Ep. 14 - Shattering the Siegfried Line

The Siegfried Line which spread from the Netherlands to Switzerland was Nazi Germany’s 400 mile westernwall, a heavily fortified defensive line that took the Allies six months to pierce.  David Saltman remembered the Siegfried Line as a formidable opponent in itself.  Robert Maxwell  regained consciousness after throwing himself on a grenade to save his buddies only to find himself alone in an abandoned house.  Maxwell found a lieutenant who helped him walk to a medic station.  Along the way, his heal was blown off by another grenade.  After having been pulled off the front line and sent back to the regimental headquarters, Edward Rychnovsky regularly checked the piles of corpses brought in on trucks for men from his company.  When Nicholas Oresko’s platoon was ordered to make a third assault on a German position near the Siegfried Line, Oresko gave the order to attack, but no one in his platoon moved.  Oresko decided to go by himself, and took out two machine gun emplacements that were pinning his men down.  Stan Davis’s armored division took Trier, which had previously been thought impregnable.  A seemingly peaceful apple orchard near the Sieg River proved deadly for Ralph Keller’s company, which took devastating losses. Byron Whitmarsh’s squad was engaged in a fierce firefight in and around a German cathedral.   Furious that the Allies could use the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen as a bridgehead across the Rhine River, The German forces waged an intense ten day battle to destroy the bridage with everything they had.  Lloyd Huggins, Rex Whitehead, Byron Whitmarsh, Clarence Taylor, and Barney Zylka rememembered the fighting at Remagen as some of the fiercest of the war.  Those stories in more in this the 14th episode of Always Remember – World War II Through Veterans Eyes.

 

David Saltman

Robert D. Maxwell, Medal of Honor Recipient

Henry Heller

Nicholas Oresko, Medal of Honor Recipient

Stan Davis

Ralph Keller

Byron Whitmarsh

Lloyd Huggins

Rex Whitehead

Clarence Taylor

Barney Zylka