Central Europe
28 March
9 May 1945
In the streets and alongside the levees of Muhlheim the assault boats were laid out in the
darkness. The 315th was supporting the 358th Infantry while just downstream at Rumpenheim the 150th
Engineers were making similar preparations for the 357th Infantry. As the assault hour 0330 on 28
March approached all was unusually quiet along the riverfront. Boats were carried over the dikes and
silently launched into the stream. The infantrymen were loaded, paddled across and the engineers
returned the boats for the second, then the third loads. Still no shot had been fired. Then, as the first light
of dawn dimly illuminated the fog rising from the river there was a brief but violent firefight with a
detachment of Hitler Youth OCS cadets in the village of Dornigheim. Small arms fire raked the crossing
sites as Company C rapidly pushed out and completed a footbridge. Artillery fire from batteries in the
Taunus Hills on the northern outskirts of Frankfurt bracketed the area but the work went on.
The 359th Infantry streamed over the footbridge and then Company C built support rafts and
carried the tactical vehicles across. The corps engineers were soon at work on a heavy pontoon bridge at
the Muhlheim-Dornigheim ferry site. By mid-afternoon the bridge was complete and the 6th Armored
was roaring across. In less than twelve hours two regiments had been ferried over in assault boats, a
third crossed on a footbridge, tactical vehicles had been rafted across and now armor was streaming over
and into the heartland of Germany.
On 30 March the division advanced 25 miles, the next day 30 miles. Town after town displayed
the white banner of surrender and nowhere could Nazis be found. The German civilians were all peace
loving people who had always hated Hitler and his crowd and who loved the Americans passionately.
There were a few road blocks but the civilians were eager to help remove them. Many of the great
masonry arch bridges on the autobahns had been demolished but most could be bypassed. On and on – it
was the same each day – a few skirmishes, a few roadblocks and bypasses, but mainly it was a matter of
racing on into the hills of Hessen.
On 1 April one of the H & S Company reconnaissance teams was captured while reconnoitering
a bridge site near Heimboldshsn the team later escaped and on 3 April bridges over the Werra River
were built at Widdershausen, Dondorf and Vacha.
This area of Germany was a mining and manufacturing center and it was at Merkers in a salt
mine that the 90th captured the entire German gold reserve. One hundred tons of gold bullion and
millions of dollars in currencies of many nations were captured along with priceless art treasures which
had been looted from the art centers of Europe. The 357th Infantry was detailed to guard the treasure
while the main body of the division pushed ahead to Bad Salzungen where a large group of German
diplomats were captured in a very plush hotel overlooking a crystal lake.
The bridge across the Werpa at Bad Salzungen was captured intact and the demolition charges
were removed. But as the 90th pushed on a fourth bridge over the Werra was built between Immelborn
and Barchfeld as the division raced on into the mountains of Thuringia amid a solid stream of liberated
slave laborers.
At Zella Mehlis on 9 April the Walther small arms factories were captured. It seemed that there
were enough pistols and shotguns and rifles there, in various stages of manufacture, to have completely
armed several divisions and needless to say, most of the visiting Americans helped themselves from the
stocks of completed weapons.
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