Yanks ride ‘em like cowboys –
Gorrell: Camouflaged tanks come out of hiding to smash Nazis in complete surprise
Normandy drive so sudden that no shells fall among U.S. troops
By Henry T. Gorrell, United Press staff writer
With U.S. armored forces on the Normandy front, France –
First came giant American bulldozers, smashing holes in the hedgerows and battering the German roadblocks to rubble, and then came a long, waddling line of tanks on which infantrymen were crouched like cowboys.
That was the way we broke through today near Saint-Lô and sent the Germans scuttling out of their trenches along the hedges and retreating southward toward Marigny and Coutances. The blow fell on the enemy with complete surprise and terrific force.
Lt. Gen. Omar N. Bradley had accumulated this armored force under camouflage in the back areas all during the time that the infantry smashed against the fanatical Nazi SS troopers, fighting like madmen to pin the Americans down into warfare of World War I type.
Today he ordered the camouflage thrown off and the great armored army moved across the front, past the entrenched doughboys who rose up out of their slit trenches to cheer as the tanks and bulldozers churned past them.
Following close on the bulldozers, the tanks banged through the hedges and rolled across fields which our terrific bombardment had pitted like the craters of the moon.
This was a great, self-sufficient army entirely on treads and wheels.
Along with the giant Sherman tanks rolled self-propelled Long Tom gun mounted on tank chassis, halftrack ambulances equipped with mobile operating tables, vehicles loaded with mines, bazookas, anti-tank guns, grenades and other heavy weapons for the tank-riding infantry.
In the wake of the armor rolled, huge halftracks crammed with tough infantrymen ready to jump out inside the breach and exploit the breakthrough. Special vehicles near the head of the mighty procession carried engineers equipped with explosive devices to clear any obstacles the bulldozers couldn’t smash.
So secret had been the preparations that not a single enemy shell fell among the vehicles as they moved up to the front through village streets lined with enthusiastic Frenchmen who looked with awe and wonder at the armored army.
As I watched the armor pour across what had been the front, I could read in the faces of the doughboys who waved and cheered them on the hope that this audacious thrust would deal the enemy a heavy blow here at the base of the Cherbourg Peninsula.
As the procession slashed southward, it dropped off special armored traffic cops wearing red armbands to guide the following vehicles through the proper hedge holes. Up in the front where the fighting was toughest, the “tank-busting” troops steadied themselves on their bucking Shermans and poured streams of automatic fire into the hedges along which the Germans had dug their trenches.
Dust rises
Great columns of dust rose over the line of advance.
The commanding general kept in touch with the tanks by walkie-talkie radio. At one point I heard him ask his battalion commander somewhere up forward in a Sherman: “As you moving?”
“Yes,” the reply came back, “but slowly due to difficult terrain – no contact yet.”
The general replied, “Get in there and gain contact.”
“Roger, I’m pushing them,” was the response.
Through glasses we could see the tanks weaving their way across bomb-torn field which Bob Casey of the Chicago Daily News, an old artilleryman himself, remarked reminded him of the battlefields of World War I.
Soon German prisoners came stumbling back through the gap. Some of them, punch-drunk from shelling and bombing, surrendered as soon as they saw our tanks.
They said yesterday’s bombing by 3,000 light and heavy bombers on the American front had wiped out entire German units.
Infantry in high spirits
I have been with this armored force for the last two days awaiting today’s attack. The infantry was in high spirits as it was ordered to mount the leading tanks for the attack. The men ran forward clutching their automatic weapons, eager to get at the enemy which had forced them to live in foxholes for many long days and nights on the front.
One doughboy told me:
I don’t care what lies ahead. What counts is that we’re busting their line.
I saw a bulldozer go by bearing the warning “Achtung, Adolf!” Its pilot was the first to smash a hole through the hedges near Saint-Giles.
Force never halted
As the bulldozer shoved out, I heard the commander giving priority next to a company of engineers on halftracks whose mission was to weed out mines that might delay the forward tanks.
And so we rolled up to the front along roads as peaceful as a country lane back home until we hit the front. The great force never halted. It just bucked on through and vanished into the German rear to wreak its havoc.