The Last Ten Days of the War 3

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The outlook in the 3rd Battalion was just as grim on the 4th of May as it had been on the 3rd and the artillery seemed even more active as we moved south from Lenggries with I Company in the lead. An ex-Wehrmacht soldier came out of the little town ahead of us and offered to guide a company up the towering slopes to the east to bypass the resistance. The SS had killed his grandmother the night before and were shelling the town where he was living. Coming out into a snowy clearing high above the Isar, the leading platoon of I Company suddenly came upon six SS men operating an OP in radio communication with the artillery that had been hitting us with such accuracy. Being typical SS they wouldn't give up and fought until all six of them were dead; SS prisoners were rare those days. That ended the accurate artillery fire and K Company pushed on to the south with little difficulty.

On the 4th of May alone there were 3,297 PW's, including five Generals, that went through our processing and countless numbers that we were unable to handle jammed the roads to the rear. The night of May 4th found the 3rd Battalion still engaged on the bank of the Isar far south of Bad Tölz, the 1st Battalion at the dead end of a Trans-Bavarian Super Highway that had never been completed except on the map, and the 2nd Battalion a few miles from the Austrian Border facing a yawning abyss in the highway where SS engineers had dropped a section of a great arched bridge several hundred feet below into a rocky gorge. Between the 2nd and 3rd Battalions it was 40 airline kilometers over rugged snow capped Alps and all units were out of radio contact with each other. Around us were an estimated 40,000 armed Germans.

It was late afternoon on the 5th day of May, 1945. The 1st Battalion had just closed into Kufstein on the Inn River after moving by truck from just south of the Schliersee to Bayrischzell, then south through the pass to Austria and had been alerted to be ready to move towards St. Johann. Then the alert was called off and the men relaxed in their billets and started to heat their rations.

The 2nd Battalion was 13 miles inside of Austria just west of the Walch See, and a light drizzle was beginning to fall. G Company had made contact with an enemy road block and had received a couple of wild rounds from a single Jerry artillery piece and had thrown back 75 rounds from two of H Company's mortars. Just across the creek to the south there had been a lively small arms fight going on with the heavy stacatto thump of the I and R platoon's fifty calibers dominating an argument with the sporadic bark of German rifles. The rest of the battalion was halted along the road and some of the men were heating C rations on Coleman stoves. It had gotten almost dark and a 131st Field Artillery Captain up in the G Company position peered into the dusk through his glasses as two shells whined over his head and crashed into the road block up ahead. "Deflection correct, 200 over ... fire for effect." It was raining harder now and getting too dark to see clearly. The radio crackled and he listened for the familiar "on the way", but the reply came back, "All troops halt in place ... do not fire unless fired upon." The Captain quietly said, "Roger ... Roger and out ... all right boys, pack up ... mission complete," and walked back along the road in the rain.

Darkness on the 5th of May found the 3rd Battalion 20 kilometers south of Bad Tölz facing a fanatically stubborn enemy manning a road block. One platoon of I Company was pinned down by the road block and another platoon had just come out of the woods where it had been trying to knock out some SS manned machine guns firing long range plunging fire from high on the snowy slopes that rose abruptly to the east. There was a flak wagon someplace in the distance that was throwing harassing 20 mm. fire from time to time. The decision had just been made that the entire company would move up the hill and attack the machine gun positions at daybreak. It was getting dark and the cold air from the snowy slopes was slipping down into the bottom of the valley. A big, shaggy haired FO from the 155th Field Artillery was adjusting the mediums on the high

slopes above them and the spent shell fragments occasionally thudded into the ground dangerously near to us. A GI who had carried a BAR all the way from Cassino remarked half profanely and half reverently: "God Almighty, I'd hate to get hit this near the end." Just then a Lieutenant walked up and said, "the Major has just received word that the war is over and the 143rd will relieve us tonight."

Service Company entered Austria via the pass just west of Kufstein late on the afternoon of the 5th of May. As they approached the town they heard some enthusiastic GI, who had just heard news of the capitulation, discharging his weapon. Twenty Nighthawk drivers are reported to have grabbed their rusty rifles and hit the ditch, and that night the newest six-by-six motor in the company was burned out by a driver who had been driving since Camp Bowie.

That was the way the war ended for the 141st Infantry Regiment. It was several days before the war in Europe was officially over, but for us it ended just after dusk on the 5th of May. Most of us found houses to sleep in that night, although some of us stood outpost duty to guard against last minute treachery — there was none. Even the SS troops seemed ready to accept complete defeat; the surrender was unconditional. Demonstrations of an exuberant nature were very few that night. We sat around in small groups and talked very quietly or didn't talk at all. Most of us were occupied with our own thoughts and were inwardly thanking God that it was over and that there would be no groping through the early morning blackness moving up to an attack tomorrow or the next day or the day after. Some of us said that we were so quiet because the end came as an anticlimax to the obvious disintegration of the German Army, but others said that they suddenly felt very humble and very grateful — humility and gratitude are emotions that come easily to men who have fought as long and hard as we had fought. At any rate, that was the way our proud regiment ended the war... and her record, written by the efforts and sacrifices of 10,000 men, is an illustrious saga of modern men of arms.

John E. Pretsch Drawing - 1945