Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II (9 page)

Regrouping After Falaise

On the road between Rânes and Fromentel, the division had been severely bloodied, and our losses in personnel and combat vehicles were high. On one roadblock alone where the Germans had laced the highway with felled trees for a hundred yards or so, we lost eighteen tanks. Few of these were recovered, because most of them had been fired at until they burned. The tanks that could be recovered from that spot and other areas were dragged back to the VCP south of Rânes, where the maintenance and ordnance troops worked feverishly to repair them.

Replacement tank crews, infantry, and other troops were also brought in and integrated into their units. The combat troops and the ordnance, maintenance, and supply troops had developed a healthy respect for one another. The combat troops laid their lives on the line constantly, and we were determined to do everything possible to supply them with the best and most efficiently repaired combat-ready equipment. We did this knowing that our new M4A1 tank, even with the 76mm gun, was hopelessly outmatched by the heavier German tanks.

The M4 tank had two types of power traverse on the turret— hydraulic and electric. The hydraulic drive was smoother and easier to maintain. We went to great pains in England when we were drawing our initial tanks to select only those with hydraulic traverse. Although many of these tanks had now been replaced, we tried to continue using the hydraulic traverse.

The Ford Motor Company, under the direction of the ordnance department, had taken the British Rolls Royce Merlin engine and cut it down to eight cylinders. This made an excellent 550-horsepower tank engine, about 25 percent more powerful than the radial engine. The V-8 design made the engine easier to maintain, and it had fewer problems with spark-plug fouling. Because of this, we selected Ford engine tanks for replacements when we could get them.

When tank crews came to pick up their tanks, the new replacement crewmen had no idea what the tank was like. Whenever a tank was knocked out, one to three men were usually killed or wounded, so it was not long before the new recruits outnumbered the veterans. If the recruits survived their first engagement, they became veterans themselves.

The ordnance maintenance crews did everything they could to familiarize the new crews with the tanks, particularly any new equipment. This participation became more prevalent as the number of veteran tankers continued to decline. It became more and more apparent that the ability of the division to revive after heavy combat operations depended largely on the ability of maintenance crews to train the new people and get the tanks and crews ready to go again.

Major Dick Johnson, as the ranking maintenance officer in the combat command, had the responsibility of recovering vehicles from combat areas. He insisted on every precaution while recovering vehicles under combat conditions. Most maintenance men had eighteen months to three years of training and were deemed irreplaceable. It was unwise to risk their lives to try to recover burned-up tanks that could not be repaired.

Tank Recovery in Combat

When a firefight broke out, several tanks and other vehicles would be knocked out. The maintenance crews from the regiment would go forward with T2 recovery vehicles to evacuate the shot-up equipment. If there were mines, the engineers would clear a path for the recovery vehicles. If the area was still under direct fire, we would wait, because a T2 recovery vehicle and maintenance crew would be a far greater loss to the division than a few shot-up tanks.

Even after the recovery operation had started, the enemy fire would often start again and the recovery crews would take cover. Sometimes, the Germans would use an abandoned vehicle as a decoy in hopes that a maintenance crew would come to recover it and they could catch them in the open.

One day I approached a knocked-out tank on the forward slope of a hill. I came up from the rear to study the damage and also get the “W” number. When I stepped in front of the tank to determine the extent of the penetration in the faceplate, I heard a dull thud like the popping of a champagne cork. I immediately recognized it as the muzzle blast of a mortar. I jumped behind the tank just before the round landed on the other side, and the tank took the blast. I got out of there as fast as I could and we recovered the tank later.

A New Commanding Officer

By August 20, we had gotten the division in good shape. We were ordered to move out the next morning toward Chartres and to Paris in a routine road march, which meant that the roads had already been traveled by friendly troops and we would probably not encounter anything but sporadic enemy resistance.

I headed over to the maintenance battalion headquarters for the night. Even though it was late and getting dark by the time I left C Company, I knew there was a good chance of getting a hot meal there.

As I approached the mess tent, I passed a three-quarter-ton weapons carrier and heard the tune of the old Negro spiritual “Dry Bones.” I could tell by the sound of the voices that the singers were feeling no pain. I caught some of the words.

Oh the wheel bone’s connected to the axle bones, the axle bone’s connected to the differential, the differential’s connected to the propeller shaft, here we go round and round.

Oh the propeller shaft’s connected to the transmission, the transmission’s connected to the flywheel, the flywheel’s connected to the crankshaft, here we go round and round.

Them bones, them bones, them dry bones, them bones, them bones, them dry bones, here we go round and round.

I thought I recognized the voices, and when I looked under the tailgate I saw four of my old lieutenant buddies, Nibbelink, Lincoln, Binckley, and Lucas. They had managed to stash away several bottles of Eau de Vie, a powerful Norman Cognac, and had gotten loaded to the gills.

“Cooper, where in the hell have you been? We’ve been waiting on you. We got some big news!”

“I’ve been over at C Company working my damn butt off. I haven’t had time to get drunk like you fellows, but I’m ready now. Lay it on me.”

Lincoln passed me the bottle and I took a big swig. I thought it was the worst liquor I had ever tasted, worse than the white lightning corn whiskey I had sampled as a teenager back in Huntsville.

Ernie tossed back his head and broke out in a broad, boyish grin. “Cooper, listen to this. Would you believe that Colonel Cowhey is no longer commanding the maintenance battalion? Colonel McCarthy is our new CO.”

Cowhey had been transferred to the XX Armored Corps to serve as ordnance officer under General Walker, who had been commander of the 3d Armored Division back at Camp Polk. Walker thought highly of Colonel Cowhey.

I felt immense relief. Was it really possible that we no longer would have to live under the constant threat of Cowhey’s distorted ideas about having the most battlefielddecorated maintenance battalion in the entire U.S. Army? If this transfer was true, our chances of survival had increased immeasurably. Cowhey had many fine characteristics, but his deep frustration affected his judgment. Apparently, this went back to his early days, when he graduated near the top of his class at West Point.

It was a custom in the regular army during the 1930s for the top 10 percent of the West Point graduating class to be chosen to go to Fort Belvoir for engineering training. After two years at Belvoir, the top 10 percent of that group was given an opportunity to go to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for another two years and be trained as ordnance officers. These young officers belonged to an elite group during the mid-1930s in the peacetime army; there were only six hundred of them when the war started. The remaining ordnance officers had to be drawn from the nine universities that taught ordnance ROTC.

When World War II started, the situation began to reverse itself. As the army quadrupled in size, the vacancies in the combat units were many times greater than those in ordnance. Thus, many of Cowhey’s former classmates in infantry, artillery, or cavalry, all of whom he had outranked, advanced much more rapidly than he did.

Cowhey’s combat military career ended tragically. He was approaching a roadblock near Trier when he was stopped by an infantry captain and warned that a German roadblock was right around the corner. Cowhey ignored the warning and proceeded down the road. The Jeep had barely gotten a hundred yards when the captain heard a wild burst of machine-gun fire. He crawled around the bend and saw Cowhey’s Jeep on the shoulder of the road. The driver was dead and Cowhey was severely wounded, with many machine-gun penetrations in his stomach and torso. This captain, at great risk, dragged Cowhey to safety. He was evacuated back to the States, where he eventually recovered after a long hospitalization.

I met Cowhey, who was then a captain, when I first arrived at Camp Polk in June 1941. For the first couple of days he was as nice as he could be; he took me around the post and introduced me to my company commander, then took me to the ordnance office and described the procedures used there. I remember being warned by another second lieutenant, who had been there several months longer, about Cowhey’s vicious temper.

“You’ve really got this guy all wrong,” I said. “He’s all right once you get to know him.”

“You just wait and see,” the lieutenant said.

I didn’t have to wait long. I was assigned to A Company as shop officer but had no knowledge of tanks and other armored vehicles. I was fortunate to have Gus Snikers as my shop master sergeant. An enlisted man in World War I, Snikers was probably the most experienced and best master sergeant in the entire ordnance department.

A Company was assigned to remove a 75mm M2 tank gun and its mount from an M3 tank and set it on a wooden platform for instruction purposes. These tanks were new to us, and no one in the division had ever tried to remove one of the guns. It was Sergeant Snikers who finally figured out how to do it.

While the crews worked on the gun, I designed a wooden mount. I knew that it had to be extremely rigid and heavy to support the gun while the men practiced on it, and I was having difficulty getting the right size timbers. The whole project took longer than we had anticipated.

The next morning in the officers’ mess, Captain Cowhey was seated at his table drinking his after-breakfast coffee surrounded by a group of the higher-ranking officers in the battalion. I had discovered that this was a customary practice; the officers were trying to get their points in and at the same time do a little brownnosing. I was seated at another table with some of my lieutenant buddies when the captain called out, “Lieutenant Cooper.”

“Yes, sir,” I replied as I picked up my cup of coffee and headed toward his table, overjoyed that I had been invited to the inner sanctum. Little did I realize what was about to take place.

“Lieutenant, I’ve been telling the other officers about the gun mount you’ve been making,” said Cowhey. “Is it ready for testing this morning?”

“No, sir,” I replied. “We encountered some difficulty in obtaining the right size timbers. I think it will be ready this afternoon.”

Immediately Cowhey’s expression changed. The veins on his neck bulged as a red flush rose in his cheeks. His dark, piercing eyes fluttered as he looked at me, and he appeared to be momentarily speechless. In the next instant, however, he exploded.

“Lieutenant Cooper, when I ask you a question, I expect an answer and no damn excuses. It’s either, ‘Yes, sir’ or ‘No, sir.’ Do you understand?”

I was caught so completely by surprise that I could not answer. Before I could collect my thoughts, he started out again. “Another thing, you are an officer in the United States Army and you are supposed to know, not think. Don’t you ever tell me that you think something. You either know it or you don’t know it. Do you understand?”

It took me a few moments to regain my composure, and I replied rather weakly, “Yes, sir, I understand.”

Like a puppy with his tail between his legs, I went back to the table where my lieutenant buddies were sitting. They couldn’t help but hear what had transpired, and as I sat down I felt completely humiliated. The silence was deafening. Finally, it was broken by Bissell Travis, the lieutenant who had cautioned me about Cowhey in the first place. He could have easily said, “I told you so,” but instead he said, “Don’t worry, Cooper, he treats all new officers that way, and this just happened to be your turn. It’s his way of indoctrinating a new officer into his way of thinking.”

I knew that Cowhey had violated one of the basic principles of conduct: Never reprimand a subordinate in front of others. If a reprimand is due, it should be done privately and on an individual basis, between the superior and the subordinate.

I had been through a military cadet hazing system at VMI that was probably equal to or more severe than what Cowhey had gone through at West Point. The cadet hazing system is designed specifically to humiliate a person and convey the lesson that until you learn how to take it, you shouldn’t dish it out. If you are going to be an officer and give orders, you have to learn how to receive them, regardless of the conditions.

In spite of his shortcomings, Cowhey exerted many positive influences. His tremendous drive and determination to get the job done as quickly as possible, come hell or high water, was the type of thinking that an officer must develop in combat. Although I have ambivalent feelings about Cowhey, his total influence on me was positive, and I have always been thankful for it.

To Paris and Across the Seine

The next morning, we proceeded south to Carrouges and on toward Alençon. The 7th Armored Division, which we considered our sister division because it was activated at Camp Polk and drew its initial cadre from our division, was traveling on another road somewhat south of us.

As their forward recon elements approached a small French village, they were reportedly met by a German officer with a white flag who, after surrendering, said he’d left a small contingent of men in the village to protect a large poison gas depot. He was afraid that if the men abandoned the depot and went back to Germany, French civilians might release the gas and blame it on the Germans. The recon officer sent word back, took all the Germans prisoner, and impounded the gas dump. Our intelligence was evidently correct that the Germans had poison gas in northern France.

During the day, I had to drop back several times to see if I could assist any broken-down vehicles. The tail end of each column was always followed by an ordnance maintenance wrecker and a three-quarter-ton weapons carrier with several tank mechanics. With breakdowns strung out over fifty miles of road, it was important to keep the ordnance company commander informed.

During a routine road march of this type, one could appreciate the magnitude of maintaining an armored division on the move. The 3d Armored Division reinforced had about 17,000 men and 4,200 vehicles. All of this equipment was of a relatively new design, and there had been little field testing prior to issuing the equipment to the troops. As a young engineer, I could only partially appreciate the tremendous genius and effort that provided our military with great quantities of good equipment. All of our wheeled vehicles, artillery, ammunition systems, and firepower control equipment was excellent. The weakness was the gross inferiority of our tanks and antitank weapons.

As we entered Chartres near sunset on August 24, we encountered elements of the French 2d Armored Division. In the main plaza in front of the cathedral, there was a great celebration going on. Young French soldiers were being plied with Cognac, flowers, and young French mademoiselles from every direction.

Of course we were jealous, but we were also resentful that while we were pressing on, these men stayed back and had a ball. We found out later that they were waiting for General de Gaulle to come from London so that the French division commander could parade his troops through the Arc de Triomphe in Paris the next day with General de Gaulle while all the newsreel cameras were rolling. Thus, French history books could tell French children in generations to come that French troops had liberated Paris, with little emphasis on the contribution of the U.S. Army.

It was after dark when Vernon and I arrived at a little French village near Corbeil, just south of Paris. We decided to bivouac in a village green surrounded by houses in the middle of town. Seeing a couple of half-tracks and a scout car parked nearby, we felt that this must be a relatively safe place and for the first time decided not to dig a foxhole. We laid our sleeping bags and bedrolls on the village green and soon were sound asleep.

I was awakened early the next morning by a beautiful young voice.
“Voulez-vous du café?”

I looked up and saw a lovely little French girl about ten years old standing beside the bedroll.
“Voulez-vous du café?”
she repeated.

“Oui,”
I replied in my best French. We stashed our bedrolls, followed her across the street, and entered the kitchen of a small house, where her mother and father were seated around a wooden table. They both looked worn and haggard, evidently from having stayed up all night for fear the Germans might return to the village before the Americans arrived. Upon seeing us, they broke into broad grins. We shook hands and sat down at the table. The mother got up and poured a steaming hot brown mixture into a cup.

“Ersatz café,”
she said. The imitation coffee was made from roasted crushed barley grains. It took a great deal of imagination to think that it resembled coffee, but it was hot and tasted good.

Our conversation consisted of my marginal French and the little girl’s English, which she had picked up in school. I was soon to learn that many French, Belgian, and German children had a much better knowledge of English and other foreign languages than American children of the same age. As our limited conversation continued, I began to get the feeling that this little French family was typical of the urban French people who had suffered a great deal under the Germans for the last four years. Hardly any French family had been spared the consequences of the war.

The family seemed genuinely appreciative of our efforts and showed us as much hospitality as possible with their limited resources. In turn we gave them several packages of Nestle powdered coffee and sweetener. As we left their home and walked across the street to our Jeep, we heard
“Vive
l’Amérique”
and
“Vive la France”
all the way.

The division’s forward elements had already crossed the Seine on pontoon bridges. We crossed on the morning of August 26 and rapidly followed the fast-moving tank columns. The advance columns proceeded to the little village of Saint-Denis-le-Gast, just east of Paris, where they met with other American armored columns that had crossed the river north of Paris. This sealed off the escape of those Germans who had not been captured in the city itself. The battle of western France and the liberation of Paris had ended.