Playing Fields Juelich

The fierceness and doggedness of German resistance on the sector east of Aachen were epitomized by their defense of a sports stadium outside the town of Juelich. U.S. Ninth Army headquarters last fortnight had airily ticked it off as one of "a few pockets of resistance" remaining to be cleaned up west of the Roer River. To the doughfoots of the 29th Infantry, who had to clean it up, it was quite a pocket.

Juelich's sports arena was an oval enclosure formed by a mound eight or ten feet high, in which were three football fields and a concrete swimming pool. U.S. artillery and planes dealt the defenders a merciless beating. A pillbox under a haystack was unmasked and heavily shelled. But when the infantry moved in across open fields, German mines and machine guns time & again drove them back. A bridge over which the defenders got reinforcements was knocked out by the Ninth's cannon every day. Every night the Germans put it up again.

After a solid week of fighting, the 29th took the pool with bazookas, grenades, bayonets, then wiped out the last resistance at the south end of the oval. The capture had cost more U.S. casualties than the taking of many a German village. Among the U.S. wounded was a sergeant who had had both legs blown off by a mine. To a major who came up to his stretcher, he mumbled weakly: "We took our objective, sir." The major wept.

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