Part 5

In the wake of the tankers this human melting pot explodes. There are the prisoner-of-war cages suddenly opened and pouring forth American, British, Russian and French prisoners by the thousand. The gaunt and eager-eyed American boys seeing their own tanks again are unable to speak. Their story is a cycle in itself.

There are the broken survivors of Ohrdruf, where the 4th Armored boys discovered corpses stacked in line, of Buchenwald, which this division reached a few days ago, liberating thousands of human wrecks held there as political prisoners; of innumerable other camps where indescribable atrocities have been perpetrated.

I have encountered Belgians, Dutch, Russians, Ukrainians, Hungarians, Czechs and Yugoslavs and a Latvian woman with tears in her eyes who asked me for a map that would show her the way back to her lost home.

Because we have been fighting barely 30 miles from the border of Czechoslovakia a great portion of the refugees are Czechs. As we pushed up the autobahn thousands of them ran out of farms and factories to watch their liberators rumble by. Bright faces grinned from ear to ear. Women cried. Men shouted in broken English. Leaning out of my jeep I yelled “Czechoslovakia.” A roar went up that drowned even the clanking of the tanks.

The reaction of our soldiers to the pathos and suffering around them is strictly American. They are shocked by the brutality of the Germans, shocked and mad as hell.

I was sitting last night with one of the division officers when a young Czech was brought by a GI from the utter darkness of the street. He was member of a group of 200 political prisoners who had been marched by the Germans for four days without food. He had been sent by a group to plead with us because he could speak English. Wan and shaking with fatigue he told us the story of Buchenwald while tired GIs searched for food in a black-out where almost everyone was in bed.

When he finished his story the American officer ran his fingers through his hair. “Christ,” he said, “I feel as if I were living in the Dark Ages.”

Then he turned to me.

“Do the folks back home have any idea of this?” he said “Do they have any idea at all?”

It is spring here. The apple trees are now in bloom. Daffodils dance in neat German gardens. Hope has been lighted in hearts which for years have known nothing but misery and fear. But there is death in this spring, death in the memory of men and women. And there is death in the frightened German towns.

Yes, there is even death in the hearts of the American tankers leaning against their massive vehicles which crouch before the attack like great beasts under the blossoming trees. The tanker boys are lonesome for their girls and ice cream and decent jobs and they are sore as hell at the Krauts.

_(New York Post, April 14, 1945)_

GENERAL DAGER OF 4TH DIVISION PACKS SUNDAY PUNCH FOR PATTON’S THIRD

Armored News, 26 March 1945

WITH THE 4TH ARMORED DIVISION IN GERMANY--Third Army’s fighting 4th Armored Division, General George S. Patton’s “Sunday Punch,” which made the “fire alarm” run from the Saar Valley to relieve the besieged 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne, has long been a thorn in the side of the German army. Aggressive leadership in this aggressive division is believed to be its secret of success in battle.

Under the title of aggressive leadership can be placed the name of Major General (then Brigadier General) Holmes E. Dager, 52-year-old commander of the crack tank division’s Combat Command “B”.

Now engaged in his second war with the Germans, the scrappy little general--he’s five feet seven inches tall--whose courage in battle has been recognized by five awards, rose from the ranks in World War I to build and command an armored element that is now known as General Patton’s “work horse.”

General Dager resumed his private war with the Wehrmacht when he led Fourth Armored troops against the Boche in Normandy hedgerows.

The speed and power of General Dager’s attack and advance achieved a major breakthrough in the German lines.

At Avranches, the gateway to the Brittany peninsula, General Dager’s troops captured 4,000 German prisoners in two days of fierce armored battle. In that action the general earned the Distinguished Service Cross. When the Nazis attacked his headquarters from three sides simultaneously, General Dager directed the counter fire that beat off the attack while manning the guns on his command tank.

General Dager’s latest award, a second Bronze Oak-Leaf Cluster to the Bronze Star Medal, came for heroic action in the battle which relieved the encircled American troops in Bastogne. General Dager’s tanks, artillery and infantry cut through a thick wall of German armor and troops to help open the corridor to the hard-hit 101st Airborne Division. The Union, N.J., general was awarded the Bronze Star Medal and an Oak-Leaf Cluster in September during the fierce fighting in eastern France where the Fourth Armored pushed the Nazis behind the Reich’s frontier in addition to protecting the south flank of Third Army.

Enemy equipment knocked out or captured by fighting units of General Dager’s command in six months of combat include 144 tanks, 224 vehicles, 15 self-propelled assault guns, 51 88s, 50 half-tracks, 62 anti-aircraft guns, 16 prime movers, as well as a locomotive and 32 freight cars.

In Combat Command “B” headquarters, officers and enlisted men have won a total of six Silver Star Medals and 61 Bronze Star Medals.

Tankman Creighton Abrams of the 4th Armored Division, Spearhead of Patton’s Advances, Makes Himself a Terror to Germans by Basing His Operations on Overpowering Violence

By Will Lang

Just before the U. S. armies plunged across the Rhine a captured American soldier, one of thousands subsequently freed, was brought up for questioning before a scowling German officer.

“So, you are from the 4th Armored Division?” the German asked.

The American looked the German straight in the eye and with the aggressiveness of a good tankman said, “You bet I am.”

The German leaned back in his chair, smiled broadly and in the tone of one anxious to hear all about an old friend, asked, “Well, and how is Colonel Abrams?”

Colonel Creighton William Abrams, Jr., the object of this intimate interest on the part of the German officer, is largely unknown among U. S. civilians. It is one of the ironies of this sprawling global war that outstanding young combat officers are better known to the enemy than in their own country. Yet it is they who execute the battle plans of the well-publicized higher officers.

As the rampaging commander of the 37th Tank Battalion of the 4th Armored Division of the Third Army, Abrams is the cutting edge of the U. S. spearhead. An even more pertinent question about him might have been, “Where is Colonel Abrams?” For where Colonel Abrams is, that spot is likely to be the farthest point of the U. S. armored penetration into Germany. Last week, as advance man for the equally aggressive George Patton, commander of the Third Army, he was reported to be cutting clear across prewar Germany into Czechoslovakia. His present whereabouts is cloaked in a security news blackout and at any given time may not even be known to his commander. In his own words, Abrams likes to be “way out on the goddam point of the attack, where there’s nothing but me and the goddam Germans and we can fight by ourselves without stopping to report back to headquarters.”

SHAEF headquarters by now is accustomed to having him and his running mate, Lieutenant Colonel Delk Oden of the 35th Tank Battalion, turn up unexpectedly in places far in advance of the theoretical battlelines. This habit inspired a wisecrack by one of Abram’s officers that has since been borrowed by half the other units on the Western Front. While looking over a field map showing concentrated German positions all around them in the forward areas, the officer shook his head in feigned dismay. “They’ve got us surrounded again,” he said “the poor bastards!”

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.