The great irony of World War II, as far as the campaign in northern Europe was concerned, was becoming only too apparent. Perhaps the most powerful ground force ever assembled, backed up by powerful strategic and tactical air forces, was being frustrated and taking horrendous losses because its main assault weapon, the M4 medium tank, was vastly inferior to its enemy counterpart. This forced a basic change in the application of our Armored Force Doctrine, which had been so brilliantly conceived a number of years before. Because of our inferior main battle tank we could not utilize this doctrine to its fullest capability.
Armored Force Doctrine was based on two separate and distinct types of armored tactical units. Each unit was organized, equipped, and deployed in the field to accomplish a separate mission.
The GHQ Tank Battalion was normally attached to an infantry division and supported it in assaults on fortified positions. The original thinking was to have the GHQ Tank Battalions equipped with a heavy assault tank with sufficient frontal armor to enable it to resist enemy antitank fire. The Germans had long since recognized this need and had developed turretless versions of their Mark IV, Mark V, and Mark VI tanks. Without the extra weight of the turret mechanism, heavier armor could be provided. The assault version of the PzKw VI, known as the Jagdtiger (Hunting Tiger) had a 128mm high-velocity antitank gun and 13 inches of frontal armor and weighed approximately 64 tons. This was twice the weight of our M4 and it was obvious to us that the M4 was not even remotely in the same ballpark as this awesome monster.
An American heavy tank had been developed in the early years of the war, but it was soon abandoned and all efforts were concentrated on the M26 Pershing. Patton’s recommendation to concentrate instead on the M4, because we needed a fast medium tank and because tanks were not supposed to fight tanks anyway, was a disastrous decision based on inflexible military thinking. Patton was the ranking Armored Force commander and had an extreme flair for getting his way.
Patton’s view was opposed by the combat commanders who had served under him in North Africa, and to even the most inexperienced second lieutenant tank platoon leader it was obvious that if our Armored Force Doctrine said that tanks were not supposed to fight tanks, the Germans would do just the opposite and oppose our tanks with their heavier tanks whenever possible. Even though this policy had been reversed by General Eisenhower when he saw our terrible losses in Normandy, it was too little too late, and we still had not received any M26 heavy tanks by early November 1944, though they were desperately needed.
The armored division was a highly mobile, self-contained arms unit capable of ranging deeply behind enemy lines for at least three days without additional supplies. Once a breakthrough had been made by the infantry and GHQ tank battalions, the armored division could penetrate deeply behind enemy lines. Even though the Armored Force Doctrine said that the armored division should avoid enemy tanks where possible, the original planner certainly would have insisted that the division be equipped with tanks equal to or superior to the enemy tanks, should the occasion arise for them to engage each other. The idea that the M4 should be given preference over the M26 because of its superior speed was a great fallacy. Although the M26 Pershing outweighed the M4 Sherman by some 15 tons, its 550-horsepower motor compared to the 400-horsepower motor of the Sherman gave it a higher horsepower per ton ratio and thus an equal or greater speed on the highway. In addition, its longer wheelbase and wider track gave it a ground bearing pressure approximately half that of the M4. This bearing pressure was similar to that of the German tanks and made it much more maneuverable in open country.
Though lacking an adequate main battle tank, the armored division was often called on to perform the missions that would normally have been assigned to a GHQ tank battalion. Besides lacking an adequate assault tank, the GHQ tank battalions apparently had insufficient training in combined operations with infantry. The armored division had its own armored infantry and was accustomed to working with it in a symbiotic relationship where each depended on the other. This made for an excellent working relationship, when a combat command was attached to an infantry division or a regimental combat team from an infantry division was attached to an armored division.
As the buildup neared completion in early November 1944, it was obvious that another massive breakthrough was being planned. General Eisenhower had observed that if the Germans attempted to take a defensive stand with the narrow Rhineland and the Rhine River to their rear, they were taking a serious risk. With our great air superiority, the Rhine crossings could be neutralized and the Germans trapped on the west bank of the river.
There were, however, several reasons for the Germans to take this position. The Siegfried line was still virtually intact and had been penetrated deeply by the First Army only in the Aachen-Stolberg area. A large percentage of German electric power came from the steam-driven, brown coal-fired electric utility plants on the Rhine Plain between Bonn, Cologne, and Düsseldorf. The loss of these plants would be a major disaster to the German war effort. Unknown to us, the Germans needed the Rhineland to launch their planned Ardennes campaign. In addition, the Germans, particularly Hitler, saw the invasion and occupation of German soil as anathema.
It had rained practically every day and the ground was saturated, making movement by tanks and other armored vehicles extremely difficult. The inability of our medium tanks to negotiate soft ground had been recognized some time before, and field service modification kits had been sent forward to be installed on the tanks.
The kits consisted of three-inch-wide steel grousers, which were attached to the track connectors on each track block on both sides. This gave an overall width of twenty inches compared to thirty to thirty-six inches on German tank tracks. I contacted Dick Johnson with the 33d Maintenance and arranged to have their supply truck pick up the boxes of grousers at the ordnance battalion headquarters company. The grousers finally got down to the tank crews, who installed them on their own tanks.
The tank crews were enthusiastic about the grousers, which did help somewhat, but the ground was so completely saturated that the grousers only partially solved the problem. Our tanks still got stuck easily. The problem was that the grousers were designed so they did not come in full contact with the ground until the tank had already penetrated the outer crust. Thus, the breakthrough of the crust had already occurred and the tank could still sink down further due to the shearing action. I’d venture to say that the fields around Kornelimünster, Mausbach, and Breinig are still filled with leftover grousers and spare locknuts.
Our front line between Stolberg and Mausbach extended across the top of hill 287. On top of the hill was a German pillbox we had captured and used as an observation post. From an open-top concrete bunker adjacent to the pillbox, we could observe the back slope of the hill. The German frontline positions were seventy-five yards down the slope and east of the pillbox.
During this two-month lull, the buildup continued on both sides, although the view from this frontline position gave little evidence of it. There were often exchanges of small-arms and mortar fire. In the intervening times between these firefights, the whole area was relatively calm.
Looking down the hill from the bunker, we could see a roadway running roughly parallel to our front line and connecting the small villages in the valley below. They had obviously been evacuated of all German civilians, although we occasionally saw cattle grazing in the valley. This pastoral scene would be rudely interrupted when one of the cows would suddenly explode. There were mines all over the area, and whenever a cow blew up the forward observers would try to pinpoint it on the map. From the frequency and randomness of the explosions, it was apparent that numerous minefields were scattered throughout this entire area.
Between our lines and the German lines and about a hundred yards north of the pillbox was a large slag dump. A small clump of trees stood at the bottom of the forward slope and the dump. A German infantry company had taken cover in these trees and come under heavy artillery fire. The
point detonating fuses on the 105mm howitzer shells were set off when they struck the tree branches, and the midair explosion caused the troops on the ground to get the full effect of the blast. About 150 bodies were piled up under the trees, and numerous bodies were scattered across the crest of the hill and down the slope behind the German lines. Some of the bodies had been there for two months, and the stench from them was terrible.
I received a new Jeep to replace the one that had been damaged by shell fire at Raeren. I also got a new driver. Vernon received a well-deserved rest, then was transferred back to C Company.
My new driver, a young soldier named White, was vigorous and enthusiastic about his job. He could hardly wait to get to the front line and see all the excitement. I explained that his job was to take care of the Jeep and keep it ready to move on a moment’s notice twenty-four hours a day. Combat was not glamorous; our job was to keep a low profile. There would be plenty of excitement to go around.
When Vernon transferred back to C Company, he took our little dog Bitch with him, because they were attached to each other by now. In the four months we’d had her, she had matured rapidly. She soon met many German boy dogs, became pregnant, and had a large litter. Vernon gave the puppies to many of his buddies in C Company. I’m sure that her progeny are scattered throughout western Germany and did their share in cementing long-term German-French relations.
The first time I took White forward, we went to the pillbox on hill 287. I wanted to talk to the forward observer and get some idea where the mines were located, because I knew that when the attack started, our tanks would eventually have to go through this area. We left the Jeep about a hundred yards west of the crest of the hill and proceeded on foot. I told White to stay inside the pillbox to avoid the occasional random shells that fell near there. He could look through the vision slots on the back side of the pillbox to see what was going on and keep an eye on the Jeep.
The artillery observer was out on the open parapet with his battery commander’s (BC) scope looking down the valley toward the German positions. He had his maps out and was marking targets as I approached him.
We saw some movement about a quarter mile down the forward slope of the hill. Three white objects were moving among the German positions; upon close examination through his scope, we saw that they were German medics. They wore large, stolelike white vestments that covered their chests and backs completely and were stuffed into their belts. Red crosses approximately eighteen inches high were on both the front and back of the vestments, and their helmets were solid white with red crosses front and back. This garb gave them much greater visibility than our medics had; they wore only armbands with small red crosses and helmets with red crosses painted in white circles on both sides.
The German medics moved freely from one foxhole to the next tending to the wounded. Our artillery observer made no attempt to fire on them as long as they were exposed. I’m not sure the Germans had the same respect for our Red Cross. I remember too well when the Germans fired on the clearly marked half-track ambulance back in Villers-Cotterêts, killing all aboard.
Suddenly, there was a tremendous explosion on the earth mound right behind us. We both hit the deck immediately. I remember feeling a tug at the back of my combat jacket as I fell down. An incoming 81mm mortar shell had struck the parapet behind us. I reached over my shoulder to see if I’d been hit and discovered that my right shoulder epaulet on my combat jacket had been severed by one of the flying mortar fragments. With the exception of being dazed for a few minutes, I was unharmed. Although I could not hear what the artillery observer was saying, I could tell by the expression on his face that he was also okay.
I returned to the bunker and stuck my head inside to tell White we were getting ready to leave, but he was not there. One of the men inside said he had left a few minutes ago and thought he’d gone back down the hill to the Jeep. I looked around but didn’t see him anywhere. I continued to call his name, without any response. After several minutes I saw a lone figure emerge around the south side of the pillbox. It was White all right, and he was carrying a rusty M1 rifle covered with mud. I explained that he had not only exposed himself unnecessarily but had jeopardized the lives of our infantrymen dug in around the pillbox. Because he was only seventy-five yards from the German front lines, he could have easily been killed and drawn fire on our other positions in the vicinity.
The chewing out I gave him shook him up; he had no idea of the seriousness of what he had done.
“Look, Lieutenant,” he said, “I found an American rifle on the field and brought it back.”
I knew then that White was an extremely naive young soldier. I explained to him that there was no shortage of M1 rifles and that risking a life was not worth his find. I continued to press hard on this point to make sure it didn’t happen again.
After examining the rusty, mud-covered rifle, I figured it had probably been on the ground for at least two months. There was a live round in the chamber, and both the bolt and the safety were rusted tight in the firing position. I knew it wouldn’t be safe to bring it back to the maintenance company in this condition. I held the rifle at arms’ length, pointed it over the hill toward the enemy line, and pulled the trigger. It fired perfectly, and the reaction sheared loose the rust on the bolt and inserted a new round in the chamber. I then unloaded the rifle, gave it to White, and told him to take it back to the small-arms section. They could clean it up and reissue it. I had always felt that the Garand rifle was an excellent gun, and this certainly confirmed it. General Patton reportedly called it “the ultimate weapon of World War II.”
The battle plan called for another major combined-arms operation, similar to the Saint-Lô breakthrough. With the massive use of airpower, artillery, armor, and infantry, we were to shatter the German frontline positions and break out onto the Rhineland Plain.
To accomplish this mission, VII Corps was assigned five infantry divisions (1st, 4th, 9th, 83d, and 104th) and two armored divisions (3d and 5th), more than half of First Army’s strength. The VII Corps front line extended from the middle of Stolberg, southeast across the back slope of hill 287, down to Mausbach, and into the northern part of the Hürtgen Forest. The initial objective was to break out of this line, capture Eschweiler and Düren, and secure a bridgehead across the Roer River, which was the last barrier before the flat portion of the Cologne Plain.
Just prior to the initial attack, all the division’s tanks were incorporated in the division artillery fire plan. Each tank platoon was given an aiming point and the proper elevation and deflection of its guns to strike specific target areas. Excess ammunition was stored alongside the tanks for use during the initial barrage. After the barrage, the tanks could move into their attack positions with a full load of combat ammunition. The tanks firing as artillery gave the division a total firepower of thirty-six artillery battalions. Combined with the artillery of the other divisions plus attached corps and army artillery, the VII Corps had a total firepower of ninety artillery battalions.
The tanks and other armored vehicles were in reasonably good shape from a maintenance point of view. Any tanks that had survived since Normandy had had a hundred-hour check, and all badly worn tracks had been replaced. In Stolberg some of the tankers had gotten sacks of cement from an abandoned cement factory and made up a crude mixture of concrete for patches to reinforce the front glacis plate. The patches, which the men reinforced with chicken wire and angle iron, were three to four inches thick. Other tankers used sandbags, logs, or anything else that might offer added protection.
The Assault to the Roer River
The buildup was now complete, and the infantry and armor were in position and ready for the attack. During September and October, the infantry assaults through the Hürtgen Forest had been extremely costly. It had been estimated that a major assault through the forest would cost an additional ten thousand infantry lives. This apparently contributed to the decision to use the 3d Armored Division for a direct frontal assa
ult. Although this was completely contrary to Armored Force Doctrine, it was felt that an armored division must be used as the initial assault force due to the inadequacy of the GHQ tank battalion and infantry division combination.
The Germans had taken advantage of this interim to reinforce their side of the line. They had pretty well evaluated our M4 battle tank and realized that the gun and the armor were vastly inferior to those of their Panther and Tiger tanks. They also knew that our tanks would get stuck more easily in soggy terrain, and persistent rains had kept the ground completely saturated. With this knowledge, they developed an extremely effective defense plan. They heavily mined all of the open terrain on the back side of hill 287 and the fields surrounding the villages below.
The German line on top of hill 287 was barely seventy-five yards from our positions in the pillbox and extended down the hill southeast toward Mausbach. When placing their first row of mines, the Germans did something that we had never encountered. Instead of placing the mines in front of the outer infantry line, as was normally done, they placed them slightly behind their forward infantry outposts. Thus, our combat engineers would have to infiltrate these outposts at night to locate and remove the mines. This was extremely difficult if not virtually impossible. The Germans planned to hold these outposts as long as they could; only when the pressure became too great would they withdraw. This would leave our troops exposed to completely intact minefields.
The first objective was to break out of this area and secure the bridgehead across the Roer River at Düren. To accomplish this, the 3d Armored Division was to penetrate the minefield on the back side of hill 287 and seize three villages in the valley below, about a mile away. These villages— Werth, Hastenrath, and Scherpenseel—were heavily fortified and lay in a triangular fashion across the main north-south communication lines for the German troops in this area. Combat Command B of the 3d Armored Division was selected to make the initial penetration.
Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II Page 18
