October 21, 1944. Aachen, Germany. Colonel Gerhard Wilck, the German commander of Aachen, is driven off in a U.S. Army jeep with his officers as a prisoner of war. Minutes earlier, he had surrendered unconditionally to Colonel John T. Corley, commander of the 26th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division. Wilck ran the city's defense from a makeshift command post in the Kurhotel Quellenhof on Monheimsallee. Defying Hitler's orders to hold to the last man, he surrendered shortly after noon on October 21. His garrison had put up a stubborn fight, and the city was taken block by block and house by house in brutal street fighting. The Germans also tried to break the encirclement. The 116th Panzer Division and the 3rd Panzergrenadier Division, roughly 23,300 men, launched a relief effort, but American air power destroyed more than 100 of their tracked vehicles before they could reach the city. After the surrender, Wilck and some 5,600 German soldiers went into captivity. The Battle of Aachen cost the Germans around 5,000 casualties on top of those taken prisoner. Wilck died in Rheinbreitbach, West Germany, in 1985.