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From D-Day to V-Day

January 1945

January 29, 1945 - D-Day + 237

The 1st Infantry Division from the US First Army’s XVIII Corps occupied Buellingen and sent reconnaissance patrols out towards Muerringen and Honsfeld. The 82nd Airborne Division’s 325th Glider Infantry Regiment under Col Charles Billingslea conquered Wereth and went through the sector of its sister regiment, the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment under Col Roy E. Lindquist, which in the meantime had occupied Holzheim, Medendorf and the hills near Eimerscheid.

The US Third Army launched an attack with the aim of breaking through the fortifications of the Siegfried Line and securing the US First Army’s right flank. Regiments from the VIII Corps’ 87th, 4th and 90th Infantry Divisions attacked from the hills west of the Our River. The 87th Infantry Division’s 345th Infantry Regiment occupied Schlierbach and Setz while its sister regiment, the 347th, advanced to Neidingen and Breitfeld. The 4th Infantry Division’s 8th Infantry Regiment was halted near Lommersweiler, while the division’s 12th Infantry Regiment went around Hemmeres, made an assault crossing of the Our River and advanced to Elcherath. The 90th Infantry Division was ordered to cross the Our River and secure the sector east of the river on the Corps’ right flank. The division’s 357th Infantry Regiment crossed the river near Oberhausen and quickly took Welchenhausen while its sister regiment, the 358th, crossed the river at Stupbach and immediately occupied the village. The III Corps reached its planned positions, occupying the ridge from north to south and thus taking control of the road leading through the Clerve and Our River valleys. In the course of the day, Combat Team Miltonberger mopped up Kalborn. In the zone of the XX Corps, the 26th Infantry Division took over the 95th Infantry Division’s sector at the bridgehead near Saarlautern.

The 3rd Infantry Division from the French First Army’s XXI Corps crossed the Canal de Colmar. The division’s 7th Infantry Regiment advanced to Bischwihr while the 15th Infantry Regiment continued to advance to the northern edge of Muntzenheim. Remnant enemy forced continued to hold out in Jebsheim. In the canal area located south of the city, the 63rd Infantry Division’s 254th Infantry Regiment mopped up the territory from the enemy while launching an attack in the direction of the Rhône – Rhine Canal.

Members of the Czechoslovak Independent Armoured Brigade fighting at the French port of Dunkirk were visited by high-ranking officers of the Czechoslovak Military in exile, including Vice Commander of Staff Brigadier General František Moravec (1895 – 1966), one of the most important figures in the Czechoslovak foreign resistance. General Moravec’s name is most frequently associated with his work at the Czechoslovak Ministry of National Defense before the Germans annexed the country in 1938. In as early as in the mid-1930s, his department maintained contact with a certain secret agent known as “Agent A-54”. Together with his closest colleagues and intelligence materials, he left for Great Britain just one day before Czechoslovakia was occupied. Here he later became the head of the intelligence department of the Ministry of National Defense in exile. He directed sending paratroopers out over the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and by gaining a wealth of information he helped the Allies in their final victory over Hitler’s Third Reich. Not long after he returned to liberated Czechoslovakia and under pressure from the Communist wing of the army, he was charged with neglecting his duties in the period before March 15, 1939 but was vindicated by the President himself. Just one month after the Communist putsch in February of 1948, he escaped across the border once more. In July of 1948, Brigadier General František Moravec was demoted in absentia to the position of Private. In 1962 he left Europe for the United States to continue working in intelligence aimed against the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia. He described his memories of the period when the dark cloud of fascism fell over Europe and of the time he spent in Great Britain during the war in his book, Master of Spies: the Memoirs of General František Moravec. After the “velvet revolution” in November 1989, he was fully rehabilitated and the high state honor of the Milan Rastislav Štefánik Order was bestowed upon him.