Task Force Roysden finally took hill 91 with heavy casualties but was driven off by the ferocious attacks of the Panzer Lehr. After regrouping, the decimated task force retook hill 91.
It was during this period that Colonel Roysden’s young driver was killed by a sniper; the colonel reportedly sat down and wept. Men in combat often developed a strong sense of personal bonding, regardless of rank.
This display of emotion was not considered a sign of weakness but rather a sign of courageous humanity.
After taking hill 91 for the second time, Task Force Roysden was completely surrounded by elements of the Panzer Lehr. On July 16, the 30th Infantry Division broke through and relieved them, which ended the German offensive. Both combat commands then returned to division control, and the division itself was assigned to VII Corps.
The division regrouped and the maintenance people again worked around the clock. New tanks came in to replace those damaged beyond repair. To this point, the division’s total losses of M4 Sherman tanks had been eighty-seven, which did not include those repaired and put back into action. These losses after a penetration of only five miles into enemy territory were obviously unacceptable and could not possibly be sustained. The shock of these losses plus those from other divisions was compounded by the realization that an enormous error had been made by Patton at Tidworth Downs in January. Requests immediately went to Washington to reverse this decision and get M26 heavy tanks into the European theater as quickly as possible.
In addition to the loss of tanks and other vehicles, we had lost all nine of our L5 Cub forward observer aircraft, which belonged to the field artillery battalions. Each battalion was equipped with three of these planes, which located enemy positions and directed artillery fire. The design of the plane was such that the pilots flew too low and too far forward, where they were subject to small-arms fire.
With the promise of new planes, the artillery observers asked for additional protection. One of the most feared wounds by men was injury to the genital area. We fabricated two small bucket seats for each plane from quarter-inch armor plate cut out of German half-tracks. Each seat was contoured to protect the lower back, buttocks, genitals, groin, and upper part of the legs. The seats, which weighed about eighty pounds, were welcomed by the pilots and forward observers and raised the overall morale. The pilots eventually learned to fly a thousand feet up and a thousand feet back behind friendly lines. If they could maintain this distance safely, they could still observe enemy targets and be reasonably free from flak.
The Gas Attack
During this period, a potentially disastrous event took place that had a dramatic effect on the tactical situation at the time. I have never seen it mentioned in any article or book except the history of the 3d Armored Division.
Early in the evening of July 21, while it was still daylight, I arrived at our battalion headquarters bivouac area to see the sentry wearing his gas mask and whirling his ratchet claxton, the signal for a gas attack. My driver and I had our gas masks in the Jeep, and we put them on immediately. The men in the bivouac area were putting down their tools and scrambling to find gas masks, which were stored in a trailer next to the ordnance shop headquarters. They’d been put there for reissue after we’d stripped them off tanks or other vehicles that had been shot up and abandoned.
The men grabbed the gas masks from the trailer until there was only one left. Two men entered the trailer simultaneously, one from each end. On one end was Lieutenant Reed, a strapping six feet four inches and weighing 250 pounds. (We used to call him Big Reed, from the cartoon “Terry and the Pirates.”) On the other end was Major Arlington, about five feet eleven inches and weighing about 160 pounds. They both looked covetously at the mask. Nobody knew exactly what went through their respective minds, but Lieutenant Reed wound up with the mask and the major walked away empty-handed.
Fortunately, the gas attack was a false alarm. It turned out that the Germans had fired a white phosphorus smoke shell into the rear of the battalion area and one of the sentries mistook the smoke for gas and gave the alarm. Other sentries took up the alarm, which quickly spread throughout the entire area. By the time lit was dark, things had settled down, but there was an air of nervousness, and everyone kept his gas mask close at hand for the night.
The ordnance companies were equipped with three decontamination trucks in the event of a mustard gas attack. The trucks contained large wooden tanks filled with water and several drums of chloride of lime powder. The procedure was to mix the powder in the water and spray it on any contaminated vehicle. The chloride of lime would release a free chlorine radical, which would neutralize the additional chlorine in the mustard gas and make it harmless. As the result of this false alarm, the drivers of the decontamination trucks checked meir equipment carefully mat evening, and one driver opened a drum to make sure that it held plenty of chloride of lime.
The crew of the decontamination truck went to sleep in their foxhole, right next to the truck. Later in me evening, a heavy mist began to settle over the bivouac area, and some of the moisture apparently got into one of the drums that had been opened, and a small amount of chlorine was released. Because chlorine gas is heavier than air, it spilled over the side of the drum, down the side of the truck, and into the foxhole. The driver of the truck awakened and smelled the chlorine gas. Needless to say, the events of the previous hours had a great deal to do with what happened next. The terrified driver screamed, then fainted dead away. The assistant driver sharing the foxhole with him Woke up, saw the slumped body of his buddy, and, smelling the gas, thought the man was dead. He immediately panicked and screamed, “Gas! Gas!” at the top of his voice.
All hell broke loose. Other soldiers awakened and immediately relayed the gas signal. Some fired three shots, and the sentries whirled claxtons again. One radio operator hollered, “Gas! Gas! Gas!”
In a matter of seconds the alarm spread throughout the entire First Army beachhead, and pandemonium broke out. Men abandoned their foxholes and ran around in the dark screaming and looking for their gas masks. Had the Germans realized what was happening, they could have attacked against a completely disorganized army.
After a while, the men realized that this was another false alarm; the sentries’ gas patches, which changed color when exposed to gas, did not indicate that any was present.
How could a well-trained, disciplined army have been subject to such sudden hysteria? Perhaps because this generation of young men grew up hearing stories about the terror of gas in World War I.
No one, perhaps even to this day, really knows how profoundly this panic could have affected the security of the army. The next morning, the CCB commander, General Truman Boudinot, called a meeting of all the unit commanders. Boudinot expressed his shock and amazement at the disintegration of discipline among the troops. In all of his years in the army, he had never seen anything like it, and he was not about to put up with any more of it in the future. He gave a direct order from General Omar Bradley, commander of the First Army, which is abbreviated as follows.
In view of the experience of the previous evening, it has been concluded that had the Germans actually used gas, the physical damage to our troops could not have possibly been as disastrous as the pandemonium that resulted from the gas alarm. Thus, you are hereby ordered to instruct all personnel that the gas alarm will be given under no conditions, even in the event of an actual gas attack. All claxtons and other types of gas alarm signals are to be taken up. The gas identifying patches on the sentries will remain, to be used for their personal protection. Any soldier giving the gas alarm, regardless of the circumstances, is to be shot on sight by the closest available soldier.