The American thrusts around Metz. Some forts were bombarded into surrender and some were left to ‘wither on the vine’.

Cross-section of a typical infantry strongpoint, Fort Driant.

‘See you in Metz’ predicted Patton on 6 December. But the last of 37 forts held out until 9 December

The vital actions towards the end of World War II in Europe have been exhaustively described — the breakout from the Cotentin Peninsula and the race across France, the Ardennes battles and the crossing of the Rhine. In all these the US Third Army, commanded by the almost legendary George S. Patton, played its part. But few chronicles of the period have devoted more than a few lines to the activities of that army between September and November 1944, when one of its corps was engaged in crossing the Moselle and reducing the city of Metz. The only account of the struggle is tucked away in the pages of the official history of the Lorraine campaign, while the publicists of the immediate post-war era tended to gloss over Patton’s first real setback.

The battle itself is packed with historical paradoxes. It would seem to be the only case in relatively modern times where two battles have been fought over the same ground within 70 years of each other, and with similar tactical problems. In the series of engagements in August 1870, known as Gravelotte-St. Privat, the Germans were attacking a French army that was entrenched on the high ground, to the west of Metz. The attackers suffered fearful casualties in frontal assaults and were finally victorious only when they succeeded in turning the flank of the position. In 1944, it was the turn of the Germans to defend the same high ground, while the Americans attacked with similar costly results. They too had to outflank the position before they could advance to capture the town. Another oddity is that in 1944 the Germans made good use of forts that they had built between 1870 and 1914, and had handed back to France as a result of the Treaty of Versailles — only to reoccupy them in 1940.

Metz is an ancient city. It controls a strategic crossing of the Moselle, so has been repeatedly fortified. The Germans took over the French defenses in 1870, and immediately set about improving and extending them. The Metz-¬Thionville area along the river became one vast entrenched camp to cover the strategic railway stations where the conscript armies would disembark in any future war with France. The advent of the high-explosive shell at the end of the nineteenth century caused a radical re-thinking of fortress design, which, so far as Germany was concerned resulted in a type of work known as a feste.

Basically, this was a piece of defended ground rather than a regularly shaped fort. Each feste consisted of a combination of batteries with guns in armored turrets, concrete barracks to house the garrison and with infantry positions to defend the perimeter. The best possible use was made of camouflage, and all the component parts were linked by underground tunnels — foreshadowing works of the Maginot Line. Between 1899 and 1914, 14 such festes were built in a ring around Metz and a further three down river at Thionville. This formed a fortified zone and was the hinge around which the German armies would wheel into Belgium and Luxemburg — the Schlieffen Plan. Between the wars, the French tended to concentrate their efforts on the Maginot Line to the north, and although the Metz forts were occupied and maintained, they were regarded purely as a secondary line of defense. When the Germans arrived in 1940, they ignored the works; they even removed parts of them for use in the Atlantic Wall —never thinking that they would soon find themselves on the defensive in Lorraine.

Strategically, Metz is an ideal position to defend against an enemy approaching from the west. After Gravelotte, the ground slopes gently up to a ridge of tree-covered hills. Here, the forts were built. Behind, the ridge drops sharply into the Moselle valley and is traversed by a number of steep ravines, quite impossible for armor and where any attack would be canalized. Only to the north does the flood-plain open out to provide a way into the city — once the forts along the ridge to the west have been outflanked. The city itself is situated at the point where the Seille joins the Moselle, and is built on a number of islands isolated by a canal and the various arms of the rivers.

On 23 August, the US Third Army was over the Seine and at Rheims by the 31st. Next day they had bridgeheads over the Meuse at Commercy and Verdun. Then they ran out of petrol. The pursuit of the disintegrating German forces had exceeded all expectations, with the result that the victorious divisions had outrun their communications. Until the Scheldt and the Channel ports could be cleared, all supplies still had to be brought in over the Normandy beaches and trucked for miles to the front line. It was not until 5 September, after some petrol had been flown to airfields near Rheims, that the advance could be continued. Those few days gave the Germans a vital breathing space to organize their defenses and to prepare to make a stand.

The Americans believed that Metz would be abandoned and that the enemy would retreat into the Siegfried Line. They had run out of territory maps and were reduced to using ordinary Michelin ones. They had no idea about the forts, except that they were old and they thought it unlikely that the Germans would bother to defend them. Added to the logistic problem of Third Army was the fact that this was the time of the initial arguments about priority of supplies for the proposed Arnhem airborne operation in the north.

Patton, ordered to stay put, interpreted his instructions liberally, and permitted 20th Corps, commanded by Major General Walton H. Walker, to advance as and when possible, to secure a bridgehead over the Moselle. Walker had three divisions available, the 5th and 90th Infantry and the 7th Armored. Facing him in Metz itself were assorted broken German units, many without their equipment, but estimated at the time by their 08 West (C-in-C West) as being equivalent to 42 divisions. The actual defense of the city was entrusted to a composite unit known as the 462nd Division. There were also some SS troops, notably of 1 7th SS Panzer Grenadier Division, and (as Metz had been a military school center), there were about 1,800 officer candidates. The majority of the latter were seasoned NCOs selected for their battle experience and Nazi Party loyalty.

The first attacks on the German positions to the west of Metz were made on 7 September by units of 5th Infantry and 7th Armored Divisions. The 2nd Infantry Regiment advanced along the line Amanvillers-Gravelotte where it found itself confronted by mines, barbed wire and pillboxes. The GIs had to grope to find the form of the enemy defenses and at that stage were not even up against the main positions. To the south, two precarious bridgeheads over the river were established. Elements of 7th Armored managed to get down one of the ravines to the river at Dornot, only to find themselves compressed along the bank and under heavy fire from Fort Driant on the hills above and behind them.

They managed to get two companies across in assault boats, but the element of surprise had been lost. Furiously counter-attacked by an SS unit, they were forced to abandon their bridgehead during the night of the 10/11 September. As a better crossing had been established farther south at Arnaville, the loss was not too serious, but even there, bridging operations were hampered by Fort Driant’s artillery.

In front of the main positions, 2nd Infantry Regiment continued its attacks. Artillery blasted away at known fortifications but on 9 September, all three battalions were pinned down by fire from the works sited on the reverse slopes of the ridge. That night, Colonel A. W. Roffe, the regimental commander, reported that he had lost 14 officers and 332 men. He protested against sending infantry ‘uselessly’ to attack ’20 odd forts’, and argued that aircraft with heavy bombs were needed.

But the available planes were widely spread out along the front. On the 10th, however, three squadrons of P47 Thunderbolts were obtained for a strike against the enemy, then obstructing the advance in front of Amanvillers. The 5001b bombs hardly dented the concrete and armor of the forts and caused only a temporary cessation of fire. When the attack was resumed next day it met with the same resistance as before. On 14 September, the assault was abandoned, and Gen. Walker decided to concentrate on expanding the Arnaville bridgehead. A breakout was tried, without any real success, and there too the advance petered out and was finally stopped on the 24th..

By then the Americans had realized that their only chance of success lay in encircling the city. Before this could be achieved, many more lives were to be lost in futile attacks on the forts. As far as the Germans were concerned, a decision had to be made on the tactical status of the city, which formed part of the front held by First Army. They had to decide whether it should be retained within the front line or be abandoned to investment by the enemy. Colonel General Johannes Blaskowitz, commander of Army Group G, urged that it be retained. The city contained a large number of officer cadets who could not be spared, and its abandonment would leave a large gap in the line which could not be plugged with the available reserves. But OKW (Supreme Armed Forces Command) was not prepared to accept responsibility and the matter was referred to Hitler personally. On 16 September, he peremptorily ordered that First Army must maintain contact and reinforce the garrison.

Meanwhile, the elements of 5th (‘Red Diamond’) Infantry Division who had been simply containing the western salient were relieved by 90th (‘Tough Ombres’) Infantry Division — a fresh formation. In front of them on the ridge, lay two main lines of fortifications, on either side of the St. Privat-Metz road. To the north was the Canrobert Group which followed the ridge of the Bois du Feves. This consisted of a concrete wall 20ft high and reinforced by four small forts. To the south of the road, two separate groups of forts, Kellermann and Lorraine, interlocked their fire over a wide area, while the gap between them was filled with field works. Beyond, and still farther south, were more fieldworks and then the Guise Group, the Jeanne d’Arc Group and some smaller forts known to the Americans as the ‘seven dwarfs’. Finally, the key to the whole position, was Fort Driant, overlooking the river and crossing its fire with Jeanne d’Arc to dominate the whole area. Fort Driant had to be eliminated before any attempt could be made to get into the city along the river from the south.

By the end of the third week in September, the whole of the Allied line was feeling the pinch of logistics. Third Army was put on the defensive with permission only for strictly local offensives, while priority was given to clearing the Scheldt. Within the definition of a local attack was the idea of knocking out Fort Driant, in preparation for a later advance when supplies permitted. Colonel Charles W. Yuill, commanding 11th Infantry Regiment, was convinced that it could be taken by storm and sold the idea to his superiors. Only one battalion was detailed, and although it was planned to attack on 19 September, a combination of bad flying weather and shortage of artillery ammunition delayed it.

An additional problem was that the Americans had no plans of the forts, but in this respect chance intervened. A French engineer colonel was discovered in Nancy. He had hidden a set of drawings at Lyons in 1940. These were hastily retrieved and, aided by a civilian technician and a French major who knew the fortress well, a plans unit was set up. In due course a complete collection was made, but too late to be of any use to the troops in the initial phases of the attack on Fort Driant.

The fort had been started in 1 902 and was named after a hero of Verdun in 1918. It comprised four hidden batteries armed with 100mm and 150mm guns in rotating armored turrets. These were connected by tunnels to a central barrack block surrounded by its own ditch. The interior was basically a flat earth surface, the only projections being the turrets, observation domes and four concrete bunkers. The whole area was surrounded by barbed wire and infantry trenches, there was artificial ventilation, and adequate stocks of food and water. The size of the garrison at the time is unknown, but was probably not very large as it could be easily reinforced from the rear.

The skies cleared on the morning of 27 September. P47s swooped in as low as 50ft and dropped 1,000 bombs and napalm, but to negligible effect. A further strike in the afternoon probably only succeeded in raising the morale of the defenders, who discovered that their concrete protection was bomb-proof. Prior to the jump-off, an artillery concentration was fired, which also failed to penetrate Two companies, supported by a few tank destroyers approached the fort, but the Germans, who had remained quiet during the advance, opened up with everything they had. The attackers were driven to take cover, and as there was no point in continuing, they were withdrawn in the early evening. The divisional commander was convinced that the fort should be simply contained, but his superiors thought otherwise.

Plans were consolidated during the next few days, and another attack, still at little more than battalion strength was mounted on 3 October. With artillery, air and tank support, two companies managed to penetrate into the fort and establish a precarious position on top of it — all the while subject to counter-attacks from the garrison who emerged from the warren of tunnels. Engineers tried to blast the concrete batteries. Attempts were made to penetrate the interior, but the men carrying the explosives and the flamethrowers were picked off by German snipers.

During the second night, it was attempted to regroup the troops, who had simply scattered into whatever cover they could find. At dawn on 5 October, the guns of several other forts opened up on the Americans on and around Driant —with deadly effect as is witnessed by the messages sent back by company commanders. But it was at about this time that Patton told Gen. Walker to take the fort, saying ‘If it took every man in the Corps (he) could not allow an attack by this army to fail’.

It was decided to strip 5th Infantry Division even further, and a task force was formed under Brigadier General A. D. Warnock. Fresh troops were moved onto the fort and orders were issued for the attack to be resumed on the 7th, the men at last being equipped with a plan. In four hours, one company managed to advance 200 yards, only to be counter-attacked and thrown back. A platoon got into one of the tunnels, but found their way blocked by a steel door. This was blown in, but the other side was blocked by a pile of scrap metal. A welding torch was needed to remove this obstacle. One was brought up during the night, and by noon the obstruction had been cleared. It was thought that the tunnel would lead them straight into the southern battery, but they ran into another door which had to be demolished by a 60lb beehive charge. This released dangerous fumes against which gas-masks were ineffective. Finally an engineer officer crawled through to find that only a small hole had been blown in the door. More explosive was brought up, but when the fumes cleared the Germans started to fire and throw grenades through the hole. The only thing to do was to build a sandbag parapet and exchange random shots.

By the morning of 9 October, the situation atop the fort was still confused, the space being too small to deploy the troops sheltering there. Losses so far had been high for such a limited action 21 officers and 485 men killed, wounded and missing. At 1200, the commanders concerned met. Warnock believed that further attacks would be too costly. He felt that the fort should be surrounded and the enemy driven underground. This idea was vetoed. Four infantry battalions would have been needed to carry it out. During the night of 12/13 October, Warnock’s men withdrew — without a shot being fired by the garrison. All senior officers were reluctant to abandon the attack. It represented the first defeat for Third Army, and came at a time when there were no spectacular advances elsewhere. But a lot was learnt about attacking fortifications.

The rest of October was a period of quiet, occupied with training and planning the final capture of Metz. The Germans took advantage of the temporary lull to reorganize their defenses. The 462nd Division was raised to Volksgrenadier status, but the officer candidates were passed out and sent off to join their units. At the beginning of November, when the final battle started, the garrison consisted of only about 14,000 supposedly second-grade troops, under Lieutenant General Heinrich Kittell, a successful Eastern Front city defender, who was ordered to hold out to the last man. His forces were too small to man all the available defenses, and supplies were short. First Army evacuated the city on 11 November, leaving Kittell to his own devices. During the night of the 14th, however, a last train got through with ammunition and food for two or three weeks.

The American plan allotted one division, the newly blooded 95th Infantry, to hold the Germans in the western salient. In the north, 90th Infantry Division would force a crossing of the Moselle above Thionville which would be exploited by 10th Armored Division. The 5th Infantry Division in the south would break out of their bridgehead at Arnaville. Both groups would then meet to the east of the city in a pincer movement to cut it off from further relief. the final order specified the ‘destruction or capture of the Metz garrison without the investiture or siege of the Metz forts’. The obvious lessons had been learnt.

The 20th Corps attack, employing 30 infantry battalions, nearly 500 tanks and over 700 guns, was launched on 9 November, when 90th Infantry seized two bridgeheads at Cattenom and Gavisse, north of Thionville. But operations there were hampered by forts of the Metz type, and one of them had to be taken in a costly assault before the bridges could be established. It was not until the 11th, hindered by fire from the forts and by rising flood waters, that the bridges were finished. Also on that day, a battalion from 95th Infantry gained an extra bridgehead by crossing into Thionville itself. They cleared the town by 13 November.

By the 14th, 90th Infantry had expanded its foothold in schedule. Accordingly, Major General Harry L. Twaddle, commanding 95th Infantry, asked permission to alter his assignment from one of simply holding the Germans in the west, and to go on to the offensive. He planned to move into the city astride Moselle with all three of his regiments, plus a composite task force. Permission was granted for this four-pronged advance to start the following day.

From then on the capture of Metz was almost entirely a matter for Gen. Twaddle’s men. On the right of his front was 379th Infantry Regiment between Gravelotte and the southern group of forts. The 378th Infantry Regiment faced the Canrobert group, while on the left. 377th Infantry was near the river on the floodplain south of Maizieres. Across the Moselle, Task Force Bacon (named after its commander, Colonel Robert L. Bacon) made up of two infantry battalions plus some armor and SPGs was formed.

The decisive moment of the whole battle came on the very first day of the attack in the west. Leaving its 82-mile front to be held by a collection of cooks, clerks, drivers and the like, 378th Infantry Regiment moved around the north of the Canrobert works and took them in the rear. By 1100 Fort de Feves had been captured, thus outflanking the entire fortified position along the ridge. The loss of that fort also denied the Germans the use of their main observation post that had controlled the fire of the rest of the forts. One officer who took part in the attack said afterwards that he had never seen so much signals equipment in one place before.

The objectives for 379th Infantry Regiment on 15 November were to take the high ground between the Guise and Jeanne d’Arc forts, and to overrun the ‘seven dwarfs’. This they achieved, but the displaced Germans infiltrated back to their rear and cut them off. The only road through to their position was under accurate fire from the Jeanne d’Arc forts, and ran through the bed of the Mance ravine. This same feature had been the scene of terrible slaughter in 1870 when General Karl von Steinmetz’s Prussians attempted to fight their way across it. The only way to supply the isolated regiment was by light aircraft. It was not until the 17th that reinforcements could fight their way through the ravine and capture the fortified farms dominating the road, and not until the night of the 18th/19th that the first supply convoy got through.

In the north, 377th Infantry Regiment fought their way towards the city down the right bank of the Moselle, while on the other side, Task Force Bacon got underway on 16 November. Next day, the Corps commander decided that the moment had come to coordinate the divisions’ drive for the bridges; 90th Infantry was advancing south parallel to Task Force Bacon, and 5th Infantry was almost into the southern suburbs while 95th Infantry was through to the forts in the west, several of which were found unoccupied. Those that resisted were simply surrounded, while isolated strongpoints were mopped up. By the night of 18/19 November, contact had been established between the various regiments, while the pincer to the east had been closed. The last escape route for the Germans was cut off. As it was probable that the bridges across the river and the canal would be found demolished, the necessary bridging equipment and assault boats were moved up ready for use on the following day.

Despite determined German resistance, all the regiments of 95th Infantry were well established in the suburbs of Metz by the morning of the 1 9th. Snipers took a heavy toll of the advancing Americans, and although some of the enemy surrendered easily, the majority were prepared to defend every house and street corner. The attackers were naturally hampered in their operations by the fact that most of the civilian population were still in the city, precluding the use of aircraft and artillery.

The crossings into the heart of the city were made in spite of heavy enemy fire, and by noon, 377th and 378th Regiments were on the islands between the canal and the river. The Germans showed no signs of surrendering and it was clear that the battle was far from over. Fighting continued throughout the next two days, especially in the area of the 377th Infantry Regiment on the Isle Chambiere. The main German command post was situated in the Mudra Barracks there. It had to be half demolished by a tank before the survivors gave in. It had been hoped to find Lt. Gen. Kittell there, but he had been wounded and was in a field hospital, set up in a tobacco factory. He was discovered actually on the operating table, and stoutly refused to surrender either the remainder of the city or the forts. Thus it was that Metz never formally capitulated ceremonially, and it was not until 1438 on 22 November that corps could officially be informed that all fighting had ceased.

Even the possession of the city still did not mean that the battle was finished. There were German garrisons holding out in seven of the forts, the last of which, Jeanne d’Arc, did not surrender until 9 December — and that was through lack of food and water. It was only then that the American troops could be reformed to join in the advance to the Sarr and on into Germany.

That the battle for the city lasted as long as it did, was mainly due to the supply problems of Third Army, and the fact that as the front was so narrow, only comparatively few troops could be deployed. Another factor was the American respect for the value of human life — a Russian army might well have expended unlimited men to take the forts by weight of numbers. Had the Americans been able to advance directly on 1 September, they could well have driven straight into the city. As it was, the Germans were given a breathing space which they used to good purpose. By establishing themselves in the forts, they negated the American armor, and the Allied air superiority that had thus far proved invincible on all fronts was useless against such defenses. After the war, the two forts of the Verdun Group were inspected by a team of American engineers, who found them little damaged — in spite of frequent attack by artillery of all calibres and bombs of up to 2,0001b.

The quality of the German resistance was due initially to the presence of elite troops, but after these had been withdrawn, the remainder continued to fight bravely —some 14,000 men holding up an entire Army Corps. Between 40 and 70 years old, the forts themselves proved that permanent fortifications still had a role to play in warfare, and could probably only have been neutralized by earthquake bombs. They fulfilled their basic purpose in that they enabled a comparatively small body of men to hold a large amount of territory. Had the Germans managed to hang on for another month, Patton would have been unable to respond quite so flexibly to the threat posed by the Ardennes offensive, and the whole timetable for ending the war might well have been thrown out of gear.