[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 42 (Tuesday, March 7, 1995)] [House] [Pages H2782-H2784] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] {time} 1915 REMEMBERING WORLD WAR II The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Vucanovich). Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan] is recognized for 5 minutes. Mr. DORNAN. Madam Speaker, I wish I had an hour because my subject certainly is worthy of it. Madam Speaker, 50 years ago today the House of Representatives came to a screeching halt, and so did the United States Senate. They stood in the aisles here and cheered because the United States had crossed the Rhine on the Ludendorf railroad bridge at Remagen. And in just these few minutes--I will expand my remarks later--but in just these few minutes I think again of Ronald Reagan's goodbye to his country 9 days before George Bush was sworn in as President. In the close of President Reagan's goodbye after 8 wonderful years, he said, ``We must teach our young people about the history of our country, what those 30 seconds over Tokyo meant.'' He mentioned D-day. He mentioned Vietnamese boat people, Vietnamese rescue at sea, with a refugee yelling up to an American sailor, ``Hello, freedom man.'' He mentioned all the sacrifices that had gone before us. He told the children of America, ``If your parents are not teaching you at the kitchen table the history of your country, hit them on it.'' I think that would be a very American thing to do. Listen to this moment in history that President Eisenhower said was absolutely stunning. Time magazine said it was a moment for all history. After the war, General Eisenhower was quoted: Broad success in war is usually foreseen by days or weeks, with the result that when it actually arrives, higher commanders and staffs have discounted it and are immersed in plans for the future. This, however, was completely unforeseen. We were across the Rhine, 600 people, by midnight. We were across the Rhine on a permanent bridge, the traditional defensive barrier to the heart of Germany, the Rhine was pierced. Finally, defeat of the enemy, which we had long calculated would be accomplished in late spring, the summer campaign of '45 was now on our minds just around the corner. General Eisenhower's chief of staff, his alter ego, General Walter Bedell Smith, termed the Remagan Bridge worth its weight in gold. And a few days later it collapsed, killing 14 brave engineers. Let me give the names of our great heroes. The first ones across should certainly have gotten the Medal of Honor. When the young Brigadier General Hoge said, ``Get across that bridge,'' a young sergeant and a young lieutenant did not pause or say, ``But, sir, every sniper on the east side of that river is going to have my heart or my forehead in his gunsights.'' They just obeyed. The first man across was a sergeant, the backbone of the military, Sergeant Alex Drabik of Holland, a suburb of Toledo, Ohio. He was a squad leader in the 3d platoon. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio [Ms. Kaptur]. Ms. KAPTUR. I say to the gentleman that Drabik was a very distinguished resident of my district for many years until his death about a year ago. We were very proud of his service. He was the first U.S. soldier across the Rhine. Mr. DORNAN. I wish he was here. If I were running this place, I would have him address a joint session of Congress. That is what this man did to save tens of thousands of Germans who did not vote for Hitler who were being wiped out. All the people in the concentration camps that lived because the war ended 3 months earlier and had stopped them from starving to death and all of the untold GI's and the Navy and Army Air Corps and Marines and everybody that died. By the way, today we were only day 17 of 36 days on Iowa Jima. The Navy shelling stopped today. The Marines were still pressing on to lose almost 6,000 people and 800 others killed in action. Here is Drabik. He was with the 27th Armored Infantry. The second man across was an officer, 2d lieutenant, and get this German-American name, Karl Timmermann, of West Point, not New York with the academy, but Nebraska, company commander as a 2d lieutenant, company CO, 27th Infantry Battalion, first officer over the bridge. Sergeant Joe DeLisio, of Bronx, NY, platoon leader of the 3d platoon, Company A. He cleaned out a machine gun nest that was set on the bridge. First Lieutenant Hugh Mott, Nashville, TN, platoon leader in Company B. I do not have time to go through them all: Doorland, Reynolds, Soumas, Windsor, Goodson, Grimball; Michael Chinchar, of Saddle River Township, NJ; Joe Petrencsik, of Cleveland; Anthony Samele, of Bronx, NY. I will put the story of this day the bridge over Remagan and what the final German commander said who was trying to blow up the bridge when he came back to see it months later. Every one of those men were the bravest and should have gotten the Medal of Honor. They all did get the Distinguished Service Cross. (The document referred to is as follows:) A Dictionary of Battles (By David Eggenberger) Rhineland (World War II), 1945. Before the last of the German attackers had been driven out of the Ardennes bulge, the Allies had resumed their offensive against the Siegfried Line. Progress was so slow, however, that the large-scale effort became necessary to effect a breakthrough to the Rhine Valley. On February 8 the Canadian First Army (Henry Crerar) launched Operation Veritable, a major attack southeast from Nijmegen, Holland, between the Meuse and the Rhine. The latter was reached on February 14. A converging thrust by the U.S. Ninth Army (William Simpson), called Operation Grenade, crossed the Roer River on February 23. The two advances linked up at Geldern, Germany, on March 3. Two days later the Allies had pressed to the Rhine from opposite Dusseldorf northward, leaving only a small German bridgehead at Xanten- Wesel. The Canadians eliminated this pocket on March 10. Meanwhile, to the south, the left wing of the U.S. First Army (Courtney Hodges) attacked toward Cologne on February 23 to cover the Ninth Army's right flank. This offensive swept across the Rhine plain, while the U.S. Third Army of Gen. George Patton punched its way through the Siegfried Line north of the Mosselle River. On the central front the rest of the First Army and the Third Army, both under the group command of Gen. Omar Bradley, launched a broad attack on March 5 toward the middle Rhine (Operation Lumberjack). By March 10 the Americans had closed to the river from Coblenz northward through Bonn and Cologne (which fell March 7), to link up with the Canadians at Wesel. The rapid advance to the Rhine yielded a surprising and rich dividend. On March 7 the U.S. 9th Armored Division discovered the railroad bridge and Remagen still standing. (It was the only Rhine bridge not demolished by the Germans.) In a daring gamble, leading elements dashed across the Rhine and seized a bridgehead on the east bank. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, supreme Allied commander in Europe, ordered the new breakthrough hurriedly reinforced. Despite German counterattacks and determined efforts to wreck the bridge, Hodges rushed three corps (three, five, seven) across the river by bridge, pontoon, and ferry. By March 21 the bridgehead had grown to 20 miles long and 8 miles deep. (The Remagen success caused the Allies to shift the main axis of their attack from Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery's [[Page H2783]] northern group of armies to Bradley's central force.) During the Remagen bridgehead build-up, the U.S. general Jacob Devers' Sixth Army Group launched its own advance to the Rhine (Operation Undertone). It took the form of a huge pincers movement against SS Gen. Paul Hausser's Seventh and First German armies. On March 15 the right wing of Patton's Third Army attacked south across the Moselle River into the Saar. Two days later Gen. Alexander Patch's U.S. Seventh Army began hammering through the Siegfried Line, headed northeast. By March 21 the joint U.S. offensive had crushed all German opposition west of the Rhine except for a shrinking foothold around Landau. Then on March 22 Patton's 5th Infantry Division wheeled from south to east and plunged across the Rhine at Oppenheim. Encouraged by light opposition in this area, the eight Corps bridged the river at Boppard, 40 miles to the north, on March 24. Germany's last natural defensive barrier had now been breached in three places on Bradley's front. The Rhineland battle inflicted a major defeat on three Nazi army groups--Johannes Blaskowitz in the north, Walther Model in the center, Paul Hausser in the south. Some 60,000 Germans were killed or wounded and almost 250,000 captured. This heavy toll, plus the loss of much heavy equipment, ruined the Nazi chances of holding the Allied armies at the Rhine. Americans killed in action totaled 6,570; British and Canadian deaths were markedly fewer. ____ The Bridge at Remagen--The Amazing Story of March 7, 1945--The Day the Rhine River was Crossed (By Ken Hechler) The Significance of Remagen Bridge For almost three weeks after the capture of the Remagen Bridge, American troops fought bitterly in the woods and gullies of the Westerwald. They inched forward, expanding the bridgehead hour by hour, pushing laboriously to the east, to the north and to the south. Not until March 16, when American forces reached the Bonn-Limburg autobahn, seven miles east of the Rhine, did they have the maneuver space in which to fan out. For the infantry and tankmen who slugged it out in the bridgehead, for the military police and anti-aircraft men who were strafed at the Rhine crossings by attacking planes, and for the engineers who struggled in the face of air and artillery fire to build pontoon and treadway bridges over the river, capture of the Remagen Bridge seemed to stiffen rather than weaken enemy resistance. To many of these men, it did not seem that crossing the bridge had accomplished much. The capture of the Ludendorff Bridge materially hastened the ending of the war. It was an electrifying development at the moment, but it was followed a few weeks later by General Patton's sneak crossing of the Rhine south of Remagen at Oppenheim, and then by Field Marshal Montgomery's grand assault across the river south of Arnhem after extensive preparations and blasts on the trumpet. One of Karl Timmermann's fellow townsmen from West Point, Nebraska, rumbled across a Rhine pontoon bridge with gasoline and supplies, several weeks after Timmermann's exploit. He commented that the Rhine seemed little wider than the Elkhorn back home and certainly not as wide as the Missouri River. He confidently told his friends that to cross a bridge like that was small potatoes. For years afterward, he spoke up in West Point American Legion meetings, in all the local bars, and at the corner drugstore, disparaging what Timmermann had done at Remagen. The Germans had a far different reaction. In his conference with Field Marshal Kesselring two days after the capture of the Ludendorff Bridge, Hitler told him bluntly that the really vulnerable spot on the western front was Remagen, and that it was urgent to ``restore'' the situation there. Hitler took a personal hand in hurrying all available troops to reduce the Remagen bridgehead. The 11th Panzer Division wheeled southward from the Ruhr. The Panzer Lear and 9th Panzer divisions followed, swallowing many gallons of precious, high-priority gasoline. Many other divisions and scraps of divisions joined in the frantic German fight to contain the bridgehead. Field Marshall Model's Chief of Staff, Major General Carl Wagener, summed up the German view as follows: ``The Remagen affair caused a great stir in the German Supreme Command. Remagen should have been considered a basis for termination of the war. Remagen created a dangerous and unpleasant abscess within the last German defenses, and it provided an ideal springboard for the coming offensive east of the Rhine. The Remagen bridgehead made the other crossing of the Rhine a much easier task for the enemy. Furthermore, it tired German forces which should have been resting to withstand the next major assault.'' The Remagen bridgehead was vital in helping to form the southern and eastern pincers for the Allied troops that surrounded and trapped 300,000 German soldiers in the Ruhr. As sorely needed German troops were thrown against the Remagen bridgehead, the resulting disorganization and weakening of defenses made it much easier for other American Rhine crossings to be made to the north and south of Remagen. Just as the loss of the bridge was a blow to German morale, so did it provide a strong boost to American and Allied morale. Not only did it make the end of the war seem close at hand, but it also emboldened the combat troops when they were confronted with chances to exploit opportunities. It underlined the fact that the German army's soft spots could be found through aggressive attacks, thereby spurring American forces to apply greater pressure. After the war, General Eisenhower had this to say about the significance of the seizure of Remagen Bridge: ``Broad success in war is usually foreseen by days or weeks, with the result that when it actually arrives higher commanders and staffs have discounted it and are immersed in plans for the future. This was completely unforeseen. We were across the Rhine, on a permanent bridge; the traditional defensive barrier to the heart of Germany was pierced. The final defeat of the enemy, which we had long calculated would be accomplished in the spring and summer campaigning of 1945, was suddenly now, in our minds, just around the corner.'' General Eisenhower's Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith, termed the Remagen Bridge ``worth its weight in gold.'' President Franklin D. Roosevelt, with only six weeks to live, shared the elation of the field commanders over the significance of Remagen. The victorious Army Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall, had this appraisal to make: ``The prompt seizure and exploitation of the crossing demonstrated American initiative and adaptability at its best, from the daring action of platoon leader to the Army commander who quickly directed all his moving columns. * * * The bridgehead provided a serious threat to the heart of Germany, a diversion of incalculable value. It became a springboard for the final offensive to come.'' War correspondents on the scene added their eyewitness accounts on the significance of seeing American troops on the east bank of the Rhine. The Associated Press cabled on March 8: ``The swift, sensational crossing was the biggest military triumph since the Normandy landings, and was a battle feat without parallel since Napoleon's conquering legions crossed the Rhine early in the last century.'' Hal Boyle wrote from the front that ``with the exception of the great tank battle at El Alamein, probably no tank engagement in World War II will be remembered longer than the dashing coup which first put the American army across the Rhine at Remagen.'' He added that the crossing of the Rhine by the men ``who knew there was strong likelihood the dynamite-laden bridge would blow up under them at any moment has saved the American nation 5,000 dead and 10,000 wounded. ``It was a moment for history,'' stated Tine magazine. The nation expressed its gratitude to the heroes of Remagen in numerous ways. Both the United States Senate and the House of representatives interrupted their deliberation to cheer the news. In the House, a spirited debate took place as to which state could claim the first man to cross. Congress Brooks Hays of Arkansas declared philosophically: ``I am sure there will be glory enough for all.'' All around the country, local civic and patriotic organizations honored the men who had wrought the miracle of Remagen. The feeling toward the Remagen heroes was perhaps best expressed in an editorial in the March 10, 1945, New York Sun, which concluded with these words: ``Great shifts in history often do hang upon the developments of minutes. Americans know, and the enemy has learned, that given the least opportunity, American soldiers are quick to seize any break and exploit it to the fullest. The men who in the face of scattered fire and the great threat of the bridge blowing up under them, raced across and cut the wires have materially shortened a struggle in which every minute means lost lives. To all who utilized that ten minutes so advantageously goes the deepest gratitude this country can bestow.'' Captain Karl Friesenhahn, the little German engineer who was in charge of the engineer company at Remagen in 1945, returned to Remagen in 1954. I saw him gaze over the ruins of the bridge and he quietly asked what awards the American Army had give to Lieutenant Karl Timmermann, Sergeant Drabik, Lieutenant Mott and the other first Americans who crossed. When I told him that they had received Distinguished Service Crosses, Captain Friesenhahn replied with some feeling: ``They deserved them--and then some. They saw us trying to blow that bridge and by all odds it should have blown up while they were crossing it. In my mind they were the greatest heroes in the whole war.'' ____ Individual Awards DISTINGUISHED SERVICE CROSS The Distinguished Service Cross is the highest award which is conferred only on members of the U.S. Army. It is second only to the Medal of Honor, which is also awarded to members of other branches of the service. The following officers and men of the 9th Armored Division were awarded Distinguished Service Crosses for their heroism at Remagen: Sergeant Alex A. Drabik of Holland (Toledo), Ohio, squad leader of 3d platoon, Company A, 27th Armored Infantry Battalion. First man over the bridge. Second Lieutenant Karl H. Timmermann of West Point, Nebraska, company commander of Company A, 27th Armored Infantry Battalion. First officer over the bridge. Sergeant Joseph DeLisio of Bronx, New York, platoon leader of 3d platoon, Company [[Page H2784]] A, 27th Armored Infantry Battalion. Cleaned out machine gun nest on bridge. First Lieutenant Hugh B. Mott of Nashville, Tennessee, platoon leader in Company B, 9th Armored Engineer Battalion. Led engineers who ripped out demolition wires and cleared the bridge of explosives. Sergeant Eugene Dorland of Manhattan, Kansas, Company B, 9th Armored Engineer Battalion. One of engineers who helped clear the bridge of explosives. Sergeant John A. Reynolds of Lincolnton, North Carolina, Company B, 9th Armored Engineer Battalion. One of engineers who helped clear the bridge of explosives. Captain George P. Soumas of Perry, Iowa, company commander of Company A, 14th Tank Battalion, the first tank company to cross the bridge. First Lieutenant C. Windsor Miller of Silver Spring, Md., platoon leader in Company A, 14th Tank Battalion, the first tank platoon to cross the bridge. Sergeant William J. Goodson of Pendleton, Indiana, Company A, 14th Tank Battalion. Tank commander of the first tank which crossed Remagen Bridge. 1st Lieutenant John Grimball of Columbia, South Carolina, platoon leader in Company A, 14th Tank Battalion. Head of first tank platoon to reach the bridge. Sergeant Michael Chinchar of Saddle River Township, New Jersey, platoon leader of 1st platoon, Company A, 27th Armored Infantry Battalion. One of first group of infantrymen across the bridge. Sergeant Joseph S. Petrencsik of Cleveland, Ohio, assistant squad leader in 3d platoon, Company A, 27th Armored Infantry Battalion. One of first group of infantrymen across the bridge. Sergeant Anthony Samele of Bronx, New York, squad leader in 1st platoon, Company A, 27th Armored Infantry Battalion. Third man across the bridge. The following is a sample of the citation for the Distinguished Service Cross: ____________________