Hello and welcome to Stories from the 28th Division Archives. I am Dr. Walter Zapotoczny. While working as the 28th Division Command Historian, I discovered stories in the archives that were not in the history books. In this episode, we are going to look at the 28th Division’s Second Dash to the Rhine in 1945.

With the Battle of the Bulge, Hurtgen Forest, Colmar and Normandy’s hedgerows behind them, the men of the 28th Division were ready for their second move to the Rhine River.

They had first hit the Rhine around Colmar in Alsace. The fighting in the snowy, steep Vosges Mountains had been anything but easy. They had helped liberate Colmar. Now, almost exactly a month later, they were poised southeast of Aachen, ready for their second sprint eastward.

On March 1 the 28th went through Schleiden, Germany, which was filled with mines and booby traps, but few aggressive Germans. In the next three days they swept 40 miles over rolling approaches to the Rhine through the country studded with mines and pitted with pillboxes. The 110th Regiment captured over 1,200 vehicles, including a 75-car train. Cooperating Burgomasters collected arms that had been hidden and turned them into the military authorities.

To soldiers, their worst enemies were mines and mud, their greatest diversion the ingenious ways in which the Germans gave up, their greatest prize a 70-year-old German lieutenant and one corps colonel and his aide. Company F from the 1st Battalion, 110th Infantry, leaping out in advance of the main body, crept up to examine a farmhouse and surprised a German lieutenant colonel and his aide in the process of eating a hot breakfast. “We were just leaving,” said the colonel, who turned out to be a corps chief of staff.

Minesweepers with the 103rd Engineer Combat Battalion loaded truckload after truckload with German mines and found a large amount of booby traps in houses in Schleiden. The largest single catch of prisoners by any man in the 112th Infantry fell to the rear switchboard operator. PFC Maurice J. Goudreau, of Rumford, Maine, was operating his switchboard when 15 Germans and an officer marched single file into his cramped quarters. The Nazi officer was still arrogant in defeat. “The Allies must first occupy all of Germany before the war is over,” he said. “That’s just what we are doing, “ said Goudreau.  

When the 28th finally reached the Rhine River near Koblenz, Germany, troops of the 112th Infantry, showing their scorn for the Germans across the river, staged a full-fledged rodeo within hearing distance of the battle eastward. Their horses were captured German artillery nags and vehicles for the chariot races were abandoned German chow and ammunition carts.

If you like these stories, visit our website for more stories that were not in the history books and please consider becoming a veteran or associate member of the 28th Division Association. Your tax-deductible membership will help us support the men and women of the division and help us to tell their stories.

So, until next time, Roll On.