Tank Killers

by Harry Yeide

  * * *

  Far to the south, Seventh Army’s 636th Tank Destroyer Battalion recon men reached the Moselle River on 20 September and scouted crossings for the 36th Infantry Division. The 141st RCT crossed the river the next day, but the race stopped rather suddenly. Over the next several days, recon teams reported strong enemy positions in every direction. Resistance became fiercer, artillery barrages heavier, and minefields thicker. Recon had to turn to foot patrols.105

  Likewise, the recon men from the 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion ran into determined resistance at Faucogney. “From there on,” recorded the battalion’s informal history, “it was slow, tough going.”106

  * * *

  The armored spearheads could run no longer. The infantry—that Queen of Battles—and its supporting tanks and TDs again took center stage.

  The officially recognized U.S. Army campaigns in northern and southern France, characterized by rapid movement and isolated pockets of German defense, ended on 14 September 1944; on 15 September, the Rhineland Campaign began, a slugfest that was to drag on by official count until 21 March of the next year. Yet there was one more clash of charging armor left to be fought in France.

  The Tank Battles of Lorraine

  Eisenhower conferred with Montgomery and Bradley from 9 to 11 September to discuss operations in light of the tight logistic situation. SHAEF continued to underscore that the primary Allied effort would be in the north, in the direction of the Ruhr, as urged by Monty. But on 13 September, Eisenhower gave Patton the inch the fiery general needed to take a mile. Patton gained leave to push only far enough to establish “adequate bridgeheads” beyond the Moselle River. A day later, Patton was across the river in strength. He ordered his corps commanders to press on to the Rhine.107

  On Third Army’s right, the French 2d Armored Division pierced the German defenses west of the Moselle River and penetrated the German Nineteenth Army’s rear area. Further north, the American 4th Armored Division formed the edge of a wedge driving into a gap between the German Nineteenth and First armies. German commanders had wanted to strike a blow against the U.S. Seventh Army advancing from the south, but this new peril appeared even graver.

  Hitler ordered a counterattack, and on 17 September the Fifth Panzer Army received instructions to seal the gap in the German front by attacking the southern flank of the Third Army columns advancing toward Metz. To the rear, German commanders struggled to find the resources to construct a forward defensive line before the Vosges Mountains, and success against the U.S. Third Army offered the only hope of gaining enough time. Fifth Panzer Army set taking control of the town of Luneville as its objective. It had available badly understrength elements of the 15th Panzergrenadier and 21st Panzer divisions and three panzer brigades either present or on the way. The 11th Panzer Division, having completed its rear-guard action against Seventh Army, was promised by 25 September.108

  The panzer brigades—the 111th, 112th, and 113th—had recently been formed for service on the Eastern Front but were committed to the west instead. They consisted of two panzer battalions (forty-five each of Marks IV and V), two panzergrenadier battalions, and other assorted elements. They lacked artillery and salvage capabilities, and the men had never even met the officers who took command when the units began detraining in France. The 112th Panzer Brigade, moreover, had been mauled by air strikes and lost roughly sixty tanks while attacking the French 2d Armored Division on 13 September.109

  The closely linked series of actions that followed constituted by some measures the largest tank battle to take place on the Western Front.

  * * *

  On 18 September, seventeen tanks and the panzergrenadiers of the 111th Panzer Brigade advanced northward toward Luneville. Men of the 42d Cavalry Squadron and CCR/4th Armored Division held most of the town but were still battling elements of the 15th Panzergrenadier Division in the streets. The panzers swept the cavalry aside and, attacking in concert with the panzergrenadiers already in Luneville, pushed the Americans back into the north part of the city.110

  Company B/704th Tank Destroyer Battalion, was bivouacked on high ground northwest of the city. Third Platoon rolled into Luneville under heavy artillery fire to aid the defenders. During fighting that lasted until well after dark, the M10s claimed three Panther kills.111

  Combat Command A/4th Armored Division rushed a task force to the scene to help out.112 Second Lieutenant Richard Buss and 2d Platoon, C/704th Tank Destroyer Battalion, accompanied elements of the 37th Armored Regiment on the rescue mission. A sergeant led Buss’s destroyers toward the south part of town, to a spot where the buildings thinned out and a railroad embankment was visible across a field. A large deserted factory loomed over the scene. Buss noticed that there were no civilians to be seen on the streets. Buss related later:

  After a while, a Lieutenant Walle arrived back from the embankment and announced that he had spotted two Panthers hidden in some trees across the field on the other side. We both took off at a run and peered over the rails. There they were! Two beauties at about three hundred yards range! The enemy had been so considerate as to place one sideways to our position. The other was positioned facing us at a three-quarters angle. With hand signals, I called Sergeant Romek’s tank up and had him dismount and join us on the embankment. I pointed out the targets. He ran back and mounted. His tank trundled up and laid its tube across the railroad tracks. Romek briefed the gunner, Corporal Mazolla, and the tube traversed onto the target.

  I gave the signal to fire. The concussion was deafening. Mazolla rose up from the telescopic sight and signaled a hit, except that nothing happened. I was terribly disappointed. I called for another round, and Mazolla indicated another hit, but there was still no indication that we had put the target out of action.

  Suddenly, I saw billowing flames. It was not the dramatic kind of explosion that one would have expected. The flames were a transparent orange, rising with startling swiftness. They rose through the branches of the trees to a height of nearly sixty feet. When I looked for the second target, it was gone.113

  The platoon lost only one man to a sniper during the action. Third Platoon, meanwhile, knocked out one of three panzers advancing to the railroad line. The German attack was beaten off. But LtCol Bill Bailey, CO of the 704th, would die under mortar fire in the streets of Luneville the next day.114

  The 603d Tank Destroyer Battalion’s Company C—preceding the main body of CCB/6th Armored Division, which was hustling east from Brittany—also deployed at the southeastern edge of Luneville during the day.115 That evening, the combat command began to relieve the defenders of Luneville.116 On 21 September, the M10s of the 773d clanked into town and took up positions on the eastern edge.

  On 22 September the Germans probed Luneville from the north and east but met with no greater success.117

  * * *

  The rest of CCA/4th Armored Division and Company C of the 704th were located a dozen miles to the north in the area of Arracourt. The 113th Panzer Brigade was on its way there, too.

  About midnight 18–19 September, an American outpost near Lezey heard tracked vehicles to the front and called in an artillery barrage. The noises stopped. At about 0730 hours, Capt William Dwight was driving down a nearby road in a thick morning fog when he encountered the rear of a German tank column. He avoided detection and radioed his battalion CO, LtCol Creighten Abrams. A half-hour later, a section of Shermans south of Lezey found the head of the column when a Panther emerged from the fog seventy-five yards away. The Shermans destroyed three Panthers in short order, and the rest of the panzers disappeared in the murk.

  Captain Dwight appeared at CCA’s CP at Rechicourt and was ordered to lead a platoon of tank destroyers—the only unit available—to reinforce the defenses at Lezey. Company C’s CO, Capt Thomas Evans—who had been shaving beside a TD when the first German shell struck near the CP—selected Lt Edwin Leiper’s 3d Platoon for the mission. Northeast of Rechicourt, the small column spotted German tanks moving through the fo
g.

  The M18s raced into hull-defilade positions in a depression and opened fire at one hundred fifty yards. The CCA executive officer, LtCol Hal Pattison, described the action: “It was so foggy that even at one hundred fifty yards the gunners could not see the enemy tanks through the telescopic sights. Consequently … when a German tank was spotted, the TD would come out of the depression just enough to fire on the enemy. Then one round of HE was fired to adjust on. Captain Dwight adjusted the fire. Having adjusted, AP would be utilized to destroy the enemy tank. When our TDs fired, the Germans would lay their guns on the muzzle flash. In this manner, they were successful in knocking out [three] of the TDs. One TD was lost rather unfortunately. It had pulled up out of the saucer-like depression to render fire upon the enemy. In that position, the motor stalled, leaving it exposed. Another of the TDs was taken up to try to withdraw it to cover. The Germans fired on them, and the TDs answered fire. Firing at the muzzle blast, the German tanks almost put a round down the tube of the recovery TD…. They then hit the stalled TD.”118

  Corporal Frederick Stewart, gunner in Sgt Emilo Stasi’s TD, rapidly knocked out two Panthers before return fire crashed into the M18 and damaged the turret. Stasi and Stewart suffered leg wounds, another man was injured, and a fourth was killed. About one hour later, gunner Cpl John Eidenschink in Sgt Pat Ferraro’s crew killed three panzers before the Hellcat was hit and put out of action. Sergeant Steve Krewsky’s men destroyed four panzers before being knocked out, with several men injured. Sergeant Edwin McGurk’s destroyer was the only one to escape damage, and his gunner, Cpl Dominick Sorrentino, accounted for two panzers.119 (One post-war study claimed an even higher number of kills.120 Combat Command A physically surveyed only eight German tanks positively destroyed, however, so there probably was some double counting at work.)

  American and German tanks, meanwhile, battled in the fog, which protected the Germans from air attack but forced all action to take place at relatively close quarters, where the better German guns had less advantage. Captain Evans deployed his remaining two platoons on high ground south of Rechicourt. The M18s and C/24th Engineers were all that stood between the Germans and CCA’s CP and artillery positions.

  About 1200, the 113th Panzer Brigade made another stab toward Arracourt. As the fog lifted, Evans could see thirty to forty panzers advancing on his position. He later recalled, “We waited and waited until they were within fifteen hundred yards [CCA’s after-action maps indicate that all kills took place at between five hundred and one thousand yards]. Then we fired. The two leading tanks were hit and stopped dead, aflame. The others, the crews apparently confused, turned sideways. I really don’t know why. That’s where they made their big mistake. It was a turkey shoot! From our position, with only our turrets showing, we hit eleven more as fast as we could load and shoot…. ”121

  The TDs were well concealed in defilade and repositioned after firing, so the Germans never had a good target and returned little fire. The 113th Panzer Brigade withdrew. Combat Command A officially credited Company C’s TDs with eight Panther kills. Private Frank Amodio, in his first action as a gunner, accounted for five of them.122

  That evening, Patton visited Evans’s small CP on the hillside overlooking the burning armored hulks. Colonel Bruce Clarke, CO of CCA, indicated that Evans had been in charge of the shootout. Patton told Evans, “This is the kind of thing that’s going to end the war quicker than anybody had hoped.” He then walked to his jeep and left.123

  * * *

  CCA formed up in two columns in heavy fog the next morning. The enemy appeared to have withdrawn, and the Americans moved out to the northeast about 0900. At 0930, the 113th Panzer Brigade renewed its attack and threatened to strike the rear of the American columns. Both were ordered to turn around, even though B/704th Tank Destroyer Battalion had combined with the artillery and tanks defending Arracourt to chalk up another six panzers while beating off the attack.124

  Working with the 35th Infantry Division’s 320th RCT and elements of the 691st and 602d Tank Destroyer battalions (the latter arrived about noon after some stiff fighting around Luneville), the combat command established a defensive perimeter at Arracourt. The 37th Armored Regiment battled the panzers all that day, losing seven Shermans in exchange for eighteen enemy tanks.

  There was little contact the next day when the 4th Armored Division initiated sweeps of the area through thick fog. One German armored probe struck positions held by the 25th Cavalry Squadron near Juvelize and destroyed five light tanks. Lieutenant Marvin Evans’s 2d Platoon, Company B, was nearby, where its M18s had been under sporadic friendly artillery fire for almost a day, despite heated comments by radio to the artillery observer by Evans. With the cavalry pulling back, Evans sent one TD back to cover the withdrawal of the rest. The overwatching crew spotted a column of German tanks and opened fire at six hundred yards, destroying three. The platoon then withdrew in leap-frog fashion.125

  By the end of 22 September, CCA and the 704th Tank Destroyer Battalion claimed to have accounted for a total to date of seventy-nine panzers in exchange for fourteen Shermans, seven M5s, and one M18 damaged beyond repair.126

  On 23 September, a tank-infantry assault by the 111th Panzer Brigade developed from the east. American tanks maneuvered onto high ground northeast of Juvelize and picked the panzers off as they came in. When German infantry moved into Marsal, fighter-bombers wreaked havoc on them.127

  Sometime during this period, Captain Evans won the Silver Star. He recalled, “They attacked again toward Arracourt. Two of our M18s were hit. One was set afire, and next to it was one with a track shot off, but the gun was still good. I was more mad than anything else and maybe a little foolhardy, but I got up in the second M18 and was able to load and fire long enough to get two more Panthers. Then the Germans wised up. I got down on the ground and crawled away. Eventually, they hit and burned that M18, too.”128

  * * *

  The 11th Panzer Division concentrated in the forest south of Dieuze on 24 September. It had left a battle group to the south but incorporated the thirty surviving Panthers of the 111th Panzer Brigade (only three of which were battle-ready). The division had twenty of its own Mark Vs and ten Mark IVs, was about 70 percent fit for combat, and had well trained men with good morale, but it lacked its antitank battalion, which was being outfitted with new Jagdpanzer IV tank destroyers. Workshops labored to rehabilitate as many of the panzer brigade’s Panthers as possible and distributed them to division units as they were repaired. The division was ordered to advance toward Rechicourt on 25 September despite the poor terrain and repetition of the line of attack.129

  The panzers and grenadiers struck into the teeth of the 4th Armored Division’s defenses on the hills near Juvelize and drove the defenders off Hill 264. Renewed attacks the next day netted Hill 257 and Juvelize as the 4th Armored Division pulled back its forward units to straighten its line.130

  The 602d Tank Destroyer Battalion covered the tactical withdrawal. In apparent reference to this action, battalion CO LtCol Pete Kopcsak later recollected: “Barthold (platoon leader, Company B) with his TDs held his ground until enemy infantry were passing him and the 4th Armored Division artillery was shelling him. I talked with [LtCol Creighton] Abrams of the 4th Armored who said he had to pull back as he was losing too many tanks. When I arrived at the battalion CP, Major Conlin said he thought I had been captured. I had waited to see that Barthold’s unit had evacuated safely. Our fighter planes were strafing the Germans on both sides of my vehicle. I saw AA tracer bullets from the Germans firing at those planes. My driver sped down the road while Smith, the radio operator, fired machine-gun bullets to both sides of the road and to our front.”131

  On 27 September, the panzergrenadiers occupied a line of concrete fortifications left from World War I—this was the area in which Corporal Hitler had served—and found themselves safe from even heavy artillery fire. The division renewed its attacks on 28 September. The spearheads came close to Rechicourt but bogged
down, and one prong suffered heavy casualties.132

  The 11th Panzer Division had achieved enough for the Germans to man a thin defensive line between the German First and Nineteenth armies. Fifth Panzer Army viewed its mission as accomplished.133

  * * *

  On 29 September, American air strikes shattered the 11th Panzer Division’s forward elements. A/602d Tank Destroyer Battalion was attached to the 2d Cavalry Group in the vicinity of Arracourt and proceeded to the scene of the German rout. The company’s gunners claimed eight “Tiger” tanks (no Tigers were present), three armored cars, and an unknown number of enemy personnel.134

  To the south, the 813th Tank Destroyer Battalion was operating with the 106th Cavalry Group in support of the 79th Infantry Division near Luneville. The cavalry believed it had spotted a force of well-concealed German tanks near Bauzemont, and the cavalry commander suggested that the tank killers investigate. The 1st Platoon of Company C advanced at about 1100 hours and an M10 engaged and knocked out a Mark IV tank. The exchange may have provoked movement, because a second Mark IV and a halftrack pulled into view, both to be dispatched by the TDs. The 3d Platoon arrived, and the eight TDs continued to fire as more vehicles became visible, setting more alight. The Germans’ problems were compounded when Allied fighter-bombers struck their positions.

  Nearby, Company A’s 3d Platoon also spotted the Germans and cut loose. Soon, three more Mark IVs, one halftrack, and a small vehicle had been disabled. The Germans tried to withdraw to the northeast at about 1500 hours, but Company A’s 2d Platoon engaged the column and destroyed a Mark V, a Mark IV, a truck, and numerous infantry. The 1st Platoon, meanwhile, shelled and silenced a German artillery battery.

  By the time the dust settled, the tank killers had destroyed thirteen Mark IVs, two Panthers, and three halftracks and trucks, and killed or wounded forty-five foot troops. They had lost not a single man or vehicle in exchange.135