 This is Lorne Green. In World War II, 61 U.S. Army divisions were locked in mortal combat with the enemy in the European Theater of Operations. This film is about one of those divisions, the 10th Armored. The 10th Armored Division was activated at Fort Benning, Georgia on the 15th of July, 1942. From the very beginning, it was known as a hot outfit. 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 were his bywords. No man had more pride in his troops and no general was more revered by his men. I'm John Drew Devereaux. I was a company commander in the 10th Armored Division during World War II. 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 and we thought they looked like slobs. He had a kind of thing that he liked to do about the salute. When you gave a salute in the 10th 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 the only outfit in the whole army that knew how to salute properly. In July 1944, a new leader assumed command of the division following General Newgarden's death. I am Lieutenant General William H. Morris Jr. U.S. Army retired. I was commanding general of the 10th Armored 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 them. Two days later on the 16th of September, Hitler, meeting 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 history. The division arrived in Battletown Sherbourg 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 3rd Army. General Patton came to visit our division and talked to the officers and non-commissioned officers, as he did with all the divisions that were assigned 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 II, I command the 11th Tank Battalion of the 10th 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 Chalon-sur-Marne. His first words were that the reason he called us into this particular churchyard in this particular town were that this was the place that he had received his first orders to go into combat during World War I, and he wanted to use this particular spot to start us off. We moved up all afternoon, past for done, and in the vicinity of Metz, and then that evening, in 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 relieved the 90th Division. I'm William R. Deserbury. I was a battalion commander, a major in the 10th Armored Division in World War II. The 10th Armored Division was a very well-trained division. Its first combat was against Metz. Metz was, you might call it a defensive sector as far as the 10th was 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 the enemy. I'm William Lyndon Roberts, Brigadier General, U.S. Army Retired. I was combat commander of CCB 10th Armored Division in World War II. I'm Colonel Curtis L. Hankins. I was a battalion commander of the 61st Armored Infantry Battalion in the 10th 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 rounds were going to land, this would save a lot of wear and tear on your knees and elbows. You'd 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 in a defensive position was very good for the battalion. It gave us time to gather our thoughts, practice some of the things we'd been learning in the States, get our communications working, having the reconnaissance platoon worked with the free French, practice patrolling, all these things it's so necessary for a battalion to do. I remember my first day in combat. We felt very safe in a tank. By doing this first day after I seen the first tank hit by 88 and burned, we began 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 destroy the enemy. And we did a fairly good job that first day. My name's John Winner. I was a tank platoon sergeant, 10th Armored Division doing World War II. After fighting for about three weeks around Metz, we moved north to the vicinity of the town of Theonville to participate in the 3rd Army offensive designed to capture Metz. 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 Metz. The mission of the 10th was to make a deep penetration into the enemy's lines. Once it had crashed through the German defense, the left column, Combat Command B, was to advance east and seize a bridgehead over the Tsar River near Mritzig. The right column, Combat Command A, was to take the division objective including Theonville, which was the center of arterial highway and railroad traffic running northeast of Metz. The enemy blocked the way and fought savagely. 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 counterattacks, captured 2,000 prisoners and destroyed great quantities of material. But the price was high. On December 7th, 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 Art Dens with 3 armies. The 6th Panzer Army, led by the butcher from Bavaria, Sepp Dietrich. The 5th Panzer Army, led by Baron Hassof von Montepo. And the 7th Army, led by General Brandenberger. They would cross the Meurs River on the second day between Liege and Namur, bypass Brussels and reach the great Port of Antwerp on the 7th 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. On the eve of December 15th, one quarter of a million Germans stood poised on the line of departure, prepared to annihilate the enemy. At 5.30 a.m., the following morning, the flame erupted along an 85-mile front. Hitler's great drive to Antwerp had begun. On December 16th, 1944, about 6 p.m., I received a telephone call from General Walker, the 20th Corps, informing me that I was going to be transferred with the entire division to the First Army, and it placed under the 8th Corps that they had been attacked by the Germans in the vicinity of Luxembourg. I immediately dispatched my Chief of Staff to Bastogne, the headquarters of the 8th 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 cornering area just west of Luxembourg. When the Battle of the Bulls 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 west to Arlon and then on to north to Bastogne. I preceded my outfit in the Bastogne and got in the Bastogne about four o'clock in the afternoon and found General Middleton. General Middleton asked me how my outfit fought and how many pieces my outfit would fight in. I told him three. He said, all right, send one to Noville, which is six or seven kilometers north, one east to Longville and one southeast to Brault. A little side light here. I had held up the march of our outfit to get O'Hara in front because O'Hara had not been in the fighting heavily down around the Merzig area. So we got O'Hara in front and I sent him out to Brault. I took my team down this road toward Wilts and we stopped for the night opposite the town of Wharton. 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 received our orders at five 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 C.P. It was a very brief meeting and Colonel Robert C.P. told me that O'Hara had been sent out to the east of the town and was in a defensive position and that Cherry was moving out slightly to the northeast of the town. And as soon as my column arrived, I was to keep moving and move to the north of the town to a little place called Novel. If there are any Germans in Novel, I was to knock them out of the town and to occupy it. If there were no Germans, I was to occupy Novel going no further north because this would be the limit on the range of the 10th 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 in Bastogne. Team Des Obris was at Novel. Team Cherry at Longvillie. Team O'Hara at Warden. The total strength of the three defending units was about 75 tanks and 2,800 officers and men. Battering at the gates of Bastogne were the advance elements of General Montefels 5th Panzer Army and General Brandenburgers 7th Army. Approximately 300 tanks and 50,000 men whose mission, in addition to taking Sandvit and Vilt, was to take Bastogne and to take it fast. It was very important to capture Bastogne fast. It was the most important road junction in the southern area of the Arden Combat Section. And in the event, General Eisenhower's reserve forces, which we suspected were near France, arrived to attack, they would have to pass Bastogne. I am Hassell Eckhardt von Montefels, former General of the Panzer Troops and Commander-in-Chief of the 5th Panzer Army. We completed establishing the defenses of Novel 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 hit us with small units from the east. Cherry, who's not here, went out to Longvillay, came back at midnight and found me asleep. He asked that he be allowed to sit on a road out east of Magaret, short of Longvillay, 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. Cherry never got back to his command. In the meantime, some of the Panzer Lair Division had cut in behind his outfit at Magaret, and he never joined. However, his headquarters went into the little Nephi Chateau. At Nephi Chateau, Cherry had a tank or two, and a few machine guns, and 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 he was being burnt out. Cherry lined up his vehicles to go out. He was to go out last in a jeep. He went outside. He got two Tommy guns. He emptied one Tommy gun to the right, got the other, up to the left, planned in his jeep and pulled out. The driver was hit, the jeep was hit, the medico in the back was hit. Cherry 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 10 o'clock in the morning, they came down from the Wilts road and shot up the artillery observer's tank and one or two other tanks. We fought on all morning long and part of the afternoon, staying in the same position there, keeping the Germans at bay. At first, the defensive bastion rested with three units of the 10th Army Division, Task Force DeSobri 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 Maurelon near the city of Rance in France. We were recuperating from the Holland Airborne operation where we had suffered about 30% 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 Verbamon. 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 aid to camp and my operations officer. As I drove north, I reached the crossroad just a couple of miles west of the town of Bastogne. I knew that 8th Corps headquarters was located in that town, so I decided to drive over to that Corps 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 101st Airborne Division had been changed and that the division would come to Bastogne rather than to go to Verbamon. I also met there Colonel Roberts, who was a commander of Combat Command B of the 10th Armored Division who were already on the scene and already in the fighting. Desbury was attacked about five or six times that first day. He will describe that. During the morning of that first day, one battalion under Colonel Prade of the 101st Airborne joined him. They, as soon as Colonel Prade joined, they decided to attack. Apparently at the same time the Germans decided to attack. At 1400 hours, the paratroopers and our tanks and our armed infantry 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 withdrew back behind the ridge. Our paratroopers on the northwest of the town actually gained the ridge. The tanks, the armed 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 withdrew the paratroopers from the northeast back into the town of Noville. Desbury was hit badly and Colonel Prade was killed that evening. And I didn't know Desbury was hurt for 24 hours. He was later captured when the hospital was captured. For the next three days and nights, the defenders of Bastogne slugged it out with a numerically superior enemy. Then on the 22nd of December, 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 Bastogne garrison. If the Americans did not comply within two hours, Bastogne would be completely destroyed and its defenders annihilated. General McAuliffe's one word answer, nuts, reverberated around the world.