by Harry Yeide
The 4th Armored Division assaulted Troyes on the River Seine the next day with the goal of forcing a crossing. The armor advanced in sweeping “desert formation”—with tank destroyers following in a secondary line—expecting the mere five hundred defenders reported by reconnaissance. Instead, they encountered two thousand determined SS soldiers.74
Artillery pounded the city while the tanks, armored infantry, and M18s of the 704th Tank Destroyer Battalion advanced. The SS waited until the attackers were almost upon them before they opened fire from basements and buildings. Heavy return artillery fire struck the Americans until Capt Thomas Evans maneuvered one of his M18s into position and knocked out the German OP in a church steeple.
One of Evans’s M18s was hit as the SS mounted a counterattack. The captain leapt to the deck of the crippled vehicle and raked the oncoming storm troopers with the .50-caliber machine gun until the M18 was hammered by another devastating blow.75 But the charge had been repulsed. The 4th Armored Division slugged its way through the city.
By early the next day, the division owned the ruins of Troyes. The last river crossings along the Seine were denied to the Germans on 29 August.
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The M10s of the 702d Tank Destroyer Battalion soon left the Seine and Somme rivers behind, and the men adopted “One More River to Cross” as a favorite unit song.76 There would be no other organized defensive line in northern France.
The enemy had lost all but about one hundred of the twenty-three hundred tanks and assault guns he had deployed in Normandy.77 Perhaps half that number had been destroyed in the American sector by a combination of TDs, tanks, artillery, fighter-bombers, antitank guns, and bazookas. TDs had accounted for roughly one hundred fifty panzers in fairly sizable engagements, and probably that many again in numerous scattered encounters. The tank killers were carrying their share of the load.
Operation Dragoon
On 15 August, MajGen Lucian Truscott’s VI Corps, Seventh Army, made an assault landing at St. Tropez in the French Riviera. As before the Anzio operation, the Americans and British had disagreed over the wisdom of the project. Churchill judged that it would fatally weaken the Italian campaign by drawing off too many divisions. The Americans were thinking in terms of logistics and wanted to capture the ports of Toulon and Marseilles. Indeed, once the northern and southern fronts linked up, these ports were to satisfy one-third of the logistical needs in northern France until Antwerp was opened in December.
The 3d, 45th, and 36th Infantry divisions stormed ashore (west-to-east, respectively) at 0800 hours supported by air strikes, naval bombardment, DD tanks, and parachute drops inland from the beaches. They encountered virtually no initial resistance because only two German infantry regiments from separate divisions stood in their way.78 With a self-propelled TD battalion attached in addition to the usual separate tank battalion, the truck-rich American infantry divisions were equivalent to full-strength panzergrenadier divisions.79
The men of the 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion added one more D-day to their list and hit the beach with the 3d Infantry Division. As far as the 601st was concerned, the operation was less trouble than the practice landings at Naples had been. Recon sent platoons in several directions, and another rat race across France began.80
The line companies of 645th Tank Destroyer Battalion landed with the 45th Infantry Division. The M8s and M20s of Reconnaissance Company landed the next day and moved ahead of the advancing infantry, who in some cases rode on the battalion’s M10s. Battalion destroyers linked up with the paratroopers and helped capture Le Muy on D+1.81
Three platoons of the 636th Tank Destroyer Battalion landed on Green Beach with the 36th Infantry Division at H+40 minutes. The 1st Platoon of Company B drove to Drammont to assist the doughs against strongpoints and pillboxes, while the 2d Platoon of Company C established a roadblock to protect the left flank of the 141st RCT. The 1st Platoon of Company B helped clear Yellow Beach and captured forty-five POWs.82
The Italian campaign veterans, already clued in to the importance of combined arms operations, comfortably formed up into task forces to drive inland. The 36th Infantry Division, for example, established three such commands. One of them, Task Force Butler, included elements of the 141st RCT, 753d Tank Battalion, 636th Tank Destroyer Battalion, a cavalry squadron, and a SP artillery battalion. Division ordered Reconnaissance Company to race ahead of the columns and establish contact with Allied paratroopers. By 19 August, TF Butler had reached the Digne-Sisteron area some sixty miles from the coast and encountered no organized resistance along the way.83
The 3d and 45th Infantry divisions raced west and then hooked north up the Rhone Valley east of the river—between Germany and most of the German troops in southern France. Behind them, four French divisions began to come ashore and turned initially to the task of taking Marseilles and Toulon. The Maquis emerged to assist the American advance and the French assaults on the major port cities.
Stripped almost bare to feed the attrition machine in Normandy, the German Nineteenth Army had only one mobile formation left in southern France, the 11th Panzer Division. One mountain and seven understrength infantry divisions would be nothing but stuffing for the POW cages if they could not escape what, in effect, was a massive encirclement.84
On 16 August, Berlin accepted the inevitable and ordered a general withdrawal from southern France, but Hitler ordered that garrisons be left behind in Marseilles, Toulon, and a few other ports to deny their use by the Allies.85 The two main cities nevertheless fell to the French by 28 August.
Alarmed at the speed of the American advance, the Germans moved the 11th Panzer Division to Montelimar, where it tangled with the 36th Infantry Division for over a week. The clash built in scope and energy as the two divisions brought their full strengths to bear over the first several days, culminating in a series of indecisive battles on 25–26 August.
The crews of the 636th Tank Destroyer Battalion saw only limited action in the course of five German attacks on 25 August. That night, however, Generalmajor Wend von Wietersheim, commanding the 11th Panzer Division, ordered his panzergrenadier regiment, reinforced by artillery and ten tanks, to attack American positions threatening his escape route north of Montelimar. About 0100 hours on 26 August, the German force struck a roadblock near La Concourde manned by two infantry companies and two platoons of B/636th. German infantry infiltrated the position and located the M10s, and a German panzer company commander then fired flares that illuminated the armor for his tanks standing off in the dark. Five M10s quickly burst into flames and a sixth was hit. Following a two-hour exchange of fire, the Americans retreated to the MLR fifteen hundred yards to the rear. The Germans had also lost heavily among the panzergrenadiers.
The 11th Panzer Division during the day received orders to join the withdrawal to Lyon. By evening, TF Butler had so many targets in its sights that it had to call for extra artillery observers to help dispatch the retreating German columns.86
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Mostly, these were good times for the tank killers.
During their first two weeks in France, TDs from the 645th encountered scattered German armor, claiming two Tigers, one Panther, one Mark IV, one Mark III, and one SP gun for the loss of ten casualties (most from Reconnaissance Company), two M10s, two M8s, and two M20s.87
By 31 August, the 3d and 45th Infantry divisions had pulled nearly abreast of Lyon. The French 1st Armored Division, meanwhile, led a Gallic sweep northward along the west side of the Rhone River.88
On 1 September, the 11th Panzer Division launched a spoiling attack against the 45th Infantry Division. A strong tank-infantry force struck Meximieux, which was defended by two reserve companies of the 179th Infantry Regiment and the regimental headquarters—including clerks and kitchen personnel—supported by 2d Platoon, A/645th Tank Destroyer Battalion.
Lieutenant Joseph Dixon was just moving two of his M10s into the village when the Germans attacked. The two TDs took up positions near the center of town, wi
th the first about one hundred yards ahead of the second. The TD commanders, Sgt Robert Fitts and Sgt Wayne Menear, positioned their vehicles so that they were partially concealed by buildings.
Ten minutes later, a platoon of Panthers raced up the wide main street into Meximieux, firing their machine guns in all directions and crushing everything in their path. Fitts’s gunner, Cpl William McAuliffe, waited until the lead Mark V was only seventy-five yards away before he fired his 3-inch gun. The round penetrated the right front hull of the Panther, which burst into flames and coasted another twenty-five yards. McAuliffe nailed the next tank seconds later at one hundred yards. This tank also caught fire and drove into a building, setting the neighboring houses ablaze. The other three tanks flew by Fitts.
Menear’s gunner, Pvt James Waldron, hit the third Panther at a range of only twenty-five yards. For some reason, he used a round of HE. The shell did not penetrate the armor, but it shattered the driver’s periscope, and the Panther plowed into another building between the American TDs. American doughs killed or captured the crewmen as they bailed out.
One of the last two Panthers stopped about fifty yards beyond Menear’s TD and turned around. Waldron immobilized the Mark V with a shot to the right track. The infantry opened up on the tank with 81mm mortars and took care of the crew when it, too, bailed out. The last Panther fled.
The Americans beat off 11th Panzer Division attacks until dark. By day’s end, the defenders had killed or captured nearly one hundred thirty Germans and destroyed eight medium tanks, four light tanks, three assault guns, and seven other vehicles. Losses totaled about thirty men killed or wounded (and one hundred eighty five presumed captured) as well as two tank destroyers and about twenty-five other vehicles destroyed or damaged.89
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Tank destroyer recon elements in jeeps and M8s ranged far ahead of the advancing columns with no contact other than radio communications. They fought innumerable tiny actions against small roadblocks and surprised German columns. Reconnaissance Company of the 636th Tank Destroyer Battalion entered Lyon at 1630 hours on 2 September and reported the city clear of the enemy but all the bridges blown. Recon later amended its report to say there was considerable sniper fire. A few days later, Battalion won approval to begin rotating the recon platoons so that men could get some rest and their vehicles receive critical maintenance.90
The advancing columns nipped at the heels of the retreating German forces. On 14 September, the M10s of A/636th were advancing with C/753d Tank Battalion and 36th Infantry Division doughs.91 The 753d’s AAR recorded, “First Section [of the 1st Platoon] … had run into numerous enemy withdrawing. In fact so close to the enemy and so many, [that] one tank moving down the road to St. Sauver from Allencourt was given a stop sign by an enemy MP to allow enemy vehicles to continue along the road perpendicular to the advance of the troops.”92
Sergeant Tom Sherman from the 636th was near the column’s point. He reported: “The destroyer driver who was just ahead of my jeep realized that the [German] bus driver didn’t intend to stop, so he slammed on his brakes and brought the destroyer to an abrupt stop. As the bus roared by, we could see that it was loaded with German soldiers. The driver of the destroyer in front of my jeep started to pull forward, so his gunner could get a better shot at the fleeing bus when another bus loaded with German soldiers following closely behind the other bus collided with the barrel of the destroyer’s gun [which stripped the mechanism].”93
The tanks and TDs shot up the enemy column.
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The advance was so rapid that maintenance and supply problems posed the greatest challenge. Lack of fuel, supplies, and replacement parts gradually slowed the Seventh Army’s pace. At one point in September, almost half of the M10s in the 645th Tank Destroyer Battalion were deadlined, most because of worn-out tracks.94
The history of the 157th Infantry Regiment summed up the advance this way: “The men drank champagne, cognac, white wine, red wine, and eau de vie (White Lightning), flirted with the French girls, and chased the Germans. Said they, ‘This is the way to fight a war…. Chase them for six days, fight them for two…. We never had it so good.’”95
General Johannes Blaskowitz, CG of Germany’s Army Group G, might have summed the situation up differently. He had lost more than half the 150,000 troops who had been manning southern France on 15 August.96
End of the Rat Race
Near the extreme left of First Army’s advance, the 3d Armored Division reached the high ground west of Mons, Belgium, on 2 September. First Army CG LtGen Courtney Hodges, alerted by Ultra that the Germans were concentrating in that area, had sent VII Corps to spring a trap. The tanks and accompanying 703d Tank Destroyer Battalion TDs encountered an estimated thirty thousand German troops who were attempting to withdraw into the defenses of the West Wall. The Germans were now caught between VII Corps to the east, XIX Corps to the west, V Corps to the south, and the British to the north. The 3d Armored Division, joined by the 1st Infantry Division, proceeded to annihilate an entire corps. A platoon of TDs under the command of Capt Bill Smith destroyed twenty vehicles in six hours of fighting. Twenty-five thousand Germans surrendered to the American divisions.97
By 3 September, the British had liberated Brussels, and they took Antwerp the following day (although the Germans would block sea access through the Schelde Estuary for nearly two more months). Eisenhower told his senior commanders that resistance along the entire front showed signs of collapse.98 In the face of these grim developments, Hitler on 5 September reinstated von Rundstedt as overall commander of the western front. Hodges told his staff on 6 September that with ten more days of good weather the war would be over.99 On 11 September, patrols from Third and Seventh armies made first contact and the two fronts soon became one. But things were about to change.
For one thing, the supply situation was becoming terribly constricting across the entire front. Progress had far outstripped pre-invasion planning, and logisticians had to resort to ad hoc measures—including air deliveries and the famous Red Ball Express truck route—to get supplies from the beaches to the spearheads. Neither First nor Third armies by the end of August had meaningful ration or ammunition reserves, and fuel was used as quickly as it arrived. In Third Army, the 814th Tank Destroyer Battalion was rationing ammunition—nine rounds per day for each M10—and on 29 August CCB/7th Armored Division literally ran out of gas in the middle of the World War I battlefield at Verdun. (The attached TDs, which burned diesel, still had some reserves).100 The 610th Tank Destroyer Battalion kept moving only because the “gas noncom,” Corporal Bruff, was able to supply the entire outfit with captured German fuel.101
Likewise, Seventh Army dangled at the end of a 500-mile supply line that ran back to Marseilles and the other southern French ports.
Moreover, the Allied advance was reaching the outer glacis of Germany itself. There lay the defenses of the Siegfried Line, or West Wall as the Germans called it, and considerable stretches of inhospitable terrain.
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First Army’s 3d Armored Division occupied Rötgen, Germany, on 12 September. Beginning under cover of darkness (and Hodges’s authorization for “reconnaissance in force” until sufficient fuel and ammo arrived), the division launched one of the first attacks on the Siegfried Line the next morning. The unit’s history recorded, “The plan was simple; the first waves of infantry, supported by direct tank-destroyer fire, were to secure high ground just beyond the dragon’s teeth. Immediately following this part of the operation, men of the 23d Armored Engineer Battalion would move forward and breach the obstacle line with high explosive charges. The tanks, which were usually considered point of the ‘Spearhead’ [the division’s codename], would then go on into Germany behind the ‘Queen of Battles’ and the engineers.”
Combat Command A’s Task Force Doan tackled a cluster of pillboxes behind dragon’s teeth northwest of Schmidthof. Mortar fire disrupted the first wave, but the doughs rallied and pressed on. Even pillboxes tha
t had taken direct hits from the 3-inch guns on the supporting M10s continued to spew death. The tanks were unable to advance until the discovery of a secondary road where German farmers had filled in the dragon’s teeth with dirt so they could cross the line to their fields. The M4s pushed forward. Assault guns and German soldiers with panzerfausts engaged the Shermans, and at one point, Col Leander Doan could see seven of his M4s burning among the pillboxes. Progress was slow and demanded a high price in blood, but CCA bashed a path through the first band of defenses.102 Third Platoon, B/703d Tank Destroyer Battalion, was probably the first TD unit to penetrate the Siegfried Line.103
By 15 September, the 3d Armored Division had punched all the way through both bands of the West Wall in its sector. The tankers and supporting TD crews were only the first to discover that the villages on the far side provided superb defensive positions, too. A half-dozen panzers ambushed Task Force Lovelady and destroyed seven tanks and one of the supporting TDs. The command pulled back to the fortifications, and the division’s forward progress all but ended. The worn out 3d Armored Division had only 25 percent of its authorized tank strength fit for combat.
Nonetheless, the advance had enabled the 1st Infantry Division on the left to take high ground at Eilendorf and encircle Aachen on three sides. Almost defenseless, Aachen was ripe for the taking, but the overextended 1st Division lacked the resources to snatch it. On the right, the 9th Infantry Division on 16 September advanced through the West Wall to within seven miles of the Roer River. But German reinforcements were arriving in large numbers to plug the gap. Confronted by fresh German reserves, Collins on 17 September ordered his exhausted corps to consolidate its positions. Only the 9th Infantry Division would continue to press the attack on the right, plunging into the forbidding gloom of the Hürtgen Forest.104
