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The plan Winters and Speirs worked out would call on Easy to display many of its hard-earned skills. The lead scout would be Cpl. Earl McClung, a part Indian who had a reputation for being able to "smell Krauts." The patrol would rendezvous at a D Company OP, where the men would drink coffee and eat sandwiches until 2200. They would come to the river under cover of darkness and launch the first rubber boat. It would carry a rope across the river to fasten to a telephone pole on the north side so that the others could pull their boats across. Once in the German lines the patrol would split into two sections, the one under Lieutenant Jones going into town, the other under Sergeant Mercier to a house on the bank of the river suspected of being a German outpost.
Whether or not the patrol succeeded in capturing prisoners, it would have plenty of support for its retreat back across the river. If either section ran into trouble, or got its hands on prisoners, the section leader would blow a whistle to indicate that the withdrawal was underway. That would be the signal for both sections to gather at the boats, and for Lieutenant Speirs and Sergeant Malarkey to start the covering fire.
The covering fire had been worked out down to the smallest details. Every known or anticipated German position was covered by designated rifle fire, machine-gun, artillery, and mortar fire. A 57 mm antitank gun was borrowed from division and emplaced to shoot into the basement of a house that could not be hit by indirect artillery fire. D Company had a 50-caliber machine-gun (stolen from the 10th Armored at Bastogne) set up to rake the German positions. The 1st platoon would have its 30-caliber machine-gun set up on the balcony of OP 2, ready to spray the German dwelling across the river, if necessary (the crossing would be made right in front of OP 2).
The night of February 15 was still and dark. The German mortars shot only a couple of flares and one or two 88s. The American artillery was silent, waiting for the whistle. The searchlights were out, as Speirs had requested. The Americans shot no flares. There was no small arms firing, there was no moon, there were no stars.
The first boat got across successfully. Two others made it. The fourth boat, with McCreary and Cobb in it, capsized. They drifted a hundred meters or so downstream, managed to get out, tried again, only to capsize once more. They gave it up as a bad job and returned to OP 2.
Jones and Mercier gathered the men who had made it over, divided them, and set out on their tasks. With Mercier was a just-arrived replacement from Company F. Without Speirs or Winters knowing it, the young officer鈥攇ung-ho and eager to prove himself鈥攈ad attached himself to the patrol. As he followed Mercier up the north bank of the river, he stepped on a Schu mine and was killed. He had been on the front line barely twenty-four hours.
Mercier continued toward his target, eight men following him. When he got close enough to the German outpost, he fired a rifle grenade into the cellar window. As it exploded, the men rushed the building and threw hand grenades into the cellar. As those grenades exploded, Mercier led the men into the cellar, so close behind the blast that Pvt. Eugene Jackson, a replacement who had joined up in Holland, was hit in the face and head by fragments of shrapnel. In the cellar, the Americans found the still-living Germans in a state of shock. They grabbed one wounded and two uninjured men and dashed back outside. Mercier blew his whistle.