Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II (17 page)

The chewing out I gave him shook him up; he had no idea of the seriousness of what he had done.

“Look, Lieutenant,” he said, “I found an American rifle on the field and brought it back.”

I knew then that White was an extremely naive young soldier. I explained to him that there was no shortage of M1 rifles and that risking a life was not worth his find. I continued to press hard on this point to make sure it didn’t happen again.

After examining the rusty, mud-covered rifle, I figured it had probably been on the ground for at least two months. There was a live round in the chamber, and both the bolt and the safety were rusted tight in the firing position. I knew it wouldn’t be safe to bring it back to the maintenance company in this condition. I held the rifle at arms’ length, pointed it over the hill toward the enemy line, and pulled the trigger. It fired perfectly, and the reaction sheared loose the rust on the bolt and inserted a new round in the chamber. I then unloaded the rifle, gave it to White, and told him to take it back to the small-arms section. They could clean it up and reissue it. I had always felt that the Garand rifle was an excellent gun, and this certainly confirmed it. General Patton reportedly called it “the ultimate weapon of World War II.”

The battle plan called for another major combined-arms operation, similar to the Saint-Lô breakthrough. With the massive use of airpower, artillery, armor, and infantry, we were to shatter the German frontline positions and break out onto the Rhineland Plain.

To accomplish this mission, VII Corps was assigned five infantry divisions (1st, 4th, 9th, 83d, and 104th) and two armored divisions (3d and 5th), more than half of First Army’s strength. The VII Corps front line extended from the middle of Stolberg, southeast across the back slope of hill 287, down to Mausbach, and into the northern part of the Hürtgen Forest. The initial objective was to break out of this line, capture Eschweiler and Düren, and secure a bridgehead across the Roer River, which was the last barrier before the flat portion of the Cologne Plain.

Just prior to the initial attack, all the division’s tanks were incorporated in the division artillery fire plan. Each tank platoon was given an aiming point and the proper elevation and deflection of its guns to strike specific target areas. Excess ammunition was stored alongside the tanks for use during the initial barrage. After the barrage, the tanks could move into their attack positions with a full load of combat ammunition. The tanks firing as artillery gave the division a total firepower of thirty-six artillery battalions. Combined with the artillery of the other divisions plus attached corps and army artillery, the VII Corps had a total firepower of ninety artillery battalions.

The tanks and other armored vehicles were in reasonably good shape from a maintenance point of view. Any tanks that had survived since Normandy had had a hundred-hour check, and all badly worn tracks had been replaced. In Stolberg some of the tankers had gotten sacks of cement from an abandoned cement factory and made up a crude mixture of concrete for patches to reinforce the front glacis plate. The patches, which the men reinforced with chicken wire and angle iron, were three to four inches thick. Other tankers used sandbags, logs, or anything else that might offer added protection.

The Assault to the Roer River

The buildup was now complete, and the infantry and armor were in position and ready for the attack. During September and October, the infantry assaults through the Hürtgen Forest had been extremely costly. It had been estimated that a major assault through the forest would cost an additional ten thousand infantry lives. This apparently contributed to the decision to use the 3d Armored Division for a direct frontal assault. Although this was completely contrary to Armored Force Doctrine, it was felt that an armored division must be used as the initial assault force due to the inadequacy of the GHQ tank battalion and infantry division combination.

The Germans had taken advantage of this interim to reinforce their side of the line. They had pretty well evaluated our M4 battle tank and realized that the gun and the armor were vastly inferior to those of their Panther and Tiger tanks. They also knew that our tanks would get stuck more easily in soggy terrain, and persistent rains had kept the ground completely saturated. With this knowledge, they developed an extremely effective defense plan. They heavily mined all of the open terrain on the back side of hill 287 and the fields surrounding the villages below.

The German line on top of hill 287 was barely seventy-five yards from our positions in the pillbox and extended down the hill southeast toward Mausbach. When placing their first row of mines, the Germans did something that we had never encountered. Instead of placing the mines in front of the outer infantry line, as was normally done, they placed them slightly behind their forward infantry outposts. Thus, our combat engineers would have to infiltrate these outposts at night to locate and remove the mines. This was extremely difficult if not virtually impossible. The Germans planned to hold these outposts as long as they could; only when the pressure became too great would they withdraw. This would leave our troops exposed to completely intact minefields.

The first objective was to break out of this area and secure the bridgehead across the Roer River at Düren. To accomplish this, the 3d Armored Division was to penetrate the minefield on the back side of hill 287 and seize three villages in the valley below, about a mile away. These villages— Werth, Hastenrath, and Scherpenseel—were heavily fortified and lay in a triangular fashion across the main north-south communication lines for the German troops in this area. Combat Command B of the 3d Armored Division was selected to make the initial penetration.

The morning of November 16 was overcast with patchy ground cover. The initial attack started at 1115 with the assault of thirteen hundred heavy bombers and six hundred fighters against Eschweiler and Langerwehe. This was followed by seven hundred medium bombers and a thousand heavy bombers attacking targets farther to the east.

From the revetment at the pillbox on hill 287, I could see a group of P47 dive-bombers attacking German fortifications at the base of a concrete observation tower approximately a mile and a half across the valley. The German antiaircraft fire was extremely intense, and I could see the tracers weaving like giant luminescent snakes. When a dive-bomber makes its pass, it must fly in a straight line before releasing its bombs. The planes are extremely vulnerable at this point, and one of the planes was struck just as it turned down into a dive. Although it was on fire, the pilot continued on his dive path until he had released his bombs and fired his machine guns. He pulled out of the dive at the last minute and headed back westward streaming smoke and flames. I never saw a parachute and was not sure whether he made it back or not. Everyone who witnessed the incident realized that it took a lot of guts to fly into a solid wall of flak the way that young pilot did.

Simultaneously with the heavy air strike, the ninety battalions of field artillery opened up, concentrating particularly on the villages. Combat Command B assembled just south and west of hill 287. As the task forces proceeded over the crest of the hill and passed through our infantry lines, they were exposed to the full effect of the German minefields.

Each task force had one flail tank. As the flail tanks crested the hill, they passed through our infantry line directly into the minefields. Although the tanks had to contend not only with mines but with an extremely soggy field, they made an initial good showing. The flying chains detonated several mines, and the explosions created additional craters. But finally, due to the combination of the muddy fields and the fact that the horsepower needed to turn the flail took too much power away from the tracks, both flail tanks became mired in the mud. They made excellent targets and were soon knocked out.

The second tank in each column had no choice but to go around the flail tanks and continue the attack. A tragic domino effect followed. The first tank proceeded around the flail tank and made its own way for several yards before striking a mine and becoming disabled. The next tank bypassed the first tank and tried to go its own way for several yards, then it struck a mine and became disabled.

This process continued until eventually one tank got through the minefield and proceeded with the attack. The next tank behind it tried to follow the same path, and sometimes it would get through the minefield successfully. However, by the time the third tank tried to come through in the same tracks, the soft ground would mire the tank so deeply that it would stick, in spite of the “duck feet” we had bolted on the track connectors. All the stuck tanks became sitting ducks for the murderous German antitank fire. The Germans continued to fire at the tanks until they set them on fire. When the crew tried to bail out, they immediately came under concentrated automatic weapons fire.

These brave tankers knew that the tanks would be at an extreme disadvantage in the muddy minefields, but they pressed on with the attack. This was one of the most courageous tank attacks of the entire war. It started with sixty-four medium tanks, and we lost forty-eight of them in twenty-six minutes. A proportional number of soldiers died in this terrible fight.

By nightfall, Task Force 1 had reached the vicinity of Hastenrath after taking tremendous losses. One column started out with nineteen tanks, including a flail, and ended up with four by the end of the day. The other fifteen were lost in the minefield. The surviving tanks were further exposed because the infantry had a difficult time coming forward to support them. The minefields were also heavily infested with antipersonnel mines. These were deadly to the infantry, who were under extremely heavy small-arms, mortar, and artillery fire.

In the fighting around Hastenrath and Scherpenseel, the tankers, without adequate infantry support, performed almost superhuman acts of heroism to hold on throughout the night. It was reported that one of the tankers, in his tank on a road junction, was the only surviving member of his crew but was determined to hold his position at all costs. A German infantry unit approached, apparently not spotting the tank in the darkness. The lone tanker had previously sighted his 76mm tank gun down the middle of the road. He depressed the mechanism slightly and loaded a 76mm HE. As the Germans advanced in parallel columns along each side of the road, he fired. The HE shell hit the ground about 150 feet in front of the tank and ricocheted to a height of about 3 feet before it exploded.

The shock took the Germans completely by surprise. The American tanker continued to fire all the HE he had as rapidly as possible, swinging the turret around to spray the German infantry, who were trying to escape into the fields on both sides of the highway. Loading and firing the gun by himself was extremely difficult, because he had to cross to the other side of the gun to load and then come back to the gunner’s position to fire.

After exhausting his HE and .30-caliber ammunition, he opened the turret and swung the .50 caliber around on the ring mount and opened fire again. He continued firing until all of his .50-caliber ammunition was exhausted, then he grabbed a .45 submachine gun from the fighting compartment and opened fire with this. After using all the ammunition from his Thompson and his pistol, he dropped back in the turret and closed the hatch.

He opened his box of hand grenades and grabbed one. When he heard German infantry climb onto the back of the tank, he pulled the pin, cracked the turret hatch slightly, and threw the grenade. It killed all the Germans on the back of the tank and those around it on the ground. He continued to do this until all of his hand grenades were gone; then he closed the hatch and secured it.

By this time, the German infantry unit apparently decided to bypass the tank. From the vicious rate of firing, they must have assumed that they had run up on an entire reinforced roadblock. When our infantry arrived the next day, they found the brave young tanker still alive in his tank. The entire surrounding area was littered with German dead and wounded. This, to me, was one of the most courageous acts of individual heroism in World War II.

By the next morning, the engineers had cleared some of the mines on the forward slopes of hill 287. They put up taped markers so the T2 recovery crews could come forward. As we went through the path to examine each tank, we had to be extremely careful. Although the major fighting had ceased in this area, we were still subjected to periodic small-arms and mortar fire. The recovery crews would take cover behind the tanks when the firing started; as soon as it lifted, they would resume trying to hook up the tanks and get them out.

In addition to the sporadic fire, there was still the danger of mines. In some cases there were unexploded Teller mines under some of the knocked-out tanks. Assuming that there might be mines under all the tanks, the recovery crews hooked a long cable from the T2, which was parked about a hundred feet away, then slowly pulled the tank by its winch. If a mine under a tank exploded, the tank would be further damaged but the maintenance crews would be relatively safe inside their T2 vehicle.

The maintenance crews, who had to expose themselves many times in situations such as this, took every reasonable precaution. They first went for the tanks that were merely stuck in the mud, because they had their tracks intact and were easier to pull out. If a tank struck a mine and broke a track, generally one or more bogey wheels were damaged and temporary repairs were made.

While we worked on the tanks, a line of infantry crested hill 287 and headed down through the minefield. Their rifles were fixed with bayonets and they were ready for action. This turned out to be the second mop-up wave of the 104th Infantry Division. The first wave had gone through earlier and was engaged in bitter fighting in the Hastenrath area working with our Task Force 1. Lieutenant Colonel Mills, the Task Force 1 commander, had been killed on November 18 in this action and was replaced by Colonel Welborn. We were delighted to see soldiers from the 104th Division, because we knew that it was a crack division commanded by Gen. Terry Allen. He had previously commanded the 1st Infantry Division, which was also in this operation and had a reputation as one of the best divisions in the army.

As the infantrymen passed through us, they executed considerable skill in fanning out on the flanks of the slag pile and the woods on our left. As soon as they entered this area, they had to dislodge the Germans with a lot of bitter hand-to-hand fighting. They cleaned up the area with dispatch and took out a number of prisoners. Firing into our area immediately tapered off, and we were considerably relieved.

Sooner or later you develop an almost super sixth sense. You know that an artillery or mortar shell is coming toward you before you hear the whining and before the
wrack wrack
sound when the shell strikes the ground in an exploding crescendo. I have often tried to analyze this sixth sense. I believe it has something to do with the high-angle trajectories of the mortars and howitzers. The sound from the gun barrel travels in a straight line faster than the projectile, which reaches you an instant later. I believe that one intuitively learns to recognize the difference between the sound of the muzzle blast when the projectile is aimed directly toward you and when it is aimed at an angle away from you. I’m not sure if this is correct, but I know that understanding this enormously increases one’s chances of becoming a survivor.

Captain Bew White, motor officer of the 391st Field Artillery Battalion and second-ranking maintenance officer in CCB below Maj. Dick Johnson, came down with his recovery vehicle headed toward the Hastenrath area. He told me they had lost one of their forward observer tanks and he was going down to see about it. I told him that the VCP was being set up at Mausbach on the highway. Lieutenant Colonel Garton, commanding officer of the 391st Armored Field Artillery Battalion, was also in command of the artillery group supporting CCB in this operation. As White’s commanding officer, Garton would raise hell until he got back his forward observer tank. In an operation of this type, the artillery has its own forward observer tanks that go with the task force to pinpoint the artillery fire.

The loss of a forward observer tank meant that we also lost a tremendous amount of concentrated artillery fire; thus, replacement was vital. German tankers, even buttoned up in their Panther and Tiger tanks, were extremely leery of the 105mm howitzer. A direct hit on the frontal or side armor by a 105mm would have little effect on a German tank, but a plunging hit on the top of the tank, where in some cases the armor was only a quarter of an inch thick, would be disastrous. In a situation like that at Hastenrath, with the tanks beyond the infantry support, the forward observer could call for overhead airbursts directly on their position. The tankers buttoned up inside would be relatively safe, but the fire would be devastating to any German infantry trying to close in on the tanks with bazookas.

By the middle of the day, the Mausbach VCP was rapidly filling with shot-up tanks. The T2 recovery crews did a superhuman job extracting these broken and battered tanks from the minefield. In some cases, the tanks were so completely mired, up to the middle and tops of the bogey wheels, that the tanks acted like huge suction cups. It was necessary to dig small slit trenches under the back and sides of the tanks to let air underneath and break the vacuum. Although each T2 recovery vehicle had a powerful fifty-ton winch on the back, and using a single pulley made it possible to get a hundred-ton drawbar pull, sometimes it took two T2s hooked together to get a tank unstuck.