The Bridge at Remagen

The Rhine River represented Nazi Germany's last natural defensive barrier. Approximately 766 miles long with an average width of 1,300 feet, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers deemed it "totally unfordable, even at low water." General George C. Marshall wrote that he "dreaded the advance to the Rhine more than any other operation during the war."

By March 1945, of the original 47 Rhine bridges (22 road and 25 railroad), the Germans had systematically destroyed nearly all:

• Hohenzollern Bridge at Cologne — March 6
• Bonn bridge — March 8
• Kronprinz Wilhelm Bridge at Urmitz — March 9

When American scouts spotted the Ludendorff Bridge still standing on March 7, 1945, it was the only intact crossing from Switzerland to the Baltic Sea.

Hitler's Bureaucratic Failure

Hitler's October 1944 orders regarding bridge demolition ironically contributed to Remagen's survival. After an American bomb accidentally triggered the premature destruction of the Mülheim Bridge in Cologne, Hitler mandated that demolition charges could only be set when the enemy was within five miles, and bridges could only be destroyed by written order from the commanding officer.

This bureaucratic delay, combined with a shortage of proper explosives—only 300kg of weak industrial Donarit arrived instead of the requested 600kg of military TNT—meant the demolition charges failed to bring down the bridge.

The capture unfolded with remarkable speed:

By the end of March 8, over 8,000 American troops had crossed. Eisenhower's reaction: "Hold on to it, Brad. Get across with everything you need—but make certain you hold that bridgehead." He later called the bridge "worth its weight in gold."

The Germans threw virtually every weapon in their arsenal at the bridge:

• 367 aircraft attacks — including first combat use of Arado Ar 234 jet bombers and Me-262 jet fighters
• 11 V-2 ballistic missiles — first tactical use of ballistic missiles in history; only time V-2s fired at a target on German soil
• 14 rounds from 600mm Karl-Gerät — super-heavy mortar
• Floating mines, explosive-laden boats, SS frogmen (detected by searchlights and killed)

The American response created the largest concentration of anti-aircraft weapons in WWII history. Between March 12-13 alone, gunners shot down 26 German aircraft. Secret "Canal Defence Lights"—13-million-candlepower searchlights mounted on tanks—illuminated the river at night.

By March 17, eight spans were operational. The original Ludendorff Bridge had become almost redundant.

The 276th Engineer Combat Battalion arrived at Remagen on March 10, 1945, relieving the exhausted 9th Armored Engineer Battalion. Their mission: repair damage to the bridge's western approach and maintain traffic flow under continuous enemy fire.

That same night, a direct artillery hit killed Major James E. Foley, the battalion's executive officer, and wounded 19 men.

Warren Spahn, a staff sergeant with the 276th, had already survived some of the war's most brutal fighting:

"We were surrounded in the Hürtgen Forest and had to fight our way out of there. Our feet were frozen when we went to sleep and they were frozen when we woke up. We didn't have a bath or change of clothes for weeks."

— Warren Spahn

At Remagen, the work was equally brutal:

"We went up at midnight, get in an hour's work, and then started ducking German shells. We pulled back and went in later. Every time we went in they'd throw more shells."

— Warren Spahn

"Let me tell you, that was a tough bunch of guys. We had people that were let out of prison to go into the service. So those were the people I went overseas with, and they were tough and rough and I had to fit that mold."

— Warren Spahn

March 16: Wounded

Spahn was wounded by shrapnel to his foot while working on bridge repairs under constant German bombardment. This earned him the ✓ Purple Heart.

March 17: The Collapse

At approximately 3:00 PM on March 17, 1945, engineers heard what Spahn described as "sharp cracks of rivets breaking... like machine guns blasting."

Spahn's own account (Harold Kaese, Boston Globe, 1950):

"My platoon was supposed to relieve another at four o'clock in the afternoon. We were in a truck near the bridge, so I got out to see the lieutenant I was relieving, about where his men were stationed. We talked in the middle of the bridge awhile, then we left. It wasn't 10 minutes later that the bridge collapsed. It sounded like machine guns blasting as the rivets came loose."

— Warren Spahn, Boston Globe, 1950

"A fellow from Pennsylvania who hadn't been on the bridge all day, went up to get a piece of equipment just as the bridge gave way. We never saw him again. That's fate for you."

— Warren Spahn

Lieutenant Colonel Clayton A. Rust, commanding the 276th, was in the middle of the bridge inspecting repairs. He fell into the river but was pulled out alive. Many of his men were not so fortunate.

Structural Failure Analysis

Captain James Cooke's post-war engineering analysis determined that the German demolition charge on March 7 had broken the bottom chord of the upstream truss, forcing the downstream truss to carry the entire load and subjecting the bridge to constant twisting. The weight of timber decking added for vehicular traffic, continuous heavy use, and repair operations finally exceeded what the damaged structure could bear.

✓ VERIFIED Documentary claim of 28 engineers killed

Note: Some sources cite 33 deaths, which may conflate the bridge collapse with three soldiers killed by a V-2 rocket striking the 284th ECB command post earlier that same day.

"The noise and the sight of the falling soldiers was very frightening. I looked down to see the men, several of whom I knew, trying to keep their heads above the water, but because they had on heavy gear and the river was flowing so swiftly they couldn't."

— Private John Morgado, 276th ECB

Of the 28 dead, 18 were never recovered—swept away by the Rhine's powerful current.

Lt. Col. Clayton Rust described the collapse as "complete decimation of the unit command"—the 276th lost its executive officer, two company commanders, three platoon leaders, and six platoon sergeants in a single moment.

By this time, however, the pontoon bridges were fully operational, and over 125,000 troops had already crossed.

Hitler responded to the loss of Remagen with characteristic fury, appointing Generalleutnant Rudolf Hübner—described as a "fanatical and reliable Nazi"—to lead a "Flying Special Court-Martial West." Hübner served as both prosecutor and judge, waving aside German military code: "the only authority he needed was Hitler's."

Four German officers were executed by firing squad:

Letters the condemned officers wrote to their families were burned. Military pensions to their widows were revoked. Generalmajor Richard von Bothmer, Battle Commandant of the Bonn/Remagen area, committed suicide on March 10.

Captain Willi Bratge, the combat commander at Remagen who was captured, was sentenced to death in absentia but survived the war. Captain Karl Friesenhahn, the engineer who triggered the failed demolition, was acquitted—the court determined he had done everything possible.

After the war, Hübner was tried in Koblenz and sentenced to four years imprisonment. The executed officers' pensions were restored to their families.

Jack Buck served in Company K, 47th Infantry Regiment, 9th Infantry Division—a combat infantry unit, not engineers. He shipped to Europe in February 1945 as a replacement soldier.

The 47th Infantry: First Across Since Napoleon

The 47th Infantry Regiment was the first infantry regiment to cross the Rhine River since the Napoleonic Wars. Buck crossed the Ludendorff Bridge on the night of March 7, 1945—the very day of its capture.

March 15, 1945: Wounded

On the morning of March 15, Buck was leading a patrol in the Remagen bridgehead zone when German artillery found his position. Shrapnel struck his left forearm and left leg, narrowly missing the hand grenade hanging from his belt.

Buck's daughter Beverly Buck Brennan stated that medic Frank Borghi's battlefield treatment "saved my father's arm from having to be amputated." Buck was evacuated to the 177th General Army Hospital in Le Mans, France.

The Spahn-Buck Timeline

Documentary Verification

• ✓ VERIFIED Both were at Remagen Bridge
• ✓ VERIFIED Both were wounded by shrapnel
• ✓ VERIFIED Wounded within 24 hours of each other
• ✓ VERIFIED Both received Purple Hearts
• ✓ VERIFIED Both future Hall of Famers (Spahn inducted 1973; Buck received Ford C. Frick Award 1987)
• ⚠ NOT CONFIRMED Any direct interaction between Buck and Spahn during WWII

The Borghi Connection

Frank Borghi—the medic who saved Buck's arm—later became the goalkeeper for the 1950 U.S. World Cup team that defeated England 1-0 in one of soccer's greatest upsets. Two men from the same company, same battle, one saves the other's arm—neither knew until meeting at a banquet decades later. Both now rest at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery.

✗ NOT VERIFIED Presence at Remagen

Despite extensive research, no documentation places Irvin or the 1313th Engineer General Service Regiment at or near Remagen in March 1945. The documentary premise that Irvin was "in the same operations area as Spahn" at Remagen cannot be substantiated.

✓ VERIFIED Battle of the Bulge Theater Presence

Irvin's unit was deployed to Reims, France during the Battle of the Bulge, serving as "secondary line in case the Germans broke through at Bastogne." However, this was a reserve position—not direct combat involvement.

Segregated Service Context

Irvin's experience reflects the systemic racism of the wartime military. In 1945, 95% of all Black soldiers were assigned to non-combat service units. Irvin's own words capture the frustration:

"We felt like we were thrown away. We built a few roads, and when the German prisoners started to come in, we guarded the prisoners. We thought it would have been better if they hadn't inducted us, and just let us work in a defense plant. We were just in the way."

— Monte Irvin

Documentary Recommendation

The Irvin-Spahn connection should NOT be presented as them being at the same bridge or in the same operations. What CAN be accurately stated:

• Both served in engineer units in the European Theater
• Both were Hall of Fame baseball players whose careers were interrupted by WWII
• Their wartime experiences were fundamentally different due to segregation policies
• Irvin's "lost years" were compounded by being denied the chance to prove himself in combat

Warren Spahn

On Perspective

"After what I went through overseas, I never thought of anything I was told to do in baseball as hard work. You get over feelings like that, I assure you, when you've spent days on days sleeping in frozen tank tracks in enemy-surrounded territory."

— Warren Spahn

On Maturity

"I matured a lot in those years. If I had not had that maturity, I wouldn't have pitched until I was 45."

— Warren Spahn

On Heroism

"The guys who died over there were heroes."

— Warren Spahn (to his son Greg)

Jack Buck

"My dad was many things—husband, father, journalist and sports fan. But I believe that in his mind, he was always a soldier first."

— Beverly Buck Brennan

Monte Irvin

On Lost Years

"I got home on September 1, 1945. In October, I started playing right field for the Newark Eagles. I had been a .400 hitter before the war. I became a .300 hitter after the war. I had lost three prime years."

— Monte Irvin

What Irvin Lost

"Monte was the best all-round player I have ever seen. As great as he was in 1951, he was twice that good 10 years earlier in the Negro Leagues."

— Roy Campanella

Military historians and German commanders agree the Remagen capture had profound strategic consequences:

"The Crime of Remagen. It broke the front along the Rhine."

— General Albert Kesselring

"Made a long defense impossible."

— Hermann Göring

"Signaled the end of the war for the Germans."

— Major General Carl Wagener, Field Marshal Model's Chief of Staff

The Remagen bridgehead enabled the encirclement of the Ruhr industrial region. First Army swept north, meeting Ninth Army on April 1, 1945, trapping 317,000-370,000 German soldiers in the Ruhr Pocket—more prisoners than Stalingrad. By March 26, Goebbels noted "no more coal was coming from the Ruhr."

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers concluded the capture "shortened the final drive across Germany towards Berlin by weeks, even months."

Why Remagen Became Legend

• Military significance: First crossing of the Rhine by an invading army since Napoleon in 1805, advancing the Allied timetable by weeks, enabling the encirclement of 400,000 German soldiers.
• Narrative power: A small task force seized a strategic objective that higher command hadn't even considered possible. Initiative, improvisation, and courage at the point of contact.
• Tragic irony: The German demolition failed not because of American brilliance but because of Hitler's own paranoid bureaucracy. Officers were executed for following contradictory orders. The bridge ultimately collapsed anyway, but only after serving its purpose.

Ken Hechler's definitive account ensured the story would endure. The combat historian, attached to the 9th Armored Division, interviewed participants immediately after the battle and returned twice to interview German survivors. His 1957 book The Bridge at Remagen sold over 500,000 copies—Harry Truman called it "one of the best books on the war"—and was adapted into a 1969 film starring George Segal.

For Warren Spahn

• Harold Kaese interview, Boston Globe, 1950 — Detailed Remagen account (PRIMARY SOURCE)
• David Condon interview, Chicago Tribune, 1982
• ROUGH AND READY: Unit History 276th Engineer Combat Battalion by Allen L. Ryan
• National Archives: 276th ECB unit records
• Oklahoma Historical Society: Greg Spahn (son) oral history

For Jack Buck

• That's a Winner! autobiography (1997, Sagamore Publishing) with Rob Rains and Bob Broeg
• 9th Infantry Division Association archives
• St. Louis Post-Dispatch family interviews (Beverly Buck Brennan, Jack Buck Jr.)
• SABR Biography Project: Jack Buck

For Monte Irvin

• Nice Guys Finish First: The Autobiography of Monte Irvin (1996, Carroll & Graf)
• SABR Oral History interview (2002)
• National Archives: 1313th Engineer General Service Regiment records
• NARA Station List (June 4, 1944 placement at Brixton, Devonshire)

For Remagen Bridge

• Ken Hechler, The Bridge at Remagen (1957/1998) — The definitive book
• U.S. Army Corps of Engineers official history
• Friedensmuseum Brücke von Remagen (Peace Museum at Remagen)
• 9th Armored Division Association archives

Government Archives