Visiting Haguenau — Where Easy Company Was Shelled by Big Bertha
In February 1945, Easy Company was stationed in Haguenau, France, holding a position along the Moder River with German forces on the opposite bank.
The two sides were close — close enough to observe each other, exchange fire, and spend long hours watching and waiting from the upper floors of requisitioned houses.
One afternoon, the Germans brought up a railway gun. The shells it fired were immediately different from anything the men had experienced. Veteran Darrell "Shifty" Powers noticed it at once. A standard 88 came in with a familiar whistle. This one spiraled in slowly — a low, churning sound — slow enough that he had time to sprint downstairs to the basement before it landed.
So that's what he did, over and over, for most of the afternoon. Shell incoming — down the stairs. Explosion — back up to watch. Another incoming — down the stairs again. He later described it as laughing and cursing at the ceiling every time the plaster came down.
The experience at Haguenau is sometimes overshadowed by what came before — the Bulge, Bastogne, the Foy attack. But the men spent weeks here, billeted in houses along streets that still exist today.
One thing that becomes clear when you visit Haguenau is how narrow the river actually is. The Moder is not a wide barrier. Standing on the bank, you immediately understand how exposed both sides were — and how strange it must have been to be quartered in a town, in ordinary houses, with the enemy just across the water.
Today Haguenau is a quiet, largely intact Alsatian city in northeastern France. The river is still there. Some of the houses and streets where Easy Company was billeted can still be found.
Walking those streets makes the waiting — and the running up and down the stairs — feel very real.
Many of the places where Easy Company operated in early 1945, from Bastogne to Haguenau, can still be visited today. If you’re interested in exploring more of the real locations connected to Easy Company, you can continue discovering them here: