CHAPTER 8
"That was no country for tanks. And we never trained with infantry, always tanks against tanks. We had a hell of a time for a while learning how they fought. It's a wonder we didn't shoot each other."
-William McFadden, veteran, 749th Tank Battalion'
the hedgerow country-or bocage-of Normandy is much like the Gallic persona in general: quaint in its way, but a source of unending frustration for any outsider. The Tactical Study of Terrain in the Neptune package offered this anodyne description: "The eastern section, which is our immediate area of operation, is featured by rolling hills, more-or-less open fields, and wooded areas. Cultivated areas consist principally of rectangular fields and orchards bordered by hedges." It almost sounds nice.
Tankers knew that they would be fighting in hedgerow country, but men from more than one unit say that the reality came as a rude surprise to them upon landing in Normandy. The separate tank battalions would bloody themselves in this morass from 6 June until after the Operation Cobra breakout, starting 25 July. Wayne Robinson describes the bocage from the tanker's perspective:
The open sun-baked stretch of beach was bad; now it was the green hedgerows, and those were very bad, too.
The hedgerows divided the battlefront into hundreds of separate small boxes, each box a separate battle, a lone tactical problem on a checkerboard of fields, each in itself a single objective to be fought for, gained, or lost.
South of St. Jean de Daye, the hedgerows were spaced so close together that a man could sometimes run from one to another across an open stretch of field in four or five seconds-if nothing stopped him.
There was plenty to stop him.
The hedgerows were perfect field defenses for a holding army, and the Germans, never slothful in military matters, took every advantage of this tough terrain to build a defense in depth that, to break through, would take all the fighting spirit, and many of the lives, of "a soft generation," as German propaganda mistakenly plugged American youth.
Dirt embankments and deep natural ditches were standard accessories with every hedgerow. Those embankments and ditches gave the German fighter protection-ready-made trenches on all four sides of each field, so that parallel hedgerows covered each other, and one hedgerow linked with another to form a system of communicating trenches....
Behind the leafy screens were such unseen targets as machine guns, big and little antitank guns, tanks, self-propelled guns on tank chassis, infantrymen equipped with bazookas-all waiting, playing a deadly catand-mouse game.
There was only one way to fight the hedgerows-one at a time, expecting the worst at each (and almost always finding it) and thinking of each row as a fortress from which the enemy must be routed, field by field. And that was how it was done.'
The German defenders did not simply sit still; they employed an active defense, launching many local counterattacks supported by tanks. Indeed, the Germans used their armor almost entirely for infantry support in a role similar to that of the American separate tank battalions. They also became increasingly aggressive in firing their artillery in battery and battalion volleys.'
On D+ 1, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme commander of the European theater; Bernard Montgomery, the commander of Allied ground forces; and Omar Bradley, the commander of American ground forces, agreed to adjust plans somewhat to put more emphasis on linking the beachheads. They feared that the isolated toeholds were vulnerable to counterattack. Although the Germans had few reserves immediately available, this issue was not moot.4
A CRITICAL CONTRIBUTION
The weight of American armor began to influence the battle on 7 June. The Germans were gathering their armored strength under the I SS Panzer Corps in the vicinity of Caen, in the British zone, leaving the defenders in the American zone with little tank support.' Nevertheless, the 746th Tank Battalion was called to Ste. Mere-Eglise to support the 82d Airborne Division in driving off one armored counterattack. Here, only twenty-four hours after D-Day, was an assignment that according to doctrine should have gone to tank destroyers. The battalion's S-3, Maj. Richard Langston Jr., recalled, "I was told to block the crossroads [there] with my three headquarters tanks and let them burn right there if necessary."6
Company B and the assault gun platoon, equipped with normal 75-millimeter Shermans for the invasion, accompanied Langston. Lt. Houston Payne, commanding the assault guns, was in the lead and was the first to spot the German armored column at about 1500 hours when he crested a rise a few hundred yards north of the center of town. Payne was surprised to see five panzers and other vehicles only 400 yards away. The Germans evidently were equally surprised, as Payne's gunner was able to knock out an antitank gun beside the road and set the first Mark IV on fire with armor-piercing rounds before the Germans responded. The opening return salvo knocked the antiaircraft machine gun and periscope off the top of the turret and injured Payne, but Payne's gunner calmly set a second Mark IV on fire. Payne had expended all the rounds in the ready rack and pulled back, motioning for the second tank to fire. This one's gun jammed, but the German column by this time was pulling back toward Neuville au Plain, a village just northwest of Ste. Mere-Eglise.
Capt. Asher Pay, commanding Company B, led two platoons of tanks to flank the Germans and reached Neuville an Plain. A German gunner knocked out two Company B tanks, but a Sherman nailed the panzer for its troubles. Company B had cut the enemy column.7
Tankers from one of the damaged Shermans ran to a farmhouse as the tanks blazed away at one another. Inside, they saw about twenty German soldiers guarding a like number of American paratroopers. After the tanks fired a few 75-millimeter rounds into the house, the guards became prisoners, and the paratroopers made ready for battle just in time. German infantry attacked the Americans, trying desperately to close with the tanks to destroy them with grenades, but the tankers and paratroopers fired into their ranks. Once the enemy troops realized the odds they faced, sixty of them surrendered.'
While this action was unfolding, the 4th Infantry Division's 8th Infantry Regiment arrived in the area north of Ste. Mere-Eglise with two companies of tanks from the 70th Tank Battalion. Lt. John Casteel of Company B reported, "We went into the town from the south and cut across to the west side and across fields until we made contact with two battalions of parachutists holding the north and west of town. The Germans were still holding a large part of the town, and we had to go through the streets firing and got out into the open as quickly as we could. Besides the enemy in the town, there seemed to be a large force of Germans to the north across the creek. That's where the 746th was fighting."'
For the men from the two tank battalions, the fight in Ste. Mere-Eglise had been a pure tank action with no coordination demanded with the other arms. The impact of shock action by tanks even in fairly small numbers was illustrated by the outcome. Under pressure from two armored thrusts, the German 1058th Regiment panicked and withdrew.10
Except for some veterans in the 70th Tank Battalion, which had fought in North Africa and Sicily, combat was new and confusing. Homer Wilkes, a tank platoon commander, realized that on 8 June, when his 747th Tank Battalion, less Company B, was attached to the 29th Division's 175th Infantry, which was going into action for the first time. Wilkes had been a cowboy before joining the army, where he had risen through the ranks to become platoon sergeant before going to Officer Candidate School in 1942. Always ready to apply the jaundiced eye of practicality and common sense, he recalled:
The column . . . formed up at Vierville in terrain curiously free of hedgerows. We started out in column on the road with Company C leading. I know not what others thought, but I thought we were marching to the front. This impression was corrected minutes later by the appearance of an infantry skirmish line. Although it was my first taste of battle, I knew what that meant....
[One] strong point was Osmanville. And there on a clear day this village was attacked by a dozen British fighter-bombers. The Company C platoon leader of the advance guard was killed trying to display his identification panel. Other officers threw out smoke grenades. But the strike was pressed home until the pilots had dropped all their bombs and expended all ammunition. As a result, thirty-two infantrymen were slain, plus our officer, and Company C lost an entire platoon of tanks....
This seemed to paralyze the infantry command group, as well it might. Omaha was their first combat too. After sitting on the road a while we were notified to attend officers call in a field. There we found Major General [Norman] Cota (the assistant commander [29th Infantry Division]), officers of the 175th [Infantry] Regiment and 747th Tank Battalion officers.
The general asked for a situation report upon which the regimental commander told him he could not get through the enemy line by any means, frontal or flank. He would have to wait for artillery support, which probably wasn't ashore.
The general replied, "All I can tell you, Colonel, is the commanding general told me this attack has to get moving."
He then addressed the 747th's commander. "Colonel Fries, can you get us through this strong point?"
To which the Colonel replied, "Yes, Sir."
"Who will be your leading officer?"
The colonel indicated the 3d Platoon [Wilkes's platoon], Company A, would be in the van, whereupon the general was introduced to the officer [Wilkes], who promptly received a pep talk.
"Is there a place for me in your tank?" asked Cota.
The reply was a crewmember would have to be dismounted. And if the general rode, it would be as assistant driver, which entailed handing ammunition up to the turret.
"I can do that. Which is your tank?" he replied....
Cota's request (actually an order) made me nervous. The general had to serve as a crewmember. Hence I as commander gave him several orders during the night, all of which he obeyed with alacrity....
Now, the plan as [I outlined it to my] tank commanders was to drive along the road until targets were encountered (meaning buildings. We had found out the enemy would be in buildings.) Then the first tank would ease left while the second tank, commanded by Lt. George P. Gale, then an enlisted man, would pull alongside. The commanders would engage targets on their respective sides of the road....
An infantry captain accompanied by a Browning Automatic Rifleman came up to report that his company was attached to the platoon. The BAR-man was an alert, clear-eyed soldier, an encouraging sign under any circumstance. The captain said they would be right behind the lead tank any time [I] needed them.
At one hundred yards, the first buildings were successfully attacked. The advance continued....
Coming upon a mined place, the point stopped. The division had not placed engineers forward with the advance guard. No one present knew how to remove the mines.
The infantry captain suggested firing the coaxial machine gun at them. This was done, but no mines exploded. Therefore it was thought the mines were inactive. The march continued and the platoon sergeant's tank was blown up by the mines...."
"There was no particular effort for the foot troops to keep in contact with the tanks," observed an army combat-interview on the action. "The mediums just rolled along with about a 50-yard interval between them, and thundered on towards the town" Isigny fell without resistance.'
The tanks, under Cota's leadership, had made all the difference. The 175th Infantry's drive collapsed the left flank of the 352d Infantry Division and opened a hole in the German line that cleared the path to the merger of the V and VII Corps beachheads.13
Meanwhile, the 741st and 743d Tank Battalions committed their remaining tanks beside the foot soldiers of the 1st, 2d, 29th, and 30th Infantry Divisions and recovered what tanks they could from the surf. On the morning of 7 June, Capt. James Thornton strolled into the 741st Battalion's transit area. Rather than return to England, he had hitched a ride to the beach, where he fell in with an infantry platoon heading inland. He eventually found someone who knew where the battalion had set up, and he parted ways; now he had a tank company to rebuild.
The assault battalions inland from Utah Beach encountered the enemy in strength and began to suffer heavy losses after their easy landing. The 70th and 746th Tank Battalions were the only armor available to the 4th Infantry and the 82d and 101st Airborne Divisions inland from Utah Beach for the first six days of fighting." By 9 June, Company C of the 746th Battalion assessed its combat efficiency at only 33 percent and reported that most tank machine guns were burned out from overuse and that many of the tank guns were ineffective. On 11 June, the company had only two officers, seventy enlisted men, and six tanks in action. By 10 July, the battalion would lose half its tanks to enemy fire.'5 From D-Day to 31 July, the 70th Tank Battalion would lose forty Shermans and six M5Als.16
On both beachheads in the first few days, a pattern emerged of rapid resubor- dinations of tankers that complicated early efforts to grapple with the new experience of combat. The 746th Tank Battalion, for example, had elements attached to both the 4th Infantry and 82d Airborne Divisions on D-Day." Company C was attached to the 82d Airborne Division from 6 to 11 June; Company A was attached to the 101st Airborne Division on 7 and 8 June; and the rest of the battalion was assigned to the 4th Division until 11 June, when the entire battalion was attached to the 90th Infantry Division. On 13 June, the outfit was attached to the 9th Division, with the exception of Company A, which went to the 82d Airborne Division."
TACKLING THE BOCAGE
At Omaha, hedgerows reached to the bluffs above the beach.19 At Utah, the hedgerows began just beyond the inundated area behind the beach.21 There were, on average, fourteen hedgerows per kilometer in Normand y.21
Incredibly, the invading forces had no tactics worked out for dealing with the terrain, nor equipment tailored to the situation. The hedgerows were not wholly impenetrable to tanks, but in the first few days, they often enough channeled armor onto narrow roads where defenders could focus their antitank and artillery pieces. The first Sherman from one battalion that tried to ram through a hedgerow was flipped onto its back and lay there like an upended turtle.22 The infantry had to attack across fields, however, which meant that tankers had to figure out a way to get their tanks to places where the infantry needed support. There was one benefit, at least, although it probably did not seem so at the time. The bocage provided terrain relatively advantageous to the Shermans in the sense that few engagements occurred at the long ranges that maximized the advantages held by German armor. Tanks generally engaged at ranges between 150 and 400 yards .21
Thus began a period of trial-and-error progress. As the 737th Tank Battalion's commander, Lt. Col. James Hamilton Jr., put it retrospectively, "We've spent years studying the book and practicing, and then in our first action we had to throw away the book, and everything we learned in practice was no good to us at all"24
Early Challenges
In order to use tactics, the tanks had to be able to move. The first approach to overcoming the challenge posed by the terrain itself was to have a tankdozer punch a hole through the hedgerow, which the tanks would pass through to support the infantry. This occurred to tankers as soon as they saw the hedges.25 Experience showed that dozers were capable of breaching about 50 percent of hedgerows.26
The main drawback to the dozer approach was that the Germans quickly figured out the procedure; when a tankdozer created a gap, tanks were likely to follow. The Germans sighted their antitank guns on the hole and waited.
At the tactical level, the tanks and infantry were not even organized as a cooperative venture, and they quickly learned to create ad hoc task organizations. Capt. Charles Kidd of the 116th Infantry, 29th Infantry Division, noted, "Initial operations in Normandy indicated that insufficient training had been conducted in infantry-tank cooperation prior to entry into combat. After the fall of Grandcamp [on 8 June], tank and infantry teams were organized. The tanks would support the advance of the infantry by firing in the trees and along the hedgerows. An infantry squad would protect the tank and assist its advance through the hedgerow by blowing a hole with TNT."27
Tankers and their infantry partners were finding they were unprepared to communicate effectively, just as pre-invasion exercises had foreshadowed. In the first hours after the troops moved inland, operational planning was scant, and commanders on the scene often made up their plans as they went. As had been the case on the beach, communications between the infantry and the tank initially were of the mouth-to-ear variety. This method had one major drawback that had already become apparent to tankers on other fronts: it was insanely dangerous under fire. The risk meant that often communication simply did not occur when things got hot. Oral communication was also rather haphazard, in part because tank crews could not see well through their periscopes, and the infantry had to get the crew's attention amidst the roar of battle and the tank's engine. Riflemen guiding tanks sometimes had to get in front and jump up and down to get the crew's attention.28 Tankers eventually figured out that the doughs often did not understand how blind they were when buttoned up and tried to teach them.29
Tankers were particularly concerned about coordination with the doughs on those nights when tanks remained in forward positions and were vulnerable to attack by infiltrating German infantry. Tank gunners could see nothing whatsoever through their sights at night. Tanker complaints on the subject started early and recurred throughout the war. Company C of the 743d Tank Battalion, for example, reported on 15 June, "Infantry left us without protection and under fire of enemy in darkness. "30
The dough, of course, had his own point of view about all this. For one thing, tanks drew enemy fire, both direct and indirect." And not only the doughs on the line worried about this fact. Two platoon leaders from the 741st Tank Battalion who attempted to find out how their tanks would be used in one day's attack, for example, found that "the infantry commanders were very vague about the situation, and confessed a reluctance to use the tanks at all, because of tanks drawing artillery fire "32 For another thing, the infantry concluded that the poor-sighted friendly tanks could sometimes be just as dangerous as the enemy. One 6th Armored Group liaison officer reported, "1st Division troops do not like to precede tanks. Claim our tanks shoot them. Prefer to go alongside or behind our tanks "33 But when the fighting got heavy, the infantry usually wanted as many tanks around as possible. A report filed by the 746th Tank Battalion captured this moth-and-flame dilemma of the infantry: "9th Inf[antry] Div[ision] still says tanks are no good but won't allow them back for rest or training.""
Experiments were undertaken to provide a radio link between the tanks and infantry, at first very indirectly. On 12 June, for example, the 747th Tank Battalion kept two company command tanks at the regimental command post to provide radio liaison with the platoons in action. Clearly, nobody was aware that radio liaison had already been pushed down to the level of the infantry battalion in the Pacific and Italy. The company commanders relied on jeeps to make quick personal trips to visit their tanks.35
Breakdowns in tank-infantry teamwork were commonplace in the first weeks after D-Day. On 16 June, for example, the 2d Infantry Division began a series of futile attacks to capture Hill 192, which dominated the approach to the strategic road hub of St. Lo and was defended by two battalions of the 3d Airborne Division. The paratroopers had just arrived at the front, and the men had never before tasted battle. Nonetheless, German morale was high, and these men resisted fanatically. A 2d Division history described the objective: "[Hill 192] was studded with foxholes, machine-gun nests, and expertly camouflaged observation points. Hedgerows sprouted along its gradual slope. Behind these, Germans huddled in dugouts. Every crossing and road in the vicinity had been zeroed in by enemy artillery emplaced on the rear slope. German camouflage suits blended softly with the foliage so well that one Nazi sniper remained in a tree only 150 yards from American lines an entire day before he was ... killed. 136
The battered 741st Tank Battalion supported the division. Their joint attacks showed a lack of infantry-tank cooperation and a misunderstanding on the part of the doughboys regarding what they could expect from tanks. The infantrymen believed that tankers had been too reluctant to take advantage of their armor protection to press forward to destroy emplacements and fire into hedgerows. The tanks, however, suffered high losses when they tried to do just that, as German antitank guns, panzerfausts, and antitank grenades could easily get the drop on them, especially when they were trying to clamber over a hedgerow.37 The paratroopers were surprised that the American infantryman refused to give up his tank support in hedgerow terrain and turned to stealth instead; the defenders could usually anticipate an attack because of the noise of the tanks 38
Even when the tanks took the lead, things went wrong because the tankers and infantry could not communicate, and because basic groundwork like terrain reconnaissance was left undone. On 16 June, for example, Capt. Cecil Thomas led eight running M4Ais from the 741st Tank Battalion to a rendezvous with Company E, 23d Infantry, to conduct an assault on Berigny. Thomas and the infantry captain decided to attack straight down a road, four tanks on each side, each group followed by a platoon of infantry. The team set off about noon, and soon intense machine-gun fire from pillboxes and fortified houses lashed the riflemen, who dropped to the ground with many casualties. The tanks returned fire and advanced alone to cover the infantry and destroy the German emplacements. Thomas discovered, however, that marshy ground prevented his advance into Berigny. One tank was lost to a bazooka when the force finally gave up and pulled back about 1700 hours.
Three days later, five Shermans and a tankdozer were ordered forward to support the 1st Battalion of the 23d Infantry. The tanks advanced, spraying hedgerows with machine-gun fire and shelling houses. An American colonel ran up and ordered the tanks to halt. They had been shooting at the 1st Battalion 39
"Such situations," noted a combat interviewer who spoke with both the tankers and infantrymen, "bred mutual distrust. The fault was due to the lack of coordination in the larger sense, rather than the fault of either the tankers or the infantry."40 For the German paratroopers, the success in stopping the 2d Division and destroying a number of tanks boosted self-confidence enormously.41
The 29th Infantry Division launched its own assault on high ground north of St. Lo on 16 June to assist the 2d Division, and similar breakdowns occurred. The 747th Tank Battalion's after-action report recorded for 20 June, "At 0600, Company B moved forward 800 yards. Engineers were blowing gaps in the hedgerows. The infantry was following. The infantry had been pinned down.... Tanks were withdrawn due to bazooka and 105mm fire. One tank was knocked out. The tank burned, and the whole crew was wounded.... On order of the regiment commanding officer, four tanks forced their way through the fire to the objective. No infantry followed. Two tanks returned .... 1112
The Exceptional 743d Tank Battalion
Perhaps the 743d Tank Battalion, commanded by Lt. Col. William Duncan after the wounding of Upham, had learned wisdom on the sands of Omaha Beach. Perhaps it was a lucky outfit. Perhaps Duncan had a knack for war. Whatever the cause, the battalion showed during the early going that there was hope for American combined arms in the European theater.
The battalion had the good fortune to be attached, from 11 to 13 June, to the veteran 1st Infantry Division, which had learned a few things about working with tanks on Sicily. Wayne Robinson captured a model of how tank-infantry cooperation was supposed to work in describing the attack on Caumont on 12 June, when all three medium tank companies supported the 1st Division's 26th Infantry Regiment:
An occasional house or a bush or a position suspected of harboring undesirable tenants was given a treatment of lead by trigger-happy machine gunners and riflemen. Tanks joined the spraying parties whenever the infantry called for it. In working with infantry, a separate tank battalion learns not to shoot at everything in sight. It might turn out to be a platoon of friendly infantry. Tank-infantry coordination is a difficult operation....
As the evening wore along [Companies B and C] began receiving heavy concentrations of artillery fire mixed in with customary mortars. Direct fire from antitank guns worried tank commanders. Machine-gun fire pinned down the doughboys. The attack, however, kept moving in toward the objective. It was slow and cautious work. The tank-infantry coordination of the 26th Infantry Regiment, veterans of the proud and battle-hardened (in Africa and Sicily) 1st Division, remained extremely good on this attack as strong point after strong point was reduced and overrun with the minimum of casualties to the doughs. The infantry efficiently infiltrated antitank gun positions; a tank cannot bull its way past an antitank gun without somebody getting hurt-a sorry lesson learned in Africa by Armored Force men. Machine-gun positions, deadly to the doughs, were another story to tanks. A few rounds of HE from the 75mm fired into the laps of the crews usually was all that was required. An antitank gun was almost always protected by flanking machine-gun nests. Each was a tactical problem to be worked out by infantry and tankers .41
The 1st Division certainly deserved its share of the credit for the effective cooperation with Duncan's tanks, as illustrated by its handling of the 745th Tank Battalion, which would fight with the Big Red One for the rest of the European campaign. The tankers had been attached to the division on 21 April, though like other outfits, no real effort was made to develop a tight tank-infantry team before D-Day. Immediately after the landings, the division attached one medium tank company to each regiment, and each regiment attached a platoon to each battalion. These assignments were retained through the end of the war-with occasional exceptions to strengthen an infantry assault with more tanks-which allowed the tankers and infantry to become intimately familiar with one another. The tankers even drew their rations from the infantry, which encouraged further mingling. Tank platoons took their orders from the infantry company commanders.
The Company D light tanks were usually attached to the 16th Infantry Regiment in addition to Company A, as were the mortar platoon and assault gun pla toon. The three tanks from the battalion headquarters were split up among the three medium tank companies, and the company assault guns were consolidated with the assault gun platoon to form a six-gun battery.44
After its brief attachment to the Big Red One, the 743d Tank Battalion was shifted to the Old Hickory Division. The 30th Infantry Division and 743d Tank Battalion were to have an unusually harmonious relationship and were to soldier together for most of the European campaign. Their promising future became amply visible during the 120th Infantry Regiment's attack to clear an area north of the Vire River on 15 June. Granted, the tankers by now were veterans, but the operation was the GIs' first taste of combat.
The 120th Infantry Regiment was to attack straight down the road running from Cherbourg to St. Lo, its 2d Battalion on the left and 3d Battalion on the right, each supported by tanks and tankdozers. The assault began as scheduled at 0800 hours, and both battalions quickly ran into stiff resistance. The regimental commanding officer, Col. Hammond Birks, exercised firm personal control over the operation, racing from spot to spot in his jeep.
A platoon advance party and a rifle squad led Company E down a small, curving road, followed by two tanks 200 yards ahead of the main party, and six tanks bringing up the rear. Rifle and machine-gun fire from both sides of the road drove the point men to ground. The lead platoon deployed into the fields while the two trailing Shermans attacked the machine guns. The doughboys worked their way through the hedgerows with grenades, grenade launchers, BARs, and bayonets, while the tanks crushed dugouts and knocked out the machine guns, and the German line gave way. The advance continued until 88-millimeter fire at Lenauderie stopped the Americans again.
Meanwhile, the 3d Battalion pushed down the St. Lo road for half a mile until it, too, encountered 88-millimeter fire and machine guns. Artillery took care of the problem, and the Americans pressed forward again. Company F moved up from reserve to tackle Montmartin-en-Grainges, the main objective. Colonel Birks, following the attack, noticed that the supporting tanks were not in action, and he personally directed them into the battle. The doughs had run into German infantry in dugouts and zig-zag trenches outside town, and seven tanks rolled forward to crush the resistance. A tankdozer pushed dirt over the firing embrasures of several dugouts.
Company F took Montmartin but came under fire from a nearby ridge. Birks ordered a barrage down on the hill, and then Company E and its supporting tanks attacked and secured it. Birks also sent a rifle platoon mounted on the decks of tanks into action against Germans in Le Comte, an early example of such tactics in Normandy.45
REGROUPING AND REASSESSING
After roughly two weeks of nonstop fighting, the infantry and tankers from the assault units in the VII Corps had a chance to catch their breath and assimilate some of the hard lessons they had learned regarding hedgerow tactics and tankinfantry communications. Several tank battalions withdrew from the line to perform critical maintenance on their vehicles and train with the doughs. The 743d Tank Battalion went into bivouac from 17 June to 7 July, the 747th Battalion from 21 June to 10 July, and the 741st Battalion from 20 to 30 June.
Replacement tanks and crews began to arrive (by 17 June for the 741st and 20 June for the 743d Tank battalions), but not in numbers adequate to make up losses.46 Some other developments were encouraging. On 20 June, kitchen trucks served hot meals to the men of the 743d Tank Battalion or the first time since the invasion.47
The 747th Tank Battalion and 29th Infantry Division built on their first ad hoc tank-infantry approach to beating the bocage. The battalion welded two prongs made of iron pipe cut four and a half feet long to the final drive housing at the nose of thirteen battalion Shermans. The tank poked holes in the hedgerow, into which engineers placed prepared TNT charges and then blew a gap.48
Meanwhile, at the tactical level, tankers and infantry worked out the following drill: using high-explosive shells with fuse delay, tanks blew out the corners of the opposite hedgerow where the Germans often put their machine guns. The tanks then skipped fuse-delay shells above the hedgerow, causing airbursts, and fired machine guns. The infantry advanced under this protection to the next hedgerow, over which they would throw hand grenades.49
Commanders tried to help. On 25 June, the 29th Infantry Division sponsored a conference on coordination of tanks, infantry, and engineers in the assault of hedgerows, and it published a memo entitled "Infantry Coordination of Tanks, Infantry & Engineers in Hedgerow Tactics." Two days later, a booklet arrived at the front, courtesy of the XIX Corps, entitled The Tank and Infantry Team.S' If these publications had anything helpful to say, it had doubtless come from the guys on the ground painfully working it out.
The 741st Tank Battalion began training in rear areas with the 2d Infantry Division on 20 June. Rifle platoons or entire companies pulled back from the line to practice for a half day with tankers and combat engineers.', This partnership adopted the following plan:
[A]ttach a tank to an infantry squad, together with four engineers.... Since the tank would encounter great difficulty in negotiating the hedgerows, the engineer group would blow a hole in the hedge of sufficient size to enable the tank to get through. The team play of this group was to be as follows: The squad leader of the infantry would form a base of fire with his squad along the hedgerow to be used as a line of departure. The tank would take up a firing position along the same hedgerow with the engineer personnel near the tank, the explosives to be carried on the rear deck of the tank where the engineers could obtain them. Since sufficient personnel were not available to cover all the fields within the zone of advance, the fields on either flank of the field covered by a team had to be covered by fire, in some cases this fire was furnished by light or heavy machine gun, emplaced in the corner of the field at the line of departure to sweep the adjacent fields. A reserve tank would be directly behind the assault tank for over-watching purposes and to provide a reserve tank in case the assault tank became stuck or was knocked out. After the base of fire neutralized the enemy fire in the first hedgerow past the line of departure, the squad leader would send the scouts of the squad forward along the hedgerows parallel with the line of advance on each side of the field. Then the BAR-man and the Tommy gunner would move forward. In short, the infantry squad infiltrated to the next hedgerow. The squad leader, when he went forward, would pick a spot suitable for the tank to secure a fire position and would signal the tank forward. If necessary, the hedge at the point of departure would be blown. In some cases, the tank was able to push through the hedge....
When the tank moved forward, the engineer group went with it to protect the tank from the fire of bazookas and antitank grenades. Upon reaching the next hedgerow, the tank would again go into firing position, the squad would form a base of fire with the tank, and the entire process of advance would be repeated ....52
The 743d Tank Battalion began practicing hedgerow tactics with the 30th Infantry Division on 2 July.53 In that partnership's approach, engineers blew three holes simultaneously in a hedgerow. At a signal from a tank's siren, everybody in the operation rushed through the openings simultaneously, thus preventing German gunners from picking tanks off one by one. In the 737th Tank Battalion, which arrived a few weeks later, teams also relied on the rush tactic. Engineers blew holes in the hedgerow using twenty-second fuses, and then tanks, infantry, engineers, and any other assault elements would pelt through before the dust settled and the Germans could sight their antitank guns on the gaps .14
Men were also trying to solve the riddle of tank-infantry communications, without which tactical improvements might help little. The chief of the First Army's armor section fired a message back to Army Ground Forces on 18 June flagging the "positive need in separate battalions and armored divisions of a quick means of communication between tanks and infantry. We are trying to get the [SCR-]300 series for the purpose. I understand AGF had authorized them. Can you send me the dope?"55 The infantry's standard tactical radio was the SCR-300 walkie-talkie. It is an intriguing possibility that the AGF approval was the result of the war observer's proposal from Italy some months earlier.
While the military bureaucracy chewed on that one, soldiers turned to the field solution that had already proved itself in the Pacific: installing a standard EE-8 field telephone, at first ensconced in an empty ammo box hung under the Sherman's rear deck overhang, which was wired into the intercom system of the tank. Installation of such rigs began by about 20 June and became standard operating procedure in most separate tank battalions. Despite the demonstrated usefulness of the phones on the tanks, battalions were not so outfitted before being committed to combat. The 749th Tank Battalion, for example, did not incorporate the boxes until 22 or 23 July, three weeks after entering battle.56 The 712th Tank Battalion did not receive phones until February 1945.57
Some battalions turned to light tanks for liaison with infantry command posts because they could tie into the tankers' radio net and were less useful than Shermans in combat. On 9 July, for example, the 749th Tank Battalion sent one light tank to the command post of each of the three infantry battalions the unit was supporting that day.58 The 747th Tank Battalion also used light tanks in this capac- ity.59 This at least signaled that communications links were getting down to the infantry battalion-tank company level.
The first efforts to get radios into the hands of the infantry that could link directly to tanks began by July. On 18 July, the 3d Armored Group ordered its battalions to supply their partner infantry battalion command post with a jeep carrying an SCR-5 10 tank radio, as well as jeeps carrying the similar SCR-509 to work with the infantry platoons.60 This was essentially the same approach battalions in both Italy and the Pacific had adopted months earlier.
It would be some time after American forces broke out of Normandy before tankers and infantry hit upon a more or less satisfactory solution to radio communications at the platoon level. On 16 July, the 745th Tank Battalion received a mes sage from the U.S. First Army foreshadowing what, months later, would become the standardized solution: the battalion would receive four extra SCR-509 radios for tank-infantry communications on a loan basis, which would eventually be replaced by the "300 series tank set." The official U.S. Army history asserts that signal companies in Normandy installed infantry-type radios in the tanks, but the battalion records suggest that such installations did not take place in any numbers-if at all-until the autumn."
Communications aside, the record suggests that the only route to a solid partnership between the doughs and the tankers was for them to spend time together taking the same classes at the school of hard knocks. The stream of units flowing into France made lasting attachments rare. For the tank battalions that landed early, this meant that now veteran tankers sometimes had to teach new infantry outfits the ropes-or die trying. The now seasoned 746th Tank Battalion, for example, was attached to the virgin 83d Infantry Division on 5 July. That division was badly mauled over the next several days, and tank-infantry cooperation was especially bad. The infantry accused the tankers of refusing to fight at night and disobeying orders, and one infantry commander threatened to shoot a tank officer for refusing to advance in support. One tank commander, meanwhile, threatened to shoot infantrymen who appeared ready to bolt and abandon the tanks.62
When an enduring partnership could take hold, tankers grew to respect infantry commanders who learned how to use their tanks effectively. In some cases battalions came to be treated as members of the infantry division to which they were attached for months.
Over the course of the fighting in Europe, tank battalions experienced the extremes of shared time with infantry divisions and everything in between. Enjoying a continuity similar to that experienced by the 745th Tank Battalion and 1st Infantry Division, the 70th Tank Battalion spent most of the campaign attached to the 4th Infantry Division. The 90th Infantry Division considered the 712th Tank Battalion a virtually organic component.
In contrast, the 761st Tank Battalion rarely spent more than a few weeks attached to any one unit, a circumstance that forced it to fight under the least advantageous circumstances for most of the war; the modern observer may be drawn to the conclusion perhaps unfairly-that the nearly all-black 761st had to fight under such ultimately dangerous circumstances because of racist distrust within the still -segregated army in its fighting abilities. The 740th Tank Battalion or its companies at one time or another were attached to seven different divisions.
CONTINUING THE FIGHT
While much of the VII Corps gnawed at the problems of tank-infantry cooperation during late June, the focus of the American effort in Normandy was northward out of the beachhead with the goal of capturing the port of Cherbourg. The 70th (attached most of the time to the 4th Infantry Division) and the 746th (attached by late June to the 9th Infantry Division) Tank Battalions were committed to the V Corps' drive on Cherbourg.
The 746th Tank Battalion recorded two firsts during the attack on Cherbourg. On the outskirts of the city, tanks lobbed 75-millimeter rounds into the fortress, marking the first mass use of a tank battalion in its secondary role as artillery in the European theater. While this was a common practice in Italy, a study conducted by the General Board of U.S. Forces for the European theater at the end of the war concluded that tank units found it increasingly difficult later in the campaign to use tanks in the indirect-fire role. The reason was that replacements for casualties almost never had received artillery training.63 After-action reports indicate that battalions often grouped the three-vehicle 105-millimeter assault gun platoon and the assault guns from each of the three medium tank companies into an expanded platoon the same size as an armored field artillery battery to fire indirectly under direction from a field artillery unit. On occasion, the battalion's three assault guns were attached to the cannon company of an infantry regiment, which also fielded 105-millimeter howitzers.64
The tankers also were the first in the theater to help capture a major city. Company A supported the 79th Infantry Division's attack on the left, while Companies B and C worked with the 9th Division's 47th and 60th Infantry regiments on the right. Cherbourg was surrounded by fortifications facing land and sea, and tank action mainly involved destroying bunkers, pillboxes, and antitank positions, rather than waging the street-by-street, house-by-house urban battle that would characterize the fighting in Cassino, many German cities, or Manila." Indeed, in almost Napoleonic fashion, one tank supporting Company A of the 47th Infantry was knocked out on 26 June by a 75-millimeter gun firing from the parapet of the arsenal.
The tank battalion's after-action report records:
By the morning of the 27th [of June], all of the city was in our hands except the highly fortified arsenal. At 0600 the three platoons of Company B moved up to shell the arsenal before they would withdraw, allowing our air support to bomb the fort at 1000 hours. After the tanks fired but before time for the air bombing, the general in charge of the German fortifications said that he would surrender the fort only if we would show our forces. So Lieutenant Kegut's platoon of tanks moved up to the gates of the arsenal and actually stuck the tank guns into the doors of the fortifications. This convinced the general that we had force, and he surrendered his entire command.
APPLYING THE LESSONS
After the capture of Cherbourg on 26 June, Lieutenant General Bradley tried to get an attack moving southward and inland. As of the beginning of July, Bradley's expanding forces included four corps headquarters and thirteen combat divisions (nine infantry, two armored, and two airborne). To the south, however, lay the heart of the bocage. And, on the Carentan plain, five large swamps and numerous slowmoving rivers and streams further broke up the terrain. Frequent rainfall turned fields to mud; indeed, the amount of cloud, wind, and rain in June and July was greater than that recorded at any time since 1900, and this cut air support in half."
The going was horrendous for the infantry, particularly the units tasting battle for the first time. Using twelve divisions over seventeen days in July, the First Army was able to advance only about seven miles in its western zone and little more than half that in its eastern zone. It suffered 40,000 casualties during July, most of them infantrymen.68
The push southward brought back into action the divisions and tank battalions that had invested time in trying to figure out how best to fight together in the hedgerows. Preparatory to a planned First Army breakout from Normandy in late July, the V Corps attacked southward on 11 July to seize St. Lo and the terrain to the east, striking with the 2d Infantry Division in conjunction with the XIX Corp's 29th Infantry Division to its right.
The 2d Infantry Division and 741st Tank Battalion, once again charged with capturing Hill 192 and reaching the Berigny-St. Lo highway, implemented the tank-infantry-engineer techniques they had been practicing. Commanders had learned that patience and preparation, rather than the audacity of armored cavalry, generally paid off in bocage fighting. Battalion and company commanders were flown over the terrain on which they would fight, and in-depth planning sessions using aerial photos took place at battalion and regimental command posts. The division conducted extensive reconnaissance, and the engineers drew up extremely detailed maps at 1:10,000 scale showing every hedgerow, sunken road, building, trail, and crossroads, and a coded number assigned to every field, copies of which were given to the infantry and to every tank commander.69 The use of numbered fields enabled the tank battalion to control the action by radio once the attack had started, facilitated the use of supporting artillery fire, and expedited the recovery of damaged tanks .71
Defying armored doctrine that frowned on use of individual tanks alone, the division assigned a tank to each rifle squad on the line, with the remainder held back to provide overwatch and replacements. The tank and rifle squad trained intensively together three times before the looming operation so the men could get to know one another. The same was true of the engineer demolition men assigned to the team. The tanks all had EE-8 phones installed to improve communications, most of which worked during the coming fight. "According to the men who fought the battle," noted a combat interviewer, "the training paid off.""
The day of the attack, tanks eased forward one at a time through the darkness at hourly intervals using first or second gear to avoid alerting the enemy. The tactic worked, and this time the paratroopers were not alerted to an impending attack by the noise of tanks. Engineers had scooped out the friendly side of the first hedgerows so gaps could be blown quickly, and elaborate signs indicated which tank was to pass through which gap. The tanks carried satchel charges on the decks for use by the engineers. Tank commanders and drivers had walked the routes to the line of departure to familiarize themselves with the path.'
At 0600 on 11 July, the 38th Infantry Regiment's 2d Battalion and the 741st Tank Battalion's Company B assaulted a nettlesome strongpoint nicknamed "Kraut Corner." Engineers blew their holes, and tanks fired high-explosive rounds into the two facing corners of the next fields and any other suspicious spot. Riflemen from Company E then advanced along hedgerows supported by suppressing fire from BARs, heavy and light machine guns, and the machine guns on the Shermans. The tanks' guns fired so continuously, reported participants, that they sounded like threshing machines, and they became so hot that the gunners had to lift the covers when not firing in order not to accidentally discharge into friendly infantry. A tankdozer covered die-hard German paratroopers in their firing positions when they shot at passing doughs from the flanks.
Cpl. Jack Boardman, Company B, recalled some hedgerow action during the attack that showed how the field telephone helped in battle:
We rolled through the opening with both our machine guns blasting at the enemy hedge. The squad of doughs scrambled and tore their way through the jungle-like shrubbery on the high bank and desperately ran down the field to gain the shelter of the opposite bank.... Suddenly the doughboy I could see in front of me dropped to the ground. I strained my eyes into the gunsight and traversed the turret back and forth trying to pick up the gun that was firing on them. The doughs' squad leader began yelling over the telephone on the back of the tank, "We're getting heavy fire from the left corner! Hit 'em, hit 'em!" I snapped the turret to the left and put an HE on delay into the corner of the hedge. It passed through the bank and exploded in the middle of a machine-gun nest. The Jerry gun that had been pointed through a small slot on the bottom of the hedge fired no more.73
Company F hit the German flank, and it buckled. Company E pressed on toward Cloville, on the flank of Hill 192, where a Sturmgeschutz III assault gun and a Mark IV tank lurked in the rubble of buildings destroyed by shelling. S/Sgt. Paul Ragan engaged and destroyed them both after a brief duel, which opened the door to the infantry to mop up in the village.
Soon the 2d Battalion crossed the St. Lo road and reached its objective. "Without the tanks, I doubt we could have made it," conceded one infantry sergeant. The battalion's commanding officer added, "In many cases, the tanks were leading the infantry, and they did a fearless job." A captured letter from a paratrooper commented about the tanks, "They shot with their guns through the hedgerows as through cake dough!"74
Things initially went less well in the zone of the 38th Infantry's 1st Battalion, which kicked off on the regimental left at 0620, supported by tanks from Company A. When the infantry pulled back 400 yards for the preliminary artillery bombardment, the German paratroopers infiltrated behind them despite the shelling, and the GIs had to fight hard to get back to the line of departure. The Germans had zeroed in the line of departure with mortars and artillery, and shells struck the decks of two tanks carrying satchel charges and destroyed them both. A bazooka disabled a third, and three others were damaged or forced to withdraw. The infantry pressed ahead without the tanks. By afternoon, replacement tanks had reached the doughboys, and the team fought just as it had trained .15
The 2d Infantry Division's tank-infantry team threw the German 3d Airborne Division off Hill 192 by 13 July, despite the commitment of the Germans' last reserves. The paratroopers never did execute a coordinated withdrawal and fought in place until destroyed or captured.76
The 29th Infantry Division also struck toward St. Lo on 11 July, and the time invested in tank-infantry training paid off there, too. Col. Philip Dwyer, commanding the 116th Infantry, judged that "the success of the 116th Infantry's attack on 11-12 July 1944 was due primarily to its being a well-planned tank-infantry attack. It is unquestionably true that the tanks draw artillery fire, but certainly on 11 July they contributed to the excellent advance of [the 2d Battalion]."" The commanding officer of the 2d Battalion agreed:
One platoon of medium tanks from the 747th Tank Battalion was teamed with each assault platoon, with another tank platoon in reserve.... The first 500-600 yards were tough. The infantry and tanks worked well together, however, and Lieutenant Colonel Fries's ramrods [that poked holes for TNT] on the front of his tanks made things go faster than they would have otherwise. Their great merit is that they saved on the use of TNT, which draws artillery and usually necessitates waiting while the charges are being set and blown .71
Regarding an attack on 15 July by the 1st Battalion of his 115th Infantry, Col. Godwin Ordway Jr. observed, "The tanks and infantry worked well together. The tank company commanding officer said the men of the 1st Battalion were the only ones not to run when the tanks got 88 fire."79 On 18 July, a platoon of medium tanks joined Task Force C, commanded by Brigadier General Cota, which finally pushed into St. Lo and secured the town.
Crews turned to field solutions in hope of adding protection against panzerfausts and other light antitank weapons. The first expedient was sandbagging. The bags were initially held on with chicken wire or some other quick fix, but service companies later welded brackets intended for the purpose onto many tanks. The 743d Tank Battalion, for example, sandbagged all of its tanks between 18 and 22 July 1944, and its records show that the unit re-sandbagged old tanks and outfitted newly received tanks during down times for much of the rest of the war.80 There is considerable debate as to whether sandbagging was all that effective. Some field tests suggested not.81 But some showed promising results: a day after test-firing a German bazooka and antitank grenade against a sandbagged Sherman on 28 July in the 3d Armored Group, trucks headed back to the beach to collect sand.82 If nothing else, as the commander of one battalion noted, "Sandbagging the front of the tank greatly improves the morale of the crew."83
With a month or more of experience, tankers learned that they faced one last problem: the infantry divisions typically rotated the units doing the actual fighting, with two regiments in combat and one held in reserve. The tank battalions remained on the line for weeks, supporting whichever infantry units happened to be engaged on a given day. This was extremely hard on both machines and men.
Regrettably, all these lessons being learned in battle were not even being shared across the short distance to England. When the 35th Infantry Division entered the XIX Corps' line on 9 July, its job was to capture Hill 122, the anchor of the German Mahlman defense line across the base of the Cotentin peninsula-no easy task. Maj. Budd Richmond of the 137th Infantry recalled, "Hedgerows and more hedgerows, and [we] wondered just how the hell we were going to mount a successful attack, from and through them.... During our intensive training phase of preparation in England, no instructions or suggestions were issued on the tactical application of such weird terrain."84
Likewise, green tank battalions still were being committed without meaningful training in tank-infantry cooperation in the bocage.85 The armored groups ashore did what they could to arrange a briefing by experienced commanders and perhaps a few days of demonstrations and training, but that was not always possible.
That meant learning in the school of hard knocks, and experience related directly to casualties. Tank battalions tended to suffer a substantial portion of their total losses for the war in their first few weeks of combat, after which the tankers who survived evidently learned how to fight more effectively. The 737th Tank Battalion joined the 35th Infantry Division in combat on 14 July and lost twenty-three Shermans in its first three days of fighting-35 percent of its losses for the war.86
Maj. Budd Richmond, the operations officer of the 137th Infantry's 3d Battalion, conceded that the destruction in just two hours of four out of five of the 737th Battalion's tanks that were supporting one rifle company during an attack on 15 July was due to "improper employment in unsuitable terrain, and lack of infantry support.... [T]his was the first such tank-infantry team action, in training or in battle. And what prior planning and coordination that did exist between the infantry and the tanks on the ground was pure chance and individual initiative."87 Capt. Don Rubottom, a company commander in the 134th Infantry, recalled, "There was no way of communicating with the men in the tank. Time after time, it was necessary to crawl upon the tank, beat on the buttoned-up hatch until it was opened, point out targets, and change the direction of the tank as it was guided through the hedgerows"18
Observers with the XIX Corps, in a report to Army Ground Forces covering the July period, summed up,
The operation of the tank-infantry team in Normandy was definitely poor. Cases are know wherein due to confusion, poor coordination and lack of common understanding, American tanks were blasted apart by friendly antitank weapons, and American tanks fired upon friendly troops with considerable casualty effect, with the result that there developed an unhealthy feeling of animosity and recrimination between the infantry and tanks. Communication between the two was poor generally.... Simple standard means of communication between tanks and infantry must be devised.89