The Capture of Dillingen Bridge

Transcript of a letter from Leonard Sikorski recounting his actions at Dillingen.

I remember going into Dillingen early in the day, we were stopped short of the bridge by rifle fire. On alighting from our halftracks we worked our way to the bridge. Sgt. Welch, alias “Shadow” took four or five of us onto the bridge to disarm the large bombs that were laying on the road surface. Sgt. Shadow and I went onto the other side of the bridge and cut wires that were running across the bridge.

Later on that day as we were using the foxholes of the German soldiers, a German command car came towards the bridge and we captured the Colonel and his driver. I confiscated a 44 Belgian pistol from the Colonel.

That first night we stayed in the beer hall just off the bridge, and the Germans sent an airplane over but it was too dark for him to do any bombing. The next morning I was sent over to the other side of the bridge with other members of our platoon to relieve the night crew. At this time a German plane came over the bridge and was firing his machine guns at us. We dove into the fox holes and no one was hit. He then tried to dive bomb the bridge but missed by several hundred feet, crashing in the wooded area near the bridge. About noon the Engineers strung a net of some sort across the Danube and were lucky in catching several floating bombs that the Germans floated down to blow up the bridge.

I also recall Roy D. Curry being a member of our platoon. After Dillingen we went to Landsberg and took over a large airfield from which I took down the Swastika Flag from the flagpole. I had this souvenir for almost 20 years, but it eventually rotted away.