TIGERS ON THE LOOSE

this is laundry in World War 2 61 US Army divisions were locked in mortal combat with the enemy in the European theater of operations this film is about one of those divisions [Music] the tenth Armored Division was activated at Fort Benning Georgia and the 15th of July 1942 from the very beginning it was known as a hot outlet it's nicknamed Tiger division the commanding general of the 10th Major General Paul W Newgarden was a superb leader carry out orders March maneuver and shoot for his by words no man had more pride in his troops and no General was more revered by his man I'm John drew Devereaux I was a company commander in the tenth Armored Division during World War two we had a marvelous kind of spirit in our division and I think it was due in great part to the training we got from general Newgarden who was our division commander in the States he was killed in an airplane crash before we went overseas now he had a couple of very pet things that he liked one that we had to wear the top button of our coveralls buttoned this was pretty uncomfortable but after a while we got so that we looked at other outfits who wore them unbuttoned than we thought they look like slobs he had a kind of thing that he liked to do about the salute when you gave a salute in the tenth Armored Division a tiger salute you lifted your chin up in the air like that that seemed pretty silly too until after a while we got used to it and then we thought we were alone the outfit in the whole army that knew how to salute properly in July 1944 a new leader assumed command division following general new Gardens death I am Lieutenant General William HH Morris jr. a US Army retired I was commanding general the 10th along with division in Europe during world war ii the division sailed from New York on September 14th 1944 a long period of training was over the men were prepared for anything but their wildest imagination could not conjure up what destiny held in store for two days later on the 16th of September Hitler leaving with his most trusted generals made a momentous decision a decision which would alter the course of the war operation Christ Rose the Ardennes offensive a campaign in which the Tigers of the 10th would cover themselves with glory and make military discipline the division arrived in battle-torn Cherbourg on the 22nd of September and was immediately assigned to general Walton Walker's 20th Corps which was under control of General George S Patton's Third Army General Patton came to visit our division and talked to the officers and noncommissioned officers as he did with all the divisions that were signed to his army General Patton covered very effectively the combat lessons learned during the war at the squad section and platoon level I'm Colonel Thomas Chamberlain during World War two I commanded 11th tank battalion of the tenth Armored Division I can remember vividly the first days of combat the first orders we received Colonel Roberts called us into a small churchyard in the town of shallow sore mark his first words were that the reason he called us into this particular churchyard in this particular town were that the this was the place that he had received his first orders to go into combat during the World War one and he wanted to use this particular spot to start us off we moved up all afternoon past Verdun and in the vicinity of Metz and then that evening and a beautiful moonlight night that happened to be Halloween night we infiltrated our half-tracks one-by-one three minutes apart down a very spooky road through a village and up into a wooded area dismounted and then trucked on up and relieve the ninetieth division I'm William R Desiree I was a battalion commander a major in the tenth Armored Division in World War two the tenth Armored Division was a very well-trained division its first combat was against Mets Mets was you might call it a defensive sector for as The Tempest concerned we were supposed to aggressively patrol and we did we saw that every instrument and every weapon was fired at least once in more or less anger against C I'm William Lynn Roberts brigadier general US Army retired I was combat command commander of CCB tenth Armored Division in World War two I'm Colonel Curtis L Hankins I was a battalion commander of the 61st armored infantry battalion and the tenth Armored Division my first encounter with enemy fire was during the defensive operation west of Metz it was here that we learned to sense artillery fire that is determine the difference between outgoing which was friendly fire incoming which was German fire if you could determine with some degree of accuracy where the enemy allow arounds were going to land this would save a lot of wear and tear on your knees and elbows you try to take cover every time the rounds would come over I am Colonel James O'Hara I commanded the 54th armored infantry battalion of the 10th armored division I consider that this initial baptism of fire and a defensive position was very good for the battalion it gave us time to gather our thoughts practice some of the things we've been learning in the States get our communications working having the reconnaissance platoon worked with a Free French practice patrolling all these things that's so necessary for a battalion to do I remember my first day in combat we felt very safe and a tank but doing this first day had frosting the first tank hit by the agent Vaughn we begin to get scared but even though we were awful scared it didn't seem to be much of a handicap of doing our job which was to destroy the enemy and we did a fairly good job at first day my name's John winter I was a tank platoon sergeant tenth Armored Division during World War two after fighting for about three weeks around Metz we moved north to the vicinity of the town of theone Ville to participate in the Third Army offensive designed to capture mess the plan of 20th Corps to which the 10th armored was assigned had two phases to destroy the enemy in Metz and to catch him as he tried to pull out of myths the mission of the 10th was to make a deep penetration into the enemy's lines once it had crashed through the German defence the left column combat command B was to advance east and seize a bridgehead over the Czar River near Mirchi the right column Combat Command a was to take the division objective including Susanville which was the centre of arterial highway and railroad traffic running north east of myths the enemy blocked the way and fought savagely [Music] but the Tigers clawed their way through the German defense by the time the division had completed its first major offensive mission it had taken 64 towns repulsed 11 counter-attacks captured 2,000 prisoners and destroyed great quantities of material but the price was high [Music] on December 7 Hitler approved the final draft of Operation Christ Rose now renamed watch on the Rhine Hitler's plan of attack was to break through on the Ardennes with three armies the 6th Panzer army led by the butcher from Bavaria Sepp Dietrich the fifth Panzer army led by Baron hisself on montejo and the Seventh Army led by General Brandenburger they would cross the Meuse river on the second day between Liege and Namur bypass Brussels and reached the great port of antwerp on the seventh day this operation Hitler believed would destroy more than 30 American and British divisions he believed it would be the beginning of the end for the Allies within the next week thousands upon thousands of troops and thousands upon thousands of tons of material were transported secretly from assembly areas to terminals just behind the front lines [Music] on the eve of December 15 one quarter of a million Germans stood poised on the line of departure prepared to annihilate the enemy [Music] at 5:30 a.m. the following morning flame erupted along an 85 mile front Hitler's great drive to Antwerp had begun on December the 16th 1944 about 6 p.m. I received a telephone call from general Walker the 20th call informing me that was going to be transferred with the entire division to the 1st army and be placed under the 8th call that they had been attacked by the Germans in the vicinity in Luxembourg I really dispatched my chief of staff the best dome the headquarters a corps for orders the chief of staff returned about 2 a.m. the next morning and informed me that the division was to go into a quartering area just west of Luxembourg when the Battle of the Bulge began my unit was in a rest area south of Luxembourg we received orders to be prepared to move north on 24 hours notice a short time later the alert was changed to 12 hours a short time later we were on the road the 10th armored division sent two of its combat commands northwest of Luxembourg to go into action there and they sent my Combat Command Western or to our lana then on to north to Bastogne I proceeded my outfit in the Bastogne and got into Bastogne about four o'clock in the afternoon and found general Middleton general Middleton asked me how my outfit thought and how many pieces my outfit would fight in I told him three he said all right send one to Neuville which is six or seven kilometers north one east along Vili and one south east to bra a little sidelight here I'd held up the March of our outfit to to get O'Hara in front cuz O'Hara had not been in the fighting heavily down around the message area so we got him hurry in front and I sent him out to bra I took my team down this road toward wilts and we stopped for the night opposite the town of worden on our way down this road we passed many American soldiers coming to the rear most of whom seemed to be from the 28th division apparently they'd been hit hard further forward when we got to our destination for the night since we see we received our orders at 5:00 in the afternoon and there was not much daylight left we settled astride the road and blocked the road to wilts I arrived in Bastogne just as night was falling I found a MP who led me to Colonel Robert CP it was a very brief meeting in Colonel Robert CP told me that O'Hara had been sent out to the east of the town and was in a defensive position and that Jerry was moving out slightly to the northeast of the town and as soon as my column arrived I was to keep moving and moved to the north of the town to a little place called no Ville if there are any Germans in Neuville I was to knock them out of the town and to occupy it if there were no Germans I was to occupy no Ville going no further north because this would be the limit on the range of the tenth Armored Division artillery which was located in the vicinity of Bastogne this then was the disposition of Combat Command B on the 18th of December the night of their arrival and Bastogne [Music] team des Aubry was at noble team cherry at long Billy team O'Hara and worden the total strength of the three defending units was about 75 tanks and 2,800 offices and Men battering at the gates of bostonia for the advanced elements of general month joyful fifth Panzer army and general Brandenburg is Seventh Army approximately 300 tanks and 50,000 men whose mission in addition to taking sandy and built was to take bostonia and to take it fast Pistone yashna its unum Dennis come Altaf was very important to capture bostonia fast it was the most important road junction in the southern area of the Audion combate section and in the event general Eisenhower's reserve forces which we suspected when he hauls arrived to attack they would have to pass by Stalin GM father we were passed on you come ich bin general defense at opera house often on Toy Fair I am hustle a capful man toy for former general of the Panzer troops and commander-in-chief of the fifth Panzer army we completed establishing the defenses of Neuville about midnight actually the defense was a routine traditional type defense we set out roadblocks to the east one to the north and one to the northwest because these were the directions that we expected the Germans to attack us the fighting throughout the night was sporadic it was a piecemeal attack they would hit us with small units from the north and then it with small units from the east cherry who's not here went out to long Billy came back at midnight and found me asleep he asked that he be allowed to sit on a road out east east of magret short of long Billy because he had found a combat command CCR of the 9th Armored Division in position 10 or 12 tanks a colonel and some artillery I gave him permission to stay where he was Jerry never got back to his command in the meantime some of the Panzer Lehr division had cut in behind his outfit at Margarette and he could he never joined however his headquarters went into the little Nephi chateau at Nephi Chateau cherry had a tank or two and whole few machine guns sent his whole headquarters company and he put up a real nice fight all day that evening he had to retire he felt like he had to get out because they were being he was being bird out cherry lined up his vehicles to go out he was to go out last in a jeep he went outside he got to tommy guns he emptied one tommy gun to the right got the other up did it to the left planed in his Jeep and pulled out the driver was hit the Jeep was hit the Medeco and the back was hit Jerry got out he got a DSC for this my battalion spent the night on the high ground south of warden and all night long we saw no German troops or heard nothing of them however we did have one straggler come to the rear who told us they were east of us in the wilts area about ten o'clock in the morning they came down from the wilts road and shot up the artillery observers tank and one or two other tanks we fought on all morning long and part of the afternoon staying in the same position there teaching the Germans at bay at first the defensive vest dome rested with three units of the 10th armored division task force - so Bri in the Northeast task force cherry in the East and task force O'Hara in the southeast I am General Anthony McAuliffe United States Army retired I was at Bastogne with the 101st Airborne Division in mid-december 1944 the 101st Airborne Division was at a place called Camp murmur lawn near the city of rass in France we were recuperating from the Holland airborne operation where we had suffered about 30 percent casualties and we were absorbing our replacements and going through a training program general Taylor had been recalled to Washington and I was the acting commander of the division I believe it was on December 18th that we received a telephone call from the chief of staff of the 18th Airborne Corps saying that the division should be prepared to move the following day to the north to the town of verbum on we had known that the Germans had attacked but we didn't know the extent of the attack or the conditions to the north but we made all preparations to get away the following day and the first thing in the morning I preceded the division to the north in a sedan with my aide-de-camp and my operations officer as I drove north I reached a crossroad just a couple of miles west of the town best down I knew that 8-core headquarters was located in that town so I decided to drive over to that core headquarters and try to learn something more about the situation it was fortunate that I did so because I learned from the corps commander general Middleton that the orders for the hundred first Airborne Division had been changed and that the division would come to Bastogne rather than to go to Vermont I also met there Colonel Roberts who was a commander of combat command B of the tenth Armored Division who were already on the scene and already in the fighting des brie was attacked about five or six times that first day he will describe during the morning of that first day one battalion under Colonel pray to the hundred and first Airborne joined him they as soon as Colonel prayed joined they decided to attack apparently at the same time the Germans decided to attack at 1400 hours and the paratroopers and our tanks are imperative he launched the attack at 1400 hours the German forces launched an all-out attack on noville so we had the situation of the Germans and the American units attacking one another simultaneously from points about 700 yards distance actually the Germans were stopped they were through back behind the ridge our paratroopers on the north west of the town actually gained the ridge the tanks the armored infantry and the paratroopers on the northeast of the town were unable to get to their positions so after a fight of about 45 minutes or an hour we went through the paratroopers from the north east back into the town of Knovel deser Brae was hit badly and Colonel parade was killed that evening and I didn't know des Berg was hurt for 24 hours he was later captured when the hospital was captured for the next three days and nights the defenders of Estonia slugged it out with a numerically superior enemy then on the 22nd of December [Music] when the besieged city was finally encircled the commanding general of the 47th Panzer Corps sent the following surrender ultimatum it called for the surrender of the bostonia garrison if the Americans did not comply within two hours the stone would be completely destroyed and its defenders and naya later general McAuliffe's one-word answer nuts reverberating around the world [Music]