I gave the signal to fire. The concussion was deafening. Mazolla rose up from the telescopic sight and signaled a hit, except that nothing happened. I was terribly disappointed. I called for another round, and Mazolla indicated another hit, but there was still no indication that we had put the target out of action.
Suddenly, I saw billowing flames. It was not the dramatic kind of explosion that one would have expected. The flames were a transparent orange, rising with startling swiftness. They rose through the branches of the trees to a height of nearly sixty feet. When I looked for the second target, it was gone.113
The platoon lost only one man to a sniper during the action. Third Platoon, meanwhile, knocked out one of three panzers advancing to the railroad line. The German attack was beaten off. But LtCol Bill Bailey, CO of the 704th, would die under mortar fire in the streets of Luneville the next day.114
The 603d Tank Destroyer Battalion’s Company C—preceding the main body of CCB/6th Armored Division, which was hustling east from Brittany—also deployed at the southeastern edge of Luneville during the day.115 That evening, the combat command began to relieve the defenders of Luneville.116 On 21 September, the M10s of the 773d clanked into town and took up positions on the eastern edge.
On 22 September the Germans probed Luneville from the north and east but met with no greater success.117
The rest of CCA/4th Armored Division and Company C of the 704th were located a dozen miles to the north in the area of Arracourt. The 113th Panzer Brigade was on its way there, too.
About midnight 18–19 September, an American outpost near Lezey heard tracked vehicles to the front and called in an artillery barrage. The noises stopped. At about 0730 hours, Capt William Dwight was driving down a nearby road in a thick morning fog when he encountered the rear of a German tank column. He avoided detection and radioed his battalion CO, LtCol Creighten Abrams. A half-hour later, a section of Shermans south of Lezey found the head of the column when a Panther emerged from the fog seventy-five yards away. The Shermans destroyed three Panthers in short order, and the rest of the panzers disappeared in the murk.
Captain Dwight appeared at CCA’s CP at Rechicourt and was ordered to lead a platoon of tank destroyers —the only unit available—to reinforce the defenses at Lezey. Company C’s CO, Capt Thomas Evans—who had been shaving beside a TD when the first German shell struck near the CP—selected Lt Edwin Leiper’s 3d Platoon for the mission. Northeast of Rechicourt, the small column spotted German tanks moving through the fog.
The M18s raced into hull-defilade positions in a depression and opened fire at one hundred fifty yards. The CCA executive officer, LtCol Hal Pattison, described the action: “It was so foggy that even at one hundred fifty yards the gunners could not see the enemy tanks through the telescopic sights. Consequently … when a German tank was spotted, the TD would come out of the depression just enough to fire on the enemy. Then one round of HE was fired to adjust on. Captain Dwight adjusted the fire. Having adjusted, AP would be utilized to destroy the enemy tank. When our TDs fired, the Germans would lay their guns on the muzzle flash. In this manner, they were successful in knocking out [three] of the TDs. One TD was lost rather unfortunately. It had pulled up out of the saucer-like depression to render fire upon the enemy. In that position, the motor stalled, leaving it exposed. Another of the TDs was taken up to try to withdraw it to cover. The Germans fired on them, and the TDs answered fire. Firing at the muzzle blast, the German tanks almost put a round down the tube of the recovery TD…. They then hit the stalled TD.”118
Corporal Frederick Stewart, gunner in Sgt Emilo Stasi’s TD, rapidly knocked out two Panthers before return fire crashed into the M18 and damaged the turret. Stasi and Stewart suffered leg wounds, another man was injured, and a fourth was killed. About one hour later, gunner Cpl John Eidenschink in Sgt Pat Ferraro’s crew killed three panzers before the Hellcat was hit and put out of action. Sergeant Steve Krewsky’s men destroyed four panzers before being knocked out, with several men injured. Sergeant Edwin McGurk’s destroyer was the only one to escape damage, and his gunner, Cpl Dominick Sorrentino, accounted for two panzers.119 (One post-war study claimed an even higher number of kills.120 Combat Command A physically surveyed only eight German tanks positively destroyed, however, so there probably was some double counting at work.)
American and German tanks, meanwhile, battled in the fog, which protected the Germans from air attack but forced all action to take place at relatively close quarters, where the better German guns had less advantage. Captain Evans deployed his remaining two platoons on high ground south of Rechicourt. The M18s and C/24th Engineers were all that stood between the Germans and CCA’s CP and artillery positions.
About 1200, the 113th Panzer Brigade made another stab toward Arracourt. As the fog lifted, Evans could see thirty to forty panzers advancing on his position. He later recalled, “We waited and waited until they were within fifteen hundred yards [CCA’s after-action maps indicate that all kills took place at between five hundred and one thousand yards]. Then we fired. The two leading tanks were hit and stopped dead, aflame. The others, the crews apparently confused, turned sideways. I really don’t know why. That’s where they made their big mistake. It was a turkey shoot! From our position, with only our turrets showing, we hit eleven more as fast as we could load and shoot…. ”121
The TDs were well concealed in defilade and repositioned after firing, so the Germans never had a good target and returned little fire. The 113th Panzer Brigade withdrew. Combat Command A officially credited Company C’s TDs with eight Panther kills. Private Frank Amodio, in his first action as a gunner, accounted for five of them.122
That evening, Patton visited Evans’s small CP on the hillside overlooking the burning armored hulks. Colonel Bruce Clarke, CO of CCA, indicated that Evans had been in charge of the shootout. Patton told Evans, “This is the kind of thing that’s going to end the war quicker than anybody had hoped.” He then walked to his jeep and left.123
CCA formed up in two columns in heavy fog the next morning. The enemy appeared to have withdrawn, and the Americans moved out to the northeast about 0900. At 0930, the 113th Panzer Brigade renewed its attack and threatened to strike the rear of the American columns. Both were ordered to turn around, even though B/704th Tank Destroyer Battalion had combined with the artillery and tanks defending Arracourt to chalk up another six panzers while beating off the attack.124
Working with the 35th Infantry Division’s 320th RCT and elements of the 691st and 602d Tank Destroyer battalions (the latter arrived about noon after some stiff fighting around Luneville), the combat command established a defensive perimeter at Arracourt. The 37th Armored Regiment battled the panzers all that day, losing seven Shermans in exchange for eighteen enemy tanks.
There was little contact the next day when the 4th Armored Division initiated sweeps of the area through thick fog. One German armored probe struck positions held by the 25th Cavalry Squadron near Juvelize and destroyed five light tanks. Lieutenant Marvin Evans’s 2d Platoon, Company B, was nearby, where its M18s had been under sporadic friendly artillery fire for almost a day, despite heated comments by radio to the artillery observer by Evans. With the cavalry pulling back, Evans sent one TD back to cover the withdrawal of the rest. The overwatching crew spotted a column of German tanks and opened fire at six hundred yards, destroying three. The platoon then withdrew in leap-frog fashion.125
By the end of 22 September, CCA and the 704th Tank Destroyer Battalion claimed to have accounted for a total to date of seventy-nine panzers in exchange for fourteen Shermans, seven M5s, and one M18 damaged beyond repair.126
On 23 September, a tank-infantry assault by the 111th Panzer Brigade developed from the east. American tanks maneuvered onto high ground northeast of Juvelize and picked the panzers off as they came in. When German infantry moved into Marsal, fighter-bombers wreaked havoc on them.127
Sometime during this period, Captain Evans won the Silver Star. He recalled, “They attacked again toward Arracourt. Two of our M18s were hit. One was set afire, and next to it was one with a track shot off, but the gun was still good. I was more mad than anything else and maybe a little foolhardy, but I got up in the second M18 and was able to load and fire long enough to get two more Panthers. Then the Germans wised up. I got down on the ground and crawled away. Eventually, they hit and burned that M18, too.”128
The 11th Panzer Division concentrated in the forest south of Dieuze on 24 September. It had left a battle
