Infantrymen throughout Lorraine took by far the highest casualties of any units. With no protection against the cold, wet conditions—often leaving behind their packs, blankets, and even field jackets in the interest of making frontal assaults with all possible speed—they suffered the highest rates of disease as well. The tankers admired and felt pity for the vulnerable foot soldiers they saw falling on all sides and shivering at night in their perpetually damp foxholes. For their part, infantrymen usually envied the tankers—until they saw crewmen maimed and burned alive inside their vehicles.
The combat team of the 4th Armored Division assigned to the 26th Division's zone—“Combat Command A”—had been divided into two task forces. On November 11 and 12, Task Force Hunter was pushed back from Rodalbe by the Germans, suffering heavy losses. Several days later, Task Force Oden was similarly repelled from its assault on the cities of Guebling and Bourgaltroff.
ON NOVEMBER 12, SCOUTS FROM Lt. Joseph Kahoe's platoon of Able Company—which had faced tough combat around Wuisse—located the Germans' key antitank postions overlooking the town. On his own initiative, Kahoe staged a counterattack with elements of the 104th Infantry Regiment. Kahoe's tanks spread out and worked in teams to destroy the antitank guns, finally capturing Wuisse early in the afternoon of the thirteenth. They successfully defended it throughout the night against a series of German assaults.
Able Company's S. Sgt. Ruben Rivers—who had earlier removed the mined roadblock outside of Vic-sur-Seille—rolled east from Morville standing on his turret, firing his .50-caliber antiaircraft gun against German ground positions. The .50-caliber was highly effective against not only troops but also trucks and wooden structures, and it could rotate on its ring mount on a 360-degree axis. The only hitch was that in order to operate it, the tank commander had to stand fully exposed in the turret. When Rivers's platoon commander, Lt. Robert Hammond, radioed up to him not to go into one of the heavily defended towns east of Morville because reconnaissance reported it to be filled with German infantry and armored units, Rivers radioed back apologetically, “I'm already through.”
There had been no change in the weather. It always seemed to be raining, turning fields and roads to the consistency of pudding. The tank drivers in the 761st had one advantage, they believed, over the drivers in other Sherman outfits. It was a skill hard-won in the swamplands of Louisiana: their unparalleled expertise with mud. They'd hated the mud they lived and breathed thoroughout their first months of training, but now counted that experience a blessing. Willie Devore had matured into one of the battalion's best drivers, with an ability to maneuver with coolness under fire. The Germans had been schooled to zero in on Shermans with three artillery shots, a first long, a second short, a third dead on. By that third shot, gunning the tank so as not to bog down, Devore would be out of sight.
Conditions in Lorraine soon became so terrible, however, that often there was nothing even the most skilled of drivers could do to avoid getting stuck. Rain turned to heavier rain. And, when it seemed the rain could get no worse, the rain would turn to snow. The wet snow melted on contact with the tanks, offering little camouflage, but it helped to conceal clusters of German mines, booby traps, Panzerfaust positions, and antitank guns.
ON NOVEMBER 14, WHILE ELEMENTS OF the 26th Infantry continued to hold the front, the companies of the 761st were pulled back to Hampont to perform the required 100-hour maintenance checks on their vehicles. Though the Sherman tank was generally outgunned in battle, it was reliably engineered. Hundred-hour maintenance procedure required essentially pulling apart the engine and checking all major systems, including fluids, belts, and spark plugs, as well as checking the wear of the tracks.
The battalion's ordnance units worked furiously around the clock, as they had throughout the 761st's time in France, to recover and repair the more seriously damaged tanks; seven of the nine Charlie Company tanks lost in the tank trap northeast of Morville were eventually put back in service. Though soldiers in ordnance did not participate directly in combat, they confronted the nightmare results of war each day. They were the ones who had to clean the insides of the tanks, washing out the blood and gore and repainting the walls, ceilings, and floors. They were responsible for collecting all body parts, however shattered, and keeping them together before turning them over for burial. The tank would then be sent back into action, but would often (so the tankers said) still carry the smell and presence of death.
Captain Williams of Able Company met the 761st's new commander, Lt. Col. Hollis Hunt, in the bullet-scarred house on the western edge of Hampont that served as the unit's temporary command post. Hunt had been assigned to the battalion after Lieutenant Colonel Bates was injured. Williams's first meeting with Hunt was not a pleasant one. Lieutenant Barbour, whom Williams considered his best first lieutenant, had been suffering from battle fatigue and shock since seeing his misdeployed platoon virtually slaughtered on Hill 309. When Barbour was unable to return to the front, Hunt wanted him court-martialed. Williams refused to sign off on the court-martial. How, he asked, could Major Wingo's abandonment of the unit go unpunished, yet Barbour be court-martialed after personally leading his men through four brutal days of close-in fighting? What Williams felt but did not directly argue was that Hunt's reaction had to do with the fact that Lieutenant Barbour was black. When Hunt persisted, Williams became defiant, refusing to betray the courageous officer who served under him, saying, “What the fuck can you do to me? Send me to the rear? Go ahead.” As a compromise, Hunt temporarily transferred Barbour out to Headquarters.
Williams had felt some doubts himself, during training, about how the 761st would perform under fire—but he'd been amazed by the courage of his men from the outset of combat. This feeling was shared by most of the infantrymen who had initially felt cheated that their tank support consisted of a black outfit. Incoming barrages of 88, mortar, and machine-gun fire tended—for the duration of combat, at least—to reduce things to the barest essentials of life and death. All that mattered was how well you were protected by the tank crews beside you and how well you carried out your part in turn. The 761st performed with the highest distinction.
The battalion's members had learned to live with the wariness some of the officers and enlisted men displayed toward them. But this attitude came as a shock and revelation to Williams—whose innate sense of fairness was most outraged by a certain class of officers (in which he placed Hunt) who stayed far from the battlefront and never saw or acknowledged what the men did, how hard they fought, and the punishment they endured to gain territory yard by yard in the endless morass of mud and blood that was Lorraine.
Most of the enlisted men of the battalion never saw or spoke with Hunt. After Lieutenant Colonel Bates had been wounded, the men never again felt the sense of security and trust in the battalion's commander that Bates had provided. But the sergeants and company leaders stepped up wherever they could. Pop Gates took responsibility for men beyond his Headquarters Company platoon, checking in on Leonard Smith and others in Charlie whenever he was able to. Russell C. Geist, who became the 761st's executive officer after Wingo left, did everything he could for the battalion, regularly putting himself at risk to talk with the men in the field. Above all else, the men came increasingly to rely on one another.
Preston McNeil picked his way through the rubble-strewn streets of Hampont searching for Charlie Company's maintenance area. Tank companies—often spread out over miles, assigned to different regiments and objectives—had no idea in combat how other companies were faring. On rare occasions when they stopped in the same town, battalion members sought out friends in other companies like survivors of a shipwreck. They didn't talk about what they'd just been through—such recounting would only bring home the stark reality of their situation—instead expressing their concern for each other through good-natured gibes. Humor proved as important a survival skill for the tankers as any military tactic. Leonard Smith was often teased about and happily recounted the various scrapes
that had led him to spend most of his time during training at KP.
ABLE COMPANY, THE FIRST TO ROTATE OUT for maintenance, was the first to push back into battle. Able had been assigned to support the 2nd Battalion of the 101st Infantry Regiment in attacking Guebling and Bougaltroff—cities from which the 4th Armored Division's Combat Command A had just been driven back with heavy tank losses. On November 15, Captain Williams, Lieutenants Kahoe and Hammond, and Platoon Sergeants Ruben Rivers and Teddy Weston traveled to a ridge above the city to scout the area with the 2nd Battalion's commander, Lieutenant Colonel Lyons. Guebling lay at the bottom of a valley approximately four miles long, surrounded on all sides by wooded hills: To enter, infantry and tanks would have to cross a stretch of open and exposed terrain. The bridge into the city had been detonated by the Germans and was now smoldering brick and metal. The steep slopes along the sole road into town would force the tanks to travel in column formation.
While some infantry commanders showed a marked lack of concern for the Sherman tanks attached to their units, Williams came to greatly respect a few of the commanders with whom he worked, Lieutenant Colonel Lyons most of all. Looking down from the ridge toward Guebling, Lieutenant Hammond voiced his concern over the extreme vulnerability of the tanks in their approach across the valley. Lieutenant Colonel Lyons agreed, saying he had expressed the same misgivings to his superiors and had recommended instead a pincer manuever encircling Guebling and Bourgaltroff. Lyons had, however, been overruled. The attack was set to begin at sunrise on the sixteenth.
Able bivouacked outside of Wuisse that evening and started rolling toward Guebling shortly before dawn. Cascades of orange streamers exploded across the dark sky: American heavy artillery was already pounding the city. The Third Army's field artillery units performed superbly, moving their heavy guns through what had essentially become marshland, taking on even more work when the fighter-bombers of the XIX Air Tactical Command were grounded due to the miserable weather. The Germans had begun, however, to develop strategies to counter Patton's reliance on artillery preparation to “soften” enemy lines. They had learned that troops waiting in forward positions were bound to be devastated by air and artillery fire: German commanders had therefore been instructed that whenever an attack was coming, they should pull the main body of their forces to positions several miles back, conserving them for the close-in ground battle to follow.
Just as the sky grew light, Able's tanks reached the bottom of the hill to the west of Guebling. Lyons's infantry had been sent ahead of them. Williams ordered Kahoe's platoon to peel off to the right. Kahoe's tanks would spread out as much as possible, screening the right flank of Hammond's platoon, which was to race down the road across the valley in a fully exposed column. Hammond's tanks would then conceal themselves just west of the city, amid the cluster of buildings around the railroad station. The ruins of the bridge they would have to cross in order to reach Guebling proper lay just beyond the station; the tanks had been instructed to wait as engineers rebuilt the bridge that would allow the main assault on the city to continue.
Floyd Dade, in the lead tank of Kahoe's platoon, rolled down for over a hundred yards from the shelter of the trees, certain despite the apparent lack of resistance that the Germans would counterstrike. He kept repeating to himself the Twenty-third Psalm: “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want . . .” Able's tanks had a stroke of good fortune: The ground had frozen during the night. Thus, despite deep ruts and chewed-up earth everywhere from yesterday's sea of mud, the vehicles had ample traction. The two platoons moved some distance across the valley amid an unsettling quiet. The calm caused Captain Williams to think that perhaps the Germans had abandoned the city. Suddenly a barrage of mortars came in, white phosphorus shells intended to stop them and mark their positions. Williams tried to reach the others over the microphone, but his throat was blocked with burning smoke. His eyes watering, he began to choke and cough. He felt his gunner next to him begin to shake and realized that his crew and the other tankers were suffering also. With zero visibility, Able's tanks could do nothing but wait in place until the mortar barrage had ended. It lasted a full twenty minutes, although the mortars had only been tracer fire for artillery positioned in the hills above. What followed next was a rain of high-caliber German fire.
Within moments, Lieutenant Kahoe's tank took a direct hit. Four of its five crew members escaped and started running, falling across the frozen, rutted ground. When an artillery shell scored a direct hit, another shell was sure to follow. Kahoe's gunner, Walter Lewis, stopped a short distance away from the tank, realizing that loader Harold McIntyre was still trapped inside. Lewis ran back, jumped onto the turret, and reached through the hatch to pull out McIntyre. The two men dove off the tank together into the partial shelter of a nearby shell crater. A second later, another shell hit the tank with such force that it spun the thirty-two-ton vehicle over on its side.
Robert Hammond's platoon, in the meantime, raced toward the train station just west of Guebling. Ruben Rivers's tank started across the railroad tracks when a deafening explosion from its undercarriage sent up a fiery black plume of smoke; it had struck a German Tellermine. Mines that detonated outside of the tank's tracks could have limited impact, damaging the tracks or suspension. Mines exploding betweeen the tracks, as Rivers's had, were devastating, their explosive force blowing straight upward into the turret. A piece of metal knocked loose by the blast cut Rivers's leg to the bone.
Captain Williams rushed up to find Rivers and his crew beside their disabled Sherman. Rivers allowed medic Ray Roberson to clean and disinfect his wound—which ran from knee to thigh—but refused morphine and refused to be evacuated. He knew the opposition his platoon was likely to face as they pushed farther into the city and toward Bourgaltroff. He took over a second tank, ordering the tank commander, Henry Conway, out. Rivers's initial crew took up rifles and joined the nearby infantry.
Able's tanks assumed positions concealed by the buildings around the tracks, and combat engineers started rebuilding the crucial bridge to Guebling. Their work would continue throughout the next day, with the engineers continually taking casualties from German fire.
The 2nd Battalion's commander, Lieutenant Colonel Lyons, visited Captain Williams near the railroad station on the afternoon of the seventeenth. Lyons's voice broke as he told Williams that the 2nd Battalion's F Company, which had been ordered to cross a flat field on the right side of Guebling to dig in around Bourgaltroff, had been surrounded by enemy tanks. The Germans defending Bourgaltroff were the same Panzer group the 4th Armored's Combat Command A had battled two days before—an entire battalion from the crack German 11th Panzer Division.
Unable to cross into Guebling until the bridge was completed, Able's tanks could do little but wait. Williams visited the men of his company. A medic had again inspected Rivers's wound and discovered that infection was setting in. Rivers was clearly in great pain. Told that the infection was likely to cost Rivers his leg and become life-threatening, Captain Williams ordered Rivers to the rear. But Rivers shook his head, telling him, “This is one order, the only order I'll ever disobey.” Williams had been informed by Lieutenant Colonel Lyons that the bridge into Guebling was close to completion; he instructed Able's two platoons to prepare for a massive assault through Guebling and toward Bourgaltroff with the remainder of the 101st Infantry Regiment the next day.
Up to this point, although the 761st Tank Battalion had faced the whole spectrum of German antitank weapons, from Panzerfausts and rocket launchers to high-velocity 75s and 88s, they had yet to encounter German Panzer and Tiger tanks in force. German armor had been depleted in the region by the battles with Patton's troops between August and October. As a consequence, German generals had sent only small numbers of tanks forward to meet the initial thrust of Patton's November 8 assault—keeping their main force back to hold a firm north-south line running through the cities of Rodalbe, Benestroff, Guebling, Bourgaltroff, and Dieuze. This was the line that all fiv
e companies of the 761st were about to challenge.
BAKER, CHARLIE, DOG, AND HEADQUARTERS left Hampont to take up positions in the woods directly southwest of Guebling, preparing to support the 328th Infantry Regiment in its assault on the crossroads city of Dieuze. Leonard Smith's “Cool Stud” crew found one bright spot as they set up camp—the addition of a mascot, a rooster they aptly dubbed “Cool Stud.” Cardell had spotted the rooster pecking around the streets of a small ruined town and placed him on the side of the tank. He was an odd, scrappy, bedraggled-looking bird. He wasn't tied down—but for whatever reason or quirk of nature (probably the bits of food they fed him), the rooster chose to stay even amid the shelling of the woods by enemy artillery.
Patton had planned the 761st's attacks on the cities of Dieuze, Guebling, and Bourgaltroff after the slow progress of the Saar Campaign's first few days, as part of his revised strategy for cracking the Siegfried Line. On November 18, a series of renewed attacks all along the Third Army's front were to mark the beginning of this second campaign phase.
In the XX Corps' zone, the 5th, 95th, and 90th Infantry Divisions were to complete their encirclement of Metz. These units had faced bloody resistance throughout the previous eight days of battle. A rare clearing in the weather on November 17 allowed the XIX Air Tactical Command to fly a number of key bombing runs; by the end of the day, the American divisions around the city had advanced to positions just four miles apart from one another, and were ready to break through the outer approaches of the city's defense.
Brothers In Arms Page 13
