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Müllenark

Back into combat with the objective of taking a moated castle, Chateau Müllenark. By now we were known as the night fighters, and this was a midnight to dawn foray. Our squad was given the objective of taking what appeared on aerial photos as a group of low sheds to the right of the main building. As the attack began across the moat by the side of the castle, we headed for the right flank and our assigned objective. We were unable to find the sheds, they turned out to be piles of sugar beets. As we continued around to the rear of the castle my first face-to-face confrontation with the enemy occurred. I stepped around a large clump of shrubbery and there was a German private, rifle in hand but with no heart for the fight. He became our first P.O.W. of the day.

Situated on a direct line between the castle and the Roer River was a large storage cellar. Here we decided to stop, regroup, and await the outcome of the company's thrust against the castle itself. We were not aware of the desperate plight of our comrades. They had come under severe mortar and small arms fire and were pinned down on the banks of the moat. Our position was relatively strong and reasonably safe. The cellar was constructed of brick in the walls, a stone floor and a thick dirt covered roof. By now it was full day light and the German garrison in the castle sent a lone soldier from the rear of the castle toward the river and the main German lines. As he approached our position, we invited him in, and he wisely accepted. This same scenario was repeated over and over during the morning hours until we had collected twelve prisoners and had placed them along the wall on one side of the cellar. Finally, the enemy came to realized what was happening and opened mortar fire on our position. They would drop a round at the doorway and the shrapnel would fly through the delete opening. We were protected by the heavy brick front walls which provided an area of safety on each side of the cellar.

The day wore on and late in the afternoon we decided to leave the cellar and make our way around the back of the castle and into the small village on the opposite side. We proceeded with our group of POWs along the high wall which enclosed the grounds of the castle and reached our company headquarters. Here we learned of the plight of our platoon whose members were still out on the banks of the moat. The company commander gave me the assignment of going out and bringing them in. This required completing the circle around the castle, moving through the dark of night and locating the position to the platoon. Then it was necessary to move from foxhole to foxhole to advise each man of the situation and how to reach the main company position. This action was completed without further casualties. Later the Bronze Star Medal for heroism was awarded for this patrol action.

—Written memoir, ca. 1977

We know more about F Company’s battle for Müllenark Castle on December 13 than any other single engagement in which Lee fought. There are several reasons for this. First, Sergeant McBride was awarded one of his two battle stars for his actions there. His personal account and citation give us specific details we might not otherwise have. Second, the fight was over a specific, known landmark, which happens to still be standing. This allows us to examine maps, aerials, and other photos of the battle scene. The place itself helps us make sense of the historical accounts.

Finally, and perhaps most significantly, the battle for Müllenark was by far the bloodiest day of the war for F Company. They sustained more battle deaths and injuries during this battle than in any other engagement of the war. The extreme conditions, the unusual circumstances, and the desperate combat were etched indelibly in the memory of the men of Lee’s company. In the memory of company communications officer Jack Schwannhauser, this battle stood out. “I was out getting shot at all day long. We were pretty well decimated.” At a Timberwolf reunion, when asked about the December 13 fight, F Company member Leroy Carson could only repeat, “We lost thirty men that night. Thirty men.” As a consequence, other company members took up the pen and produced accounts of this battle, lending their various perspectives to our understanding.

Müllenark Castle was an imposing 17th-century bailey built to protect the manor house of a medieval ducal estate. Located just southeast of the village of Schophoven, it was one of the final German strongholds west of the Timberwolves’ next objective, the Roer (Rur) River. The façade of the castle was almost 85 meters wide, built of red-brown brick, and featuring a pair of three-story towers topped with turrets on either end. The property was surrounded by a millstream fed by the Roer that served as a moat.

At some point during the hours before the assault, Sergeant McBride attended his first briefing as a squad leader, at which he learned of the objectives of the attack and received intelligence and orders for 3rd Squad. After such briefings, it was the sergeant’s duty to convey the information other members of the squad.

The Müllenark estate was just south of the regiment’s objective, the town of Schophoven. F company would join two companies from the 3rd battalion for the assault, K and L. These companies would attack the town itself, while F company would attack the castle on the right. Lee’s platoon was to be deployed on the far-right flank of the attack. He remembered this as “midnight to dawn foray,” and while it is true that his company assembled during the night in Inden, the attack itself was not scheduled to begin until just before dawn: 6:30 AM.

Their jumping off point for the attack was about a mile and a half northeast of Inden. They headed out at 5:00 AM under the cover of the winter darkness. Heavy rain had left the fields flooded and slick with deep mud, and it took the ammunition-laden men of F company more than an hour to trudge to the crest of a rise less than a mile from Schophoven where the other companies awaited their arrival. According to Frank Perozzi, “Anyone who fell in the deep mud required the assistance of two men to set him back on his feet.” Some of the men were assigned to carry a long plank they could use to cross the castle’s moat but carrying it under these conditions proved impossible, and they abandoned it to the mud along the way.

They arrived at the point of departure just before the preparatory barrage began. At 6:30, artillery and mortar rounds aimed at Schophoven and Müllenark began to arc over their heads. It was still dark, and the tracer rounds of their weapons company’s heavy machine guns lit their way. Frank Perozzi remembered that the barrage ceased while they were still a few hundred yards from Müllenark, at which point they knew they needed to hustle or they would get caught running in the open in the twilit morning.

It did not take long for the Germans to respond. The windows and turrets of the castle were suddenly alive with enemy soldiers who returned rifle, machine gun, and mortar fire and dropped an occasional grenade. The other squads in Lee’s platoon were just crossing the icy-cold, chest-deep water of the moat when the onslaught began. They hastily dug foxholes on the castle bank of the moat, though it was so muddy they could not make holes deep enough or parapets substantial enough to afford much protection.

The intensity of the German’s returning fire disrupted all communication, causing Captain Bowman to lose contact with his infantry platoons on the one hand and with his superiors on the other. His description of the situation as recorded in the After Action Report: “All hell broke loose.” The regiment knew almost nothing about the company’s predicament for several hours. At around 6:45 that evening, Bowman made his way south to the recently captured town of Pier and was able to update regimental headquarters. Unfortunately, the men of the first and second platoons (minus Lee’s squad) remained pinned down from dawn until well after dusk in their foxholes along the moat, largely out of contact with their comrades.

As Lee described, his 3rd squad, with a single prisoner had made its way around the back of the castle and discovered, to their relief, a ground-level storage facility. This was almost certainly one of the cellar vaults of the former manor house. Built in the twelfth century and long since dismantled, the old manor house was much larger than the smaller three-story villa that stood behind the bailey on one corner of the old foundation. The remaining ground level rooms featured heavy brick walls, stone floors, and roofs covered with dirt and debris from the demolition of the old manor, just as Lee described. These cellar rooms were located just a few hundred feet from the rear of the bailey in the direction of the river.

Frank Perozzi colorfully reported details of 3rd squad’s exploits that he almost certainly learned from Lee himself: “The third squad had gone too far to turn back and miraculously made its way to a one-room, ground level shelter behind the chateau. The six-man squad had twelve prisoners before Heinie mortars began to fall outside the entrance. With each mortar round or machine gun burst at the doorway, Jerries and Americans would simultaneously hit the straw floor in one grand mix-up.”

At some point that day, long after 10:30 AM when Schophoven had been secured by K and L companies, Lee or another member of his squad succeeded in contacting a tank in Schophoven. Under the cover of fire from the tank, the squad managed to reach the outer walls of the estate and make their way safely into Schophoven with their prisoners in tow. When Captain Bowman returned to Schophoven that evening, he assigned Lee and two others to complete their circuit around the castle once again to apprise the other company members of the evacuation plan. Perhaps considering a three-man patrol too conspicuous, he left the other two men in a safe position and completed the circuit himself.

Lee’s actions on December 13 and 14 were, without question, his most daring of the entire campaign. They demanded tremendous physical courage, some skill, and a bit of good luck. As he noted, he was awarded a Bronze Star for facilitating the nighttime evacuation of his pinned-down comrades. Frank Perozzi said he thought Sergeant McBride should have been awarded a Silver Star for having captured twelve prisoners during the brutal assault the day before. Lee’s son Steve recalled hearing his father say that there were moments during the Müllenark attack during which he thought he might have been able to take the castle and earn, perhaps, an even greater commendation. But the thought of his family at home deterred him from taking any undue risks. Here is the text of Lee’s Bronze Star citation:

Staff Sergeant Lee B. McBride (Army Serial Number 39910589), Infantry, Company F, 414 Infantry, United States Army, is awarded the Bronze Star Medal for heroic achievement in connection with military operations in Germany on 14 December 1944. During the daylight hours of 13 December 1944 three platoons were pinned down in an open field about one hundred-fifty yards from their objective by intense mortar, artillery, and small arms fire delivered by a firmly entrenched enemy. When the order for withdrawal was given, Sergeant McBride and two other soldiers volunteered to contact a portion of the company out of contact with the company commander. At great risk to his life and in the face of heavy concentrations of enemy fire which forced him to seek cover on many occasions, Sergeant McBride led his patrol to the company's position. Leaving his two men in place of cover, he moved forward along, identified himself, and crawled from man to man giving each man specific instructions concerning withdrawal, the points of assembly and the route to be taken. Ignoring the grazing enemy machine gun fire, he continued his mission until all men had been oriented, and under his guidance all troops withdrew without further casualties and successfully reached the assembly area. Sergeant McBride's valorous leadership, disregard for personal safety, and devotion to duty reflect great credit upon himself and the armed forces of the United States.

The following day (December 14) a patrol was formed from the few remaining F Company members. They attacked the castle again, only to find that it had been largely abandoned in the interim. Its defenders had fled east across the Roer.

Allied forces were now perched on west bank of the river. But this had only been an intermediate objective. High command had their eyes on the Rhine and was frustrated at the pace of the advance. Many German strategists saw the defense of the Siegfried Line and the Roer as a German victory. Delaying the Allies crossing of the Roer was vital to the success of the Ardennes counter-offensive, which commenced the day after Müllenark was secured. This fact accounts for the desperate German defense and their hasty retreat. Gustav Adolph Van Zangen, a German infantry general went so far as to say, “The defense of the Roer was the most difficult part of the Ardennes Offensive!”

Battle Fatigue

One member of Lee’s platoon on December 13 was Howard Kokotoff, who evidently had a reputation for toughness with some of the other men. He had rejoined the platoon just before the Schophoven attack after spending some time in Paris for rest and recuperation. “Koke” (as they called him) appears to have been experiencing what was then called battle fatigue.

Known today as Combat Stress Reaction, battle fatigue was a post-traumatic response to combat or injury that affected hundreds of thousands of World War II soldiers. Some estimates suggest that it accounted for about 40 percent of all combat casualties during the war, a staggering figure. Symptoms range from exhaustion, headaches, disorientation, extreme fright, irritability, and heightened sensitivity to sound, to temporary paralysis. In some severe cases, this temporary condition develops into longer-term maladies such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Although modern psychology had already begun to theorize about the pathology of battle fatigue by the onset of World War II, it remained widely misunderstood and often stigmatized as mere cowardice or malingering. General George Patton famously quipped, “The greatest weapon against the so-called battle fatigue is ridicule.” Patton’s view was that of an earlier generation. Army medics at the time typically treated the condition with 2 to 3 days of rest and recuperation. Statistics show that thus treated, between 50 and 70% returned to their combat units. This was very likely the reason Kokotoff had just returned from his brief stay in Paris.

As the F Company infantrymen made their way toward Müllenark in the dark early morning, Koke slipped into a muddy shell crater. When Frank Perozzi tried to help him out, he said he was too tired. He confided that he wanted to go back to Inden but was afraid the others would think he was “yellow.” “I never thought I'd see Koke crying,” recalled Perozzi. He told Kokotoff to return to Inden, but he refused and mustered the courage to keep marching.

Kokotoff was not alone. During the approach to castle, perhaps amid the noise of the regiment’s preparatory artillery bombardment, another soldier fell in the mud and said he could go no further. A now frustrated Frank Perozzi “felt like kicking him in the ribs. We were all tired.” Yet another soldier fell, lying face up and rolling his eyes. His platoon leader said, “You’re sick, boy!” In a very real sense, he was.

Soon after Kokotoff reached Müllenark, he was shot in the thigh or abdomen. Because his entire unit was pinned down under fire from the castle, no medic was able to evacuate and treat him that day. He may have been in his foxhole still waiting for help when Sergeant McBride passed by during the night to issue evacuation instructions. Lee could do nothing more than promise the injured that a medic would arrive soon. Unfortunately, help did not come quickly enough for Koke. He died in a muddy foxhole at Müllenark.

Lee did not forget Kokotoff’s death. He underlined Koke’s name in the roster of battle deaths in his personal copy of Timberwolf Tracks.

Lee was not immune to the psychological toll of warfare. “Perhaps the worst part of being an infantryman in combat,” he wrote, “was the continual 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week, possibility of sudden injury or death, coming not only at times when it might be expected, but at the most unexpected times. The mental strain of the realization that at any time your end might come, or that you might be gravely injured was really the hardest part of the whole infantry experience.”

How did Lee cope with the stress of battle? He attributed his survival to “the sense of humor which most of us had that made it all the way through. I saw many individuals,” he continued, “that simply could not take it psychologically. They cracked up.” He counted himself fortunate that he “always seemed to fall in with someone who was sort of a nut and had a great sense of humor.”

He also spoke of an inner peace he often felt under extreme duress, born of his faith in God and a life to come. “A common emotion in each case was a feeling of peace, of acceptance of whatever was to come and a perfect assurance of continuing life either here of on the other side,” he wrote. “If I died,” Lee said, “I’d see my mother whom I hadn’t seen for many, many years. If I survived, I’d see my sweet wife and child again.”

Even so, one of the long-term post-traumatic effects of combat is a tendency to avoid talking about one’s war experiences with those who were not involved themselves. This kind of internalization is sometimes the product of shame or survivors’ guilt or a protective instinct. Lee certainly demonstrated a reticence to speak of his war experiences with his family. He felt more comfortable around other men of his age in his church congregation, many of whom were veterans themselves. In any event, his coping mechanisms evidently helped protect him from the most severe consequences of battle fatigue, but there is no question he carried psychological scars with him for the rest of his life.

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