After the liberation of Paris the Division moved eastwards across France. Progress seemed slow for our highly mobile Division. We were part of the American 14th Army whose infantry divisions did not move as fast as the armoured sections.
The Germans had surrendered Paris on 25 August 1944. On 12 September the French fought and won what some historians believe to be one of the most decisive battles of the war in the west. That may be an exaggeration but it was a battle that destroyed a myth and created a pattern that was to establish the reputation of the Division, which it retained until the end of the war. The engagement is known as the Battle of Dompaire, after a small town nearby. It is largely unknown in Britain because no British troops took part. The Americans recognised its importance immediately and awarded the Presidential Unit Citation to the Division, which means that every member of the Division present at the battle is entitled to wear the rather insignificant medal that goes with the award.
The battle is very clear in my memory because I had a ring-side seat at the destruction of two of Germany's most formidable and up-to-date tanks.
Ever since leaving Paris there had been persistent rumours that an even more formidable tank than the Panther was being produced. The Panther had a gun that could penetrate the main armour of a Sherman whilst its main frontal armour was impervious to the Sherman's rather inadequate weapon. The rumour was that the Germans had modified their eighty eight millimetre gun so that it could be mounted on a Panther. To understand the significance of this requires some knowledge of the extraordinary position that the German eighty eight millimetre gun held among all the armies in Western Europe during World War II. It was originally designed as an anti-aircraft gun and in that role was better than anything the Allies had. However, when it was adapted as a general purpose field gun it became the most effective and feared anti-tank weapon. Its power of penetration was very great indeed and the German gunners were adept at moving it about and setting it up for action. The suggestion that we were shortly to meet the Panther tank fitted with such a gun caused even the most confident and fearless tank crews to be a little worried.
The evening before the battle our air surveillance had indicated some activity in the heavily wooded area ahead of the Division's position. The small tank section to which I was attached consisted of four Shermans only, two being out of commission. We were under the command of the philosopher Sergeant-Chef who has been mentioned before. We moved into a very small village consisting of three farmhouses round the village square, or green, which was, in fact, just an enormous communal muck-heap. Each house had a very large barn alongside with tall doors designed to take a fully loaded hay-wain.
One of the farmers opened his barn doors and I put my ambulance at the far end where there was another great door. This left room for two Shermans and the other two were positioned at each end of the small road that ran through the village. I saw the farmer's wife taking away our largest stewpan that seemed a very good sign but, in spite of the prospect of a good supper in comfortable conditions there was a general air of unease. One of the tank drivers, on seeing the Chef going off for the third time to check on his guard tanks, remarked that he must know something we did not.
We did have a magnificent stew for supper and I slept well, even though I heard the Chef off again on his rounds during the night. I was up before the French, as was usual, and went out through the wicket gate in the rear doors of the barn. Outside I was surprised to find that the ground fell away very steeply to the floor of a valley.
There was thick woodland to the right but the valley floor and the slope opposite was grassland. The horizon opposite was little more than a quarter of a mile away and stretched round to the left to enclose the valley back to the end of the village. I was sitting on a convenient rock, listening to the birds waking up, when I heard the unmistakable sound of tank engines starting up - and they were not Shermans. I dashed back indoors but the two tanks were already moving out. Outside I sat on my rock again, just in time to see two German tanks emerge from the woodland and begin to creep up the valley. They were the new Panthers, the guns of which seemed to be half as long again as those I had seen before. Both tanks were traversing their guns from side to side in a very menacing way.
When the enemy tanks reached a position opposite but below my rock one of our Shermans popped up over the far side of the valley, fired one shot and was gone below the horizon. It was brilliant shooting but it did not penetrate. I heard the shell ricochet away over my head. Both German tanks were swinging their guns to meet this menace but the draw-back to the new gun was apparent. Its increased weight made it very slow to bring to bear. Meanwhile another Sherman rose above the horizon ahead, fired a shot and disappeared. By the time the Germans brought their guns to bear it was far too late, although both fired.
Variations of this process continued until one of the Shermans hit the track of one of the Panthers which started to veer about, evidently no longer steerable. Although I could not see our Shermans I was told that two of them immediately unshipped their turret machine-gun. One crewman from each of two of the tanks then took his gun to fire over the ridge to keep the German crews from emerging to carry out repairs.
The Germans tried several times to get to work with the undamaged tank manoeuvring about, trying to cover its colleagues. They suffered several casualties but the odds were against them. The Panthers were too slow, both over the ground and in traversing their turrets.
In the meantime we had been in touch with the American Air Force. This was a drill that had recently been perfected with improved communications between ground observers and pilots. About twenty minutes after receiving our request two rocket-firing Thunderbolts appeared. After one pass over the valley to assess the situation, each plane made one attack and each scored a bulls-eye. Both enemy tanks lay motionless with their turrets blown off. The surviving crews escaped. They had leapt out of their hatches as soon as the planes appeared and had run for the woods. Our machine-gunners did not fire at them, knowing they would be captured very soon and observing the brother feeling that exists between opposing tank-men.
Now that the small part of the battle that I had seen was over, my real work began. We collected four of the Germans who had been wounded by machine gun fire while trying to mend their tank-track. Later, when we moved away from the scene of our engagement, we passed signs of many similar small battles all adding up to the victory the Division had achieved.