continued to fight in the pillboxes in a manner that belied the futility of their mission. The 14th Armored Division (Maj. Gen. Albert C. Smith) attacked into the Wissembourg Gap on 20 March and then fought Germans of the XC Corps over the possession of Steinfeld for the next two days. Both at Neustadt and at Landau, remnants of two divisions of the XIII SS Korps, including the 17. SS Panzergrenadierdivision, had held through the day, but early in the evening the defense collapsed. General Franz Beyer's LXXX Korps, transferred from the 7. Armee to plug the hole from the north alongside the Rhine, had hardly anything left to prevent the 12th Armored Division from driving southward from Ludwigshafen toward Speyer. By nightfall of the 22nd, a column of the 12th Armored stood only from Speyer, and on the 23rd, the 14th Armored broke through the Westwall at Steinfeld and began its advance on Germersheim. To forestall a second Remagen, by 19 March the Germans had blown all Rhine bridges from Ludwigshafen northward. Of three that remained upstream, the southernmost, the Maxau Rhine Bridge at Maximiliansau, was destroyed on 21 March when a round of American artillery fire struck a detonator, setting off prepared demolitions. A second, at Speyer, was too immediately threatened and too far removed from the main body of German troops to be of much use to any but the defenders of Speyer itself. It would be blown late on the 23rd. Over the remaining bridge, at Germersheim, roughly east of Landau, as many vehicles and field pieces as could be salvaged began to pass during the night of the 22nd. Still no orders for final withdrawal beyond the Rhine came from the Commander-in-Chief West. Headquarters of both the 1. Armee and Army Group G still were west of the river. Some German officers were beginning to wonder if every last increment of the 1. Armee was to be sacrificed when at last, on 23 March, authorization came to cross the Rhine. While the bridge at Germersheim continued to serve artillery and vehicles, foot troops began to evacuate the west bank at three ferry sites south of the town. A smattering of infantrymen, an occasional tank or assault gun, and a regiment of antiaircraft guns operating against ground targets formed rear guard perimeters west of the ferry sites. Conclusion Although all divisions of the U.S. VI Corps