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CHAPTER X |
| As February arrived the 90th's Major General
James A. Van Fleet moved to a higher command and was succeeded by Major
General Lowell H. Rooks. The early days of February also saw the abrupt departure of winter, and the equally abrupt arrival of the hated enemy of all troops... General Mud. The melting snows developed into countless streams which cascaded from the hills into the Our. And once more the 90th found it necessary to contend with a river in flood. The Division now held an 18,000 yard front running northeast from Leiler on the south to Winterspelt on the north. On the left was the 4th Infantry Division, on the right the 6th Armored. Enemy opposition consisted chiefly of mortars, nebelwerfers (smoke blowers) and artillery. The Germans had seen fit to withdraw their Elite troops when the Bulge had flattened, and the enemy now comprised units of Volksgrenadiers (People's Grenadier). The troops, while not highly trained, nevertheless fought stubbornly now that the Fatherland itself was menaced. Heckhuscheid fell on the first day of the month, and now the attack turned its direction again. Wheeling about almost at right angles, Corps now altered its course and aimed toward the southeast. New objectives were assigned. At H-hour, D-Day, the entire Corps would assault the Siegfried Line with the Prüm River as its objective. The 4th Infantry Division would attack toward the town of Prüm, while the 90th was to cut through the 4th and take Pronsfeld, southwest of Prüm. Nothing lay between Corps and its objectives but treacherous knee-deep mud, hills, and the desperate Wehrmacht anchored securely in the Siegfried Line. Road beds, reduced to soft muck, collapsed almost immediately under the weight of vehicular traffic. Trucks and jeeps and tanks and Tank Destroyers ground impotently in an effort to extricate themselves from the morass in which they were mired, while the mud clung to the hubs and axles with octopus-like tenacity. |
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