By February 1, 1945, the fight for Kesternich was over after fierce combat made clear that from the town U.S. artillery observers could direct fire on all remaining German positions to the west. Both sides suffered heavy casualties, but the American objective of opening the way to Schmidt and the Schwammenauel Dam was achieved, and two battalions in the 311th received the Distinguished Unit Citation for action under extreme circumstances and opposition. With Kesternich captured, the 78th Division gained momentum, and within days Dedenborn and Ruhrberg were taken, clearing the way for Schmidt and the dam, whose capture was urgent because Allied operations downstream on the Roer remained stalled until it was under U.S. control. The Germans could have released the dam’s twenty-two billion gallons of water in an eighteen-foot wall down the valley, destroying major river crossings and Allied hopes to the east, but instead the Allies were able to exploit their success, and seven days after Ed Kelley died, the Schwammenauel Dam was in U.S. hands. Holding the high ground at Kesternich and controlling the waterways, the Allies moved faster than the Germans anticipated, helping set in motion the capture of the Bridge at Remagen, identified as the most significant event of the war since D-Day and, after the Normandy landings, the single most important event in the Allied drive on Berlin. Had the assault on Kesternich failed on January 30–31, further winter operations on the northern front would have been impossible, but when Ed Kelley and the 78th Division silenced the German guns there, they opened the way for success in the Rhineland Campaign. As Allied forces advanced with confidence and speed toward the Ruhr Valley and the Rhine, events following Kesternich altered Eisenhower’s strategy, because the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen, built in World War I for German attacks west into Belgium and France, became a main artery for Allied forces striking east into Germany.