Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II (8 page)

Northeast Toward Falaise

Once the German penetration at Mortain had been sealed off, it became our turn again. The Germans had committed all their available reserves to make the breakthrough at Mortain, and they had overextended themselves. SHAEF immediately recognized this opportunity, and General Eisenhower ordered Bradley’s 12th Army Group to make a wide end run deep into enemy territory. In the meantime, Montgomery’s 21st Army Group was to mount a major offensive in the Caumont-Falaise area and drive south to meet the 12th Army Group, which would trap the bulk of the German 7th and 5th Panzer Armies.

I left the VCP in the afternoon of August 11 and headed south in my Jeep to try to catch up with CCB. I knew that their route was down through Saint Hilaire-du-Harcouët to Gorron and on to Mayenne, but I did not know exactly how far they had gotten. Gorron and Mayenne, heavily damaged by air strikes and artillery and tank fire, were important road junctions, and wherever the Germans held out there was a firefight.

The 3d Armored Division would lead the VII Corps attack and would move rapidly. The corps was getting stretched out, and I realized that the supply routes would be vulnerable. Occasionally, I would pass infantry, artillery, and other motorized units, but a great deal of the time my driver and I would find ourselves alone on a highway in our Jeep going as fast as we could. As we entered Gorron, we had to slow down and pick our way through the heavy debris, then check which route the combat command had taken.

Many of the houses had been damaged and burned. As we drove slowly around the ruins, Vernon suddenly whistled and hollered, “Here, here!” A small gray object emerged from beneath the charred timbers of a smoldering house, ran toward our Jeep, jumped into Vernon’s lap, and started licking his face. The wire-haired terrier puppy, about twelve inches high and probably about three months old, had no collar and apparently had been wandering in the rubble for some time.

Vernon wanted to keep the puppy as a mascot. I told him that the last thing we needed was a puppy to take care of when we were trying to catch up with CCB. We decided that the French would return to the village soon because the Germans had been gone for at least six hours. Civilians normally hid in the woods until the fighting was over, then returned to their homes to see what they could recover. With a look of disappointment, Vernon put the puppy on the ground and gave him a pat, and we took off in a cloud of dust.

Looking closely at the rubble in the streets for signs of tank tracks and examining the map, I finally was able to determine which road CCB had taken. We got on the highway, and Vernon accelerated the Jeep to top speed and drove in stony silence.

About a quarter mile out of town, I happened to look in the rearview mirror and saw a small object bounding down the middle of the road behind us. My resistance melted. “Vernon, stop the damn Jeep!” I yelled. The puppy, which had gathered considerable momentum, got a few feet from the Jeep, then cleared the back end in a single leap. Vernon reached into the air and snagged it like a forward pass.

“Well, I guess we do need a macot,” I replied as Vernon cuddled the puppy, “but he’ll be your responsibility.”

“Don’t worry, Lieutenant. I’ll take good care of him.” The “he” turned out to be a “she,” and Vernon named her Bitch. He put her in the backseat on the cushion next to my map box, and we took off again.

We encountered no more Americans on the road toward Mayenne. I realized that we were in the area known as “the void,” somewhere between the combat command and the following mop-up elements. I knew that CCB was moving fast, and the faster it moved the greater this void became. I did not know whether Mayenne was in our hands or whether CCB had bypassed it and gone ahead; in any event, I did not want to go into Mayenne after dark.

It was beginning to get dark, and I thought it best to find a place to bivouac for the night. We saw a small field on the left of the road with a dry creek running through it. Poplar trees and heavy hedges flanked both sides of the creek. We decided this would be a good place to stop.

Vernon found an opening in the hedges where wagons had crossed the little stream, and he drove the Jeep through the opening into the creek bed. It was flat and sandy, about ten feet wide and four feet below the level of the field. This made for perfect camouflage; the entire Jeep and all our equipment were below ground level. Someone walking past would not be able to see us.

I laid out our bedrolls and put an M1 rifle on each side. We decided to eat K rations; it was late and we were both too tired to deal with our mess kits. The K rations came in a small waterproof box and were of three types: breakfast, lunch, and supper. The breakfast box contained a small can of scrambled eggs and bacon bits pressed into a patty, which was tasty once you got used to it. Lunch consisted of a can of Cheddar cheese, and supper was a can of potted meat. All the meals contained Waverley crackers, which had lots of protein. There was also coffee, powdered milk, sugar, cigarettes, and toilet paper.

Vernon gave Bitch a can of potted meat. She was ravenous and consumed it in no time. We decided not to build a fire, because it was getting late. We drank water instead of coffee. One thing I wasn’t going to do was light up a cigarette and get in the bedroll; I had learned my lesson in the Bois du Hommet.

I suppose all soldiers develop certain hang-ups after they’ve been in combat for a while; I’ve had my share of them. Vernon’s main hang-up was that the Germans might sneak up on us at night and throw a hand grenade into the foxhole. It was easy enough to assure him that this was highly improbable when we were with the combat command inside the security line, but when we were in the open and on our own, the situation was different.

Suddenly, I began to appreciate the dog. Bitch seemed to be extremely intelligent and would do what we told her. She had an almost instinctive understanding of the situation, and she fitted in perfectly with our sleeping arrangements. Vernon placed her between our bedrolls; she snuggled against him and we all dozed off.

I woke with a nudge from Vernon.

“Lieutenant, somebody’s in those bushes on the other side of the bank.”

Bitch had apparently heard the noise first, but instead of barking she nuzzled Vernon to wake him.

I strained my ears, listening intently; suddenly, I heard a crackling noise as if someone took a step in dry grass. I reached under my combat jacket, which I was using for a pillow, and took out my .45 pistol. I slowly pulled back the bolt and engaged the cartridge in the chamber. Vernon took the safety off his M1 carbine.

There was another crackling noise. If it was a German patrol, there would probably be several of them and they would be making more noise than this. If it was two or three stragglers who had seen us come into the field earlier, they could be trying to bushwhack us. On the other hand, it was dark and they probably couldn’t see us as well as we could see them.

After waiting some time with bated breath, we heard no further noises. I was beginning to think it was just a rotten limb falling. I whispered to Vernon that I didn’t think the noise was anything unusual, trying to convince him and myself at the same time. I lay back down with my pistol at my side and was just beginning to doze off when Vernon nudged me again. As I emerged out of a semisleep, I could definitely hear a crackling noise. But then the noises came further and further apart, then ceased altogether. Exhausted, we both finally drifted off to sleep.

When I awakened it was barely daylight. Bitch was snuggled against Vernon; her muzzle rested on his shoulder blade, and he had his right arm around her. Lying there in the early morning light, Vernon looked like a little boy snuggling his teddy bear. I was glad we had kept the dog. What a terrible thing war does; it takes young men in the flower of their youth, it demeans them, it humiliates them, it destroys the last vestige of dignity. It sometimes kills or horribly maims them. Those who survive are never quite the same.

I had gotten out the K rations and loaded my bedroll and the two rifles back into the Jeep when Vernon awakened. “Lieutenant, did you ever figure out what was making that noise?”

“No, Vernon, I didn’t hear a thing after I finally dozed off the last time.”

Vernon got up and stretched, then walked about fifty feet downstream in the dry creek bed to take a leak. He suddenly called out, “Lieutenant, I found it.”

A large goose and her goslings had a nest in the high weeds on the embankment. Apparently, every time she ruffled her wings, they made a crackling noise. She appeared to be asleep and we did not disturb her.

We took off down the road and soon found CCB maintenance company just west of Pré en Pail.

General Rose Assumes Command

All of the division’s units reverted back to division control on August 12 under our new division commander, Gen. Maurice Rose. General Rose had led a combat command in the 2d Armored Division and had an outstanding record in North Africa as well as in Normandy.

Combat Command B had taken the brunt of the heavy fighting in Mortain and suffered severe casualties. The command’s four task forces, plus elements of the 2d Armored Division and additional infantry, engaged three German panzer divisions and one German infantry division in a bitter battle around Mortain. With the timely assistance of the Ninth Air Force and the RAF, they finally brought the Germans to a halt and turned them back, though not without severe losses. Task Force Hogan alone lost twenty-three tanks plus a number of personnel. The Germans also suffered severe losses. The 116th Panzer Division lost approximately half its strength. The 85th Division was severely depleted, as were the 2d Panzer and 17th SS Panzergrenadier Divisions. The objective of preventing the Germans from breaking through to Avranches and splitting the First and Third Armies in two had been accomplished.

As the division regrouped west of Pré en Pail, new personnel replacements arrived, and the maintenance, ordnance maintenance, and ordnance supply units once again worked around the clock to repair and replace all the damaged tanks and other vehicles. By August 12 the personnel strength had been rebuilt to about 91 percent officers and 96 percent enlisted men. The artillery was up to 100 percent strength, tanks to 94 percent, and the other vehicles to approximately 98 percent. The remarkable American supply and maintenance system had shown its worth again. The division had been thoroughly bloodied and tested. In spite of our heavy casualties, we had learned invaluable lessons.

When we first started in Normandy, the officers rode the column’s lead tank, but most of the time the lead tank was knocked out. If the officer was killed and his tank was knocked out, the platoon lost its command center as well as any radio contact with the company.

The platoon commander started taking the third tank in the column, which gave him a better chance to coordinate the platoon and maintain contact with the company commander. If the lead tank survived the day, it would rotate back to the rear of the column and the next tank would take its turn.

The platoon commanders also learned that they should not frontally assault German positions fortified with tanks and antitank guns. Instead, they should lie back and call for artillery support, then try to outflank the target. This was strictly according to Armored Force Tactical Doctrine, but it took many bitter losses for some men to learn it.

In other cases, the tank column would unknowingly run up on a German roadblock and come under withering high-velocity antitank fire. Sometimes, the Germans would let a column pass and catch them on the flank, exposing the tanks’ vulnerable side armor. Time and again it was thrown up to us that we simply did not have a heavy tank to match that of the Germans. As a result, many Americans were bleeding and dying needlessly.

Closing the Falaise Pocket

On August 12, the Saint-Lô breakthrough entered its third and final stage. The left flank of the German army had been shattered, and General Patton’s Third Army was now ranging deep into enemy territory with little resistance. The First Army had driven far to the south, then swung east to roll up the shattered flank of the German army. The German 7th Army tried to retreat as rapidly as possible using the roads between Condé-sur-Noireau and Argentan. The American First Army was then ordered to swing north and the British Second Army and Canadian First Army to drive south in an attempt to meet and cut off the German retreat.

In the early morning hours of August 13, the VII Corps, now back up to strength, launched an attack toward the north, led by the 3d Armored Division. It was to meet British units driving south from Thury-Harcourt and the Caen area. Combat Command A advanced along the right flank and CCB to the left. The task forces of the two combat commands would sometimes cross over one another.

By this time, we had driven so deep into enemy territory from the beachhead (approximately a hundred miles) that we were through the dense part of the
bocage
. The entire corps was moving rapidly in fairly open tank country. The 2d Armored Division with its accompanying infantry secured the left flank. The motorized infantry divisions leapfrogged over one another and secured the strongpoints that the armored divisions had bypassed.

This was classic armored warfare. The situation was highly fluid, and it was extremely difficult to know where the friendly and enemy units were at any one time. We did have the tremendous advantage of our airpower dominating the skies in the daylight hours. The Germans could not spot our positions by air, whereas we had a fairly good idea of theirs. Although resistance may have started out much lighter, as we advanced north it became stronger and stronger; the Germans were determined to prevent the encirclement of their 7th Army.

After passing through Carrouges and Rânes, we found much heavier resistance and had to contend with an unanticipated situation. Political rather than military, it came as a complete surprise to the troops in the field. General de Gaulle had insisted that French troops be involved in the battle of France. On the surface, this appeared to be a good idea, because the Poles and other Europeans had been involved with both British and American troops for some time. However, bringing in an entire division that had not been training with British and American units was a different matter than working with small continental European units attached to either British or American units.

The French 2d Armored Division, which did not participate in the Normandy landings, suddenly appeared on the road between Pré en Pail and Rânes. Although the higher commanders must have known about this, the troops in the field were generally uninformed and were much surprised to see the French. With extremely poor march discipline, the French got their half-tracks scattered up and down the highway, then stopped without pulling off the highway, which blocked the roads for our follow-up infantry reinforcements and maintenance and supply units. This impeded both CCA and CCB, which were trying to get forward before the Germans could set up strong roadblock positions.

Finally, General Collins ordered the French division commander to get his troops completely off the road and clear the way. This was not intended to disparage the French troops, who I’m sure were dedicated brave soldiers trying to help liberate their homeland. It merely demonstrated that an extremely poor decision had been made at a higher level. The French 2d Armored Division later performed extremely well when they were attached to the French First Army under a French army commander with their own communications.

The fighting between Rânes and Fromentel became much heavier as the Germans brought down crack units to prevent our trapping the 7th Army. As CCA advanced along the main highway toward Rânes, CCB traveled a parallel route toward the high ground just southwest of Fromentel. Both CCA and CCB task forces bypassed all heavy opposition where possible. At night they would coil off the road and set up their perimeter defenses with tanks and infantry in order for the maintenance, supply, and medics to work all night. The Germans, in the meantime, would completely surround the task forces, forcing them to break out again the next day in order to advance. After the fall of Rânes, both CCA and CCB continued northward.

The road between Rânes and Fromentel was a typical French country road, fairly straight with lines of poplar trees on both sides. The Germans cut down alternate trees on either side of the road to form roadblocks, in some instances more than a hundred yards deep. They sewed Teller mines on both sides of the road and covered the roadblocks with heavy antitank and automatic weapons fire. Bands of Panther tanks roamed the countryside and covered the flanks. In one incident, the tanks hid in a cave; they would come out to fire and then go back into the cave, making them difficult to find.

The Germans were desperate by this time, and some of their SS troops began to resort to brutality. One SS unit infiltrated one of our 703d Antitank Battalion positions and captured the platoon commander and four soldiers. One of the soldiers, a combat engineer, managed to escape. Shortly thereafter, the young officer and the three men were discovered; they had all been shot in cold blood. This enraged our men and undoubtedly resulted in severe retaliation later against other SS troopers.

The battle for Fromentel became a series of intensive separate actions, completely isolated and highly fluid. The fighting in some instances was at extremely close range. One of our tank destroyers knocked out two Panther tanks at a range of twenty-five yards. The tank destroyer commander dismounted to try to rescue the crew from one of the burning tanks, but he was killed by exploding ammunition in the German tank. Even under the severe strain of combat, the quality of mercy was always present.

The Germans were putting up a desperate, courageous fight, and in some cases fanatics refused to surrender. Our tanks came upon an isolated group of young Hitler
Jugend
who had been drafted into the 1st SS Adolf Hitler Panzer Division, which at one time had been Hitler’s personal body-guard. One tank commander reported that the young German soldiers would not surrender. In their fanatical, desperate last efforts, they had to be gunned down by the tanks and finally physically run over and crushed in their foxholes. The carnage sickened the tank crew.

The situation in Fromentel became so fluid that it was extremely difficult to tell which part of the town the Germans occupied and which part the Americans occupied. This confused the air force, and on two occasions CCA had to abandon positions when they were mistakenly bombed by P38s. Finally, after seesawing back and forth, CCA occupied the town. Although we had expected to meet 21st Army Group units before this time, the Canadian First Army, which was leading the group, was having a hard time and was still north of us.

On August 17, CCB moved north and west of Fromentel and secured hill 214 just south of Putanges. On the same day, twelve hundred German armored vehicles plus several thousand other vehicles streamed across our front and came under heavy bombardment by both British and American artillery and airpower.

On the morning of the eighteenth, elements of CCB made contact with Canadian armored units south of Putanges. Although the VII Corps captured approximately five thousand German prisoners, and other units captured many more, a number of German units escaped. Field Marshal Kluge, apparently anticipating our action, had moved his major gasoline dumps forty miles to the east, which gave the Germans sufficient fuel to head east across northern France. German units that escaped were badly mauled and suffered a crushing defeat.

On August 19, the infantry continued to mop up the smaller, isolated pockets of resistance. On August 20 and 21, the 3d Armored Division reassembled for a two-day maintenance and supply period in an area just south of Rânes. The 23d Engineers set up a shower area in a nearby stream. I didn’t give it much thought at the time, but later I realized that my last shower had been on July 1, just before we left Codford, England. It had been fifty days since I’d had a shower! For some of the fellows in CCA who came over before us, it had been more than sixty-five days. Even after we had moved out into the field at Codford, about a month before D day, we still enjoyed the luxury of a shower each night at the nearby Quonset hut lavatory.

Personal sanitation in the field is difficult at best. I was able to brush my teeth and wash my face almost daily and shave with cold water every third or fourth day, but I had no change of clothing except clean socks. When my turn for a shower finally came, I took off my helmet, pistol, combat jacket, money belt, regular belt, and combat boots and put them in one pile along with the contents of my pockets. I stripped off my wool shirt, wool trousers, long underwear tops and bottoms, and socks and made a dirty clothes pile next to the shower area. Having worn the same shirt, trousers, and long underwear for fifty-one days, I felt that they were raunchy enough to walk to the pile by themselves.

The quartermaster gave us fresh cakes of soap, and I indulged myself even though the water was ice cold. When we came out of the shower, we were each given a clean olive-drab towel and a new wool shirt, wool pants, socks, and long underwear. We never wore khaki uniforms and always wore long underwear, because in northern Europe the evenings were cool even in summertime.