Ray Stratford, the veteran interviewed in the preceding pages, worked alongside Captain Harold Lozano (Pancho) as a communications specialist during the campaign described below. The narration, written by Howard K. Smith, CBS correspondent, is excerpted from With the 102d Infantry Division Through Germany (Infantry Journal Press, 1947), pp. 133—9. It details "the first hours of the great Allied offensive that marked the beginning of Germany’s end."

22 February 1945, 1800 hours: This is Ederen, a badly smashed German village two miles from the Roer River. German fighters, on reconnaissance, have been over five times in the last hour, and we have received a few German shells throughout the day. But now it is quiet.

I have been staying in a deep cellar with C Company of the 405th Regiment of the 102d Infantry Division. It has been chosen to spearhead the crossing of the Roer tomorrow morning. The company commander is Captain Harold Lozano of San Antonio, Texas. He is called Pancho by his two hundred men. Pancho is a short, barrel-chested, black-chested, black-haired and black-eyed little demon. He is always grinning.

1900 hours: Pancho told his four platoon commanders…that H-hour would be 3:30 in the morning. There would be a forty-five minute artillery barrage, and then they would cross the river in assault boats. The platoon leaders left for different parts of the town to brief their riflemen.

"When you get across," [one platoon leader] told the men, "don’t hang around. Move away from the bank as fast as you can. That bank will be as hot as Hades. We’ve got the minefields spotted, we think. Follow me in my footsteps when we walk. Get down on your hands and knees and feel your way forward on the lookout for trip wires when I do."

2000 hours: Out in the back yard, we all sat around on rubble and worried. Eventually, Pancho came out, smoking a big cigar and with a broad grin almost closing his little eyes. He stood, legs apart, in front of us and talked about past attacks and future prospects, telling only the funny sides.

With slight exaggeration he told about the attack on Beeck, when a mortar shell tossed him up in the air. "Where you headin’, Pancho?" a sergeant had shouted to him. "Ain’t headin’ nowhere," he had answered. "I’m just coming back down to earth." Everybody laughed. I don’t know if Pancho meant it that way, but he had broken an awful tension.

2300 hours: In the smoky cellar,…photos of wives and families were passed around for inspection. Then one by one the others lay down and tried to sleep. When their eyes had been shut a good while, I went over to the corner and removed the hand grenades from above the stove and placed them in the far corner. Now I’ll try to sleep.

0200 hours: Pancho is assembling the men in the muddy trough of a road outside. In a quarter of an hour we will start marching up the road across the flatlands to the Roer River. We will march single file on either side of the road.

The barrage, Pancho said, would open just about when we were halfway to the river. Then, when Jerry [the enemy] started responding we might have to leave the road. If we did we must follow him, for there were still mines in the fields.

0315 hours: This is Roerdorf and I am in a deep, strong cellar, thank God. I don’t think I shall ever again witness a spectacle as terrifying as that I have just seen.

We marched over the silent road to a village called Welz, halfway to the river. When we were leaving the village our barrage opened up at precisely 0245. Almost instantly the navy blue sky turned into a dome of yellow fire as a thousand guns blasted forth. They thundered and roared over our heads like a hundred express trains. On that flat plain, walking erect, I felt naked, exposed, terrified. Once I think I almost broke. I wanted to dive for the ditch and stay in it until this was over. But I looked ahead and saw Pancho strutting on like a bantam rooster and I was ashamed of myself. Three times I had to dive for the ditch. Once I lost my helmet and spent a terrible minute groping in the mud for it.

We left the road and cut across the fields, a long twisting snake of moving men, all following Pancho.Then our long-range machine guns opened up from a thousand foxholes behind us, firing shoulder-level tracers, chains of bright purple lights, toward Jerry’s lines on the river. We had to fall on our hands and knees and crawl to escape our own murderous fire.

At the road running parallel to the river, I shouted an inaudible "Good luck!" and ran down the road to the first house in Roerdorf. I was in the cellar in nothing flat. It turned out to be the headquarters of the combat engineers, who are out there in that inferno, trying to put up a pontoon bridge. Meanwhile, the first wave of the infantry is crossing in boats.

0400 hours: Colonel Anderson is the commander of the 327th Engineers who are doing this job and whose headquarters this cellar is. He has…probably the hardest job to do today. His men must put up the bridges to supply and reinforce the infantry. He must do it on sites zeroed in by German guns for months. The Army manual says you cannot build a pontoon bridge in a river with a current of more than five miles an hour. The current at Roerdorf is more than six miles an hour.

The bridge in the vicinity of Roerdorf is not doing well, to understate the situation. The engineers on the flaming river bank are losing the boats which are to be used as pontoons, and the boats are cruising off down the river. Some of the boats Anderson had loaned to the infantry have been capsizing in the driving stream and floating off.

Anderson has just put on his helmet and gone down to the river bank. His communications are shot to hell. Most of his wires have been cut by German artillery, which is plowing the river bank and the village.

0430 hours: I tried to write this in the medical aid station I just visited down the street. But the little house was overflowing with wounded and I had to leave. The floor of the main room was sticky with mixed blood and dust. Men with legs broken and purple were lying on stretchers. There were others with their sides gashed wide open. One man was torn up terribly everywhere. Were it not for the tension I think I would be sick. Being scared, tired, and confused has some advantages, and this is one of them.

Here in the CP, I have run into a combat fatigue case. He was out on the river bank repairing telephone lines when an 88 hit his buddy right in the back. [This] giant of a man is now sitting on the floor here, crying like a baby. His jacket is splattered with blood and tiny bits of flesh. He is uncontrollable and should be evacuated from the zone of fire. The medics say that there are other men who may die if they are not evacuated immediately and this man must wait. I tried to talk to him but he didn’t hear a word I said.

0600 hours: I have spent an hour with the commander of the regiment, a gaunt white-haired colonel named Williams. His eyes are inflamed from lack of sleep. He planned the attack last night and is making it tonight. His hands tremble as he points to places on the map.

"It’s the damned bridges," he explained. "We can’t get one to stay in that current. It cuts them in half like a band saw. We’ve got a battalion of infantry on the other side without supplies and not enough ammunition to last the day out."

There is one bridge up now, but it can’t stand a load until an auxiliary cable is thrown across. The infantry is still crossing in what boats they can get. And they’re still capsizing and finally reaching shore a mile down the river, wet, cold, uncertain of mines in that unreconnoitered area.

There is no word from C Company and Pancho.

1000 hours: The mortar shelling let up a little and I went down to the bridge site. It was not hard to find for the zigzag road was marked by great patches of blood on the plowed earth, by smashed canteens, ripped jackets, splintered rifle butts, and general destruction. It has been an awful night out there.

But the bridge is up. The second cable is being fastened on the other side now. Troops are lining the streets in town waiting to cross.

1100 hours: The worst has happened. When the bridge was almost complete, one of the Alligators upstream got out of hand in the current. It smashed the bridge and broke both cables.

That is not all. The liberated pontoon boats rushed downstream, where they collided with another pontoon bridge a mile away, and shattered that one as well. Colonel Anderson is in misery.

The air is roaring with fighter-bombers. We can see them peeling off into dives, see their guns flashing, and hear their tattoo. They will help those weary, battered infantrymen on the other side.

1300 hours: Colonel Anderson has come in and is sitting on a blanket in this cellar room. He says German artillery ceased hitting the river bank an hour ago. The bridge will be completed within a couple of hours. Work has already begun on another heavier bridge. It will carry tanks and heavy guns to support the infantry.

Jerry’s mortars have been pushed way back and can’t reach us any more. His artillery can, but apparently the infantry on the other side are giving it enough to do over there.

1400 hours: The bridge is up. Colonel Williams’ whole regiment was over the river. The whole 102d Division was over. It was the first division to get all of its units over the river.

In his general report back to Division and Army, Colonel Williams said progress has been extremely good and casualties very low. That is one of the amazing things about war: when you’re right up close everything seems to be confusion, chaos, and failure. A single dead or maimed man conjures up images of complete annihilation to you. But back in the rear and with perspective on the whole front, it all fits smoothly, neatly, economically in the bigger picture…that counts.

Before bidding Colonel Williams goodbye, I asked about Pancho & Co. I was told that Pancho reached his objective hours ahead of time and was knocked out cold by concussion from a German shell. He was not wounded, though, and was brought to in an hour. He resumed command of the company and was working up to his second objective.

I want to hear what form that concussion yarn takes when Pancho tells it a week from now.

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