During the afternoon of December the 2nd, the Germans unleashed the first of the tremendous
artillery barrages that were to make the town of Saarlautern and the crossing site all but untenable for
weeks to come.
The assault waves drove into Saarlautern under this heavy fire and fought in the streets and
buildings of the town. The enemy defenses were designed with great ingenuity. Massive pillboxes and
bunkers were sandwiched in between normal dwellings and covered the neighboring streets with fire. A
harmless looking "Bierstube", a store, or even a doctor's residence might develop into a death trap with
thick concrete walls housing small determined bands of German troops.
Battalion objectives, at times, were a block of houses or even a single building. The town itself
had been converted into a fortress, and even peaceful looking parks became fiercely contested "no-man's
lands". Every street was a battleground echoing with the clatter of machine guns and the roar of tank
guns blasting in the heavy walls of reinforced houses. When night fell, the enemy could be heard
moving about in the streets and houses, but in the darkness and rain could not be accurately located.
It was realized that the fight through the town from house to house in a conventional type of
attack and to seize and hang on to the necessary bridgehead across the Saar would be too costly a
process for the already weakened troops. It was also likely that Germans would destroy the bridge as
the troops of XX Corps drove closer. So the 95th Division, with Corps approval, decided on one of the
slickest tricks of the war. Estimating the psychology of the German defenders, who fought skillfully,
but rigidly by the book, it was decided that the only feasible way of seizing the bridge intact was to
strike from an unexpected quarter.
After quietly patrolling the riverbank north of the town during the night of December the 3rd,
troops of the 95th Division paddled silently across the river in assault boats on the morning of the 4th at
0545 hours. By 0600 hours an entire battalion had crossed over without alerting the Germans and
started down the east side of the river. The route led over open terrain but the Germans, taken
completely by surprise, had left the outpost positions undefended. As the at battalion moved forward,
groups of the enemy coming to occupy the outposts were quickly and quietly captured. As the bridge
was reached, an armored scout car with a powerful radio was seized in a commando-like raid and its
occupants either bayoneted or captured before they could flash a warning.
The first shots of the whole operation were fired when the startled bridge guards attempted to
reach the switches and blow the bridge. One sentry was dropped 5 feet short of his goal.
As this amazing action was taking place, a task force of infantry and engineers bypassed centers
of resistance in Saarlautern and fought its way through the town to seize the other end of the bridge on
the west bank.
All wires leading to the bridge were immediately cut, and engineers began the work of clearing
the demolitions and mines from the structure. Four 500-pound American aerial bombs laid end to end in
the center the span, were discovered. These were disarmed and hauled off the bridge.
The bridge was a narrow life-line for large German forces west of the river and a pathway across
the Saar for the men and the guns of the "Ghost" Corps. The German forces east of Saar were slow to
react to the daring maneuver of the XX Corps troops in taking the bridge, but within a few hours they
struck hard in a frantic effort to retrieve their loss. Heavy guns and mortars from the high ground east of
the river poured a mass of shells on the bridge and in its vicinity. Guns of caliber as large as 240 mm
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