9

Back to Germany

Return to Aachen

On February 7, the division moved back to occupy Aachen, Stolberg, Mausbach, Werth, and Hastenrath, areas we had so bitterly fought over back in November. In the meantime, the 104th Infantry Division had consolidated this area and driven up to the west bank of the Roer River at Düren.

The maintenance battalion moved back to the Engleburt Rubber factory in Aachen, where we had buildings and plenty of paved areas to do maintenance. When we got there, the liaison group made a mad dash for the telephone exchange. With its heavy concrete walls and roof, it was obviously the safest place in the factory.

The weather had cleared up considerably. Even though the rains made the fields muddy, it was still better than the snow and slush of Belgium. Many of the tanks were bivouacked in the muddy fields surrounding the small villages, but the maintenance company of the 33d Armored Regiment had moved back into Mausbach, where there were many paved areas in the middle of the village. Although the division was still within enemy artillery range, the Germans were apparently trying to conserve their ammunition in preparation for our upcoming offensive.

The headquarters building of the Engleburt Rubber factory was posh even by German standards. The largest tire manufacturing company in Germany, it had been working around the clock making tires for German combat vehicles and trucks. Because of this continuous operation, the company provided elaborate living quarters for its top executives. It had a beautiful paneled dining room complete with linen napkins and tablecloths, crystal, and sterling silver flatware. There were adjoining bedroom-and-bath facilities.

The liaison group arrived back at Engleburt before the rest of the headquarters company, so my buddies Lincoln and Lucas made a quick emergency requisition for tablecloths, crystal, and silver flatware. Having lived there before the Ardennes campaign, we knew about these elaborate facilities and wanted to make sure that they were shared with the liaison group before Colonel McCarthy and Major Lawrence could claim the entire layout.

By this time, we had obtained one of the giant blowtorches that came with each German tank. Apparently, the low-octane fuel made the big V8 Maybach engines extremely difficult to start in cold weather. The Germans used these torches to preheat the manifold prior to starting up. They had to be careful doing this; they could set the tank on fire if there was the slightest fuel leak.

The blowtorches, which we took from any shot-up German tank we found, made good trading material; they were in much demand as a source of heat. We could fire one up and shoot a flame about three inches in diameter and ten feet long. The flame would heat a room in a matter of seconds, especially if the flame was oscillated back and forth. Living fairly high on the hog, the liaison group felt well fixed for the time being.

Trading with the Enemy

The factory also held a cache of German schnapps and good French wines. The liaison group made sure they got their share. One evening after an elaborate meal, we decided to explore the building further. It was a split-level in the area near the telephone exchange. Our quarters were partly above- and partly belowground. Below us were at least two levels of sub-basement with heavy reinforced concrete floors and walls. The building itself was a natural fortress. In one of the lower-level basement rooms, we discovered many German file cases. Some of them were marked with what we thought was the German equivalent of “confidential.” This naturally tweaked our curiosity and we immediately opened them and started examining the contents. As ordnance officers, we had been instructed to be on the lookout for intelligence on enemy industrial technology.

I was stunned by the contents. Correspondence and documents between English firms and Engleburt, dated from 1940 through 1943, indicated that business went on as usual. All correspondence was in both English and German, attached together in the same file. It was obvious that the Germans and English were placing orders and transferring checks and money, apparently through Swiss banks. I was shocked to find out there were English businessmen dealing as merchants of blood when their own soldiers plus their American allies were engaged in a desperate fight for their lives. We reported these findings to Colonel McCarthy. After checking them out, he notified G5 (military government), which in turn instructed us to impound the documents until further notice.

A few days later, a lone German civilian came to headquarters and asked to see the commanding officer. Although he was shabbily dressed, as most civilians were at that time, his bearing and manner suggested that he was well educated. He told Colonel McCarthy that he had orders from G5 to get the records in the basement.

Colonel McCarthy smelled a rat and immediately detained the man. He called G5, which sent a couple of MPs to take the man away. We speculated that he might have been one of the ex-Engleburt executives trying to get hold of the records and destroy them before they could be turned over to a war-crimes commission. I never knew the final outcome of this matter, as we turned over all records to G5 when we left Engleburt.

The Western Front: February 1, 1945

The Allied armies occupied virtually the same positions we had on December 16, prior to the Battle of the Bulge. The dams on the upper reaches of the Roer River had finally been captured, and the flooding caused by the damaged control valves on the dams had now subsided. We were preparing for the final assault on Germany.

Rumors about strategy flew, particularly among the junior-grade officers. The general plan called for an advance along the entire front. The main effort was to be made by the 21st Army Group across the Rhine River, north of the Ruhr Valley. The First Army was to cover the southern flank of the 21st Army Group’s Ninth Army, and the Third Army would in turn cover our southern flank. The 6th Army Group would consolidate the Saar area and the upper Rhine.

We all knew that the Germans had suffered a terrible defeat in the Battle of the Bulge, although not without horendous losses to our side. We also knew that the Russians on the eastern front had taken the major brunt of the war so far, although there had been little activity there for some time. It appeared now that the Russians finally were beginning to get things going.

Much of what went on during this time didn’t make much sense to the junior officers. The real esprit de corps of a good outfit is based largely on the faith that the younger soldiers have in commanders. In the 3d Armored Division, that faith was well placed. We had, with a few exceptions, an excellent officer corps.

Although we did not know it at the time, considerable friction existed between General Eisenhower and Field Marshal Montgomery. The Combined Chiefs had already decided that Montgomery and his 21st Army Group would make the major effort in the north. Somewhat reluctantly, Eisenhower went along with these plans. General Bradley and his officers resented Montgomery’s arrogance and felt they had made the main effort since Normandy.

The senior Allied commanders ranged from one extreme to the other. Montgomery was conservative and would hesitate to attack until he had overwhelming superiority. He was also arrogant and was constantly trying to build up the importance of his 21st Army Group. On the other end of the spectrum was the extremely aggressive Patton, who believed in attacking at the first opportunity. He was really in his element when his armored columns could range far and wide in exploiting a major breakthrough. However, he had little patience with infantry assault operations, and when he was not immediately successful he became frustrated.

General Bradley had actually served as Patton’s subordinate in Sicily; however, Bradley’s tactical brilliance and steady judgment had caused Eisenhower to select him to command the 12th Army Group. Under Bradley, Gen. Courtney Hodges of First Army had served as an enlisted infantryman in World War I and had later gone to West Point. Through his hard-bitten determination, he advanced through the ranks to become an army commander. Although he had none of Patton’s flamboyance, his steady judgment earned him the unyielding loyalty and respect of his subordinates. Hodges, more than any other army commander, understood the use of armored divisions and infantry divisions reinforced with GHQ tank battalions and how each could be used to maximum advantage. Always unassuming and never pushing for undue publicity, Hodges had a combat record that was unequalled or little understood by the general public.

One of the cardinal principles in warfare is that the units that are opposed by the most powerful enemy units suffer the greatest casualties. At the same time, if they are successful, they can also inflict the maximum casualties on the enemy. The First Army suffered more casualties than any other American army and inflicted the greatest casualties on the Germans. It was also responsible for the capture of the greatest number of German prisoners.

General Simpson’s Ninth Army was activated in September 1944 from a cadre of battle-hardened divisions from First Army. It was part of the 12th Army Group until the Battle of the Bulge, then was assigned to Field Marshal Montgomery’s 21st Army Group. General Devers’s 6th Army Group, with the American Seventh Army and the French First Army, had landed on the southern coast of France and driven northward to the Saar region and the Vosges Mountains. The French First Army did a good job when actually concentrating on fighting the Germans. Its commanders were so concerned about the French place in history that they were often involved in political disputes with both Devers and Eisenhower.

Ordnance Problems

The buildup for the final assault was now proceeding rapidly. I spent a great deal of time going back and forth between the Engleburt factory in Aachen and the maintenance company of the 33d Armored Regiment at Mausbach. One day in Mausbach, Maj. Dick Johnson told me that a tank from the 2d Battalion was having difficulty in keeping 75mm rounds in the main ammunition storage box underneath the turret. He said this condition had appeared in other tanks before, and no one knew what was causing it.

The ammunition was stored in the racks with the projectile to the rear and the cartridge case sticking out the front for easy removal. Small, spring-loaded metal clips engaged the rim of the cartridge and kept the round in place. For some reason the rounds were dislodging when the tank stopped. If the primer happened to strike a sharp object, the rounds could explode prematurely.

The main ammunition rack was a fabricated aluminum box approximately three feet wide, two feet high, and three feet deep. It had a series of three-inch longitudinal tubes nested together in several rows to accommodate thirty-four rounds of 75mm tank ammunition. Although the ammunition box was enclosed in quarter-inch armor plate with split-type doors down the front, the rim clips were supposed to hold the ammunition in the rack with the doors open.

The maintenance crew hadn’t checked this out very well, because the trouble was obvious once I got inside the tank and examined the front of the rack. This particular tank had thirty rounds of 75mm tank ammunition and four bottles of Cognac. The tank crew had decided that this was a good place to store their extra Cognac. The diameter of the bottle of Cognac was slightly larger than that of the ammunition. There was enough clearance in the tube to allow the bottle of Cognac to go in, but not without stretching the clips beyond their yield point. The weakened clips would no longer hold a round of ammunition. The crew had apparently removed the Cognac and replaced the 75mm ammunition in time for another inspection, but the day I came they were not expecting an ordnance inspection. We replaced the clips and corrected the condition.

When confronted, the crew defended their actions. “This ammunition is no damn good anyway against a German tank. If the going got too rough, we could hide behind a building and break out the Cognac and at least ease some of the pain.”

I couldn’t help but realize the tragic irony of what they said. The crew was reprimanded by their company officers, and Major Johnson put out notification that the practice must cease immediately. Although it could seriously threaten the crew members’ lives, I don’t believe it ever stopped completely.

Captain Bew White, maintenance officer of the 391st Field Artillery, which was normally attached to CCB, told me they were having difficulty with 105mm howitzer shells firing erratically. Although the division was out of the line, the artillery fired support from time to time for the 104th Infantry Division, which was holding the line on the Roer River at Düren.

The firing chamber in the breech end of a 105mm howitzer is bored in several diameters. The initial part is bored to a specific diameter and tapered to allow the cartridge to be easily inserted. This diameter must be large enough to allow the free passage of the cartridge case and yet small enough to allow the cartridge case to expand against it when the round is fired, and to allow obturation (a sealing action that traps combustion gases).

Just forward of the cartridge chamber is the head space, with a smaller diameter than the cartridge chamber and of sufficient bore and length to accommodate the rotating band. Just forward of the head space is the forcing cone, the area where the tapered lands start from the diameter of the rotating band and decrease slightly along a tapered length of approximately two inches until the lands reach a diameter to accommodate the projectile’s bourrelet (the main diameter of the projectile itself). The lands are in effect longitudinal ridges approximately a quarter inch wide, separated by grooves of equal dimension and of sufficient number to cover the entire circumference of the barrel. The groove between the lands is approximately an eighth inch deep, and the diameter from the top of the lands back into the head space is gradually tapered for a length of approximately one and a half inches. These lands and grooves are formed with a spiral broach that is pulled through the barrel.

When the propelling charge fires, the pressure forces the shell forward and the soft top of the rotating band is cut by the tapered forcing cone. This imparts obturation to the front of the shell and at the same time causes the shell to rotate, giving it stability as it leaves the end of the barrel. This forcing cone, the most critical part of the gun barrel, receives the greatest wear.

In addition to the shearing action of cutting the rotating band, the forcing cone is subjected to corrosion from the fulminate of mercury used in the primers, and from the high temperature and pressure inside the barrel. This corrosion causes pitting, which further weakens the lands in the forcing cone to the extent that they shear off for several inches inside the tube itself. When this happens, the grooving in the rotating band becomes erratic. This in turn causes the projectile to lose obturation and wobble when it emerges from the end of the barrel. In some cases, the rotating band is so severely damaged that it comes off in flight and the projectile starts tumbling, which throws it off its trajectory. A tumbling projectile could drop short and kill our own troops.

Upon examination, it was revealed that all the gun barrels in the 391st Field Artillery were in bad shape. In some cases, the lands were sheared off for twelve to eighteen inches. I reported this immediately to Major Arrington. Lieutenants Nibbelink and Lincoln reported similar conditions in the 67th and 54th Armored Field Artillery Battalions. A detailed ordnance inspection revealed that all of these gun tubes were badly worn and should be replaced. Major Arrington called Captain Sembera and requested that he immediately requisition fifty-four 105mm tubes.

Army ordnance couldn’t believe that the gun barrels were worn as badly as we reported. They told Captain Sembera that they were sending forward a first lieutenant who was an ordnance “expert” on gun barrels from Rock Island Arsenal. When Sembera introduced him to us in the liaison group, I recognized him immediately, although I’m not sure he recognized me at the time. After a short while, we developed a good rapport. The lieutenant was Joe Dortman; we had been classmates in 1939 during ROTC summer camp training at Aberdeen Proving Ground. He was an academic type, kind of flaky, extremely naive, and the butt of several practical jokes. By today’s standards, he would be considered a nerd. I told Nibbelink and Lincoln about my experience with Dortman back at Aberdeen; I wanted to make sure they didn’t let the cat out of the bag, because we wanted to make sure we got those replacement gun tubes.

At Aberdeen Proving Ground that summer, we had 150 ordnance cadets from nine different ROTC units. We were split up so we would get to know the men from other schools. My three tent mates were from the University of California at Berkeley, Cornell, and the University of Cincinnati; the tent next to us had my buddy Barnett from Georgia Tech. Dortman, an MIT man, lived several tents down. He always sounded off the right answer before anybody else when the instructor asked questions during lectures. He was also somewhat arrogant, and the rest of us began to resent him.

We were given seating assignments at the eight-man tables in the mess hall, and Dortman was assigned to the same table with Barnett and me. During the day, we were on a tight schedule. In the mornings we would attend lectures together and after lunch we would be assigned to small groups and visit various weapons sections. The day’s activities were good grist for the table conversations that evening.

One evening Barnett asked what I’d done that day.

“Oh,” I answered with a slight grin, “we visited the white rat section down at the south end of the proving ground.”

Barnett winked back. “Oh, what do they do down there?”

“They’ve developed a highly intelligent breed of gopher rats,” I replied, “and they put them through a rigorous training program.”

“What kind of a training program are you talking about?” Dortman demanded.

I notched up the ante. “They use the rats to assist in cleaning out the antitank guns before they fire them.”

“What do you mean they assist in cleaning out the guns?” replied Dortman.

He was beginning to swallow the bait, so I quickly replied. “They take these white rats and breed them specially for size and weight and color, also for the quality of their fur. When the rats are fully developed, they train them in different mazes to see if they’ll follow commands and directions. After they’re thoroughly indoctrinated, they’re dipped in a cleaning solution and put into the chamber of a 37mm gun. A soldier holds up a piece of cheese at the other end of the gun tube. As the rat scrambles after the cheese, he thoroughly swabs the inside of the barrel, cleaning out the dirt and Cosmoline.

“Just before he reaches the end of the barrel, the soldier pulls the cheese away and the rat drops into another cleaning bath, then he’s routed back through the chamber again. Sometimes it takes two or three passes before the gun barrel is clean, provided he doesn’t get the cheese in the meantime. If he grabs the cheese before the soldier can pull it away from the end of the muzzle, he’ll stop and eat the cheese and won’t be interested in cleaning the gun. If he completes his mission properly, he gets the cheese as a reward.”

Dortman looked stunned as he took this in. I was sort of stunned myself to think he actually believed the story. I had never told such a lie in my life.

The other fellows sitting around the table looked about to explode. I figured we’d better do something in a hurry, so I started out again.

“You remember last week when we went down to see them fire the big fourteen-inch gun? Well, Dortman, do you know how they cleaned it out? They used a rare breed of Texas jackrabbit, and instead of cheese they dangled carrots at the other end of the barrel. I understand it took six jackrabbits and about three bushels of carrots before they got that gun clean.”

This last comment was too much. I think Dortman realized he’d been had. For the next few days, he was kind of cold and aloof, and I realized he must have thought I was some kind of nut. Before we left camp, however, things had settled down and we parted as good buddies. This was the last I had seen of Dortman until he showed up for the artillery inspection in Germany.

When we got down to the 391st Field Artillery, I took Dortman to see Bew White, and we went over to one of the batteries and started inspecting the guns. Dortman had brought with him a special inspection mirror, consisting of a telescopic stainless steel tube with an angular adjustable mirror on the end; it looked like an enlarged version of a dentist’s inspection mirror. By stretching the stainless steel handle to its full length, Dortman could inspect the bore of the gun barrel.

The first gun we inspected was heavily pitted around the forcing cone, and the lands were ripped out eighteen inches forward of this area in a jagged fashion. It was obvious that the gun should be replaced.

Dortman couldn’t believe this and asked to see the gun book. Each artillery piece had a gun book that was kept with it at all times; the crew entered the number of rounds and the size of the charge fired each day. After an extremely heavy barrage, the crew could look at the number of rounds left and tell how many had been fired. A good gun crew chief kept these books up-to-date, so he could have a relative comparison of the condition of his gun tube at any time.

The 105mm ammunition was designed as a separate loading round. This meant that the brass cartridge case and the projectile would come apart. Each new round contained seven individual charges. Each charge consisted of a small bag of smokeless powder. By removing the bags, the crew had the option of firing from one to seven charges, depending on the range of the target. By entering this information into the gun book on a daily basis, one could quickly calculate the comparable number of service charges (the equivalent of firing the full seven) that had been fired.

After looking at the gun book, Dortman said, “These guns are supposed to fire seventy-five hundred service rounds, and they haven’t fired nearly that many. What the hell have you been doing with these guns?”

The crew chief spoke up. “Lieutenant, as you know, the seventy-five-hundred-service-round charge rating is based on firing at four rounds per minute. When we’re firing a red-hot mission, we fire at least ten rounds per minute.”

Dortman was incredulous that a gun could be fired this fast, but after witnessing several rapid-fire missions called by the 104th Infantry Division, he became a believer. All of the other gun barrels were in similar or worse condition. Dortman told Captain Sembera that he would recommend that First Army replace all the gun barrels immediately.

As Dortman was leaving, he relaxed and smiled. “Cooper, I never have forgotten how you and Barnett pulled my leg about those white rats.”

I relaxed myself and told him that I’d been uptight during his whole visit, hoping he hadn’t held it against me. As he left in his Jeep on his way back to First Army, I couldn’t help but get in a last-minute remark. “You know, if we ran some of those white rats through these gun tubes, they’d probably come out looking like striped-butt tigers.”

As I was leaving VII Corps headquarters at Eupen, I saw two young boys standing near my Jeep. One of the great tragedies of war is the profound effect it has on children. Because Eupen was a border town and had been transferred back and forth four times in the last thirty years, the children were bound to be confused as to whose side they were on. The two boys looked to be about four and eight years of age, and I figured they were brothers. Many of these children spoke French and German and also understood a little English.

I figured I’d been targeted for a handout. The older one blurted, “Avez vous du chocolat?” (Do you have some chocolate?) The younger one blurted something about schokolade (the German word for chocolate). The older boy understood that the Americans and the Belgians were on the same side, whereas the younger boy, having been born during the German occupation, had no idea about sides; he was German and proud of it.

“You Belgian or Deutsch?” I asked.

The older one quickly replied, “Me Belgique.”

The younger one steadily persisted, “Me Deutsch, me Deutsch.”

“Non, non, he mon frère, he Belgique, just like me,” the older one replied quickly. The younger one shook his head and stubbornly insisted that he was German.

I was about to explode with laughter and could carry on the charade no longer. In the meantime, Wrayford had already broken out several chocolate bars and we divided them evenly between the boys. As we got in the Jeep to drive away, I noticed the older boy nudge the young one. They both waved and called out, “Vive l’Amerique.” War makes children grow up fast.

The constantly diminishing tank crews became increasingly aware of the M4’s weaknesses. They took every means available to reinforce the front glacis plate. They stored spare track blocks and bogey wheels there, but this was not sufficient. Some crews put sandbags on the glacis plate; others used a combination of logs and sandbags laced together with chicken wire.

At Stolberg, the crews continued their efforts at the abandoned cement factory, making concrete armor. Although these measures may not have been effective, I’m sure they had a great psychological effect on the crews. The concrete may have done some good, but this was probably offset by the added weight, which crunched the forward bogey wheels and slowed the tank considerably. The crews felt this was worth it if they could get more protection. Like drowning men, they would grab at any straw that might save them. They were desperate to survive.

The First New M26 Tanks Arrive

During the first week of February, Major Arrington called in the three liaison officers to brief us on a pleasant surprise. Within the next few days, we would receive our first shipments of the M26 Pershing heavy tank, films of which had been shown at Tidworth Downs in 1944. Although information on the new tank was limited, Major Arrington gave us everything he had and told us to brief the tank units.

We did not want to make the same mistake we had made on the M4 Sherman tank. Prior to the invasion, we had innocently informed the tank units that the M4 Sherman was a much better tank than it actually proved to be in combat. This was due to false information and to pure ignorance on our part.

The Pershing was the first completely new American main battle tank of World War II. Both the M3 medium with the 75mm gun in the hull and the M4 Sherman with the same short barrel 75mm in a rotating turret were built on the basic tank chassis of the old M2 medium tank, which had been developed back in the late 1920s and early 1930s at Aberdeen Proving Ground.

The M26 was a radically new design with an entirely new chassis. It was longer, wider, and lower than the M4 Sherman and had a gross weight of some forty-seven and one half tons compared to 34 tons for the M4 Sherman. Although it was heavier than the Sherman, its longer and wider track gave it a ground bearing pressure of three to four pounds per square inch compared to seven pounds per square inch for the Sherman. This meant that the M26 would go over rough, muddy ground in which the Sherman would get stuck. The track was supported by large, overlapping bogey wheels suspended on torsion bar spring systems. This was the old Christy system, which had been developed by the Americans some twenty years previously and had been adopted by the Germans and the Russians. The Christy system allowed a much wider track, and also the torsion bar suspension had a greater amplitude than the old coil spring system on the M4 Sherman. This system permitted a much easier ride over rough terrain at higher speeds, and the increased amplitude gave the tank better traction going over rough ground or ascending rugged slopes. All American tanks that came after the M26 Pershing used the Christy system.

The M26 was the closest thing we had to the German Panther. It had four inches of cast steel armor on the glacis plate at forty-five degrees, whereas the Panther had three and a half inches of plate armor at somewhat less than thirty-eight degrees, the nominal angle below which armor-piercing shot would ricochet.

During our ordnance ROTC training, there was considerable debate among the experts as to the value of cast armor versus plate armor. American metallurgists who advocated cast armor claimed that it could be made more homogeneous; therefore, once the projectile started to penetrate, it had a work hardening effect that could limit the depth of the penetration.

The plate armor advocates claimed that it was roll forged, which produced an elongated, high-tensile-strength grain in the direction of rolling. The surface of the plate could then be case hardened; this, backed up with the high-strength elongated grain boundaries underneath, produced a superior grade of armor.

Having no expert knowledge, I based my conclusions only on actual observations of tanks knocked out in combat. From more than a thousand tanks, both American and German, that had been knocked out in combat, I do not recall ever seeing one where a 75mm or larger projectile started to enter the armor and failed to penetrate. The American cast armor on the tanks resisted penetration of armor-piercing shot from .30-caliber small-arms projectiles up through 37mm armor-piercing projectiles; however, once the 75mm or larger projectile started to penetrate, it would normally go through.

In fact, the first tank that was brought back to our VCP at Airel in Normandy was struck by a German 75mm PAK41 on the top radius of the turret just forward of the tank commander’s periscope. The angle at the point of impact could not have been more than fifteen to twenty degrees; however, the projectile penetrated two and a half inches of armor and ripped an eighteen-inch gap at the top of the turret, which tapered down to an inch and a half further back. The fragments from this impact showered down on the tank commander and killed him. When I saw this, I was shocked by the power of the German antitank guns. Although all of the turrets for the M4 Sherman tank were cast armor and some of the earlier hulls were cast armor, most of the hulls were plate armor.

Other than the fact that the M26 tank armor was cast and the Panther’s was plate armor, the armor was comparable in thickness on the sides and the rear. However, the armor on the top deck of the Pershing varied from one inch down to half an inch, whereas the armor on the top deck of the Panther was only about a quarter of an inch thick.

The M26 turret was equipped with power traverse, far superior to the manual traverse of the Panther. It also had a gyrostabilized gun control, which enabled a tank to fire while moving and have the gun remain fairly level. The M4 Shermans had this gyrostabilizer, as did the M5 light tanks, but our tank crews appeared hesitant about using this system and preferred to fire from a stationary position. In some instances, our Sherman crews could get off two or more shots against a Panther before the Panther could get its gun around to fire on the Sherman. Unless the shots fired by the Sherman hit the Panther on the side or the rear, the Sherman would usually be knocked out by a single shot from the Panther.

The 90mm M1 gun in the Pershing fired a heavy projectile at a relatively low muzzle velocity of about 2,750 feet per second. The Panther’s 75mm, whose muzzle velocity was 350 to 400 feet per second higher than this, probably had a slight edge in penetrating capability. In one incident, the projectile from a 90mm M1 gun struck a Panther directly on its glacis plate at a range of less than 300 yards, and the projectile ricocheted.

The Pershing had a 550-horsepower Ford in-line engine. This gave the tank a higher horsepower-per-ton ratio than the heavier Panther, which had a Maybach engine with approximately the same horsepower. The Maybach was a good engine; however, the Germans had to use such low-octane fuel that it was difficult to start the engine in cold weather. This was why the German tanks carried blowtorches. The Pershing’s higher ratio made it more mobile and faster than the Panther. Overall, the two tanks were evenly matched, but the Pershing’s mobility was somewhat neutralized because the Panther often fired from stationary and sometimes dug in positions whereas the Pershing was usually moving on the offensive.

Of the first twenty Pershing tanks to arrive in the European theater of operations, ten went to the 2d Armored Division and ten went to the 3d Armored Division. We issued five to each of our armored regiments.

After a thorough checkout, we took one of the new Pershings up a hill in the vicinity of Mausbach and set up some preliminary firing tests. The forward observers set up their BC scopes and picked out some German targets about a mile away in a section of Düren, across the Roer River. As a safety precaution, we set up tapes at about a forty-five-degree angle from the front of the tank and extending back about a hundred feet on either side.

The 90mm gun had a muzzle brake similar to the one on the Sherman’s 76mm gun. The brake was a heavy steel casting on the front end of the gun barrel with a clearance hole through the center to allow the projectile to pass. On either side were dual blast deflectors, which deflected the blast to the rear and sides. This reversal of the gun blast offset the recoiling forces to the rear. Because the space inside the tank turret is limited, the recoil distance from the rear on the gun must be confined to nine to twelve inches. The muzzle brake makes this possible.

Anyone standing inside the tapes could not only have his eardrums ruptured, he might be killed by the shock of the blast. This same situation occurred with the Sherman’s 76mm gun, but the effect was magnified considerably by the power of the 90mm gun. Although our armored infantry soldiers knew about this, we had to make sure that anyone attached from other divisions was also warned.

The Roer River Line

Across the Roer at Düren lay level farmland. At first it appeared to be ideal tank country, but these flat, open spaces also provided excellent fields of fire for the dug in and camouflaged German tanks and antitank guns. The Germans had had two months to prepare these positions, and they did it in a superb manner. A series of zigzagged trenches ranging from seventy-five to two hundred feet long overlapped one another. Interspersed among the trenches were a series of two- and three-man foxholes used for machine-gun nests and mortar pits.

There were also numerous dug in positions for dual-purpose 88mm guns, self-propelled guns, and tanks. The tanks and guns were located so that anyone assaulting one of them frontally would come under the fire of two others, to the left and right. There were numerous pits farther to the rear that could be occupied by self-propelled guns and tanks that were driven out of their forward positions.

Among the trenches and antitank positions were numerous minefields. Realizing by now that American armored divisions tended to go cross-country to try to flank strongpoints, the Germans made sure that all avenues of approach were covered with minefields. In some cases, the Germans put mines behind the forward trench line so the engineers would have to face the German infantry before they could get to the mines. This was similar to the positions on hill 287 near Stolberg during the November offensive. The flood waters of the Roer were now beginning to subside, although the flatlands across the river were still saturated.

American and German forces used widely different methods when holding a dug in position. The Americans tried to maintain extreme flexibility and move about constantly, putting out patrols to capture prisoners and at the same time confuse the enemy about our intentions. The Germans tended to fall into routines and seemed to perform certain operations every day at the same time. Their predictable actions undoubtedly saved us many casualties.

A rifleman with the 104th Division was stationed at an outpost on top of a two-story building about forty yards from the west bank of the Roer River at Düren. These outposts were manned by two men who were relieved periodically on staggered shifts. This meant that a soldier would spend half his time with a soldier who had been on the outpost previously and the second half with a new soldier who had just come on.

Late one afternoon, a new soldier arrived at the outpost. The soldier already present asked the new soldier if this was his first time in combat. The new soldier replied that he had just been transferred from the communications zone and was excited and anxious to see some action. The older soldier told him he’d see plenty, and soon. He pointed out the various German positions and explained that although there would be random mortar and artillery fire from time to time, there would be several mortar rounds fired on their position at 1830.

The young soldier was confused. “How do you know it’s going to be at eighteen-thirty?”

“They always fire at eighteen-thirty. You can damn near set your watch by it.”

The older soldier then showed the new man where to take cover and told him if things got too hot to just follow him. He said he’d learned from experience that the German 81mm mortar was a high-angled weapon with a low muzzle velocity. The sound of a muzzle blast travels in a straight line faster than the flight of the projectile. A soldier could hear the mortar blast before the projectile reached him. Within the receiving arc, the sound of the mortar blast was much like a cork popped from a champagne bottle. At no other point around the periphery of the border did it sound like this. When a soldier hears that particular sound, he is in the middle of the target area and may have just two to three seconds to take cover. A good infantryman can cover a lot of ground in that time.

Sure enough, at 1830 the mortar fire started coming in. The first rounds landed on a roadblock to the right of them down in the street. When the older soldier heard the cork pop out of the bottle, he yelled, “Let’s go.” He took off down the steps to the basement, and the younger soldier followed close behind.

The incoming round struck the high parapet over the edge of the roof, and the blast went over their heads. As the older soldier reached the bottom step, he was struck a violent, wrenching blow by a large object. Knocked to the floor, he lost his helmet and gun. He soon realized that the blow was the young soldier behind him, following close on his heels. As he tried to collect his senses, he yelled, “Are you all right?”

A belated but firm reply came back. “You beat me this time, but now I know the way.”

Sleeping on a UXB

On the night of February 22, the day before the attack was to start, the RAF launched a massive air raid on Berdorf, Elsdorf, and Niederaussen, the major fortified towns on the way to Cologne. British night air raids normally began with Mosquito bombers at low level dropping flares to mark the target, followed by the bombers dropping incendiary bombs.

Because the target area was only fifteen to twenty miles from Aachen, we went up on the roof to watch. The bombers flew in single file to unload their bombs. Although there were many lines of planes for the different targets, it still took well over an hour for some thousand planes to drop their bombs. The planes at the head of the columns would unload incendiary bombs and start large fires, and the planes after that would drop high-explosive bombs.

The Germans had reinforced their antiaircraft defenses considerably. In addition to the dual-purpose 88mm guns surrounding the area, they had numerous batteries of 40mm Bofors and 20mm Oerlikon antiaircraft guns. Searchlights pierced the misty skies with their incandescent beams. The raging firestorms, the thousands of red incendiaries leaping up from the ground and merging in an apex, the crisscrossing of the shafts of lights, and the crescendo of exploding 88mm shells was an awesome sight. It was as if some giant diabolical Christmas tree was raining death and destruction from its boughs.

After the raid was over, we started back across the roof near the elevator house to the stairs leading below. Suddenly, my buddy Lieutenant Lincoln grabbed my arm and pulled me aside. “Look out, Cooper, you’re about to step in that hole!”

Glancing down, I saw a hole in the roof approximately fifteen inches in diameter. We went downstairs to see what it was. As we approached the area on the third floor, we saw the same size hole, which was repeated on both the second and first floors. Finally, in the basement, we saw the same neat, round hole and could tell by the clear, sharp cut at its edge that the object had been traveling at a high speed when it struck the basement floor.

Trying to recall everything I had learned at bomb disposal school, I surmised that this was a 500 pound unexploded American bomb (UXB), which was probably buried twenty to thirty feet below. It had obviously been in the building since the American air raid in October. There were several other American UXBs lying around in the yard. This type of bomb was extremely dangerous; the men were told to avoid them, if possible, and leave them for bomb disposal crews.

Working around unburied UXBs on the ground was one thing, but having them in the building where you and two hundred other men were living was a different matter. As the only officer in the maintenance battalion who had attended bomb disposal school, I felt I should tell Colonel McCarthy immediately. When I informed him, he told me to keep my mouth shut, that we were moving out in the morning and he didn’t want to create a panic.

Lincoln and I both agreed that he was right. After all, that bomb had been in the building for five months and was there during our first bivouac in Aachen before the Battle of the Bulge. Of the several thousand American bombs dropped on Aachen during the September and October assaults, there were probably well over a hundred American UXBs in the city. Had we tried to move the battalion in the dark to another area, it would have created confusion, and we might have moved to an area even more heavily infested with UXBs.

We left the next morning without further event. Sometime after the war, German prisoners removed the bombs under the supervision of American bomb disposal officers. At least they did not have to concern themselves with booby traps buried underneath the fuses, as the Germans had done with the bombs they dropped in London.

New Maps of Germany

When we first entered Germany back in September, we had been moving so rapidly that we had run out of maps. Many a time I would take a grease pencil and mark the route on my plastic map case as I followed a tank column. I would try carefully not to smudge the markings, because they were the only thing I had to go on when I returned at night some thirty miles to our division rear.

When we captured Liège, we discovered a German map factory in full production. We moved a signal corps cartography group into the factory, and they started making maps for the American army. From then on, we were issued maps before each new major operation.

We had just been issued maps covering the entire Rhine Plain to Cologne and also through central Germany to Berlin. We all figured that this was the big one, the final assault to destroy the German army in the west and meet up with the Russians somewhere in central Germany.

The signal corps map group in Liège did such as excellent job of supplying us with new maps that they soon ran out of map paper. Military maps require high-quality, heavy paper. With tens of thousands of brand-new German maps available, the signal corps began to print our maps on the back side. This seemed to solve the shortage. Each liaison officer received a complete set of maps tied together in one big roll.

I unrolled my maps, spread them out on the hood of my Jeep, and started separating them according to type: 1:125,000 scale, 1:62,500 scale, and 1:10,000 scale. Then I started folding them and classifying them in numerical order. The 1:125,000 maps, in color, were to be used as large situation maps. The 1:62,500 maps, also in color, were used by the tactical commanders to plot advances. The 1:10,000 maps, in black and white, showed details of individual houses in the villages and were used as close-in tactical maps.

As I folded some of the 1:125,000 color maps, I noticed a lot of blue on the back of two of them. Upon closer examination, I was surprised to see that these were maps of southern England prepared by the Germans for the invasion of England in June 1940. They covered the area from the Thames estuary down through Weymouth and Bournemouth, the ports from which we had embarked. The maps continued farther west and covered all the major potential invasion sites on the English Channel.

When I saw these maps, I remembered when we had first arrived in Codford in September 1943. We had been assigned quarters formerly occupied by the area’s British Defense Command. The liaison officers had been assigned individual desks, and as I cleaned out my desk I noticed that the main drawer was jammed. I got it unjammed and saw a folded map caught between the top of the drawer and the bottom of the desktop. When I finally got the map out safely, I damn near collapsed when I saw stamped in large red letters the word “Bigot-Amgot,” the British code word for “top secret.”

This map should have been kept under double lock and key. I knew that a lowly first lieutenant had no business with it. Although I was excited and I am sure my hands were shaking, I was not too excited to take a careful look at it. Fortunately, I was by myself. The map covered an area south of Codford, which was in Wiltshire, extending along the coast for about fifty to sixty miles. The British camp to which we had been assigned was apparently some type of command headquarters for the defense of this area. The map showed the location of every unit from battalion down through company, platoon, squad, and outpost.

From my limited knowledge of defensive tactics, I could see immediately that this entire area was grossly undermanned; it was covered by only about a thousand soldiers instead of the usual five infantry divisions plus at least one motorized or armored division in reserve. The map showed a battalion area where a division would have been expected, and a company where a full regiment should have been. The defenses gradually diminished to the point where they had to actually cover the beaches. There were not enough outposts to cover all the exits from the beach. It appeared that there were outposts manned by at least an automatic weapon with a couple of men spaced at intervals of a mile or more along the cliffs above the beaches. They apparently used some type of messenger on a bicycle to communicate among these outposts. This British map was dated June 1940 and covered a small portion of the same area of the German map that I had just been issued.

I have often wondered if the German decision to invade England would have been affected if they’d had a copy of this map when they made their German maps in Liège. A single German division could have completely overwhelmed the pitiful British defenses shown on this map. Later, I couldn’t help but realize the great irony of being issued a map to invade Germany that had been printed on the back of a German map that would have been used to invade England.

When my mind finally returned to the real world in Codford, I wondered what to do with this map. How could I explain how it came into my possession? If I turned in the map to Major Arrington, he would have to pass it along to a higher authority, and eventually it would wind up in British hands. Probably some young British lieutenant who was as green and inexperienced as I and about my age would wind up in a general court-martial. I would be called as a key witness, which might require my transfer out of the division.

I was even afraid to show it to my buddies Lincoln and Nibbelink for fear they might advise me to turn it in. I finally chickened out. I wrapped the map in some other papers, sneaked it down to my cubbyhole in the Quonset hut in the bachelor officers’ quarters, stuffed it in my little potbellied stove, and burned it. This is probably one of the dumbest things I ever did. It would have been a rare memento.