Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II (6 page)

The Bombardment

The initial barrage started at about 1000, some thirty minutes prior to the air attack. The ground fog had completely dissipated. Because bombing in a heavily wooded area is difficult under ideal conditions, the bombardiers needed every possible advantage.

The L5 Cubs cruised over the lines approximately a thousand feet back and up. I’m sure the observers and pilots felt a lot better with their armor-plated seats. The first targets were enemy artillery and antitank guns. The German dual-purpose 88mm guns became a particularly high-priority target.

The first flight, B26 attack bombers, came over in a column of squadrons in tight formation at approximately eleven thousand feet. There appeared to be one-half to three-quarters of a mile between the squadrons. Once they started, they formed a long gray continuum across the sky and over the horizon. I was reminded of Leonidas in the battle of Thermopylae; told that the Persian arrows were so numerous that they would darken the sky, Leonidas said, “Good, so much the better, we can fight in the shade.”

The constant drone of the motors was interrupted only by the artillery and the terrible bomb blasts when yet another salvo struck the ground. A few of the 88s that survived the initial barrage opened fire on the first flight as they came over the target area. Three of the planes in the first squadron were hit and appeared to disintegrate in midair.

This victory was short lived for the Germans. The L5 observers saw the blasts of the antiaircraft guns and immediately called down on them the full power of ninety battalions of field artillery. The guns were eliminated within seconds. It appeared thereafter that every time an antitank or antiaircraft gun opened up, it was immediately destroyed.

In spite of all the precautions, some mistakes were made. The Bois du Hommet–Pont Hébert highway was mistaken for the Périers–Saint-Lô highway. The latter was the real bomb line, but the constantly churning dust and debris from the bomb blasts apparently hid some of the marker panels. As a result, some of the bombs dropped short on our side of the line. There were about six hundred casualties in the 9th Infantry Division. One bomb actually dropped in our 3d Armored Division area, but we sustained no severe casualties from it. Lieutenant General Leslie McNair, chief of the army ground forces in Washington who had come to Normandy to observe the operation, was in a foxhole in the Vents Heights area when a bomb dropped short and killed him. McNair was the highest-ranking American officer killed in combat in World War II.

It took an hour for the more than nine hundred B26 medium bombers in the first flight to pass over the target. If we thought that the B26 attack was something, we hadn’t seen anything yet. Immediately following the B26 attack, seventeen hundred B17 and B24 high-level bombers from the Eighth Air Force flew over at approximately twenty thousand feet. By this time, the German antiaircraft fire had been pretty well eliminated, and there was little evidence of flak. Because the planes had to fly only a few hundred miles from England to the target, they could carry a relatively light load of gasoline and a full armament of six to eight tons of bombs.

The bomb load of each plane included 500-pound demolition bombs and 150-pound antipersonnel bombs. The demolition bomb would produce a crater forty-five to fifty feet in diameter and fifteen to twenty feet deep. It didn’t take many of these bombs to produce overlapping craters in a small field. A direct hit on a tank would demolish it completely; at a distance of five to ten feet, it would break the tracks and turn the tank on its back. In a small town such as Marigny, one of these bombs would take out an entire block. Marigny was so completely devastated that only rubble remained. When American troops finally assaulted the town, it was difficult for them to tell where the streets had been.

The 150-pound antipersonnel bomb had a heavy steel case with grooved segments, similar to a hand grenade; when it exploded, it fragmented into many small, deadly missiles. In the two hours it took the B17s to make their bomb run, the combination of these two types of bombs obliterated everything in the target area. In our assembly area in the Bois du Hommet, approximately a mile from the bomb line, we could feel the ground shake whenever a bomb load struck.

Next came 700 P-47 fighters, whose mission was to patrol the exposed flanks of the armored divisions, as they expanded the breakthrough, until the infantry divisions could come forward and occupy this ground.

This made a total of 3,300 planes dropping some 14,000 tons of bombs in three hours. This was the largest single bombardment of the war until Hiroshima.

New Mission for Air Support

The effect of the bombing was totally and completely devastating. The air force and the artillery obliterated the area on both sides of the road south of the Bois du Hommet to Marigny. In a few instances the highway was hit, but in most areas the road was still passable by wheeled vehicles.

As soon as the bombing and artillery ceased, the infantry moved out. The 9th Infantry on the right and 30th Infantry on the left moved about nine hundred yards in the first forty-five minutes; in conventional hedgerow fighting, this could have taken several days. Immediately after the infantry’s initial penetration, the two armored divisions with their supporting infantry moved through the gap. In addition to their ground support role, the P47 fighter-bombers of the Ninth Air Force had the unique mission of holding and securing ground on the flanks of the armored divisions.

The 3d Armored Division and the 1st Infantry Division were on the right and the 2d Armored Division and the 4th Infantry Division were on the left. Our division’s objective was to capture Marigny and swing to the right to secure the high ground north of Coutances, approximately seventeen miles away at the base of the Cotentin Peninsula. This rapid thrust would completely envelop the left flank of the German army, which was pinned to the coast eight to ten miles north of Coutances, and complete the first phase of the breakthrough.

As soon as the CCB task forces passed through the penetration area, C Company of the maintenance battalion followed. The area beyond the northern boundary of the bomb line looked like the surface of the moon. The bomb craters had overlapped in many areas, and in some cases entire hedgerows were taken out. About a mile inside the bombing area, we encountered a Mark IV German tank, which had apparently been dug in on the side of the road as an antitank roadblock. A near miss of a 500 pound demolition bomb had turned the tank completely on its top.

A little bit farther down, we pulled off to the right and moved the company into its first bivouac inside the bomb line. The first field that had reasonably clear spaces happened to be right in front of one of the batteries of the 391st Field Artillery, which was firing a mission on Marigny. The vehicles moved around the edge of the field next to the hedgerows, and we immediately started to set up our defenses and install the green identification panels.

As we were moving into our bivouac, we were apparently spotted by a German battle group of tanks and infantry that had been outside the bombing area and was moving in toward our flank. We were busy digging our foxholes and setting up our 57mm antitank gun when we spotted the German group in the next field. The 57mm would not have a chance against a Panther. In addition to the 57mm, we had an armored scout car with a .50-caliber machine gun plus half a dozen .50-caliber machine guns on ring mounts on GMC trucks. The men themselves had .30-caliber M1 carbine rifles and were prepared to put up a hell of a fight.

At this point, the artillery battery commander realized that our 57mm antitank gun and his howitzers would have little effect against the Panther tank. He called his air force liaison officer and ordered an air strike. Within less than forty-five seconds, two P47s appeared right over the treetops, traveling at an altitude of three hundred to five hundred feet. Because their approach was from the east, they had to let their bombs go long before they reached our area. The bombs passed directly over our maintenance company and struck the target on the other side of the hedgerow. It seemed as though the bombs were going to land squarely in the middle of our area, and we took cover in our foxholes, shallow as they still were.

As the two P47s came screaming in, with their four 500 pound bombs arcing overhead, they let go with their eight .50-caliber machine guns. The Germans were apparently just about to breach the hedgerow with an explosive charge when the bombs struck. The blast was awesome; flames and debris shot five hundred feet into the air. There were bogey wheels, tank tracks, helmets, backpacks, and rifles flying in all directions. The hedgerow between us and the German tanks protected us from the direct effect of the blast, but the tops of the trees were sheared off.

With the exception of perhaps some broken bows in the tops of the trucks, we didn’t sustain any damage but I kept digging my foxhole in fear that German stragglers would still try to come in on us. If there were any survivors left in this group, they were soon taken care of by the 9th Infantry, who moved up, shored up our flank, and consolidated the area.

I remembered back to when we were in England, before the invasion started, that we would tease the air corps about the fuzz-faced flyboys who flew the fighter planes. By this time, the air corps had lowered the age limit for commissioned officers to eighteen, figuring that these young men were full of piss and vinegar and had enough hot-rod instincts to make excellent fighter pilots. Men beyond their midtwenties were supposedly no longer foolhardy enough to make good fighter pilots. I realized the truth of this on that day. Because of the Ninth Air Force, the men of C Company of the maintenance battalion and one battery of the 391st Field Artillery became
survivors
.

Operation Spark Plug

I received word from Maj. Dick Johnson that a number of tanks from CCB were shut down about halfway between Marigny and Coutances due to spark-plug fouling. Idling while waiting to cross the bomb line was taking its toll on our tank engines. I immediately got two empty ration boxes and filled them with every spark plug we could spare. Although I didn’t know where the tanks were, I knew the route they were supposed to take.

My driver, Vernon, and I took the bypass route around Marigny that CCB had taken, because fighting was still going on in the town. One of the things I had learned is not to go looking for trouble, because there is enough out there to go around for everybody. As we started down the main highway, we soon became accustomed to what we later referred to as the debris of combat: spent tank shells, paper, shot-up German vehicles, and sometimes a few German dead. It made me feel certain that we were on the right road.

About halfway to Coutances, we came down a hill toward the little town of Camprond. According to the map coordinates, the CCB column took a right turn here and should be somewhere on the north road right outside of town. As we approached the town, I could hear sporadic rifle fire. Just as we were about to enter the town, I heard a loud blast that sounded like a tank firing right at us. Vernon hit the brakes and the Jeep skidded sideways. I yelled, “Let’s get the hell out of here.” We turned and headed back up the hill at top speed, then moved into a defiladed position behind the brow of the hill. I looked through my field glasses to see what was going on.

Apparently, a German Mark IV tank had backed into a building and was firing across the street at some of our infantry. I decided to wait and see what happened. The tank firing soon ceased, so I assumed that the tank had been knocked out. But considerable small-arms fire continued. I would wait until it subsided. While I was lying there with my field glasses aimed at the town, another Jeep approached from the rear and parked beside us. Out stepped a soldier in a trench coat. I thought at first he was an officer but soon realized by the patch on his shoulder that he was a member of the press corps.

“What’s going on down there?” he asked as he came up beside me.

“Damned if I know,” I replied.

“But I just saw you come up the hill a few minutes ago from the town.”

“I didn’t stay around long enough to find out what was happening.”

I explained that I had a bunch of spark plugs to deliver to our tanks on the other side of the town, where I’d be going as soon as the firing subsided. He asked if he could follow me. “Be my guest,” I replied.

Shortly thereafter, the firing seemed to subside considerably, and I figured it was time to go. Just then a 36th Armored Infantry half-track came down the road. We decided to follow it.

Suddenly, the reporter became apprehensive. After much cogitation, he turned to me. “Lieutenant, you go on down there and deliver those spark plugs. I think I’ll go back to battalion, look at the map, and get the ‘big picture’.” This was the first time I’d heard the expression “big picture.”

As we followed the half-track down the hill into Camprond, the firing continued to subside. We passed through the village and found the road to the right on the map and started back up the hill. About half a mile out of town, we came upon the tank column, which had just been engaged in a heavy firefight. There were German vehicles and litter on the road. The body of a young German soldier, stripped to his waist, lay on a stretcher beside the road where he had evidently been left by his own medics. Some soldiers in their final agony develop a wax-like hue, then later turn whitish gray, particularly if there had been a great loss of blood. This man, with his blond hair and ivory skin, looked like a wax figure.

The 33d Maintenance people were glad to see me coming with their spark plugs, and they wasted no time in placing them in their engines. They gave me the old plugs so I could have them sandblasted, then the tank column continued to the high ground north of Coutances. From this position they could dominate the road net into the city in all directions while the infantry secured the city itself. This opened the road for Patton to move his divisions south toward Avranches and the Brest peninsula.