Maneuvers and mishaps

The aftermath of Operation Tiger, a practice run 6 weeks
before D-Day at Slapton Sands

Various pre-invasion training maneuvers included:¹¹

• Constructing platforms similar to the landing craft that would be used in the invasion, complete with comps, so drivers could practice how to back onto the ramps then drive out into the surf
• Learning how to waterproof the tracks with a rubber substance
• Discovering and disarming booby traps and land mines
• Crawling across obstacle courses as live rounds of ammunition were fired overhead
• Testing gas masks in rooms filled with tear gas
• Boarding an actual LST (landing ship tank), shipping out into the channel and landing in the surf to give drivers a lesson in surfing the half-tracks.
• Practice firing at sleeves towed by airplanes.

The unit was shaping up well, as this passage from The Maverick Outfit attests:

When they first went to an English range they were told by their hosts to be ready when the plane came by and not waste time because gasoline, or “petrol,” was scarce. The plane could not afford to make a run and not have all the guns firing. As it turned out it was the gunners who had to wait for the plane, for as it came by on its first run, there was so much fire power thrown up and the shooting was so accurate, that the sleeve was shot right off the towing line. Then the plane released a second sleeve and a little while later that was shot down. Then the men twiddled their thumbs as the plane landed to get more sleeves. As the men began to realize that their shooting was so good, they also began to realize they were going to be well up front in the big show. This feeling became stronger when, at one of the firing ranges, they were visited by a group of big Army brass. In the midst of them they recognized Lt. Gen. Omar N. Bradley. It was learned many years later that he had personally inspected every outfit that was going to land on D-Day.¹²

Jack remembers seeing Bradley. “He was about 20 yards away from where I was standing,” he says. “And the firing results were just as described. Later we learned they decided which of the two AAA-AW units would go in on Omaha Beach and Utah by the flip of a coin. The one that went in on Omaha was so torn up the Army didn’t even rebuild it.”

As the 474^th completed individual training exercises successfully, it joined other Army and Navy units in a pair of landings called Tiger Exercises. These joint exercises revealed flaws but were costly in lives. Stephen Ambrose in D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II describes what happened:

In the rehearsal for the VII Corps at Utah, Operation Tiger, held on the night of April 27-28 at Slapton Sands, there were some missed schedules resulting in traffic jams and some naval craft arriving late at embarkation points. Much worse, German E-boats slipped through the British destroyer screen and sank two LSTs and damaged six others. Over 749 men were killed and 300 wounded in the explosions or drowned afterward. Lessons were learned that saved lives on D-Day. There had been no rescue craft in the Tiger formation. Naval commanders realized that they would be needed. The men had not been taught how to use their life preservers. After Tiger, they were. It turned out that the British were operating on different radio wavelengths than the Americans, which contributed to the disaster. That was fixed. What could not be so easily fixed was the weather. Visibility had been poor on April 27-28 and the American fighter planes had not shown up.¹³

Although no one from the 474^th was directly involved in the mishap, they were nearby. Captain James Herlihy, commanding officer of C Battery shared this description:

We sailed from Torquay, a resort town on the southern coast of England, on LSTs. I remember being up on the deck the night before the landing, enjoying all the activity and wondering how all of this activity on the water could be kept hidden from all those curious people on the French coast, which really was not all that far off. It must have been about 1 a.m. when I heard a roar of small boat engines. I saw nothing, but then an LST behind us blew up with a roar, and in the glare I saw several 2½ ton trucks rolling end over end into the red haze over the flaming ship. Less than a minute later, the same thing happened to the LST in front of us. The rest of the night was spent waiting for the same things to happen to us, but we landed and took up positions defending the landing area, ammunition dumps and roads leading away from the beach. When the time came for us to be relieved for a new mission inland, our relief had not arrived. I went to the beach master and asked where was D of the 435^th and when would they relieve us and was told, “They won’t be in.” They were on one of the LSTs which had been blown up.¹⁴

“I remember the Tiger exercises, too,” Jack adds. “A German plane woke me up in the middle of the night when he flew real low trying to duck the searchlight.”

On to St. Lo with the VII Corps

Gen. Omar Bradley,
"The Soldier's General"

Gen. Omar Bradley’s plan was to have the VIII Corps move 20 miles down the coast to the cathedral town of Coutances while the VII Corps moved toward St. Lo. With this accomplished, he expected all of his troops to be out of the marshlands and on firm ground where they could launch armor toward Avranches, the entrance to Brittany.

Once again attached to the VII Corps, the 474^th provided its supply line with ack-ack defense and engaged the Luftwaffe in six raids involving nine enemy planes on July 18-19 near St. Jean de Daye. The 474^th received credit for one Cat I and four Cat IIs, with four of them being Me 109s and one a FW 190.

July 15-20 the battalion’s mission was to defend the VII Corps field artillery of the 18^th and 188^th Field Artillery Groups. As the batteries moved toward St. Jean de Daye, they could tell that the 1^st Army was preparing for a big battle, with ordnance depots, hospitals and all manner of supplies spread along either side of the highway. Jack’s battery, A, ended up at La Nicollerie with the 91st Field Artillery.

The buildup they’d seen along the way, they would soon learn, was for a battle referred to as Cobra. Cobra called for a massive air bombardment on a narrow stretch along the Periers-St. Lo highway. Situated near Le Desert, just 3,000 yards way, most of the battalion had front-row seats for the action:

St. Lo

About 9 a.m. some of the men were watching a squadron of P-47s strafe, when they heard a rumble behind them. Turning around they saw three triangular formations of Flying Fortresses, and behind them as far as the eye could see were such formations. They seemed to go all the way back to England, as indeed they did. As the planes droned overhead at 8,000 feet, the men could see the bomb doors open, and then some could see with the naked eye the bombs falling while others watched with field glasses. German shrapnel came up to meet the planes, and the men could hear it whistling down around them as the bombardment went on. It was too entrancing a sight to leave.²⁶ 

The statistics were overwhelming:²⁷

• 1,500 Forts and Liberators led the raid, each carrying 40 to 100 bombs; enough to create 60,000 craters.
• 396 medium and 350 fighter bombs followed with 500-pound general purpose bombs and 260-pound fragmentation bombs.
• Planes bombed the 3.5-mile by 1.5-mile area with 5,000 tons of high-explosive, jellied gasoline and white phosphorous bombs for more than two hours.
• 111 Americans were killed and 490 wounded by “friendly fire” when bombs fell short.

 “I remember that day the American planes dropped the bombs and killed so many American soldiers,” Jack adds. “You never heard such a loud roar when the bombs started down. We didn’t know what to do. We finally ran for a nearby stone farmhouse that was unoccupied, and still we didn’t feel safe.”

From July 28 to July 31, A and B Batteries gave anti-aircraft protection to the 2^nd Armored Command Post, division trains and armored field artillery battalion, and the 62^nd Field Artillery, a 105 outfit. “As the day broke on July 30, hundreds of destroyed vehicles and wagons, innumerable dead horses, and the miscellaneous wreckage of defeat lay scattered over the countryside as the battle of the Cotentin ended,” The Maverick Outfit concludes.²⁸

But it wasn’t over yet. A and B Batteries reverted to battalion control. Some of the men dug in the half-tracks while others prepared foxholes, when just at twilight a lone German plane flew low over the battleground.

As soon as darkness arrived, a second German plane appeared and dropped a series of beautiful flares, which were misleading by their beauty because they always preceded an air raid. Sure enough, within minutes the air was filled with the rumble of many German bombers, and seconds later the dreaded whistle of falling bombs filled the air to be followed by the crash and roar of the explosions. It was like a Fourth of July celebration at the fairgrounds at home, what with the pretty flares and the noise of the explosions, except that everyone had to fight a feeling of panic and desire to get up and run, just run and run and run. But there was no place to run to, except to the nearest foxhole or, if this was filled, to find a little fold in the field. Some panicked and jumped out of the foxhole and ran across the field to a bridge abutment which was made of concrete and afforded more protection. But one couldn’t run as far as he would have liked to, because it was raining death. Most were content to clutch the dirt and didn’t care if several others were on top of him. They didn’t seem heavy…For an hour a dozen bombers combed the area. Through a minor miracle the road cleared of traffic just before the bombing began, and although it was pockmarked by anti-personnel bombs, none of the convoy troops was struck, although A Battery suffered several casualties…And strangely enough, with all their efforts, the Germans missed the bridges.²⁹  

The Three Faces of Jack: Cocky, Determined, Pensive

Although The Maverick Outfit gives the date as July 31, Jack’s Army discharge papers say July 29, and the diary of Dr. Louis Small, who checked the wound the next day, says July 28, this seems to be the same scene Jack describes when he explains how he was wounded. “It was sometime during these events that we were bombed and strafed by enemy planes at night. I was standing behind the half-track while two other fellows were firing at the planes. The Germans had dropped flares, and at times you could catch a reflection on the plane’s body. The enemy dropped several series of anti-personnel bombs, and a small piece of metal made a razor-like cut on my left hand—very superficial. When the medic came around in the morning, he treated it and put me in for a Purple Heart.

“We drove through the area several days later at maybe five miles per hour,” Jack continues, “but the dust hadn’t settled. There were huge craters, wrecked enemy tanks and plenty of junk. A complete elite Panzer division was destroyed. Stories were told of enemy troops walking around without weapons or helmets, wondering where they were.”

From July 20 through Aug. 25, the 474^th’s gun crews engaged the enemy in 11 raids involving 46 planes. Claims were submitted for the destruction of 11 and the possible destruction of six. Officially, the outfit received credit for 5.5 Cat Is and six Cat IIs. While with the 2^nd Armored Division, A and B Batteries had two raids involving seven aircraft, destroying two for sure and two others possibly.³⁰ 

The Battle of the Bulge

The Ardennes-Alsace Campaign, which would later become known as the Battle of the Bulge, began Dec. 16 at 5 a.m. when German Gen. Von Rundstedt attacked five different places along the 1^st Army front in the Ardennes Forest in Belgium.

Members of Jack's gun crew brave the snow and cold in the Hurtgen Forest.

When Jack’s group pulled back from the Hurtgen Forest, just over the border in Germany, for reassignment to the Ardennes, they had to endure a long trip in very cold weather. “This  was one of the coldest winters on record in Europe, and I believe it,” Jack says. “I almost froze my legs and had to have help to get the circulation up to par.”

But it wasn’t without its humorous moments. “About halfway through the trip, we stopped at a refreshment center set up by the Army with bathrooms, hot coffee, snacks, etc.,” he says. “Other units had preceded us at this stop and had built a log fire inside a small stone house that had the windows knocked out. Everything seemed to be stone, mortar and plaster, and the ceiling was very high. I decided to use the bathroom, and when I opened the door I discovered the bathtub had been used as a commode. It was at least 80 percent filled with ‘honey.’ I have laughed many, many times about that sight.”

The Germans were making their final rally in the Ardennes, and some of the gun crews burned out gun barrel after gun barrel, firing every few minutes that day. Jack confirms this. “At one point we were told to keep our anti-aircraft guns depressed in order to help stop a possible enemy breakthrough.”

 December brought more enemy air actions for the battalion than any other month since the unit went into combat. There was a total of 19 raids, involving more than 100 enemy aircraft…As the German counter-offensive continued to penetrate deeper, the truth dawned on the men that they were in trouble and could be cut off.³⁸

Jack remembers this sense of panic well. “Our half-track got lost at one point, and it was the next afternoon before we found our outfit.”

Along about Dec. 18-19, the 474^th was reassigned to follow the 957^th Field Artillery, a howitzer unit. Capt. Herlihy relates: 

We started in two jeeps with them on a cold, snowy, sleety day, back down the hard-won roads towards Stolberg, below Aachen, Verviers, and Liege. We went back to the Meuse Valley, purported to be the objective of the German push, went through Huy, and headed south toward Marche and Bastogne. The general idea was that the VII Corps would pull back from the Rhineland, swing to the rear of the hard-pressed V Corps, and try to hold the right shoulder of the Bulge, as it was now called. Since the arrow-shaped penetration split the 1^st and 3^rd American Armies of the 21^st Army group under Gen. Bradley, it made good sense for the 1^st Army to pass under control of the British Army Group, which now ran from the Bulge up to the North Sea. It was misinterpreted at home, and also by some of the British troops who came down to join us. They advised us that they had come to save the Yanks. When the Battery caught up to us, we were advised by the field artillery to whom we were attached that C Battery had its own mission now, and was given a small part of the Ourthe River to hold, and that we were not to fall back from this position. Against an armored force, this would be a tall order, but all along the recon route, we had passed 90mm guns, put at isolated crossroads, with the same orders. The German push had to be slowed until the sides of the Bulge could be beefed up. It was cold, icy and miserable, but we already knew of many American units that had been cut to pieces while holding similar crossroads in the path of the attack. We passed many fields of American mines just strewn on the ground, with no time for concealment or burial in the frozen ground. Anything to slow down the push. In the rural areas we were defending, there were few houses, so a typical night was spent on the frozen ground, with the snow scraped off the ground, and pine branches under the sleeping bag, waiting for the sounds of tanks or vehicles. Is there anything colder than an outdoor latrine, behind a tree, in the snow?...Life in the gun sections was just plain miserable, for a good gun position had to have a field of fire, and that meant no wind protection. A fire was a problem. Seats on the guns were the coldest places around, but the guns had to be manned all day. At night, the best move was to pair guns to reduce the need for guards. The weather was miserable. Finally, on Christmas Day, the overcast broke and the Allies put up everything that could fly. What a wonderful sight to see contrails all over the sky. We yelled like kids as the rumble of bombings came from just over the horizon, in Germany, and on targets within the base of the Bulge.³⁹

In a conversation just a few months before Jack passed away, he and son Jack Jr. talked about these days. Jack Sr. was by then living in a nursing home, and Jack Jr. had come to visit, found him asleep and sat in a chair reading until his dad awakened. Jack Jr. was reading No Silent Night: The Christmas Battle for Bastogne by by Don Cygan and Leo Barron. 

"He asked me if the book was about the Bulge, and I said yes. He asked if there were any maps in the book. There were several, and I picked out one that showed the Allied and German lines around Christmas 1944. He studied the map a minute and then pointed to me where his outfit was near Bastogne.

"On the map, he pointed out the importance of Bastogne. It was the rail and communcations center for southern Belgium and Luxembourg. The German's goal was to cut off the Allies from the port of Antwerp, Belgium, now the Allied major supply center. To do that, they had to have control of Bastogne."

In spite of what The Maverick Outfit reported (referenced earlier), Jack told his son they had no winter gear and limited supplies and ammunition. They were also being shelled multiple times a day by German artillery, and their orders were to hold the line, meaning that if the Germans attacked and they ran out of ammunition, fighting would be hand-to-hand. 

"He smiled a bit then and said, 'If you could get over the fact you were in a war, the shelling was the greatest light show I ever saw,'" Jack Jr. related. "He said he and two buddies alternated spending an hour in a burnt-out halftrack to keep warm since it was the coldest winter in Europe in a century. On Christmas Eve night they could hear the Germans singing Silent Night, and the Germans could hear them. 

"On Christmas morning, he said the weather cleared and the Allies were able to air-drop supplies to their armies in the field and bomb the German positions. Also, General Patton's army broke through and attacked the German left flank, thus breaking the siege.

"His remembrance of the details was awesome," Jack Jr. continued. "I felt like I was there. The whole thing was a very special moment."

The Battle of the Bulge reached its climax a few days after Christmas 1944 when the American 2^nd Armored Division blocked the path of the German 2^nd Armored, and the two groups hammered each other for three days. The Americans left 81 panzers smoking in the hills and halted Von Runstedt’s advance. On the third day, the enemy began to fall back, and the 1^st Army launched its drive to wipe out the bulge in its lines that had been caused by the initial German successes.

"Dad's recall of this situation was clear and precise, too," Jack Jr. adds. "He even remembered they had to capture the town of Foy, which had been held by the Germans. They assaulted Foy across an open farm field while the Germans held the town and controlled the field of fire. Surviving that is a miracle in itself.

"Even though dad's health was failing at the time he shared all this with me, his mind was not. He particularly recalled not only the terrible cold and low supplies but also the great courage of his fellow soldiers during what seemed like a hopeless situation. In spite of it all, he said they believed 'everything would work out,' and it did. These guys and their comrades never gave up or gave in. When I think about this, I do know how special this discussion was and how special our dad and his comrades were."

The weather continued bitter cold in the first week of January 1945. Snow fell steadily, piling up on tree branches and covering over those who’d died earlier in the campaign. The half-tracks had to be moved every so often to keep them from freezing in the ground. The 474^th was moving with the 109^th AAA Group and giving protection to VII Corps artillery, so it made a wide circle to the east, then headed southeast toward Bastogne, which was already surrounded.

Jan. 25, 1945, is recognized as the end of this most bloody battle of WWII. This color footage does a good job of showing the conditions our soldiers had to endure.
.