World War II: Interview with Lieutenant Colonel McClernand Butler

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MH: As the Battle of the Bulge continued, you weren’t really aware of what was going on around you?

Butler: Not to the extent that it really mattered. At the end of the third day, the only thing I could tell was that the artillery fire that was coming in and hitting our unit was 10 degrees out of 360. In other words, the Germans and the Americans had sagged back on either side of us. We were sticking out like a finger there.

MH: How did you hold out?

Butler: During the last real push by the Germans to take our position, we stopped them with ammunition that the pioneer platoon leader had gone back and got from an abandoned ammunition dump. He’d loaded up a 6-by-6 truck and brought it up. We stopped the tail end of that last push with guns and ammunition taken off the German dead. It really got down to the nitty-gritty. The Germans did what any logical person would do: They kept the pressure on when they weren’t going anywhere and sent the rest of their troops around to where they were making some headway.

MH: What did that mean for your unit?

Butler: We kept on fighting; we sent out patrols. We had some difficult fighting, but not the kind of fighting they had at some of the other locations, where they hadn’t held fast.

MH: Can you describe the weather conditions during the fighting?

Butler: It was extremely cold. The snow got up to 12 feet deep in drifts. I think it was about 3 feet deep on the flat. A man who got hit in the open could die within 15 minutes unless he got evacuated. It was bitterly cold and it was a miserable time. We had two things that helped. First, we held, so that the men, whether in buildings or in foxholes, had time to fix up their little corner of the world. As long as they stayed there, they were in pretty good shape. In other places, where you were just lying in the snow, you started digging in and then your feet got wet. You’d get trench foot, which literally meant your foot would rot off. The men improvised to keep warm. One man had a pair of galoshes and he found a fur coat. He cut that up and put it in his shoes.

MH: What about the patrols your unit sent out?

Butler: We were told to get some prisoners. There again, I had to use my head. The Germans knew that Americans usually moved in defilade, taking shelter behind hills and other natural obstacles. So instead of sending the patrol out along a ditch or gully–and it was snowing so hard that you couldn’t see too well–our patrol went out across an open field. One of our patrols found a pillbox made of logs, with a stove inside. One of my soldiers climbed up on top of the pillbox and dumped a grenade down the smokestack of the stove. When it blew up, the Germans who had been inside the pillbox thought that wasn’t a good place to be. The ones who came out were killed, and the ones who had stayed in the pillbox were captured.

MH: What other incidents occurred during patrols?

Butler: In the middle of the night, a German company commander got information that the ground had been cleared. He marched his company, about 200 men, up to an occupied house and across a ditch from where a BAR man was dug in. Once the German officer got there, he called for a meeting of his noncoms–at a spot right in front of this BAR man’s foxhole. That was a long night. The BAR man stood it just as long as he could and then he cut loose. The Germans pulled back to organize, and he pulled back to another foxhole. They attacked and he cut them down again. Then he moved back to his original foxhole and the Germans attacked where he’d been. He cut them down again. Then the rest of the men in the eight-man squad got into the act. Come daylight, there was one lieutenant and about eight Germans left.

MH: Do you believe that your battalion affected the outcome of the Battle of the Bulge?

Butler: If the Germans had broken through us, the story of the Battle of the Bulge probably would have had the same ending. But if we hadn’t held, the 99th and the 2nd Infantry divisions would have been outflanked and surrounded.

MH: Did your battalion get a reprieve when the Bulge fighting slacked off?

Butler: We were told to hold right where we were. The only R&R [rest and recreation] anyone got was when he was wounded. We went on to Hollerath, Germany, which also was part of the Siegfried Line. When I got to Hollerath, we were in the line, but the pillboxes were pointed in a direction that didn’t do us any good in the fighting. By that time, the Germans had lost a tremendous number of men that they couldn’t replace. We had lost men, but we could get replacements. At Hollerath, I set up my headquarters in a pillbox. It could house about eight men; it also had two openings for machine guns. The openings were made of case-hardened steel, and the doors were on ball bearings, so that you could close them with one finger. The box itself supported another pillbox. In other words, this pillbox fired in front of that pillbox and so on.

MH: Where did you go from there?

Butler: From there the battalion was sent back to get new guns, new clothing and get cleaned up. We got a little training. I forget what they tried to stuff in us. Then, about three weeks later, we went back into the line. The first place we hit was Bergheim, which was the door to the Rhine. I took that town with a night attack and didn’t lose any men. The biggest difficulty in carrying out a night attack is control, and having men who can coordinate well as a team in the dark. I decided to stage the night attack at Bergheim because my troops would be going across an open area about 500 yards long and 400 yards wide. There was no cover. It was like a golf course, so I used the night for concealment. We caved in the security platoon, captured it intact. Although the Germans fought for the town, we had everything going our way. The only men I lost were two soldiers who, after the fighting had died down, went out to investigate a car they thought they might be able to capture. An 88mm gun overlooking Bergheim killed them. We then went up and took a town by the name of Kuckhof. It was then that I had my first large loss of men killed at one time. In one of the squads, a man had a bazooka. When the rocket stuck in it, he pointed the tube muzzle down to get it through, and it went through–and exploded. Before long, the Germans figured something was wrong and opened up with artillery. I lost about 30 or 40 men.

MH: Where did your battalion head from there?

Butler: We were withdrawn from Kuckhof. They had me and the battalion come back to Gohr and get decorated with the Presidential Unit Citation for our defense of Hofen. Then we went across to the Remagen bridge. The Remagen bridge, over the Rhine River, was something else. It was a large, two-lane railroad bridge with a concrete civilian walkway on one side. We got it intact. When I got there, the Germans had the high ground overlooking the bridge and were firing 8-inch shells at it. Those shells would come in and explode, cutting a girder or two, or they would go on down and hit the river and explode. A shell would come in about every three minutes.

MH: What was your role in securing the Remagen bridgehead?

Butler: I went across the bridge and reported to Maj. Gen. Louis A. Craig, commander of the 9th Infantry Division, who had his headquarters in the basement of a hotel. He ordered me to go up and relieve a battalion at Bruchhausen that had been pretty badly shot up. I stayed on that bridge four hours, getting my men across. That was a little hairy because enemy shells were coming in. You could hear them, but we didn’t have anywhere to go, so we could only stand there and let them come. Nevertheless, I got my men all the way across.

MH: What happened when you reached the east bank of the Rhine River?

Butler: There was a tremendous amount of liquor in the town. When I say tremendous, I mean it was the wine belt. Craig had issued orders to get rid of the wine and the cognac. The MPs had taken some axes and cut holes in the bottoms of the kegs. At the time I received my orders, I was standing in about four inches of cognac. We got up to that town and things quieted down. The men started looking around and they noticed the liquor, too. To make a long story short, when I was moved from there I had a drunken battalion on my hands. The only thing I could think of to do was turn down the offer to transport the troops in trucks and make them walk to where we had to go. They were mad at me, but they came in sober.

MH: Was the German resistance collapsing?

Butler: Yes and no. They were trying their best to stop us, wherever there was a line of resistance. Our next fight was getting across the Wied River, where we suffered some casualties. From there, I was moved with the 7th Infantry Division. Our job was to go around and get in back of the Germans. To get there, I was given the job of cutting the Autobahn, which is a four-lane highway. There again I had to make a night attack. We were 10 miles behind the line. We got in there at night and withstood two counterattacks from the Germans, which we didn’t have any trouble checking. Come daylight, it was like shooting fish in a rain barrel because we had the high ground. Between our direct fire and artillery fire, the enemy had to pull out.

MH: When did you next encounter stiff resistance?

Butler: The next time was when we went around in back of the Germans in the Ruhr Pocket. We assaulted Hemur, and there again they didn’t want to give up, but we took that town. That was the end of the fighting. Somewhere around 300,000 Germans were captured. Then we went on down to the south where Patton was and we crossed the Altmühl River. Think that over–moving with guns and ammunition, we went from the Altmühl to the Danube on foot and carried our weapons. We had one jeep as an ambulance. We moved 50 miles on foot and started fighting when we got there. We stopped at the Danube.

MH: What was the final cost in casualties of your battalion’s remarkable advance?

Butler: In six months of fighting, I had about 300 percent turnover in the battalion. The average number of men in a platoon of 50 who hadn’t been hit by that time was two. One of the things I can’t understand was why I was able to maintain such a well-coordinated battalion with that amount of turnover. I guess the new men were able to pick up the necessary knowledge right away. On April 30, as we were crossing the Isar River, I physically collapsed. I was evacuated.

MH: Were you ever wounded?

Butler: I got the Purple Heart. One of those times an artillery shell didn’t miss me. I had some cracked ribs, but I was lucky to be alive.

MH: You still have great pride in your battalion, don’t you?

Butler: As far as I was concerned, they were the best outfit in the entire First Army. And they thought I was the best battalion commander. You can’t get anything better than that.

This article was written by Matthew Cappelliniand originally published in the June 1996 issue of Military History magazine. For more great articles be sure to subscribe to Military History magazine today!

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Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Historical Conflicts, Historical Figures, World War II

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