Since December the U. S. First and Ninth Armies had been building up strength behind the swollen little Roer River. On Feb. 23 They let it go with a stunning night barrage (above and below (photos not included)). The Germans at the river were quickly overpowered. Beyond the river the rigid framework of their Rhineland defense began to break down. A week after the first gun had been fired at the Roer, the Ninth had arrived at the Rhine opposite Dusseldorf. The men of the Ninth exchanged shots with the Germans on the other side.
Lieut. General William H Simpson, commander of the Ninth (see cover), had been waiting for this drive to the Rhine. If the river was to be crossed by his army, the smooth crossing of the Roer was a battle rehearsal. For weeks the muddy little stream had been an obsession the the men of the Ninth. They prepared and planned to cross it early in February, in coordination with drives by the Canadians and General Patton's Third Army. But on the eve of the crossing the Germans opened the gates in the big earth dams of the upper Roer, partly flooding the cabbage land of the lower valley. General Simpson was forced to postpone the crossing while his engineers calculated when it would be possible
The engineers, watching the flood diminish, told the general the crossing could be made on Feb. 23. The Ninth began to get ready again. The men and tanks and portable sections of pontoon bridges moved up to the river. At 2:45 a. m. the barrage began and a smokescreen drifted over river to cover the crossing.

The U. S. Breakthrough Begins With the Crossing of the Roer

The Ninth Army's crossing of the Roer was a short, violent struggle against the Germans and the river. Forty-five minutes after the night barrage had begun, assault boats and amphibious tractors started across in a great wave. In some of the boats were combat engineers, ferrying cables to moor their pontoon bridges in midstream. It was an excruciating few hours for the engineers. The flood had lessened but the current was still swift and strong. Runaway boats and pontoons careened downstream, crashing into bridges as they were being built. As the work went on the Germans kept up a blind but deadly machine-gun and mortar barrage through the smokescreen. But in spite of difficulties there were two footbridges across the Roer in the morning. Later the engineers put in bigger bridges for trucks and tanks.
The hardest crossing on the Ninth army front was made by the veteran 29  ^th Division at Julich, which appears on the far side of the river on the opposite page [photo above]. The wreckage along the Roer at Julich was reminiscent of Normandy. All of Julich except the ancient moated citadel was taken by afternoon, freeing the 29  ^th to join the power drive across the Cologne plain. But even after the entry into Julich, the crossings of the Roer were places of danger. The Germans still had the river under observation and shelled it heavily. The little bridge above [see photo below] and the dead soldier on it were principals in a grisly little drama which is unfolded on the following pages [see additional photos below].