For the U.S., taking the Schwammenauel Dam on the Roer was considered the most vital task on the entire Western Front, and Kesternich, with its prominent position in the Monshau Corridor, had become the last good German defensive position before the dam after the fighting in the Ardennes. On the bleak, freezing morning of January 30, a full-scale blizzard blew in from the west as American soldiers, dressed in white camouflage and marking their rifle stocks with white tape, rose at 3 a.m., received grenades, moved from foxholes and cellars to forward positions by 5 a.m., and began the battle at 5:30 a.m. The Germans had spent more than six weeks preparing and strengthening the town, laying mines, barbed wire, traps, machine-gun positions, anti-tank guns, and stubborn infantry defenses in more than 120 buildings. With over two feet of snow and bitter cold favoring the entrenched defenders, casualties mounted quickly, medics struggled to evacuate the wounded, weapons froze and jammed, and many tanks were lost to minefields or bogged down in the snow. The 78th Division saw Kesternich as a now-or-never objective essential to the movement of the entire U.S. front, and fighting raged inch by inch and rubble heap by rubble heap through a day that left not a single house standing. In that struggle, where the action of each man could affect the fate of hundreds or perhaps thousands, Ed Kelley took action and gave his life for the ultimate success at Kesternich, later receiving his country's highest honor posthumously.