Brothers In Arms

by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  In the XII Corps sector, Patton planned a renewed push by the 26th Infantry in conjunction with the 80th and 35th, and the 4th and 6th Armored Divisions, moving north and east to converge on the cities of Sarreguemines and Saarbrucken. These cities—located just beyond the German border, thirty miles east of the Corps' current positions—controlled the approaches to major strongholds in the Siegfried Line. The 26th Division and 761st were specifically instructed to attack through Rodalbe, Benestroff, Guebling, Bourgaltroff, and Dieuze, then to push northeast through a series of fortified woods and hill towns including Honskirch and Sarre-Union. The assaults were to begin just after dawn on the eighteenth.

  Popular histories of the Second World War have tended to bypass both the Saar Campaign and the First Army's concomitant attack through the Hurtgen Forest (which had started in September and was joined with renewed force on November 16)—rushing instead from the costly yet triumphant invasion of Normandy straight to the bitter yet also unquestionably successful Battle of the Bulge. The Saar Campaign, like the Battle of the Hurtgen Forest, was in the end to prove a victory—but it numbered among the bloodiest and least successful victories of the war. Patton's Saar offensive had deteriorated, by mid-November, into a series of disjointed and not always well-advised drives. Patton had lost sight of his larger objectives and the costs, and instead seemed concerned, as the official U.S. Army campaign historian would note, “simply with driving steadily forward, going as far as his strength and supplies would permit.”

  BAKER, CHARLIE, AND DOG'S OBJECTIVE —Dieuze—was a vital communications and rail center. The Germans had been convinced the November attack coming in the 26th Division zone would drive toward that city, and had been surprised by the initial thrust on the eighth toward Rodalbe instead. Dieuze, a point of convergence for several rivers, bordered on a large marshland and lake. It was terrain upon which tanks had not been designed to fight. The ground-bearing pressure of the M-4 Sherman was approximately seven pounds per square inch, equivalent to that of a man walking—making it all too easy for tanks to bog down.

  Late on the 17th and 18th, the XIX Air Tactical Command passed over Charlie's waiting positions, flying a series of bombing missions against Dieuze. Leonard Smith looked up through the trees to catch the glorious sight of the fugitive sun glinting off the wings of the Allied P-38 Lightnings and P-47 Thunderbolts. It further heightened his perpetual adrenaline rush. William McBurney had a reaction of a different sort, remembering his conversation of years before with the Army recruiter, wondering why he couldn't be soaring up there instead of stuck down below inside the type of vehicle that Sherman crews everywhere nicknamed “Iron Coffins” or, alternately, with gallows humor, “Ronsons” (after a brand of cigarette lighter whose motto was “Lights up every time”).

  Baker, Charlie, and Dog Companies, along with the 328th Infantry Regiment, began rolling forward shortly after dawn on the nineteenth—immediately encountering minefields and a hail of antitank weapons.

  A typical M4 firing sequence, as engine noise and crashes from enemy fire engulfed the cramped interior of the tank, went like this:

  Commander to driver: “Driver . . . STOP”

  Commander to gunner: “Gunner . . . TANK” [naming the type of target]

  Commander to loader: “AP” [calling for armor-piercing shells]

  Commander to gunner: “Traverse left . . . Steady-on . . . One thousand.”

  Gunner to commander: “Ready!”

  Commander to gunner: “FIRE!”

  Leonard Smith's excitement over the adrenaline rush of battle never diminished: He kept a running tally in his head of his hits on enemy infantry and antitank positions. William McBurney, on the other hand, quickly lost all sense of numbers, time, and location. Tank gunners were restricted in vision to a narrow periscope and a horizontal rectangle in the turret: McBurney often didn't know the names of the towns they entered, how many buildings or machine-gun nests they destroyed, or how many miles they crossed. All he knew was that they were moving forward. And all he focused on was the mechanical process of calling to his loader for rounds, steadily firing and repeating. He found that church steeples—which, because they often housed German snipers and artillery observers, Patton instructed all tankers to blow apart—were one target he never had any trouble seeing.

  The 761st and the 328th Infantry successfully drove the Germans back in two days of fierce fighting from the towns of Val-de-Bride and Guebestroff. As they approached the flooded outskirts of Dieuze, Pop Gates's Assault Gun Platoon was ordered forward to fire on the city. Under heavy German fire, Gates's guns carefully took up position. His platoon destroyed its designated targets with such a high degree of accuracy that Maj. Gen. Willard Paul, the commander of the 26th Infantry Division, praised the unit, claiming he had “never seen a better demonstration of firing by weapons of that type before.”

  In the action on the twentieth, Charlie Company's captain, Irvin McHenry, weary from two continuous days of fighting, failed to move away from his cannon's recoil and broke his hand. McHenry was evacuated to the aid station, and Gates was transferred over to head Charlie. Gates was now directly responsible for the lives and well-being of many of the young men, including Leonard Smith, with whom he had formed such a close attachment.

  The 761st's determined advance through the rubble and morass of Dieuze's outskirts, and its successful firing mission—eliminating critical perimeter defenses—helped make possible the capture of that city by the 328th Infantry Regiment and elements of the 4th Armored Division on the afternoon of the twentieth.

  AS BAKER, CHARLIE, AND DOG COMPANIES of the 761st prepared to drive toward Dieuze on November 18th, Able Company launched its assault through the city of Guebling and toward Bourgaltroff. It was a two-day battle that proved to be the company's costliest of the war. The 101st Infantry Regiment had been battling house to house for several days in Guebling. Enemy troops in the area had largely fallen back in order to make a final stand at heavily fortified Bourgaltroff, but the Germans had left behind harrassing forces and Guebling was still subject to shelling. Captain Williams ordered his Shermans to cross the just-completed bridge into Guebling. He divided his tanks into three groups, with one group moving straight through town and the other two going around the northern and southern perimeters to take up positions in the field on the far side of the city, overlooking Bourgaltroff to the east.

  Williams's tank reached the center of Guebling without opposition, although the young captain saw a number of burned-out half-tracks and overturned Sherman tanks, disturbing evidence of the 4th Armored's recent bitter battle with the 11th Panzers.

  Floyd Dade's tank rolled past the center of Guebling and came under German fire. The Sherman took up position, unable to move in any direction, behind a disabled tank of the 4th Armored Division. German soldiers, aware of their predicament, continued directing fire at them but were unable to target them firmly because of the other tank. Dade and his crew, assigned to guard a crossroads five hundred yards away, stayed in position amid the barrage to keep it sighted.

  Ruben Rivers, moving around the perimeter of Guebling toward a low hill that gave him a line of fire on Bourgaltroff, encountered two enemy tanks. Despite his life-threatening injuries from two days before, Rivers calmly targeted the tanks for gunner Everett Robinson, shooting an intense round of armor-piercing and high-explosive shells until both German tanks withdrew.

  The 101st Infantry Regiment battled toward Bourgaltroff against entrenched German forces. The tanks of Able Company were ordered to stand by and hold their stations throughout the night of the eighteenth. The sound of burp guns and M-1s was constant, and the Germans sent up a series of flares. Ruben Rivers reported to Captain Williams a sound that was equally ominous. Throughout the night, the staff sergeant noted the distinctive rattle of large numbers of German tanks taking up position in the field.

  Williams, coming by Rivers's tank just before sunrise on the nineteenth, asked Rivers one last time to evacuate so
that his injured leg could be saved. Rivers refused, telling him, “How in the hell can I go back and leave you all here?” The assault on Bourgaltroff was set to begin in earnest at dawn.

  Lieutenant Colonel Lyons, commanding the 101st Regiment's 2nd Battalion, continued to believe that the direct attack on Bourgaltroff was a mistake. He felt that the 26th Division should instead encircle and close off the city, telling Captain Williams, “Division should pinch out this sector and be done with it.” He would be proved correct; the attack would become a slaughter. Nonetheless, Lyons was again overruled by his superiors.

  Lyons was concerned in particular with the German antitank guns, which were well-positioned throughout the vast meadow, as well as with the Panther and Tiger tanks. The enemy tanks could penetrate the sides of a Sherman from 1,200 meters; to penetrate the thicker German armor, American tanks had to close to a range of 400 meters, hardly an equal match. The turret on the Tiger was slow, not fully electric like the Sherman's. But the German crew could rapidly stop one track and essentially jump the entire tank around: The 761st called it pouncing “quick like a cat.” One well-placed Tiger could cover a great deal of ground.

  Able Company's plan of action was for Ruben Rivers and a companion tank, commanded by Sgt. Walter James, to cross the field toward Bourgaltroff and fire on the western edge of the city with high-explosive shells. Second Lt. Robert Hammond and an additional tank would move across the field more slowly, spreading out to destroy as many enemy infantry and machine-gun positions as possible. Captain Williams's tank, Floyd Dade's tank, and the rest of the company would in the meantime head down the road toward Bourgaltroff in column formation.

  The assault was preceded by a heavy American artillery barrage. Dade's tank, commanded by Teddy Weston, rolled forward just as dawn broke to lead the column on the road to Bourgaltroff. The 101st Infantry was already filtering past them into the meadow. As they did, they were mowed down by machine-gun fire. German antitank tracers started raining in. Rivers's tank advanced some distance across the field and was the first to spot and open fire on German positions.

  Back along the road, Dade's tank took an artillery hit on its turret. Miraculously, none of the crew was injured and the tank was still mobile. But the tank's 76mm gun had been disabled. The Germans slowly zeroed in on the tank column. Artillery crashed in around the exposed vehicles, striking a second tank. Dade's tank backed up behind the shelter of a ruined house. Captain Williams, seeing that the situation was hopeless, ordered the others in the column to do the same.

  Ruben Rivers sighted several Mark IV Panther tanks and enemy tank destroyers concealed behind a slope in the meadow. These vehicles had a wide field of fire and were devastating the American tanks and infantry. Rivers advanced, firing off tracers and armor-piercing shells. Captain Williams, from his position on the road, spotted enemy tracers flying in across the field toward where he knew Hammond's and Rivers's tanks were advancing. Williams, unable to keep the fear from his voice, radioed both tank commanders to pull back. Hammond attempted to fall back behind a clump of trees. Rivers, instead of retreating, pushed ahead to provide cover for the retreating infantry and other tanks in the field. He radioed Williams, “I see them. We'll fight them.”

  Williams rolled his tank forward from its sheltered position to provide some kind of covering fire for Hammond and Rivers. Dade's tank, armed with nothing but machine guns, followed. Rivers and Hammond had moved beyond a crest in the meadow, out of their line of sight.

  The infantry was everywhere taking casualties. Antitank tracers continued raining in. An infantryman jumped up on Williams's tank with orders from Lieutenant Col. Lyons to the American troops to fall back to defensive positions. Williams radioed both Rivers and Hammond again to take cover. This time he received no answer.

  IN HIS POSTWAR STUDY of the Lorraine Campaign, military historian Christopher Gabel criticizes the American generals for their part in its high casualty count, stating that Eisenhower, Bradley, and Patton were so intently focused on cracking the Siegfried Line that they grossly underestimated the terrain and man-made obstacles in the way. In essence, a growing gap in perception arose between the high commanders “who drew large arrows on maps and the tactical units fighting for yards of muddy ground.” At 1300 hours on November 19, Able Company and the 101st Infantry Regiment received word that the sector including Bourgaltroff had been pinched out—as Lieutenant Colonel Lyons had argued all along that it should be. The deadly attack across the open field had been for nothing.

  Lyons, leading from the front, had been struck by mortar fire early in the afternoon; he survived, but lost an eye and a leg. The 101st Infantry Regiment was devastated with heavy losses, as was the 761st. Able Company's 2nd Lt. Robert Hammond was killed by a direct strike from a Tiger tank. Technician Roderick Ewing was also killed. S. Sgt. Ruben Rivers, who had refused to leave his men and fought on for several days though badly wounded, died when two German high-explosive shells ruptured the turret of his tank as it rolled forward, fully exposed, toward enemy positions across the field.

  Rivers's loader, Ivory Hilliard, was gravely wounded by ricocheting fragments. Hilliard escaped the tank, but in shock ran toward the German lines. Hilliard's body—missing for two days—was eventually discovered curled up in fetal position in an abandoned enemy trench.

  Captain Hart, commander of the distinguished tank destroyer unit assigned to protect the rear and flank of the 761st at Guebling, was amazed by the courage of Able's lead tanks. He formally addressed the battalion's acting commander, Lt. Col. Hollis Hunt, saying, “I've never seen a tank company stand in there like this one.”

  On the nineteenth, Captain Williams and several other members of Able Company, including Henry Conway and Mose Bryant, crawled forward through the open meadow with stretchers—endangering themselves under enemy machine-gun fire—to remove the severely wounded crew members Vinton Hudson and Roderick Ewing from their tanks. American tankers, subject daily to the extreme vulnerabilities and terrible injuries afflicting Sherman tanks and crews, had a firmly held code that if there was any chance to save someone, you risked your own life in the attempt. You knew beyond doubt that if it were you out there, trapped and unable to move, others would do the same.

  The remainder of Able Company moved ahead to the town of Marimont, performing maintenance and repairs on their vehicles in advance of their next assault. On the morning of November 21, the company held a memorial service in the town's weather-beaten church for those killed and wounded, sitting together in the pews without benefit of a chaplain present. According to Captain Williams, “There were no sounds except for quiet weeping.”

  6

  THE SAAR

  Our helmet was our home.

  —WILLIAM MCBURNEY

  After the capture of Dieuze on November 20, the 761st's Dog Company was ordered six miles north to support the 26th Infantry Division's reconnaissance and field artillery units attacking the hill town of Benestroff. Benestroff had been one of the 26th Division's initial objectives for the Saar Campaign. The American artillery briefly shelled the town. Preston McNeil saw a French woman emerge from a building at the outskirts, desperately waving a white flag.

  Dog Company was the first unit into Benestroff. It appeared to have been abandoned. Nonetheless, McNeil cautioned his men to be careful as they fanned out through the gutted streets. Mines and booby traps left by the Germans in abandoned buildings, under rubble, even under corpses, wired to detonate days or even weeks later, took a high toll both physically and psychologically on American troops. In the action around Morville, McNeil had seen an infantryman severely injured by such a device while trying to pull a Luger pistol off a dead German soldier, and was determined the same thing not happen to any of his men. It could be exhausting trying to keep his platoon together. He was just twenty-two and scared himself. He prayed constantly for the safety of his men, and prayed more than anything he wouldn't let them down.

  While Dog Company rolled through the streets of
the near-deserted town, Baker and Charlie Companies fought their way northeast from Dieuze toward the town of Torcheville with the 328th Infantry Regiment. Pop Gates stayed close to the front, regularly conferring with the foot soldiers on potential hazards and frequently going himself or sending his tankers on foot to scout ahead. If there was one thing Gates had learned in the battalion's first two weeks of combat, it was that anything could happen to anyone at any time. Like McNeil, his first concern was his responsibility—seventeen M-4 Shermans and eighty-five men.

  He'd given up on trying to talk Leonard Smith down from his perpetual combat high, but always checked in on him and was always encouraged, at the end of another day's slogging through the mud, to see Smith still alive and in good spirits. They pressed rapidly through a series of small towns. The limited vision that defined the tanker's world in combat was restricted still further on entering a village: In open terrain, they'd been trained to know where enemy teams might hide, but in a town any window, cellar, or alleyway might hold a Panzerfaust or rocket launcher team. Smith moved his periscope in all directions, searching for any sudden movement.

  On the roads between towns, the tankers fired on virtually everything, from buildings to haystacks to the tops of clusters of trees, that might house a sniper. Smith never tired of the hunt for targets.

  The rooster “Cool Stud” had remained atop Smith's tank despite the near-continuous combat. It would get off to forage when they bivouacked at night, and get back on again before they headed out in the morning. The rooster became a legend, treasured pet, and welcome source of humor for all of Charlie's crews, not so much begging for as huffily demanding scraps of food.

  ON NOVEMBER 16 AND 17, while traversing the Bride and Koecking Forest in their approaches on Guebling and Dieuze, the 761st unwittingly crossed an unmarked but politically crucial boundary within the French province of Lorraine: They had entered into the region known as the Saarland, or Saar. The Saar spans the border of France and Germany, with approximately half of its area on either side. Though measuring just 992 square miles—considerably smaller than the state of Rhode Island—the Saar, a coal-mining and industrial district studded with breathtaking valleys and woods, nonetheless has been one of the most contested regions in history. Romans and Celts fought for control of the Saar and Alsace-Lorraine as early as 54 B.C.; Attila the Hun crossed the region in A.D. 451 during his invasion of Gaul; Emperor Charlemagne's grandsons declared the territory part of Germany when they divided his kingdom in A.D. 870. The Saar was reclaimed for France in 1680 by Louis XIV, and again in 1801 by Napolean Bonaparte; it was seized by the Germans in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. The area had been for centuries “the traditional invasion route between east and west”—a fact of which the history-minded George Patton was not unaware when he planned his own Saar Campaign.