4TH ARMORED HAS A RECORD
The cold winter rain had been falling for three weeks. Lorraine pastures were bogs, streams were rivers. With duckbill grousers on tank tracks, 4th Armd. moved out Nov. 9, in a downpour. Third Army's winter offensive had begun.
Armored warfare was on a "one-tank" front—on the road — as tanks strained and stuck. Columns ground northeast toward Morhange through the sodden wreckage of German villages. The fight now was in Nazi-annexed French Lorraine.
Massed artillery hammered at armor probing German defenses. At Destry, the 8th Tank outflanked and wiped out a nest of 21 anti-tank guns without losing a single tank. Morhange was overrun. Fighting was bitter at Guebling.
A sudden shift to the south and CC B pushed to the Sarre River where the 8th Tank seized Fenetrange Thanksgiving Day. The first crossing of the Sarre was made by Troop C, 25th. Cavalrymen commanded by 1st Lt. John Keenan, Mars Hill, Me., rushed Gosselming with all guns blazing, took the bridge. Although intact, the span was mined and wired for demolition.
Pushing across the Sarre into ever deepening mud, the 4th contacted Seventh Army troops which had driven to Strasbourg. Germans hastily threw the 130th Panzer Lehr Div. against the 4th, but tankers hurled it back, then lumbered north.
Supported in a narrow zone by as many as 14 battalions of town-flattening -artillery, the 4th slogged past Sarre Union to Domfessel and Vollerdingen. In savage tank fighting, the 37th plowed through the Maginot Line to Singling Dec. 8.
Although the division was relieved two days later by 12th Armd. Div., two 4th Armd. units remained in combat to roll over the German border.
S/Sgt. George Poulus, Gary, Ind., platoon sergeant, Troop D, 25th Cav., took a 15-man patrol up Hill 382 south of Utweiler, Germany, Dec. 16. The same afternoon,. Shermans of Co. A, 37th, chased Nazi tanks back in the woods above Rimling.
Maj. Gen. Hugh J. Gaffey, Third Army Chief of Staff, succeeded Gen. Wood as commander of 4th Armd. Dec. 3. Gen. Wood, in command of the division since June 18, 1942, had brought it from Pine Camp, N.Y., to the Sarre Valley.
Gen. Gaffrey had commanded 2nd Armd. Div. in Africa and Sicily before becoming Gen, Patton's Chief of Staff. It was under him that the 4th answered what tankers always will remember as "the fire call."
The division was in Corps reserve Dec. 18. Tankers heard vague reports of a two-day old German offensive up in Belgium and Luxembourg, gave it little thought. But at 2030, orders were received to march north against the breakthrough. The combat command jumped off shortly before midnight.
CC B raced northwest through Morhange, crossed the Moselle at Pont-a-Mousson, turned north to Briey and Longwy then into Belgium to Arlon before arriving at an assembly area at Vaux-les-Rosieres. The 151-mile march had been made in 19 hours. CC B came under control of the hard-pressed VIII Corps, First Army. Next day, the 4th assembled near Arlon under III Corps. CC B returned to division without being committed.
Fourth Armd. spent more than three years getting ready for the battle of France. The division was tempered 39 months in California, in Texas heat, in the cold of the Canadian border, in English plains. It emerged a tough, confident team. Soldiers in tanks were backed by soldiers skilled in keeping tankmen rolling.
The 126th Armd. Ord. Bn., 144th Armd. Sig. Co., 46th Med. Bn. —all were trained to help tanks, infantry, cavalry and artillery at their job. The 704 TD Bn. virtually is a part of the division. The 489th AA Bn., in addition to its bag of 26 German planes, has killed 246 ground troops, destroyed four armored cars, 24 wagons, 15 trucks, two machine gun nests and captured 500 enemy. The 995th Treadway Bridge Co, 1st platoon of the 16th Field Hospital, 3804 QM Trk. Co., and the 444th QM Troop Transport Co., also were integral parts of the team.
Activated April 15, 1941, at Pine Camp, the 4th trained 16 months before reaching the Tennessee maneuvers in the Cumberland Mountains. Mid-November, 1942, the division moved to the vast California Desert Training Center where base camps were established near Freida and Needles.
After six months of rugged desert training, the 4th arrived at Camp Bowie, Tex, June3, 1943, and maneuvered during a broiling summer until alerted Nov. 11 for overseas duty. Train after train left the Lone Star State from Dec. 11 to 18 to take armored troops into a frigid Massachusetts winter at Camp Myles Standish. The main body of troops sailed from Boston Dec. 29, 1943.
Eleven days later, the division disembarked in Wales and entrained for camps in Wiltshire, England. Soon the staid names of Chippenham, Trowbridge, Devizes and Bath were as familiar as Watertown, Palm Springs, Brownwood or Ft. Worth. In a final polishing, the 4th trained six months on the English downs and in the bitter winter frosts of the Salisbury and Avebury plains.
Officers and men have won one Congressional Medal of Honor, 15 Distinguished Service Crosses, 554 Silver Stars, 1955 Bronze Star Medals, 56 Air Medals and one Legion of Merit.
•How well they fought is shown by the names given the 4th: "The Rolling 4th," "Fiying 4th," "Phantom 4th," "Ghost Division," "Fire Alarm Division." In cool military appraisal, the Germans first called them the "American Elite Fourth Armored Division." Later, Nazi propagandists dubbed them "Roosevelt's Highest Paid Butchers."
The division, however, has never adopted a nickname. The men of the armor feel that "The Fourth Armored" is name enough—praise enough.
Some men on the 4th whose courage made the division great no longer fight beside their comrades.
It is for these dead as well as for Victory and Peace that the 4th Armd. Div. will fight until the last page of its combat story is written.