ASLComp Schmidt: Defiant Reich EVERYMAN Edition

SCHMIDT, GERMANY, 4 November 1944: In Schmidt, as daylight came about 0730 hours on 4 November, the crash of a German artillery barrage brought Colonel Flood's battalion of the 112th Infantry to the alert. About half an hour later the peripheral outposts shouted that German tanks and infantry were forming up on the fringe of Harscheidt. American artillery was slow to respond; not until 0850 did the big guns begin to deliver really effective defensive fires. By that time the fight was on in earnest. Infantrymen from the battalion of the 1055th Regiment that had found their route of withdrawal cut by American capture of Schmidt charged in from the west. The other two battalions of the regiment and at least ten tanks and assault guns of the 16th Panzer Regiment struck from the direction of Harscheidt. As the German tanks clanked methodically onward in apparent disdain of the exposed mines strung across the hard-surfaced roads, the defenders opened fire with bazookas. At least one scored a hit, but the rocket bounced off. The German tanks came on, firing directly into foxholes and buildings. Reaching the antitank mines, the tanks merely swung off the roads in quick detours, then waddled on. Such seeming immunity to the bazookas and mines demoralized the men who saw it. Confusion mounted. As rumor hummed about that orders had come to withdraw, individually and in small groups those American infantrymen still alive and uncrippled pulled out. The overwhelming impulse to get out of the path of the tanks sent the men streaming from the village in a sauve qui peut. About 200 fled into the woods southwest of Schmidt, there to find they actually were deeper in German territory. The others headed back toward Kommerscheidt. The dead lay unattended. By 1100 most Americans who were to get out of Schmidt had done so. By 1230 the 28th Division headquarters apparently recognized the loss, for at that time the first air support mission of the day struck the village. For the third straight day fog and mist had denied large-scale air support.

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