56th Field Artillery Battalion         (A short history from the 1945 artillery unit 'Blue book'

In the ETO with "Goldenrod"

First men of the 56th Field Artillery Battalion to hit France went over the side if their ships, down rope ladders and into landing craft which chugged away to the Normandy shore and Utah Beach on the evening of July 3, 1944.

The sightseeing, staring and apprehensive but cocky bunch made the most of the first two days during which waterproofing was removed from vehicles and final preparations made for the serious task ahead.

There were jittery moments the night of July 5, when reconnaissance parties were shelled near Pont I’Abbee, when the batteries moved into position as big guns on both sides of the road thundered in sending shell after shell against German positions.

At 11 minutes to 6, '0549' according to Army time, on the morning of July 6, the No. 1 gun of Battery C belched flame, 30 odd pounds of steel and TNT arched toward the German lines, and the struggle in Europe which was not to end until the guns of ‘goldenrod’ had fired no less than 144,996 rounds.

At first in support of the 90th Division, the 56th reverted to Division control and wheeled into position behind the doughboys of the 121st Infantry Regiment on the night of July 7, ready to support the division’s first big action, the attack on La Haye du Puits.

With the infantry battalions went the forward observers, the liaison officers; reliefs were frequent and necessary, battery commanders were forward constantly, and first casualties went into the records.  But the men buckled down, tore into varied lot numbers of ammunition with new vigor and the attack rolled on.

Beards grew and sleep was infrequent those first days.  “How’re the doughs doin’?”  That was the question.

This was the hedgerow country, and fighting was vicious and slow.  But the batteries kept jumping forward, keeping as close behind the infantry as they dared.  At positions near Bretat it was not uncommon to hit the sod when small arms ‘over’ from the front splattered though the area.

“Bed-check Charlie” came over nightly, and fingers of machine gunners itched to join the antiaircraft umbrella which filled the sky, but no one considered it quit smart to give away an artillery position with the fire of a 50-caliber machine gun.

It was while occupying the positions near Bretet from July 18 to July 26, as plans and preparations were made for a new D-Day and the crossing of the Ay River, that the first enemy planes appeared.  Five strafed the command post one afternoon with no damage, but the hot reception from the battalions 50's and the potent weapons of the attached ack-ack convinced them it wasn't a good place to visit.

With ringside seats for the biggest air show of the war up to that time, the mass attack by 3,000 planes on July 25, the men went back to their firing the next day for the assault crossing of the Ay River, the final breakthrough in Normandy and a rat-race, goose-chase for more than a week in an attempt to catch fleeing enemy forces.

Observers and liaison officers up with the infantry hiked up to 15 miles a day with the doughboys in this effort.  It was no rare occasion to pick up German prisoners right in the battery position.  One Kraut patrol, mistaking the aiming post lights of Battery A for some kind of assembly signal, wandered into a wide-awake local security setup and a few lads who weren't in the mood to have any truck with visitors.  The simple, official report: Three enemy dead, 8 wounded, 16 prisoners.  No casualties were suffered by Battery A.

While other division units went on to Rennes, the capital of Brittany, the 56th, operating with the 121st Combat Team, was ordered to join the 83rd Division in its assault on St. Malo and Dinard.  Advancing northward from Dinan, first enemy resistance was met near Pleurtuit, south of Dinard, on the 7th of August.  Driving straight into what later proved to be the heart of a ‘steel ring’ around Dinard, the infantry made slow but steady progress, but on the morning of August 9, the Third Battalion of the 121st, having penetrated the enemy line, was cut off by a German action from the flanks.

One liaison section and a forward observer crew, sewed up with the isolated battalion, did a heroic job in saving the infantry from annihilation.  The 56^th’s guns fired day and night to place a ring of fire around the battalion position.  Radio batteries, source of the only means of communication of the stranded unit, were carefully nursed by the artillery teams within the trap.

The 56th suffered probably its worst disaster at this time when two liaison planes, in a volunteer mission to drop blood plasma to the infantry crashed in midair, resulting in the deaths of four officers. 

Contact was not made with the ‘lost battalion’ until the afternoon of August 12, when a new concerted attack by other battalions of the 121st, behind adjust fire on numerous targets of opportunity, gained 2,000 yards.  Another strong assault the next day and Dinard fell with a prisoner bag of some 3,000.

After Dinard, the battalion had a few days to itself south of Dinan for reorganization, then rejoined the division for the attack on the port of Brest.  In general support when the drive opened on August 24, the 56th went into more aggressive action on the night of the 31st when the 121st Infantry relived the 28th Regiment.

A 20-minute preparation preceded the attack the morning of September 1, but progress was slow as the infantry bucked into the main line of defense about the city.  Observers fired one-gun precision missions, adjusting as close as 75 yards in front of our own troops, and often searched out hedgerows for machine gun positions with an explosive ‘probing stick’ known as a 105-mm, howitzer.

The advance was continued until September 10, during which time the artillery was instrumental in reducing one heavy fortified strong point.  Observers up forward at the time adjusted the guns of practically every caliber artillery piece in the army, and on September 11, the heavier weapons were adjusted on the huge walls surrounding the old Breast fortress.

Two days later, having turned the job of cleaning out the city proper over to another division. The battalion found itself in new positions near Argel, on the Crozon Peninsula, just south of Brest.  Scarcely any gains were registered before the infantry came up against the main line of resistance just outside of Tal Ar Groas (‘Teller Gross’ the boys called it.)

With the doughboys unable to gain, the emphasis went over to the artillery, and observers put the 56thÕs guns to work on the job of reducing strong points which were holding up the advance.  An enemy counterattack on the night of September 16, preceded by a very heavy artillery preparation, brought down our own normal barrage and the attack was repulsed, but the men up front described the sensation, with hundreds of shells going overhead in both directions, as “roaring Hell.”

Divesting effects of the terrific fire were learned early the next day when our troops attacked behind another heavy preparation, broke the enemy resistance and made a three-mile advance trough a thoroughly battered sector.  The advance was so rapid that previously reconnoitered battery positions proved to be too far back.  On the night of the 17th, day before the Germans surrendered, Battery B occupied one position after a hasty reconnaissance, moving in over a route which went through a part of Crozon where the infantry still was fighting.

It was near Cameret, on the tip of the Crozon Peninsula, that the men got their first good rest since landing in France.  There was swimming in the sea after the engineers had removed the mines.  Some men learned the art of ‘fishing’ with captured German hand grenades.  And then there was the party one night in an abandoned resort hotel where battalion had set up headquarters.  With the front lines far removed, blackout restrictions were lifted, and the French stood around and gaped at the first night lighting they had seen in six years.

But the biggest part of the war was still ahead.

The division had reassembled near Le Trehou, Brittany, on September 22, and five days later was on a long march across France with overnight stops at Rennes, Chartes, and Suippes, into Belgium and down into Luxembourg where positions were occupied near Eppeldorf.  Up forward, the infantry was again in the line, holding a broad front along the Our and Sauer Rivers.

Across the river was a new sight: Germany!

Two shells, one from each of two batteries winged their way into Germany proper on October 2, 1944, marking another step in the battalion’s mounting history, but the first two rounds were little indicative of the small amount of ammunition available during the next month and a half.

Eppledorf was a hot spot.  Previous units in the vicinity had kept clear of the town for a reason the battalion learned in a 10-day period from October 3 -13.  Continued shelling of the battalion area resulted in a displacement to positions near Medernach.

Although ammunition continued to be supplied only in driblets, the battalion fired its limited amounts with telling accuracy until hurry-up orders on November 19, brought in another unit to take over, whereupon the 56th entered into its most bitter days of the war; the Hurtgen Forest, in Germany.

The Hurtgen Forest was wet; it was muddy; it was cold; it was miserable.  Mud was melted chocolate ice cream, ankle deep.  Trees were no longer trees; trees were toothpicks, a result of thousands upon thousands of shells which had reduced the forest to splinters.

The infantry began its attack the morning of November 21, but failed to gain.  Observers had no observation due to the bad weather, fired many missions by sound.  Fire was directed on suspected positions constantly and massed fires of several battalions became commonplace as the division went ‘all out’ to dislodge the strongly fortified enemy.

Gains were small, bitterly contested.  On November 23, the battalion fired intermittently for a full hour to cover the sound of tanks moving forward trough the twisted woods.  More preparations, harassing missions, counter-battery fire, more preparations.  A fierce counterattack by the enemy on the night of November 23 required 45 full minutes of concentrated fire before the assault was stopped.  The 121st still held its ground.

Two more days of hellish fighting, and the troops had cleared the forest to the clearing short of the village of Hurtgen.  During this period the battalion fired 5,800 rounds of ammunition on harassing missions and targets of opportunity.

On November 30 Hurtgen fell, and when one battalion of the 13th Regiment went to Kleinhau, the 56th gave direct support to that attack.  By this time, the batteries had displaced far forward, so close to the infantry that it was necessary to fire the smallest charge in order to hit the short range.

While the infantry spent from December 2, to 22, cleaning out strong points west of the Toer River, the battalion kept busy with numerous fires, and was placed in direct support of the Second Ranger Battalion on December 7-8, in an attack to capture Hill 400, southeast of Bergstein.  Desperate enemy counterattacks, once the hill had been taken, were repeatedly broken up by deadly artillery fire, as jubilant Rangers reported ‘extremely heavy enemy casualties.’

Obermaubach, on the banks of the Rohr, fell December 26, and efforts turned to defensive measures as many an eye cocked south for an occasional glance toward the Ardennes where the Germans were making their breakthrough effort.

On February 8 the ‘Hurtgen Club’ broke up.  It was an almost regretful; farewell the men staged as they march ordered from log huts and underground bunkers which had been their homes for more than two months.

In position near Birgel, the 56th waited with everyone else for the waters of the Roer River to subside; waited and planned for the massive jump-off which came the morning of February 23.  But an important event already had taken place on the afternoon of February 16, when Battery C, which had fired the first round in France, boosted out the 100,000th round, the target being an enemy observation post.

Starting at 0245 hours on the morning of the 23rd, some 2,000 rounds of ammunition were hurled at the enemy in preparation for the crossing of the Roer River at Duren, and from the time of the jump-off at 0330 hours and continuing through the day, the battalion fired an additional 1,000 rounds in close support, harassing missions and targets of opportunity for the troops, making the assault crossing.

A muzzle burst on No. 2 gun in Battery A, reported at 0330 hours during the preparation split, the howitzer tube and the gun was out of action.  By 0600 hours however, a new gun was at the position, was immediately registered in corrections applied and Battery A again had four guns in action before the day was very old.

The 56th went back into direct support on the evening of the 24th when the 121st Infantry crossed the Roer, passed through the 13th Regiment, and cleared the outskirts of Duren before attacking toward Binsfeld.  On Sunday morning, the 25th, the battalion crossed the river, took up positions and moved into action as the Eighth Division paced the drive across the Cologne Plain.

Again it was a chase, the official reports sounding like action at a football game: Eschweiler, Baumweiler, Blatzheim; a counterattack on February 27 at Piffelsberg;  Kerpen, Modrath, the Erft Canal, and the battalion went into general support when another regiment passed through and relieved the 121st on March 1.

But the Gray Bonnet doughboys were not out long, coming back into go through the 28th after the seizure of Frechen on the night of March 3.  Cologne was within artillery range, the Rhine River, almost within grasp, and the enemy attacked with tanks twice on the morning of March 5, both of which were repulsed by artillery fire. 

The 121^st’s attack was steered to objectives to the West and southwest of Cologne as other units of the division went into Cologne, and the doughboys completed their task on March 7, after another preparation.  As a parting kiss the next day, the battalion shot a little reading matter in the general direction of the enemy as propaganda shells were dumped on the eastern bank of the Rhine.

Then came a five-day rest in a bivouac in Habbelrath.  On the 14th of March, the battalion moved into position in Duisdorf, again assuming direct support of the 121st which had taken over a holding position on the Rhine.  Few missions were fired as the ammunition allotment was low.  Six days later, the movement orders came again this time to take positions north of Cologne, staying there until relieved on March 29.

Ahead lay the crossing of the Rhine.

On March 30, the battalion displaced just south of Bonn and crossed the Rhine on the General Hodges Bridge, going into Germany proper where the Remagen bridgehead had been steadily expanding for a little more than three weeks.

The First and Ninth Armies had just made contact at Paderborn, sealing off the industrially rich Ruhr, and the Eighth Division immediately became the spearheading force from the South to reduce and split the ‘pocket.’

Ask one of the men what happened in the next two weeks and you get a shrug, a roll of the eyes.  Things moved fast directions of attack changed often,  and the old familiar ‘reconnaissance, selection and occupation of position’ was accomplished more times than in Tennessee maneuvers.

Progress was sporadic, but rapid.  Our targets were tanks, half tracks, personnel, AA guns.  Roaring out of a relatively quite night, the Germans mounted a furious counterattack against the Second Battalion ‘normal barrage’ had been fired for three hours, and the enemy assault had petered out but it burst out again in mid-afternoon in the Third Battalion’s sector and was reduced by artillery fire.

The 56th fired a total of 4,512 rounds that day, with ammunition being loaded into the howitzers directly from trucks as they arrived from the dump.  Gun tubes barely had a chance to cool off from the day previous to the attack when some 3,600 rounds had been fired.

The 121st continued its rapid advance, through Netphen into Musen, Littlefeld, Mittel, Neger, Lehne, Spielwigge: off one map onto another, one reconnaissance scarcely would be completed before the infantry’s advance required another.

Oberbrugge, Possel, and the 13th went trough the 121st, putting the 56th in general support just two days before contact was made with the Ninth Army troops, spitting the Ruhr pocket in two.

It was when the battalion was in position near Altenfords that T/4 Alfred Loeser, German-speaking radio operator from Headquarters discovered the telephone system to the next town of Gevelsburg was still in operation.  Loeser promptly called the commander of the German garrison, demanded he surrender, and gave him 20 minutes to think it over while artillery concentrations were prepared.  The enemy commander sent back an impolite ‘no’ later, which was the battalion’s command to fire.

The attack swung to the West in mopping-up operations, the 121st was back in line and progress was rapid with considerable prisoners being taken.  On the morning of April 17, all organized resistance in the Ruhr pocket ceased

From that time until the 26th of April, the battalion was on military government duty just outside of Mulheim, across the Rhine from Cologne.

With the Eighth Division attached to the XVIII Airborne Corps, the battalion moved north on April 27 to bivouac in Wriedel, near Uelzen, awaiting plans for the attack across the Elbe with the British Second Army.

On the 30th, new positions were occupied near Bleckede, where the bridgehead had been established, and the 121st Infantry went across to expand the bridgehead late that night.  Right behind them went the 56th, and the batteries were in position to support the attack which jumped off early on the morning of May 1.

Action on May 2 was brilliant.  With two battalions of the Gray Bonnet doughboys in the lead, two motorized columns led by tanks, headed out in a fast action toward Wismar, on the Baltic, with Schwerin an immediate objective.  The Germans collapsed in a big heap.  Prisoners jammed the roads, were waved to the rear by fast moving troops who never bothered to disarm or search them.

Arriving in Schwerin shortly after noon, the combat team received a halt order from corps when it was learned our Russian allies already had reached Wismar.  The battalion moved out to occupy positions north of Schwerin which had not yet been cleared of the enemy, and several thousand additional prisoners were disarmed and sent to the huge compound in Schwerin, already bulging with an uncounted mass of Germans.

The complete collapse of the Germans in the North was evident even before the big surrender of May 3, and V-E Day, coming on May 8 while the battalion was engrossed in handling displaced person and liberated prisoners of war and guarding installations, came as anticlimax.

But it was the real climax, a happy day for the tired men who had shot their way from the shores of Normandy right into the middle  of Germany.  Training had paid off.

As high point men began to leave the battalion while still in Europe, the 56th began to lose more familiar faces.  Key men disappeared to resume civilian jobs.  The battalion boarded the Navy Transport, ‘General Squier.’ at Le Harve on the night of June 29, sailed the next morning, and picked up the shores of Virginia the evening of July 8, after an uneventful trip.

With redeployment plans and ‘ETO to Tokyo’ banners tossed into the ash can by later developments, more men began to leave, officers finally qualified for their discharges, the 56th Field Artillery Battalion took on an entirely new face.  Old associations, nurtured and ripened by the experiences of battle, have broken up; but friendships, established in war will continue into peace.