The regiment's biggest problem was transportation. It had only enough trucks to move one battalion at a time and, as supply problems increased with the distance, ten of these trucks were detached to haul supplies. An infantryman will ride anything in preference to walking and the truck shortage brought out some strange and unmilitary sights. Thirty-four men could ride on the hull of a tank and fifteen on a jeep and trailer. The battalions stripped the towns they went through of anything that would roll. In addition to cars and trucks, farm wagons were taken to be used as trailers. Soon every vehicle was pulling some kind of trailer. It was not unusual to see the scouts of a company careening down the highway -- two on a bicycle. Such vehicles as fire trucks and cement mixers had a limited capacity but they would roll. School buses were the best loot because of their capacity. At one point an officer got curious about a Volkswagen that was tooling along with the column and on closer examination found that it contained two German officers.

The regiment's columns probably presented the most unmilitary appearance of any outfit since the Mexican war. A newspaper correspondent who had managed to get that far forward took a look and dubbed the regiment, "The Ragtag Circus." Had the high command ever gotten that far forward it is probable that disciplinary action would have been taken, but the high command was a hundred miles to the rear.

Although appearances were against it the regiment was by no means an uncontrolled mob. Major Sharpe had initiated the idea of numbering important places along the zone of action and furnishing each Company Commander with a map overlay showing the numbers. This allowed commanders to talk in the clear over the radio, since saying, "We have taken number thirty-six and are moving on number twenty-four" would mean nothing to anyone who didn't have the code. Primarily its greatest use was to keep the rear area monitors off our necks. We were supposed to encode and decode such messages, which were so slow that they would be worthless when received. The regimental forward CP adopted this method from Major Sharpe and soon had our whole section of Germany on numbered map overlays. The regimental forward CP consisted of two jeeps, one with the regimental commander and his radio operator, and the, other with the operations officer and his radio operator. The range of the radios was not great enough to allow communications with the rear, but such communication was seldom of an emergency nature and we could talk to them at night over the German high wire.

Communication is always difficult in combat. The field telephone was the most satisfactory because it allowed man-to-man conversation and was not easily intercepted by the enemy. Its greatest disadvantage was that the lines had to be laid from a reel cart so they were normally along roads and trails. These lines were constantly being broken by both our own and the enemy's artillery fire, and chewed up by the treads of tanks. Repairing breaks in the lines was a hazardous duty; the artillery that broke the line in the first place might open up again while the repair crew was mending it. Lieutenant Raikos, our communications officer, would go out every day with a crew of about six men and come back with half of them. He always came back himself. There was a saying around headquarters, "Well, Raikos, won't come back today," but the shell with his name on it hadn't been fired. He lasted out the war.

The nature of our organization, particularly for the last drive, made the telephone almost useless. The regiment was organized into three battalion combat teams. Each team consisted of a battalion of infantry, a battery of field artillery, a platoon of medium tanks, a platoon of engineers, and a medical platoon. They operated independently except against a large town, when two or more battalions cooperated. The regimental front was about six miles wide and this, with the speed of our advance, made laying wire impractical.

The resistance that the regiment encountered was usually minor, depending generally on how many S.S. troops were around. The most serious obstacles between us and the Elbe river were expected to be the area around Bad Harzburg on the edge of the Harz mountains, the city of Halberstadt, and the Weser river, of Pied Piper fame. None of them turned out to be very serious. Cook's battalion moved on Bad Harzburg so rapidly that the barmaids did not have time to cut off the taps on the beer. Some of them were not about to serve American soldiers, and a few went so far as to spit at them. This was a mistake. A gun butt applied across their posterior was a language they understood and quickly corrected their partisanship. The Hitler Jugend put up a fight at Goslar, but their courage was their chief asset. They were no match for veteran infantrymen. We moved along the edge of the Harz Mountains but did not go into its forests. We heard later that we had bypassed 65,000 Germans in the forest. The latrine rumor had reached us about Hitler's redoubt in the Harz Mountains, but we estimated that with the limited road net they couldn't assemble a very dangerous force. We temporarily lost our supply officer, Major Kohler, near Bad Harzburg. He saw a truck parked a hundred yards inside the forest and decided to liberate it. It evidently was a plant. When he got to the truck he found himself looking down the barrels of a German patrol. They marched him all over the Harz Mountains and, when he was recaptured ten days later, he had lost eighteen pounds. There were only a few roads leading out of the forest. We left an anti-tank gun squad to cover each exit and moved on.

Halberstadt was a city of about 40,000 and we expected a siege. It was in the zone of action of the 1st Battalion. Major White's battalion was north of the city. When the 1st Battalion started its attack the defenders all moved to the south walls. It was not Major White's job, but when he saw the opportunity he drove in from the north and captured the city in minutes.

The Weser River was something of a repetition. The river was wide and deep and it was defended on the east side. On a reconnaissance to the north Major White saw that our rivals, the 2nd Armored Division, had built a bridge across the river in their zone. He violated all the rules of Army protocol by moving his battalion into the 2nd Armored's zone of action and crossing their bridge without permission. He then moved south and got behind the defenders of the crossing site in our area with hardly a shot fired. The regiment crossed in assault boats.

It is often difficult for a combat soldier to decide which is the worst the enemy or his own high command. The high command is always coming out with orders that are completely unenforceable, and often interfere with the success of an operation. Possibly the reason for some of these is to prevent adverse publicity getting back to the United States. For example, there were the orders against looting. There is always looting by soldiers in time of war. There wasn't much in Germany. The regiment was moving too fast to search the houses. There was very little of value in the houses, and the looters had no means of transporting articles of any size. In the last campaign across Germany orders were received that there would be no fraternizing with the German people. The troops usually stopped at night in some German town that had enough houses to offer billeting. Anyone who would be naive enough to think that the soldiers didn't sleep with the women in the houses where they were billeted should waste his talents on the General Staff. We had a war to fight and were too busy to be "Sunday School superintendents." Only one complaint was received from the Germans. That was from a man who stated that the whole platoon had raped his wife. Major Mauldin, the regimental surgeon, went to investigate. He returned with a dozen pornographic photographs of the accuser and his wife in various positions of sexual intercourse. It seems that his occupation was the production of such photographs for sale. No further action was taken.

After the regiment crossed the Weser river the Germans along the way took on the appearance of rooters at a ball game more than enemies. Some of them actually applauded when our troops went by them. They probably could see the specter of the Russian army approaching, and much preferred occupation by the semi-civilized Americans to what they knew they would get if they were overrun by the Russians. Occasionally some die-hard would try to fight. One German Major tried to overrun our lines hanging onto the side of an ambulance with a pistol in his hand. One of our G.I.'s knocked him off with one slug from his M- 1. The standing symbol for surrender was sheets hanging out of the second-story windows. Usually our troops didn't fire on such houses. On one occasion the occupants of a house across the Lippe Canal which had sheets displayed made the mistake of firing on our I&R platoon. A tank was brought up and it reduced the house to rubble in a short time, while the occupants tried to flee out the back entrances.

By this time it was apparent that the drive to the Elbe river was a horse race between the leading Combat Command, (Regiment) of the 2nd Armored Division and the 329th Infantry Regiment. The 2nd Armored had started a day earlier than the 329th and usually kept that lead, but the race was close enough for the commander of the 2nd Armored to tell his officers, "If that infantry outfit beats us to the Elbe, heads will fall around here." The regiment lost one full day by the unrequested loan of an armored reconnaissance battalion. It was sent up to lead the advance and at ten o'clock it had moved half a mile, was firing its tanks at the defending force in a small village, and our leading battalion had not moved. Sharpe's battalion was ordered to go around through the fields and take out the resistance, which he did in about thirty minutes. The armored battalion then moved through the town, only to be stopped at the next little town two miles beyond. Sharpe didn't wait this time but moved his battalion around the flank and took out the resistance. By this time half a day had been lost and Division Headquarters was told that if it wanted us to get along with the war, it would have to get the armored outfit out of our way.

Division Headquarters put the armored outfit over on a flank and the drive continued, but we had lost almost a day in the horse race.

The 329th Infantry by this time, in spite of the "Ragtag Circus" designation, was as competent an infantry machine as the United States has ever put in the field. The hedgerows of Normandy had taught us the costliness of frontal attacks, and the only time these were used was when the terrain offered no alternative. When the latter was true, as in the capture of the Rhine river defenses, assault fire was substituted for maneuver. In fighting through towns and villages that had to be taken house-by-house "mouse-holing" was often used. This was a method of blasting through the walls of adjacent houses to avoid the exposure of going into the streets. Each battalion had attached to it a platoon of five medium tanks. These tanks became so accustomed to operating with the battalion, being fed and billeted with it, that they considered themselves part of the battalion, and operated very effectively. They were particularly useful on road blocks, pillboxes, and masonry buildings.

The regiment's artillery, the 322nd Battalion, was commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel John Skinner. Its 105's could always give close support because Skinner usually moved with the advance guard, and kept his batteries far enough forward to always have some of them in supporting distance, leap-frogging them forward a battery or a section at a time. The regiment never asked for air support. When it wanted supporting fire it wanted it right now. Air support was a long and complicated procedure, and by the time it got there it was too late to be of any value.

Combat proficiency, in addition to usually being successful, also reduces casualties. Our last battalion commander casualty was Lieutenant-Colonel John Speedie, who had received four separate wounds in the fighting from Normandy to the Rhine. At the beginning of our last drive he got his last wound, this time in the foot. He couldn't walk, so he had to be evacuated. Major George White took charge of the battalion and commanded it outstandingly the rest of the way.

During the drive across Germany we experienced the unusual phenomenon of having men who had been wounded in previous battles, going AWOL from field hospitals and replacement depots, thumbing rides on trucks bound for the front, and rejoining their old companies there. They had every probability of getting wounded again but just couldn't stay away while the fighting was going on. The regiment received a continuous stream of letters from higher headquarters directing that disciplinary action be taken against these AWOLs. A form endorsement was placed on all such letters. It read, "Disciplinary action has been taken." Enlisted men were not the only AWOLs. Lieutenant-Colonel Speedie, after his third or fourth wound, appeared at regimental headquarters still in his bandages. When asked why he had not stayed in the field hospital until cured he replied, "I was afraid my battalion would be given to somebody else."

As the regiment neared the Elbe River it was apparent that the horse race with the 2nd Armored Division had been lost. Fighting was going on in Magdeburg, and some infantry had apparently been put across the river -- an evident attempt to establish a bridgehead. The regiment reached Barby on April twelfth. There was a bridge at this point and the Germans put up a strong defense. Our 2nd and 3rd Battalions overran these defenses on the morning of April thirteenth, and the Germans blew up the bridge. At about the same time word was received that the 2nd Armored had withdrawn from its attempted bridge-head across the river.