Germany

The 300th moved through Aachen, Germany on January 25, 1945. Aachen was known as the first German city taken by U.S. troops as they moved into Germany.

At the end of March, 1945, the 300th moved to Remagen, Germany. First Army troops came to the outskirts of the town on the west bank of the Rhine River on March 7, 1945. Scouts observed German troops retreating across the Rhine on a railroad bridge. Built in 1916, the Ludendorff Bridge was designed for war and had been used for years by the Germans to move troops across the Rhine. It originally included chambers to house explosives so it could be destroyed if necessary but the French, years earlier, had filled the chambers with concrete.

Remagen was taken easily with the Germans escaping across the bridge. U.S. troops waited for the Germans to destroy the bridge but much to their surprise, the Germans were slow to string explosives along the bridge. The Germans botched the job and the explosives failed to bring down the structure. U.S. troops stormed across the bridge, and in heavy fighting, drove the Germans back and immediately began to move Allied troops and equipment across the Rhine River. Reconnaissance Officer Lt. Shoop and Sgt. John Durant made a reconnaissance probe that took them over the bridge reporting this back to Company B HQ.

300th Engineer William F. McAlexander describes crossing the bridge at Remagen:

Lieutenant Taylor came up about daylight and said, "Load up right now, we're going across the Rhine River." So our group crossed the Ludendorf Bridge at Remagen. We didn't go through the tunnel on the other side. We took a right and went over where we joined the 7th Armored Division again.

When we crossed the Ludendorf Bridge, it was quiet over there. We didn't have any opposition and were just sailing along. We didn't know the bridge fell in right behind us. We had no idea. We went way inland before I heard the bridge fell in. All of our groups didn't go across the bridge. Most of them went across on a Treadway bridge.

Yet again circumstances had changed the history of the 300th. They had been assigned the critical mission of building the bridge across the Rhine, a job for which they had been training for months. With the Ludendorff bridge still standing, the 300th was assigned other missions. They followed other Allied troops and moved over the Rhine and deeper into Germany.

Engineer battalions spent the next ten days attempting to repair the badly damaged Ludendorff Railroad Bridge. Four welders from the 300th were also sent to help with the repair work. It was on March 17, ten days almost to the hour from when American troops first set foot on it, that the bridge collapsed without warning crashing into the Rhine River killing 28 men with many more were injured.

The 300th supported the Allied troops during the Battle of the Bulge from mid-December, 1944 through the end of January, 1945 during a long, harsh winter. They traveled to numerous locations including: Filot, 2 Jan; Xhoris, 5 Jan; Louveigne, 7 Jan; Born, 1 Feb; Lichtenbusch, 6 Feb; Roetgen, 21 Feb; and Abenden, 4 Mar.

The activities of the 300th during the winter of 1944-45, included: bridge construction, maintaining airstrips, operating gravel pits, removed ice/snow/debris from roads, guarded bridges and cleared and maintained roads while assigned to various groups.