Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II (31 page)

We found the road that wound up the hill through the Niederwald to the Germania statue, still standing in all its majesty. Including its large stone pedestal, the statue was well over a hundred feet tall. From the shell craters around it and from the blasts on the stone base, we could tell that the area had been subjected to heavy shelling. The statue itself did not appear to have taken any direct hits, but there was great evidence of strikes by shell fragments. Perhaps the Germans had used this as an observation post, and the shelling was an attempt to neutralize it. On the front of the stone base was inscribed in large letters
Wacht am Rhein
(“watch on the Rhine”).

I took several pictures of the statue, then found a number of battered postcards in the little tourist center at the base of the statue. I later gave them to Aunt Betty, who was angry that I hadn’t blown up the statue. I explained that a quarter-ton Jeep loaded with TNT wouldn’t have been enough to destroy it. That seemed to assuage her fury.

German soldiers were being repatriated as rapidly as possible. If their background and personnel data showed no possible record of war crimes or high Nazi connections, they were dismissed immediately. Many of the high-ranking officers, particularly in the SS, were held for further questioning.

Although the war had been over for about a month, we still saw groups of German soldiers in uniform walking along the road heading toward their homes. Even though they were disarmed, they had to wear their uniforms because that was their only clothing. The men were either very young, many in their early teens, or in their late fifties and sixties. There was an almost complete absence of men in their twenties, thirties, and forties; they had been killed or wounded long ago.

My Christian background told me that I should have sympathy and understanding for the defeated enemy, but the memory of the devastation they had caused made me feel hatred instead, even for the women and children. Although we had accepted war as a terrible barbaric tradition, the Germans breached all bounds of humanity: the machine-gunning of disarmed American soldiers at Malmédy; the wanton slaughter of Belgian civilians in Stavelot; the deliberate starvation, torture, and the killing of millions of innocent civilians at Nordhausen, Belsen, and Auschwitz revealed the ghastly genocide that Hitler inflicted on an entire generation. These terrors were incomprehensible to the American mind; there was no answer.

The First Industrial Survey of Postwar Germany

The joint Allied high command ordered a preliminary survey of all German industries to determine what each one made before and during the war and what it was capable of making after the war. The survey would produce a rough listing of German facilities, with particular emphasis on military technology, sources of raw material, and the status of utilities. It would seize and impound all documents and technical information.

The American sector of occupied Germany was divided into division areas. The primary function was to feed and clothe the civilians in each area and get industry and agriculture going as a productive enterprise as quickly as possible. The 3d Armored Division area was divided into three segments, one for each liaison officer. My area was a pie-shaped segment extending northwest from Darmstadt at the apex, with the Rhine River on the west and the Main River on the north. It included the cities of Gross-Gerau and Rüsselsheim plus numerous other small towns and villages.

Our liaison group reported to division headquarters to receive our instructions for the survey. We were given lists and locations of major German industries in our area and were told to be on the lookout for other industries not listed and to survey them if we felt they had any significant value. We received printed forms, several pages each, on which to record all pertinent information plus any comments we might choose to add. In addition to my driver and my Jeep, I was assigned an American soldier who was fluent in German. We also had a copy of a SHAEF order written in both English and German directing German civilians to cooperate with us fully.

As a young engineering student, I could understand some of the intricacies and problems of organizing a major industrial economy for war. At Gross-Gerau I surveyed a medium-sized plant that manufactured 40mm ammunition for Bofors antiaircraft guns. The plant’s several rambling, older buildings contained about fifty thousand square feet of space. The roofs of several had been damaged by bombing, but the machinery, covered with tarpaulins, seemed intact. The director general and owner of the company took us through the plant and described in detail his production process. He opened his books and records and gave us all the pertinent information we needed to fill out our forms.

He said it was not until February, when the bridges across the Main River were destroyed, that he experienced a shortage of steel bar stock, which came from the Ruhr. He was able to operate with the considerable stock he had on hand, but in late February the bombing destroyed the roof and disrupted his main power feeders. Although the power was restored, he could not obtain materials to fix the roof. When his machinery started rusting because of the inclement weather, he had to shut down.

He told me that the 40mm Bofors shells he was making would fit our navy’s 40mm antiaircraft guns. I knew this to be true, because both the United States and Germany had licensed the design from Sweden. In good English, he offered to make a deal. If the U.S. Army could get him roofing material to make repairs, he would assemble enough men to start up the plant and manufacture shells. He seemed to have no qualms about producing shells to destroy his former allies, the Japanese, if he could make a fast buck doing it.

I explained that, although the United States had adequate shell production of its own, I would include his suggestion in my report. I recommended that the plant be tooled for automatic screw machine parts, because I knew that postwar Germany would have a great demand for them.

It took several days to complete our survey of the General Motors Opel plant, the largest automobile manufacturer in Europe, which had been taken over by the German government and converted to war production. Although the plant manufactured many items, its major products were trucks and the FW190 fighter plane’s radial engine for the German Luftwaffe.

Because of the plant’s location at the confluence of the Main and Rhine Rivers just west of Rüsselsheim, it was easy to identify from the air. The bombing of December 1944 damaged the roofs of several production buildings, although making quick temporary repairs and moving some of the machinery to less damaged areas enabled full production to resume quickly. The plant operated continuously until February 1945, when bombing destroyed the Darmstadt gas works, which supplied the gas for the annealing furnaces and foundries.

All German plant managers had to be regarded with suspicion, because their position hinged on being Nazis or Nazi sympathizers. One of the Opel plant’s assistant directors, who worked with us on our survey, was cooperative in showing us all the records and documents (which we immediately impounded), but he appeared more interested in covering his tracks and protecting himself than in helping us. All the managers knew about the forthcoming war crimes trials and wanted to make sure that they would not be accused of atrocities against slave laborers. They wanted their names cleared. Although it was not our job to get involved in the politics, we did note whether or not the various managers were cooperative.

Each evening, all three liaison officers got together in our quarters at Darmstadt to compare notes. An air force team from SHAEF headquarters who lived in the house next door was also surveying the bombings; however, their focus was on the physical extent of the bomb damage as compared to the after-action reports from the flight crews.

From these surveys and earlier observations, I began to develop reservations about how and why the air force chose targets. There is no question that their efforts were a primary factor in the defeat of Germany. Strategic bombing had completely devastated all the major German cities and many of the industries. Severe damage to the infrastructure had made it extremely difficult for the Germans to move troops and matériel during the last stages of the war.

In spite of this, there were questions. For at least two years prior to the war’s end, both American and British bombers had made deep raids into central Germany. These flights passed right over the plants that contributed about 70 percent of all the electric power for the Ruhr and for German industry. The flights also bypassed the chemical by-product plants that manufactured lubricants for the army and briquettes to heat German homes.

During the deep raids, the air force suffered terrible losses, because they had to go without fighter protection. Yet many of the more accessible large power plants went untouched. The large Fortuna plant at Oberaussem and many others around it were still operational two months before the war ended. The destruction of the ball-bearing plant at Schweinfurt, which was extremely costly to the air force, may not have been necessary if the power plants in the Rhineland had been destroyed and the Opel plant in Rüsselsheim had been shut down. The FW190 engines manufactured at the Opel plant used ball bearings made at Schweinfurt.

Why these power plants remained operational until ground forces captured them was debated at length at the higher levels of command. There was, no doubt, a great deal of political maneuvering involved. Although the air force planners tried to do what they thought best, it appears that they made some serious errors in judgment.

Reflections on the Aftermath

The pain, suffering, and losses of our tankers, infantrymen, artillerymen, engineers, and other combat arms affected me deeply and profoundly. I came on active duty in June 1941 at Camp Polk in a cadre group of about four hundred officers. During the next three years of training in the States and in England, I got to know many of them and became close friends with some of them. Of all those assigned to the infantry, tanks, or engineers, or as artillery forward observers, I did not know of a single one who survived without being seriously wounded.

As a young ordnance ROTC cadet in August 1939, I was shocked to find that our total tank research and development budget for that year was only $85,000. How could the greatest industrial nation on earth devote such a pittance to the development of a major weapons system, particularly when World War II was to start in two weeks?

Development of the M4 Sherman was further hindered by bickering and rivalry between the infantry, artillery, and armored officers about the characteristics of this tank. The infantry wanted a heavy tank that they could use for breakthroughs. Armored officers wanted a fast, mobile tank with adequate armor and a high-velocity gun. These requirements conflicted with those of the artillery, who felt that the tank was essentially a mobile artillery piece and therefore they should dictate the characteristics of the gun. It should be capable of firing at least five thousand rounds before being replaced. To do this, it was necessary to use a low-velocity gun. Artillery won on this point; the tank carried the short-barreled 75mm M2 gun.

Apparently, it hadn’t occurred to anyone that there was only a remote possibility that a tank would last long enough in combat to fire five thousand rounds. Ordnance intelligence had indicated that the Germans were rapidly replacing their short-barreled 75mm howitzers in the PzKw IV tank with long-barreled, high-velocity KwK41s for greater penetration against enemy tanks. There was also information that the Russians and Germans both were using tank against tank in massive battles. This information, which should have been the handwriting on the wall for future trends in high-velocity tank-gun design, was either misunderstood or completely ignored. It appeared inexcusable to me that our troops were furnished with such a deficient main battle tank. The M4 appeared to have been designed by a committee, and many young Americans bled and died as a result.

As the middle of July 1945 neared, the tension became more acute. Although the war in Europe was over, everyone knew that the war with Japan still had to be won. Future plans had to be put on hold.

Although we were never formally briefed, there were many bull sessions going on similar to those held before D day. Speculation ran somewhat along these lines: Two American armies, the Eighth and the Tenth, were already in the Pacific and were being reinforced with additional units. The First Army would be added to this new army group. The final assault would be on the main island of Honshu. The Eighth Army would land on the north and the Tenth Army on the south. The First Army would then land both north and south of Tokyo Bay and attempt to cut off the city before the Japanese command could escape.

Whereas the Germans, when they were cut off and completely isolated, had eventually surrendered to save further loss of life, I was not sure that the Japanese would do this; in many instances in the South Pacific, they had fought to the last man. In Japan itself, the casualties could be horrendous. Some estimates put American casualties at a million and Japanese casualties at perhaps 10 to 20 million. This, of course, was speculation, but the rumors became wilder as time went on.

The French Riviera

The division was tentatively scheduled to go to Marseilles in late August and early September, preparatory to shipment to the Pacific. About this time, Major Arrington told us we could all take two weeks’ leave, either in Paris or on the French Riviera. Although I wanted to see Paris, I’d had enough of the ice and snow of the Ardennes and the frigid weather of northern Germany. I was looking forward to warm sunshine.

We were still in winter uniforms: wool shirts, wool trousers, long underwear, lightweight combat jackets, and combat boots. At least we had done away with the steel helmet and wore only the helmet liner. The loss in weight made us feel about ten feet tall. Our footlockers had caught up with us by this time, and I could hardly wait to get out a summer uniform. I packed my GI knapsack for the trip with two sets of khaki shirts and trousers and GI underwear. After wearing long underwear for more than a year, putting on lightweight cotton boxer shorts made me feel buck naked.

We took the truck convoy from Darmstadt to Luxembourg to catch the train to Marseilles. Four company-grade officers were assigned to a compartment. Even though the roadbed was rough in places, because the tracks had just been repaired, our accommodations were comfortable, and I enjoyed the trip down the Rhône Valley to Marseilles. From Marseilles we went by truck convoy to Cannes. We were assigned quarters at the Gallien Hotel, a medium-sized, luxurious French hotel in the foothills above Cannes and about half a mile from the beach. My traveling buddies were Capt. Cecil Martin, a medical officer in the 45th Medical Battalion, and Joe Lykes, a first lieutenant in the 33d Armored Regiment.

We soon settled into a routine of pure pleasure. We were issued tickets for all meals and upon request could get additional tickets to take guests to dinner. The tickets were good at any hotel except the Breakers, which was off-limits to all but general officers. The army never forgot RHIP (rank has its privileges). The routines for field-grade officers (colonels, lieutenant colonels, and majors) and company-grade officers (captains and lieutenants) were much more relaxed than they had been when we were on garrison duty back in Germany. The uniform of the day was khaki shirts and trousers and dress shoes. We didn’t have to wear ties and could leave our collars open. We removed our rank insignia from the right side of our collar but kept our branch insignia, which in my case was a flaming bomb, for ordnance. We wore our division patch on our sleeve. We could go bareheaded or wear our overseas cap.

We would get up at about ten o’clock in the morning and have a leisurely breakfast. The food was primarily GI 10-N-1 rations, but prepared by French chefs it certainly didn’t taste like GI chow. Omelets made with powdered eggs and powdered milk tasted like gourmet creations. I understand that adding a tablespoon of bacon grease to one quart of milk was the key to the flavor. After breakfast, we would promenade down the main avenue to view the lovely French mademoiselles. Every mademoiselle in France who could beg, borrow, or steal a ride to Cannes headed there. It did not take long for the war-weary young Americans to get acquainted with them.

One morning as Doc Martin and I walked past the Carlton Hotel, I heard a familiar voice cry out, “Hey, Cooper what the hell are you doing here?”

I immediately recognized one of my old fraternity brothers, Marshall Stringer, from Michigan. One of the first members of our fraternity to be called to active duty, he was now a lieutenant colonel in the air force and was stationed in Naples. His squadron had been downsized to one B25 bomber, a Jeep, and a master sergeant.

Stringer told me that he and the sergeant would sign the morning report in Naples on Monday morning, stash the Jeep (first having removed the wheels) in the bomb bay of the B25, and fly to Nice. The sergeant and the plane would stay in Nice, and Marshall would take the Jeep to Cannes. They would stay the entire week enjoying themselves, then fly back to Naples on Sunday night in time to sign the next Monday morning report. This had been their routine for the last six weeks.

Marshall asked if we had met any girls. When I replied that we had not, he invited us inside to meet “the Baroness.”

We entered a small bar next to the hotel, and he introduced us to “Baroness Olga from the Volga,” a tall, handsome woman with aristocratic bearing. She was a White Russian married to a French attorney and had a beautiful villa at Cannes, where she stayed during the week. Her husband came on weekends. She appeared to be in her middle forties and spoke several languages, including perfect English.

This was the first season that the French had been allowed to return to the Riviera since the German occupation. She had come early to reclaim her prewar title as the grand dame of French society in Cannes. Many of the mademoiselles who had come to Cannes gravitated to her, because she seemed to have the right connections to enhance their social standing.

She made a couple of phone calls, and in a few minutes a tall, good-looking redhead wearing red-and-white polka-dot shorts and a halter top rode up on a bicycle. The baroness introduced her as Ginnerret. She was a medical doctor and had worked with the French underground during the war. The baroness thought she might make a good date for Doc Martin.

A few minutes later, a beautiful, tall blonde rode up on another bicycle. In white shorts and a halter, and with golden bronze skin, she looked as though she had just stepped off the cover of
Vogue
magazine. Michelene would be my date. I thought I’d hit the jackpot.

We all sat down at a little table in the back and enjoyed a few drinks together. We seemed to be the envy of all the young GI lieutenants.

One afternoon we took the girls on the bus to Eden Rock, a large promontory projecting into the Mediterranean. The Breakers Hotel was located at the extreme tip of the promontory. Although it was off-limits to all but general officers, junior officers could use the pavilion next to the hotel. The pavilion was located on the upper level of the cliff and contained dressing rooms, a bar and grill, a dance floor, and an open patio looking over the beautiful blue Mediterranean. The patio was enclosed with a decorative steel railing and steps that led to lower levels. Each level contained a diving platform. From the patio we could see the bottom; although the water must have been twenty feet deep, it was crystal clear. It was the only place we were allowed to swim, because the sewage treatment facilities had been damaged during the war and raw sewage was discharged directly into the bay. Barbed-wire entanglements on the beach marked the possible site of remaining mines.

The four of us sat on the patio at a little table with a brightly colored umbrella. We were enjoying our drinks and the view, particularly the mademoiselles in their new bathing suits, the skimpiest I had ever seen. They consisted of a G-string and a minimal bra that barely covered what it was supposed to cover. The suits were flesh colored, just a shade lighter than the tanned body of the owner. Ginnerret explained that when a mademoiselle went into a store to purchase a bathing suit, she followed a strict procedure. She placed the bra over her forearm and wet it with a glass of water. When the bra darkened sufficiently to match the color of her skin, she chose that one. This meant that bathing suit shops had to carry many different shades, and that whenever a mademoiselle got a darker tan she had to come back and buy a new bathing suit. The idea was to make the mademoiselle look as though she was wearing nothing at all when she came out of the water.

Any skepticism I might have had over this explanation was erased when one of the young officers standing near the rail hollered, “There’s a naked woman lying down there on the rocks.”

There was a mad scramble as everybody rushed to the rail to see for themselves. Sure enough, on the platform about fifty feet below was a lovely young mademoiselle lying on her back apparently nude. She opened her eyes and smiled, got up, and came slowly up the stairs. When she got within about ten feet of the top, I realized that she had on a wet bathing suit. This was the beginning of the famous bikini.

Eden Rock was a beautiful resort. In the afternoons a small string combo played dance music on the patio. One afternoon as we were sitting there, I heard a particularly lilting melody. When I inquired, I was told that the song was written by a local musician and was entitled “C’est Fini” (it is finished). The song, which became popular with the American soldiers, told about the problems of the war and the sense of relief that it was finally over.

One evening we were making the rounds of the bars along the beach. We had visited the bar at the Carlton Hotel and the Miramar, which was an air force hangout. We finally wound up in the Martinez Hotel, near the east end of the beach. This was the general routine for everybody; the more bars that were visited and the more liquor that was consumed, the more rambunctious the party became.

When the liquor flowed, the soldiers loved to brag about the heroic exploits of their particular unit. Exaggeration increased with the number of drinks consumed until the bragging eventually degenerated into arguments about who won the war. Sometimes these became heated. When this would happen, a group of 3d Armored Division soldiers would raise their arms, bring their hands together at a point over their heads, and shout, “Just call me Spearhead and I’ll pass on through.”

One young lieutenant of the 101st Airborne became obnoxiously loud. As far as he was concerned, the 101st Airborne had won the war almost single-handedly. Four young lieutenants from the 1st Infantry Division, one of the crack infantry divisions, finally had enough. They escorted the young airborne lieutenant off the patio. Some thought they were taking him home and tucking him into the sack. Such was not the case.

Suddenly, there was a great commotion overhead. Each of the four 1st Infantry lieutenants had grabbed an arm or a leg of the airborne lieutenant; they were swinging him back and forth over the fourth-floor-balcony railing. At the count of four, they threw him off the balcony and screamed, “Geronimo! Fly, you S.O.B.!”

To the amazement of those below, the lieutenant flew in a spread-eagle position from the fourth floor toward the patio, but he landed in the middle of a large awning that stretched from the edge of the building, then rolled off one side and fell into a cactus bed. He was so drunk that he was completely limp; the only injury he sustained was a few cactus needles in his butt. The fall apparently sobered him up enough to navigate back to his hotel alone.

The Bomb

Our leave was rapidly drawing to an end. In a few days we would return to Darmstadt and prepare to depart for the Pacific. About half past ten one morning as we were sitting on the patio of the Miramar Hotel drinking coffee and relaxing, a young French boy came down the street distributing the
Stars and Stripes
newspaper, a GI publication free to all servicemen. He was hawking it at the top of his lungs just like an American newspaper boy selling an “extra.” I got a paper and brought it back to our table. The date on the paper was August 6, 1945, and the headline read, “Americans drop atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.”

The article said we had developed a secret atomic bomb with an explosive capacity of twenty thousand tons of TNT. Everyone looked at me; they knew that I had gone to bomb disposal school.

I was just as shocked and surprised as they were, and I had no idea what it really meant. My first reaction was that we had indeed developed some kind of super explosive; however, I did not believe that it was an actual atomic explosion. Talk of nuclear power and nuclear bombs appeared to be Buck Rogers–type thinking; I thought that those developments would be at least a hundred years away. It never occurred to any of us that this new bomb might appreciably shorten the war.

Early on the morning of August 9, we boarded trucks to head back to Marseilles to catch our train to Luxembourg. When we arrived in Marseilles, the French newsboys were hawking another
Stars and Stripes
announcing that an atomic bomb had been dropped on Nagasaki. Gradually, I realized that this was more than just a super explosive, that maybe we had developed a real atomic bomb, but I was convinced that we would still have to invade Japan to finally bring the country to its knees. I think that most of the soldiers felt the same way.

On the trip up the Rhône Valley, I was jammed into a compartment with seven other junior officers. After we had completely exhausted our repertoire of stories about whiskey, women, and pleasure, the conversation finally turned to war. I realized that all the exaggerations were a reflection of the pain and suffering that these men had been through and that this was their way of letting off steam. Somebody finally broke out a deck of cards and some dice, and the crapshooting and poker games went on late into the night.

The Survivors

We arrived in Luxembourg about midmorning and were told that 3d Armored Division trucks would pick us up about half past four that afternoon. We would have the rest of the day to explore the city.

Other than some shelling during the Battle of the Bulge on the northern outskirts, this medieval city had been relatively undamaged by the war. We walked around, crossed the stone bridge over a big canyon park formed by the river running through the middle of the city, and had a leisurely drink and lunch at one of the many bars and sidewalk cafes. Then we visited the Luxembourg Theater, which had been taken over by the army and showed free movies twenty-four hours a day.

The theater, the largest in Luxembourg, was typical of the large movie palaces built in the late twenties and early thirties. Elaborately decorated like a Moorish palace, it had two balcony levels and two rows of box seats on the sides. We got good seats in the middle of the first balcony and settled down to relax and enjoy the movie,
Dark Victory,
starring Bette Davis. The film was interrupted about every fifteen minutes with announcements for such and such a unit to report to Plaza Square.

I had already seen the film, so I let my mind wander to our terrible tank losses. Major Arrington’s order to prepare final combat loss reports had given us the losses for the entire division. Of 158 M5 light tanks, we lost more than 100 percent. (Although the M24 light tank that replaced the M5 was far superior in both firepower and armored protection, it was still too light for major assaults.) Of a total of 232 medium tanks (including 10 M26 Pershings), 648 were totally destroyed in combat and 1,100 needed repairs. Of these 1,100, approximately 700 had been knocked out in battle. This meant that we lost 1,350 medium tanks in combat, or a total loss of 580 percent. It was obvious why we soon ran out of trained tank crews and had to substitute raw infantry recruits during the Battle of the Bulge.

I had mixed thoughts about the capability of Japanese armor. Japanese tanks were reportedly extremely light and much inferior to ours in firepower and armor, but the Japanese reportedly had gotten the complete plans and specifications for the German Panther tank some time ago. If the Japanese could manufacture Panther tanks in large numbers, this could pose a major threat. But even if Japanese armor posed no major threat, we had every reason to believe that if the Japanese infantry fought as tenaciously as it did in the South Pacific islands, it would inflict severe losses on us. Our men felt that an invasion of Japan would be extremely bloody and costly to both sides.

Suddenly the screen in the movie theater went blank and the lights started to brighten. We all stood up to look around; at first I thought that this was merely another announcement telling a particular unit to meet their trucks in the plaza. But then the theater manager’s voice came over the speaker loud and clear and in perfect English. “We have just received a BBC broadcast that the Japanese have agreed to unconditional surrender.”

The effect was stunning. Some of the men stood speechless and in a daze; some fell on their knees and started praying; some broke down and cried. I said a silent prayer, thanking God for my deliverance. It was as if we had all been on death row and had suddenly been given a reprieve. Time seemed to stand still and merge into eternity while three thousand young soldiers realized that by the grace of God we had all at last become survivors.