 This is Lorne Green. In World War II, 61 United States Army divisions were locked in mortal combat with the enemy. The European Theater of Operations. This building is about one of those divisions. The 10th Armored. Its nickname was the Tiger Division. On the 16th of December 1944, Hitler began his great drive to the Port of Antwerp, the Ardennes offensive. Six days later, on the 22nd of December, strong German forces surrounded the outnumbered and outgunned American defenders of Bastogne, a key communication center vital to the success of Hitler's plan. As a result of this encirclement, the commanding general of the German 47th Panzer Corps delivered a surrender ultimatum to General Anthony McCollough, commander of the Bastogne garrison. General McCollough's reply to the German commander was, nuts. Fighting in the beleaguered city was Combat Command B of the 10th Armored Division. From the very beginning of the battle for Bastogne, heavy fog and bad flying weather prevented aerial resupply and fighter support. There was a shortage of surgical equipment and not enough blankets for the men suffering from wounds and shock. Ammunition was running low and some of the artillery batteries were down to less than 10 rounds per gun. But the morning of December 23rd broke clear and cold, and visibility was unlimited. From England to the foxholes of Bastogne, where every man looked up to the sky and prayed, and their prayers were answered. I'm William Lynn Roberts, Brigadier General, U.S. Army Retired. I was Combat Command Commander of CCB 10th Armored Division in World War II. The 19th tactical, 19th tactical column furnished us every half hour a squadron of planes which circled us. At the same time, by some luck, a captain staggered into Bastogne. How he got there, I don't know, but he was an expert on operating with the air from the ground. He had a fine VHF set, which could work with the air. We set that thing up in the middle of the compound, and he used the air as follows. The airplanes carried napalm bombs, ordinary bombs, rockets, and what he called bullets. He said, I pulled the napalm bombs first, then I pulled the bombs next. I pulled the rockets next, and then I gave them bullets, and before I let them go, I made them circle once to give us new targets. I have estimated that this, that the air was equal to at least two divisions of health. Because they could see in the snow, which had newly fallen, where the tanks had gone, they were able to bomb all of these little woods. And at one time they found a column moving right toward the 4th Armored Division, which was battling to get into us. And I think the next air squadron destroyed the whole group. I am General Anthony McAuliffe, United States Army retired. I was at Bastone with the 101st Airborne Division in 1944. One of the saddest and most dramatic incidents occurred on Christmas Eve night. We had asked for volunteers when we lost our hospital, and a very fine trained nurse, the daughter of the village hardware storekeeper, Renee Lemaire volunteered. She took charge of a group of wounded from the 10th Armored Division in a house on the main street of Bastone. But on Christmas Eve, a 500-pound bomb struck the house, went all the way through, and none of the 10th Armored Division soldiers, nor reigning the mayor, not a one survived. On December 26th, elements of the 4th Armored Division crashed into Bastone. The encirclement was broken, and for the Germans, it was the beginning of the end. After we had been in there about 30 days on the 16th of January, we were relieved. We left Bastone in one of the worst deserts I've ever seen. Going up Longway Hill about 40 miles south, a great big long hill with a gentle slope, the tanks just couldn't make it. They were sliding back like bears on a slippery slide. In thinking it over, I've decided that if we had been in Bastone alone without any infantry, we couldn't have held 10 minutes. The 101st Airborne, without the steel that my outfit afforded, could not have held. But the steel of my outfit and the blood and flesh of that their outfit made a pretty tough combination. It's always seemed regrettable to me that Combat Command B of the 10th Armored Division didn't get the credit it deserved in the Battle of Bastone. All of the newspaper and radio talk was about the paratroopers. Actually, the 10th Armored Division was in there a day before we were and had some very hard fighting before we ever got into it. And I sincerely believe that we would never have been able to get in to Bastone if it had not been for the defensive fighting of the three elements of the 10th Armored Division who were first in the Bastone and protected the town from invasion by the Germans. On the 20th of February 1945, following a much needed rest and refitting, the 10th Armored Division was rolling in high gear again. The mission this time was to clear the Isar-Moselle Triangle and capture the city of Triere, an important supply and communication center, and one of the most heavily fortified areas in the world. This was the job General Patton had started in November of 1944 but left unfinished because of the Ardennes counter-offensive. I am Colonel James O'Hara. I commanded the 54th Armored Infantry Battalion of the 10th Armored Division. Our division was involved in action in the Isar-Moselle Triangle on two different occasions. On the first occasion I was not involved. On the second occasion, after the Battle of Bastone, we were told to drive to Sarborg. As I recall, the 94th Division, which was an infantry division, cleared the way through the Siegfried Line and we followed and got into Sarborg with little incident. When we got up to the Sarra River, our division headquarters moved into the town of Ale and planned a river crossing. For this river crossing, General Pibern, who commanded CCA, was put in command. He was given all three of the Armored Infantry Battalions as his command and told to take them over the river and assault boats and seize the high ground on the other side. My name is John Drew Devereaux. I was a company commander in the 10th Armored Division during World War II. I think the river crossing we did on the way to Triere was one of the things that I would least like to have to do again. We did it at night and it's always more difficult to do something at night and it's a lot more scary. We carried these assault boats for what seemed like about five miles through the woods. When we came out of the woods at the edge of the river, we had to go across a lot of open field and over some fences. While we were going through there, it was pitch dark, of course, and all of a sudden we walked into not only a minefield, but the whole place was booby trapped. Just as the first mine or first booby trap went off, of course they began to let us have it with mortar and artillery fire and people screaming medic, you didn't know whether you should put your foot down again in front of you for fear you were going to step on something, whether you should just stay right where you were or what to do. It was about as scary a thing as I've ever been through. We finally got to the river cross without too much trouble. I tell you what, it was a great feeling to get on the other side and get on solid ground again. We got up to the top of the hill and down on the valley below. There we met again with General Pibern. There was not too much action at this time and we saw many prisoners coming to the rear. However, there were a number of pill boxes which had to be cleared out. General Pibern gave us our choice of when to clear these pill boxes out. Some of them did not clean them out in the daytime, I mean some of our Italians. In my case I decided to clear these pill boxes at night. We'd had a lot of training back in the States on how to take a pill box. So when it came our turn to do this, we were fairly well prepared for it. We crawled through about 1,500 yards of open field, got down into an anti-tank ditch and then the approved routine was that your bazooka man was to fire his bazooka at the observation slit of the pill box while a couple of the others went around the back and threw grenades in. Well, I turned to the bazooka man and I said, now you fire at the observation slits and he said, OK. And he turned around to the rocket man, say give me the rocket for the bazooka, only to find that the rocket man was lying on his stomach about 1,500 yards way back where we'd started. So there was nothing much to do there, but take a couple of N1s and pop away at the slit while the platoon sergeant myself went around the back. It was rather like the movies. The platoon sergeant would open the door, back door of the pill box and I'd take a grenade and throw it in and then we'd heat slam the door and we'd both lean on it, make sure nobody got out. We did this pretty well all afternoon and I think about the end of the afternoon we had maybe 100, 150 prisoners. By February 21st, 48 hours after the attack on the Zara-Moselle Triangle began the Tigers of the 10th together with elements of the 94th Infantry Division had overrun 85 square miles of German real estate and captured 23 towns, thus setting the stage for the subsequent capture of Priere. Well the 10th Army was then given the mission of taking the town of Trier. So we were sent down the road and were told to capture Trier and we had to go through a town called Zerf. My battalion get up near the town of Zerf. We found that the Germans, which we had knocked out from the area around the river had retreated just behind Zerf and they were zeroing in on Zerf with heavy artillery. I had gone past Zerf in the morning and found that the town was boiling with artillery. Didn't see how anybody could live there. I moved on up to a battalion that had lost its whole headquarters. Some sick, some absent, one killed. And my executive and I took over this battalion. It was raining, it was dark, they were shelling. At the same time General Patton was raising cane with General Walker, the Corps Commander who was raising cane with General Morris, the Division Commander who was raising the bevel with me to get into Trier. As I said, practically all the division was around Trier except my little force that was just being relieved at Zerf. Colonel Richardson, Lieutenant Colonel Richardson was commanding. I heard that he was to be relieved by the Rangers in the afternoon. Get in to Zerf, they were yelling over the radio. I sat in the headquarters that evening with Roberts, my exec, and we used an old map and decided that we'd play this as a map problem. We wanted to go around to the right, but we found out that it was dark, we didn't have guides, it was loaded with mines. We knew the big minefields up there were afraid to do that. The only road was directly into Trier. But you couldn't hold a hand up in the afternoon on this road because the Germans were on the ridges on each side so we couldn't figure on this road. But all at once it occurred to us that it was black and the Germans couldn't see anybody on the road, so we decided we'd send him down this road. Richardson got loose, came into the headquarters. We told him he was going in. He brought his young officers in, briefed them. I remember he told one outfit, I'll take the bridge to the right, you take the bridge to the left. It happened that we knew that these two bridges were still intact from airplane photographs that day. To make a long story short, Richardson got into town and that one, his bridge, blew up in front of his face. He hadn't heard a boom for the other bridge so he rambled down in his tank to the other bridge, found out that it hadn't blown, that there was a little shooting from this end of the bridge but it was sporadic and wasn't organized. He organized a platoon, sent it across the bridge. He had his tank and some other stuff fire on the other end of the bridge and fortunately they got across. They captured the man, the officer who was supposed to blow it. He directed them to ten or eleven other officers who would have told on him if they'd got away. They were in the back of a cafe so he got the whole group. My name's John Winter, I was a tank platoon sergeant of the 10th Armored Division during World War II. After Truyere was taken, we shoved on to Whitlich, Germany. After taking Whitlich, we pulled back to Truyere and we promised a rest. But my particular platoon and a platoon of infantry was given the mission of on the opposite side of the mountain from Truyere to try to take a bridge intact. It started out under the cover of darkness. As we approached in this valley where the bridge was supposed to be, the Germans were set with 88s and infantry waiting for us. That's where I lost my tank. When it was hit, it immediately burnt and I bailed out the top of it, dived out the top, and run into a large dairy barn for cover. On the 16th of March, the entire division was pushing toward the Rhine. To get there, the Tigers dealt with endless enemy pillboxes, dragging steams, roadblocks, and worst of all, about 100,000 well-trained German coupes. I'm Colonel Curtis L. Hankins. I was a battalion commander of the 61st Armored Infantry Battalion in the 10th Armored Division. One event that I remember on the way to the Rhine concerns the destruction of a German supply column. This took place between Kaiserslautern and Frankenstein. With the aid of the Air Force, who had bottled up from some German vehicles earlier in the day, we were able to destroy an entire German Army's supply train. This was recognized as one of the greatest concentrations of enemy equipment of the entire war, and General Patton came down to take a look at this and said it was the most fantastic destruction of an enemy column that he had seen during the entire war. The Tigers reached the Rhine Valley in a little over a week, capturing in their drive 8,000 prisoners and cutting off the escape route for more than 50,000 Germans. On the 28th of March, they crossed the Rhine at worms for the final cleanup that was to take them clear to the Austrian and Bavarian Alps. Three days later, after heavy fighting, the division rolled through the historic University City of Heidelberg. But the Tigers were getting tired. After six months of continuous, vicious fighting, the division was now 50% below strength and the men were showing the inevitable signs of wear and tear. This was a dangerous situation, where although the Germans were definitely on the run, they still packed a murderous wallet. On the 3rd of April, 1945, the 10th Armored Division and the battalion of the 100th Infantry Division received orders to seize the town of Heilbronn and continue east. I am Lieutenant Colonel George Hamill. During World War II, I was a company commander in the 21st Tank Battalion 10th Armored Division. The division had been ordered to seize the city of Heilbronn, a key communications center. And our battalion, Task Force Rally, had driven up to the very gates of Heilbronn only to find that the bridges across the Necker River were blown in our faces. The division was then ordered to attempt to cut off Heilbronn from the rear. Task Force Hankins crossed the Necker River north of Heilbronn and made a wide sweep into Krailsheim. They ran in the very little opposition. We were ordered to follow Task Force Hankins, pass through at Krailsheim, and continue on towards Schwabisch Hall. We successfully passed through Krailsheim and went through the next large town called Ilschofen and penetrated deeper into German territory when we came to some blown bridges and were completely stopped. By this time, the Germans had reacted to this penetration into their rear. The German reaction was violent. It was his greatest display of strength since the Ardennes offensive. By the 8th of April, Krailsheim had been cut off by the Germans. Suppliers were running low for the Americans in the city and it looked as though another Bastogne might be in the making. But the Air Force came through again. In the next two days, transport from the 9th Tube Carrier Command brought the necessary gasoline, rations and ammunition to sustain the Tigers. Despite their ability to beat off one enemy attack after another, the Tigers could not maintain supremacy of Krailsheim without reinforcements, and reinforcements were not available. As a result, the mission was changed and the division ordered to withdraw from the area. We all resented, I think, the fact that we had to give up this terrain that we'd taken in hell. Certainly, we were not driven out. We withdrew. It was a sad disappointment indeed to receive orders to withdraw from Krailsheim, especially after it appeared that the overall objective had been won. From the 11th to the 22nd of April, the combat fatigue Tigers streaked south. By the 23rd of April, they stood poised along the north bank of the Danube River, southeast of Ulm, where the 44th Infantry Division was already fighting and where intelligence reports indicated the First German Army planned to make a desperate stand. The city fell in a matter of a few hours. As the lead vehicle passed the outskirts of the town at 8.54 in the morning, I immediately sent the message back to combat command, and a few minutes later, the Paris Radio announced that the American forces had captured Ulm, when in fact we were still fighting there. With the capitulation of Ulm, the 10th's three combat commands raced forward with violent defectives. Town after town was gobbled up in the Great Rush. Our division was ordered to attack down through the Bavarian Alps to the Brenna Pass to link up with American troops coming north through Italy. The Germans had threatened to make a last ditch stand in what was referred to as the German National Readout Area. There had been a lot of talk about undercover activities by what the Germans referred to as werewolves. As we approached the Alps, we could see them from a distance, and it certainly made all of us pause, wonder what awaited us. They were very beautiful, great snow-capped peaks, but for an armored unit, it was also rather forbidding. Actually, when we get into the Alps, we found very little resistance, and our battalion went down in the Garmisch-Partenkirchen through the town of Murnau. Another column went down through Oberammergau. While clearing the roadblock at Oberammergau, the scene of the world-famous passion play, an international Red Cross representative came up to the other side of the roadblock. He had with him a German captain. They wanted to negotiate for the city of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the scene of the 1936 Winter Olympics. They wanted us to agree not to shoot up the town. After considerable discussion, we agreed not to shoot unless the Germans fired at us first. When we arrived at the town, the international Red Cross representative escorted us through the town, and the Germans lived up to their bargain and didn't begin firing until we were well beyond the city. This ended the war for my task force, and I can't think of a better place to end it than Garmisch-Partenkirchen. I'm Colonel Thomas Chamberlain. During World War II, I commanded the 11th Tank Battalion of the 10th Armored Division. If the staff of the division had spent two years trying to pick out the best place to end the war, they could not have done as well as we actually did. There, there were big hotels on the lakes where the men could go swimming and boating. Of course, plenty of skiing and ice skating. In addition, there were horses available so that they could go horseback riding. It made a fine place to relax after the war. The war was over and won. The Tigers of the 10th had met and hunted the best of the enemy. They had covered 600 bitter bloody miles from Sherbourg to the Brenner Pass, fighting almost every inch of the way. They had taken 56,000 prisoners and 600 cities and towns. Yes, the war was over and won. The fighting was finished.