Seventy-five years ago this Saturday, Alexander A. Drabik, a Toledo-area butcher, became the first American soldier to cross Rhine River in World War II, dashing with two other GIs the 1,300-foot length of the bridge at Remagen, all the while knowing that the Wehrmacht had mined the bridge with demolition charges that could explode momentarily.
Sergeant Drabik, the son of John D. and Frances Drabik, was the youngest son of 14 Drabik children raised on a farm near Holland and Toledo. He attended the Dorr Street School, worked as a butcher in Holland, and enlisted in the Army in 1942 when he was almost 32 years old.
On March 7, 1945, Sergeant Drabik, a tall, lanky man, raced across the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen with two soldiers from the rifle squad he led, and secured the initial Allied bridgehead across the Rhine River, in the face of heavy fire from German machine gunners defending the bridge.
Despite serious wounds he had received during the Battle of the Bulge a few months earlier, and despite losing his steel helmet during the mad dash across the span’s length, Sergeant Drabik was determined to secure the bridge before it could be destroyed by the retreating German army.
According to an instructor at the Army’s Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., Sergeant Drabik turned to his squad members and said, “OK, who’s going with me? I’m going across,” fully aware that prisoners had revealed that the bridge was set to be detonated in less than 45 minutes.
“We ran down the middle of the bridge, shouting as we went,” Sergeant Drabik recalled. “I didn’t stop because I knew that if I kept moving they couldn’t hit me. My men were in squad column and not one of them was hit. We took cover in some bomb craters. Then we just sat and waited for others to come.”
The Fort Leavenworth instructor added about Sergeant Drabik, “He was the third-oldest man in the company, and he ran the entire length, about three football fields, being shot at all the time.”
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, said that the capture of the bridge at Remagen shortened the war by six months
For his heroism, Sergeant Drabik was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the military’s second-highest award for heroism on the battlefield.
Some have said he should have received an upgrade to the Medal of Honor instead.
With the defeat of Japan and conclusion of World War II, Sergeant Drabik and his division commander, Maj. Gen. John W. Leonard, were honored in a homecoming parade in Toledo on Aug. 18, 1945.
Tragically, Sergeant Drabik was killed in an auto accident on Oct. 2, 1993, while en route to a reunion in Hunter, Kan., of his old unit, the 27th Armored Infantry Battalion. His car crashed into a tractor-trailer on I-70, east of Rocheport. He was 82.
In the 1969 movie, The Bridge at Remagen, Sergeant Drabik was portrayed by famed actor Ben Gazzara in the fictional role of Sgt. Angelo.
Bob Orkand, a retired Army lieutenant colonel of infantry, lives in Huntsville, Texas. He served in Vietnam, Korea, West Berlin and the Pentagon. He is co-author of a recent book, “Misfire: The Tragic Failure of the M16 in Vietnam.”
First Published March 7, 2020, 5:00 a.m.
