With our tour of Normandy at an end, Dad and I left Périers and headed south on the road to Coutances and beyond that Highway D-7 to Avranches, the very road where the 712th tanks traveled on August 2, 1944 as part of the Third Army.
As Operation Cobra was in progress, Gen. Omar Bradley told Patton on July 28, 1944 that the Third Army would be officially activated on the 1st of August. In the meantime Patton was given interim command of the VIII Corps, which included the 90th Infantry.
The 712th Battle Route – Normandy Campaign. (The History of the 712th Tank Battalion)
The original plans for the Battle of France called for the Allies to advance westward into Brittany after breaking out of Normandy. The ultimate goal was to seize two the deep water ports of Brest and Lorient. The Allied military planners wanted to use the ports along the Brittany coast for discharging the supplies that would be needed to move across France methodically and defeat the Germans. Patton, however had already realized that the bombings and breakout had the Germans in disarray and that the initial success of Operation Cobra also presented an opportunity to move eastward and encircle the bulk of the German forces in Normandy. But to do that there had to be a rapid movement of troops through the opening in the enemy lines.
The Third Army’s attack in all directions. (The History of the 712th Tank Battalion)
On July 29, 1944, as troops began moving south, Patton found a battalion of the 90th Infantry digging foxholes. He chastised the troops to begin moving, by shouting to them, “It is stupid to be afraid of a beaten enemy.”2
Mindful that his orders were to advance only westward in Brittany, Patton had his staff make contingency plans for an eastward movement as well. In order to convince both Bradley and Eisenhower to allow him to both move eastward as well as fulfilling the Third Army’s initial mission for Brittany, a sufficiently large number of troops through the breakout corridor was essential.
On the afternoon of August 1st, Patton went to Avranches to do the impossible – move two armored divisions and two infantry divisions, more than 100,000 men and 20,000 vehicles, within a two day period, across a single bridge and along the one main north-south street through town. That afternoon, he took control by replacing an MP and began personally directing the traffic. By the end of the day, Patton had gotten the four divisions through the bottleneck and on their westward movement, he also succeeded in getting the 90th through and situated southeast of Avranches in anticipation of getting permission from SHAEF to move eastward in a looping drive to Paris.
Patton was now in a position to put his personal philosophy of tank warfare into practice in territory where he was no longer hampered by hedgerows.
The question of whether infantry or tanks lead in attacking is determined by the character of the ground and of the enemy resistance. Whenever the ground permits tanks to advance rapidly, even with the certainty of a loss from mine fields, they should lead. Through dense woods or against prepared positions or unlocated anti-tank guns, infantry leads, followed closely by tanks, which act as close supporting artillery. But irrespective of the foregoing, some tanks must accompany the infantry when they reach the objective. These tanks are for the purpose of removing enemy weapons which emerge after the passage of the leading tanks.3
The tank column of the 712th was moving at a rapid pace (rapid being a relative term since the maximum speed of a Sherman Tank was 20-25 miles per hour), the 90th Infantry hopped on the sides and tops of the tanks for a ride. Dad explained, “This is the road into Avranches. The infantry rode on the tank. We went barreling down the street.”
Father Murphy writes:
We are going in our vehicles at top speed through dark roads, no lights, all on a long convoy. […] We go through the towns of Countances and Avranches with its church on a high hill.
[…]
We saw Patton at one point standing on a jeep urging the troops to keep moving. […] Tanks are coming up and preceding us all the time.”4
The column reached Avranches at about midnight. In the History of the 712th Tank Battalion this event is recorded as:
Suddenly the black night was pierced by flares dropped by an attacking squadron of Luftwaffe bombers. The tankers crouched in their tanks and experienced all the fearful perils of a bombing as the Boche dumped his load.
Dad continues his account, “We had a night bombing at Avranches. That’s when they (the infantry) jumped off and got in the ditches to protect themselves from the bombing.” Fortunately, in Dad’s sector, the accuracy of the Lufwaffe’s bombers was poor, only one truck was hit and the column detoured around it and continued their forward progress. As Dad told it, “When they were bombing us along in here, during the night, they’d drop flares to see what was on the ground. They dropped one and it hit an ammunition truck and it had gasoline on it. And it blew up and the ammunition started going off. We had to get it pushed on the side to keep on going. The pilot was diving so low you could see him in the cockpit with the flares out there.”
An officer on the Third Army’s staff described the bombing that night and Patton’s reaction to it.
General Patton had ordered our Headquarters set up in several adjoining fields in the center of this gap, so that he could be right on the ground to see that all of our divisions were pushed through the opening quickly. […] Just after dark – almost midnight – […] the bombers came over, by the hundreds it seemed, and they laid their eggs. You could hear them whistle and scream as they fell and the ground rocked with the explosions. The planes circled over for more than an hour, sounding like a great hive of angry hornets.
At the height of the bombing a secret message in a sealed envelope arrived for Patton. The messenger was directed towards Patton’s trailer where he found him smoking a cigar and looking up into the sky watching the bombing. “The Gen. was cool as a cucumber. He just looked up into the sky and kept saying aloud: ‘Those goddamn bastards, those rotten sons-of-bitches! We’ll get them! We’ll get them…’”5
As Dad and I drove though Avranches along the main highway, we came to a point on a cliff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean and in the distance we could see Mont St Michel. We took a little time to detour off the battle route and visit one of the most scenic spots in France.
This rocky islet, jutting above the sandbanks and waters of the Gulf of St Malo, has a walled village at its base and a Benedictine abbey, dedicated to the archangel St Michael, perched atop its highest point. With a history dating back to the year 708, the present abbey was built between the 11th and 16th centuries.
The geography of the Mont is what gives it its most unique characteristic. On this northwestern shore of France, the difference in the sea level between low tide and high tide is at times as much as forty feet. During low tide each day Mont St Michel is surrounded by land; and you can actually observe the sea rushing in to surround the Mont at high tide. The overall height of the of the island, including the church is well over five hundred feet and it is a spectacular sight to see it silhouetted against the western sky from the French shoreline.
Mont St Michel’s awesome fortifications were attacked many times during the Hundred Years War, but never captured. During World War II, German soldiers barricaded themselves on Mont St Michel, but Dad said that the Third Army just bypassed it and eventually, when the Germans ran out of food, they surrendered. Among his many spiritual duties, St Michael is the patron saint of soldiers; how fitting it was that this shrine to St Michael went unscathed during World War II.
In August 1944 the troops did not have the luxury of stopping for a sightseeing tour. I doubt that the soldiers in 712th and the 90th even got a glimpse of Mont St Michel in the dark distance. After reaching Avranches, the Third Army split up and advanced in three different directions at the same time; several days later it was attacking in all four directions, north, south, east and west. The 90th Division and the 712th were part of Task Force Weaver heading eastward toward Paris.
On August 2, 1944, Patton wrote in his diary his
thoughts regarding the 90th Infantry Division.
East of Avranches we caught up with the 90th, which is moving along the road between the See and the Selune Rivers. The division is bad, the discipline poor, the men filthy, and the officers apathetic, many of them removing their insignia and covering the markings on their helmets. I saw one artillery lieutenant jump out of his jeep and hide in a ditch when one plane flew over at a high altitude firing a little. I corrected these acts on the spot. I got out and walked in the column for about 2 miles, talking to them. Some were getting rides on guns and others made no comment. I called them babies and they dismounted. They seemed normal but are not in hard condition.
Due to its performance record in Normandy, Eisenhower and Omar Bradley had the same assessment of the 90th Infantry Division. In Eisenhower’s words, the 90th had not been “well brought up,” – that is, not well trained in the United States and had had a particularly grueling initiation into combat in the Cotentin. But McLain and Weaver would soon turn it into a hard-hitting outfit.6
Regarding his decision not to disband the 90th, Bradley commented, “we stayed with the division and in the end the 90th became one of the most outstanding in the European Theater. In the metamorphosis, it demonstrated how swiftly a strong commander can transfuse his own strength into a command.”7 The disbanding of the 90th Infantry Division would not have affected the 712th’s status as an independent battalion, it would merely have been assigned to a different infantry division. But, after that first month of on the job training, the 90th and the 712th began to gel as a team; if the 90th had been disbanded, that first month of combat – learning each other’s strengths and weaknesses – would have been for naught. Attachment to another division may have caused the 712th to continue to experience a high casualty rate. Bradley’s decision to “stay with” the 90th also benefitted the 712th.
Between the end of the war in May of 1945 and his premature death following an automobile accident in December of 1945, Patton wrote his wartime memoirs, compiling information from his diary and letters he had written. In his memoirs, Patton again writes about that meeting with the 90th on August 2. With the benefit of hindsight, he was a bit more reflective and wrote:
On the second of August, Stiller and I joined the column of the 90th Division marching east from Avranches, and walked in their ranks for some hours. At that time the efficiency of this division was extremely dubious, but had just secured the services of General McLain and General Weaver. When we got to a point where the road turned south to St Hilaire, I met McLain and Haislip, and was informed that the fighting down the road was caused by Weaver, personally leading an assault over a bridge. This was the beginning of the making of one of the greatest divisions that ever fought, and was due largely to these two men. The division subsequently had a series of great commanders.
Driving back to Army Headquarters with Haislip, I saw a young officer and his driver leap wildly out of a jeep and into a ditch. I went up to find out what was the matter and they said an enemy plane was overhead. That was true, but it was so high it was practically innocuous; just another instance of the nervousness of a first fight. They got back into the car even faster than they got out.8
To achieve the liberation of Paris, the Allies had to occupy the City of Mayenne and then Le Mans in successive order. The Third Army, more particularly, Task Force Weaver, was charged with this objective. When the 90th was in the town of St Hilaire-du-Harcouet, a small town near Avranches, Brig.-Gen. William Weaver, the Assistant Division Commander of the 90th, was given his orders to take LeMans, 82 miles behind enemy lines. Sub-Task Force Randolph (named after Lt-Col. George Randolph, the commanding officer of the 712th) was the point unit of this eastward attack. The Third Army was essentially moving parallel to the English Channel coastline, approximately 60 miles inland. The English and Canadian forces were still held up along the beaches of Normandy. Consequently, the German army was situated between the English and the Americans.
Since the Wehrmacht was in a state of disarray as a result of the breakout from St Lô, the plan called for the use of surprise and speed and with as little as contact with the Germans as possible. Weaver sent out his various reconnaissance units with the instructions, “Don’t look for Germans. Just find out where they ain’t.”
Dad said of the 712th’s involvement, “Task Force Randolph – that’s when they told us to go and keep going as far as we could go.” Dr William M. McConahey, a medical officer in the 90th Division, described this mad dash after the breakout in much the same way, “Now the Germans were disorganized and our armored divisions were on the loose. Then the 90th got orders to take off: to strike out boldly to capture LeMans, far to the southeast. We were just to keep going, not worrying about enemy troops on the flanks and behind us. Just keep going!”9
It was en route to Mayenne that the newly liberated French greeted the American troops with flowers and wine. It was a happy day, flags were taken out of hiding and hung from windows. Signs were erected exclaiming “Vive la France, Vive L’Amériqué” and “Welcome to our Liberators”. Dad explained how the people cheered and greeted the American troops.
We are on the road to Ernee and on the road to Mayenne from Avranches. And all the people from these villages back here came out with flowers and apple cider and poured it into our canteens. They came out with pouches of apple cider and they filled up our canteens with cider. The infantry was riding on the back, we were traveling at a pretty good rate of speed and we were moving quite well. This is where they threw the roses on the tank. When we were training in the United States, I told the tank commander, Willinger “These things (Sherman Tanks) are only iron coffins.” So when we got here I said, “You see I told you these were iron coffins, they’re putting flowers on us already.”
The Bridge at Mayenne
The 90th and the 712th were moving toward the Mayenne River when they received information that the 1st Infantry Division had been held up at Mortain and was unable to reach the highly important town of Mayenne. The 90th and the 712th undertook this mission, they cut through Ernee and reached the outskirts of Mayenne early in the evening of August 5, 1944.10
As Dad and I approached the outskirts of Mayenne, Dad began, “This is the area where we first hit resistance when we entered Mayenne. The GIs riding the back of the tank disembarked and we proceeded at a slower pace until we got (close) to the Mayenne River and the bridge.”
The Mayenne River runs from northeast to southwest through the City of Mayenne. Buildings and homes of the city occupy both sides of the river and the adjoining terrain is a gradual slope from river’s edge back several hundred yards inland. The Mayenne River itself is a steep-banked stream about one hundred feet wide and five feet deep. The narrow streets approaching the bridge, with buildings lining the narrow sidewalks on both sides, was reminiscent of the architecture and crowded city scape back home in the French Quarter in New Orleans.
The capture of Mayenne, August 5, 1944. (Gruntz Sketch)
The 90th and the 712th advanced upon the river from the northwest. The main street was a straight shot to the bridge and on the other side the Germans had located an 88-mm gun and a 20-mm gun. The Operational Journal of the 712th Tank Battalion merely noted: “5 August 1944, Time: 19:00 – B Co has one plt across bridge into town other two plt along road SE into town. Germans are fleeing South.”
This sparse entry belies the military significance of the events of that transpired that day.11 The History of the 712th Tank Battalion written after the war provided a few more details:
…a platoon of B Company forged into town into the mouth of several 88s, crossed the bridge and seized important ground on the south side of the river. An enemy force had just reached the approaches to this bridge but B Company forced them to retire.
The tank officer heading the platoon was Lt Robert Vutech, who commanded one tank in the platoon of two.12 The other tank in that platoon was commanded by Sgt Willinger; Dad was the gunner in the Willinger tank.13
The capture of the bridge over the Mayenne River was of utmost importance for the eastward movement of American troops and the ultimate objective of reaching Le Mans. The other bridges in Mayenne had been blown up by the Germans. This remaining bridge was rigged for demolition with eight 550 lbs bombs located on top of the bridge in plain view. And with the German guns looking down the throats of the Americans, the capture of this bridge looked to be a suicide mission and an impossible task. Vutech was both respected and well-liked by the soldiers in his command and he would not order them to do anything that he wouldn’t be willing to do himself. Dad described what happened as the plans for the attack were made, “ We stopped in a little area to have a recon to see what we were going to do to cross this bridge since it was the only bridge left in Mayenne to be crossed. The brass came up and looked at it to decide which way we were going to attack it. So they decided to send two tanks across. (Vutech and Willinger) drew straws to see which tank would go across first. (Vutech pulled the short straw) and went first and then we went after.”
This reconnaissance by Vutech was typical of his style. Leslie Vink, describing Vutech in another action, stated, “Bob Vutech was very different. As soon as the tank stopped, he was out scouting to see what was around us.”14
Vutech’s tank began rolling down the hill toward the bridge firing its 75-mm cannon on the move. Dad’s tank was buttoned up and as they proceeded he viewed the unfolding events through his gunner’s periscope.
When we crossed the bridge, Vutech’s tank started firing. (The Germans) had torpedo bombs on the bridge, they were on the side. And when he started firing he (German with detonator) ran.
When we crossed the bridge, there was an anti-tank gun at the first corner there – that building wasn’t there then. He (the gunner in Vutech’s tank) knocked out the anti-tank gun. I don’t know what happened to him (German anti-tank gunner). I don’t know whether we killed him or not. Then we went up the hill and there was a cross roads.
A Tank Gunner's Story: Gunner Gruntz of the 712th Tank Battalion Page 11