Black Soldiers at the Teutoburg Forest 1945

[Wiggum]

Hi,

i ask this here because i know here are some WW2-Experts around.

Today my Grandpa told me that he saw his last heavy combat near the Teutoburg Forest in 1945. At this time he was in a "Genesungskompanie" (actually he was in the 12. SS-Panzer-Division) because he was badly wounded 1944 during the fighting around Caen.

He told he was positioned at Sennelager. During the fighting near the Teutoburg Forest (he could not remember the exact location) this happened:

He and his comerades hear screams after some firefights with the americans in the night. They moved to the location of the screams and found a wounded black us soldier that told them something they thought maybe was his mother or girlfriend...it sounded like "meleen".

They take the wounded back to the own lines and give him first aid, he was wounded on the leg (my leg - meleen). They had to move so they took him back to his old position, they thought the advancing us troops will pick him up.

So, i did not found something about the fighting near the Teutoburg Forest in the internet.

Could it be possible that there were black US soldiers fighting in this area and can you tell me some more about the fighting in this area ?

[Wicky]

http://www.feldgrau.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=29129

According to the Tieke book about "Panzerbrigade Westfalen" Hauptsturmführer Pauli and his men from "SS-Pz.Aufklärer-Waffen-Lehrgang" defended "most likely" the narrow passage through the Teutoburg Forrest south of Berlebeck. "Most likely" the same unit defended the town of Blomberg, too.

The narrow passage near Berlebeck is known as "Gauseköte". In the German book "Truppenübungsplatz Senne" (about the 100 year history of the Sennelager military training area, page 226) the following information can be found: Sechs German soldiers coming from the Staumühle military camp at Sennelager were shoot after surrending to the American troops at the Gauseköte near Berlebeck.

The "Gauseköte" passage

http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bild:Gauseköte.JPG&filetimestamp=20080224111714

[gunnergoz]

This might be a toughie. IIRC, weren't some Blacks being integrated at platoon level by then, into certain infantry divisions? I think it was mostly due to the pressure for infantry replacements and the Army did not want to do one-for-one individual black replacements and instead sent in entire platoons of Black soldiers to hard-hit companies and battalions.

Ah, here's a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Soldier

So, it is possible that this soldier did not come from an all-Black outfit, but was from one of those replacement platoons and companies that were scattered in regular infantry divisions throughout the ETO by then. It would obviously be easier to find an all-Black outfit since they were relatively few and pretty well documented, but my suspicion is that this guy was an infantry replacement, having been found pretty far forward during an American advance (if he'd been found during an American retreat, like in the Bulge battles, he might have been from one of the many Black service, engineer or artillery outfits.)

Just my 2 bits; any other bright ideas?

[Michael Emrys]

This might be a toughie. IIRC, weren't some Blacks being integrated at platoon level by then, into certain infantry divisions?

There was also at least one all-black TD battalion. I think there might have been an all-black artillery battalion too.

But from the OP's description of the incident, it sounds to me that it would be much more likely that the soldier in question would have been an infantryman.

Michael

[Affentitten]

At that stage of the war where the front was collapsing he could have been from any sort of unit. Service units of all kind were blundering around because their maps showing friendly positions were out of date as soon as they were marked and there were so many pockets of German troops that were completely bypassed in the race to grab real estate and link up with the Soviets.