At 10:45 a.m. on the 18th, CCB was placed on a one-hour alert. General Wood often utilized a light Piper Cub liaison aircraft flown by his personal pilot, Maj. Charles "Bazooka Charlie" Carpenter, to keep up with his rapidly moving division, sometimes personally carrying corps orders from headquarters directly to his advancing armored columns.[12]. The division was organized as a full Armored Division in May and June 1942 under the command of Major General John Shirley Wood. I protested vehemently, reminding him that the situation up ahead was unclear, terribly confused, and that this was no time for a piecemeal commitment of my forces. Thus, the 8th led the odyssey north into the cold, black night, reinforced with the halftracks of the 10th Armored Infantry Battalion. We soon learned that the 8th Tank Battalion was the only battalion in the division that he visited. He arrived at high speed in his jeep, with a wide, crooked grin and all his stars blazing. This article was originally published in the November 1999 issue of World War II. Stories published by … Their positions were predominately in the open fields near the highway and in the woods west of Lutrebois. Only later did we learn why CCB had gone where it did and when it did. The division appears to have been part of VII Corps for most of this period. Gen. Holmes E. Dager, and its 8th Tank Battalion, which I commanded as a young major. I placed in command of the task force Captain Bert P. Ezell, my battalion executive officer. After jumping out of his jeep, he worked his way along the entire length of the small town. He was jolly, animated and interested in how we were doing. [9] By 12 April the 4th AD was across the Saale River. The division got the nickname "The Battered Bastards of the Bastion of Bastogne". [13], The division was composed of the following units:[14], After a tour of occupation duty in Germany, the 4th AD returned to the United States for inactivation. At the time, I was serving with Combat Command B (CCB) of the 4th Armored Division, commanded by Brig. We began our journey in darkness and were to end it in darkness, as night came upon us again. A number of questions have been raised about our mission: *Why did CCB, whose original destination was the vicinity of Longwy, continue on alone until it reached a position in VIII Corps sector, only nine kilometers from Bastogne? When I told him to return, Ezell was dumbfounded. This booklet is one of the series of G.I. The 8th Tank Battalion and the rest of CCB were part of the 4th Armored Division’s attacking force, coordinated with the 80th and 26th Infantry divisions of III Corps. During the division’s rest period my command post was in Domnon-les-Dieuze, a tiny, wet, muddy and depressing French village about 40 miles northeast of Nancy. General Milliken also knew that the key to his III Corps three-division attack was having the 4th Armored at full strength. On the fourth day the troops were excited and energized by the visit of the Third Army commander, General Patton, who swooped in for a quick stop. Just before dark on the day after Christmas 1944, elementsof Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.’s 4th Armored Division, attacking from the south, succeeded in making contact with the beleaguered Americans at Bastogne. Further reading: A Time For Trumpets, by Charles B. McDonald; and Battle: The Story of the Bulge, by John Toland. The armored division, according to Middleton, later achieved “some limited success,” but ultimately its commanding general had to be relieved. The men were beside themselves, chatting and shouting excitedly. Bessy Colman, first African American aviator. As ordered, the 8th Tank Battalion crossed the IP at 12:50 a.m. on December 19. On 1 August, Gen. George Patton's U.S. Third Army became operational and the 4th AD became the spearhead of the Third Army. 3rd Armored Division; 4th Armored Division; Shop by Regiment + 75th Ranger; 327th Infantry; 506th Infantry; 502nd Infantry; 26th Infantry; 187th Infantry ; Shop By Unit + Special Operations Command; 1st Brigade "Bastogne" 2nd Brigade "Strike" 3rd Brigade "Rakkasans" Air Corps; Army Special Forces; 160th SOAR; Shop by Rank; Shop by Specialty + Army Specialty Badges; Army M.O.S. I continued with my preparations for the move the next day to the east, as well as the subsequent attack into Germany, by sending billeting parties forward to obtain billets for the battalion to occupy at the end of the march to the border. As was to be expected, he had a difficult time convincing Roberts that he had to leave with his force just after arriving in Bastogne. The encircled 101st Airborne Division had occupied that critically vital Belgian town for several days, categorically refusing German demands for surrender. New York, New York: Galahad Books World War II Order of Battle p52, The Armored Sentinel, Fort Hood, Texas, 15 April 1954, 4th Armored Division Yearbook 1958 via usarmygermany.com, Army Battle Casualties and Nonbattle Deaths, Final Report (Statistical and Accounting Branch, Office of the Adjutant General, 1 June 1953), Learn how and when to remove this template message, http://www.history.army.mil/html/forcestruc/cbtchron/adcomp.html, http://www.history.army.mil/documents/ETO-OB/4AD-ETO.htm. The 4th was named the "Breakthrough" division in 1954, but that name was eventually discontinued.[5]. General Patton then drove to Arlon, to the headquarters of General Middleton’s troubled VIII Corps to get a firsthand picture of the situation in the Bulge. It happened just after the Battle of the Bulge. Two days after the Germans launched their Ardennes Offensive, the 4th AD entered the fight (18 December 1944), racing northwest into Belgium, covering 150 miles in 19 hours. Arrangements were made for a simple code to indicate, via a brief telephone call, which operation would be implemented. General Middleton still must have been anxious to send CCB into Bastogne behind Task Force Ezell and surely requested permission to do so. As we neared the town of Vaux-les-Rosières, we were at last told to stop for the night. General Gaffey must have wanted his combat command returned. Once the column was on the road, we rolled mile after mile into the unknown. In sharing my own experience and research, my goal has been to shed a little light on an obscure, yet telling, incident that had formerly been shrouded by the fog of war. On the 21st, I received my orders from General Dager at CCB headquarters for the attack that would take place the following day. That directive was quickly followed up with instructions to cross the initial point, or IP (as yet to be designated), at 12:50 a.m. and then move in a totally different direction–north! It turned out that General Bradley was responsible for that trip. Neufchâteau, another milestone, came and went as we continued to roll, still without enemy contact. Since the Combat Command had not been engaged, I withdrew it to Arlon [not Arlon but Léglise].’, Historian Martin Blumenson, in the second volume of The Patton Papers, quotes from General Patton’s diary entry of the same day, December 20: ‘In the morning I drove to Luxembourg, arriving at 0900. The group was astonished at his rapid response to the situation and was more than satisfied with his proposal. The following day, at Chaumont, the 8th Tank Battalion was on the receiving end of one of the most powerful tank-led counterattacks of the war, temporarily slowing its advance to Bastogne and inflicting heavy casualties. With no order for the next day, the men settled in for the night after the evening meal. During the next hour, Patton and his staff planned, in outline, three distinct operations. Brigadier General Albin F. Irzyk is the author of He Rode Up Front for Patton. This combat command was located just to the east of the Bastogne … What really was disturbing was the realization that the encirclement had been taking place while Ezell’s group had been in Bastogne, and it had continued with unabated fury after the 8th Tank Battalion and CCB had left the area. HistoryNet.com is brought to you by Historynet LLC, the world's largest publisher of history magazines. A cloud of apprehension hovered over the entire battalion. Much later that same day he issued the order that got CCB moving just after midnight. Tanks … It took the 4th Armored Division five days of bitter, costly fighting to break the ring of German units encircling the 101st, but only six days before the linkup, elements of that same division had actually been in Bastogne on the day it was being encircled. The 4th Armored was on the left flank. The 4th AD remained in Germany until final inactivation in May 1971, when it was redesignated the 1st Armored Division. Early that morning I was told to attend a meeting at division headquarters, but before I left for the meeting it was called off. World War II Order of Battle. *If General Dager had not protested dividing his command, what might have happened to CCB if it had rolled into Bastogne as ordered, on the day when the enemy was very much on the move? The task force hauled back as much of the abandoned artillery equipment as they could handle and encountered no resistance on the way back to the bivouac area. We had no information about the situation up ahead or about the enemy. On 29 December, the 4th AD departed Boston to conduct training in England in preparation for the invasion of Normandy. Even if the Germans had cut the Neufchâteau/Bastogne highway, the Fourth Armored Division might have capitalized on the location of CCB and attacked from Vaux-les-Rosières instead of from Arlon. Third Army relief force, the 4th Armored Division, broke through the German lines and opened a corridor to Bastogne, ending the siege. News of the German attack reached the headquarters of Combat Command A (CCA) of the 4th Armored Division at 0635 hours. On 23 December, the 37th Tank Battalion knocked out a German operated Sherman tank and two 75mm SPs near Begonville. Other Third Army units which were trapped with the 101st Airborne Division in Bastogne were from the 9th and 10th Armored Divisions. That was not the time to reinforce a failing situation and risk having elements of the 4th Armored committed prematurely. It was 1650, December 26, the 4th Armored Division, had broken thru enemy lines, and reached its objective - the siege of Bastogne was over … although the fighting wasn’t yet … (Charles P. BOGGESS, 1st Lt, C Co, 37th Tk Bn, 4th Armd Div, USA, ……….., recollections) pictures taken in 1984 - 40th Anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge It was not clear whether the artillery units had been attacked and their positions overrun, or if they had been spooked by the sight of German tanks crossing the road just to the north of them and had abandoned their guns and vehicles. Almost immediately, the town became littered with tank parts and equipment of all types. Later that same day, Patton met at Verdun with Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower and a distinguished gathering of senior commanders that some have called perhaps the most historically significant conference of the 1944-45 campaign. Two other Third Army divisions, the 4th and 5th Infantry Divisions, were disclosed to be fighting the Germans in the … Combat Command "B", with its 8th Tank Battalion out front, led the advance of the division. At the Verdun meeting, General Patton had committed himself to a coordinated attack with three full divisions. CCR, the last to head north to the Ardennes, was at that point, made up of the 37th Tank Battalion and the 704th TD. The 4th Armored Division, previously attached to the XII Corps, was now assigned to the III Corps. The division was then led by Major General Hugh Gaffey through the Battle of the Bulge and until the end of the war. Some of the vehicles were still idling. *Once CCB had moved into its bivouac at Vaux-les-Rosières, should the rest of the 4th Armored Division have capitalized on the situation, moving up to attack from the bivouac location only a short distance from Bastogne rather than consolidating for the attack farther south and then fighting its way north along the difficult forest axis from Arlon to the encircled city? The 4th AD, spearheading Patton's Third Army, attacked the Germans at Bastogne and, on 26 December, was the first unit (Company C, 37th Tank Battalion led the 4th Armored Division column that relieved Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge) [8] to break through at Bastogne and relieve the besieged 101st Airborne Division. "Order of Battle of the US Army - WWII - ETO - 4th Armored Division", "Longines Chronoscope with Gen. John S. Wood (2 April 1952)", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=4th_Armored_Division_(United_States)&oldid=998387002, Armored divisions of the United States Army, United States Army divisions during World War II, Military units and formations established in 1941, Military units and formations disestablished in 1971, Articles with French-language sources (fr), Articles needing additional references from July 2012, All articles needing additional references, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, "They shall be known by their deeds alone" (WWII), Headquarters & Headquarters Company, 4th Armored Division, Headquarters & Headquarters Company, Combat Command A, 25th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron (Mechanized), Headquarters & Headquarters Battery, Division Artillery, Headquarters & Headquarters Company, Division Trains, Roosevelt's Butchers (by Nazi propagandists), French Croix de Guerre with Palm, World War II (MOSELLE RIVER, 12–29, September 1944; DA GO 43, 1950), This page was last edited on 5 January 2021, at 04:16. In popular lore, a battalion of the 4th Armored Division is credited with relieving Bastogne and lifting its siege. Combat Command "A" (CCA) would be the next to move out, nine hours behind CCB and along the same road. On 30 June 1958, Combat Command "A" was at Wiley Barracks, New Ulm, It comprised 2d Medium Tank Battalion (MTB), 66th Armor (Leipheim); 2d Armored Rifle Battalion (ARB), 41st Infantry (Neu Ulm); and 2d Armored Rifle Battalion, 51st Infantry. The US 35th Infantry Division came to fill the gap between the 4th Armored Division and the 26th Infantry Division south of Bastogne. However, their unofficial nickname "Name Enough" came into use postwar; the division commander having said, "Fourth Armored Division was name enough"; "They shall be known by their deeds alone." Early the next morning, December 20, I was, figuratively speaking, hit by a thunderbolt. After visiting the three other divisions of the XII Corps that day, he wrote in his diary that he had decided to put the 6th Armored Division and the 26th Infantry Division into the III Corps because ‘if the enemy attacks the VIII Corps of the First Army, as is probable, I can use the III Corps to help.’. He had done what he had promised his commanders he would do. To give much deserved credit to Combat Command “B” of the 10 th Armored Division for saving the strategic transportation hub city of Bastogne, Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe, in command of the 101 st Airborne Division while its Commanding General was temporarily away, stated that “without the sacrifices of the 10 th Armored CCB, there would not have been a Bastogne to be … At the head of the 8th was my tank, making it the lead element of the Third Army in its advance to the north. Ezell’s units had apparently managed to slip through a gap in the enemy echelons driving west. The fact that we arrived was a tribute to both our men and vehicles and spoke volumes for the work we had accomplished during the recent rest period. Patton’s decision was revealed when Task Force Ezell was ordered out of Bastogne shortly after noon and CCB was directed to move to the rear, which it began to do by midafternoon. But the top of his head had been blown off above the eyes, apparently by an armor-piercing round. Those of us who participated in this confusing operation, as well as historians who have analyzed the Battle of the Bulge in the years following World War II, could not help but note the ironies and incongruities surrounding the battle. It should be emphasized that at this meeting Patton pledged a three-division counterattack with the entire 4th Armored Division as the key division in the corps. Richard Henry Lee, American Revolutionary patriot and signatory of the Declaration of Independence. 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