Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II

Preparation: The Hedge Chopper

The division spent the next few days regrouping. New personnel replacements were integrated into their units.

The maintenance battalion continued to work around the clock trying to catch up on some of its backlog. In addition, replacement tanks and other vehicles were coming in across the beach directly from Tidworth Downs.

The tanks had to be refurbished by the maintenance people before being issued to the combat units. The vehicles supposedly had all the equipment on board, but some of it that was still in boxes and other wrapping had to be taken out, cleaned, and installed. This could have been done at the depot and saved the maintenance crews in the fields some time, but because the depot people were not familiar with all the equipment and how it was used, the vehicles still had to be checked in the field regardless of their condition when received. In many cases, tank crews were assigned to the maintenance battalion to help refurbish these replacement vehicles, because only experienced tank crews knew the proper place for all the equipment.

On the afternoon of July 22, Major Arlington ordered me and the other two liaison officers, Lieutenant Nibbelink of CCA and Lieutenant Lincoln of Combat Command R (CCR), and also Lieutenant Lucas from headquarters company, to report with him to witness a demonstration in a nearby field. As we entered the field, we noted a number of high-ranking officers congregating around an M5 light tank. We could tell by the red signs on several Jeeps that there were some general officers among them. As we got out of our Jeeps and started to approach the high-ranking brass, I began to cringe, as I’m sure my lieutenant buddies also did.

Major General Watson, our division commander, and Brigadier Generals Hickey of CCA and Boudinot of CCB, and most of the division staff were present.

A tall officer standing in the middle of the group could be identified immediately. He is said to have worn more stars than any other general officer in the army: three on his helmet, three on each side of his collar, and three on each epaulet of his Eisenhower jacket. General Patton had come to witness the demonstration, but because the Third Army had not yet been activated, his presence in Normandy had been kept secret.

Patton was a fine-looking man with rugged features and piercing eyes. In his Eisenhower jacket, brightly polished riding boots, riding britches, and leather belt with a brass buckle and holding ivory-handled pistols, he looked every inch a soldier. Although some felt that he looked overdressed, this was part of his mystique.

One could not help but stand in awe of him, and he dominated the conversation by his bearing and presence.

Many of our division’s officers who had previously served under him looked upon him as a demigod. His aggressive nature and severe disciplinary manner produced an ambivalence in those who served under him; they either hated his guts or worshiped the ground he walked on.

The demonstration that we had come to see was a test of a new device that would attach to the front of me M5 light tank and allow it to breach the hedgerows. The only way a tank could currently get through the hedgerows was with a bulldozer tank in front of it, and the division had only four of these.

A young soldier from a nearby engineering battalion had come up with the idea for this new device based on his experience back home as a farmboy clearing hedgerows with a bulldozer. The device was fabricated steel with ten- to twelve-inch-long pointed spikes welded perpendicular to the base channel. This weldment was attached to the towing clevis brackets on the front end of the tank transmission. Previously, tanks that rammed hedgerows simply reared up backward, because the thickly embedded roots reinforced the hedgerow mass. The spikes on the new device embedded themselves in the hedgerow and prevented the tank from rearing up. At the same time, they cut some of the reinforcing roots, and the inertia of the tank moved the entire hedgerow mass out of the way.

The test worked beautifully the first time: The tank went through the hedgerow without a problem. The possibilities were immediately recognized. Instead of waiting for bulldozer tanks, it was now possible to breach the hedgerows at many places simultaneously. When Patton nodded his approval, we knew it was a go situation. General Watson called Colonel Smith, the division chief of staff, and told him to make plans to have the hedge choppers installed at once. Colonel Smith and the G3 estimated that the division required fifty-seven of the devices. Because a major assault was scheduled for the next day, everything was of the utmost urgency.

Without any idea of how many man-hours it would take to fabricate these units or even how long it would take to get the steel, Colonel Cowhey told General Watson that he would have fifty-seven hedge choppers built and installed on the tanks by 0700 the following morning. Based on this commitment, the division made its plans for the next day’s assault. Everyone realized that this quick commitment by Colonel Cowhey must have appealed to General Patton, who liked no-nonsense decisions. The commitment had to be carried out by the next lower echelon, however.

Colonel Cowhey came over to where we were standing and asked Major Arrington how many welding machines we had in the entire division. Arrington told him that there were forty-two welding units, including those in the maintenance battalion and all of those in the maintenance units of the various combat companies.

Cowhey said he would have Colonel Smith make all the welding units available to us.

The plan was an example of how a project could be carried out under extremely adverse conditions. Several abandoned garage buildings in Saint Jean de Daye were taken over and established as the modification center.

Tarps stripped from the tops of trucks were used to plug the holes in the roofs of the buildings and cover the doors during blackouts. Warrant Officer Douglas, an expert certified welder in civilian life, was put in charge of the actual manufacturing operation.

Major Arlington called us aside and gave us our orders. Lieutenant Lincoln was to take a truck group with burning and cutting torches down to Omaha Beach and salvage as much steel as possible from leftover German beach obstacles. Lieutenant Lucas would take another group to Cherbourg, fifty miles away, and secure all the four- to twelve-inch channels and I beams he could handle from a large fabricating shop and steel warehouse on the south side of the city. All this steel was to be brought back to Saint Jean de Daye as quickly as possible. Major Arlington told me to contact Major Johnson, motor officer of the 33d Armored Regiment, and ask him to have the 33d’s tanks report to Saint Jean de Daye at 2330. These tanks were to go down the “B” line in the garage building. The 32d Armored Regiment’s tanks would start reporting at 2400 and go down the “A” line in an adjacent building.

By the time the first tanks from the 33d arrived at Saint Jean de Daye, things were well organized. Onan portable generators were set up inside to produce electric lights for the welders. The 486th Antiaircraft Battalion had extra vehicles stationed around the area to be on alert against German air attacks in case arc flashes from the welding torches were seen.

Warrant Officer Douglas had no drawings to go by; he simply made field sketches on pieces of scratch paper and gave them to the men. One group cut out the parts and tacked them together. The welders completed the units, then another group installed them on the clevis brackets of the tanks. In the meantime, Douglas and his crew had come up with a design that included plow-type plates on the edges of the outboard cutters, which did an even better job of breaking through the hedgerows.

The men worked all night and by daybreak had actually completed and installed seven hedge choppers and fabricated many other parts and partial assemblies. It was determined that it took forty man-hours to complete one hedge chopper; this meant that forty welders had completed approximately one hedge chopper an hour, allowing for production slowed by the fact that no two hedge choppers were identical.

Fortunately, misty and foggy weather delayed the bombing attack, and the assault was put off for another forty-eight hours. The welding crews continued around the clock with no relief. Some men worked so long, continuously exposed to the welding arc, that they became temporarily blinded and had to be relieved. This blinding effect was due to severe eyestrain and was not permanent.

Planning Operation Cobra and the Saint-Lô Breakout

At a CCB briefing, General Boudinot went over the entire situation involving Operation Cobra. Military intelligence had discovered that an attempt had been made on Hitler’s life the day before. Although details were sketchy, the information was that a bomb had exploded but Hitler was thought to have escaped without serious injury.

I was startled that this information had gotten to us so quickly. I had no idea that the British, through Operation Ultra, had broken the German code. General Truman Boudinot said some people thought this attempt on Hitler’s life might be the beginning of an uprising in the ranks of the German general staff, but no one could know for sure and we should not count on this possibility.

The initial objective of Operation Cobra, as the plan was known, was to deliver a crushing blow to the German front lines and also to the rear areas to break up the German reserves. Our experiences in Normandy had shown clearly that once an attack started through the hedgerows, it soon became exhausted. This slowed the attack and gave the enemy a chance to counterattack when the troops were stretched out and most vulnerable. To make a successful attack, this capability of the German reserves had to be reduced.

The initial penetration would be made by the VII Corps of the First Army under the command of Maj. Gen. Joseph (Lightning Joe) Collins, an extremely aggressive commander with a brilliant combat record in the Pacific theater. He had also shown extreme aggressiveness in Normandy with the whirlwind capture of Cherbourg. He was assigned the 1st, 4th, 9th, and 30th Infantry Divisions, all crack units, and the 2d and 3d Armored Divisions, the U.S. Army’s only two oversized, powerful, “heavy” armored divisions. The VII Corps also included a number of extra corps and army artillery battalions.

The heavy armored division’s 390-tank force had the equivalent firepower of thirty artillery battalions. With our own three artillery battalions plus the two attached battalions and the 703d Antitank Battalion, this gave us the firepower of thirty-six artillery battalions. The 2d Armored Division had this same capability, and with the twelve artillery battalions from each of the four infantry divisions and the extra corps-and army-level battalions, VII Corps could concentrate the firepower of ninety artillery battalions into an extremely small area.

The line occupied by the 9th and 30th Divisions concentrated on a narrow area along the northern part of the Périers-Saint-Lô highway. They were backed up by the 1st and 4th Infantry Divisions. The 2d and 3d Armored Divisions concentrated in the Bois du Hommet, a large, densely forested area just north of the Le Mesnil-Saint Jean de Daye highway. This was approximately a mile and a half north of the infantry front line and astride the road running southward from Périers through the infantry line to Saint-Lô. The main attack was to come along the highway from just south of the infantry to Marigny.

An area approximately nine thousand yards long extending south along the highway and a thousand yards wide (five hundred yards on either side of the highway) was selected for the main bombardment. In addition to the artillery, the Eighth and Ninth Air Force would carpet bomb this area and an area from Marigny four miles east to Canisy. It would be the largest aerial bombardment of the war up to this point, and the first time that air attacks together with artillery and infantry fire would be concentrated in such a narrow area.

As if the air force did not have a difficult enough mission concentrating so much firepower in such a small area, it had the additional responsibility of trying to miss the highway from the infantry line south to Marigny.

Bomb craters on the road would slow the rapid advance of the tank columns and the wheeled vehicles that followed.

The attack had been delayed three days due to overcast weather. Now a light mist and drizzle hung above the area, but the air force meteorologist assured us it would lift by morning, in time for the attack.

This night the entire division concentrated in an extremely small area in the Bois du Hommet. We had tanks, half-tracks, artillery pieces, and wheeled vehicles jammed bumper to bumper, some 4,400 vehicles in an area approximately one mile square. This was completely contrary to all our training. The fact that the German Luftwaffe showed little strength during daylight, and the fact that we had to concentrate like this for the attack to come off rapidly enough, made the risk worthwhile.

The Danger of Smoking in a Foxhole

B Company under Captain Roquemore transferred to CCR, and C Company under Capt. Sam Oliver transferred to CCB. My driver, Smith, returned to headquarters company’s antitank section, and I got a new driver, Vernon, from C Company. Vernon was a tall, lanky boy from Tennessee who took great pride in keeping his vehicle maintained and clean, which greatly appealed to me.

The area where C Company had chosen to bivouac was right in front of the 391st Field Artillery Battalion.

Vernon soon located two German foxholes that had been dug side by side; they appeared to be in excellent condition and showed no signs of booby naps. We decided to use these rather than dig new foxholes that evening.

I was a little apprehensive about using a German foxhole, but once I got inside and examined it, I was impressed. It was a one-man foxhole almost seven feet long, about two feet wide, and four feet deep. It was completely covered and had a narrow opening at one end. The floor was flat except for a three-inch-deep trench that extended around the edge of the wall. Any moisture that seeped into the foxhole would accumulate there, so the floor would stay reasonably dry. The German who occupied this foxhole apparently had plenty of time for refinements.

I tossed my bedroll into the foxhole, got inside, and closed my shelter half on the entrance. With my flashlight I could see pretty well. I took off my shoes, pants, combat jacket, and shirt and used the clothing for a pillow.

My .45-caliber pistol and shoulder holster went underneath my helmet at the head of the foxhole. I would sleep in my long underwear and socks.

As soon as I stretched out and relaxed, I decided to catch that midnight drag, a habit I had developed when I was a cadet at VMI. We were not allowed to smoke in the room after lights out, so we always felt as though we were getting away with something. One of my two roommates, Jimmy Ellison, smoked. Tommy Opie didn’t, but he would join in the conversation and we would lie there in the dark, shooting the breeze. We called this catching the midnight drag. Jimmy wound up in the navy; Tommy died while serving in the air force. Although cadet life at VMI was rugged, it beat the hell out of living here in a foxhole; at least we had clean sheets and a shower once a day.

The 391st Field Artillery, right behind us, fired intermittent interdictory fire practically all night long.

Occasionally, the German sound and flash system would pick up the location of the artillery battalion and they would send a few incoming rounds. The 391st would stop firing for a little while, then start again. I soon got used to the noise. I lay back, lit up a cigarette, and was really enjoying myself. I must have dropped off to sleep immediately, because I began to dream about being branded on the chest with a hot iron, a scene I remembered from the movie The Scarlet Letter. In my dream I could feel the extreme heat on my chest. I even thought I could smell flesh burning.

I awakened with a start and looked down to a glowing ring about eight inches in diameter smoldering on my chest. The cigarette had apparently fallen out of my hand and set the kapok of my sleeping bag afire. I threw back the sleeping bag, jumped out of my foxhole, and made a mad rush to a nearby kitchen truck to find water. I grabbed the first can I found in the dark and headed back to douse the smoldering sleeping bag. Just as I reached the edge of the foxhole, I put my hand on the cap and realized that the can held gasoline rather than water. The two cans were identical except for the caps.

Not only would the gasoline have caused an explosion that would have killed me instantly and set the whole woods on fire, the Germans would have started counterbattery fire that would have resulted in horrendous casualties. I rushed back to the kitchen truck and grabbed a water can, making sure about the top this time, then ran back to the foxhole and flooded it. I got back in the soaking wet sleeping bag, so grateful to have been saved from a ghastly inferno that I just lay back thankfully and went to sleep.

Although the hedge-chopper crews continued to work around the clock, by dawn of July 26 they had installed less than half of the planned fifty-seven units. The remaining tanks had been returned to the assembly area the previous evening, but the welding crews continued to work on them anyway. After the attack started, the crews took the remaining parts of the partially completed hedge choppers with them to install on the designated tanks later.

The operating hedge choppers proved effective and helped keep our tank casualties low because the Germans did not anticipate the next hedgerow breakthrough. The devices were mounted so low on the tank transmissions that the German tank crews could not tell by looking over the hedgerows which tanks had the choppers and which did not. The entire project showed the ingenuity of the American soldier and his ability to improvise.

At dawn on July 26, there was still a slight haze in the air, but the sun soon burned it off and we knew the day would be clear. Green luminescent panels had been issued to the infantry and the armored units to mark the front lines and to identify the tanks. These replaced our original red luminescent panels, which could have been confused with the red Nazi flag sometimes carried by German tanks.

The ammunition supply company had been working night and day to get ammunition to the artillery and tank units. The tanks and the M7 gun carriers filled their ready racks first so they would have a complete combat load of ammunition when they moved out. They stored excess ammunition on the ground and used this in the initial barrage. The interdictory fire that had started the night before continued at a fairly low level.

The Bombardment

The initial barrage started at about 1000, some thirty minutes prior to the air attack. The ground fog had completely dissipated. Because bombing in a heavily wooded area is difficult under ideal conditions, the bombardiers needed every possible advantage.

The L5 Cubs cruised over the lines approximately a thousand feet back and up. I’m sure the observers and pilots felt a lot better with their armor-plated seats. The first targets were enemy artillery and antitank guns.

The German dual-purpose 88mm guns became a particularly high-priority target.

The first flight, B26 attack bombers, came over in a column of squadrons in tight formation at approximately eleven thousand feet. There appeared to be one-half to three-quarters of a mile between the squadrons. Once they started, they formed a long gray continuum across the sky and over the horizon. I was reminded of Leonidas in the battle of Thermopylae; told that the Persian arrows were so numerous that they would darken the sky, Leonidas said, “Good, so much the better, we can fight in the shade.”

The constant drone of the motors was interrupted only by the artillery and the terrible bomb blasts when yet another salvo struck the ground. A few of the 88s that survived the initial barrage opened fire on the first flight as they came over the target area. Three of the planes in the first squadron were hit and appeared to disintegrate in midair.

This victory was short lived for the Germans. The L5 observers saw the blasts of the antiaircraft guns and immediately called down on them the full power of ninety battalions of field artillery. The guns were eliminated within seconds. It appeared thereafter that every time an antitank or antiaircraft gun opened up, it was immediately destroyed.

In spite of all the precautions, some mistakes were made. The Bois du Hommet-Pont Hébert highway was mistaken for the Périers-Saint-Lô highway. The latter was the real bomb line, but the constantly churning dust and debris from the bomb blasts apparently hid some of the marker panels. As a result, some of the bombs dropped short on our side of the line. There were about six hundred casualties in the 9th Infantry Division.

One bomb actually dropped in our 3d Armored Division area, but we sustained no severe casualties from it.

Lieutenant General Leslie McNair, chief of the army ground forces in Washington who had come to Normandy to observe the operation, was in a foxhole in the Vents Heights area when a bomb dropped short and killed him. McNair was the highest-ranking American officer killed in combat in World War II.

It took an hour for the more than nine hundred B26 medium bombers in the first flight to pass over the target.

If we thought that the B26 attack was something, we hadn’t seen anything yet. Immediately following the B26 attack, seventeen hundred B17 and B24 high-level bombers from the Eighth Air Force flew over at approximately twenty thousand feet. By this time, the German antiaircraft fire had been pretty well eliminated, and there was little evidence of flak. Because the planes had to fly only a few hundred miles from England to the target, they could carry a relatively light load of gasoline and a full armament of six to eight tons of bombs.

The bomb load of each plane included 500-pound demolition bombs and 150-pound antipersonnel bombs.

The demolition bomb would produce a crater forty-five to fifty feet in diameter and fifteen to twenty feet deep. It didn’t take many of these bombs to produce overlapping craters in a small field. A direct hit on a tank would demolish it completely; at a distance of five to ten feet, it would break the tracks and turn the tank on its back. In a small town such as Marigny, one of these bombs would take out an entire block. Marigny was so completely devastated that only rubble remained. When American troops finally assaulted the town, it was difficult for them to tell where the streets had been.

The 150-pound antipersonnel bomb had a heavy steel case with grooved segments, similar to a hand grenade; when it exploded, it fragmented into many small, deadly missiles. In the two hours it took the B 17s to make their bomb run, the combination of these two types of bombs obliterated everything in the target area. In our assembly area in the Bois du Hommet, approximately a mile from the bomb line, we could feel the ground shake whenever a bomb load struck.

Next came 700 P-47 fighters, whose mission was to patrol the exposed flanks of the armored divisions, as they expanded the breakthrough, until the infantry divisions could come forward and occupy this ground.

This made a total of 3,300 planes dropping some 14,000 tons of bombs in three hours. This was the largest single bombardment of the war until Hiroshima.

New Mission for Air Support

The effect of the bombing was totally and completely devastating. The air force and the artillery obliterated the area on both sides of the road south of the Bois du Hommet to Marigny. In a few instances the highway was hit, but in most areas the road was still passable by wheeled vehicles. As soon as the bombing and artillery ceased, the infantry moved out. The 9th Infantry on the right and 30th Infantry on the left moved about nine hundred yards in the first forty-five minutes; in conventional hedgerow fighting, this could have taken several days. Immediately after the infantry’s initial penetration, the two armored divisions with their supporting infantry moved through the gap. In addition to their ground support role, the P47 fighter-bombers of the Ninth Air Force had the unique mission of holding and securing ground on the flanks of the armored divisions.

The 3d Armored Division and the 1st Infantry Division were on the right and the 2d Armored Division and the 4th Infantry Division were on the left. Our division’s objective was to capture Marigny and swing to the right to secure the high ground north of Coutances, approximately seventeen miles away at the base of the Cotentin Peninsula. This rapid thrust would completely envelop the left flank of the German army, which was pinned to the coast eight to ten miles north of Coutances, and complete the first phase of the breakthrough.

As soon as the CCB task forces passed through the penetration area, C Company of the maintenance battalion followed. The area beyond the northern boundary of the bomb line looked like the surface of the moon. The bomb craters had overlapped in many areas, and in some cases entire hedgerows were taken out.

About a mile inside the bombing area, we encountered a Mark IV German tank, which had apparently been dug in on the side of the road as an antitank roadblock. A near miss of a 500 pound demolition bomb had turned the tank completely on its top.

A little bit farther down, we pulled off to the right and moved the company into its first bivouac inside the bomb line. The first field that had reasonably clear spaces happened to be right in front of one of the batteries of the 391st Field Artillery, which was firing a mission on Marigny. The vehicles moved around the edge of the field next to the hedgerows, and we immediately started to set up our defenses and install the green identification panels.

As we were moving into our bivouac, we were apparently spotted by a German battle group of tanks and infantry that had been outside the bombing area and was moving in toward our flank. We were busy digging our foxholes and setting up our 57mm antitank gun when we spotted the German group in the next field. The 57mm would not have a chance against a Panther. In addition to the 57mm, we had an armored scout car with a .50-caliber machine gun plus half a dozen .50-caliber machine guns on ring mounts on GMC trucks. The men themselves had .30-caliber M1 carbine rifles and were prepared to put up a hell of a fight.

At this point, the artillery battery commander realized that our 57mm antitank gun and his howitzers would have little effect against the Panther tank. He called his air force liaison officer and ordered an air strike.

Within less than forty-five seconds, two P47s appeared right over the treetops, traveling at an altitude of three hundred to five hundred feet. Because their approach was from the east, they had to let their bombs go long before they reached our area. The bombs passed directly over our maintenance company and struck the target on the other side of the hedgerow. It seemed as though the bombs were going to land squarely in the middle of our area, and we took cover in our foxholes, shallow as they still were.

As the two P47s came screaming in, with their four 500 pound bombs arcing overhead, they let go with their eight .50-caliber machine guns. The Germans were apparently just about to breach the hedgerow with an explosive charge when the bombs struck. The blast was awesome; flames and debris shot five hundred feet into the air. There were bogey wheels, tank tracks, helmets, backpacks, and rifles flying in all directions. The hedgerow between us and the German tanks protected us from the direct effect of the blast, but the tops of the trees were sheared off.

With the exception of perhaps some broken bows in the tops of the trucks, we didn’t sustain any damage but I kept digging my foxhole in fear that German stragglers would still try to come in on us. If there were any survivors left in this group, they were soon taken care of by the 9th Infantry, who moved up, shored up our flank, and consolidated the area.

I remembered back to when we were in England, before the invasion started, that we would tease the air corps about the fuzz-faced flyboys who flew the fighter planes. By this time, the air corps had lowered the age limit for commissioned officers to eighteen, figuring that these young men were full of piss and vinegar and had enough hot-rod instincts to make excellent fighter pilots. Men beyond their midtwenties were supposedly no longer foolhardy enough to make good fighter pilots. I realized the truth of this on that day.

Because of the Ninth Air Force, the men of C Company of the maintenance battalion and one battery of the 391st Field Artillery became survivors.

Operation Spark Plug

I received word from Maj. Dick Johnson that a number of tanks from CCB were shut down about halfway between Marigny and Coutances due to spark-plug fouling. Idling while waiting to cross the bomb line was taking its toll on our tank engines. I immediately got two empty ration boxes and filled them with every spark plug we could spare. Although I didn’t know where the tanks were, I knew the route they were supposed to take.

My driver, Vernon, and I took the bypass route around Marigny that CCB had taken, because fighting was still going on in the town. One of the things I had learned is not to go looking for trouble, because there is enough out there to go around for everybody. As we started down the main highway, we soon became accustomed to what we later referred to as the debris of combat: spent tank shells, paper, shot-up German vehicles, and sometimes a few German dead. It made me feel certain that we were on the right road.

About halfway to Coutances, we came down a hill toward the little town of Camprond. According to the map coordinates, the CCB column took a right turn here and should be somewhere on the north road right outside of town. As we approached the town, I could hear sporadic rifle fire. Just as we were about to enter the town, I heard a loud blast that sounded like a tank firing right at us. Vernon hit the brakes and the Jeep skidded sideways. I yelled, “Let’s get the hell out of here.” We turned and headed back up the hill at top speed, then moved into a defiladed position behind the brow of the hill. I looked through my field glasses to see what was going on.

Apparently, a German Mark IV tank had backed into a building and was firing across the street at some of our infantry. I decided to wait and see what happened. The tank firing soon ceased, so I assumed that the tank had been knocked out. But considerable small-arms fire continued. I would wait until it subsided. While I was lying there with my field glasses aimed at the town, another Jeep approached from the rear and parked beside us. Out stepped a soldier in a trench coat. I thought at first he was an officer but soon realized by the patch on his shoulder that he was a member of the press corps.

“What’s going on down there?” he asked as he came up beside me.

“Damned if I know,” I replied.

“But I just saw you come up the hill a few minutes ago from the town.”

“I didn’t stay around long enough to find out what was happening.”

I explained that I had a bunch of spark plugs to deliver to our tanks on the other side of the town, where I’d be going as soon as the firing subsided. He asked if he could follow me. “Be my guest,” I replied.

Shortly thereafter, the firing seemed to subside considerably, and I figured it was time to go. Just then a 36th Armored Infantry half-track came down the road. We decided to follow it.

Suddenly, the reporter became apprehensive. After much cogitation, he turned to me. “Lieutenant, you go on down there and deliver those spark plugs. I think I’ll go back to battalion, look at the map, and get the ‘big picture’.” This was the first time I’d heard the expression “big picture.”

As we followed the half-track down the hill into Camprond, the firing continued to subside. We passed through the village and found the road to the right on the map and started back up the hill. About half a mile out of town, we came upon the tank column, which had just been engaged in a heavy fire-fight. There were German vehicles and litter on the road. The body of a young German soldier, stripped to his waist, lay on a stretcher beside the road where he had evidently been left by his own medics. Some soldiers in their final agony develop a wax-like hue, then later turn whitish gray, particularly if there had been a great loss of blood.

This man, with his blond hair and ivory skin, looked like a wax figure.

The 33d Maintenance people were glad to see me coming with their spark plugs, and they wasted no time in placing them in their engines. They gave me the old plugs so I could have them sandblasted, then the tank column continued to the high ground north of Coutances. From this position they could dominate the road net into the city in all directions while the infantry secured the city itself. This opened the road for Patton to move his divisions south toward Avranches and the Brest peninsula.

Lessons from Operation Cobra

The first phase of Operation Cobra ended with the complete destruction of the left flank of the German army.

This enabled the First Army to move south to widen the gap and outflank the Germans south of Saint-Lô.

The comparison between this operation and the operations in the bocage country, south of Airel, was astonishing. Previously, it had taken twelve days to penetrate eight miles. Including the operation around Villiers-Fossard, our total tank losses had been eighty-seven. In the first phase of Operation Cobra, from the morning of July 26 through July 28, the division moved forward seventeen miles to Coutances with a loss of only two tanks.

The lessons were straightforward. The hedge choppers, although we had fewer than half of those ordered, allowed the tanks to break through the hedgerows at a number of points simultaneously without forewarning the Germans. Next, we had the almost perfect classroom solution of air, armor, infantry, and artillery working in support of one another. The crushing firepower completely destroyed enemy troops in the area and neutralized their reserves. This kept the flanks open long enough for the armor to secure a complete breakthrough.

The armored division is in its ideal element once it is through the main line of resistance and has a more or less open field. Here it can move rapidly, bypass pockets of enemy resistance, and keep casualties at a minimum. Conversely, when it gets bogged down and moves slowly, casualties reach a maximum. Operation Cobra will be remembered as one of the best-planned and best-executed examples of combined-arms warfare in military history.