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The Fighting 30th Division: They Called Them Roosevelt's SS
In World War I the 30th Infantry Division earned more Medals of Honor than any other American division. In World War II it spent more consecutive days in combat than almost any other outfit. Recruited mainly from the Carolinas and Georgia and Tennessee, they were one of the hardest-fighting units the U.S. ever fielded in Europe. What was it about these men that made them so indomitable? They were tough and resilient for a start, but this division had something else. They possessed intrinsic zeal to engage the enemy that often left their adversaries in awe. Their U.S. Army nickname was the “Old Hickory” Division. But after encountering them on the battlefield, the Germans themselves came to call them “Roosevelt’s SS.”
This book is a combat chronicle of this illustrious division that takes the reader right to the heart of the fighting through the eyes of those who were actually there. It goes from the hedgerows of Normandy to the 30th’s gallant stand against panzers at Mortain, to the brutal slugs around Aachen and the Westwall, and then to the Battle of the Bulge. Each chapter is meticulously researched and assembled with accurate timelines and after-action reports. The last remaining veterans of the 30th Division and attached units who saw the action firsthand relate their remarkable experiences here for the first, and probably the last time. This is precisely what military historians mean when they write about “fighting spirit.” There have been only a few books written about the 30th Division and none contained direct interviews with the veterans. This work follows their story from Normandy to the final victory in Germany, packed with previously untold accounts from the survivors. These are the men whose incredible stories epitomize what it was to be a GI in one of the toughest divisions in WWII.
This book is a combat chronicle of this illustrious division that takes the reader right to the heart of the fighting through the eyes of those who were actually there. It goes from the hedgerows of Normandy to the 30th’s gallant stand against panzers at Mortain, to the brutal slugs around Aachen and the Westwall, and then to the Battle of the Bulge. Each chapter is meticulously researched and assembled with accurate timelines and after-action reports. The last remaining veterans of the 30th Division and attached units who saw the action firsthand relate their remarkable experiences here for the first, and probably the last time. This is precisely what military historians mean when they write about “fighting spirit.” There have been only a few books written about the 30th Division and none contained direct interviews with the veterans. This work follows their story from Normandy to the final victory in Germany, packed with previously untold accounts from the survivors. These are the men whose incredible stories epitomize what it was to be a GI in one of the toughest divisions in WWII.
350 pages, ebook
First published July 19, 2015
71 people are currently reading
97 people want to read
About the author
Martin King
103 books16 followersEmmy Award winning British Military Historian/Author/ Lecturer who's had the honor of reintroducing many US, British and German veterans to the WWII battlefields where they fought. He lives in Belgium near Antwerp where he spends his most of his time visiting European battlefields.
His voluntary work tracing individual histories has been a labor of love for almost 30 years. He speaks, and has a working knowledge of German Italian Dutch and French. Frequently in demand as a public speaker he has lectured at many British and US colleges, universities and military bases throughout the world. The History Channel hired Martin as a Historical Consultant on their series "Cities of the Underworld". In 2007 he began a new assignment working as a Historical consultant/writer on the hit series 'Greatest Tank Battles', currently the most watched military documentary in the US. Shortly thereafter he accepted an invitation to work as a Presenter/Historical Consultant on the series 'Narrow Escapes' with Bafta Award winning documentary makers WMR.
He is a frequent visitor to the prestigious West Point Military Academy. Widely regarded as a leading authority on European Military History, General Graham Hollands referred to him as the "Greatest living expert on the Battle of the Bulge". Steven Ambrose called him "Our expert in the Ardennes". Fellow writer and notable historian Professor Carlton Joyce said "He really is the best on the Ardennes". His campaigning work for World War Two veterans recently came to attention of some leading military personnel at the Pentagon who cordially invited him to present his latest work there. Awarded 'SERVICES TO EDUCATION' certificates by the USAF and NATO. In 2015 his documentary feature 'Searching for Augusta' received no less than 7 EMMY AWARDS for 'BEST HISTORICAL DOCUMENTARY'. In 2017 his book 'THe Fighting 30th Division - They called them Roosevelt's SS' was nominated in the USA for the 'Prestigious writer Award'. He's also an Honorary Citizen and chosen Cultural Ambassador
His voluntary work tracing individual histories has been a labor of love for almost 30 years. He speaks, and has a working knowledge of German Italian Dutch and French. Frequently in demand as a public speaker he has lectured at many British and US colleges, universities and military bases throughout the world. The History Channel hired Martin as a Historical Consultant on their series "Cities of the Underworld". In 2007 he began a new assignment working as a Historical consultant/writer on the hit series 'Greatest Tank Battles', currently the most watched military documentary in the US. Shortly thereafter he accepted an invitation to work as a Presenter/Historical Consultant on the series 'Narrow Escapes' with Bafta Award winning documentary makers WMR.
He is a frequent visitor to the prestigious West Point Military Academy. Widely regarded as a leading authority on European Military History, General Graham Hollands referred to him as the "Greatest living expert on the Battle of the Bulge". Steven Ambrose called him "Our expert in the Ardennes". Fellow writer and notable historian Professor Carlton Joyce said "He really is the best on the Ardennes". His campaigning work for World War Two veterans recently came to attention of some leading military personnel at the Pentagon who cordially invited him to present his latest work there. Awarded 'SERVICES TO EDUCATION' certificates by the USAF and NATO. In 2015 his documentary feature 'Searching for Augusta' received no less than 7 EMMY AWARDS for 'BEST HISTORICAL DOCUMENTARY'. In 2017 his book 'THe Fighting 30th Division - They called them Roosevelt's SS' was nominated in the USA for the 'Prestigious writer Award'. He's also an Honorary Citizen and chosen Cultural Ambassador
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 4, 2020
In more ways than the obvious one, this work can be - it is in every way but official, in that authors differ - a sequel to The Longest Day, the famous one about D-Day, which was made into a film as well.
The first two pages of chapter six describe next moves, after capture of Aachen, planned by Generals Eisenhower, Bradley, Montgomery - with some objections by General Patton noted - and the differences they had; to anyone whos watched A Bridge Too Far, mentioned in this book before in previous chapters, what's coming is anticipated, and so such a reader expects more details of Operation Market Garden at that point. This is even more true about the Battle of the Bulge, which the 30th Division was involved in, so all in all there is much to look forward to as one begins, and more so later.
But - having built up the anticipation - Battle of the Bulge precedes Operation Market Garden. One point a reader here might begin to notice unless a professional historian, is that most accounts of the Battle of the Bulge are usually centred around Bastogne, which is well deserved, of course, but here one reads about other just as well deserved battles and encounters, and begins to know of other important points that the Battle of the Bulge was fought around - Stavelot, for example - and most of all, Baugnez and Malmédy. This part is hardly ever spoken about, perhaps as a matter of policy, because immediately after the war and even as Nuremberg trials were proceeding, cold war was on, and any public knowledge about the Malmédy massacre by the S.S., of eighty U.S. soldiers who had fought and surrendered, would turn the U.S. people into far more fiercely anti German than the horror evoked by the exposing of extermination camps.
...........
Foreword introduces the topic, and the Introduction takes it further:-
"The 30th Infantry Division, named “Old Hickory” and code-named “Custom,” was called by historian S. L. A. Marshall the “most outstanding infantry division in the European Theater of Operations (ETO)” during the entire war.
"The officers and men of Old Hickory were the product of a civilian army, well trained by competent officers into a cohesive fighting machine that outsmarted the best of the German Army’s elite divisions. Although a National Guard unit, it never received the credit to which it was due all through the war; it was always relegated to the bottom of the publicity lists of accomplishments that gave more credit than was due to the Regular Army divisions in the ETO.
"A majority of the officers and men of the 30th were from farms and small towns throughout the country, although at the beginning, they were predominantly from North and South Carolina and Tennessee. Consequently they brought with them considerable knowledge of tractors, trucks, and other farm-related vehicles, which gave them enhanced knowledge of military vehicles. Most had a basic knowledge of guns from their experiences in hunting deer, squirrels, and rabbits, making them excellent marksmen.
"It is only fitting and proper that these “Old Hickorymen” be given the honor of being the best soldiers to fight against the best that the enemy— the Germans—had to offer."
"The combat record of the 30th Infantry Division in the ETO led it to being named the “outstanding infantry division of the ETO” by Colonel S. L. A. Marshall, the official US Army historian for the theater. The citizen soldiers of the 30th Division saved the Normandy breakout by standing firm at Mortain; later, they again stopped Hitler’s vaunted SS panzer units in the Battle of the Bulge, halting the German advance and thus turning the tide of that pivotal engagement. They were so respected by their German opponents that Axis Sally referred to them as “Roosevelt’s SS.”"
"Soldiers who initially joined the 30th Infantry Division when it was activated in August 1917 at Camp Sevier, South Carolina, came from the National Guard units of North and South Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia, the same area where Andrew Jackson grew up."
"Early in July 1918 they finally arrived at Le Havre, France, and immediately set about training with the British Army in Flanders and Picardy. On the 9th of July they were assigned to hold the line east of Poperinghe in the Dickebusch and Scherpenburg sector to become acquainted with the hell of Flanders fields. Later on they were called on to participate in the second Somme offensive that culminated in the breaking of the almost impenetrable Hindenburg Line. When the armistice arrived at the 11th hour of the 11th day in November 1918, the 30th Division had chalked up approximately half of the medals awarded by the British to US forces in WWI. There were also twelve Medals of Honor."
"The 30th Division arrived in Normandy on 10 June, four days after D-Day. Their initial objective was to replace the battered 29th Division that had been decimated at Omaha Beach. They were put into action almost immediately and were soon being unanimously referred to as the “Work Horse of the Western Front” due to their tenacity in battle against seasoned SS units. They quickly gained the attention of the German commanders who praised their efforts and said that they were operating with the same discipline, intensity, and rigor as the real SS, hence Roosevelt’s SS.
"By the end of WWII, the 30th Infantry Division had accumulated a remarkable list of battle honors. It spent 282 days in combat earning five battle stars in the Normandy, Northern France, Rhine land, Ardennes-Alsace, and Central Europe campaigns. Ten Presidential Unit Citations were awarded to subordinate units within the division (including the 743rd Tank Battalion and 823rd Tank Destroyer Battalion, both attached to the 30th). Six Old Hickorymen earned Medals of Honor—three posthumously. More than eighty men earned Distinguished Service Crosses, the nation’s second highest award for valor. Approximately 20,000 Purple Hearts were awarded to soldiers wounded or killed in action in the ETO. In addition, the division took approximately 53,000 prisoners over the course of its campaigns."
"After the war, Colonel S. L. A. Marshall, the official US Army historian for the European Theater of Operations (ETO), reviewed combat records for all US Army infantry divisions serving in the theater and cited the 30th Division as, “. . . the outstanding infantry division in the ETO.” This was remarkable because the 30th was a National Guard outfit, not a Regular Army unit. Initially, the Division was a formation comprised of ordinary men. Once in combat, however, the citizen soldiers of the Fighting 30th morphed into warriors. They accomplished truly extraordinary feats, never failing in their missions, and they did so with great gallantry and a degree of efficiency that was unmatched."
........
"HAROLD WILLIAMS, 105TH ENGINEER COMBAT BATTALION
"I was in the motor pool to start with. They put me in Water Purification at the beginning measuring streams, water supply, back flushing, and taking samples. There were three of these units in the 30th Division. One day, they wanted a volunteer to drive an amphibian. We were in Florida and we would practice bridge building. That kind of fascinated me. From then on I was assigned to a 2-1/2-ton truck. We traveled by train from Florida to Tennessee to Camp Forest. It was a tent city. Tullahoma was the name of the town. This was just prior to maneuvers. We had all kinds of training there. Eventually, we held maneuvers that went on for weeks. We were all over Tennessee and maybe even into parts of Kentucky. After finishing maneuvers the Division came out with high standards, really high. Then we were ordered to Indiana, to Camp Atterbury. It was fall and it was getting cold. We were placed in a two-story barracks. Every day we would get up at daybreak, have roll call, and then we would hike with combat bags and rifles. We would hike approximately four to five miles to a firing range. This went on all the time, rain or shine. Before we left we would take some bread, a piece of cheese, and an apple, and away we would go. We would get back from our hike in the evening before dark. This went on into January. We had to report to a set of buildings, where there were officers from Washington who interviewed us on our training and other things. Our ratings were pretty high so it was determined that we were ready to ship out. It leaked out that we were headed to the Pacific. I think it was a deliberate leak. We boarded the train and we started to travel east, so we knew damn well that we were not headed west. We ended up at Camp Myles Standish on the Cape near Boston. It was just a staging area. Some of us got new equipment and new rifles. I can remember going on KP duty and it went around the clock; that’s how enormous the camp was.
"We were in a state of high secrecy. Trucks took us to south Boston and we boarded ships that were waiting for us. I was on the USS John Ericsson and there were three ships, I believe, that transported the Division. From there we landed in Liverpool, another unit unloaded in Blackpool, and the third one, I believe, on the Clyde in Scotland. From there we moved by train east to London. The Division was broken up when we got there, meaning some were bivouacked in separate towns. We didn’t operate as a whole. We went into London and there was an air raid going on. The city was being bombed and we spent the night there in the yards. We waited until it was over, then we proceeded to the town of Winchester. We hadn’t had a shower in two weeks, since we had gotten on the boat. We were packed in like sardines and we needed showers pretty badly. We were quartered in Quonset huts. We got our showers in the morning and went down to the chow line. A whistle blew shortly after and they called all drivers to fall out. The drivers fell out in an area in the front near the curb and the motor pool officer came by with a jeep. As our name was called from the roster each one of us got into the jeep and drove it a foot or two. We backed it up and then got out. This qualified us for driving in the U.K.!"
"KING KENNY, RECONNAISSANCE PLATOON, 823RD TANK DESTROYER BATTALION
"We landed in Liverpool north of London and got on trains headed to a town named Hereford. We unloaded and formed one whole battalion at the station. I remember some little kids coming by in their beanies, short pants, and jackets and one kid said, “Hey look they’re Scots!” and another kid said, “They’re Aussies!” and finally one kid said, “They’re Yanks!” We stayed in civilian homes."
"WILLIAM GAST, COMPANY A, 743RD TANK BATTALION
"A tank weighs approximately 35 tons. That’s 70,000 lbs! Our first tanks had a cast hull with a 75mm main gun, a .30-caliber machine gun mounted beside it on the right, and another .30-caliber machine gun, known as a bow gun, which the assistant driver operated. There was also a .50-caliber machine gun mounted on top of the turret with a 360-degree traverse that the tank commander could use as direct fire or anti-aircraft. A little later we received a tank with a welded hull. It had more armor plate and a lower silhouette of the turret.
"The channel was very rough. It was cold, misty, and wet. We were getting nervous. Because the hours were dragging on, we threw a tarp under the tank to try to get some sleep. Too much tension!
"Through the night we became friendly with the LCT captain. We got to talking about getting the LCT in close enough to the beach so when the ramp was lowered, and we drove our tanks off, they would not be submerged. He promised he would get us close enough.
"Now it’s just around 0600 hours in the morning and as we looked out over the side of our LCT there were boats and crafts as far as you could see. “Mount up and get your engines started.” This is it! The Captain of the LCT did as he promised. The front ramp was lowered and the first tank drove off. Then I drove down the ramp and I could feel my tracks turning . . . then they took hold of the bottom of the channel and I was able to move forward. As I found out later, the water had all kinds of metal obstacles to prevent us from coming onto the beach. The beach was loaded with everything you could think of to keep us from advancing."
"By dusk we finally made it up to the wall. That’s as far as we could go. Up against the wall we were protected from direct fire, and started to get a little organ -ized. We learned that out of 15 tanks of A Company, five of us made it. I have some -thing that bothers me to this day. The beach was covered with dead and wounded soldiers. There is no way of telling if I ran over any of them with my tank.
"Pictures . . . video games . . . movies . . . words . . . they simply do not convey the feeling of fear . . . the shock . . . the stench . . . the noise, the horror and the tragedy . . . the injured . . . the suffering . . . the dying . . . the dead!
"Sometime during the night the engineers were able to blast enough of the wall away, enabling us to exit the beach the next morning and get on top of the bluff."
Even as the tanks were dealing with coming ashore,
"Within moments German coastal guns had elevated their firing angle and started to respond in earnest, the first salvos ripping into the surf at short range just off the beach. Other German gunners attempted to stem the first advance wave of combat engineers who were vainly attempting to tackle murderous underwater obstacles such as barbed wire; and anti-tank and antipersonnel mines. Sherman tanks, half-tracks, and trucks of the 743rd were the first armor to attempt that hellish strip of sand that would become known ad infinitum as Omaha Beach. This was just the beginning of a long and terrible fight for men of the 30th Division that would endure almost without pause until the end of the war in May 1945.
"The first actual 30th Division unit to arrive at Omaha Beach on D-Day +4 was the 230th Field Artillery Battalion. They had been sent to replace an artillery battalion of the 29th Division that had lost most of its pieces in the choppy English Channel off the coast of Grandcamp-les-Bains. Other units from the 30th Division arrived in France during the night of 13/14 June. The first casualties in the 30th Division were incurred when a Landing Ship Tank (LST) carrying members of the 113th Field Artillery Battalion struck a German mine just off the Normandy coast. The final toll for that unfortunate incident was two killed, eight wounded, and 20 missing. It wouldn’t be long, however, before the entire division was thrown into the fray."
"ED MIDDLETON, 730TH ORDNANCE COMPANY"
"We were also supposed to have extra weapons and supplies for the troops. We ran out very quickly, so we established battlefield recovery and I had all the frontline troops collect army ordnance—ours and the enemy’s—and they let us know where it was. We picked it up and took care of it. By the time we got to the Ardennes and the Battle of the Bulge ...
The first two pages of chapter six describe next moves, after capture of Aachen, planned by Generals Eisenhower, Bradley, Montgomery - with some objections by General Patton noted - and the differences they had; to anyone whos watched A Bridge Too Far, mentioned in this book before in previous chapters, what's coming is anticipated, and so such a reader expects more details of Operation Market Garden at that point. This is even more true about the Battle of the Bulge, which the 30th Division was involved in, so all in all there is much to look forward to as one begins, and more so later.
But - having built up the anticipation - Battle of the Bulge precedes Operation Market Garden. One point a reader here might begin to notice unless a professional historian, is that most accounts of the Battle of the Bulge are usually centred around Bastogne, which is well deserved, of course, but here one reads about other just as well deserved battles and encounters, and begins to know of other important points that the Battle of the Bulge was fought around - Stavelot, for example - and most of all, Baugnez and Malmédy. This part is hardly ever spoken about, perhaps as a matter of policy, because immediately after the war and even as Nuremberg trials were proceeding, cold war was on, and any public knowledge about the Malmédy massacre by the S.S., of eighty U.S. soldiers who had fought and surrendered, would turn the U.S. people into far more fiercely anti German than the horror evoked by the exposing of extermination camps.
...........
Foreword introduces the topic, and the Introduction takes it further:-
"The 30th Infantry Division, named “Old Hickory” and code-named “Custom,” was called by historian S. L. A. Marshall the “most outstanding infantry division in the European Theater of Operations (ETO)” during the entire war.
"The officers and men of Old Hickory were the product of a civilian army, well trained by competent officers into a cohesive fighting machine that outsmarted the best of the German Army’s elite divisions. Although a National Guard unit, it never received the credit to which it was due all through the war; it was always relegated to the bottom of the publicity lists of accomplishments that gave more credit than was due to the Regular Army divisions in the ETO.
"A majority of the officers and men of the 30th were from farms and small towns throughout the country, although at the beginning, they were predominantly from North and South Carolina and Tennessee. Consequently they brought with them considerable knowledge of tractors, trucks, and other farm-related vehicles, which gave them enhanced knowledge of military vehicles. Most had a basic knowledge of guns from their experiences in hunting deer, squirrels, and rabbits, making them excellent marksmen.
"It is only fitting and proper that these “Old Hickorymen” be given the honor of being the best soldiers to fight against the best that the enemy— the Germans—had to offer."
"The combat record of the 30th Infantry Division in the ETO led it to being named the “outstanding infantry division of the ETO” by Colonel S. L. A. Marshall, the official US Army historian for the theater. The citizen soldiers of the 30th Division saved the Normandy breakout by standing firm at Mortain; later, they again stopped Hitler’s vaunted SS panzer units in the Battle of the Bulge, halting the German advance and thus turning the tide of that pivotal engagement. They were so respected by their German opponents that Axis Sally referred to them as “Roosevelt’s SS.”"
"Soldiers who initially joined the 30th Infantry Division when it was activated in August 1917 at Camp Sevier, South Carolina, came from the National Guard units of North and South Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia, the same area where Andrew Jackson grew up."
"Early in July 1918 they finally arrived at Le Havre, France, and immediately set about training with the British Army in Flanders and Picardy. On the 9th of July they were assigned to hold the line east of Poperinghe in the Dickebusch and Scherpenburg sector to become acquainted with the hell of Flanders fields. Later on they were called on to participate in the second Somme offensive that culminated in the breaking of the almost impenetrable Hindenburg Line. When the armistice arrived at the 11th hour of the 11th day in November 1918, the 30th Division had chalked up approximately half of the medals awarded by the British to US forces in WWI. There were also twelve Medals of Honor."
"The 30th Division arrived in Normandy on 10 June, four days after D-Day. Their initial objective was to replace the battered 29th Division that had been decimated at Omaha Beach. They were put into action almost immediately and were soon being unanimously referred to as the “Work Horse of the Western Front” due to their tenacity in battle against seasoned SS units. They quickly gained the attention of the German commanders who praised their efforts and said that they were operating with the same discipline, intensity, and rigor as the real SS, hence Roosevelt’s SS.
"By the end of WWII, the 30th Infantry Division had accumulated a remarkable list of battle honors. It spent 282 days in combat earning five battle stars in the Normandy, Northern France, Rhine land, Ardennes-Alsace, and Central Europe campaigns. Ten Presidential Unit Citations were awarded to subordinate units within the division (including the 743rd Tank Battalion and 823rd Tank Destroyer Battalion, both attached to the 30th). Six Old Hickorymen earned Medals of Honor—three posthumously. More than eighty men earned Distinguished Service Crosses, the nation’s second highest award for valor. Approximately 20,000 Purple Hearts were awarded to soldiers wounded or killed in action in the ETO. In addition, the division took approximately 53,000 prisoners over the course of its campaigns."
"After the war, Colonel S. L. A. Marshall, the official US Army historian for the European Theater of Operations (ETO), reviewed combat records for all US Army infantry divisions serving in the theater and cited the 30th Division as, “. . . the outstanding infantry division in the ETO.” This was remarkable because the 30th was a National Guard outfit, not a Regular Army unit. Initially, the Division was a formation comprised of ordinary men. Once in combat, however, the citizen soldiers of the Fighting 30th morphed into warriors. They accomplished truly extraordinary feats, never failing in their missions, and they did so with great gallantry and a degree of efficiency that was unmatched."
........
"HAROLD WILLIAMS, 105TH ENGINEER COMBAT BATTALION
"I was in the motor pool to start with. They put me in Water Purification at the beginning measuring streams, water supply, back flushing, and taking samples. There were three of these units in the 30th Division. One day, they wanted a volunteer to drive an amphibian. We were in Florida and we would practice bridge building. That kind of fascinated me. From then on I was assigned to a 2-1/2-ton truck. We traveled by train from Florida to Tennessee to Camp Forest. It was a tent city. Tullahoma was the name of the town. This was just prior to maneuvers. We had all kinds of training there. Eventually, we held maneuvers that went on for weeks. We were all over Tennessee and maybe even into parts of Kentucky. After finishing maneuvers the Division came out with high standards, really high. Then we were ordered to Indiana, to Camp Atterbury. It was fall and it was getting cold. We were placed in a two-story barracks. Every day we would get up at daybreak, have roll call, and then we would hike with combat bags and rifles. We would hike approximately four to five miles to a firing range. This went on all the time, rain or shine. Before we left we would take some bread, a piece of cheese, and an apple, and away we would go. We would get back from our hike in the evening before dark. This went on into January. We had to report to a set of buildings, where there were officers from Washington who interviewed us on our training and other things. Our ratings were pretty high so it was determined that we were ready to ship out. It leaked out that we were headed to the Pacific. I think it was a deliberate leak. We boarded the train and we started to travel east, so we knew damn well that we were not headed west. We ended up at Camp Myles Standish on the Cape near Boston. It was just a staging area. Some of us got new equipment and new rifles. I can remember going on KP duty and it went around the clock; that’s how enormous the camp was.
"We were in a state of high secrecy. Trucks took us to south Boston and we boarded ships that were waiting for us. I was on the USS John Ericsson and there were three ships, I believe, that transported the Division. From there we landed in Liverpool, another unit unloaded in Blackpool, and the third one, I believe, on the Clyde in Scotland. From there we moved by train east to London. The Division was broken up when we got there, meaning some were bivouacked in separate towns. We didn’t operate as a whole. We went into London and there was an air raid going on. The city was being bombed and we spent the night there in the yards. We waited until it was over, then we proceeded to the town of Winchester. We hadn’t had a shower in two weeks, since we had gotten on the boat. We were packed in like sardines and we needed showers pretty badly. We were quartered in Quonset huts. We got our showers in the morning and went down to the chow line. A whistle blew shortly after and they called all drivers to fall out. The drivers fell out in an area in the front near the curb and the motor pool officer came by with a jeep. As our name was called from the roster each one of us got into the jeep and drove it a foot or two. We backed it up and then got out. This qualified us for driving in the U.K.!"
"KING KENNY, RECONNAISSANCE PLATOON, 823RD TANK DESTROYER BATTALION
"We landed in Liverpool north of London and got on trains headed to a town named Hereford. We unloaded and formed one whole battalion at the station. I remember some little kids coming by in their beanies, short pants, and jackets and one kid said, “Hey look they’re Scots!” and another kid said, “They’re Aussies!” and finally one kid said, “They’re Yanks!” We stayed in civilian homes."
"WILLIAM GAST, COMPANY A, 743RD TANK BATTALION
"A tank weighs approximately 35 tons. That’s 70,000 lbs! Our first tanks had a cast hull with a 75mm main gun, a .30-caliber machine gun mounted beside it on the right, and another .30-caliber machine gun, known as a bow gun, which the assistant driver operated. There was also a .50-caliber machine gun mounted on top of the turret with a 360-degree traverse that the tank commander could use as direct fire or anti-aircraft. A little later we received a tank with a welded hull. It had more armor plate and a lower silhouette of the turret.
"The channel was very rough. It was cold, misty, and wet. We were getting nervous. Because the hours were dragging on, we threw a tarp under the tank to try to get some sleep. Too much tension!
"Through the night we became friendly with the LCT captain. We got to talking about getting the LCT in close enough to the beach so when the ramp was lowered, and we drove our tanks off, they would not be submerged. He promised he would get us close enough.
"Now it’s just around 0600 hours in the morning and as we looked out over the side of our LCT there were boats and crafts as far as you could see. “Mount up and get your engines started.” This is it! The Captain of the LCT did as he promised. The front ramp was lowered and the first tank drove off. Then I drove down the ramp and I could feel my tracks turning . . . then they took hold of the bottom of the channel and I was able to move forward. As I found out later, the water had all kinds of metal obstacles to prevent us from coming onto the beach. The beach was loaded with everything you could think of to keep us from advancing."
"By dusk we finally made it up to the wall. That’s as far as we could go. Up against the wall we were protected from direct fire, and started to get a little organ -ized. We learned that out of 15 tanks of A Company, five of us made it. I have some -thing that bothers me to this day. The beach was covered with dead and wounded soldiers. There is no way of telling if I ran over any of them with my tank.
"Pictures . . . video games . . . movies . . . words . . . they simply do not convey the feeling of fear . . . the shock . . . the stench . . . the noise, the horror and the tragedy . . . the injured . . . the suffering . . . the dying . . . the dead!
"Sometime during the night the engineers were able to blast enough of the wall away, enabling us to exit the beach the next morning and get on top of the bluff."
Even as the tanks were dealing with coming ashore,
"Within moments German coastal guns had elevated their firing angle and started to respond in earnest, the first salvos ripping into the surf at short range just off the beach. Other German gunners attempted to stem the first advance wave of combat engineers who were vainly attempting to tackle murderous underwater obstacles such as barbed wire; and anti-tank and antipersonnel mines. Sherman tanks, half-tracks, and trucks of the 743rd were the first armor to attempt that hellish strip of sand that would become known ad infinitum as Omaha Beach. This was just the beginning of a long and terrible fight for men of the 30th Division that would endure almost without pause until the end of the war in May 1945.
"The first actual 30th Division unit to arrive at Omaha Beach on D-Day +4 was the 230th Field Artillery Battalion. They had been sent to replace an artillery battalion of the 29th Division that had lost most of its pieces in the choppy English Channel off the coast of Grandcamp-les-Bains. Other units from the 30th Division arrived in France during the night of 13/14 June. The first casualties in the 30th Division were incurred when a Landing Ship Tank (LST) carrying members of the 113th Field Artillery Battalion struck a German mine just off the Normandy coast. The final toll for that unfortunate incident was two killed, eight wounded, and 20 missing. It wouldn’t be long, however, before the entire division was thrown into the fray."
"ED MIDDLETON, 730TH ORDNANCE COMPANY"
"We were also supposed to have extra weapons and supplies for the troops. We ran out very quickly, so we established battlefield recovery and I had all the frontline troops collect army ordnance—ours and the enemy’s—and they let us know where it was. We picked it up and took care of it. By the time we got to the Ardennes and the Battle of the Bulge ...
January 4, 2020
In more ways than the obvious one, this work can be - it is in every way but official, in that authors differ - a sequel to The Longest Day, the famous one about D-Day, which was made into a film as well.
The first two pages of chapter six describe next moves, after capture of Aachen, planned by Generals Eisenhower, Bradley, Montgomery - with some objections by General Patton noted - and the differences they had; to anyone whos watched A Bridge Too Far, mentioned in this book before in previous chapters, what's coming is anticipated, and so such a reader expects more details of Operation Market Garden at that point. This is even more true about the Battle of the Bulge, which the 30th Division was involved in, so all in all there is much to look forward to as one begins, and more so later.
But - having built up the anticipation - Battle of the Bulge precedes Operation Market Garden. One point a reader here might begin to notice unless a professional historian, is that most accounts of the Battle of the Bulge are usually centred around Bastogne, which is well deserved, of course, but here one reads about other just as well deserved battles and encounters, and begins to know of other important points that the Battle of the Bulge was fought around - Stavelot, for example - and most of all, Baugnez and Malmédy. This part is hardly ever spoken about, perhaps as a matter of policy, because immediately after the war and even as Nuremberg trials were proceeding, cold war was on, and any public knowledge about the Malmédy massacre by the S.S., of eighty U.S. soldiers who had fought and surrendered, would turn the U.S. people into far more fiercely anti German than the horror evoked by the exposing of extermination camps.
............
Foreword introduces the topic, and the Introduction takes it further.
"The 30th Infantry Division, named “Old Hickory” and code-named “Custom,” was called by historian S. L. A. Marshall the “most outstanding infantry division in the European Theater of Operations (ETO)” during the entire war.
"The officers and men of Old Hickory were the product of a civilian army, well trained by competent officers into a cohesive fighting machine that outsmarted the best of the German Army’s elite divisions. Although a National Guard unit, it never received the credit to which it was due all through the war; it was always relegated to the bottom of the publicity lists of accomplishments that gave more credit than was due to the Regular Army divisions in the ETO.
"A majority of the officers and men of the 30th were from farms and small towns throughout the country, although at the beginning, they were predominantly from North and South Carolina and Tennessee. Consequently they brought with them considerable knowledge of tractors, trucks, and other farm-related vehicles, which gave them enhanced knowledge of military vehicles. Most had a basic knowledge of guns from their experiences in hunting deer, squirrels, and rabbits, making them excellent marksmen.
"It is only fitting and proper that these “Old Hickorymen” be given the honor of being the best soldiers to fight against the best that the enemy— the Germans—had to offer."
"The combat record of the 30th Infantry Division in the ETO led it to being named the “outstanding infantry division of the ETO” by Colonel S. L. A. Marshall, the official US Army historian for the theater. The citizen soldiers of the 30th Division saved the Normandy breakout by standing firm at Mortain; later, they again stopped Hitler’s vaunted SS panzer units in the Battle of the Bulge, halting the German advance and thus turning the tide of that pivotal engagement. They were so respected by their German opponents that Axis Sally referred to them as “Roosevelt’s SS.”"
"Soldiers who initially joined the 30th Infantry Division when it was activated in August 1917 at Camp Sevier, South Carolina, came from the National Guard units of North and South Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia, the same area where Andrew Jackson grew up."
"Early in July 1918 they finally arrived at Le Havre, France, and immediately set about training with the British Army in Flanders and Picardy. On the 9th of July they were assigned to hold the line east of Poperinghe in the Dickebusch and Scherpenburg sector to become acquainted with the hell of Flanders fields. Later on they were called on to participate in the second Somme offensive that culminated in the breaking of the almost impenetrable Hindenburg Line. When the armistice arrived at the 11th hour of the 11th day in November 1918, the 30th Division had chalked up approximately half of the medals awarded by the British to US forces in WWI. There were also twelve Medals of Honor."
"The 30th Division arrived in Normandy on 10 June, four days after D-Day. Their initial objective was to replace the battered 29th Division that had been decimated at Omaha Beach. They were put into action almost immediately and were soon being unanimously referred to as the “Work Horse of the Western Front” due to their tenacity in battle against seasoned SS units. They quickly gained the attention of the German commanders who praised their efforts and said that they were operating with the same discipline, intensity, and rigor as the real SS, hence Roosevelt’s SS.
"By the end of WWII, the 30th Infantry Division had accumulated a remarkable list of battle honors. It spent 282 days in combat earning five battle stars in the Normandy, Northern France, Rhine land, Ardennes-Alsace, and Central Europe campaigns. Ten Presidential Unit Citations were awarded to subordinate units within the division (including the 743rd Tank Battalion and 823rd Tank Destroyer Battalion, both attached to the 30th). Six Old Hickorymen earned Medals of Honor—three posthumously. More than eighty men earned Distinguished Service Crosses, the nation’s second highest award for valor. Approximately 20,000 Purple Hearts were awarded to soldiers wounded or killed in action in the ETO. In addition, the division took approximately 53,000 prisoners over the course of its campaigns."
"After the war, Colonel S. L. A. Marshall, the official US Army historian for the European Theater of Operations (ETO), reviewed combat records for all US Army infantry divisions serving in the theater and cited the 30th Division as, “. . . the outstanding infantry division in the ETO.” This was remarkable because the 30th was a National Guard outfit, not a Regular Army unit. Initially, the Division was a formation comprised of ordinary men. Once in combat, however, the citizen soldiers of the Fighting 30th morphed into warriors. They accomplished truly extraordinary feats, never failing in their missions, and they did so with great gallantry and a degree of efficiency that was unmatched."
........
"HAROLD WILLIAMS, 105TH ENGINEER COMBAT BATTALION
"I was in the motor pool to start with. They put me in Water Purification at the beginning measuring streams, water supply, back flushing, and taking samples. There were three of these units in the 30th Division. One day, they wanted a volunteer to drive an amphibian. We were in Florida and we would practice bridge building. That kind of fascinated me. From then on I was assigned to a 2-1/2-ton truck. We traveled by train from Florida to Tennessee to Camp Forest. It was a tent city. Tullahoma was the name of the town. This was just prior to maneuvers. We had all kinds of training there. Eventually, we held maneuvers that went on for weeks. We were all over Tennessee and maybe even into parts of Kentucky. After finishing maneuvers the Division came out with high standards, really high. Then we were ordered to Indiana, to Camp Atterbury. It was fall and it was getting cold. We were placed in a two-story barracks. Every day we would get up at daybreak, have roll call, and then we would hike with combat bags and rifles. We would hike approximately four to five miles to a firing range. This went on all the time, rain or shine. Before we left we would take some bread, a piece of cheese, and an apple, and away we would go. We would get back from our hike in the evening before dark. This went on into January. We had to report to a set of buildings, where there were officers from Washington who interviewed us on our training and other things. Our ratings were pretty high so it was determined that we were ready to ship out. It leaked out that we were headed to the Pacific. I think it was a deliberate leak. We boarded the train and we started to travel east, so we knew damn well that we were not headed west. We ended up at Camp Myles Standish on the Cape near Boston. It was just a staging area. Some of us got new equipment and new rifles. I can remember going on KP duty and it went around the clock; that’s how enormous the camp was.
"We were in a state of high secrecy. Trucks took us to south Boston and we boarded ships that were waiting for us. I was on the USS John Ericsson and there were three ships, I believe, that transported the Division. From there we landed in Liverpool, another unit unloaded in Blackpool, and the third one, I believe, on the Clyde in Scotland. From there we moved by train east to London. The Division was broken up when we got there, meaning some were bivouacked in separate towns. We didn’t operate as a whole. We went into London and there was an air raid going on. The city was being bombed and we spent the night there in the yards. We waited until it was over, then we proceeded to the town of Winchester. We hadn’t had a shower in two weeks, since we had gotten on the boat. We were packed in like sardines and we needed showers pretty badly. We were quartered in Quonset huts. We got our showers in the morning and went down to the chow line. A whistle blew shortly after and they called all drivers to fall out. The drivers fell out in an area in the front near the curb and the motor pool officer came by with a jeep. As our name was called from the roster each one of us got into the jeep and drove it a foot or two. We backed it up and then got out. This qualified us for driving in the U.K.!"
"KING KENNY, RECONNAISSANCE PLATOON, 823RD TANK DESTROYER BATTALION
"We landed in Liverpool north of London and got on trains headed to a town named Hereford. We unloaded and formed one whole battalion at the station. I remember some little kids coming by in their beanies, short pants, and jackets and one kid said, “Hey look they’re Scots!” and another kid said, “They’re Aussies!” and finally one kid said, “They’re Yanks!” We stayed in civilian homes."
"WILLIAM GAST, COMPANY A, 743RD TANK BATTALION
"A tank weighs approximately 35 tons. That’s 70,000 lbs! Our first tanks had a cast hull with a 75mm main gun, a .30-caliber machine gun mounted beside it on the right, and another .30-caliber machine gun, known as a bow gun, which the assistant driver operated. There was also a .50-caliber machine gun mounted on top of the turret with a 360-degree traverse that the tank commander could use as direct fire or anti-aircraft. A little later we received a tank with a welded hull. It had more armor plate and a lower silhouette of the turret.
"The channel was very rough. It was cold, misty, and wet. We were getting nervous. Because the hours were dragging on, we threw a tarp under the tank to try to get some sleep. Too much tension!
"Through the night we became friendly with the LCT captain. We got to talking about getting the LCT in close enough to the beach so when the ramp was lowered, and we drove our tanks off, they would not be submerged. He promised he would get us close enough.
"Now it’s just around 0600 hours in the morning and as we looked out over the side of our LCT there were boats and crafts as far as you could see. “Mount up and get your engines started.” This is it! The Captain of the LCT did as he promised. The front ramp was lowered and the first tank drove off. Then I drove down the ramp and I could feel my tracks turning . . . then they took hold of the bottom of the channel and I was able to move forward. As I found out later, the water had all kinds of metal obstacles to prevent us from coming onto the beach. The beach was loaded with everything you could think of to keep us from advancing."
"By dusk we finally made it up to the wall. That’s as far as we could go. Up against the wall we were protected from direct fire, and started to get a little organ -ized. We learned that out of 15 tanks of A Company, five of us made it. I have some -thing that bothers me to this day. The beach was covered with dead and wounded soldiers. There is no way of telling if I ran over any of them with my tank.
"Pictures . . . video games . . . movies . . . words . . . they simply do not convey the feeling of fear . . . the shock . . . the stench . . . the noise, the horror and the tragedy . . . the injured . . . the suffering . . . the dying . . . the dead!
"Sometime during the night the engineers were able to blast enough of the wall away, enabling us to exit the beach the next morning and get on top of the bluff."
Even as the tanks were dealing with coming ashore,
"Within moments German coastal guns had elevated their firing angle and started to respond in earnest, the first salvos ripping into the surf at short range just off the beach. Other German gunners attempted to stem the first advance wave of combat engineers who were vainly attempting to tackle murderous underwater obstacles such as barbed wire; and anti-tank and antipersonnel mines. Sherman tanks, half-tracks, and trucks of the 743rd were the first armor to attempt that hellish strip of sand that would become known ad infinitum as Omaha Beach. This was just the beginning of a long and terrible fight for men of the 30th Division that would endure almost without pause until the end of the war in May 1945.
"The first actual 30th Division unit to arrive at Omaha Beach on D-Day +4 was the 230th Field Artillery Battalion. They had been sent to replace an artillery battalion of the 29th Division that had lost most of its pieces in the choppy English Channel off the coast of Grandcamp-les-Bains. Other units from the 30th Division arrived in France during the night of 13/14 June. The first casualties in the 30th Division were incurred when a Landing Ship Tank (LST) carrying members of the 113th Field Artillery Battalion struck a German mine just off the Normandy coast. The final toll for that unfortunate incident was two killed, eight wounded, and 20 missing. It wouldn’t be long, however, before the entire division was thrown into the fray."
"ED MIDDLETON, 730TH ORDNANCE COMPANY"
"We were also supposed to have extra weapons and supplies for the troops. We ran out very quickly, so we established battlefield recovery and I had all the frontline troops collect army ordnance—ours and the enemy’s—and they let us know where it was. We picked it up and took care of it. By the time we got to the Ardennes and the Battle of the Bulge ...
The first two pages of chapter six describe next moves, after capture of Aachen, planned by Generals Eisenhower, Bradley, Montgomery - with some objections by General Patton noted - and the differences they had; to anyone whos watched A Bridge Too Far, mentioned in this book before in previous chapters, what's coming is anticipated, and so such a reader expects more details of Operation Market Garden at that point. This is even more true about the Battle of the Bulge, which the 30th Division was involved in, so all in all there is much to look forward to as one begins, and more so later.
But - having built up the anticipation - Battle of the Bulge precedes Operation Market Garden. One point a reader here might begin to notice unless a professional historian, is that most accounts of the Battle of the Bulge are usually centred around Bastogne, which is well deserved, of course, but here one reads about other just as well deserved battles and encounters, and begins to know of other important points that the Battle of the Bulge was fought around - Stavelot, for example - and most of all, Baugnez and Malmédy. This part is hardly ever spoken about, perhaps as a matter of policy, because immediately after the war and even as Nuremberg trials were proceeding, cold war was on, and any public knowledge about the Malmédy massacre by the S.S., of eighty U.S. soldiers who had fought and surrendered, would turn the U.S. people into far more fiercely anti German than the horror evoked by the exposing of extermination camps.
............
Foreword introduces the topic, and the Introduction takes it further.
"The 30th Infantry Division, named “Old Hickory” and code-named “Custom,” was called by historian S. L. A. Marshall the “most outstanding infantry division in the European Theater of Operations (ETO)” during the entire war.
"The officers and men of Old Hickory were the product of a civilian army, well trained by competent officers into a cohesive fighting machine that outsmarted the best of the German Army’s elite divisions. Although a National Guard unit, it never received the credit to which it was due all through the war; it was always relegated to the bottom of the publicity lists of accomplishments that gave more credit than was due to the Regular Army divisions in the ETO.
"A majority of the officers and men of the 30th were from farms and small towns throughout the country, although at the beginning, they were predominantly from North and South Carolina and Tennessee. Consequently they brought with them considerable knowledge of tractors, trucks, and other farm-related vehicles, which gave them enhanced knowledge of military vehicles. Most had a basic knowledge of guns from their experiences in hunting deer, squirrels, and rabbits, making them excellent marksmen.
"It is only fitting and proper that these “Old Hickorymen” be given the honor of being the best soldiers to fight against the best that the enemy— the Germans—had to offer."
"The combat record of the 30th Infantry Division in the ETO led it to being named the “outstanding infantry division of the ETO” by Colonel S. L. A. Marshall, the official US Army historian for the theater. The citizen soldiers of the 30th Division saved the Normandy breakout by standing firm at Mortain; later, they again stopped Hitler’s vaunted SS panzer units in the Battle of the Bulge, halting the German advance and thus turning the tide of that pivotal engagement. They were so respected by their German opponents that Axis Sally referred to them as “Roosevelt’s SS.”"
"Soldiers who initially joined the 30th Infantry Division when it was activated in August 1917 at Camp Sevier, South Carolina, came from the National Guard units of North and South Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia, the same area where Andrew Jackson grew up."
"Early in July 1918 they finally arrived at Le Havre, France, and immediately set about training with the British Army in Flanders and Picardy. On the 9th of July they were assigned to hold the line east of Poperinghe in the Dickebusch and Scherpenburg sector to become acquainted with the hell of Flanders fields. Later on they were called on to participate in the second Somme offensive that culminated in the breaking of the almost impenetrable Hindenburg Line. When the armistice arrived at the 11th hour of the 11th day in November 1918, the 30th Division had chalked up approximately half of the medals awarded by the British to US forces in WWI. There were also twelve Medals of Honor."
"The 30th Division arrived in Normandy on 10 June, four days after D-Day. Their initial objective was to replace the battered 29th Division that had been decimated at Omaha Beach. They were put into action almost immediately and were soon being unanimously referred to as the “Work Horse of the Western Front” due to their tenacity in battle against seasoned SS units. They quickly gained the attention of the German commanders who praised their efforts and said that they were operating with the same discipline, intensity, and rigor as the real SS, hence Roosevelt’s SS.
"By the end of WWII, the 30th Infantry Division had accumulated a remarkable list of battle honors. It spent 282 days in combat earning five battle stars in the Normandy, Northern France, Rhine land, Ardennes-Alsace, and Central Europe campaigns. Ten Presidential Unit Citations were awarded to subordinate units within the division (including the 743rd Tank Battalion and 823rd Tank Destroyer Battalion, both attached to the 30th). Six Old Hickorymen earned Medals of Honor—three posthumously. More than eighty men earned Distinguished Service Crosses, the nation’s second highest award for valor. Approximately 20,000 Purple Hearts were awarded to soldiers wounded or killed in action in the ETO. In addition, the division took approximately 53,000 prisoners over the course of its campaigns."
"After the war, Colonel S. L. A. Marshall, the official US Army historian for the European Theater of Operations (ETO), reviewed combat records for all US Army infantry divisions serving in the theater and cited the 30th Division as, “. . . the outstanding infantry division in the ETO.” This was remarkable because the 30th was a National Guard outfit, not a Regular Army unit. Initially, the Division was a formation comprised of ordinary men. Once in combat, however, the citizen soldiers of the Fighting 30th morphed into warriors. They accomplished truly extraordinary feats, never failing in their missions, and they did so with great gallantry and a degree of efficiency that was unmatched."
........
"HAROLD WILLIAMS, 105TH ENGINEER COMBAT BATTALION
"I was in the motor pool to start with. They put me in Water Purification at the beginning measuring streams, water supply, back flushing, and taking samples. There were three of these units in the 30th Division. One day, they wanted a volunteer to drive an amphibian. We were in Florida and we would practice bridge building. That kind of fascinated me. From then on I was assigned to a 2-1/2-ton truck. We traveled by train from Florida to Tennessee to Camp Forest. It was a tent city. Tullahoma was the name of the town. This was just prior to maneuvers. We had all kinds of training there. Eventually, we held maneuvers that went on for weeks. We were all over Tennessee and maybe even into parts of Kentucky. After finishing maneuvers the Division came out with high standards, really high. Then we were ordered to Indiana, to Camp Atterbury. It was fall and it was getting cold. We were placed in a two-story barracks. Every day we would get up at daybreak, have roll call, and then we would hike with combat bags and rifles. We would hike approximately four to five miles to a firing range. This went on all the time, rain or shine. Before we left we would take some bread, a piece of cheese, and an apple, and away we would go. We would get back from our hike in the evening before dark. This went on into January. We had to report to a set of buildings, where there were officers from Washington who interviewed us on our training and other things. Our ratings were pretty high so it was determined that we were ready to ship out. It leaked out that we were headed to the Pacific. I think it was a deliberate leak. We boarded the train and we started to travel east, so we knew damn well that we were not headed west. We ended up at Camp Myles Standish on the Cape near Boston. It was just a staging area. Some of us got new equipment and new rifles. I can remember going on KP duty and it went around the clock; that’s how enormous the camp was.
"We were in a state of high secrecy. Trucks took us to south Boston and we boarded ships that were waiting for us. I was on the USS John Ericsson and there were three ships, I believe, that transported the Division. From there we landed in Liverpool, another unit unloaded in Blackpool, and the third one, I believe, on the Clyde in Scotland. From there we moved by train east to London. The Division was broken up when we got there, meaning some were bivouacked in separate towns. We didn’t operate as a whole. We went into London and there was an air raid going on. The city was being bombed and we spent the night there in the yards. We waited until it was over, then we proceeded to the town of Winchester. We hadn’t had a shower in two weeks, since we had gotten on the boat. We were packed in like sardines and we needed showers pretty badly. We were quartered in Quonset huts. We got our showers in the morning and went down to the chow line. A whistle blew shortly after and they called all drivers to fall out. The drivers fell out in an area in the front near the curb and the motor pool officer came by with a jeep. As our name was called from the roster each one of us got into the jeep and drove it a foot or two. We backed it up and then got out. This qualified us for driving in the U.K.!"
"KING KENNY, RECONNAISSANCE PLATOON, 823RD TANK DESTROYER BATTALION
"We landed in Liverpool north of London and got on trains headed to a town named Hereford. We unloaded and formed one whole battalion at the station. I remember some little kids coming by in their beanies, short pants, and jackets and one kid said, “Hey look they’re Scots!” and another kid said, “They’re Aussies!” and finally one kid said, “They’re Yanks!” We stayed in civilian homes."
"WILLIAM GAST, COMPANY A, 743RD TANK BATTALION
"A tank weighs approximately 35 tons. That’s 70,000 lbs! Our first tanks had a cast hull with a 75mm main gun, a .30-caliber machine gun mounted beside it on the right, and another .30-caliber machine gun, known as a bow gun, which the assistant driver operated. There was also a .50-caliber machine gun mounted on top of the turret with a 360-degree traverse that the tank commander could use as direct fire or anti-aircraft. A little later we received a tank with a welded hull. It had more armor plate and a lower silhouette of the turret.
"The channel was very rough. It was cold, misty, and wet. We were getting nervous. Because the hours were dragging on, we threw a tarp under the tank to try to get some sleep. Too much tension!
"Through the night we became friendly with the LCT captain. We got to talking about getting the LCT in close enough to the beach so when the ramp was lowered, and we drove our tanks off, they would not be submerged. He promised he would get us close enough.
"Now it’s just around 0600 hours in the morning and as we looked out over the side of our LCT there were boats and crafts as far as you could see. “Mount up and get your engines started.” This is it! The Captain of the LCT did as he promised. The front ramp was lowered and the first tank drove off. Then I drove down the ramp and I could feel my tracks turning . . . then they took hold of the bottom of the channel and I was able to move forward. As I found out later, the water had all kinds of metal obstacles to prevent us from coming onto the beach. The beach was loaded with everything you could think of to keep us from advancing."
"By dusk we finally made it up to the wall. That’s as far as we could go. Up against the wall we were protected from direct fire, and started to get a little organ -ized. We learned that out of 15 tanks of A Company, five of us made it. I have some -thing that bothers me to this day. The beach was covered with dead and wounded soldiers. There is no way of telling if I ran over any of them with my tank.
"Pictures . . . video games . . . movies . . . words . . . they simply do not convey the feeling of fear . . . the shock . . . the stench . . . the noise, the horror and the tragedy . . . the injured . . . the suffering . . . the dying . . . the dead!
"Sometime during the night the engineers were able to blast enough of the wall away, enabling us to exit the beach the next morning and get on top of the bluff."
Even as the tanks were dealing with coming ashore,
"Within moments German coastal guns had elevated their firing angle and started to respond in earnest, the first salvos ripping into the surf at short range just off the beach. Other German gunners attempted to stem the first advance wave of combat engineers who were vainly attempting to tackle murderous underwater obstacles such as barbed wire; and anti-tank and antipersonnel mines. Sherman tanks, half-tracks, and trucks of the 743rd were the first armor to attempt that hellish strip of sand that would become known ad infinitum as Omaha Beach. This was just the beginning of a long and terrible fight for men of the 30th Division that would endure almost without pause until the end of the war in May 1945.
"The first actual 30th Division unit to arrive at Omaha Beach on D-Day +4 was the 230th Field Artillery Battalion. They had been sent to replace an artillery battalion of the 29th Division that had lost most of its pieces in the choppy English Channel off the coast of Grandcamp-les-Bains. Other units from the 30th Division arrived in France during the night of 13/14 June. The first casualties in the 30th Division were incurred when a Landing Ship Tank (LST) carrying members of the 113th Field Artillery Battalion struck a German mine just off the Normandy coast. The final toll for that unfortunate incident was two killed, eight wounded, and 20 missing. It wouldn’t be long, however, before the entire division was thrown into the fray."
"ED MIDDLETON, 730TH ORDNANCE COMPANY"
"We were also supposed to have extra weapons and supplies for the troops. We ran out very quickly, so we established battlefield recovery and I had all the frontline troops collect army ordnance—ours and the enemy’s—and they let us know where it was. We picked it up and took care of it. By the time we got to the Ardennes and the Battle of the Bulge ...
November 3, 2015
The 30th infantry started out as a National Guard unit made up of mostly farmers and men from small towns from North & South Carolina, and Tennessee. They had a lot of knowledge of trucks, tractors and other equipment when it came to repair. They were also mostly hunters so they were excellent marksmen, and good around weapons. There nickname was “Old Hickory”, the Germans called them “Roosevelt’s SS”. They were also in combat in Europe more days than any other unit but got no recognition for this. Some thinking is that because they started out as National Guard Unit. Originally the 30th was created July 18, 1917, for WWI. When WWI ended they had been awarded ½ the medals given out by the U.S. and British forces, also 12 Medals of Honor were awarded to the unit. The 30th arrived in France 4 days after D-Day to replace the 29th that was decimated on Omaha beach. They would spend 282 days involved in intense combat. They were made up of 743rd Tank Battalion, 823rd Tank Destroyer Battalion,230th field artillery Battalion, 197th field artillery Battalion,105th Engineer Battalion, 105th Medical Battalion, 113 Field Artillery Battalion, 117th, 119th, 120th , Infantry Regiments, and I am sure I am missing a few. The author takes you through from their first day and all of their battles. With interviews, and or letters from veterans from the respected units. Some of the information comes from actual records from the 30th action reports. There is a story of a unit coming under attack by friendly fire because no one expected them to be that far ahead. In this one of these attacks over 100 men were killed along with General Leslie McNair. They suppressed this information at the time because they did not want the information to get back to the B-24, and B- 17 crews that made troughs runs. This was not told until years later. This is just one story like that there are a few more. They also were the Unit that installed or had phones installed on the backs of tanks so they could communicate better with the crew inside. They also had a field observer with them from the artillery unit from day one so they could direct fire more act curtly. What really made this book for me was the personnel stories that went along with the different chapters, and how these young men were able to adapt in the face of some hellish fire and still overcome. An excellent book. I got this book from net galley.
May 8, 2016
This was an excellent read of the army's WWII 30th division. What makes it unusual is the book is written in rather "short story" or essay form by many of the soldiers who were in the 30th division and fought the war. I am a WWII history and fiction reader. Born in 1937 my young life was in that period where all things centered around, during and after, "The War". I remember relatives going and coming home from the battles, sitting around the radio listening to the news of the war and the reading of latest casualties listed, my father and his defense job on the RR that, along with four small children, kept him out of battle, ration stamps and tokens, etc. So, I found the stories written by men in the 30th division powerful in their telling. Unimaginable conditions from weather and terrible tolls from "friendly fire"! That was not anything I had read about before this book. Always there are deaths by "friendly fire" but these were horrific. So, the book was interesting and I recommend it to all who are WWII history buffs.
August 29, 2016
makes you feel like you are marching thru europe with them. most world war two vets dont talk about the war. you get a real idea of what it was like for them. informative but not at all boring. I would highly recomend this book.
September 22, 2016
Very Good Read
I liked that this book is largely from the soldiers who actually fought the battles. These were indeed some of America's Best. They came together and in many cases they overcame terrible odds. God Bless them all. Carl Branco Veteran
I liked that this book is largely from the soldiers who actually fought the battles. These were indeed some of America's Best. They came together and in many cases they overcame terrible odds. God Bless them all. Carl Branco Veteran
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