vehicles, such as modified M5 light tanks. There was also a call for wider tires for the 3-inch gun carriage. The 635th noted in its AAR for October, “Speed is not as essential as getting in and out of the positions tactics demand.”22 But commanders also realized that this meant that the towed guns had to be in place already to stop an armored attack, because they could not be repositioned speedily enough to deal with unexpected threats.23
The lack of natural cover and concealment in front of many West Wall defenses meant that towed guns had to move into well protected, previously prepared positions to survive intense artillery and mortar fire. The prime movers and other vehicles also needed to be dug in and sandbagged—a single piece of shrapnel in the gas tank of a halftrack would usually set it alight. The change of terrain had in no measure changed this lesson from the thick bocage.24
Far to the south, the U.S. Seventh Army was fighting through the rough, forested terrain before the Vosges Mountains. The thick woods cut down fields of fire so much that the TDs were often of little use beyond providing a boost for infantry morale. And even that was debatable: The Germans usually reacted with artillery fire to the sound of TD engines, thus putting the doughs at greater risk. German armor, when it was encountered, was usually pre-placed in woods and more vulnerable to bazooka attack by the infantry than to TD gunnery.
The 773d and 813th Tank Destroyer battalions became embroiled in fighting to clear the Foret de Parroy and Foret de Haguenau east of Luneville with the doughs of the 79th Infantry Division. The fighting in the forests offered a heavy dose of the danger TD crews faced in their open turrets from artillery shells exploding amongst the treetops. On 7 October, the 779th began to install steel covers on the tops of its M10 turrets to protect its crews from airbursts. For good measure, the outfit moved all .50-caliber machine gun mounts to the turret fronts.25
The 813th did not cover its turrets until early 1945. Corporal Harry Dunnagan of the 813th recalled one incident. “We had one man stranding up in the turret on guard. The rest of us were lying down in the tank sleeping. Shortly after dark, a loud explosion shook me awake. That was a [tree-burst] directly over the open turret, and it was on its mark. Fortunately, I was not hit. As I looked up, the man in the turret, Clancy A. Jordan, was sinking down, saying “Mother” and other words I couldn’t understand. I reached for him and tried to see if I could give him some [morphine]. There was no time; by the time he reached the floor, he was dead. I put my hand on our sergeant, George M. Richey, to try to wake him; he was silent. He was dead. The lieutenant’s legs were chopped up.”26
Dunnagan was promoted to sergeant and took over the M10. The very next day, Dunnagan’s destroyer advanced with the infantry. Both sides were using artillery, and the other gun in the section was hit, and its crew bailed out when the .50-caliber ammo caught fire. Dunnagan’s replacement gunner blindly fired HE into the trees wherever the infantry said there were Germans. Before the day was out, the new gunner was wounded by shrapnel from a 20mm shell that struck a tree limb overhead.27
The weather deteriorated steadily as snow and ice alternated with rain and mud. That meant that the TDs could not advance until engineers cleared the roads of mines, and that as a consequence the infantry had usually reached its objective before the destroyers could move up.
The M10s frequently served as artillery pieces, although the steep slopes meant that often the flat- trajectory 3-inch guns could not hit desired targets. Recon established listening posts from which they directed artillery fire and provided antitank defense warning. And men learned to fire the bazooka.28
Even where TDs could fight, the heavy combat all along the front resulted in serious artillery ammunition shortages by October. Once again, TD battalions showed they could step into the breach. Between 16 and 26 October, for example, M18s from the 602d Tank Destroyer Battalion conducted one hundred thirty-eight indirect fire missions under the control of XII Corps Artillery in support of the 26th and 35th Infantry and 4th Armored divisions.29
With tank destroyers operating almost entirely like tanks when performing direct-fire missions, a simple improvement made to infantry-support tanks as early as the bocage fighting finally came to some TDs. On 1 November, the 9th Infantry Division informed the 899th Tank Destroyer Battalion that field telephones would be installed on its M10s once installation on the attached tanks was completed. The division thought there would be enough phones to cover the entire battalion. This simple expedient permitted a rifleman to talk to the commander in the turret while crouching—with at least some cover—at the rear of the vehicle. In view of the continued lack of radio links between the doughs and most TD outfits, this fix permitted some relatively safe communication while under fire.30
The 3d Infantry Division demonstrated that more could have been done on the communications front more broadly. By October, the division had introduced a common radio frequency for use by the doughs, the tank killers from the 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion, and the tankers of the 756th Tank Battalion—a fix that produced a high degree of cooperation among the arms.31
A Grim Struggle
November was like October for the TDers, only more so: more bloody attacks against well-dug-in defenders, and more bloody bad weather. Casualties had been so heavy in front-line infantry units in October they were suffering severe shortages of riflemen. The worsening weather was cutting dramatically into the number of close-support missions the Air Corps could fly to ease the job faced by the infantry and armored divisions—and their supporting tank destroyers. However, by the end of the first week of the month, the transportation system was finally delivering most of the supplies needed by the front-line troops.32
The under-publicized Seventh Army—dubbed “America’s forgotten army” by military historian Charles Whiting—set the pace for the entire Western Front in November. Major General Alexander “Sandy” Patch on 29 September had gained control of XV Corps after his men had linked with Third Army, and the Normandy veterans settled in beside the Italian veterans of VI Corps. The divisions had burned themselves out trying to break through the German Vosges Mountain defenses in October, but November brought three fresh formations—the 100th and 103d Infantry and 14th Armored divisions—into the line.
Seventh Army and the First French Army to its right (together comprising the 6th Army Group) had one slight advantage over the troops farther north: The terrain was awful, the weather conditions terrible, and the defenders tenacious, but the men had not yet confronted the West Wall. Moreover, the German forces facing them—in the estimation of the German Nineteenth Army commanding general—were incapable of stopping another concerted offensive.33
A blanket of wet snow covered the XV Corps front the morning of 13 November after heavy rains had given way to blizzards in the preceding days. Streams and rivers were swollen and many bridges were under water. Nonetheless, the 44th and 79th Infantry divisions jumped off as scheduled toward Strasbourg, some fifty miles ahead on the Rhine. On 15 November, the German line in front of the 79th Infantry Division all but collapsed after doughs from the 315th Infantry Regiment—supported by tanks and by TDs from the 813th Tank Destroyer Battalion—hit the German reserves just as they were assembling for a counterattack. Company A’s M10s nailed six SP guns, while Shermans from the 749th Tank Battalion destroyed most of rest of the 708th Volksgrenadier Division’s assault guns. By 18 November, the 553d Volksgrenadier Division’s defenses were unraveling under the steady pressure from the 44th Infantry Division.34
The French 2d Armored Division—formerly a First Army command—began to ease into the line on 16 November and was ready to strike when a hole opened two days later. Armored task forces enveloped the Saverne Gap in the Vosges Mountains. After only five days of fast moving against little resistance, the French tanks rolled east across the Alsatian plains and entered Strasbourg at 1030 hours on 23 November.35 Recon men from the 813th Tank Destroyer Battalion operated with the French division during the final dash. Company C, 776th Tank Destroyer Battalion, meanwhile, worked with the 106th Cavalry Group, which screened the French north flank.36
