On March 7
1945, the US 9th Armored Division captured the
Ludendorff Railroad Bridge at Remagen. The
capture of this bridge meant the US Army had
their first bridge over the Rhine River.
The capture of the bridge was an historic
feat which was the subject of a movie and
several books after the war. Since then it has
passed into history as 'The Bridge at Remagen'.
However, the
Germans tried to prevent the Americans from
using it to bring men, equipment and supplies
over the Rhine and into Germany. They shelled
the bridge constantly, had mines, explosives and
frogmen with explosives flow down the river in an
attempt to blow the bridge. The Germans also
attacked the bridge with no less than 11 V2
rockets. The Luftwaffe attacked the bridge even
with jet fighter-bombers. This left the bridge
heavily damaged.
The 276th
Combat Engineer battalion, assisted by the
specially trained welders and steelworkers of
the 1058th Engineer Construction and Repair
Group (in some sources also called the 1058th
Port Construction and repair Group), had relieved the combat engineers of the
9th Armored Division on March 10th and were
working around the clock to repair the bridge.
Ken Hechler, in
his famous book about the bridge writes: "About
two hundred men, principally engineers, and
their equipment were working on the Ludendorff
bridge on the afternoon of March 17. Just before
two o'clock, Captain Francis Goodwin, and
engineer combat supply officer, walked into the
railroad tunnel to investigate some German water
supply equipment he had seen at the far
end.[...] He stopped briefly to talk with Major
Carr, the commander of the 1058 Port
Construction and Repair Detachment [...] and
asked how long it would take to plank over the
gap blown by the German demolition. Carr
estimated that he could repair the gap in one
more day but that it would take a month to
completely repair all of the damaged parts of
the bridge.
Captain Goodwin
strolled across to the Remagen side of the
bridge. He paused and asked one of the welders
whether he had enough gas for cutting and
welding. The welder assured him that the supply
was adequate. The captain stopped by the crane
which was trying to straighten out one of the
members in the truss by tightening a cable, and
he questioned the sergeant in charge about what
he was attempting to do. Everything appeared to
be in order. [...]
Welder at work at
the Ludendorff Bridge (US Army Signals Corps,
National Archives)
At the time
Captain Goodwin was leaving the bridge, Lieutenant Colonel
Clayton A. Rust, the commanding officer of the
276th Engineer Combat Battalion -one of the two
units of engineers working on the bridge repair-
was talking to an fellow officer near the center
of the bridge. [...] Suddenly, around three
o'clock, Colonel Rust heard a sharp riflelike
report. It sounded like a rivet head being
sheared off. He looked up and saw one of the
hangers slowly break loose and dangle from the
bridge. Then came another sharp report from
behind him to the left. Another rivet had
sheared off. Both these noises came too quickly
on top of each other for the colonel to shout
any warning. The entire deck of the bridge
started to tremble. Colonel Rust began to hear
frantic cries from the men on the bridge as they
dropped their tools and lumber and started to
run. The whole deck was vibrating and dust was
rising from the surface. Instinctively, he knew
that the time was short, that everybody on the
bridge was aware that it was collapsing and that
it was every man for himself. He started to run
to the Remagen side of the bridge and in a few
seconds found himself running uphill as the
center span collapsed. Then the water of the
Rhine swirled around his knees and in an instant
he was engulfed. He had no sensation of falling,
but the weight of one of the girders soon
pinioned him under water. How long he was held
under, Colonel Rust does not know, but suddenly
his trap was sprang and he rose to the surface
just as he felt his lungs would burst. [...] The
current then swept him down to the treadway
bridge, where he was pulled from the Rhine,
badly shaken but not seriously hurt.
The Ludendorff
Bridge, minutes after it collapsed (From
www.usace.army.mil pp)
"No one alive
can say why the bridge collapsed,' Colonel Rust
said later. "The bridge was rotten throughout,
many members not cut had internal fractures from
our own bombing, German artillery, and from the
German demolitions. The bridge was extremely
weak. The upstream truss was actually useless.
The entire load of traffic, equipment and dead
load were supported by the good downstream
truss...It is my opinion as an engineer that the
collapse occurred as the result of vibrations
caused by numerous possible sources, i.e., air
compressors, one crane, a few trucks, several
electric arc welders, hammering, and finally,
but important, the not insignificant concussion
of heavy artillery recently emplaced in the town
of Remagen...I believe that, as the vibration
continued, the condition of the previously
buckled top chord was aggravated to such an
extent that it buckled completely under a load
which of course it was not designed to carry".
(US Army Signals
Corps, National Archives)
The engineers
of the 276th Engineer Combat Battalion and the
1058th Port Construction and Repair Detachment
lost 7 killed, 18 missing whose bodies were
never recovered and 3 who subsequently died of
wounds -a total of 28 who gave up their lives;
63 others working on the bridge were injured
when thrown into the icy waters of the Rhine by
the sudden collapse."
(US Army Signals
Corps, National Archives)
The collapse of
the bridge was witnessed by Colonel David E.
Pergrin of the 291st Engineer Combat Battalion,
who was standing on the treadway, described
above. In his book First Across The Rhine,
he writes:
"It was coming
up to 1500 and the colonel [Anderson] and I were
still on the treadway bridge when our attention
was arrested by a loud, painful groaning from
just to our south. As I instinctively glanced
towards to source of the sound, I heard a even
louder sound of simultaneous screeching,
cracking, and splintering as steel rubbed
against steel and wood. There, directly in front
of me, the tired old Ludendorff Bridge was at
last giving way. As the effects of the
self-demolition progressed, the immense
structure swayed and then caved in. It was like
watching a slow-motion movie, the progressive
action was so distinct.
The collapse of
the Ludendorff Bridge set all available hands in
the 291st to instant, instinctive rescue efforts
and a frantic race to save our own span.
Automatically, as soon as the big railroad
bridge sounded its own death knell, my veteran
engineers recovered from the shock and got to
doing all the things that seemed to need doing.
In no time at
all, all sorts of heavy debris was floating
swiftly in the current toward our vulnerable
treadway floats. As the infantrymen on the
treadway span speeded up their pace from the
route march to every man for himself, my
magnificent engineers appeared as if out of
nowhere with cranes, powerboats, and other
equipment that could be used to rescue swimmers
and prevent fatal collisions between debris and
the floats. Scores of my men ran out from either
bank armed with pikes, poles, or anything that
came to hand that could be used to hold off
debris and direct it between the pontoons. Max
Schmidt and several others drove Quickway cranes
out onto the bridge in order to lift the larger,
heavier pieces of planking up and over our span.
As efforts to save our bridge coalesced, many of
my men worked their way out onto the saddles to
help pull their comrades from the largely bilged
276th Engineers out of the dangerous
current.[...]
We fished out
eighteen survivors from the many members of the
276th I had seen scrambling for safety during
the last moments of Ludendorff's thundering,
screeching demise. Among them was Lieutenant
Colonel Clayton Rust, the battalion commander,
who was picked up by a boat manned by Sergeant
Frank Dolcha.[..]
That was some
of the good news. We eventually learned that the
tally had mounted to twenty-eight killed or
missing and ninety-three injured."
A casualty of the
collapse is taken off the bridge (US Army
Signals Corps, National Archives)
Major William
C. Carr, Commanding Officer of the 1058th is
buried at Henri-Chapelle American Military
Cemetery in Belgium. Commemorated on the Tablet
Of The Missing there are S/Sgt Henry F.
Albertson and Captain Arthur F Gullo (a memorial
to Capt. Gullo was erected on his family plot on
a Carthage, NY cemetery. For more information go
to the the 488 Engineers Light Pontoon Coy
website. See link below). Of the
276th Combat Engineer Battalion the following
men are buried at Henri-Chapelle: Sgt Albani
August, Pfc Quitman Goar, Pfc James E. Herring,
and Pvt Wesley L. Lowery. Commemorated at the
Tablet Of The Missing are 2Lt Gene C. Enos, Cpl
Noble S. Kirkwood, Pfc Benjamin H. J. Rowland,
and Tec4 Edwin D Smotherman.
S/Sgt Alexander
P. Tercha (of the 1058th Engineer Port
Construction Group) is buried at Hamm American
Military cemetery in Luxembourg.
Tec5 Wesley E.
Smith
is buried at Margraten American Military
Cemetery, Plot B Row 20 Grave 11
The STARS &
STRIPES ran an article on March 17, 1962
about the collapse of the bridge. You can find
it on-line by following
this link. Another article, about the
reunion of US and German soldiers who fought for
the bridge on March 7, 1945, can be
found here.
