Sunday, December 13, 2009

April 4-6, 1945

April 4 left Gr.B. drove to Bielefeld. Had a close shave there, fired on by snipers & then had machine gun open from rear. In the morning the jerries had a road block under a RR bridge. In the afternoon they backed into the houses on the edge of town. Four jerries came out after loud speaker told them to give up. They were men of about 40 & plenty scared. We went back to Gütersloh.

UPDATE: On December 5, 2013, I received an email from Bruce Mattmueller whose dad, Warden Mattmueller of San Bernardino, California was assigned to the 102nd Div. 1276th Combat Engineers. Warden's diary entry notes: April 2, we arrived at Munster, cleared streets with dozers. April 4th, went to Bielefeld, to clear roadblocks, had trouble with snipers.

Warden won the Bronze Star at the Roer River, making 14 crossings in an assault boat under mortar fire. One boat was sunk and he is credited with rescuing numerous soldiers from drowning. His diary lists the following names: Bobs (or Robert), Dick (or Richard), Bills (or William, Johns, Dons (or Donald), Daves, Raymond, George, Melvin, Abe, Art, Melvin, Ivan, Joseph, Carl, Dan, Danny, Ira, Vic, Ellis and Gerhard.

Frank's April 1 entry, noted that "Warden's truck slid off the road in front of me." According to Bruce, Warden drove a GMC 2 1/2 named "Norma" after his wife.




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