following halftrack loaded with ammo exploded.
Artillery fire soon rained down on the roadblock. Twice during the day, rare Luftwaffe air strikes hit the tiny command. Unfortunately, so did one flight of British Typhoons, which wounded two of the TD men.
The Germans tried to rush the roadblock with tanks. Firing calmly at a range of two thousand yards, the TDs picked off at least a dozen armored vehicles, including three tanks, four armored cars, and four halftracks. The crews and infantry believed more vehicles had been hit but retrieved by the Germans.51
Lieutenant Francis Conners’s 2d Platoon of A/823d Tank Destroyer Battalion, was emplaced between two companies of the 120th Infantry Regiment on Hill 285 overlooking the Le Neufborg road. At 0500 hours, the TD crews spotted a German tank moving through the fog from behind a house in a nearby field. A bazooka team, accompanied by an infantry lieutenant, went after the panzer, but after five hundred yards the lieutenant decided they had gone far enough. Sergeant Ames Broussard asked permission to carry on alone and pushed on until he spotted the Mark IV. Broussard knocked the tank out, but German infantry had infiltrated past him, and he was cut off for fourteen hours.
The Germans attacked the line on Hill 285 at 0900. Number-two gun destroyed two Mark IVs at a range of only one hundred fifty yards. Number-one gun later hit another panzer from fifty yards; this panzer limped away smoking and was later found abandoned. Second Platoon added two SP guns and an armored car to its total by the end of the day.
The main threat to the crews came from the Allies. Typhoons struck the position and killed one TD man. Later, friendly artillery and infantry took the men under fire. “We didn’t have a friend in the world that day,” commented Lieutenant Conners.52
By the end of the day, von Kluge was convinced that the offensive had failed, but he pressed ahead at the insistence of the Fuhrer.53
The 823d Tank Destroyer Battalion fought beside the doughs for the duration of the bitter struggle, but no subsequent day saw the wild engagements against panzers witnessed on the first. The men at the Abbaye– Blanche roadblock would fend off more German attacks until 12 August and be credited by Col Hammond Birks, CO of the 120th Infantry Regiment, with being one of the most important factors in his outfit’s successful stand against the German offensive. Conners held his hill against repeated assaults with his crews, a recon section, and a few infantry stragglers until ordered off on 9 August. Fewer than nineteen men were killed, wounded, or missing.54
The men of the 823d had demonstrated the strength and weakness of General McNair’s vision of the steady shore battery engaging enemy ships. The towed 3-inch guns had, indeed, proved a lethal weapon in their first real test against a large armor force. But the overrunning of two platoons and other losses demonstrated the vulnerability of guns that could not move after they had revealed their firing positions nor when confronted with the choice to withdraw or die.
The 2d Panzer Division accomplished a minor penetration but was stopped by air strikes—particularly by rocket-firing British Typhoons—and by reserve tanks from the 3d Armored Division. The panzer division lost 60 percent of its committed strength on 7 and 8 August.55 The 2d SS Panzer Division, meanwhile, captured Mortain but could not push the 30th Infantry Division off high ground west and northwest of town. Allied fighters intercepted Luftwaffe ground-support missions before they could reach the battle zone, and few German planes arrived.56
The M10s of the 629th Tank Destroyer Battalion rolled in to support the hard-pressed 30th Infantry Division on 8 August. And several other TD battalions—including the 899th and 629th—arrived as other American divisions converged to snuff out the counteroffensive. LtCol W. Martz, CO of the 654th Tank Destroyer Battalion, was captured near Mortain on 8 August while operating with the 35th Infantry Division.57
Battered by Allied fighter-bombers and facing stiff resistance, the German armored columns ground to a halt, and the attack broke down within five days, having advanced to a depth of between three and seven miles.58
Pocketing the German Seventh Army
While the fighting flared at Mortain, Bradley on 8 August proposed to Montgomery that he send Patton’s Third Army in a sweeping envelopment of the German Seventh Army. The objective would be to link up with Canadian troops pushing south toward Falaise. Monty agreed.
Fifteenth Corps advanced from its positions around Le Mans on 9 August. The U.S. 5th and French 2d Armored divisions spearheaded the attack. The Germans tried to stop them at the Sarthe River, but XV Corps smashed through at a cost of thirty-nine tanks. Starting their long partnership with the 5th Armored Division, the crews of the 628th Tank Destroyer Battalion began to kill panzers. Staff Sergeant Flynn claimed the battalion’s first armored victim on 11 August when he destroyed a Mark IV at five hundred yards near Le Mesle. Two days later, Corporal Kee—the battalion’s only gunner from Chinatown in New York City—knocked out two Mark IVs at twelve hundred yards.59
The tanks turned due north and headed for Argentan. The columns reached that city on 13 August, but Bradley stopped them because he feared they would collide with the Canadians. The Canadians, however, were behind schedule and did not reach Falaise until four days later, a delay that allowed many thousands of German troops to escape.60
Hitler on 16 August reluctantly approved von Kluge’s recommendation that Seventh Army extricate itself from the almost complete encirclement. He also sacked von Kluge, who committed suicide.61
The 607th Tank Destroyer Battalion on 15 August deployed its towed 3-inch guns with the 90th Infantry Division to relieve the 5th Armored Division in the Le Bourg St. Leonard-Chambois area northeast of Argentan at the eastern end of the pocket. Companies B and C of the 607th settled in with the doughs of the 359th Infantry Regiment at the point where it was expected the Germans would try to break free.
German infantry attacked the line at 0800 on 16 August but was thrown back by noon. A second assault supported by panzers briefly drove the Americans out of their positions. During the fighting, 607th CO LtCol Harald Sundt personally manned a Company C 3-inch gun directly in the path of the attack. Sundt, Sgt Harold Scott, and Cpl Orlin Shirley were decorated for playing a crucial role in stopping the onslaught.
The next day, the M10s of the 773d Tank Destroyer Battalion arrived from the Argentan area, where the men had just seen their first action. Artillery fire struck around the vehicles of Company A as they maneuvered into position south of Le Bourg St. Leonard about 1400 hours, and one M10 struck a mine. At 1600 hours, two platoons of TDs pounded the buildings of the town, after which the doughs of Company E, 1st/359th Infantry Regiment, advanced into the streets supported by the TDs of 3d Platoon. Corporal Carlston and Corporal Holmes from 3d Platoon each destroyed two Mark IV tanks during the action, while Corporal Hamilton in 2d Platoon accounted for one more. Two men died and twelve were wounded.
Company C, meanwhile, advanced on Le Bourg St. Leonard at 1930 hours with the riflemen of Company A, 2d/359th Infantry Regiment. 3d Platoon got into a fire fight, during which it destroyed a Mark IV but lost one M10.
The doughs and TD crews cleared the town, and the SP outfit turned its positions over to towed guns from the 607th on the morning of 18 August. The crews of the 773d then pressed on toward Chambois in support of the 90th Infantry Division’s bid to seal one of the last holes in the wall of the pocket. When the doughs and TDs linked up with Polish troops (under Canadian command) at Chambois at 1600 hours on 19 August, the Falaise Pocket was closed! The two days of combat netted the 773d another dozen panzer kills.
At 0800 hours on 20 August, two platoons from Company A moved into firing positions near Chambois. When Lt Delbert Reck’s 1st Platoon spotted a mixed column of Germans, Reck ordered his destroyers to take up hasty firing positions along a hedgerow and waited while the enemy drove into his trap before opening fire. Reck and his platoon sergeant, SSgt Edward Land, moved from M10 to M10 to orchestrate the deadly barrage. When
