Just before the U. S. armies plunged across the Rhine a captured
American soldier, one of thousands subsequently freed, was brought up
for questioning before a scowling German officer.
“So, you are from the 4th Armored Division?” the German asked.
The American looked the German straight in the eye and with the
aggressiveness of a good tankman said, “You bet I am.”
The German leaned back in his chair, smiled broadly and in the tone of
one anxious to hear all about an old friend, asked, “Well, and how
is Colonel Abrams?”
Colonel Creighton William Abrams, Jr., the object of this intimate
interest on the part of the German officer, is largely unknown among
U. S. civilians. It is one of the ironies of this sprawling global war
that outstanding young combat officers are better known to the enemy
than in their own country. Yet it is they who execute the battle plans
of the well-publicized higher officers.
As the rampaging commander of the 37th Tank Battalion of the 4th
Armored Division of the Third Army, Abrams is the cutting edge of the
U. S. spearhead. An even more pertinent question about him might have
been, “Where is Colonel Abrams?” For where Colonel Abrams is, that
spot is likely to be the farthest point of the U. S. armored
penetration into Germany. Last week, as advance man for the equally
aggressive George Patton, commander of the Third Army, he was reported
to be cutting clear across prewar Germany into Czechoslovakia. His
present whereabouts is cloaked in a security news blackout and at any
given time may not even be known to his commander. In his own words,
Abrams likes to be “way out on the goddam point of the attack, where
there’s nothing but me and the goddam Germans and we can fight by
ourselves without stopping to report back to headquarters.”
SHAEF headquarters by now is accustomed to having him and his running
mate, Lieutenant Colonel Delk Oden of the 35th Tank Battalion, turn up
unexpectedly in places far in advance of the theoretical battlelines.
This habit inspired a wisecrack by one of Abram’s officers that has
since been borrowed by half the other units on the Western Front.
While looking over a field map showing concentrated German positions
all around them in the forward areas, the officer shook his head in
feigned dismay. “They’ve got us surrounded again,” he said
“the poor bastards!”
The surrounding of Abrams’ and other units of the 4th Armored by the
Germans has almost invariably resulted in the 4th Armored’s soon
surrounding the Germans. This pattern, repeated elsewhere along the
front, has made the great campaign in the west a series of encircling
movements which have broken the back of the German defenders and
captured them in massive blocks of tens of thousands. The 4th’s
special skill in this technique recently won it a Presidential
Citation which followed a peculiar accolade from the Germans that was
almost as flattering in its own way. According to captured documents
the Wehrmacht rank and file, among whom the 4th is regarded with both
respect and terror, were told that each individual soldier in the
division was chosen because he was a professional murderer in civilian
life. Moreover, the documents charged, an American was entitled to
membership in the division only after he had first proved: 1) he had
killed his mother; 2) he had been born out of wedlock.
These documents are cherished at divisional headquarters along with
the records of the 4th’s career through a series of bold and
critically important field operations. It was the 4th, with Abrams
always out on the point of contact, that broke loose from the Normandy
peninsula in only 11 days’ fighting, a feat that has been described
as “astounding the Allies as well as the Huns.”
After that it was the 4th that led the Third Army in the breakthrough
at St. Lo, which drove the Germans back to their Seigfried
fortifications. In that epic drive the division destroyed 317 German
tanks and captured 20,000 prisoners, even though on several occasions
Abrams radioed back that “We are moving ahead without opposition.”
Division headquarters, following up, would find the “unopposed”
route strewn with German tanks and gun batteries and littered with
hundreds of German bodies.
When the Germans mounted their Ardennes counteroffensive, it was the
4th Armored, under command of Patton’s former chief of staff, Major
General Hugh Gaffey, that buttressed the southern flank. Later, with
Abrams in the lead, it broke through in a spectacular and devastating
dash to relieve the besieged 101st Airborne Division in Bastogne. More
recently, in the drive from the Kyll River to the Rhine, it plunged
ahead more than 50 miles in fifty-eight hours of concentrated mayhem.
Abrams and his outfit destroyed more than 300 German motor vehicles,
75 artillery pieces, 75 anti-tank guns, 15 Tiger and Panther tanks, 20
“screaming meemies” and overran a rear-area German hospital with
80 patients, three enemy ammunition dumps, one ordnance depot, one
fuel dump and a German army corps headquarters where an annoyed German
Lieutenant General and most of his staff were captured while still at
their desks.
Such accomplishments, in which Abrams has always been a leading
performer, have draped the cape of a legendary hero around Abrams’
shoulders. At 30, he is mature enough to be truly modest, and he does
not cultivate the hero worship that surrounds him. But there is a
dynamic quality about him and a great flair for leadership that cause
his men to idolize him. “We can always spot his tank,” says
Lieutenant John Whitehill, a company commander, “because it doesn’t
roll ahead like others. It gallops.”
“Abe’s tank,” says Lieutenant Colonel George “Jigger”
Jacques of the 53rd Armored Infantry, whom Abrams addresses over the
tank radio as “Sad Sack,” “Looks bigger than anyone else’s in
the field just because Abe’s in it.”
As he rides along, Abrams gnaws on a long, black, unlighted cigar.
“It looks just like another gun,” his men say. His present tank,
successor to six he has worn out, is named Thunderbolt VII. One of the
latest improved models of the M4 medium tank, it arrived just after
Christmas, when the battalion was resting after the breakthrough to
Bastogne. It has a 76-mm gun, a 17-inch tread, a cast turret and a
welded hull. Abrams spent a happy holiday wheeling it through its
vocabulary of paces within artillery range of the Germans. The tank it
replaced, Thunderbolt VI, had its name in letters eight inches high on
a background of billowing white clouds punctured by jagged red streaks
of lightning. In the interest of winter camouflage Thunderbolt VII was
painted a drab white, but with spring well along Abrams’ driver,
Sgt. Robert Stillwell, is giving thought to another appropriate motif
for VII.
One reason why the Germans are particularly fascinated and terrified
by Abrams is that they assume because of his name that he is Jewish,
and they imagine that race vengeance plays some part in his
destructiveness. Actually Abrams is a New England Methodist but he
lets people think what they like. However, Major Harold Cohen of the
division’s 10th Armored Infantry Battalion is Jewish and is not only
a close friend but an operational business partner of Abrams.
Cohen’s infantry usually either accompanies or follows Abram’s
tanks, so that the two units are often indistinguishable. To the
Germans the team of Abrams and Cohen seems like the instruments of a
wrathful Jehovah.
Perhaps, if the Germans could ever understand it, it would be
instructive to them to know more about Abrams and the background that
molded him. He was born in Springfield, Mass., on Sept. 16, 1914 and
grew up like any normal American boy whose parents see that he goes to
Sunday school, eats his vegetables and has plenty of milk to drink.
World War I was finished by the time he went to grade school, and the
only military background in the family was the story of his
greatgrandfather, who served with distinction as a drummer boy in the
Civil War until his left arm was blown off by a nervous comrade behind
him.
In Agawam High School, across the Connecticut River from Springfield,
young Abrams was known as “Toots.” His friends picked up the
nickname from the Abrams family, who started calling him “Tootsie”
because he was such a cute baby. He was able to live this down in high
school, however, where he was captain of a football team that went
through its season undefeated, untied and unscored upon. He was class
president in his senior year, editor in chief of the school paper,
president of Hi-Y, a member of the senior class play and class orator
at graduation. In summers he worked on the Jenks farm near by and in
his spare time took part in 4-H club garden activities. He also raised
chickens and later raised and exhibited steers for the 4-H Baby Beef
club.
After high school Abrams considered a scholarship to Brown University
but a friend persuaded him to try the competitive examinations for
West Point. He was third in a field of 57 and entered when the two
candidates ahead of him failed in their physical examinations. At West
Point he was too busy to spend much time on his studies and graduated
216th in a class of more than 480. He had his nose broken playing
hockey and was considered one of the most efficient hazers on the
academy’s “beast detail.” It took him four years to make his
letter in football because he was never able to get his weight up much
above 165 pounds, which is light for a guard. The 1936 Howitzer, the
academy yearbook, said he held the football “warm up record” as
well as the “undisputed title of the loudest, happiest,
fightin’est man on the squad.” “Indeed,” said the Howitzer,
“a team of Abrams might conceivably prove a champion.”
From West Point, Abrams went to the Cavalry School at Fort Bliss,
where his restlessness soon gave him a reputation as a prankster.
During one period he had a room directly across a court from the
officers’ club of the post. On Saturday nights, after other officers
and their friends had parked their automobiles in the court and
entered the club for an evening of fun, Abrams would sneak out and
attach smoke-producing firecrackers to the spark plugs of the cars.
Then he retired to the window of his room to watch and wait. When the
officers’ club eventually closed, gay, teetering officers climbed
into their cars and pressed the starters. The loud explosion and
ensuing clouds of black smoke, curses and frightened cries gave Abrams
much saturnine merriment. Intoxicated by a series of successes, one
night he wired a firecracker in the automobile of the general
commanding the post. Abrams never was identified as the culprit in the
inquiry which followed, but having achieved the ultimate he felt
justified in giving up his pastime.
In his second year at West Point Abrams had met Miss Julia Harvey of
West Newton, Mass., an attractive Vassar student who came down for a
hop as the guest of one of Abe’s friends. The friend got sick, Abe
got the date, fell in love and he and Miss Harvey were married two
months after he was graduated. Now the mother of 6-year-old Noel
Abrams and 4-year-old Creighton William Abrams III, she lives in St.
Petersburg, Fla. with her mother, waiting and hoping like millions of
other Army wives for the war to end quickly.
Abrams, too, wants the war to end quickly and as a cavalryman who
turned to tank warfare in 1940 his theories about how it can be done
quickly are illuminating. To a cavalryman’s belief in mobility be
has added a belief in the efficiency of violence properly and
unsparingly applied. “We don’t want the Germans to fall back,”
Abrams insists. “We want them to try to defend their positions so we
can destroy them and their equipment. There’s entirely too much
emphasis on getting prisoners and not enough on destruction. Whenever
the Germans get us in the wringer they show no quarter, so why should
we? We’ve got to set our minds to destroying them--that’s the only
way to get this job done, and done fast.”
“When we go into those pretty little towns in Germany,” Abrams
explains, “we don’t aspire to damage anything. But if there are
Germans there we use our violence, everything that can be burned is
burned and every building is destroyed.”
Abram’s theory is that overpowering violence not only destroys the
enemy’s soldiers and does it quickly but it also keeps down American
casualties. In one town in Belgium, for instance, German resistance
was mean and stubborn. In house-to-house fighting, Abrams’ tankmen,
working with Lieut. Colonel Jacques’ armored infantry,
systematically chucked grenades into every window and directed flame
throwers through every door. Before the village was completely cleared
of Germans it was necessary to burn every building in the area. The
score was 427 prisoners of war, 50 Germans killed and 42 wounded,
American casualties were negligible.
“Our operations are all based on violence,” Abrams says. “An
infantry division doesn’t have the type of violence we have. We have
more firepower than any infantry division in the world--German,
British or Russian. We have mobility, better communications and
support artillery which is right behind us. Why, I’d no sooner
tackle an American tank battalion having all that violence than I’d
try to trap a wildcat in my sleeping bag.”
When Abrams’ tank battalion starts rolling, it goes fast, with every
gun in its tremendous arsenal firing throughout the charge. “Even
the best German troops, like the 11th Panzer,” says Abrams, who
occasionally speaks in Mac Arthur-like formalism, “cannot collect
themselves fast enough. Our firepower spreads confusion and chaos in
the German command and fear in the German soldier. Perhaps the more
stouthearted fellow will hang on. But the vast majority take counsel
with but one thing--fear.”
The best illustration of the effectiveness of this blasting program
occurred during the 4th Armored Division’s dash to relieve the
Bastogne garrison. just before dusk on the day after Christmas,
Abrams’ tank battalion and the 53rd Armored Infantry under Jacques
had fought their way to the crest of the last hill before Bastogne.
Ahead a secondary road rolled over the countryside for more than three
miles before it finally reached the outskirts of the town. Two
villages, Clochimont and Assenois, straddled the road, both defended
by fanatical German paratroopers.
While supporting artillery laid down a heavy concentration on the two
villages, Abrams’ armor stood poised on the hillside, ready for the
swift downward swoop. Finally Abrams stood up in his turret and over
the interphone came his terse signal, “Let ’er roll!” Like one
great snake, the chain of armored vehicles jerked into motion and,
gathering momentum, raced down the road towards Clochimont with guns
blazing. The column whipped through the village and then rolled on to
Assenois where our artillery shells were still pounding German
hideouts. Four lead tanks sped through the inferno safely, but a
half-track next in line caught a direct hit which disabled the
vehicle, killing two infantrymen and wounding four others. The next
tank was pinned by a falling telephone pole and still another Sherman
floundered under half a ton of debris. In the street the remainder of
the column ground to a halt behind the immobilized vehicles. Abrams
and his crew scrambled out of their tank and wrested the telephone
pole from the trapped tank as infantry engaged German paratroopers in
a hot sniping duel. Once back in his tank, Abrams waved the column
forward and it roared ahead, leaving doughboys behind to clear the
burning village.
Thus Bastogne was relieved in a daring plunge which sent the Germans
reeling. As against their high casualties and equipment losses, ours
were few: 30 men killed, 180 wounded, and several tanks destroyed.
While Abrams has never had a tank shot out from under him nor
sustained an injury in combat, his long periods spent in the vanguard
of the fighting have brought him close to death many times. One of his
narrowest escapes occurred north of Bastogne when a sudden heavy
German artillery barrage caught him standing in the open with two of
his officers. The trio instantly dove under the stern of a light tank
near by. While shells, mortars and rockets sliced the area to ribbons,
one officer had his helmet rapped by shrapnel and “Colonel
Abe’s” pants were torn by fragments. “I was considerably
concerned at the time,” Abrams commented later, “but our division
headquarters later reported only ‘sporadic’ enemy fire, so I guess
I shouldn’t have been.”
[Illustration: General Hoge]
Major General William M. Hoge
_21 March 1945-17 June 1945_
[Illustration: Outfit Magazine 28 May 1945 Battle Biographies]
PATTON PINS FIRST HONOR MEDAL
IN THIRD ARMY ON HEROIC TEXAN