Sergeant Robert K. Pacios - A/36th Armored Infantry Regiment - "Three Days in Hell - 9 to 12 December 1944"

Maybe it was our imagination, but to the men of Company A, 36th Armored Infantry Regiment (AIR) the toughest assignments seemed to be assigned to A Company. Therefore when we received our next task it seemed that we finally had a soft touch. This was fine with us since we had just received a new C.O., 1st Lieutenant Walter I. Berlin. In addition, former platoon sergeant, Raleigh F. "Pete" Colbert, Jr. had, a few days earlier, received a battlefield commission as a new 2d Lieutenant and had assumed command of the second platoon.

For the first time in several months the Company was at full strength, 5 officers and 174 men. There were three 42 man platoons consisting of a HQ squad, two rifle squads, a 60mm mortar squad and a machinegun squad with two .30 caliber light machineguns. With officers and Company HQ squad had a fighting strength of 140. The remainder of the personnel consisted of drivers, mechanics, cooks, etc.

It was in the early afternoon of 9 December 1944, in the small German town of Mausbach, eight miles east of Aachen, that Lt. Berlin briefed the company. The next day we were to be part of Task Force (TF) Kane and, from a collection of farm buildings called Stutgerhof, provide left flank protection for TF Hogan which was to make the major effort by attacking north, capturing the towns of Geich and Obergeich and moving rapidly forward to seize and secure Echtz.

TF Kane consisted of A Co., 36th AIR, Companies D & G of the 32d Armored Regiment, a platoon of engineers from the 23d Engineer Battalion, a platoon of M-36's from the 703d Tank Destroyer Battalion, a section of mine clearing Sherman tanks from the 738th Tank Battalion, all supported by the 105 howitzers of the 67th Armored Field Artillery Battalion.

At 1900 we moved out in complete darkness to make the road march to Langerwehe. Dismounting we moved on foot to Stutgerhof that had been seized by a combat team from the 9th Infantry Division. Upon our arrival the men from the 9th quickly disappeared and we were left alone.

As dawn broke into a gray, overcast day we saw that Stutgerhof was on a slight prominence that was about 25 feet higher than the flat ground that stretched to the East. We could plainly see Geich and Obergeich, Hogan's twin objectives, lying to our right as well as the church steeple of Echtz, his second objective.

As the morning wore on we could hear the distant sound of artillery and the very faint sound of small arms fire from Geich. As Hogan's task force was having trouble reaching its target towns, at 1400 we received orders to proceed across the flat farmland and seize Echtz. Moving across the level fields from which sugar beets had been harvested and receiving only intermittent, ineffective artillery fire, we reached ground two hundred yards from the outskirts of Echtz before we encountered slight resistance in the form of a small volume of rifle fire from troops of the German 3d Parachute Division who were sheltered in a deep trench. This resistance was easily overcome since the krauts had no anti-tank weapons to fight the 30 tanks that were with us.

Moving quickly into the built-up area the men of Company A flushed out a substantial number of enemy soldiers who had taken refuge in the buildings. By dark the town of Echtz was secure with a few more enemy appearing and being killed or captured during the night. Our casualties on December 10 were relatively light, 14 men wounded with most of these wounds being slight.

The next morning, after meeting with Lt. Berlin and Col. Kane, Lt. Pete Colbert returned to his second platoon. Pete told us that intelligence had determined that all of the enemy's fighting men had been killed or captured, and the next town to the east, Hoven, was occupied by cooks, bakers, clerks and other headquarters personnel of the German 3d Parachute Division. Therefore the men of the second platoon were to mount 5 Sherman tanks of G-32, one squad to a tank, and reconnoiter the ground between Echtz and Hoven.

If able, we were to hold the town, radio back and the rest of Company A with the remaining tanks would come up and relieve us. Confident that we would be in Hoven within an hour (it was only 2,000 yards distant) the second platoon mounted the tanks and started out onto the flat, treeless plain and moved towards our objective.

Three hundred yards from Echtz the tanks moved out of their column formation and fanned out into a platoon front. We halted and the tank platoon commander surveyed Hoven through his field glasses. Suddenly all hell broke loose as we began to draw enemy anti-tank fire and then some artillery rounds. The tanks began backing up, withdrawing into the shelter of the buildings. The driver of the tank I was on backed up very slowly and the members of my squad leaped off it and high-tailed back into town. The solid rounds cracked by our heads and we heard some plunge into the soft ground with a huge thud. The slow moving tank was knocked out and only three of the five-man crew escaped.

The second platoon immediately prepared for a counterattack. (The Germans were notorious for mounting them.) Taking firing positions inside the buildings, we were ready but the enemy did not oblige. In the basement of the building I was in, the men started exploring the structure. Dan Woods, a rifleman, threw back a curtain covering an alcove and there sat six docile members of the Wehrmacht.

The brass then decided that their estimation of the situation was incorrect and that maybe quite a few of the enemy paratroopers had been able to retire safely to Hoven. That afternoon, 11 December, the entire Company, along with the tanks of D and G Companies of the 32d Armor moved out to attack. Our first platoon was on the left side of the road and the third on the right with the second now in reserve. TF Hogan, having by now captured Geich and Obergeich, moved into Echtz and now joined in the attack on Hoven.  The 67th Armored Field Artillery Battalion fired a preparatory barrage on the town.

When the leading elements of the infantry reached the small stream that bisected the area, the krauts opened up with murderous artillery, mortar, small arms and automatic weapons fire. Devoid of any cover or concealment the infantry was taking horrendous casualties. Not neglecting the tank, anti-tank rounds destroyed several tanks. Cries of "Medic! Medic!" attested to the accuracy of Jerry's fire. Pinned to the ground, the infantry was not able to rise to seek shelter until the artillery fired white phosphorous rounds to create a smoke screen and shelter the movements of the first and third platoon from German observation. 

The bodies of eight members of the Company lay sprawled on both sides of the road between Echtz and Hoven. Nineteen wounded men were able to make their way back to Echtz, either by themselves or with the aid of stretcher-bearers or helped along by unhit men. The Company's three medics did yeoman duty in caring for the wounded. 

That night the men, with sentries posted and on the alert, rested as well as they could under the circumstances. The German artillery plastered Echtz with harassing fire all evening, stopping just before dawn. The bag of German prisoners grew and created a problem when their guards took cover from an artillery concentration. Taking advantage of this and probably seeking shelter from their own shells the Germans scattered into a number of buildings. A couple of squads spent a few hours before then were all rounded up again. 

It was obvious that someone higher up in the command structure wanted to capture Hoven which sat on the east bank of the Roer River. That night the rest of the 1st Battalion of the 36th AIR and the 1st Battalion of the 60th Infantry Regiment (9th Infantry Division) was attached to TF Kane. The Task Force now consisted of two infantry battalions with attached armor supported by all four 3d Armored Division field artillery battalions as well as several Corps artillery battalions.

We were to commence a third attack the next morning, 12 December, at 0800 after a prolonged artillery preparation on Hoven. Because A Company had suffered many casualties the previous two days, we were the reserve company of the 36th AIR which attacked in the fields on the right side of the road to Hoven while the 60th was on the left.

The artillery preparation seemed to be overwhelming and included with several frightening TOT's (time-on-target). Immediately smoke was fired to cover the movements in the open field. By the time A Company had reached the stream in the field, we were receiving a lot of artillery and mortar fire. Soon we reached the first buildings in Hoven, passed through the other two companies, and commenced to clear out the buildings in the town.

My squad led the platoon and moved out. We had cleared several buildings (there were only six men remaining in the squad) when we discovered that we were alone - the rest of the platoon was not following. When the last man in our squad had signaled the first man in the following squad, the signal was missed and we had moved out alone. However things were going well for us and I decided to continue on.

Working in two teams we leap-frogged aggressively and cleared out buildings on both sides of the street. Flushing out a number of frightened German paratroopers we continued on until we came to an intersection, which was covered by a German anti-tank gun. I sent Mike Lucas back to where the tanks were, which had halted at the beginning of the village, to retrieve the platoon radio that had been on the deck of one of the tanks. Mike returned a half hour later with a tank and with word that shrapnel had riddled the radio useless.

By this time I discovered that each of us had less than a full clip of ammunition for our M-1's. I sent two men back along the street to recover empty clips that had been ejected. Borrowing a machine gun belt of .30 caliber from the tank, we reloaded the recovered empty clips. Because the tank commander dared not expose the tank to the anti-tank gun, we sat there for several hours before being relieved.

Thus, on 12 December we were able to take the objective with a force 20 times larger than our original reconnaissance patrol that tried unsuccessfully two days earlier. But the victory this day was not without casualties. We had another eight men killed and six wounded.

A Company's total casualties for the three-day affair were 16 killed, 33 wounded, 15 evacuated because of exhaustion and one self-inflicted gunshot wound. Thus our casualties totaled 65 or 43%.

There was a tremendous amount of heroism displayed by the men of the Company and the Army recognized this. As a result Lt. Berlin received the Distinguished Service Cross (he had been recommended for the Medal of Honor), nine men received the Silver Star and seventeen Bronze Star medals were awarded. To cap it all off the entire Company received a cluster to The Distinguished Unit Badge, or Presidential Unit Citation as we called it, having received its original one for its actions in breaching the Siegfried Line the previous September.

Today Bob Pacios is retired and living in Lewiston, ME. He was born 29 August 1924 in Medford, MA. He entered the service early in 1943 and was assigned to the 3d Armored as an infantry replacement in Normandy on 19 August 1944. He served as leader of the 60mm mortar squad in the 2d platoon of Company A, 1st Battalion, 36th Armored Infantry Regiment, and was promoted to platoon sergeant on 13 December 1944. He was seriously wounded in the small Belgian town of Provedroux on 10 January 1945 during the Battle of the Bulge. After medical evacuation, Bob never returned to the 3d Armored Division. He is a member of both Third Armored Division Association (1941-45) and the Association of 3d Armored Division Veterans.  He is also the editor of The Spearhead Doughboy, the monthly newsletter of Company A, 36th AIR.