THE FEELING THAT THE WAR would soon be over was not limited to the general public. After the breakout from Normandy, there developed within the Allied high command a dangerous optimism. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, now the Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe, had an ongoing wager that the war would be over before Christmas. Gen. Omar Bradley was heard to comment that “the German army was no longer a factor with which we need reckon.” Allied intelligence had learned that Hitler's own generals had tried to assassinate him on July 20; though that attempt had failed, Hitler seemed to have disappeared after the Battle of Normandy and there was speculation that another attempt had succeeded. For the first time since the German blitzkrieg had galvanized the United States Armed Forces into action in the summer of 1940, factory production of tanks and ammunition was allowed to slow.
Even George Patton, usually not one to underestimate his opponent, believed that the war would soon be over. On August 8, when in a single day his Third Army took St. Malo, Le Mans, and Angers, he wrote to his wife Beatrice about “how little the enemy can do—he is finished we may end this in ten days.” On August 21, pressing rapidly eastward, the Third Army took more than seventy miles of ground, gaining Sens, Melun, and Montereau. Patton again asserted that, if he was allowed to continue his drive, “we can be in Germany in ten days. . . . It can be done with three armored and six infantry divisions. . . . It is such a sure thing.”
The 761st Tank Battalion was ultimately bound for combat in the European Theater of Operations because Patton's Third Army needed tanks—and, more than tanks, trained Sherman crews. Patton himself specifically requested the unit: The battalion's future was to be linked directly with that of the man whose thirty-year career in the military had spanned perhaps more highs and lows than that of any other U.S. general.
Born in 1895 to a prominent Virginia family, Patton had a profound sense of personal destiny from his earliest childhood: At the age of five, he announced to his parents that he intended to become “a great general.” He graduated from West Point in 1909 and rose from a young lieutenant to the rank of captain in World War I. On the creation of the Armored Force in 1940, he was appointed to command and train the “Hell on Wheels” 2nd Armored Division. Promoted to general, he led an initially disorganized U.S. Seventh Army in 1942 and '43 to victory in Tunisia and Sicily. But despite his undisputed tactical brilliance, his fierce, mercurial temperament landed him in trouble with his superiors as often as not. On New Year's Day 1944, command of the Seventh Army was taken away from him. He had—on two occasions that made world headlines the previous fall—slapped young soldiers suffering from battle fatigue; he considered the malady to be cowardice. Striking a subordinate was a court-martial offense. Only the intervention of his longtime supporters Dwight Eisenhower and George Marshall saved Patton from having to resign—and perhaps the stockade.
Patton intended to make the Third Army his redemption, the linchpin and consolidation of his role in history: When he was assigned command of the army in January, he wrote in his diary, “As far as I can remember this is my twenty-seventh start from zero since entering the U.S. Army. Each time I have made a success of it, and this must be the biggest.” Though he was not directly involved in the planning of D-Day (he was used as the decoy commander of a phantom invasion force in order to dupe the Germans), his Third Army staff kept him abreast of the details. According to intelligence liaison Oscar Koch, when Patton was first shown an operational map of France early in 1944, he said the map was fine, then smiled. “But it only goes as far east as Paris. I'm going to Berlin.” Patton's lightning-fast advance toward this objective in August was soon to be halted: He was to be stalled throughout the fall in the Lorraine region, outside of Metz, in the Saar Basin. This was the northeasternmost corner of France, forty short miles from the Siegfried Line, a series of massive fortifications designed to protect Germany from land invasion. The Third Army was there to encounter its bloodiest fighting of the war; and the 761st Tank Battalion was to play a key role in Patton's attempt to seal his reputation and make history.
ON SEPTEMBER 8, the members of the 761st boarded the train at Avonmouth that would take them on to Wimborne, twenty miles from the southern coast of England. Located amid the jewel-green hills of Dorset County, Wimborne had been a sleepy market town before World War II; during the war, houses, estates, and hotels were taken over to billet soldiers bound for France. As per Army policy, the battalion's six white officers were quartered apart from its thirty black officers in the rooms of an estate. The enlisted men stayed in a barn and series of outbuildings on the estate grounds.
They had finally been told that France was their ultimate destination. Couriers were sent to Southampton to make final preparations for their Channel crossing, which they were informed would take place on or shortly after September 30. The men were also told that they would indeed be fighting in tanks, though they hadn't yet received the new equipment. Leonard Smith couldn't believe his good fortune. He had been afraid he'd never get the chance to fight, much less in a tank. He couldn't wait to see his new Sherman. Pop Gates, who had always looked out for Smith, tried to calm him down. War wasn't a game, he told him, they'd be going up against real bullets. But Smith was too excited to listen. William McBurney, though more reserved and cautious by nature, couldn't help but be equally excited at the chance to prove himself.
One of the officers, however, was less than enthusiastic: Maj. Charles Wingo, the battalion's executive officer. Despite the battalion's excellent record throughout training, Wingo had told Able Company's Capt. David Williams that he didn't believe the men would perform well under fire. “What in the world is the War Department thinking about? These folks aren't fit for combat.” Williams, too, had his doubts. Fair-minded but strict, he had continued to be a bit wary of the men (and they of him), at times erring in interpreting the humorous vein in which some of his soldiers took what would otherwise have been an untenable situation—training to fight in an army that viewed them as less than fully able—as a lack of discipline. While Lt. Col. Paul Bates had no doubts whatsoever about the abilities of the men, ever thoughtful and sober-minded, he couldn't keep himself from reflecting that some of them would not be coming home.
Warren Crecy and the quiet, serious Horatio Scott spent most of their free time at Wimborne writing letters home. Leonard Smith, William McBurney, and Preston McNeil took whatever opportunity they could to head to the nearby towns.
By the fall of 1944, more than 100,000 African American soldiers were stationed in or had passed through England on their way to war, most of them in quartermaster and service units. Young English women seemed to enjoy dancing and socializing with both white and black American soldiers. But many white American soldiers resented any contact between black troops and English women, and tried to impose American—particularly Southern—social mores, like forcing blacks to get off sidewalks to let white soldiers pass, and regulating which pubs and theaters blacks could attend. This may have contributed to the Army's decision to billet the 761st in Wimborne, far from any large towns.
In the unsegregated cities of England, clashes between white and black American soldiers had been frequent. In Launceston, in September 1943, black ordnance soldiers who were ordered to leave a pub by white soldiers returned, armed with guns; two MPs were wounded, and fourteen of the blacks were court-martialed. In Leicester, also in September 1943, white soldiers harassed mixed couples in the city's streets, with one incident escalating to a riot in which a white MP was killed. In Bristol, in July 1944, white soldiers attacked and badly beat several members of a black truck battalion; the incident escalated to a riot in which a black GI was shot and killed by MPs. One African American private stationed in England went so far as to cable First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who had pushed hard to integrate the Armed Forces: “This is a rather hard thing for me to do since it is my first time but I am very much sure that you have read many similar. We are, my unit, in a very tense situation and I am hoping you can hel
p us in some way. We were told there was no segregation here in England, it isn't from the people, they are fine, only from our officers. . . . We are forbidden any recreation that might cause us to mix as a whole with the people. We are a Negro unit, I do hope you can help us in some way.”
The letter underlined a contradiction faced by every black soldier, draftee or volunteer, in the U.S. Armed Forces at that time. They considered themselves first and foremost Americans, and were honored to fight in the nation's service. But they also had to internalize and transcend the knowledge that they were viewed, at best, as second-class citizens by the brass and many of their fellow soldiers—and often, far worse, as incompetent and cowardly. It was one of the tragic ironies that African Americans had come to understand as something they just had to live with.
The men of the 761st found the citizens of Wimborne and the surrounding towns wary of them at first. Over time, they got along well, dancing and drinking in the local pubs. They discovered that the townspeople weren't prejudiced themselves, but that some of the white American soldiers stationed nearby had warned the British townspeople that they were violent and untrustworthy.
Preston McNeil resented this. He had hoped such behavior had been left behind in Louisiana and Texas. It hurt to be seen as dangerous, as less than human, simply because of the color of his skin. But it didn't change the reasons for which he had originally volunteered. America was his country; he wanted to help defend it. He also hoped—as did many of the battalion's members—that in doing his part and proving himself on the battlefield, he would help make life better in America for himself and other African Americans when he returned. As they prepared to enter combat, McNeil and the other men of the 761st put aside the feelings of anger and confusion engendered by the ignorance and ill-will they faced; they put themselves into positive frames of mind that would allow them to perform to the capability of their training, a capability that perhaps only they themselves were truly aware of and confident in. Their ability to act as an effective fighting force, and their own survival as individuals, depended on it.
ON OCTOBER 5, the 761st Tank Battalion was officially assigned to Gen. George S. Patton's Third Army. Patton's injunction to his lieutenants—the same message Patton sent to all corps, division, and battalion commanders in his army—was clear: “Each, in his appropriate sphere, will lead in person. Any commander who fails to obtain his objective, and who is not dead or seriously wounded, has not done his full duty!” Patton's fiery rhetoric, and the fact that he himself was known to lead in person on the battlefield, helped to inspire strong loyalty among his troops. The men of the 761st, who had seen news clips celebrating Patton's victories, were inspired by the force of his personality, high standards, and example. They would have followed him into hell. And against the entrenched German resistance in the Saar Basin, the members of the 761st would in fact encounter what one war correspondent termed “a living nightmare of bloody hell.” The 761st had been called up to join the Third Army as part of a massive new offensive, Patton's plan to break through the Siegfried Line and push toward Berlin.
From the end of August to the beginning of October 1944, Patton's Third Army had moved forward less than fifty miles. Patton's lightning-fast drive across France and toward the Rhine had been halted near the Saar Basin at the end of August—not by any German resistance but rather by the Allied high command. The stunning success of Patton's breakout from Normandy had created a logistical nightmare: The Allies had advanced, by mid-September 1944, to positions the Allied planners had not expected them to reach until May 1945. British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery's 21st Army Group was positioned north of Paris, with Montgomery hoping to push north through Belgium and Holland, across the Rhine, and into Germany's crucial Ruhr industrial region, thus ending the war quickly. The general who forced the Germans to capitulate would be remembered forever in the annals of history; Montgomery wanted very badly to be that man. Patton, too, considered himself the man to end the war.
But there were not enough supplies and not enough of a transportation infrastructure to keep both Patton's and Montgomery's armies in motion. The French railroads had been all but decimated by Allied and German bombs. A special one-way trucking system was created to carry rations, ammunition, and gasoline inland from Normandy; the most intrepid and highly effective of the supply units was the “Red Ball Express,” an African American quartermaster regiment that often crossed territory that had not been fully secured under heavy fire to reach the front. But the combined Allied armies in Europe consumed more than 800,000 gallons of gasoline per day, and supply lines had simply been stretched too far—over three hundred miles from the Normandy beachheads. The trucks could not carry enough supplies to support offensives by two full army groups. Montgomery's offensive was given priority. Throughout September and October, though the lack of supplies precluded any major assault, Patton was determined to make periodic forays to “straighten out” his front and secure a better line of departure for his own massive offensive. He furiously advocated that he be given the men and equipment necessary to move forward in November.
Patton's successes thus far in Europe had rested on the highly coordinated deployment of infantry, artillery, airpower, and the divisions with which Patton's name was later to be considered synonymous—crack Sherman units. The one advantage the Sherman tanks held over the more heavily armored and more powerful Panzer and Tiger tanks was their greater maneuverability; to this end, highly trained crews were essential. Patton described a tank fight in the simplest terms, as “just like a barroom fight—the fellow who gets the hit wins. Our men . . . are magnificent shots. . . . The whole thing in tank fighting is to train crews not as individuals but as crews.”
Patton's Third Army had sustained heavy tank losses even amid the relative ease of its push across France in August: By August 26, the 4th and 6th Armored Divisions, in spearheading for Patton's forces, had lost a total of 269 tanks. In September and October, though Patton's operations were limited in scope, both infantry and armored units took high casualties: A special truckload of supplies had to be sent from Normandy to the Third Army's graves registration squad, including 3,000 personal-effects bags. Patton desperately needed replacements—and, more than anything, trained Sherman crews.
Patton had no great regard for African Americans; his letters and private journals abound with racist stereotypes and rhetoric. He was, however, perhaps above all else a consummate pragmatist. When manpower later grew short in Europe in the winter of 1945, he was one of the first American generals to integrate his rifle units. And in October 1944, when he needed all available skilled Sherman crews to spearhead his planned assault on the Siegfried Line, he called for the 761st. He was fully aware that this would make them the first African American armored unit to be deployed in battle: Most of the Army's brain trust believed their deployment would be a waste of equipment. But Patton was running out of options. Had anyone of less than his stature called for the battalion, they might never have been allowed to see action.
As the men of the 761st spent their final days in Wimborne, they had no idea they were about to make Army history. All they knew was that they were black Americans trained to fight. They wanted to prove themselves in battle, just as they had at Camp Claiborne and Camp Hood. They were also unaware of the import of the offensive they were about to join—Patton's push into Germany to end the war. In the Army, as with most organizations, the farther down one goes in the structure of command, the less one knows. At the level of the enlisteds, as GIs everywhere were fond of saying, “you don't know shit.” All they knew as soldiers was that the brass would tell them to go in a certain direction and that's where they went; told to take a hill without knowledge of the why or wherefore, they'd give everything they had to try to take it.
On October 7, the unit's full battery of fifty-six M-4 Sherman and seventeen M-5 Stuart tanks was delivered to the battalion. They immediately felt reassured. Wherever they were going, they'd be fighting in tanks. They
'd be doing what they were trained to do. The majority of the medium tanks they received were the most recent model of the Sherman, the M4A3E8, known by tank crews as the “Easy Eight” because of its improved suspension and smoother ride. The Easy Eight, in addition to a better suspension system, had slightly thicker armor, safer stowage racks for ammunition, and—most important of all—a higher-velocity cannon. They were still “iron coffins,” far outgunned by the Panzers, which could cut right through them, but at least they had more firepower. The original 75mm of the M-4s had a muzzle velocity of 2,050 feet per second; the longer-barreled 76mm of the M4A3E8 had a muzzle velocity of 2,900 fps, an improvement of almost 50 percent. Leonard Smith and the rest of his crew dubbed their new tank “Cool Stud,” after their first Sherman at Camp Hood.
The battalion was notified that it would be moving out that afternoon. The men drove the tanks twenty miles south to the small fishing port of Weymouth, all five crew members of each tank standing up and looking out the hatches. When they passed some white soldiers along the way, one of them called out in a friendly tone of voice, “Who are you boys taking them to?” The soldiers had never seen blacks operating tanks, and assumed the crews were delivering them to another unit. Leonard Smith smiled and called back, “These are ours.” He and the other members of the battalion were justly proud of their tanks. On October 9, at Weymouth, the battalion loaded their tanks, assault guns, and mortars onto the LSTs (for Landing Ship, Tank) that were to take them across the Channel.
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