Chapter III: Part 3

The surrounding of Abrams’ and other units of the 4th Armored by the Germans has almost invariably resulted in the 4th Armored’s soon surrounding the Germans. This pattern, repeated elsewhere along the front, has made the great campaign in the west a series of encircling movements which have broken the back of the German defenders and captured them in massive blocks of tens of thousands. The 4th’s special skill in this technique recently won it a Presidential Citation which followed a peculiar accolade from the Germans that was almost as flattering in its own way. According to captured documents the Wehrmacht rank and file, among whom the 4th is regarded with both respect and terror, were told that each individual soldier in the division was chosen because he was a professional murderer in civilian life. Moreover, the documents charged, an American was entitled to membership in the division only after he had first proved: 1) he had killed his mother; 2) he had been born out of wedlock.

These documents are cherished at divisional headquarters along with the records of the 4th’s career through a series of bold and critically important field operations. It was the 4th, with Abrams always out on the point of contact, that broke loose from the Normandy peninsula in only 11 days’ fighting, a feat that has been described as “astounding the Allies as well as the Huns.”

After that it was the 4th that led the Third Army in the breakthrough at St. Lo, which drove the Germans back to their Seigfried fortifications. In that epic drive the division destroyed 317 German tanks and captured 20,000 prisoners, even though on several occasions Abrams radioed back that “We are moving ahead without opposition.” Division headquarters, following up, would find the “unopposed” route strewn with German tanks and gun batteries and littered with hundreds of German bodies.

When the Germans mounted their Ardennes counteroffensive, it was the 4th Armored, under command of Patton’s former chief of staff, Major General Hugh Gaffey, that buttressed the southern flank. Later, with Abrams in the lead, it broke through in a spectacular and devastating dash to relieve the besieged 101st Airborne Division in Bastogne. More recently, in the drive from the Kyll River to the Rhine, it plunged ahead more than 50 miles in fifty-eight hours of concentrated mayhem. Abrams and his outfit destroyed more than 300 German motor vehicles, 75 artillery pieces, 75 anti-tank guns, 15 Tiger and Panther tanks, 20 “screaming meemies” and overran a rear-area German hospital with 80 patients, three enemy ammunition dumps, one ordnance depot, one fuel dump and a German army corps headquarters where an annoyed German Lieutenant General and most of his staff were captured while still at their desks.

Such accomplishments, in which Abrams has always been a leading performer, have draped the cape of a legendary hero around Abrams’ shoulders. At 30, he is mature enough to be truly modest, and he does not cultivate the hero worship that surrounds him. But there is a dynamic quality about him and a great flair for leadership that cause his men to idolize him. “We can always spot his tank,” says Lieutenant John Whitehill, a company commander, “because it doesn’t roll ahead like others. It gallops.”

“Abe’s tank,” says Lieutenant Colonel George “Jigger” Jacques of the 53rd Armored Infantry, whom Abrams addresses over the tank radio as “Sad Sack,” “Looks bigger than anyone else’s in the field just because Abe’s in it.”

As he rides along, Abrams gnaws on a long, black, unlighted cigar. “It looks just like another gun,” his men say. His present tank, successor to six he has worn out, is named Thunderbolt VII. One of the latest improved models of the M4 medium tank, it arrived just after Christmas, when the battalion was resting after the breakthrough to Bastogne. It has a 76-mm gun, a 17-inch tread, a cast turret and a welded hull. Abrams spent a happy holiday wheeling it through its vocabulary of paces within artillery range of the Germans. The tank it replaced, Thunderbolt VI, had its name in letters eight inches high on a background of billowing white clouds punctured by jagged red streaks of lightning. In the interest of winter camouflage Thunderbolt VII was painted a drab white, but with spring well along Abrams’ driver, Sgt. Robert Stillwell, is giving thought to another appropriate motif for VII.

One reason why the Germans are particularly fascinated and terrified by Abrams is that they assume because of his name that he is Jewish, and they imagine that race vengeance plays some part in his destructiveness. Actually Abrams is a New England Methodist but he lets people think what they like. However, Major Harold Cohen of the division’s 10th Armored Infantry Battalion is Jewish and is not only a close friend but an operational business partner of Abrams. Cohen’s infantry usually either accompanies or follows Abram’s tanks, so that the two units are often indistinguishable. To the Germans the team of Abrams and Cohen seems like the instruments of a wrathful Jehovah.

Perhaps, if the Germans could ever understand it, it would be instructive to them to know more about Abrams and the background that molded him. He was born in Springfield, Mass., on Sept. 16, 1914 and grew up like any normal American boy whose parents see that he goes to Sunday school, eats his vegetables and has plenty of milk to drink. World War I was finished by the time he went to grade school, and the only military background in the family was the story of his greatgrandfather, who served with distinction as a drummer boy in the Civil War until his left arm was blown off by a nervous comrade behind him.

In Agawam High School, across the Connecticut River from Springfield, young Abrams was known as “Toots.” His friends picked up the nickname from the Abrams family, who started calling him “Tootsie” because he was such a cute baby. He was able to live this down in high school, however, where he was captain of a football team that went through its season undefeated, untied and unscored upon. He was class president in his senior year, editor in chief of the school paper, president of Hi-Y, a member of the senior class play and class orator at graduation. In summers he worked on the Jenks farm near by and in his spare time took part in 4-H club garden activities. He also raised chickens and later raised and exhibited steers for the 4-H Baby Beef club.

After high school Abrams considered a scholarship to Brown University but a friend persuaded him to try the competitive examinations for West Point. He was third in a field of 57 and entered when the two candidates ahead of him failed in their physical examinations. At West Point he was too busy to spend much time on his studies and graduated 216th in a class of more than 480. He had his nose broken playing hockey and was considered one of the most efficient hazers on the academy’s “beast detail.” It took him four years to make his letter in football because he was never able to get his weight up much above 165 pounds, which is light for a guard. The 1936 Howitzer, the academy yearbook, said he held the football “warm up record” as well as the “undisputed title of the loudest, happiest, fightin’est man on the squad.” “Indeed,” said the Howitzer, “a team of Abrams might conceivably prove a champion.”

From West Point, Abrams went to the Cavalry School at Fort Bliss, where his restlessness soon gave him a reputation as a prankster. During one period he had a room directly across a court from the officers’ club of the post. On Saturday nights, after other officers and their friends had parked their automobiles in the court and entered the club for an evening of fun, Abrams would sneak out and attach smoke-producing firecrackers to the spark plugs of the cars. Then he retired to the window of his room to watch and wait. When the officers’ club eventually closed, gay, teetering officers climbed into their cars and pressed the starters. The loud explosion and ensuing clouds of black smoke, curses and frightened cries gave Abrams much saturnine merriment. Intoxicated by a series of successes, one night he wired a firecracker in the automobile of the general commanding the post. Abrams never was identified as the culprit in the inquiry which followed, but having achieved the ultimate he felt justified in giving up his pastime.

In his second year at West Point Abrams had met Miss Julia Harvey of West Newton, Mass., an attractive Vassar student who came down for a hop as the guest of one of Abe’s friends. The friend got sick, Abe got the date, fell in love and he and Miss Harvey were married two months after he was graduated. Now the mother of 6-year-old Noel Abrams and 4-year-old Creighton William Abrams III, she lives in St. Petersburg, Fla. with her mother, waiting and hoping like millions of other Army wives for the war to end quickly.

Abrams, too, wants the war to end quickly and as a cavalryman who turned to tank warfare in 1940 his theories about how it can be done quickly are illuminating. To a cavalryman’s belief in mobility be has added a belief in the efficiency of violence properly and unsparingly applied. “We don’t want the Germans to fall back,” Abrams insists. “We want them to try to defend their positions so we can destroy them and their equipment. There’s entirely too much emphasis on getting prisoners and not enough on destruction. Whenever the Germans get us in the wringer they show no quarter, so why should we? We’ve got to set our minds to destroying them--that’s the only way to get this job done, and done fast.”

“When we go into those pretty little towns in Germany,” Abrams explains, “we don’t aspire to damage anything. But if there are Germans there we use our violence, everything that can be burned is burned and every building is destroyed.”

Abram’s theory is that overpowering violence not only destroys the enemy’s soldiers and does it quickly but it also keeps down American casualties. In one town in Belgium, for instance, German resistance was mean and stubborn. In house-to-house fighting, Abrams’ tankmen, working with Lieut. Colonel Jacques’ armored infantry, systematically chucked grenades into every window and directed flame throwers through every door. Before the village was completely cleared of Germans it was necessary to burn every building in the area. The score was 427 prisoners of war, 50 Germans killed and 42 wounded, American casualties were negligible.

“Our operations are all based on violence,” Abrams says. “An infantry division doesn’t have the type of violence we have. We have more firepower than any infantry division in the world--German, British or Russian. We have mobility, better communications and support artillery which is right behind us. Why, I’d no sooner tackle an American tank battalion having all that violence than I’d try to trap a wildcat in my sleeping bag.”

When Abrams’ tank battalion starts rolling, it goes fast, with every gun in its tremendous arsenal firing throughout the charge. “Even the best German troops, like the 11th Panzer,” says Abrams, who occasionally speaks in Mac Arthur-like formalism, “cannot collect themselves fast enough. Our firepower spreads confusion and chaos in the German command and fear in the German soldier. Perhaps the more stouthearted fellow will hang on. But the vast majority take counsel with but one thing--fear.”

The best illustration of the effectiveness of this blasting program occurred during the 4th Armored Division’s dash to relieve the Bastogne garrison. just before dusk on the day after Christmas, Abrams’ tank battalion and the 53rd Armored Infantry under Jacques had fought their way to the crest of the last hill before Bastogne. Ahead a secondary road rolled over the countryside for more than three miles before it finally reached the outskirts of the town. Two villages, Clochimont and Assenois, straddled the road, both defended by fanatical German paratroopers.

While supporting artillery laid down a heavy concentration on the two villages, Abrams’ armor stood poised on the hillside, ready for the swift downward swoop. Finally Abrams stood up in his turret and over the interphone came his terse signal, “Let ’er roll!” Like one great snake, the chain of armored vehicles jerked into motion and, gathering momentum, raced down the road towards Clochimont with guns blazing. The column whipped through the village and then rolled on to Assenois where our artillery shells were still pounding German hideouts. Four lead tanks sped through the inferno safely, but a half-track next in line caught a direct hit which disabled the vehicle, killing two infantrymen and wounding four others. The next tank was pinned by a falling telephone pole and still another Sherman floundered under half a ton of debris. In the street the remainder of the column ground to a halt behind the immobilized vehicles. Abrams and his crew scrambled out of their tank and wrested the telephone pole from the trapped tank as infantry engaged German paratroopers in a hot sniping duel. Once back in his tank, Abrams waved the column forward and it roared ahead, leaving doughboys behind to clear the burning village.

Thus Bastogne was relieved in a daring plunge which sent the Germans reeling. As against their high casualties and equipment losses, ours were few: 30 men killed, 180 wounded, and several tanks destroyed.

While Abrams has never had a tank shot out from under him nor sustained an injury in combat, his long periods spent in the vanguard of the fighting have brought him close to death many times. One of his narrowest escapes occurred north of Bastogne when a sudden heavy German artillery barrage caught him standing in the open with two of his officers. The trio instantly dove under the stern of a light tank near by. While shells, mortars and rockets sliced the area to ribbons, one officer had his helmet rapped by shrapnel and “Colonel Abe’s” pants were torn by fragments. “I was considerably concerned at the time,” Abrams commented later, “but our division headquarters later reported only ‘sporadic’ enemy fire, so I guess I shouldn’t have been.”

Major General William M. Hoge _21 March 1945-17 June 1945_

PATTON PINS FIRST HONOR MEDAL IN THIRD ARMY ON HEROIC TEXAN

Army Times, March 17, 1945

WITH THE 4TH ARMORED DIVISION, in Germany--The first Medal of Honor to be awarded to a man in the 3d Army has been pinned on the breast of 1st Lt. James H. Fields of Fort Worth, Tex., by General George S. Patton, Jr.

The “dauntless and gallant heroism” of Lieutenant Fields at Rechicourt, France, after being seriously wounded were largely responsible for the repulse of Nazi forces on September 27 and contributed in a large measure to capture of his battalion’s objective.

The 1st platoon of A Company, 10th Armored Infantry Battalion, which Lieutenant Fields commanded, was sent up Hill 265 to fill a gap left by two platoons, including one heavy weapons platoon, that had been knocked out by savage enemy resistance. Fifty-five men went up the hill and 13 returned almost 24 hours later after using two light machine guns to wipe out a platoon of Jerries supported by artillery and three Panther tanks.

Lieutenant Fields moved his men up under cover of darkness and assumed a defensive position. They held out all that night and about 6 o’clock the following morning they received their first concentrated attack. They repelled that, and a few minutes later, Fields heard one of his men call for medical aid from a nearby foxhole.

Knowing that no medical aid man was present, and that none was available, Fields went to the aid of the man himself. He arrived just in time to see one of his squad leaders shot through the head. He turned to take a shot at the Nazi marksman, but before he could fire, he was hit.

The Jerry bullet ripped through Lieutenant Field’s cheek from left to right, knocked most of his teeth out, cut his tongue and filled his mouth with blood and jaw fragments. Rendered speechless, he refused to leave his platoon and continued to direct fire with hand and arm signals and pencilled notes which he dispatched from one foxhole to the next.

“Only when his objective had been taken and the enemy scattered did he consent to be evacuated to the battalion CP,” the War Department citation reads: “At this point he refused to move farther back until he had explained to his battalion commander by drawing on paper the position of his men and the disposition of enemy forces.”

This was not the first time that Lieutenant Fields had been conspicuously gallant. During an attack on the city of Troyes, France, in August he deliberately exposed himself to enemy fire again and again in order that the positions of the enemy might be found. He received the Silver Star for that action. Lieutenant (now Captain) Fields also wears the Purple Heart and the Combat Infantryman Badge.

JERSEY HERO WOULDN’T LEAVE BUDDY, CAUGHT IN FLAMING TANK

Cut Down by Nazi Machine Guns as He Tried Rescue--French Honor Him

By Robert W. Richards United Press War Correspondent

WITH THIRD ARMY in Alsace Lorraine, October 11, 1944 (U. P.)--In this tiny village which must go unnamed for fear of German reprisals, men and women come from their homes smiling proudly whenever American tanks null past.

Sometimes these people wave and sometimes they just stand looking. They tell their children:

“There go your brothers.”

For these Frenchmen in this town, near the quiet Marne Canal and only a stone’s throw from the hated Boche, are blood brothers of all American armored men--especially the crack Fourth Armored Division.

It was the Fourth Armored which shattered remnants of German forces in their village. And it was a sergeant of the Fourth Armored who showed them that these tank-riding Yankees not only know how to fight but how to die.

From hidden places, from haylofts, barns and attics, they had watched the dramatic action. When it ended the entire town was so moved by what it had seen that the people gathered in a body, walked to the square and picked up the sergeant’s crumpled body.

They buried him not far from the spot where he fell and every day since then some of these villagers cover his grave with fresh flowers.

When the people watched the fighting this is what they saw:

Two German 88’s were concealed near the town square.

Down the road, rumbling over rough pavement, came a long line of American Sherman tanks. The people held their breaths. They had no chance to shout warnings.

The first Sherman roared past the square and turned left into the town moving north. The German gunners were surprised or unprepared for they did not fire.

A second tank rolled into the square. By this time the Nazi gunners were ready and the 88’s roared.

The crippled tank wheeled and faced its enemy but it was unable to return the fire. Other tanks pulled back behind the protection of a house.

While the people watched this tank became a roaring furnace. They were happy to see a man leap from the top of the burning turret. They screamed to him:

“Come to us. Come this way.”

But the soldier wearing sergeant’s stripes returned to the blazing tank.

This hard-muscled young tank commander who used to work in a New Jersey copper plant had realized that his bow gunner remained trapped.

He scrambled to the tank’s top and attempted to pry open the red hot hatch. While he struggled German machine gunners got busy. They riddled him through and through and he fell in the mud of the road.

He lay there while fellow tankmen from another direction destroyed the enemy 88s. They were so occupied with the task of killing Germans that they roared past his body without stopping.

Later they returned hut the sergeant wasn’t there.

Admiring townsfolk already had buried him.

* * *

4TH A. D. HERO GIVES LIFE, WINS TOP HONOR

Sgt. Joseph J. Sadowski, of Perth Amboy, N. J., a tank commander in the famous 4th Armored Division, who returned to his flaming tank in the face of withering enemy fire and almost certain death in an effort to rescue a trapped comrade, has been awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously, the War Department has announced.

Maj. Gen. Francis Mallon, commanding general of the Army Ground Forces Replacement Depot No. 1, Fort George G. Meade, Md., presented the medal to Sergeant Sadowski’s father, Mr. John Sadowski, at a ceremony held April 21 at Fort Meade.

Mrs. John Sadowski, mother of the sergeant, and his five brothers and two sisters also attended the ceremony along with high ranking officers of Army Ground Forces.

The action in which Sergeant Sadowski gave his life occurred last September 14 at Valhey, France, when the tank which he commanded was struck by an 88-mm shell at close range while advancing upon the town with the leading elements of Combat Command A, 4th Armored Division.

With his tank disabled and in flames, Sergeant Sadowski ordered his crew to dismount and take cover in the adjoining buildings. Discovering that his bow gunner was still in the tank and for some reason unable to dismount, he rushed back to the burning vehicle, ignoring a hail of enemy machine gun and bazooka fire, and attempted to pry open the bow gunner’s hatch.

While working feverishly to release his comrade from the flaming tank, Sergeant Sadowski was cut down by a stream of machine gun bullets.

Other units of the task force, stunned and momentarily confused by the suddenness and ferocity of the enemy attack, witnessed the action of Sergeant Sadowski and, the citation states:

“The gallant and noble sacrifice of his life in the aid of his comrade, undertaken in the face of almost certain death, so inspired the remainder of the tank crews that they pressed forward with great ferocity and completely destroyed the enemy forces in this town without further loss to themselves.”

Sergeant Sadowski was active in outdoor sports and in boxing, in which he excelled, he was presented with a golden belt buckle as a result of his achievements in the Middlesex County Boxing Tournament of 1935.

In addition to the nation’s highest award, he earned the Purple Heart and was entitled to wear the American Defense and the European Theater Ribbons.

Sergeant Sadowski was a member of Company A, 37th Tank Battalion. _(Armored News, 30 April 1945)_

19-Year-Old Staff Sergeant Awarded Nation’s Top Honor

By Bob Moors Stars and Stripes Staff Writer

LANDSHUT, Germany, July 4--S/Sgt James R. Hendrix, a red-haired, freckle-faced 19-year-old farmboy from Arkansas, was summoned from guard duty into the awesome sanctum of Fourth Armored Division Headquarters here yesterday and informed that he had been awarded the nation’s highest decoration--the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Hendrix had won the medal as a private by single-handedly silencing two German 88 mm. guns, capturing their crews, wiping out two machine-gun nests, saving three comrades from death and attempting to save a fourth trapped in a burning halftrack.

The action took place in the Battle of the Bulge last December as his outfit, Company C, of the 53rd Armored Infantry Battalion, was fighting its way into Bastogne to relieve the 101st Airborne Division.

Thirty-nine-pointer Hendrix could request discharge as a CMH winner but says he will not. “I want to come back with the Fourth Armored after a furlough in the States and maybe stay in the Army for good,” he said.

Hendrix is a quiet, modest kid who shuns attention of any kind; typically, he was wounded three times in eight months of fighting, but never bothered to go to the medics.

When the major who broke the news asked him where he wanted to receive the decoration, here or in Washington, he replied promptly: “Washington, sir.”

Red probably would have decided otherwise if he had known President Truman is expected to pin on his award at a ceremony and review. All Red had in mind was that he had been stationed near Washington before coming over and knew the city well. Also he would be able to visit his parents, Pearl and James Hendrix Sr., on their farm in Lepanto, Ark., where Red had helped raise corn and cotton until he joined the Army Nov. 9, 1943.

When the major asked whether he wanted to go home via ship or plane, he said quickly: “Please, sir, I have never been in one before.”

Just what happened that confused night on the approaches to Bastogne is hard to piece together from what Red tells. “It’s all right there in the citation,” he says. “For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life and above and beyond the call of duty,” was the way the War Department worded it in its prosaic style.

“On the night of December 26, 1944, a task force was engaged in a final thrust to break through to the besieged garrison at Bastogne. When leading elements were halted by a fierce combination of anti-tank, artillery and small-arms fire in the town of Assenois, Pvt Hendrix dismounted and advanced upon two 88 mm. gun crews, and by the ferocity of his actions compelled the German gun crews first to take cover and then surrender.

_Hendrix says merely: “We ran up on ’em yelling ‘come out,’ but they wouldn’t. One poked his head out of a foxhole and I shot him through the neck. I got closer and hit another on the head with the butt of my M1. He had American matches on him. Others came out then with their hands up.”_

“Later in the attack this fearless soldier again left his vehicle voluntarily to aid two wounded soldiers threatened by enemy machine-gun fire. Effectively silencing two enemy machine-guns, he held off the enemy by his own fire until the wounded men were evacuated.”

_“I just shot at the machine-guns like all the 50s on half-tracks were doing,” is Hendrix’s persistent version. “A half-track had been hit pretty bad and these fellows were wounded and lying in a ditch. Machine-gun fire was mostly toward them, but some bullets were coming my way.”_

Continuing the attack, Hendrix again distinguished himself when he hastened to aid still another soldier who was trapped in a burning halftrack. Braving enemy sniper fire and exploding mines and ammunition in the vehicle he extricated the wounded man from the conflagration and extinguished his flaming clothing with own body thereby saving the life of his fellow soldier.

_“A grenade exploded between his legs and everybody else got out. But he was hollering for help.” Hendrix said. “I tugged at him and got him out on the road, but he was badly burned. I tried to find water to put out the flames but the water cans were full of bullet holes, so I beat out the flames as best I could. He died later.”_

All company commanders who were with Red then either have been killed or wounded, but the present CO, 1st Lt Melvin L. Schuweiler, of Charlottesville, Va., was high in praise of the boyish soldier.

“He hasn’t got much formal education, only went to the fourth grade, but I’ve never seen a guy with more common sense. He’s got guts, but sense enough to go with them.”

Hendrix, who is the third Fourth Armored man to win the CMH, also wears the Combat Infrantryman’s Badge and the Presidential Citation ribbon, which was awarded the division.

HELLO BBC

The Fourth Armored Division was heard on numerous news broadcasts. Following is the script of a typical broadcast:

ROBERT REID TO BBC LONDON VOICECAST FOURTH ARMORED DIVISION

Hello BBC this is Robert Reid speaking from Third U. S. Army on March 21 with dispatch number 108--Title Fourth Armored Division. This story has been censored.

When the story of the big break up of the German army west of the Rhine is finally told it will be largely the story of the Fourth Armored Division of the Third United States Army--a division which staged a super blitzkrieg in the homeland of the blitzkrieg inventors, tearing the better part of the German army into ribbons and opening the way for the conquest of a huge slab of Nazi territory.

The Fourth had already made a name for itself back in Normandy and Brittany, and more recently when it burst through into beleaguered Bastogne. But its achievements of the past fortnight surpass all those other breathless adventures. It has become an epic of dash and audacity--the sort of thing the division’s first commander was possibly thinking about when he said that the Fourth would never need a motto. It would be known by its deeds alone.

When the Fourth was given the job of first of all breaking through to the Rhine from the Kyll River it set off in typical Fourth style--right out into the blue with ten days rations packed in its trucks for it fully expected to be cut off--a situation to which it is not unaccustomed and which, by the way, has given rise to what has almost come to be the divisional motto. It is credited to one of its sergeants and goes back to Brittany. During one tough spot down there this notability was heard to remark, “Gee, we’re cut off again, the poor so-and-so’s.”

But the Fourth was not cut off this time. True its line was a very thin one--perilously thin--as it burst out of the Kyll River bridgehead and raced Rhinewards cutting a corridor--according to the current crack sixty-five miles long and twenty-five feet wide--that being the width of the road which carried them to the banks of the Rhine, through the depths of the Eifel Forest in fifty-eight hours. Nothing could stop them. They just rode down everything in their path leaving six thousand Germans prisoners to stream back behind them, capturing more than 500 German transports, 80,000 shells, Vee bomb sites, and so on.

But that was not the end of the story. There was still that huge tract of German countryside away to the south of the Moselle to be conquered before the last stretch of Rhineland was ours and once again the Fourth was given the job of bursting it open.

From a bridgehead secured by the Fifth and 90th Infantry Divisions across the Moselle River, two columns of the Fourth Armored Division suddenly burst as though from a catapult--shooting south and south east--two spearheads of steel cutting two long lanes deep into enemy territory then doubling and swerving and changing direction so often and so quickly that the Germans simply could not cope with these steel will of the wisp tactics and became swamped in general confusion which resulted in such little things as siezing three invaluable bridges intact over the river Nahe--one of the prizes of this rat race.

But if all this was an exciting job it was also a lonely job at times. The Fourth was roaring ahead with the infantry following up miles behind and mopping up the towns it had over-ridden. So when units of the Fourth took the little Rhineland spa town of Bad Kreuznach they hadn’t too many men to spare to act as patrols during the night to guard against any surprise counter attack by the Germans, or to patrol the streets in any force on the lookout for snipers.

What they did smacks of Red Indian warfare. It was both effective and spectacular and figuratively cocked a snook at any stray German plane who might also come nosing around during the night. Piles of wood were collected and bonfires lit at every entrance leading into the town--a device calculated to throw up in silhuette anything or anybody approaching the place.

Not that the Fourth was always lonely on this trip. There were some quite lively moments early on in the race when the Luftwaffe sent out its planes to try and stop the tanks. But the Fourth has a jolly good ack-ack battalion of its own and those gunners brought down thirty-two Jerry planes in three days.

Commanded by Major General Hugh J. Gaffey, a soft spoken Texan, who fights his battles in immaculate riding breeches and boots you could use as a mirror, the Fourth Armored Division has done one of the biggest jobs on the Western Front--and from what I have seen of General Gaffey and his men they intend to continue in the same way.

4th Armored Mentioned in Congress

The fighting qualities of American tanks as compared with the German Tiger and Panther tanks, was the cause of a heated, but brief, discussion in Congress early in 1945. General Patton’s report to the Deputy Chief of Staff, which was read into the Congressional Reoord, included the following:

“In the current operation had the Fourth Armored Division been equipped with Tiger and Panther tanks and been required to make the move from Saarguemines to Arlon, then through to Bastogne, from Bastogne to the Rhine, and now to Mainz--it would have been necessary to rearmor it twice; and furthermore, it would have had serious if not insurmountable difficulty in crossing rivers.”

* * *

200,000 Germans In Trap

Paris, March 17, 1945 (International News Service)--General George S. Patton’s 4th Armored Division raced to trap perhaps 200,000 German troops west of the Rhine south of besieged Coblenz today after smashing more than 20 miles southward in a sensational breakthrough below the Moselle.

Driving south along the Rhine Valley under a security blackout, the “Flaming Fourth” smashed through Rheinbollen and through Ellern, which lies more than 20 miles southeast of the Moselle bridgehead and 35 miles south of Coblenz, to within 60 miles of a junction with the U. S. Seventh Army.

In a 3d Army front dispatch, INS Correspondent Larry Newmann said the danger to Wehrmacht units within the 2,500-square-mile Rhine-Moselle-Saar triangle “grows hourly as Patton’s flaming Fourth Armored speeds forward against disorganized and wildly surrendering opposition.”

MEN AND MEDALS; Patton is a great morale-booster. He distributes medals lavishly, builds up rivalries among his units. The 4th Armored Division is his pace setter, the one that is always through for open-field running. It has a dazzling record. It cut off the Brittany peninsula, plunged through the Loire valley with only air protection on its flanks. In the Battle of the Bulge it raced to the rescue of Bastogne, went on to help carve up the German advance. In the Saar-Palatinate cleanup it sliced through in parallel combat columns, scored one of the big victories of the west.

This crack division has had three crack commanders. First was doughty, 57‑year‑old Major General John S. Wood, who took a pounding as his tank bumped over Brittany, then rumbled 400 miles across France. Patton’s grey‑haired, hard-as-nails chief of staff, Major General Hugh Gaffey, took it over in December. Soon after the Rhine crossings, Gaffey was made a corps commander. Now the 4th is run by dark, handsome Major General William M. Hoge, who seized the Remagen bridge intact while he was with the First Army, then captured whole the Main River bridge at Aschaffenburg in his first east-of-the-river task for Patton.

The Third’s other armored divisions challenge the 4th’s dash and sometimes perform feats that would be textbook nightmares. Two Patton armored divisions once crossed each other at a right angle road junction in the midst of combat, but only the Germans were confused. Patton’s forces have run right off their tactical maps, and have had advanced maps, gasoline and ammunition parachuted to them.

_(April 9, 1945)_

WESTERN FRONT--General George S. Patton’s Third Army was going strong. So were the battle-famed 1st Infantry Division and other outfits of the First Army. They bore the scars of the Battle of the Bulge and were out for meat. Major General Hugh J. Gaffey’s 4th Armored Division (Third Army) had been given a task of exploiting to do after the Kyll River had been bridged near Trier. Its tankmen and motorized infantrymen were given rations for ten days, ordered to pour on the coal and get to the Rhine.

Fifty-eight hours and more than 50 miles later they were there, close to Coblenz. They had slashed out a corridor north of the Moselle with one of the war’s swiftest armor strokes. Behind their tanks the infantry mopped up thousands of prisoners from shredded German divisions. Among them was a befuddled German general. Out of touch with his troops, he had stood on a knoll looking for some sign of them. Finally his binoculars found a large patch of Germans. He hurried over to find that they--and he--were prisoners.

_(March 19, 1945)_

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LONDON, May 8, 1945 (Associated Press)--The partisan-held radio in Prague announced Monday night that American tanks, racing to the relief of patriots in the Czechoslovakia capital, had smashed into the city’s suburbs within four miles of its limits.

...Patton’s Fourth Armored Division, famous for its spectacular exploits in France, was leading the drive, smashing through little resistance across western Bohemia in two swifty-moving columns.

4TH ARMORED, SPEARHEAD IN WAR, SWEATS OUT THE PEACE IN GARRISON

By James Cannon, Stars and Stripes

WITH 4TH ARMD. DIV., Landshut, June 8, 1945--The 4th Armd. Div., which usually moved ahead of the 3d Army like a pilot train laying its own track, waits for orders in the sun.

The orders may never come and the men may be here in these hills until they’re discharged. That’s all right with most of them. If you came all the way from St. Lo, you know every shell sounds like the first one, and the percentage runs against you every time one comes in.

The division was used as a vast patrol in constant journeys of military exploration through hostile country. They were always in a hurry, and the secret of their achievements was mobility. Now these tankers, who recognized no frontiers in combat, are garrison troops.

They do close-order drill and pull a lot of guard. They stand reveille and all the usual inspections and formations that plague troops in permanent installations. Seeing them out of their dirty combat clothes and tank helmets, you don’t recognize them in their clean ODs and helmet liners.

Although they don’t know how long they will be here, the tankers were getting barracks ready for winter occupation. They were still installing wash bowls, hot-water boilers, lockers and showers. They were carving baseball diamonds out of the flower-brightened meadows.

The I. and E. program is set to go, and a lot of guys want to go to school. But it will have to wait until text books are located.

Thirty per cent of them have enough points to go home, and reinforcements are coming in to take their places. They expect a training program as soon as the recruits arrive to fill in for the old-timers.

Breakthrough Armored News Rolling United Press Patton’s Pet New York Sun Rip-roaring Indianapolis Times Rough-necked London Daily Express Roosevelt’s Highest Paid Butchers German Radio American Elite 4th Panzer Division German Radio Invincible London Telegraph Flaming Fourth International News Service Ghost London Times Phantom London Express Fire Alarm London Globe Flying Herald-Tribune (Paris) Great Life Magazine Irresistible New York Times Hard-hitting Washington Times-Herald Colorful Boston Traveler Patton’s Favorite Spearhead Chattanooga Free Press Crack Sunday Empire News Famous Associated Press Fire-eaters London Daily Express Veteran Chicago Sun Immortal Saturday Evening Post Bold New York Times Hard-riding Armored News Patton’s Sunday Punch Armored News Irrepressible Life Magazine Famed Time Magazine Impatient SHAEF Intelligence Bulletin Ubiquitous BBC Radio Patton’s Fourth Armored Associated Press Georgie’s Beloved Fourth Armored New York Post Patton’s Pace Setter Time Magazine Patton’s Rampaging Fourth Armored United Press Fabulous Chicago Tribune Patton’s Prize Fourth Armored Associated Press Glorious Radio Luxembourg Gaffey’s Whirlwind Detroit Free Press Champions Stars and Stripes Fantastic St. Louis Post-Dispatch Patton’s favorite of all divisions Philadelphia Evening Bulletin Romping Associated Press

THE PRESIDENTIAL CITATION

by Gregor Ziemer

_Gregor Ziemer, who wrote the following story, might well be known as the “Man who Stayed for Dinner.” He joined the Fourth Armored Division at Polch, Germany on March 7, 1945. At the time he expected to remain for three days to do some broadcasts for Radio Luxembourg. He liked what he saw so much that he has been with the division ever since._

_The three months he has spent with the Fourth Armored have presented Mr. Ziemer with sights that he always hoped to experience--but never thought he would--as he had lived in Germany for twelve years before the war, both before, and during the Hitler regime. Consequently, Ziemer probably knows Germany as well as any living American._

_During his stay in Germany, Ziemer headed the American School in Berlin, and on his return to the States wrote “1,001 Days of Hitler” and the best seller, “Education for Death,” which later became the movie, “Hitler’s Children.”_

_Since he has been with the division, Ziemer has written a detailed account of defeated Germany for Collier’s magazine, and at present is hard at work on a full length book about Germany, based on his experiences with the Fourth Armored, that he hopes to publish in the near future._

_Although the story that appears here will probably never appear elsewhere in print, we felt that it was a great and sincere tribute from a man who ranks high among the nation’s authors and from a man that we feel we can call a fellow member of our great division. With this in mind we pass it on to you.--Public Relations Officer._

LANDSHUT, GERMANY, June 14, 1945--There are some moments which only the Angel of History should be allowed to record.

There are occasions when pride and memory and gratitude and humbleness are so mixed up that the emotions go dull and words become even less effective than usual.

Such a moment I experienced this afternoon.

I stood out under the blue sky of conquered Bavaria, and saw American boys pass in review--their first review since they had come to Europe a year ago, I saw American flags carried over a field of green, I watched color guards carry banners. I saw a Four-star General pin pieces of blue cloth on the banners. I saw the same general pin a bit of blue ribbon in a small gold frame on the tunic of another general. I heard a band play the “Star Spangled Banner.”

And it was as if a million voices were shouting “Thank You! Thank you for what you have done!” And it was as if the hills of Bavaria were echoing the sound, until the whole world was full of it.

For this afternoon, on that level field outside the old historic city of Landshut, the Fourth Armored Division of the Third Army passed in review and received the Presidential Citation.

“It was a broad field, and there were many boys on it--boys in their best garrison uniforms. And they passed in review with a precision and a compactness and a spirit that amazed even the old veterans of many reviews who were present.

Yes, the Fourth Armored received the Presidential Citation this afternoon.

“Motivated always by the highest esprit de corps and displaying the greatest intrepidity and determination, these units successfully and swiftly executed missions of an exceptionally hazardous nature against the enemy.”

Those were the words they heard, those boys out there on the field. And they knew what the words tried to say--those boys--boys who are now doing occupational work when they would much rather be home, boys who were thinking of their buddies who helped to earn this citation but were not there to see it presented because they are lying in heroes’ graves in France, Belgium and Luxembourg.

Yes, I attended a review in honor of a Presidential Citation. And my heart was so full that a drop could have overflowed it. For more than three months I have been with this Fourth Armored. I have seen them in action. I crossed the Rhine with them at Oppenheim. I rolled across the pontoon bridge with them at Hanau on the Main. I made a detour around that burning half-track at Buchenwald. I crawled across the Bailey bridge that dark bitter morning when the Nazis thought they had us cooped up at Ifta. I rode into Czechoslovakia with them.

I am only a civilian, and know next to nothing about the tactical difficulties the Fourth encountered on this historic odessey across Germany. But I was there when they opened the road blocks, when they cleared out the machine gun nests, when they evacuated their dead.

And today tears rolled down my cheek as I held my hand at salute while the American flags were carried past the reviewing stand where stood General Jacob L. Devers and Major General William M. Hoge. Out on the field I saw them all, the heroes of the Fourth--Colonel Creighton W. Abrams, Colonel Hayden A. Sears, Colonel Wendell Blanchard, Colonel David A. Watt, Lt Colonel Leslie D. Goodall, Colonel Alexander Graham, Lt Colonel Harold Cohen, Lt Colonel Delk M. Oden, Lt Colonel James Bidwell, Lt Colonel Albin Irzyk, Lt Colonel Robert Mailliard, Lt Colonel William Nungesser, Lt Colonel Arthur C. Peterson, Lt Colonel Robert M. Parker, Lt Colonel Neil M. Wallace, Major Henry Crosby, Major William Hunter, Major Charles Kimsey and Major Erbin Wattles. Behind them were their men, of Headquarters, tank destroyers, cavalry, engineers, armored artillery, armored infantry, tank battalions, trains, medics, and ordnance...

And I also saw all the others, who were not there...

I saw them as an American civilian would see them, a civilian who has had the good fortune of having been with them when they earned the Citation, as a civilian who represents the Nation which bestowed it on them.

And because I am a civilian, and because I happen to know what brought the Fourth this recognition, I make myself the spokesman of my Nation at this moment, and I say:

“I wonder if you know what you have done? I wonder if you realize how history will thank you for ridding the world of a fear which a few short months ago was still cowing the entire globe? I wonder if you realize how majestic, how significant your acts, your sacrifices, your spirit are? It was you and men like you who have brought the world a new hope, a new lease on humanity.”

You don’t wish thanks. You didn’t do this because you wanted to be heroes. You refuse to be heroes now. But, please believe me when I say that for generations you will earn the undying thanks of a nation, a world which has come out of oppression to the light as bright as the sun which shone this afternoon over your polished helmets, and the new paint jobs of your tanks on parade.

This thanks the world may not express in words. The world itself is sometimes inarticulate when it comes to expressing gratitude. But History, that timeless element which runs through the strains of life and anchors in eternity, History knows, and History will give you credit.

General Devers expressed it well when he said that on your shoulders--on your young shoulders--rests the hope for the future.

You will accept this added responsibility for the future as you have accepted every order for a new rat-race.

But meanwhile accept the humble thanks of your people; accept the deeply rooted “Thank You” of a nation which has come to know its own strength, when it watched your strength.

For as long as our nation can produce a unit like the Fourth Armored, as long as it can create a spirit like yours--just that long there is no fear for the future of America.

At I looked at you this afternoon, at the faces as they passed quickly by, faces which came from every walk of American life, I knew I was seeing a new America. It is an awakened America--an America which has taken its place in the family of nations--and which will be a watchman of the nations if necessary.

American soldiers marched under a German sky, on German soil, under a German sun, and received a citation of an American President--how impossible it would have seemed a short time ago.

And now I can quote the sacred words of our Savior who died to save mankind, “It is finished.”

But, as for Him the task was not finished, even as He spoke those words, so our task is not finished. But we of the Fourth Armored, we Americans all who know so infinitely more of the world, of mankind, of the human mind than we did a year ago, we fear not the future, we fear no enemy, we fear not ourselves, nor our miserable charlatans and fools who would make America a nation of bickering merchants and a rabble of hypocrites.

We are going home with the bit of blue ribbon in the gold frame over our right breast pocket. And it will always bring us just one message:

“We of the Fourth are not vainglorious. We are not conceited. We are humble and grateful. We are conscious of our duties and our responsibilities--now in peacetime as we were in wartime.

“But never again--NEVER AGAIN--will we be afraid of Fear; never again will we be afraid to attack that which we consider wrong, no matter where it is, no matter what kind of wrong it is. Never again will we permit evil to grow under our feet!”

And so I salute the Fourth--today, every day, until the Last Review is over, until the last one of us has joined those of the Fourth who have gone before ...

And even then, from beyond the grave, we shall keep alive this spirit born in battle, confirmed in peace, made symbolic by our Presidential Citation.

So Help us God!

Amen!

_The following paragraphs are excerpts from a Collier’s story written by Gregor Ziemer. Although the story deals basically with the German people, it is based on Ziemer’s experiences while traveling with the Fourth Armored._

I am writing this on the running board of a confiscated automobile. For what seems a century I have been rat-racing across Germany with the famous U. S. Fourth Armored of Presidential Citation fame.

I, who have been worrying for many months how I could get back into Germany soon after the war, have entered with a spearhead. With my senses keyed to unaccustomed intensity, I crossed the Sauer, the Rhine, the Mosel, the Nahe, the Main, and the Fulda and the Werra--driving a civilian car, in battle khaki, as part of a column of tanks and half-tracks, of jeeps and trucks.

My mind is urging me to get down on paper my first impressions of the defeated Germany. I lived in Germany. I knew the sadistic, the scheming, the malignant Hitler Germany. Now I am getting firsthand impressions of a different Germany: the Germany of the white flags; which shrugs its shoulders, which stares in amazement--and which takes orders.

Overhead a dogfight is filling the blue April sky with staccato bursts of death. Not more than a quarter of a mile away I see the green shacks of the infamous Ohrdruf concentration camp which I have just visited. I have seen such destruction of German war weapons recently that my mind is a shambles. . .

“We had no idea you Americans were so strong.” That is another chorus. A captured general, Edgar Rohrich, to whom I spoke in the small town of Ifta, made that clear. And then he gave me an insight into German psychology. “I’d ask nothing more of life than a chance to command a division like this Fourth which I see here,” he said, in that narrow corridor of the farmhouse where I interviewed him. And if he had such a division? He would continue to fight, and he would continue to attempt to conquer the world, of course .....

From where I am sitting I can still see in the evening twilight the mound of the mass grave of Ohrdruf. I still smell the odor of death. But I also see an old peasant trying to obliterate the traces left on his field by tanks and foxholes. He is looking forward to the harvest many months ahead. It will take almost bucolic patience, almost superhuman endurance, to put Germany back in order, Is it worth it?

There will be many who say no. There will be others who will say yes.

After weeks of rat-racing with the Fourth Armored across Germany which is, for the time being, humble, I can say only this: Let the world decide, but only after a long heart-searching interview with its own conscience, as to which is cheaper--another war or a long, patient, firm, disciplined occupation of this country which we have conquered with so much effort, so much weariness, and at the cost of so many lives.