AFTER effecting contact with ten tanks (which were lined up along the edge of the river in order to shell and lend 50 cal. support) the Captain had made a quick reconnaissance. There were no fording places in his sector, and no assault boats. One trick might work--demolition of the three bridge pillars that still stood partially intact. At pointblank range, the tanks fired ten armor-piercing rounds into the pillars. When the blast was over, enough rubble and masonry had fallen into the river to create a tolerable fording place. Supported by heavy weapons units, the company moved across and rallied under the lee of the stone bridge supports. G Company followed the assaulting company.
Now it remained only to get the tanks across. A spot was found in front of a riverside factory building where the tanks could push through a hedge and run off a gentle slope into the river. Wallowing out into the river with water up to their bow machine-guns, four tanks made the plunge. Others followed. At the end of this maneuver fire power of tanks and infantry was massed on the forward bank, using a thick hedgerow for protection. And Able Company jumped off into the attack with George Company ready to support.
81 mm mortars, operated under battalion control, had set up on the outskirts of town, with an OP established on a rooftop in the rear of the weapons. In the first half hour of the attack, the How Company platoon fired over 700 rounds into the center of Zeitz. As the rifle companies moved in, the platoon displaced, just in time-- for the old positions received accurate counter-battery fire five minutes after they pulled out.
Now the battle moved into every section of the city. To the south, Able Company cleared a section of buildings near the church, on high ground overlooking the cemetery and the river--then moved south through sniper-infested streets.
In no other city had the battalion encountered civilian snipers by the scores as in Zeitz. Some wore the uniforms of railroad workers, policemen and post office employees. Others wore ordinary civilian clothes. Few of these super-Nazis were taken as prisoners. To aid in wiping them out, a platoon of armored infantry drove into A Company's sector to clear road blocks so that tanks could follow. Withering fire from tank artillery wasn't healthy for these "plain-clothes boys."
Early in the morning, enemy artillery fire--the usual 88s--whined into the city, increasing their output as the day progressed. Engineers, who were attempting to put in a Bailey bridge for the armor to use, were stopped again and again, finally being ordered to abandon the job. At battalion headquarters, which a platoon of G Company was guarding, one of the chief headaches was communications. Wires across the river had to be reinstalled constantly under the harassment of the 88s.
Odd battle experiences were varied and numerous. In Charlie's sector a large PW camp was liberated. Overjoyed Allied prisoners--hundreds of them--exchanged greetings with busy riflemen who hailed them on the run, fumbling in their pockets and stopping just long enough to offer them their first American cigarettes in months and years.
In another section of the city, a German staff car suddenly appeared from a side street, running into the rear of Able Company riflemen. The horn honked impatiently at first, but in a few moments the car pulled to a stop. Its occupant was a Nazi major. Unaware that Zeitz was already in American hands, the major remained goggle-eyed and speechless as rifle muzzles were pushed into his face. The major had been traveling through Zeitz to another city.
These hours in Kretzschau and Zeitz left their stamp on the regiment, left their stamp indelibly on the companies of the line, left their stamp branded deeply in the memory of many of the Special Units. They were unforgettable.
The I & R platoon was out in force that night, each squad in a different direction on separate parts of the same mission, one headed by Lt. Cloud and the other by the regimental S-2, Maj. Clark. The mission was to discover and to bring together in contact the lines of the 6th Armored and of the 3rd battalion. The precise reason why this contact was ever lost has never been quite clear--but the general picture explains it sufficiently. It was the question of movement again, so rapid as to be almost lightning. It was the crossing and recrossing of lines and sectors in such a way as to create a state of hectic chaos and confusion. It was the impatience of the armor to be off and away. It was the necessarily greater caution of men traveling afoot and without armor. It was any number of reasons and all of them together. But, in the long run, it devolved upon the platoon to find these loose ends and, if humanly possible, join them together again. So, the squads separated upon leaving Kretzschau and both of them by slightly different routes headed for Zeitz. The clues, if anywhere at all, would be somewhere around here.

ZEITZ, where resistance (in spots) was still raging with its sniper and "die-hard" menace, was a ticklish town to be in--or even to be near. Lt. Cloud and his squad of men made their way by jeep accompanied by an M-8 from the 76th Recon Troops and finally located a liaison officer from the 6th Armored and the information that there was supposed to be a representative from the Armor to meet a representative from the 3rd battalion and lead the battalion to the expected meeting place on a road to the east of Zeitz. The representative would be making his way to the town along this road and should be met just short of the city or intercepted on the road for the sake of greater speed. One jeep and a detail of three men were immediately dispatched to this lonely watch at the edge of this road outside of town. Their orders were to flag down every 6th Armored vehicle which hove into sight.
As luck would have it, it was not ten minutes before the first one of these appeared, tearing down the road. It was ticklish business, of course, stopping any vehicle this way in the dark, never knowing whether or not the passengers might happen to be trigger-happy--but it was accomplished. The mission was explained to the man riding next to the driver and (again, as luck would have it!) it turned out to be a General Officer, although it was never determined exactly which one it was. He listened patiently--for a moment--then exploded. The jeep practically trembled with his "emphasis." "Go back and tell your regiment to get their-- -- --twenty miles up this road! That's where the 6th Armored is!" And that was that-until the next vehicle showed up (three minutes later), this time with a Captain peering out of the turret of a recon car. His message was substantially the same, except that the distance up the road dwindled down to a matter of seven miles. But he was still not the expected representative. Before Lt. Cloud returned to check with the men at this post another half hour elapsed and in that time one more 6th Armored car was flagged down, this one containing a S/Sgt. who was a trifle more amiable and communicative than the others encountered. And according to his account, the distance up the road was not seven miles but seven kilometers. It was shortly after this that the platoon leader came along--and it was "load up--the mission has been changed!"

The other squad, with Maj. Clark, in the meanwhile was off on another tangent. The mission here was to contact the 3rd battalion CP somewhere in this vicinity between Kretzschau and Zeitz. There were three vehicles, one of them mounted with a 30 cal. machine-gun. They drove into Zeitz picking their way carefully in and out and finally found themselves moving fast down a road at a point about three kilometers from the town and its burning houses and its streams of tracer bullets.

It was at this point that the Major, who was in the lead jeep, decided to stop in order to reorient himself, to check his bearings and--if necessary--review and change his plan of action. The road they were on went through terrain which (supposedly) was cleared of enemy resistance. (At least that was the story they had had.) That picture changed in a flash within the next few moments.
The vehicles had stopped near a cross-roads on comparatively flat ground with woods about 500 yards distant along the road. A sudden stream of lead and tracers cut through the night from the dug in position of from thirty to fifty Jerries who must have been "overlooked" or possibly had reinfiltrated into that "cleared-out section." The men hit for the ditches at the side of the road. Pfc. John N. McInerney (37694667) driving Maj. Clark's jeep was killed as he hit the ditch. Pfc. Walter Stern (19204628) was hit in the jeep and also killed. By now German bazookas had been added to the fire. Pfc. Walter Maier was hit. And then Pfc. David who had been driving the third jeep jammed his gear into reverse, fed it gas and let her roar. Pfc. Corcoran at the machine-gun in the other jeep covered his getaway with counter-fire for as long as he could--until his gun jammed and he too had to make a jump for it. He landed in the ditch and started to crawl backwards along towards where Cpl. Hart and Pasquinucci had succeeded in reaching, but he too was caught by enemy fire before he was able to make it. Sgt. Ridley, Pfcs. Walter Maier and Frank Dorko were with the Major. An almost steady stream of enemy fire was traversing the positions and keeping the men almost completely pinned down. What little firing they were able to do was completely ineffective and their ammunition was rapidly petering out in any event.
Having with him Maier, who could speak German, the Major decided to see what persuasion could do. He realized that their position was hopeless and that their only hope was to attempt to parley. It will to this day be an open question as to whether or not he would have succeeded if the Germans had not had with them one of their officers. However, that was the situation and there was no remedy for it. It was also an open question as to how soon David would be back with help or if he had even been able to get completely away. As the only alternative under the circumstances the Major surrendered and permitted himself and the men with him to be taken prisoner and disarmed. He again tried vainly to persuade the German lieutenant in charge of the futility of any further German resistance and to impress him with the fact that there would be help on the way to the Americans within the next few minutes--but it was still "love's labor lost."
David, in the meanwhile, had found the 6th Armored and was bringing them back. Actually, what the Major had predicted was true. Help was on the way!
The I & R platoon had come through combat thus far scathless--until this night--perhaps that was the law of averages. It catches up sometimes. And yet it was ironical (though they did not know it at the time) that the end of the war for the Combat Team should be so close--and that this should have happened to them now. Two were dead. Two were seriously wounded. One (Sgt. Ridley) had a ruptured ear-drum and his condition was so serious as to cause his evacuation. It was a sad platoon the next morning when it reassembled--what was left of it--but c'est la guerre!
Back in Zeitz, night fell and the battalion was in firm control of two-thirds of the city. The prisoner score for the day was 480 enlisted men and fourteen officers. Enemy dead could not be estimated. The battle was not over, but silence prevailed in the empty streets . . .
. . . and another tired soldier sat down for a moment on the rubble-remnants of a masonry pillar, lit a cigarette and took a deep drag. As the smoke streamed out of his nostrils and through his lips he looked around him, at the city, at the night, at his buddies and a look of surprise overtook his countenance. "Well, whadda you know," he said, "--it's Friday the thirteenth."

THERE was to be one more day of chasing the rag, tag and bobtail of the German army. Even as the 1st battalion was yet at work clearing Zeitz, other battalions of the combat team were off, on their way again. Barely a hundred miles south of Berlin, only thirty miles from Leipzig, armor and infantry were still heading east toward the Russians. With the passing of twenty-four hours the combat team was to find itself far out ahead of the Allied lines--holding ground farther east than any other unit on the entire Western Front. The battalions were to be separaten during these action-packed hours, racing along pell-mell with various combat-commands of the 6th Armored Division.
The 2nd battalion jumped off first with Combat Command A. Outside of Drossdorf, a village on the southeastern outskirts of Zeitz, the battalion was divided to coordinate with the armor's plan of attack. G Company, followed by CC A and battalion command groups, took a northern route with CT 15. E and F Companies moved out in a parallel southern column with CT 9. With the 2nd battalion again went Lt. Singleton as artillery observer with E company. The following is his comment:
"(April 14 - 16) Received order to join the company at 0800 on April 14. Arriving, I found out from Capt. Maberry that the battalion was to be motorized and work with the 6th Armored Division which was to kick off on another spearhead attack. Our mission was to follow in the rear on trucks, mopping up small-arms resistance, rounding up prisoners and guarding bridges that were taken undamaged. Departed from the forward assembly area at 1400 for the wildest ride that we ever had. Germans surrendered by the thousands. The tanks met little resistance and they quickly wiped out what opposition there was. Many Allied prisoners of war were released by us and one prison camp alone had 500 French officers. German planes attempted to disrupt cur advance and we witnessed a German bomb missing the column by only 75 yards and killing several German civilians. The company stopped off at Lunzenau to guard four bridges crossing a small river. One of the bridges was blown out just as we arrived, but we secured and held the other three."
Along the southern route, thirty kilometers away from Zeitz lay the sizable city of Altenburg. It was known as a stronghold, a supply dump and a Luftwaffe center. In a surprise move E and F Companies bypassed the city completely to the south, circling it and coming north to the east of the town. Their results were as good as if they had beleaguered the city itself. They captured an entire regiment of Germans. The column speeded on to the Zwickauer Mulde River, another twenty-two kilometers away, to capture bridges at Hohenkirchen and Lunzenau which Company E was left to guard. The northern column, meanwhile, had run into a battery of thirty 88s, had destroyed the guns with the aid of P-47 fighter planes and rounded up 230 prisoners. Late in the afternoon of April 15th, the two columns joined (another nineteen kilometers to the east) to seize bridgeheads over the Zschopau River in the vicinity of Mittweida. By nightfall, G Company had dug in on high ground across the river and the battalion had relieved all armored forces in the sector. (Editorial Note: This last remark may convey the wrong impression. Actually, 1st battalion with TF Lagrew [CCR from the 6th Armored Division - U.Koch] advanced and established outposts eventually which were even further east than those established by the White battalion. In their identical claims to the same distinction, very probably neither of the battalion historians realized the proximity of the battalion outposts to each other. This condition was engendered by the fact that the lines and the armor had been and continued to be in such a continuous state of flux.)