge back into the firestorm.

I have no idea how long all this lasted - it could have been a very slow 30 minutes or a fast three hours. Finally it became clear to everyone that we weren't accomplishing anything and the word came to pull out. We went back the way we came, under fire, but with every step there was greater safety. We arrived at the ridge where McCord and I had rejoined the company and collapsed with exhaustion.

Wounded men were brought in and our few Medics worked feverishly. They worked particularly hard on a man whose head was covered with bandages and his uniform with blood - someone told me it was Art McBride and a bullet had taken out both of his eyeballs. Sometimes I've imagined that I saw those dangling eyeballs but I don't think I really did. I was told that Sundstrom, Dick Finley, John Childs and others in 1st Platoon, Lt. Wardell of the 2nd Platoon and others had been killed. I've always known 12 men died on that hillside, but I now remember only Sunsdtrom; Finley, from Indianapolis, and Childs, an Iowa farm boy, from the 1st Platoon, and Sgt. Carl McCarten, a husky blond, from the 3rd.

Villers sought me out, put a hand on my shoulder, and drawled, "Yo heah yo buddy got hit?" with as much emotion in his eyes as I ever saw anyone in combat allow himself.

We were no longer green, but I was numb, frightened and depressed. Perhaps I couldn't fully absorb all the implications, but based on what I saw that day, I remember feeling hopelessly that the Germans were indeed supermen, as Hitler had claimed, and that we were incompetent amateurs who had fooled ourselves into believing we were capable of fighting them and that all of us would be killed sooner or later. But Fortunately there was no time for this depression to develop. We had to get out of there. It would be dark soon and we knew what had happened to Co. B, lying frozen on another hilltop a short distance away.

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