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CHRONICLES OF HEROIC ARIZONA CHINESE- AMERICAN SERVICEMEN OF WORLD WAR II (7)
CHINESE AMERICAN SOLDIERS ON THE EUROPEAN BATTLEFIELD On 16 December powerful German forces struck the lightly held sector of the First Army front south of Monshau in the Ardennes. German armored spearhead drove toward the Meuse River, aiming at Antwerp. Aided by bad weather, a variety of deceptions, and the failure of Allied intelligence correctly to interpret the signs of an impending attacks, they achieved complete surprise. Elements of the five U.S. divisions plus support troops fell back in confusion. Two regiments of the 106th Infantry Division, cut off and surrounded atop the mountainous Schnee Eiffel, surrendered after only brief fighting the largest battlefield surrender of U.S. troops in World War II. Partly as a result of decision to continue attacking throughout the autumn, U.S. forces were spread thin in areas such as the Ardennes, and the Americans had few reserves to meet the attack. SHAEF immediately ordered available units into the threatened area, sending an airborne division into the important communications center of Bastogne. 18 December, Eisenhower ordered Gen. Patton's Third Army to disengage from its offensive toward the Saar and to attack the enemy's southern flank. Scattered American units, fighting desperate rearguard actions, disrupted the German timetable, obstructing or hold key choke points road junctions, narrow defiles, and single-lane bridges across unforgettable streams to buy time. Defenders at the town of St. Vith held out for six day V Corps troops at Elsenborn Ridge repelled furious attacks, jamming the northern shoulder of the enemy advance. To the south armored and airborne troops, although completely surrounded and under heavy German attack, held Bastogne for the duration of the battle. A German officer with a white flag, approached the American defense and asked to speak to the American Officer in charge. He was taken blind folded to Gen. McAuliffe with a message from the Germans to surrender his troops. His answer was "Nuts". So the battle continued. Short of fuel, denied critical road, hammered by air attacks when the weather finally cleared and confronted by American armor, the German spearheads recoiled short of the Meuse. Meanwhile, Patton had altered the Third Army's advance and did a complete turn around, attacked northward, relieving Bastogne on 26 December. The German attack lost its momentum. By the end of January the Allies had retaken all the ground lost. The Battle of the Bulge was over Hitler had squandered almost all his remaining armor and fighter aircraft. Infantryman Sing Y. Yee was killed at the Battle of the Bulge. THE FINAL OFFENSIVE With the elimination of the "bulge", the campaign in the west moved into its final phases. Eisenhower decided that his armies should advance to the Rhine all along its length before crossing. Eisenhower planned concentrate attacks from the north by the British 21st Army Group and the U.S. Ninth Army and from the south by the U.S. First Army. Meanwhile, the Third Army would drive straight across Germany, and the Seventh Army would turn southward into Bavaria. Pic Ngauoun "Ben" N. Tang was an infantry machine gunner with the 462nd Anti-Artillery Battalion in the battle and campaigns of Normandy, Ardennes, Northern France, Rhineland, and Central Europe.
First, a pocket of German resistance at Colmar had to be eliminated. Eisenhower assigned five additional U.S. divisions and 10,000 service troops to that effort. Meanwhile, the Canadian First Army cleared the area between the Maas and Rhine Rivers. At the same time, the First Army advanced and finally seized the Roer River dams, but found that the Germans had destroyed the controls. The result in the flooding delayed the Ninth Army's advance by two weeks. The attack finally began in late February and linked up with the Canadians, cutting off German forces facing the British. Meanwhile, the First Army's drive to the Rhine resulted in the capture of Cologne and on 7 March the seizure of an intact bridge at the town of Remagen. T/Sgt. Walter Yuen was with the 81st General Hospital in Northern France & the Rhineland. As American divisions poured into the bridgehead, the Third and Seventh Armies launched coordinated attacks to the south. On the 22nd, and the 25th, Third Army troops made assault crossings of the Rhine. The Allied columns fanned out across Germany, overrunning isolated pockets of resistance. While Montgomery's force drove northward toward the great German ports of Bremen, Hamburg, and Luebeck, the Ninth Army advances along the Axis Muenster, Magdeburg. The night and the First Army troops met on 1 April, encircling the industrial region of the Ruhr and capturing 325,000 prisoners. The First Army continued eastward toward Kassel and Leipzic while the Third Army rolled through Frankfurts, Eisenach, and Erfurt toward Dresden, then southward toward Czechoslovakia and Austria. The Sixth Army Group advanced into Bavaria toward Munich and Salzburg, denying the Germans a last-ditch defense in the Bavarian or Austrian Alps. Germany was shattered. On the eve of victory, April 12, 1945, while having his portrait painted, President Roosevelt complained "I have a terrific headache.” Franklin D. Roosevelt died. Within two hours, Vice President Harry S. Truman became President. Nevertheless, Eisenhower resisted British and Patton's pressure to drive on to Berlin. He saw no point intaking casualties to capture ground that, in line with earlier agreements between Allied leaders, would have to be relinquished to the Soviets once hostilities ceased. The Soviets massed 1.2 million men and 22,000 pieces of artillery and on 16 April began their assault upon the city. The British and American forces stop line along the Elbe and Mulde Rivers. The Russians moved through the streets of Berlin. On 30 April 1945, Hitler committed suicide in a bunker beneath the ruins of his capitol. May 4, 1945, Tech Sgt. Henry Ong, Jr. was liberated by the British 8th Army. Henry celebrated V-E day in Brussels, Belgium, the target of his first bombing mission in 1944. German forces in Italy surrendered effective 2 May and those in the Netherlands, northwestern Germany, and Denmark on 4 May. On 7 May the German High Command surrendered all its forces unconditionally, and 8 May was officially proclaimed V-E Day. The U.S. had contributed 68 divisions, 15,000 combat aircraft, well over 1 million tanks and motor vehicles and 135,000 dead. The country now turned its focus to a war a half a world away and to the defeat of Japan in the Pacific.
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