page 3 of 11
Play MovieBattle of the Bulge
Please report errors to: info@tellingstories.org.
Tell us the story of the Battle of the Bulge.
The Battle of the Bulge. The were five campaigns in Europe. There was Normandy, there was Southern France, there was Northern France, there was the Ardennes, and I can't think of the next one—it was the biggest one we had, I will think of it in a second now—we were in all of them except one. We weren't at Normandy. We were in all the other four campaigns. The Battle of the Bulge was called Ardennes. What happened down there was that the American troops—they were being wounded—the ones that were wounded they sent them down there to recuperate in the Ardennes. So they were down there like just fooling around, recuperating, you know. There were a few combat outfits there, they weren't looking for any action. But what Hitler decided to do was to pull his troops from Russia, some of them, and bring them over to the Ardennes and push the Americans and their forces into the Atlantic Ocean, and that way, they'd be rid of us.
So they snuck up on us doing that and they caught the Airborne Division trapped in Bastogne. We were just reading the Stars and Stripes when it came out, they had pictures of all these American troops that the Germans had lined up and was just mowing them down, you know, and bringing all their different tanks into the Bulge there to destroy us. And Patton, we were still fighting like hell up there—the other battle was in the Rhineland, the Battle of the Rhine—so what Patton did, Eisenhower told him, said "You got to get down there and get those boys out of there, George, in about forty eight-hours." He said, "Do you think you could do it?" He said, "Yeah." He said, "When you get them there, that’s too early, you got to let them get some rest." He said, "They don't need rest." So we went across the terrain that was unfit for tanks, and the weather wasn't helping any. We had to fight the weather conditions, four feet of snow and all that stuff.
We were traveling the day and night, and only the way you could had tell how far you couldn't see—you know what a cigarette would look like at night? You know a cigarette, when you smoke a cigarette, that’s what we had on the back of the tanks. A little light, the driver had to watch that light see where the other tank was. If the one tank would have gone over a cliff they would have all gone over. The only way you could tell that you were in front the tank was by that light, and you could feel when you couldn't se that light, you could feel the heat from the exhaust of the tank. We had an exhaust about that wide, you know, and it was really blowing that hot air and that’s what a lot of the infantry guys when we stop at all, run up to that and warm up, pull their gloves off because there was snow about four feet deep. Through that terrain, the weather conditions and the Germans with their stubborn resistance they were giving us, you know, we are lucky to be here today. We got there on the twenty ninth of the....
What was your experience on the way there? Were you the driver? What was your specific job?
I was still the loader at that particular time. You see when I came to the 761st they had given all the high positions to the old soldiers. So they know they were getting us so they filled the positions with the tank commanders, the gunners, the drivers. They had the first choice to see what they wanted to be. So we got the choices that was left and as we came in and as we lost men, some were made officers. First they were sergeants then they were made lieutenants. When that started happening I was made tank commander and when my tank commander and platoon sergeant made lieutenant and then I took his place. Then I was a platoon sergeant and then a tank commander.
You were a tank commander in the Battle of the Bulge?
Yes, and in the Battle of the Rhine all the way through to the end of the war, I was Staff Sergeant. In the Battle of the Bulge, we got there on the 29th, and New Year's Day, we celebrated by getting the captain two towns—and Captain Williams, the one that wrote Hit Hard, just before he died, he was telling me what really happened when we came in that night, and we all tried to get some sleep. This little lieutenant came up, cleanly shaved, a new uniform on, and told him that the Colonel wanted to see him—they sent him wanted to see us—and wanted to send him to bring us to where he was, the headquarters there, where he had his little camp. He told them, "Tell him we'll see him tomorrow." He went back and he told the Colonel what he said, and he was mad. He said, "I thought I told you to send the men around here." He says, "Well hell! Why did you want us to come around at night?" He says, "Well he says you might get lost, like some outfits do get lost, you know, coming in, trying to come in." He says "Well, hell! We came all the way from France over here, you know, we still been—this is not our first battle."
We all needed shaves and here's the old Colonel all clean and shaved and fed, and had been sleeping in the bed there. And we all were ragged and dirty. He said "I ought to court marshal all of you." We told him, "Go ahead." Then he give us our assignment and he apologized to William later. I didn't know all of this was all happening, see it's just between the officers, you know. That’s why Colonel Bates and William, they tried to get them to leave us amd then go through the Twelfth Army Division, which was white, and they told them no we won't go, we'll stay here. As we got down to the Battle of the Bulge, one of the things that was sad that they sent a lot of young soldiers in there and officers that didn't have combat experience. So the Germans just slaughtered them. One incident—they heard an airplane coming, a fighter, and they ran out to wave out at it, and it was the German Messerschmitt. He just came around and strafed him. Then he had another one behind him. See, what they would do, they would strafe and another one would hesitate twenty seconds, give you time to get up, then he would come in and strafe, make his run. You don't send troops into battle like that without any experience.
We all knew the sounds of the engines of the German planes. We knew the sound of the engines of the German tanks and all the other vehicles. So when you here that sound you know it's danger, so the were running out waving and going on. Then when they start mowing them down, these tanks, in this one incident, the Germans were up on the ridge and that was a place like a soup bowl. Once you get down in there, you can't get out because of the ice, your tanks would start slipping when you try and come out of there. He sent the Twelfth Army Division—or the Seventh, I don't know which one it was—he sent a battalion of those guys in there like a line of ducks. What the Germans did, they knocked out the first tank and the last tank, and then they can't go any place. What they were doing was starting to mow them down, one at a time. The infantry, those little guys with them, they jumped up and started running, and they were mowing them down, too. Sergeant Chico, Captain William told him get out there and take care of those guys. He jumped out and told them to hit the dirt, don't run, lay down. He finally got them to lay down, they didn't have any officers with them, they didn't know what they were doing—bunch of young kids.
Another thing that the Germans were slick about when the Battle of the Bulge happened—there was a church that was blown up and the Germans zeroed in on that church because that would have been a good place—you know the walls that were standing—for the troops to hide. When they came in they just zeroed in on that particular spot. When the troops would come in and run for cover they'd go to that wall and then they'd just fire on it and just knock in down and get them all that way. That was the Battle of the Bulge—most of the things in a little place called Tillet that I remember most. There was St. Vith where we relieved the 7th Army Division. In the little place called Tillet, we fought there for five days. That’s where the Germans had their supplies and they wanted to come in and get their supplies ready and get between the Bastogne and Brussels highways, to keep them from coming in and getting their supplies and connecting up with the other army. After five days, when the 17th Airborne Division I was telling you about, they finally came in on trucks and so forth after the <?????>. Then we could bomb that ridge up there. And then at the Battle of the Bulge, we did what we had to do. After that we went on down to the Rhineland, if anyone wants to ask about that.
When did you eat and sleep?
We learned how to sleep when the Germans were firing on us. When they're throwing a barrage of ammunition rounds in on us, we knew that they're getting ready to attack. So I could sleep then, and then as soon as it stopped I'd wake up because I knew they were attacking. We had K rations, in a can and boxes. You were always snacking if you got a break. We had a little gas heater and we would pump it up and light it and put a can of beans on it, warm it up—or a can of soup. We would let the infantry make coffee and stuff like that and give those boys some hot coffee. Then let them use our stove and get behind the tanks and get warm. And the Germans, what they would do, they would wait until about ten or fifteen of them got together and then they start shelling. One or two come up here, they'd sit down watch you wherever they were and then they start shelling, and we'd scatter out again. So we let some of the guys come in the tanks and sleep because they had it. I felt sorry for those poor guys.
You ate and slept in shifts?
Yeah, those guys, they were in the Ardennes in those forests, those pine trees, they are about—just like that—pretty thick in there. Those guys had to dig in that hard ground of snow and try and cover up, then the Germans would fire on the top of the trees. Then the hot metal would come down and you'd hear those guys hollering for the medics to come because they got hit. In the forest there they had a place cut out with a track and they had a gun on the track. It come over in this opening and fire, and by the time you'd find out where he is and spot the fire on it, he'd move to another place and start firing. So they had it pretty well set up, but we got in there and took care of them.
Was there ever a time where you were seriously afraid for your life or you ever got injured?
Yes, 183 days. But I never got injured. I cut my hand on a can of beans—as I told you—that was the only wound that I got. But I had a lot of close calls. The first day in battle, when you asked me about that, the tank commander was nervous and we have what you call a hand held mike, and they were giving orders, receiving orders and the battery was on, we had a battery about that big. The mike ran the battery down so our tank stopped running, shut down. The other tanks in front were moving and the tank commander told me, he says " Floyd, you and"—we a kid there from New York, he was really light complexioned, we called him Honky—he says, "You and Honky go out and put up that machine gun and protect the tank." So there was a clump of woods and Honky wouldn't get out, so I went and set the gun up and pointed it down at the clump of woods. On the way back to get the ammunition, I looked up and I saw something like a football pass coming in. I just stood there and watched it. It hit about 25 yards from me, it was a mortar. By the ground being soft and muddy as it was, it went down in the mud about, I guess a foot or so. Then when it exploded it just—pfff—the mud kind of muffed it. I could feel the heat from that red and black smoke that I saw. Then the medics come running up to me they thought I was hit but I told them "no." That was the closest call that I had.
The tank was stuck in a ditch. There were some fence posts, so none of the other crew would get out with me to try and put them under the tank tracks so when they spin, it would pull them up. And I got shot at about twelve times by one of the 88s when I tried to get back to my tank. I knew the firing order. That's why they didn't get me. They put one round over you, and one round behind you, and the third round's always on the target because they divide that distance between you. Then I went to the right, and then the next shell hit where I left from. Then I keep that pattern on the way back up. Then they put one over again and one down, then I come back to the left, and then they hit where I came from. They did that about three times. Then I got back in the tank and then they stopped firing. What Hitler was doing then, that's when we were in France, when we first started, they would save some pockets of resistance back—but at the Battle of the Bulge we didn't know that—for them to come out when they succeeded in the Battle of the Bulge and surround us, they helped push us into the Atlantic. So that was the closest that I ever did. But then when we got to the Rhineland, that was a different story.
Battle of the Rhine
Tell us about the Battle of the Rhine.
Yes, the battle of the Rhine—that's the first time the 761st Tank Battalion fought as a unit. Our battalion commander, Colonel Paul Bates, he was in charge of the operation Task Force Rhine. The 761st, we were leading it with the other infantry divisions and battalions with us, put us in charge of the whole force there. The most interesting part was when we got to the Haardt Mountains. We had to cross the Haardt Mountains to cross over to the plains of the Rhine. On our way over, that's the first time we fought at night. We had two companies to go down around the edge of the mountains and fight in these two towns. The rest of the battalion, we were going up in the mountains supporting the 87th Infantry Division. When we got there, the platoons down in these cities, they hit two ammunition dumps and it set the whole town on fire. So that night it just lit up the top of the mountains up there and we could see how to fight, and that was the first time we fought at night. There was a lot of movement up there with the American troops and the Germans. The next morning we knocked out 200 horses which were drawing these towed guns up into the mountains with the Germans, and about thirty ammunition trucks, and two ammunition dumps and about thirty pill boxes.
I was just kidding around, but I took my firing pin—because I had a new gunner—out of the breach of the cannon. That night I looked up at the Eastern star they call it, and I put two cross hairs over the muzzle of the gun. Then I could sight through the pinhole where the firing pin was, where the two cross hairs crossed, and put them on that star. Then I would get the periscope and I would do the same thing—that's the gun sight—and make sure that they were on the same spot. Then I took it down and swung it around, and I saw a bullet hole on the pill box about twenty five yards from us, so I zoomed in on that bullet hole. I couldn't have fired the gun if I wanted to. About thirty Germans came out of the pill box, which should have been secured anyway—the infantry passed it up and said that it was secure—so when I put the gun around there they thought I saw them in there, so they came out with their hands up. I just scooted back down into the tank and sent them to the rear. This German officer looked like he was six feet tall—not six feet, about seven or eight feet tall—he had a big shiny leather coat on and his Luger, and William in my company came out and took the Luger off of him. Then we went on through the Haardt Mountains and we got there on the other side of the Rhineland. We used enough ammunition, so when the 14th Army Division came through they didn't even have to fire a shot, they just came in the Rhine planes. We destroyed seven Rhineland cities.
You could tell the troops that you captured, each one of them. This was our patch, that's Armored. We captured 4000 Germans and they had these armored patches. They were from fourteen different divisions. They all had different patches on. So that's what we were doing, fighting these fourteen different units. And they surrendered down in the Rhineland. I think Colonel Bates said we used around 26,000 tons of ammunition during that time, just having a good time, you know. Through the Siegfried line and we captured—it was 4000 Germans that we captured—and twenty-six ammunition trucks and about thirty tanks. That would be one of the biggest battles that we had—the Battle of the Rhine. After we finished Rhine, the next plan was to meet the Russians in Austria.
Where was General Patton during these two battles?
Where was General Patton? He was in headquarters—he was out on the battlefield a lot. So what they told him, Eisenhower had a problem with Patton. He would oversee his terrain a lot. Like the first time we fought, he got in one of the tanks and borrowed the glasses from one of the guys. He'd like to have his hands on a lot. I'm glad you mentioned that. Down in the Battle of the Bulge when they saw Patton, the Germans had captured a bunch of the American troops and taken their uniforms, raided our warehouses, and dressed up as American soldiers, on these checkpoints—officers and also enlisted men—and when we would come over to a checkpoint, and if you didn't know where to go, they would send you into the ambush where the German troops would ambush you when you came in there, thinking you were going up to the front line where the American troops were. They said "Patton, oh Patton's a smart man, he's kind of cagey, too. He said, "What are we going to do?"
So they got troops dressed up as Americans on all of these checkpoints. Patton said, "Put one of them niggers up there, that's one thing they don't have. If he's not black, shoot the son of a bitch." So we had one guy—I told you about old Honky—he says, "I'm not going to no guard duty anymore, I may be misunderstood." He wasn't black enough, so he didn't go. So General Patton, he just nipped that in the bud right quick. So we played a couple of important roles that you don't hear about and that was one of the main ones you know because those Germans did that quite a bit, you know, turning signs around sending you the wrong way. If you didn't know how to read a map you were up the creek.
Did you ever have any direct contact with Patton?
Only when he came to talk to us, to the battalion. We had one guy say he did, but we always say he's lying, because when he said Patton did, during the time Patton came, our battalion commander helped him off the half-track back into his jeep, and McConnell he said that Patton looked in his tank and talked to him. "I looked into his blue eyes and he told me, 'I want you to go over there and kill all those Krauts and sons of a bitches' you know." I said "McConnell, you lying." We said "We all was there, remember?" and the guys we have, the reunion, they still get angry with him because he's lying.
