Perhaps the most distinguishing feature of the old Roman town of Remagen, about halfway between Dusseldorf and Frankfurt on the Rhine River, in 1945 was the 1,000-foot, double-track Ludendorff railroad bridge.
Despite the bridge's presence, Remagen didn't really factor into Allied plans as they stormed across France and Belgium in late 1944. The town's narrow roads and imposing cliffs made it unsuitable for a military crossing.
But the swift Allied advance toward Germany was blunted in autumn 1944 by supply problems and renewed resistance by German forces, themselves invigorated by the prospect of defending of their homeland.
After Allied forces halted and flattened the bulge created by a massive and ferocious German offensive in winter 1944, attention turned to how to cross the Siegfried line at Germany's western border and the Rhine River beyond it.
Plans were drawn up to thrust into the German heartland north and south of Remagen. The US 9th Armored Division — nicknamed the "Phantom" division because of repeated German reports that it had been destroyed — was left in a backup role.
But fate, and a few thousand pounds of faulty explosives, soon made the 9th Division the first military force cross the Rhine since Napoleon.
As US troops approached the Rhine in February and March 1945, the prospects of finding one of the 40 bridges across the river intact seemed dim — until Lt. Karl Timmermann and his company came across the bridge at Remagen.
Sources: Deutsche Welle, "The Bridge at Remagen"
Timmermann and his troops advanced through Remagen on the western side of the river, fighting off German defenders. German soldiers on the bridge prepared the demolition charges they had planted to destroy the bridge.
Just as Timmermann ordered his men to cross the span, its German defenders set off the explosives. Explosions rocked the superstructure, sending up plumes of smoke and debris. The US troops flung themselves to the ground for cover but soon stood up to see the bridge intact.
"I asked for 600 kilos (1,320 pounds) of army explosives; I received 300 kilos (660 pounds) of commercial explosives," Willi Bratge, a German captain in charge of bridge security at the time, told Stars and Stripes in 1962. "They were to be exploded electrically; we activated the detonator; only one charge went off causing a crater in front of the bridge.
"The main charge did not go off; a tank round must have hit the pipe carrying the cable to the explosives," he added.
Jacob Kleebach, then a sergeant of the bridge security force who became a carpenter in Remagen after the war, differed: "All those stories are not true. Nobody knows. It just didn't explode."
US troops scrambled across what remained of the bridge, backed up by rifle, machine-gun, and tank fire suppressing German soldiers attempting to beat them back. As they sprinted across the railroad tracks to the eastern bank, US troops cut every wire they spotted, hoping to avert further demolition.
Sgt. Alex Drabik, running for his life through a storm of German fire, was the first infantryman to set foot west of the Rhine. Soon behind him was Timmermann.
Back in the US, on the evening of March 7, Mary Timmermann, at work at the Goldenrod Cafe, got a long-distance call. She was apprehensive. She had two sons in the US Army in Germany and brothers fighting on the German side.
"This is the Omaha World-Herald calling," the voice boomed, according to Ken Hechler's 1957 book, "The Bridge at Remagen.""Your son Karl has just crossed the Remagen bridge. You know what that means?"
"I know what it means to me: Is he hurt?" she replied.
"No, he's not hurt. But listen to this: Karl Timmermann was the first officer of an invading army to cross the Rhine River since Napoleon," the voice told her.
"Napoleon I don't care about," she said. "How is my Karl?"
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