Though the 761st had trained to work together as a single unit, the 26th Infantry Division intended to break the battalion up in the coming assault to provide firepower and fill in holes wherever it deemed necessary. This was entirely in keeping with the Armored Force's guidelines for the deployment of separate tank battalions. But it made the tankers of the separate battalions themselves feel like bastards—illegitimate, at sea, ignored—as they were shifted from unit to unit within the 15,000-man divisions.
American infantry divisions in World War II contained three “regiments” of 3,000 men apiece; these regiments were further divided into three 500-man rifle battalions; battalions were further divided into three 189-man rifle companies; each company was further divided into three platoons. Separate tank battalions would be broken up along company (15-tank), platoon (5-tank), and even individual tank lines to support infantry regiments, battalions, companies, platoons—wherever a tank or group of tanks was requested. This could be a dizzying and—depending on how much the infantry officers to whom they reported did and did not know about tanks—profoundly unsettling experience for the tankers.
The three regiments of the 26th Infantry Division were the 101st, 104th, and 328th Infantry Regiments. Able Company had been sent to the 104th Infantry Regiment. Capt. David Williams was in for a rude shock when he reported to the 104th, and was told that one of his three platoons would be taken away from him, to fight alongside a battalion of the 101st Regiment. He felt nauseated: He had gotten his mind around fighting apart from the rest of the 761st but had not counted on losing one of his platoons. He accompanied Able Company's best platoon leader, 1st Lt. Samuel Barbour, to the 101st Regiment's nearby headquarters, where he was shaken still further. The 101st Regiment's commander told Barbour that he intended to send the platoon's Shermans to attack single-file straight down a road—where, as both Williams and Barbour knew from their training at Camp Hood, one well-positioned antitank gun could annihilate all five tanks. But such was the structure of command that they had no choice.
EARLY ON THE MORNING of November 7, the 761st's remaining four companies—Baker, Charlie, Dog, and Headquarters—were ordered to leave the bivouac area at St. Nicholas as well. They were to fight as part of a task force including the 328th Regiment, one company of the 101st Regiment, and the 691st Tank Destroyer Battalion. The company commanders informed their men that they would be attacking at dawn on the eighth. They had little time to worry. Before leaving camp, they had to make sure they had their full supply of 75mm or 76mm, .30- and .50-caliber ammunition, and were gassed up. Gunners had to zero in the tank gun, put a cross on it, and line up the sight. The crews checked over every piece of equipment before lining up in column formation and rolling east toward the village of Athainville. They traveled slowly, at four miles an hour, to save fuel. By the time they arrived, the weather had turned to freezing rain. They stopped for the night in a sodden field. The mud got inside their boots and somehow found its way into their C rations. They were less than five miles from the front. They had yet to meet the infantrymen beside whom they would be fighting.
Captain Williams's two platoons of Able Company, closer to the front at Bezange-la-Grande, were camped directly beside a detachment of soldiers of the 104th Infantry Regiment. Floyd Dade, the diligent, eager young recruit from Arkansas who had joined the 761st at Camp Hood, was the first to introduce himself. He did so not without some trepidation, after the battalion's experiences with white soldiers in training and in England. Some of the troops with whom the 761st was later to fight—green recruits facing battle for the first time—resented the fact that their armored support consisted of African Americans, felt cheated, betrayed, even set up to die, and voiced these sentiments within earshot. But the 761st was fortunate in its first assignment. The 26th Infantry Division had originally been created from several New England national guard units (hence its nickname, the “Yankee Division”). Most of its members were northeasterners, and while not all of them had risen above the prevailing prejudices of the time, the division had been fighting in Lorraine without tanks since early October, and the vast majority were simply so glad—as the major offensive approached—to have tank support that it made little difference to them who was at the helm. A few of the soldiers asked Floyd Dade where he was from, and he did the same; they traded C rations and talked about their hometowns, about sports, in particular a shared love of football. They talked well into the night, as most of them knew they wouldn't sleep anyway, talking about anything but what they were fully aware was coming within a matter of hours.
EATING FROM THEIR C RATIONS near Athainville, the men of Headquarters, Baker, Charlie, and Dog Companies talked in small groups. William McBurney checked and rechecked his “grease gun”—an odd-shaped, compact, .45-caliber submachine gun that was standard issue for tankers. Several of the men prayed together: Preston McNeil found that he wasn't the only one raised by a Holy Roller. Many were past the pretense of youthful bravado and were frankly scared. The impression some of the men had formed was that they, a battalion, were being sent to take a hill an entire division had been unable to take. The 761st had in fact been told by an officer of XII Corps that one of the positions they were to attack was a “big hill,” Hill 253; the GI rumor mill had it that the crack 4th Armored Division had previously tried but failed to capture 253, and some of the men believed they were being set up to fail. (What the 761st had no way of knowing was that only a small group from the 4th had been involved, and had been starved at the time of ammunition and supplies.)
Lieutenant Colonel Bates had gone ahead to the 328th Regiment's forward posts to make a personal reconnaissance on foot, slipping through the mud to scout for himself the exact terrain conditions his men would face. In Bates's absence, the men built one another up, just as they'd done throughout training. Smith walked around encouraging his more anxious friends, as if they were a sports team the night before a big game. They were determined to show the Army and the Germans that they could take whatever came their way, that as black soldiers they were as good as or better than any other unit. Some of the men couldn't get past the worry that they weren't going to make it, that their superiors might have been sending them to die. But that sort of pessimism only made the majority all the more determined to do the best fighting they could and to look out for one another.
THE HARSH WEATHER SHOWED no signs of abating. Maj. Gen. Manton S. Eddy, commander of XII Corps, and Maj. Gen. Robert Grow, commander of the 6th Armored Division, visited Patton that night at his headquarters. The two highly distinguished veterans of Tunisia, Sicily, and Normandy took what was for them an unprecedented step—begging Patton to call off the attack. They voiced their belief that the severe weather conditions would preclude success. Patton brusquely responded that the campaign would go forward as planned. If either man refused, he was invited to make recommendations for a replacement. Patton later wrote his wife that though he “declined” to call off the attack, “it took some doing, as the ground is a bog.” As he prepared to go up to bed, he paused at the bottom of the stairs, telling his personal aide, Lt. Col. Charles R. Codman, “I think this has been the longest day of my life.”
Patton woke at 3 o'clock the next morning, the morning that was to be the start of his great “Battle of Germany,” to find it raining worse than ever. Questioning his earlier decision, he repeated to himself his motto: “Don't take council of your fears. Demand the impossible.” At 5:15 he was awakened again, by the sound of the Third Army's heavy artillery. In preparation for the tank and infantry assaults of XII Corps, a massive force of more than five hundred guns had begun firing on enemy positions at 4:30. Patton described the sound, from his quarters twenty miles away, as “like the constant slamming of heavy doors in a large empty house.”
UP CLOSE, JUST BEHIND THE FRONT, the bombardment was deafening. The exploding shells sounded to Leonard Smith like the immediate crack of a lightning strike multiplied a thousand times. The force was unimaginable, ramming every nerv
e. The men knew that's what they were heading into. They had slept (those who were able to) in uniform inside their tanks, hatches closed against the driving rain. The turrets reeked of fuel and sweat. In the predawn darkness, company commanders gave the order to turn the tanks over. The tanks of Baker, Charlie, Dog, and Headquarters Companies started all together, like the Indianapolis 500. Colonel Bates led the way forward in his jeep. They rolled directly east in a column. Tank destroyers and trucked infantry of the 101st and 328th Regiments soon joined them.
Two miles down the road, near the town of Arracourt, they came to a sudden halt. A French farmer had blocked the crossroads with his herd of cattle. He was almost certainly a collaborator sent to disrupt American troop movements. Lorraine had passed repeatedly between French and German hands in the past two centuries: The Germans had deliberately maneuvered to increase their influence and create loyalty whenever they had control, shaping a populace split between pro-French and pro-German factions. Lieutenant Colonel Bates personally placed the farmer under arrest, then ordered several of the infantrymen accompanying the tanks to clear the road.
Just shy of the front, Bates left his jeep to direct the tank crews. The tank commanders had been told which way to go the day before, but Bates had since learned of an impassable, flooded area and had shifted their axis of approach by thirty degrees. It was daybreak and the men, seeing Bates, waved, then buttoned up their hatches and kept going. The Germans had begun to return artillery fire. The road was targeted, and shells exploded all around Bates. He nonetheless continued to stand in place, directing vehicles until the entire column had passed. Before he could make his way back to his jeep, a German patrol that had infiltrated behind American lines opened fire.
Bleeding heavily, Bates told medics who came to administer aid that he intended to remain with the battalion. His bullet wounds were severe enough, however, that the medics gave him no choice but to be evacuated. Word spread anxiously from tank to tank along the column that Lieutenant Colonel Bates was gone.
Maj. Charles Wingo—who had never had faith in the men—was second in command. Wingo left Headquarters Company and drove off in his jeep toward the front. Not long afterward, the tank crews sighted him heading back the other way. He kept on going. (Though he could have been court-martialed, Doc Adamson took pity on the terrified major and diagnosed him with “battle fatigue.”) The men were on their own.
The column consisting—from front to back—of Baker, Charlie, Dog, and Headquarters Companies continued its move toward the battlefront. The enemy shelling had stopped for the moment, and some of the men ventured to look out their hatches. William McBurney spotted a dead horse just off the road. It had been hit by an artillery shell with such force that it was essentially turned inside out, the strange pale lines of its intestines fully exposed. Though in the unit's trek across France he had seen various marks of devastation—buildings reduced to rubble, bombed-out tanks and half-tracks, ruined fields—for some reason this sight disturbed him more than anything and brought home to him with utter clarity where he was and what he was facing.
Preston McNeil and the five M-5 Stuart tanks of his platoon were just ahead of Headquarters. McNeil kept in radio contact with his company commander, careful to speak in code; he could switch off that network to speak more freely to his crew via intercom. Dog Company's platoon leaders received orders to stop on the road at 6 A.M.: They were to stand back in reserve while Baker and Charlie proceeded into battle. McNeil took the opportunity to step out from his tank and personally check on his platoon. He had to shout to be heard: The roar of the combat ahead was intense. McNeil went from tank to tank, reassuring his men and nodding encouragement to the infantrymen grouped around them, some of whom had pulled out cigarettes. Suddenly McNeil saw the infantrymen falling on all sides. There had been no warning. He didn't understand what was happening until he heard some of them screaming. Artillery shells were raining on them from out of nowhere. McNeil rushed back to his tank and buttoned up, pressing his face against his periscope. The Germans—once Baker and Charlie rolled out to battle—must have targeted the ridge to disrupt supply lines.
Leonard Smith's “Cool Stud” was the last tank in the column, still moving forward toward the stopping point. Smith and the rest of his crew could hear the enemy shelling up ahead. An American jeep swerved up from behind them and screeched to a halt. A young, thin-faced white officer jumped out and signaled for them to stop. He climbed atop the Sherman and informed them that he was an artillery observer, assigned to their vehicle. He took the tank commander's position, ordering Smith's tank to pull out and move forward to the edge of the ridge, to provide him with a view of the battlefield so he could report on enemy positions to American artillery teams.
As the Sherman started moving up, the young officer—standing with his head and shoulders protruding from the turret—was struck with shrapnel from an exploding shell. Smith, below in the loader's position, didn't realize what had happened until a fountain of blood started pouring down on him.
The hit had put a hole in the artillery observer's jaw. Smith tried ineffectually to staunch the wound and reassure the stunned officer, while the gunner closed the hatch, called for the driver to stop, and radioed back for medics.
NEAR BEZANGE-LA-GRANDE, the separate combat team consisting of the 104th Infantry Regiment and Captain Williams's two platoons of Able Company entered battle. The platoon led by 1st Lt. Joseph Kahoe, and that led by 2nd Lt. Robert Hammond, moved up the narrow muddy road from the outskirts of Bezange-la-Grande to a ridge overlooking the village of Vic-sur-Seille. At 5:15, Williams and his reserve tank led them down to the bottom of the hill. Infantrymen beginning to cross the mile-long meadow between the ridge and Vic-sur-Seille were already under fire, diving down in the mud then getting up to dart forward again. Williams stopped as he had been trained to do, taking up a command position concealed by brush at the edge of the meadow. The five tanks of Kahoe's platoon moved past Williams to the left, heading forward defilade—like a football blocking line—to cover the infantrymen with machine-gun and cannon fire. Hammond's platoon continued straight toward Vic-sur-Seille, intending to fire high-explosive ammunition on the town to clear the way for infantry.
The overriding impression of the tank crews heading into combat was a chaos of noise. With limited vision, all eyes pressed anxiously to the narrow periscopes, sound was the tanker's best ally and worst nightmare—constant radio traffic, the engine, the thudding and recoil of their own cannons, and the earsplitting crashes of incoming shells. Gunners and bow gunners followed the tank commander's orders. Loaders yanked HE and AP shells from racks on the turret walls and rammed them into the breech. Drivers struggled to keep moving forward, finding the Duckbills little help against the torrents of mud.
The ridge from which Able's tanks had departed was quickly zeroed by German artillery. Supply, medical, and headquarters detachments beyond the hill were in turmoil under heavy shelling. Captain Williams, in radio contact with his assistant above at the 104th Regiment's 1st Battalion headquarters, learned that the 1st Battalion's commander was so unnerved by the intensity of the fire that he had to be relieved from duty. Clifford Adams, a young private from Waco, Texas, in the 761st's medical detachment, was struck and killed by fragments from an exploding shell.
Nineteen-year-old Floyd Dade was among those moving forward in the first tank. Straining to see what little he could out of his periscope, he was astonished by the courage of the infantrymen they supported. The infantry took countless hits in the open field but kept going. The foot soldiers had never fought with tanks before and initially stayed too close beside the vehicles—working on the natural assumption that thirty-two tons of steel would provide them with cover more effectively to fire from. But the Sherman was essentially a big, wide, high-silhouetted target, drawing enemy small-arms, automatic, mortar, and artillery fire. The infantrymen quickly learned to spread out. Lieutenant Kahoe radioed the tank commanders to remind their gunners to aim high, t
o avoid hitting the American infantry charging on all sides through the field.
Dade, acting as loader, could hear machine-gun bullets ricocheting off his tank's turret. The bullets did not penetrate and he started thinking maybe they'd be okay. But the bullets proved to be tracer fire. A German antitank crew had them zeroed in. The Sherman happened to hit a dip in the field at the exact moment the shot came in. The armor-piercing 88 would have gone directly through the turret, immediately killing Dade and the gunner—but because of that dip it sheared off the .50-caliber machine-gun mount instead. The force of the blast rocked the tank. The cut to the gun mount was smooth and precise, as though someone had burned it off with a blowtorch. But the 76mm cannon and .30-caliber machine guns were still intact, and the crew kept fighting forward.
The fields and roads Able Company's tanks were crossing had been thickly sewn with mines. Two tanks were soon disabled by explosions, their tracks blown off; fortunately, no crew members were killed. Hammond's platoon closed in on Vic-sur-Seille, with twenty-six-year-old S. Sgt. Ruben Rivers, from Holtulka, Oklahoma, commanding the lead tank. Two hundred yards outside of town, the narrow road was blocked by a large felled tree that the Germans had mined and covered with small-arms fire. The road was the only route into town: The 104th Regiment's advance could have been halted for several hours. Standard military procedure dictated that Rivers's tank should stay back, shooting high-explosive shells for effect while the infantry attempted—at great cost—to clear the surrounding area so that the tree could safely be removed. Rivers saw enemy mortar and rifle fire devastating the American infantrymen stationed in the ditches beside the road.
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