THE REMAGEN BRIDGEHEAD
The 148th Engineer Combat Battalion in Remagen. Germany March 1945
At 1800 on 17 March, only three hours after the collapse of the Ludendorff Bridge, the commanding officer of the 148th Engineer Combat Battalion, Lt. Col. William J. Irby, received orders orders from First Army to build a Class 40 floating Bailey bridge at Remagen.The floating Bailey was regarded as a "semitactical" bridge, normally used to replace treadway bridges and requiring considerably more time to construct than either treadways or pontons. The battalion was one of three operating a Bailey bridge park at Weilerswist about ten miles West of Bonn, under the 1110th Engineer Combat Group, First Army's Bailey bridge and mine boom experts.
Col. Irby lost no time. Ordering his men to begin loading the bridging equipment on about one hundred trucks, most of them borrowed from quartermaster units, he sent two of his officers to reconnoiter for a site and instructed his company commanders to move their men to the Remagen area and to meet him at this advance command post at Remagen at 0200 on 18 March. Then he hurried to group headquarters, where he was told that he would have the help of Company C, 291st Engineer Combat Battalion and sixty men of the 501st Light Ponton Company.
Irby had not expected orders to build a Bailey bridge over the Rhine so soon, and his planning had focused on a 25 March target date. Nevertheless his men were ready, having practiced on the Meuse near Liege for months. Most important, the equipment was ready, neatly laid out along the roadnet at Weilerswist in the order in which it would be used, landing bay equipment in one stack, floating Baileys in another.
Work began at 0730 on 18 March at the site where the heavy ponton ferry had operated from Remagen to Erpel (downstream from the treadway bridge). While the company from the 291st Engineer Combat Battalion prepared approach roads to connect with the existing roadnet, the 148th Battalion built the bridge. Here, as with the treadway and ponton bridges, the swift river current made it difficult to tow components into position. Repaired civilian Rhine tugboats were to slow and clumsy, but three U.S. Navy LCVPs proved excellent. The rushing waters of the Rhine also complicated anchorage, but the engineers solved this problem by dropping five 1500-pound anchors upstream and sinking two rockfilled barges to which cables were attached.
Artillery fire occasionally landed near the bridge but did no damage. Men worked around the clock. By 0715 on 20 March to 1258-foot floating Bailey was ready to take traffic - twenty-four hours earlier than the First Army had expected.
