three parallel tracks on the top right side, where three shots had hit just above the angle causing them to ricochet off after fracturing the steel and leaving three tracks in my skull!
As we drove fast northwest of Bologna, an artillery shell landed just behind my jeep. A fragment as big as your fist went through the steel spare wheel; the jeep body; the chain locker over the right wheel holding tire chains, wheel jacks, and other tools; the command radio behind my seat; the steel back to my seat; my tanker’s jacket; and my clothing. I could feel the hit and asked my driver to get me to the first aid station we came to. There’s where we discovered all this damage, plus a big blister on my back where the fragment had burned. Some burn stuff was applied with another band-aid, and we were on our way….
[That evening, battalion executive officer] Bob Childs arrived. He had come from promoting Jack Wright to major, and he brought me Jack’s old helmet, with the captain’s bars welded onto the front, to announce my own promotion to captain, after nearly a year off and on as CO, Company C. He said, “I just can’t have my officers going around without a bath, and your helmet with those three holes won’t let you bathe in it!”40
By late April, the 701st Tank Destroyer Battalion’s AAR reflected a hope that cheered many a weary warrior:
A great valley had been crossed as the Fifth Army advanced from the Apennines to the Alps. A major water obstacle had been crossed, and the German armies in Italy had been virtually destroyed. The spring offensive had been a gratifying success.
For the officers and men of the 701st Tank Destroyer Battalion, this month meant the completion of thirty- five long, arduous months of overseas service. This was perhaps the most singly important month of them all to us, for at long last the end of the European war seemed in sight. Elements of this battalion were among the first American ground forces to engage the Nazi enemy in this war. It was a gratifying thought that the end was so near….
In the closing days of the month, some of the 701st men who came ashore in the first landing at Oran saw their last action supporting the 10th Mountain Division advance along Lake Garda in the Alps. The Americans mounted small amphibious operations to bypass roadblocks and AT guns hidden in tunnels on the east side of the lake. Newly minted Capt John Hudson, now commanding C/701st Tank Destroyer Battalion, mounted two M10s on an old freight boat. When his guns fired on some German activity on the far side of the lake, the vessels jumped six feet sideways and dumped an unsecured jeep into ninety feet of cold water.41
North of the Alps, the S-3 for the 818th Tank Destroyer Battalion, which was approaching the German- Austrian border with the 26th Infantry Division, recorded the following notation for 2230 hours on 1 May in his journal: “Radio announcement unofficial that Hitler was dead (good riddance).” By that day, the Germans were estimated to have no more than two hundred tanks or assault guns along the entire Western Front, half of them in front of Third Army, where remnants of the Sixth Panzer Army had reappeared from the Eastern Front.42
But men continued to die until the very end. On 2 May, Lt Joseph Keeby, the reconnaissance officer in the 614th Tank Destroyer Battalion who had led the raid near Prinzheim three months earlier, died with five of his men in a fight on the outskirts of Scharnitz, Austria.43
On 5 May, M10s of 3d Platoon, C/804th Tank Destroyer Battalion, advanced up the winding Italian alpine road into the Brenner Pass with doughs of 1/339th Infantry Regiment, 85th Infantry Division. About the same time, two platoons of Shermans from C/781st Tank Battalion, a platoon from C/614th Tank Destroyer Battalion, and doughs from the 103d Infantry Division, entered the pass from the German side. A German guard, complete with burp gun and potato mashers, halted the column at a bridge with a red lantern to warn them that the heavy tracked vehicles could make it across only if they drove slowly. They drove slowly. At 1615 hours, the two columns encountered one another eight miles inside Italy. Fifth and Seventh armies had joined forces.44
German representatives signed documents of capitulation in the wee hours of 7 May. To the world, General of the Army Dwight Eisenhower declared simply, “The mission of this Allied Force was fulfilled at 0241, local time, May 7, 1945.” At midnight on 8 May, the war in Europe was over for everyone. The AAR of the 645th Tank Destroyer Battalion, whose men had seen and done much since landing in southern Italy so long before, recorded:
May 8th, the long awaited day for the 645th TD Bn. (VE Day). Most of the men in the battalion could hardly believe it was true. With over five hundred fifteen days in direct contact with the enemy to our credit, a great proud feeling is felt within us. We have made our contribution to this hard-won victory. First thoughts went to the folks back home, and each man wrote that letter that their loved ones were waiting for. “The war is over,” and I am healthy and sound. Second thoughts went to our comrades who have fallen in battle. We had become like brothers, and their absence has made our joy subdued.45
The end of the war found the men of the 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion, some of whom had come all the way from Oran, drinking champagne liberated from Hitler’s cellars in Berchtesgaden. “For a teetotaler,” noted the battalion history, “der Fuhrer carried a wicked supply of everything good to drink.”46
Mission Accomplished
The TD battalions had racked up some astonishing accomplishments. The first outfit to enter combat, the 701st Tank Destroyer Battalion, had knocked out eighty-seven armored fighting vehicles—or nearly three times its own strength in tank destroyers. This was actually a fairly low total, however, because the battalion had fought in Italy, where panzers were scarce. The other battalion in action since Operation Torch, the 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion, claimed one hundred fifty-five tanks and SP guns.
The tank killers had fought the greatest number of panzers after busting into Fortress Europa at Normandy.
The 823d claimed to have won the kill title out of all fifty-six TD battalions in the ETO—one hundred thirteen tanks, including sixty-eight Mark IVs, twenty-seven Panthers, and eighteen Tigers—as well as the First and Ninth armies’ records for tanks destroyed in a single day. The battalion accomplished this feat despite landing at Normandy with towed guns. The outfit fired 4,193 rounds of 3-inch ammunition directly and 33,486 rounds indirectly during the campaign.47
But who really knows who was champ? The 773d Tank Destroyer Battalion also claimed one hundred thirteen panzers destroyed, plus twenty-five SP guns.48 After landing on D+3, the 702d Tank Destroyer Battalion claimed to have destroyed one hundred three panzers, fifty-one SP and AT guns, and one hundred twenty vehicles.49
In general, the towed battalions had not proved as valuable as the self-propelled units. The 635th Tank Destroyer Battalion made it past VE Day before receiving orders to convert to M18s. It had engaged a total of only eleven German tanks after D+2. The towed battalion’s limited ability to contribute to American combat might was a testament to the regrettable tendency of the generals to prepare to fight the last conflict. Western Europe had not been North Africa.50
A U.S. Army study of thirty-nine TD battalions of all types indicated that they, on average, destroyed thirty- four tanks, seventeen towed guns, and sixteen pillboxes. In aggregate, the TDs’ contribution was huge. Tank destroyer battalions in Third Army alone claimed the destruction of six hundred eighty-six tanks and two hundred thirty-nine SP guns (as of 28 April 1945). Total TD losses (as measured by replacements) in the entire ETO were five hundred thirty-nine M10s, two hundred fifteen M18s, one hundred fifty-one M36s, and two hundred twenty- eight towed guns.51
