the smoke cleared, 3-inch gunfire had destroyed one Panther, seven Mark IVs, nineteen halftracks, twenty-nine trucks, nineteen command cars and Volkswagens, and assorted other vehicles and guns. Reck’s men also rounded up nine hundred prisoners. They had suffered only two men wounded.
The doughs of Company E, 359th Infantry Regiment, were being pressed hard by German tanks and grenadiers when two TDs from 2d Platoon clanked up. The first 3-inch salvos found no targets. Sergeant John Hawk was a machine gunner who had helped drive off one attack already and been wounded in the leg by shrapnel. He approached Lt John Snider to report that panzers were lurking in the woods. Snider traversed onto the general area but could not spot the tanks. Hawk told Snider to aim directly over his helmet and climbed a knoll under enemy fire to act as a human aiming stake. The first shot missed.
Realizing that his shouted fire directions could not be heard above the noise of battle, Hawk ran back to the destroyers through a concentration of bullets and shrapnel to correct the range. He returned to his exposed position, repeating this performance until two of the tanks were knocked out and a third driven off. Still at great risk, he continued to direct the destroyers’ fire into the Germans, wooded position until the enemy came out and surrendered. (Hawk was awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroics that day.)62
Company C’s 1st Platoon was in positions on Hill 129 north of Fougy with doughs from the 3d Battalion, 359th Infantry Regiment. During the night, the men engaged German vehicles trying to slip by in the darkness at ranges between two hundred and four hundred yards and stopped four tanks and a dozen other vehicles. At daybreak, the Americans discovered that the Germans had flanked them to the left, and a wild fire fight broke out, during which the platoon destroyed two Panthers, two Mark IVs, an 88mm SP gun, and assorted other vehicles. One M10 was lost in the exchange, and the remaining two guns—out of ammo—pulled back to the company CP. Before leaving, Private Conklin, although wounded, returned to his knocked-out M10 and fired its last four rounds of HE at advancing German infantry only one hundred yards away.
Company C’s 2d Platoon was located at Chambois proper when the wave of fleeing Germans troops crashed against the American line. The crews had a field day; they picked off eleven Mark IV panzers, three Panthers, five Mark III command tanks, three assault guns, and many other vehicles. Sergeant Schimpf’s number- four gun alone KO’d eight panzers and assault guns and twenty-six other vehicles, and his gunner fired three basic loads of ammunition during the action. The platoon reported approximately five hundred enemy dead and approximately one hundred prisoners.
The 3d platoon was deploying at Fougy about 1000 when it encountered the Germans eight hundred yards away. Over the next eight hours, the M10s destroyed eleven Mark IV panzers, three Panthers, two Mark III command tanks, and about thirty other vehicles.63
By 21 August, American troops were rounding up stragglers, most of whom wanted to surrender. The 776th had busted forty-six tanks and SP guns and another seventy-seven vehicles. As a unit citation concluded, “The battalion inflicted staggering losses upon the enemy, attacking them relentlessly wherever they were encountered, contemptuous of overwhelming odds.” The almost overlooked 607th’s guns had destroyed thirty-four tanks, twenty-three SP guns, nine halftracks, and sixty-four other vehicles during the fighting.64
First Army, meanwhile, was compressing the pocket as it plowed north toward the British and Canadians. The 3d Armored Division hooked through Mayenne and then east and north after the fighting at Mortain, and the 703d’s M10s followed close on the heels of the lead Shermans. CCA ran into the remnants of the 1st and 9th SS Panzer divisions around Joue du Bois on 14 August. The fighting was so vicious that staff officers and cooks had to join the battle to beat off the German counterattacks. Company A of the 703d knocked out three tanks and drove off the accompanying grenadiers. On 15 August at Ranes-Fromentel, an SS combat patrol infiltrated Company A’s positions and captured a lieutenant, two security men, and two engineers. All but one engineer who escaped were later found shot to death.
Later that day, Cpl Joseph Juno from 2d Platoon, Company B, engaged two Panthers at a mere twenty-five yards. The 3-inch gunfire cracked the frontal armor on both panzers. Juno was killed by exploding ammunition when he dismounted to help the enemy wounded.65
The collapse of the Falaise Pocket was a disaster for the German Army. It left behind fifty thousand prisoners, ten thousand dead, as many as five hundred tanks and assault guns destroyed or captured, and most of the transportation and artillery of those troops who got away.66
Even as the resistance crumbled, Eisenhower decided to pursue relentlessly rather than stop at the Seine River to build up supplies, and Bradley unleashed a tidal wave of American corps across northern France. First Army, on the left, would receive priority in supplies over Third Army to enable it to support Montgomery’s drive along the coast. Generalleutnant Heinz Guderian, father of Germany’s armored legions, lamented, “While our panzer units still existed, our leaders had chosen to fight a static battle in Normandy. Now that our motorized forces had been squandered and destroyed they were compelled to fight the mobile battle that they had hitherto refused to face.”67
River Hopping
The 3d Armored Division (with the 703d Tank Destroyer Battalion attached) recorded, “There was a quality of madness about the whole debacle of Germany’s forces in the West, something which was not easily explained. Isolated garrisons fought as viciously as before, but the central planning and coordination which must go into decisive action was missing…. [For the men,] days merged into one long stream of fatigue and weariness in the endless pursuit.”68
Lieutenant Jack Dillender, a platoon leader in the 814th Tank Destroyer Battalion, supporting the 7th Armored Division’s blitz across France, recalled, “The weather was hot and the fumes from vehicles and no rest began to take their toll on our faces. Our eyes were in bad condition and our faces cracked and blistered so badly we could hardly open our mouths.”69
The semi-official history of the 610th Tank Destroyer Battalion noted the wonderful side of the “rat race”: “The natives along the route cheered the columns all the way, and arms began to ache from returning the waves and salutations along the way. The briefest stop was the signal for much bartering for bread, cognac, and wine, and as the convoy moved the French enthusiastically tossed apples, tomatoes, etc., into the vehicles. A steel helmet was a necessity, for a hard apple thrown at a speeding vehicle can be a deadly missile.”70
As they had in North Africa, the tank killers sometimes formed the division’s spearhead. Lieutenant Jack Dillender encountered division CG MajGen Lindsay Silvester and XX Corps commander MajGen Walton Walker in a small village where the advance had stopped under German fire. Dillender recalled:
General Walker said, “What the hell is holding up my corps?” He received an explanation…. Then he said, “Put a TD unit in the lead and put me on the banks of the Seine by 3:00 PM. Where is the TD officer?”
I jumped down and reported to him. He said, “Lieutenant, can you read a map?”
I said, “Yes, sir,” and he said, “Show me where you are.” He said, “Fine. Now, do you see this road taking off to the right at the crossroads? Do you see that it turns back to our attack direction? Lieutenant, I want you to take your platoon and lead us to the Seine at Melun. I want you to run your destroyers as fast as you can, and don’t deploy this column unless you run into armor and lots of it. Do you understand?”
I said, “Yes sir.”
He said, “Lieutenant, move out and good luck.”
I said, “Yes, sir,” saluted, and ran back to my destroyer, and off we went…. We were about thirty miles from the Seine, and we were really pushing those diesels. Along the way I saw a small German convoy (no tanks) to my left front headed for the same intersection. We were on a road lined with trees, and they had not seen us. I halted my platoon and brought all four guns broadside…. We fired the first round together and then it was at will after that. We finished off that convoy so that there wouldn’t be any traffic congestion at the intersection and then moved on. We reached the Seine at 3:10 PM.71
