AACHEN

Although Aachen is not located directly in the Rhine valley the success at Aachen opened the door to moving closer to the Rhine River.

October 1944: Aachen is located in a triangle area on the border of Luxembourg,
Netherlands and France. It took five long months of fighting to get into the area but once in the region, the Allies won the battle. Aachen was the first German city to be fall into Allied hands. With the victory of Aachen, the Allies would next move throughout southern Belgium and Luxembourg towards the land south of the Rhine.

The best way to move into an area was to crawl along the ground in the hours just before daylight. For the Germans, the heaviest fighting was usually one hour after dark. That gave them time to study the landscape and get their bearing. That gave the Germans an advantage over the GI’s. Once the Allies were aware of the German fighting hours the Allies would stop fighting one hour before dark so that they would have time to study the area and have a better opportunity to maintain the attack.

The most difficult obstacle that the Allies had to overcome in the area was the heavily fortified “pill box”. The pill box was normally located on a steep hill in regions that were heavily forested and where there was thick underbrush. The box could possibly be covered with wire so that it was even more inaccessible and had deep trench tunnels where the Germans could lie in wait. The concrete structure that was set in the ground gave an excellent camouflage for machine guns and mortars. When anyone was within a reasonable distance, the Germans would open fire on the unsuspecting GI’s. The goal for the Allies was to completely destroy the pill box either be detonation or by having a tank demolish the box completely. The purpose was to insure that the Germans would not be able to use them later on.