Posted by Allan Wilford Howerton Link: Howerton bio/links
on October 11, 2009, 3:34 pm, in reply to "The capture of Hannover"
98.163.76.104
Regrettably, I do not have information on the 84th’s capture of Lenthe. I searched my personal notes re the advance to Hannover, the after-action report of the 335th Infantry for April 1945, and the material on Hannover in the official division history, “The 84th Infantry Division in the Battle of Germany” by Lt. Theodore Draper without finding any reference. From this I would conclude that there may not have been very much resistance or battle action at Lenthe, at least not by 335th Infantry units. I do not have the after-action reports for the 334th Infantry. If you do not have that report from NARA you might want to check it. The attack on Hannover was made by rapidly moving motorized columns and unless there was significant resistance villages along the route would not necessarily have been reported.
There is a single paragraph account in the Draper history (page 226) on Northen as follows: “Probably the most stubborn resistance on April 10 was not in Hannover but in the little village of Northen, about 6 miles west of Hannover (Map 16). In the morning, the Artillery S-3, Lt. Col. David E. Jones, was killed by a sniper. General Barrett ordered a battery of 155 mm. guns into position for direct fire on the place. The big guns ripped it apart. The 335th’s Company I following closely behind the artillery, entered the town at 8:30 p.m. Inside the town, some small arms were encountered, but the artillery had very effectively wiped out the main resistance. It was discovered that the Northen pocket was fairly large as such pockets went in this phase. Even after shelling, about 130 prisoners were collected.”
My unit, Company K was following Company I in the advance to Hannover. After a major battle at Eisbergen April 7/8, we spent the night of April 9 at Barsinghausen and advanced into Hannover during the night of April 10/11. There is no mention of Lenthe in my notes tracking the advance.
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