Sergeant Rivers ordered his driver to roll forward. Watching through his field glasses, Captain Williams was stunned to see Rivers jump out of the turret of his tank, crawling ahead carrying his tank's tow cable. The Germans had attached a number of antipersonnel and antitank mines to the tree. Rivers moved carefully to fasten his cable to the tree trunk, exposed to small-arms fire. A brace of mortars exploded less than twenty yards away, sending up sheets of mud and shrapnel. But Rivers continued painstakingly to encircle the trunk. He then calmly remounted his tank and ordered the crew to back up, pulling the tree off the road—and exploding several mines in the process. Rivers had cleared the way for the attack to continue.
Rivers's tank and the rest of Robert Hammond's platoon moved ahead into Vic-sur-Seille, firing high-explosive shells into upper-level windows to take out German sniper and machine-gun posts while the infantry began battling house to house. Joseph Kahoe's platoon had crossed the meadow and opened fire on the opposite side of town.
AMONG THE ENEMY FORCES entrenched in the 26th Infantry Division's battle zone were the 361st and 559th Volksgrenadier Divisions—lightly trained units that nonetheless had the advantages of terrain and superior position—as well as one of Germany's finest military outfits, the 11th Panzer Division. The crack 11th Panzers had won victories throughout North Africa and on the Russian front, and were reinforced in Lorraine by 12,000 reserve troops and several dozen tanks and assault guns.
Charlie Company and the 328th Regiment were hit with a hail of mortar and artillery fire immediately as they moved down the ridge. Second Lieutenant Jay E. Johnson, commanding the first platoon of Charlie, was severely injured and temporarily blinded when a shell exploded near his tank. Charlie Company's remaining tanks gave covering machine-gun and cannon fire to infantrymen entering their first objective, the village of Bezange-la-Petite. One of the 328th Regiment's medics, Corp. Alfred L. Wilson, was hit while administering aid to a fallen infantrymen. Though in great pain and losing blood, he continued to crawl from one patient to another to give aid, well aware that there weren't enough medics to handle the high number of casualties. Even when he was too weak to move Wilson refused to be evacuated, verbally directing unskilled soldiers in treating their comrades' wounds until he lost consciousness. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.
The battle spread north toward the “big hill,” Hill 253. A German HE 88 exploded just above the lead tank of one of Charlie Company's three platoons, commanded by S. Sgt. Harvey Woodard. The tank did not appear to have been hit, but soon came to a stop in the middle of the field as the fighting continued around it. The tank's hatches remained closed and no crew members emerged. Other tank commanders in the platoon attempted repeatedly to contact Woodard by radio and received no answer. Two other tanks were soon disabled by mines and enemy shells: Corp. James Edwards and S. Sgt. Samuel F. Saunders were critically injured and had to be evacuated by medics.
Dog and Headquarters Companies waited back on the ridge. Wingo's departure and the injuries to Lt. Colonel Bates and the artillery observer had forced a change in plans for Headquarters. Captain Harrison ordered the company's three Sherman tanks to stand back and guard the supply train, which had just arrived and was unloading. The tank commanders kept track of the unfolding combat as best they could over their radios. Leonard Smith's crew had shifted positions after the artillery observer was evacuated (they never learned what became of him). Gunner Daniel Cardell became Smith's tank commander, and Smith moved up to his dream position, the gunner's seat. The bow gunner had taken Smith's place as loader. Cardell, hearing the shouts and carnage below, told his crew, “They're tearing up C Company.” Cardell decided, on his own, that they should go forward to try to help.
Smith's Sherman rolled east, when suddenly it hit either a natural dip in the ground or a tank trap. Driver Hollis Clark kept gunning it, trying to move forward or back out, but was unable to free the tank. Among the many vulnerabilities of the M-4 Sherman was a tendency for its exhaust to become blocked, allowing deadly carbon monoxide gas to back up inside the turret. Smith, with his slight frame, was the canary in the coal mine. He immediately passed out—and the others, realizing what had happened, switched off the engine and jumped out. Cardell pulled Smith up onto the turret to see if fresh air would revive him. It didn't: The crew couldn't see Smith breathing, could not feel a pulse, and assumed that he was dead.
They left Smith's body atop the turret, running back toward the supply train to inform the battalion's ordnance team—responsible for reclaiming damaged vehicles—of the tank's position.
LATE THAT AFTERNOON, Baker and Charlie Companies along with the 26th Infantry finally captured Bezange-la-Petite and Hill 253. But the cost had been high for all units involved. The infantry suffered casualties numbering in the hundreds. Members of the 761st had continued to try to contact Charlie Company's S. Sgt. Harvey Woodard. The ordnance crew went out to Woodard's tank when the field had cleared. The hatches were locked and had to be cracked open one at a time. Inside the turret, Woodard, gunner Carlton Chapman, and loader L. C. Byrd were sitting in position with their eyes open: All three of the men were dead. When they opened the front two hatches, the team discovered driver Claude Mann and bow gunner Nathaniel Simmons dead as well. There were no visible signs of trauma. The precise cause of death remained a mystery. The men may have sustained internal injuries from the high-explosive blast; it was more likely they died as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Able Company had also captured its initial objective, the town of Vic-sur-Seille, after heavy fighting. Rolling through the town at the end of the day, Walter Lewis, the gunner in Lieutenant Kahoe's tank, was told by Kahoe to stick his head out of the turret. They were slowly approaching a dead German soldier lying in a gutter, blood streaming from his mangled body and pooling in the street. It was a man Lewis himself had killed. Gunners didn't often see the men they shot. Lewis never forgot it.
Floyd Dade, stepping out of his tank when the fighting had ended, asked after the infantrymen he'd talked with late into the previous night. Each time he asked a foot soldier, “Have you seen Private So-and-so?” he was told, “He got hit a while back.”
THE BATTALION'S ORDNANCE UNIT had been too busy to recover Leonard Smith's “Cool Stud” tank. Smith woke late on the afternoon of the eighth to find himself draped across the turret. He heard the voices of German soldiers. An enemy patrol was approaching. Smith quickly decided his best bet was to lie there as though he'd been killed—a deception in which he could only pray he'd be helped by the artillery observer's caked blood on his uniform.
With the guttural voices drawing closer, Smith tried to remember the sequence of events that had brought him to this point. It was an odd, inglorious introduction to war. The voices approached within yards, but none of the patrol stopped to check if he was still alive. Smith's seemingly boundless luck held true. The voices faded into the distance. Smith wasn't taking any chances. He stayed there, not moving, until dark. Then he climbed down into the turret, locked the hatch, and went to sleep.
AT HIS HEADQUARTERS IN NANCY on the evening of the eighth, General Patton was pleased with the slow but sure progress made by the 80th, 35th, and 26th Divisions along the XII Corps front. The 80th Division had taken the towns of Aulnois-sur-Seille and Mailly-sur-Seille, and the 35th had captured Malaucourt-sur-Seille and Jallaucourt, advances equal in distance with the 26th's capture of Vic-sur-Seille and Bezange-la-Petite. At 10 A.M., the skies had cleared and the XIX Air Tactical Command had been able to make several strategic runs against enemy headquarters. It was a rare stroke of good fortune; the rain soon returned and remained for the rest of the month. But that evening, Patton was in good spirits.
Baker, Charlie, Dog, and Headquarters Companies of the 761st set up defensive perimeters outside Bezange-la-Petite and bivouacked for the night. William McBurney and Willie Devore had learned of Leonard Smith's apparent death. The news hit Smith's buddy, Willie Devore, the hardest. It was difficult for al
l the men, particularly because their sorrow was mixed with the feelings of relief and even joy that they themselves had survived. Pop Gates had to put his grief aside as he checked and prepared the assault guns for what was likely to be a worse day of fighting to come.
ALONE IN THE WOODS, Leonard Smith woke just before dawn. He climbed out of the tank, unarmed. He didn't see a living soul anywhere. He was trying to decide just what to do when a grizzled German soldier appeared, walking toward him, holding a rifle up in the air.
Smith couldn't understand what the man was saying. The soldier wasn't shooting, he was holding the rifle with both hands above his head. It took Smith a moment to realize that the man intended to surrender. He took the rifle from him. He had no idea where he was or where the rest of his unit had gone. He figured the German would know the way. Smith signaled for the soldier to start walking, and followed him. They reached a road and walked for a while before they heard the sound of tanks approaching. Smith felt a moment's panic—then excitement as he realized the tanks were American. They were, in fact, a column of the 761st. The crews were so glad to see the resurrected Smith that they stood up, waving and cheering. He was a hero after all.
Smith turned his “prisoner” over to MPs at the rear of the column. He then ran and jumped up to rejoin his crew, who had been given another tank on which they'd already taken the time to paint the words “Cool Stud.”
NOVEMBER 9 WOULD BE ONE OF the few days of the war when all four letter companies of the 761st were assigned to fight toward the same objective, the heavily fortified town of Morville-les-Vic. The town itself was less than a mile square, but of critical strategic value: It was situated along the main road to the 26th Division's first goals for the Saar Campaign (ten miles distant), Rodalbe and Benestroff. Able Company was to cover the west flank of the attack, taking the neighboring city of Château-Salins with the 101st Infantry Regiment quickly after dawn. Baker Company was to enter Morville-les-Vic from the southwest via the main road, covering elements of the 26th Infantry Division in what was likely to be very bitter house-to-house fighting. Dog Company was to guard the east flank, supporting the infantry in taking the town of Salival and then screening the nearby woods to keep German relief forces from reaching Morville. Charlie Company would push ahead through the woods, approaching Morville from the east and north and thus completing the encirclement of the town. Headquarters Company—with its three Sherman tanks, and mortar and artillery platoons—was instructed to stand by as needed.
The 761st's company commanders had been briefed by infantry intelligence on terrain and antitank obstacles. They had been trained to rely on infantry reconnaissance. Even the most accomplished of infantry scouts, however—having no experience with Shermans—had little understanding of what constituted a threat for the tanks. Charlie Company's captain, Irvin McHenry, was assured that the approach for his unit from the northeast side of Morville was clear.
Just after dawn, Captain Williams's two platoons of Able Company waited on the hill to the southeast of Château-Salins while eight P-40-series fighter-bombers strafed the town. The infantrymen and tankers stood up to cheer them on. The poor weather had returned, a cold rain that soon turned to light snow, but the planes of the XIX Air Tactical Command continued to fly whenever possible in support of the ground forces. (They took such high risks in doing so that though their operations were grounded completely on twelve days in November, and limited on the remaining eighteen, they took as many casualties as they had during the previous three months combined.) After the bombardment of Château-Salins, Able Company's tanks rolled forward. They encountered only sporadic machine-gun and mortar fire. The tanks fanned out through streets filled with smoking rubble, covering the infantry as they cleared what was left of the town's buildings one at a time. To Captain Williams, the attack was working as it should, precisely as per their training in the States. Château-Salins was the first rail and communications center east of Nancy to be claimed by the 26th Division, and XII Corps would use the town as its headquarters for the next few weeks of the Saar Campaign.
BAKER, DOG, AND CHARLIE COMPANIES would not be so fortunate. A young driver in a Charlie Company tank was terrified and literally shaking that morning at the prospect of another day under fire. Sam Turley, the company's first sergeant—known throughout the 761st as the best first sergeant in the battalion—was supposed to stay back and supervise the company's progress by radio from a command post. Instead, he willingly volunteered to take the frightened driver's place. This would prove to be Charlie's one piece of good luck.
In its approach on Morville-les-Vic from the south, Baker Company was slowed by a series of roadblocks covered with machine and antitank guns. The Shermans worked for several hours in close concert with infantrymen of the 26th Division to clear the obstacles, firing their .30- and .50-caliber machine guns to cover the infantry while the infantry fanned out to spot and eliminate Panzerfaust and other antitank teams. When Baker and the foot soldiers finally reached the outskirts of town, the Shermans fired high-explosive shells to clear a path—but, as it turned out, with only limited effect. Realizing the importance of Morville as a passageway to the east, the Germans had manned the vast majority of buildings. German machine-gun and bazooka teams were strategically placed overlooking every intersection, and carefully positioned in cellars and upper-level windows throughout the town. The infantrymen fanned out with Baker's tanks in close support, firing their cannons to eliminate positions as the German teams opened fire and revealed themselves.
At an intersection two-thirds of the way through Morville, while taking up position to fire on a building containing several gun posts, the tank commanded by Sgt. Roy King took a direct hit from a Panzerfaust. Gunner Herbert Porter was wounded by metal fragments. The tank caught fire. When Roy King and loader Nathaniel Ross opened the top hatch to escape, King was struck and killed by machine-gun fire. Ross was also hit but managed to jump down and take shelter. The two remaining crewmen, James Whitby and John McNeil, exited through the bottom escape hatch, carrying their grease guns. Herbert Porter, severely injured, also managed to climb out.
Germans continued firing on the tank. Several infantrymen rushing to the aid of the Sherman crew were struck and killed. From under the tank, John McNeil began firing his grease gun at German positions in the windows above. Whitby reentered the burning tank to man the tank's .30-caliber machine gun, blasting out several German machine-gun posts and a Panzerfaust unit, clearing the way for the infantry finally to take the buildings around the intersection.
IN THE FOREST NEAR THE town of Salival, Dog Company's “screening” operation had quickly devolved into a pitched battle. Dog Company's light tanks had started by shelling Salival to clear the way for an infantry assault, then had taken up position in the hills and woods around the town. Lacking full armor, the light tanks weren't made for direct combat. But the situation dictated that they fight.
Warren Crecy's driver, Harry Tyree, manuevering in the forest, heard a BOOM! as a German 75mm shell hit the assistant driver's side. The blast tore out the right side of the tank's suspension system. Crecy shouted, “I'm going to get 'em” and jumped out of the turret. Tyree watched in wonderment through his periscope as Crecy ran forward, commandeering a nearby jeep that was armed with only a .30-caliber machine gun. Driving straight into a hail of bullets, Crecy routed the enemy antitank crew, then continued forward to provide covering fire for a squad of infantrymen who were moving up to take out several German artillery observers. Quiet and thoughtful in most situations, Crecy became a man possessed going into battle.
Crecy and his crew took over a second tank and pressed on. This tank soon became mired in the dense mud. Harry Tyree, hearing German machine-gun bullets striking the sides of the vehicle, told Crecy he intended to stay put inside the hull. But Crecy dismounted. He was trying to determine how to brace his tank's tracks when he heard a machine-gun barrage erupt nearby. American infantry units crossing an open stretch of terrain below were taki
ng heavy casualties. Crecy climbed up on the rear of his immobilized tank, and, with no cover from incoming machine-gun fire, blasted at the enemy positions—allowing the American infantry to advance.
The Sherman tanks of Headquarters Company, along with the 105mm assault gun and mortar platoons, had moved up into the woods near Salival. In radio contact with the other companies, they could hear what was happening to Baker and Dog—and could hear that Charlie was being decimated. An American spotter plane sighted a relief column of two hundred German soldiers and thirty vehicles en route from the town of Hampont to the beleaguered Charlie Company's side of Morville. Pop Gates moved his five assault guns forward, trapping and destroying the enemy relief column with a well-executed indirect fire mission. This preemptive attack prevented a horrific situation from becoming even worse.
CHARLIE COMPANY HAD ENTERED BATTLE just after 9 A.M., pushing off ahead of Dog Company from the vicinity of Moyenvic toward the northern end of Morville. Charlie had such success in pressing through German-controlled terrain during this early part of the attack that it raced across a key bridge before the Germans had time to detonate it. The company began to be slowed, however, by a rain of carefully directed artillery fire from a German officer candidate school less than two miles away in the town of Marsal.
As 2nd Lt. Kenneth Coleman's platoon reached the outskirts of Morville, Coleman's tank took a direct hit from a nearby German antitank gun. His tank—the lead vehicle in the column—was immobilized. Though the five-man crew managed to evacuate safely, their tank now blocked the road, leaving the remainder of the platoon exposed. This was a common German tactic: When American tanks were in column formation, the Germans often waited until they drew close, then with pinpoint accuracy fired to disable the first and last tanks in the line. This left no exit for the other tanks—they were unable to move forward or back out—and the Germans could take their time picking them off one by one. Coleman reacted quickly, leading his crew on foot in an assault against the enemy artillery and small-arms positions overlooking the road. Though under fierce fire, armed with only grease guns on what should by all accounts have been a suicide mission, this crew succeeded in routing the German teams. Several of Coleman's men were hit in the attack and had to be evacuated. The damaged tank was pushed off the road. Coleman took command of the next tank in line and led the remainder of his platoon forward.
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