Pacifica Military History Free Sample Chapters.pmd

282 Pacifica Military History
FIRST ACROSS THE RHINE
The 291st Engineer Combat Battalion in France, Belgium,
and Germany
By Col. David E. Pergrin with Eric Hammel
First Across the Rhine is the first-person narrative by the commander of
the celebrated 291st Engineer Combat Battalion, one of the rough, hardworking
U.S. Army engineer combat units that literally paved the way
from Normandy to the Rhine and beyond.
After it landed in Normandy shortly after D-Day, the 291st quickly
acquired a reputation as a savvy, can-do engineer combat unit. During
the race across France and Belgium in the summer of 1944, the 291st
proved itself to be the U.S. First Army’s premier engineer battalion. In
December 1944, the lightly armed 291st found itself virtually alone as
it stood astride the route of the panzer spearhead charged with leading
the northern army group in Hitler’s last-ditch Ardennes offensive—the
Battle of the Bulge. Tough and confident, the 291st blew up bridge after
vital bridge in the face of the German assault and thus denied Germany
her needed victory in the West. Weeks later, the 291st was selected from
among all U.S. Army engineer combat battalions in Germany to throw
the first bridge across the Rhine River in the face of enormous resistance.
It thus built the longest combat bridge in Europe in record time
and opened the German heartland to the Allied juggernaut.
Few American combat units have achieved the distinction and recognition
accorded the 291st Engineer Combat Battalion. Here, in the
words of its only combat commander, is the 291st’s recipe for success—
stiff training and a group ethos for excellence. This is an exciting, inspiring
story about an essential aspect of warfare all but ignored in the
thousands of World War II books that have flooded the market over the
past half century.