Dingen Germany is a tiny one road town in the North West suburbs of Dortmund. Since this is such a small suburb, I decided to just park the car and walk the streets until I found a view to sketch. I decided this small wood framework house was a good enough subject.
My father, 1st Lieutenant Arthur Thorspecken was leading C-Company of the 75th Infantry Division of the 290th Infantry, whose job was to clear the approaches to Dortmund. As the 290th Infantry Division neared Dortmund, the enemy gradually relinquished it’s grip. Prisoners poured in, filling the division cage. The battle carried on from one town to another. On all sides there was rubble and ruin.
On April 6, 1945, German troops desperately defensed against overwhelming Allied advances, the 75th Infantry’s 1st Battalion which included my fathers C-Company, moved into a new area to establish defensive positions despite heavy enemy small arms fire. The 3rd battalion passed through elements of the 289th but made very slight progress before encountering stiff enemy resistance. Supporting tanks were called upon to break the back of this German defensive position and succeeded in doing so. The attacking fores were then free to move against Dingen and Bodelschwingh Germany.
Strong resistance came from German tanks, troops and small arms fire. The 75th Infantry B-Company on the left, was subjected to considerable cross fire from enemy positions. B-Company counter attacked throughout the day in an effort to clear the towns of Dingen and Bodelschwingh. The towns were taken in the early hours of darkness on April 6, 1945.
Local Germans learned that any sign of resistance, for instance, German sniper fire, an infantry skirmish, or a random mortar round, maddened the “Amis.” The result was almost always the same: a hailstorm of US fire that flattened the town and killed German soldiers and civilians alike. Artillery units attached to US XVI Corps (which included the 75th Infantry Division) on the northwestern edge of the pocket, for example, fired no fewer than 259,000 artillery rounds in fourteen days.
A British woman who had moved to Germany was walking her dog and she stopped to talk to me. She had inherited a a traditional timber-framed house. Her grandmother was just a child when the American Troops came into Dingen. Her grandmother was sick with a cold and she was in the yard of the home. An American soldier came up to her and gave her an American chocolate bar.
The woman walking her dog asked me why I was sketching Dingen, which she felt was a run down town in the Ruhr. I had resisted telling many Germans about my project, but I explained it to her. She was intrigued and told me that the Americans had set up a field hospital at the end of the road in 1945. I walked up to the clearing she had mentioned when my sketch was done. It was an ordinary farmer’s field surrounded by hedgerows and electrical power lines. Since I had my sketch complete, I decided not to sketch the field.