THE STORY OF THE 4TH ARMORED
The outstanding celerity of your movement and the unremitting, vicious and skillful manner in which you pushed the attack, terminating at the end of four days and nights of Incessant battle in the relief of Bastogne, constitute one of the finest chapters in the glorious history of the United States Army. You and the officers and men of your command are hereby commended for a superior performance.
-LT. GEN. GEORGE S. PATTON, Jr., COMMANDER, THIRD U. S. ARMY IN A LETTER TO MAJ. GEN. HUGH J. GAFFEY.
Four medium tanks roared up the tree-lined roadway. Machine guns sprayed the snow-crusted evergreens. Dark enemy forms ran and fell as red tracers played among them.
A concrete blockhouse ringed by pines loomed ahead of the onrushing tanks. First Lt. Charles Boggess, Jr., Greenville, Ill., commander of the lead tank, spotted the emplacement from the open hatch of his Sherman. Down in the turret, Cpl. Milton Dickerman, Newark,
N. J., traversed the sights of his 75 on the blockhouse, kicked the trigger. The tank bounced from the recoil as the shell crashed into the concrete.
The breech of the 75 slammed shut as Pvt. James G. Murphy, Bryan, Tex., the loader, slapped in another round. Pvt. Hubert Smith, Cartersville, Ga., driver of the tank Cobra King, tromped on the throttle, squinted through his dirt-splattered periscope as the medium rolled up to the smoking blockhouse. Bow Gunner Pvt. Harold Hafner, Arlington, Wash., kept the hot barrel of his machine gun trained on the woods.
In the open fields beyond the pines, Lt. Boggess saw red, yellow and blue supply parachutes sprinkle the snow like confetti. He halted his clattering mediums.
"Come here, come on out !" he shouted to khaki-clad figures in foxholes. "This is the 4th Armored !"
No answer, Helmeted heads peered suspiciously over carbine sights. The tanker bellowed again. A lone figure emerged.
"I'm Lt. Webster of the 326th Engineers, l01st Airborne," the paratrooper said. "Glad to see you."
At 1645, Dec. 26, 1944, the 4th Armd. Div. had reached another objective—Bastogne,
Twenty-five minutes later, Maj. Gen. Anthony G. McAuliffe (then Brig. Gen.), commanding the l01st Airborne Div., shook hands with Lt. Col. Creighton W. Abrams, Agawam, Mass., and Capt. William A. Dwight, Grand Rapids, Mich., to celebrate the relief of Bastogne.
Col. Abrams, 37th Tank Bn. commander, and Capt. Dwight of his staff were close behind Lt. Boggess in the tank rush that pierced the last German defenses south of the beleaguered town.
Tanks of the 37th, along with the 53rd Armd. Inf. Bn., were the point of the 4th's spearhead into Bastogne. Behind them rolled ambulances and supply trucks for l01st paratroopers and tankers of the 9th and 10th Armd. Divs. holding the town.
The relief of Bastogne added another battle to the brilliant campaign record of 4th Armd. In six months of fighting, the division had spearheaded virtually every Third Army offensive. Territory wrested from the Wehrmacht stretched from Normandy's hedgerows to the Reich border at the Sarre.
Fourth Armd. swept south in the Normandy breakthrough, cut off the Brittany peninsula, wheeled east across the heart of France over the Moselle into Lorraine, fought across the Sarre and struggled north in mud through the Maginot line to the German border.
It then made a 120-mile "fire call" run to smash back von Rundstedt's divisions in the Ardennes.
The last stretch to Bastogne was tough, covering the hardest 16 miles the division ever made. From Dec. 22, 1944, until Jan. 9, 1945, the 4th battled elements of nine German divisions and two brigades.
Four days after the division started for Bastogne, its tanks were in the city. Behind-fighting tankers lay the wreckage of the 5th German Para Div, Determined Nazi paratroopers who rode the breakthrough panzers into Luxembourg and Belgium were to hold the south flank of the German wedge below Bastogne.
They were in the path of the 4th Armd. Most of the Para division was demolished. More than 2000 were killed or wounded, another 2000 captured.