17 March 1945 To disrupt the German supply lines, the division air liaison officer called upon the XII TAC to bomb St. Ingbert and Hassel. The 3rd Battalion, 254th Infantry, had been ordered to cease further offensive operations after it had achieved its blocking position the day before; however, the order had been received after "K" Company had begun its attack on Hill 386. Radio failures precluded the reception of orders from battalion to have the company pull back to the defensive line, and it went on to take the hill. When communications were again restored, the company and its attached units were directed to withdraw from Hill 386 to the 3rd Battalion positions a t dawn. The cryptic message was, "Have King and friends come in tactically." The Company Commander assumed correctly that his group would have to fight its way back to the friendly line. A counterattack by elements of the German 112th Fortress Regiment on the 17th of March against Hill 386 coincided with "K" Company's return to the defensive area near Hill 370. As it returned a second counterattack was being directed toward I Company, and the attacking German force was caught in a cross fire between "I" Company on Hill 370 and the returning "K" Company. The battalion was reorganized with "K" Company occupying the eastern group of pillboxes, "L" Company covering the western group and "I" Company defending the northern sector. Charles E. Ball , the CO of "M" Company, 254th Infantry, in his recount of "The Private Who Cracked The Siegfried Line", recalled the mission to destroy pillboxes within the Siegfried Line. In training, the accepted method for eliminating enemy pillboxes was to close up their firing ports with a continuous application of machine gun and automatic rifle fire. Then one man was sent forward with a "pole charge" which consisted of some 20 pounds of TNT tied to a stick, hobo fashion. In theory, the charge was to be set against a weak point on the pillbox and exploded thus destroying the emplacement. Most of the attempts with pole charges were unsuccessful and usually resulted in peeling a small shell of concrete from the four foot thick wall. After several unsuccessful tries, the pole charges were abandoned and bazookas were used, again with little damage to the pillboxes. During a lull in the fighting, a corporal approached the CO of the 3rd Battalion. "Sir, see that open pipe vent sticking out of the top of the pillbox ... how about me dropping a grenade down it?" "Best idea of the day!" the Colonel said, so with machine gun fire again closing the pillboxes in the area, the corporal worked his way forward to the nearest pillbox and confidently dropped his hand grenade down the vent. Two seconds later, the grenade rolled out of the vent and landed at the Corporal's feet where it exploded and wounded him. Apparently, the vents had been equipped with a trap door or some diverting mechanism which precluded the grenade from entering the interior of the pillbox. The group lay stunned as every approach they had tried met with little or no success. After about a half hour, an ammunition bearer carrying a Bangalore torpedo (2 and 1/8 inches in diameter and five feet long, the bangalore is like a drain pipe packed with nine pounds of TNT) approached his commanding officer. "Sir, this will not roll out. Let me try it." So with machine guns blazing again, the Private ran some 30 yards and then fell to his hands and knees, crawling the last distance to the top of the pillbox. He stuck the torpedo down the vent, pulled the fuse and jumped into a nearby trench. After a few seconds, there was a noise ... like the sound of a giant firecracker exploding inside a vinegar barrel. The small group crept up to the vicinity of the private near the pillbox. They found that the safest place was behind the emplacement and away from the fire which came from other units of the 254th. Then the rear door of the bunker opened slowly, like the door of a bank vault and two German soldiers staggered out. One had a burned face and the other was bleeding from the nose. "Our comrades will have to be carried out," they said. The private had done it! He had found the "key" to the strongest part of the "West Wall!" They had called it "Impenetrable", but the bunker had fallen in a few seconds to a private using a drain pipe filled with nine pounds of TNT. Taking the remaining five bunkers in the complex was a routine 30-minute job. In all of the excitement and the din of battle, Charles Ball never learned the name of the private. He remains only in memory as a GI without even a first class private's chevron, but a man among men to whom an untold number of Allied soldiers owe their lives. In the meantime, on the 17th of March, the 2nd Battalion, 254th Infantry, had moved down the unimproved road to the west of the Ensheim-St. Ingbert highway and into the draw
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