It became immediately obvious to the maintenance people in the field that it would be a disaster to follow the directive not to cannibalize certain tanks. They would have to do so in order to repair others and get them in operation quickly. The maintenance personnel decided to scrap the regulations and get on with the job of repairing the most vehicles in the least possible time and returning them to combat. One tank in combat was a lot better than two on the dead line waiting for spare parts. Even doubling the number of spare parts trucks available would have been insufficient to handle the tanks damaged in combat.
In addition, there were insufficient resources to handle the administrative paperwork involved in finding spare parts. It was apparent that the damaged vehicles were the best source of parts. Thus, if a tank received a penetration in the turret ring (the point where the turret was attached to the hull), both the turret and the hull would be damaged beyond repair in the field. The tank would immediately be scrapped, and the power train, the engine, the gun, and any other parts would become available for repairing other tanks. These decisions were made at the lowest level by the ordnance platoon leaders. This was as it should have been, and it worked to the advantage of the entire division.
Because we were operating on “double British summertime” (seven hours ahead of eastern standard time), it did not get dark until around 2330, so we had about eighteen hours of daylight in which to work. In addition, some of the maintenance crews erected shelter halves over the back ends of the tanks so they could repair the engines after dark. They worked around the clock and caught little catnaps whenever they could. They felt that this was the least they could do to support their comrades in the tank and infantry units who were on the line all the time.
We had to be extremely careful working under tarpaulins after dark, because the slightest glimmer of light could be seen from miles away by the low-flying German aircraft, which always came after dark. They would reconnoiter our ground positions, particularly in the rear areas where maintenance work was going on; if they saw any signs of activity, they would drop butterfly bombs.
Toward the end of the day, Major Johnson, Captain Roquemore, and I got together to prepare a list of all the vehicles and other ordnance work in the VCP. This list included any spare parts that we would need from the battalion, plus a list of all the vehicles that were damaged beyond repair and had been cannibalized. We also got a list from the T2 recovery crews of any tanks and other vehicles that had been damaged beyond repair and had not been recovered. This list included the “W” numbers of the vehicles, the map coordinates, and, if possible, a brief description of the damage. From this list, I prepared our first combat loss report, which contained information considered too sensitive to send by radio. One of the primary responsibilities of the ordnance liaison officer was to deliver this list personally to the maintenance battalion in the rear.
It was after midnight and completely dark by the time Smith and I started down the road toward Isigny to deliver my combat loss report. Under these conditions we traveled without any light, not even the little cat eye blackout lights. Fortunately, there was an MP at the bridge to see that my Jeep was in the center of the road so the wheels would get on the temporary treads put across the hole in the bridge.
After leaving the bridge, we headed toward the intersection of the Isigny–Airel Road, about a mile and a half away. There were no other vehicles in sight, so we stayed in the center of the road as best we could. As we approached the next road junction, we were signaled to stop by two MPs, who asked where we were going. I told them we were going back to division trains.
The MP corporal in charge said he’d been instructed to warn all vehicles that the Germans had dropped paratroopers between this point and Isigny. The last convoy had come from Isigny about forty-five minutes before; however, this was before the report about the paratroopers. Any convoys returning to Isigny would come in a random fashion, he said.
We decided to wait about half an hour to see if another convoy was coming along. In the meantime, Smith and I discussed what to do. If there were German paratroopers along this road, it would seem that their first objective would be to capture American vehicles for transportation. They would probably try to block the road and ambush us to capture our Jeep intact. I had previously had the rear seat of the Jeep removed and a plywood box installed to carry my combat loss report and other ordnance documents and maps. I kept a thermite grenade next to the box. In the event of impending capture, I planned to pull the pin on the grenade to set all of the documents on fire, then abandon the Jeep.
After waiting a little while longer and seeing no signs of a convoy, I decided we had to take a chance and run the gauntlet—the name we had given the area between division forward and division rear—which varied in width from a few miles to maybe forty to fifty miles. The distance from this road junction to the battalion area in Isigny was about ten miles. The road was straight and narrow and had trees on both sides.
We drove in the middle of the road at top speed, which for the Jeep was sixty-five miles an hour even with the governor taken off. To estimate the center of the road, Smith looked up at an angle of approximately thirty degrees to see the sky between the trees. I looked straight ahead down the center of the road and at the shoulders to see if I could detect anything. After a while, our eyes became accustomed to the darkness, and we were amazed at what we could see even without moonlight. We were no longer concerned about meeting any American trucks on the road, only about the possibility of meeting Germans.
After we had gone about five miles, I saw a light piercing the darkness approximately a quarter mile away. The light was arcing slowly up and down, similar to a railroad signal. Smith slowed down. At the same time, I removed the safety on the .30-caliber carbine, which I had previously taken out of the rack on the windshield. We knew that no American soldier could be dumb enough to shine a flashlight in this area; we would not even dare light a cigarette on the beach at night without first getting into a covered foxhole. It must be Germans.
Fortunately, we had rehearsed what we might do in a situation like this. Smith would slow down. If he could see clearly that the road was not blocked, I would open fire and he would accelerate as rapidly as possible to try to get away. If the road appeared to be blocked, we would hit the ditch on the right side of the road, I’d pull the pin on the thermite grenade, and we would jump over the hedgerow and try to get away.
As we approached the source of the light, it went off and I could see the bows of a GMC truck against the starlight. I figured that the Germans had captured the truck and killed the crew and were now trying to get a Jeep. I could see shadowy figures in the dark by the side of the truck. As one of the figures slowly approached the Jeep, I realized that he could not see us well either. I slowly raised the carbine to my shoulder and started to pull the trigger.
When the figure was about ten feet from the Jeep, I heard him say, “Hey, soldier, y’all got a tire tool?”
No German could imitate a deep Southern drawl like that.
“What in the hell are you doing shining that light, soldier?” I demanded. “Don’t you realize the Germans have dropped paratroopers along this road?”
“I ain’t heard no such report,” he replied. He said his truck had a flat tire and he had no tire tools, probably because they’d been traded to the navy on the LST for slabs of bacon.
“Sir, you mean they done dropped them paratroopers way back here?”
Before I could reply, he hollered to his buddy and they jumped into the cab of the truck and took off down the highway, flat tire and all. I was in a cold sweat as I realized that I’d come within seconds of killing an American soldier.
Major A. C. Arrington was shocked when he saw the first combat loss report. “The Germans are chewing the hell out of those M4 tanks,” he said. “They’re no damn good. Cooper, you tell Captain Roquemore to forget the regulations and to cannibalize every vehicle he can to get those in the VCP running.”
&nbs
p; He was glad to hear that the captain was already doing this on his own initiative. Arrington notified Capt. Tom Sembera, the division ordnance property officer, and started immediately securing replacements.
It was amazing how quickly procedures changed once the unit got into combat. Paperwork went out the window and the replacements were made by verbal request. I began to realize something about the U.S. Army I had never before thought possible. Although under garrison conditions it is highly regimented and somewhat bureaucratic, in the field it relaxes and recognizes individual initiative. This flexibility was one of the great strengths of the U.S. Army in World War II.
The next day, July 11, I returned to the VCP with a small convoy of spare parts trucks. One of the most needed maintenance parts was spark plugs. I gathered all I could beg, borrow, or steal and brought them with us. Most of the M4 tanks had R975 Wright nine-cylinder air-cooled radial engines. When the engine was started, the tank usually backfired with considerable noise, which gave away the unit’s position and instantly brought enemy fire. Most of the tank crews would idle the engines as slowly as possible when trying to maintain a defiladed position in the hedgerows.
The air-cooled radial engine was a holdover from the Depression years. Lack of funds prompted ordnance to use surplus air force radial engines in tanks. They couldn’t have chosen a more poorly designed engine for this purpose, but it was the only one available in quantity when the war started.
Designed for high, constant speeds in an aircraft, the engine had excessive clearance between the cylinder walls and the pistons. When the engine was running at the proper speed in an aircraft, the clearance narrowed and the engine performed satisfactorily. In a tank however, where the engine was run slowly, the excess clearance allowed the engine to pump oil, which fouled the spark plugs.
Each engine had nine cylinders, and each cylinder had two spark plugs. This meant that eighteen spark plugs had to be replaced every time the engine fouled. No special provisions had been made in the overall planning for fighting tanks in the hedgerows, so it was no wonder that the spare parts allotment for spark plugs was grossly underestimated.
In addition to the spark plugs we brought up from battalion, we stripped all the plugs out of the tanks that had been damaged beyond repair. The ordnance shop trucks were equipped with small spark plug sandblast cleaning machines, which were kept busy around the clock. Ordnance soon ran out of blasting sand and sent crews to the beach to get more. It had to be dried and sifted before it could be used, but it saved the day.
The German Counterattack: Tanks and Infantry in the Hedgerows
That same day, July 11, became one of the most critical in the battle of Normandy. The Germans launched a massive counterattack along the Saint-Lô–Saint Jean de Daye highway in an attempt to capture Carentan and Isigny and split the First Army in two. If this attack was successful, VII Corps would be completely isolated from Omaha Beach, and the Germans could drive the entire First Army back onto the beachhead. The results would be disastrous. Combat Command A, which was attached to the 9th Infantry Division, put up a terrific defense in the vicinity of Saint Jean de Daye against attacking tanks and paratroopers. The fighting became so intense that CCA finally brought up some of the 155mm GPFs on M12 chassis from the 991st Field Artillery.
The German assault gun known as the Jagdpanther, which had a barbette turret (it did not rotate) with the gun mounted behind a heavy six-inch armored faceplate, was used to make frontal assaults on infantry. The Jagdpanther, in conjunction with other Panthers and flanking protection by paratroopers and infantrymen, made an extremely formidable force. The armor was virtually impervious to our M4 Shermans as they advanced up the highway in an almost continuous attack.
At one point, a German tank came through an opening in a hedgerow and encountered an M12 with its 155mm GPF zeroed in on the gap. The 155 let go and struck the tank at the base of the turret, completely decapitating it. The turret and gun were blown off, and the tank stopped in its tracks. In another instance, as the German tank force was approaching the intersection of the Saint Jean de Daye–Airel highway, Lieutenant Colonel Berry, who commanded the 67th Armored Field Artillery, got in a ditch with his forward observer and personally directed the fire for the entire battalion against the German task force.
The 105mm howitzer mounted on the M7 chassis proved to be one of our most effective weapons against German armor. Although the 105mm projectile would not stop a tank if it hit the glacis plate head-on, it had a good chance of penetrating the light top deck armor of the German tanks if it came down on top of the tank at an angle. It appeared that the German tank designers had put most of the weight in frontal and side armor. Even the German Panther and Tiger tanks had only about a quarter inch of armor on some areas of the top deck. The high angle of an incoming howitzer shell would allow it to strike the top deck and explode, thus penetrating and killing the entire crew inside.
If artillery fire was intense enough around a tank, it would kill the infantry, which would slow the tank’s progress. Because a tank crew has limited vision when buttoned up inside, it is dependent on the infantry’s hand signals to point out targets. If the infantry is not there, the tank slows down and proceeds cautiously or stops completely. Although the howitzer on the M7 was designed for a maximum fire rate of 4 rounds a minute, skilled gun crews could fire 10 rounds a minute. With eighteen guns they could concentrate 180 rounds a minute, or 3 rounds every second, on a given target. This, combined with the fire from the tanks plus the 155mm guns from the 991st, stopped the German advance.
In the meantime, Combat Command B, with task forces headed by Lieutenant Colonel Lovelady at Pont Hébert and Colonel Roysden at Vents Heights, fought against a savage counterattack by the Germans in the south. The Germans had committed the Panzer Lehr Division, a new armored division with new equipment and fresh troops. They were making an all-out attempt to recapture hill 91 in the vicinity of Vents Heights. Task Force Roysden finally took hill 91 with heavy casualties but was driven off by the ferocious attacks of the Panzer Lehr. After regrouping, the decimated task force retook hill 91.
It was during this period that Colonel Roysden’s young driver was killed by a sniper; the colonel reportedly sat down and wept. Men in combat often developed a strong sense of personal bonding, regardless of rank. This display of emotion was not considered a sign of weakness but rather a sign of courageous humanity.
After taking hill 91 for the second time, Task Force Roysden was completely surrounded by elements of the Panzer Lehr. On July 16, the 30th Infantry Division broke through and relieved them, which ended the German offensive. Both combat commands then returned to division control, and the division itself was assigned to VII Corps.
The division regrouped and the maintenance people again worked around the clock. New tanks came in to replace those damaged beyond repair. To this point, the division’s total losses of M4 Sherman tanks had been eighty-seven, which did not include those repaired and put back into action. These losses after a penetration of only five miles into enemy territory were obviously unacceptable and could not possibly be sustained. The shock of these losses plus those from other divisions was compounded by the realization that an enormous error had been made by Patton at Tidworth Downs in January. Requests immediately went to Washington to reverse this decision and get M26 heavy tanks into the European theater as quickly as possible.
In addition to the loss of tanks and other vehicles, we had lost all nine of our L5 Cub forward observer aircraft, which belonged to the field artillery battalions. Each battalion was equipped with three of these planes, which located enemy positions and directed artillery fire. The design of the plane was such that the pilots flew too low and too far forward, where they were subject to small-arms fire.
With the promise of new planes, the artillery observers asked for additional protection. One of the most feared wounds by men was injury to the genital area. We fabricated two small bucket seats for each plane from quarter-inch armor plate
cut out of German half-tracks. Each seat was contoured to protect the lower back, buttocks, genitals, groin, and upper part of the legs. The seats, which weighed about eighty pounds, were welcomed by the pilots and forward observers and raised the overall morale. The pilots eventually learned to fly a thousand feet up and a thousand feet back behind friendly lines. If they could maintain this distance safely, they could still observe enemy targets and be reasonably free from flak.
The Gas Attack
During this period, a potentially disastrous event took place that had a dramatic effect on the tactical situation at the time. I have never seen it mentioned in any article or book except the history of the 3d Armored Division.
Early in the evening of July 21, while it was still daylight, I arrived at our battalion headquarters bivouac area to see the sentry wearing his gas mask and whirling his ratchet claxton, the signal for a gas attack. My driver and I had our gas masks in the Jeep, and we put them on immediately. The men in the bivouac area were putting down their tools and scrambling to find gas masks, which were stored in a trailer next to the ordnance shop headquarters. They’d been put there for reissue after we’d stripped them off tanks or other vehicles that had been shot up and abandoned.
The men grabbed the gas masks from the trailer until there was only one left. Two men entered the trailer simultaneously, one from each end. On one end was Lieutenant Reed, a strapping six feet four inches and weighing 250 pounds. (We used to call him Big Reed, from the cartoon “Terry and the Pirates.”) On the other end was Major Arrington, about five feet eleven inches and weighing about 160 pounds. They both looked covetously at the mask. Nobody knew exactly what went through their respective minds, but Lieutenant Reed wound up with the mask and the major walked away empty-handed.
Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II Page 6
