Ed & Ray Hersman in WWII - Robert Marks.org

4.15. DÜSSELDORF Ed & Ray Hersman in WWIII started calling artillery down on the German tanks but couldn’t get itin right since we were at the foot of the mountain. It did worry the Germantankers though and eventually they pulled out.That night we sent a patrol to the Houtilize highway. The next dayan armored division moved through us and cut the highway and linked withPatton’s army which was coming up from the south. This was our last fight inthe Buldge battle. Our next fight was to be in the Rhine Valley in Germany.About this time an offer went around to some of us to get battlefieldcommissions. Generally only non-coms got this offer but to some of us theysaid they would make us non-com’s and then we would be put in for thecommissions. The catch was that the new officers could not serve with theirold outfit. As far as I know nobody ever took one of those offers.4.15 DüsseldorfAfter the Buldge battle we went into Germany and attacked towards Düsseldorf. 33After the preceding battles this was almost fun although we lost quite a fewmen.We drove the Germans into Neuss 34 which is directly across the RhineRiver from Düsseldorf. trains were still running across the river from Neussinto Düsseldorf and since we had captured a train the colonel had an idea.He thought it might be a good idea to load the battalion on the train andgo across the bridge into Düsseldorf. Fortunately he finally decided it wastoo risky. We attacked across some open fields and captured Neuss. TheGermans blew the bridge up when we were about a block away. We stayedin Neuss for several days and it was almost like a vacation since we had nofighting. Several .88 anti-aircraft guns were captured around Neuss. TheGerman crews fired these guns at the American troops as long as they couldthen ran into their underground concrete bunkers. The Americans turned33 See #14 on the map in Figure 4.1 on page 40.34 Neuss is a few kilometers west of Düsseldorf.76