The battle for Fromentel became a series of intensive separate actions, completely isolated and highly fluid.
The fighting in some instances was at extremely close range. One of our tank destroyers knocked out two Panther tanks at a range of twenty-five yards. The tank destroyer commander dismounted to try to rescue the crew from one of the burning tanks, but he was killed by exploding ammunition in the German tank. Even under the severe strain of combat, the quality of mercy was always present.
The Germans were putting up a desperate, courageous fight, and in some cases fanatics refused to surrender.
Our tanks came upon an isolated group of young Hitler Jugend who had been drafted into the 1st SS Adolf Hitler Panzer Division, which at one time had been Hitler’s personal bodyguard. One tank commander reported that the young German soldiers would not surrender. In their fanatical, desperate last efforts, they had to be gunned down by the tanks and finally physically run over and crushed in their foxholes. The carnage sickened the tank crew.
The situation in Fromentel became so fluid that it was extremely difficult to tell which part of the town the Germans occupied and which part the Americans occupied. This confused the air force, and on two occasions CCA had to abandon positions when they were mistakenly bombed by P38s. Finally, after seesawing back and forth, CCA occupied the town. Although we had expected to meet 21st Army Group units before this time, the Canadian First Army, which was leading the group, was having a hard time and was still north of us.
On August 17, CCB moved north and west of Fromentel and secured hill 214 just south of Putanges. On the same day, twelve hundred German armored vehicles plus several thousand other vehicles streamed across our front and came under heavy bombardment by both British and American artillery and airpower.
On the morning of the eighteenth, elements of CCB made contact with Canadian armored units south of Putanges. Although the VII Corps captured approximately five thousand German prisoners, and other units captured many more, a number of German units escaped. Field Marshal Kluge, apparently anticipating our action, had moved his major gasoline dumps forty miles to the east, which gave the Germans sufficient fuel to head east across northern France. German units that escaped were badly mauled and suffered a crushing defeat.
On August 19, the infantry continued to mop up the smaller, isolated pockets of resistance. On August 20 and 21, the 3d Armored Division reassembled for a two-day maintenance and supply period in an area just south of Rânes. The 23d Engineers set up a shower area in a nearby stream. I didn’t give it much thought at the time, but later I realized that my last shower had been on July 1, just before we left Codford, England. It had been fifty days since I’d had a shower! For some of the fellows in CCA who came over before us, it had been more than sixty-five days. Even after we had moved out into the field at Codford, about a month before D day, we still enjoyed the luxury of a shower each night at the nearby Quonset hut lavatory.
Personal sanitation in the field is difficult at best. I was able to brush my teeth and wash my face almost daily and shave with cold water every third or fourth day, but I had no change of clothing except clean socks.
When my turn for a shower finally came, I took off my helmet, pistol, combat jacket, money belt, regular belt, and combat boots and put them in one pile along with the contents of my pockets. I stripped off my wool shirt, wool trousers, long underwear tops and bottoms, and socks and made a dirty clothes pile next to the shower area. Having worn the same shirt, trousers, and long underwear for fifty-one days, I felt that they were raunchy enough to walk to the pile by themselves.
The quartermaster gave us fresh cakes of soap, and I indulged myself even though the water was ice cold.
When we came out of the shower, we were each given a clean olive-drab towel and a new wool shirt, wool pants, socks, and long underwear. We never wore khaki uniforms and always wore long underwear, because in northern Europe the evenings were cool even in summertime.
Regrouping After Falaise
On the road between Rânes and Fromentel, the division had been severely bloodied, and our losses in personnel and combat vehicles were high. On one roadblock alone where the Germans had laced the highway with felled trees for a hundred yards or so, we lost eighteen tanks. Few of these were recovered, because most of them had been fired at until they burned. The tanks that could be recovered from that spot and other areas were dragged back to the VCP south of Rânes, where the maintenance and ordnance troops worked feverishly to repair them.
Replacement tank crews, infantry, and other troops were also brought in and integrated into their units. The combat troops and the ordnance, maintenance, and supply troops had developed a healthy respect for one another. The combat troops laid their lives on the line constantly, and we were determined to do everything possible to supply them with the best and most efficiently repaired combat-ready equipment. We did this knowing that our new M4A1 tank, even with the 76mm gun, was hopelessly outmatched by the heavier German tanks.
The M4 tank had two types of power traverse on the turret—hydraulic and electric. The hydraulic drive was smoother and easier to maintain. We went to great pains in England when we were drawing our initial tanks to select only those with hydraulic traverse. Although many of these tanks had now been replaced, we tried to continue using the hydraulic traverse.
The Ford Motor Company, under the direction of the ordnance department, had taken the British Rolls Royce Merlin engine and cut it down to eight cylinders. This made an excellent 550-horsepower tank engine, about 25 percent more powerful than the radial engine. The V-8 design made the engine easier to maintain, and it had fewer problems with sparkplug fouling. Because of this, we selected Ford engine tanks for replacements when we could get them.
When tank crews came to pick up their tanks, the new replacement crewmen had no idea what the tank was like.
Whenever a tank was knocked out, one to three men were usually killed or wounded, so it was not long before the new recruits outnumbered the veterans. If the recruits survived their first engagement, they became veterans themselves.
The ordnance maintenance crews did everything they could to familiarize the new crews with the tanks, particularly any new equipment. This participation became more prevalent as the number of veteran tankers continued to decline. It became more and more apparent that the ability of the division to revive after heavy combat operations depended largely on the ability of maintenance crews to train the new people and get the tanks and crews ready to go again.
Major Dick Johnson, as the ranking maintenance officer in the combat command, had the responsibility of recovering vehicles from combat areas. He insisted on every precaution while recovering vehicles under combat conditions. Most maintenance men had eighteen months to three years of training and were deemed irreplaceable. It was unwise to risk their lives to try to recover burned-up tanks that could not be repaired.
Tank Recovery in Combat
When a firefight broke out, several tanks and other vehicles would be knocked out. The maintenance crews from the regiment would go forward with T2 recovery vehicles to evacuate the shot-up equipment. If there were mines, the engineers would clear a path for the recovery vehicles. If the area was still under direct fire, we would wait, because a T2 recovery vehicle and maintenance crew would be a far greater loss to the division than a few shot-up tanks.