Michael Collins - The tigers of Bastogne : voices of the 10th Armored Division in the Battle of the Bulge

Published in the United States of America and Great Britain in 2013 by
CASEMATE PUBLISHERS
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Copyright 2013 Michael Collins and Martin King

ISBN 978-1-61200-181-4
Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-61200-182-1

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CONTENTS

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to all veterans of war, particularly those of the 10th Armored Division in World War II and notably John A. Collins Jr., who fought with Team Cherry as a member of Company F, 90th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron (Mechanized), in and around Bastogne during that bitter winter of 194445. He was author Michael Collinss grandfather and the inspiration for this book.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to my co-author and friend Martin King and his family for their support during the writing of this book and for their hospitality during my trips over to Belgium. Thank you to my fiance Lisa for her love, support, and understanding. Thank you to my parents, my brothers, sisters-in-law, nieces and nephew, and my immediate and extended family and friends for their love and support. My thanks to Howard Liddic, President of 10th Armored Division Western Chapter, for his help with photographs, General Orders, and other research, Phil Burge, Secretary/Treasurer of the chapter, and Craig Charlton, webmaster for the organizations internet site, for their help and support. Thanks to Klaus Feindler for his help with 20th Armored Infantry Battalions history and contacts, Christian Pettinger for his help with photographs and other 10th Armored Division history, and Daniel Jordao and Marc Weber for keeping the 10th Armored Division history alive in Luxembourg. Thanks to Norman Faye for allowing use of his fathers vast collection of photographs, Donald Naftulin for photographs and information about his father, Gail Ryerson Parsons for photographs of her father and other documents, and Jan Newsome for information and photograph of her uncle Barry Browne. Thanks to John Vallely of Siena College for his support, humor, and research help. And I feel a deep debt of gratitude to all the 10th Armored Division veterans who allowed us to tell their story, and to their family members for allowing us to keep their memory alive in this book. I also would like to remember those veterans that graciously supported our efforts who passed away before the publication of this book: Richard Barrett and Thaddeus Krasnoborski, both soldiers who served with the 420th Armored Field Artillery Battalion at Bastogne.

MICHAEL COLLINS

Many thanks to my co-author and friend Michael Collins and his tremendous family for their continued enthusiasm and support for this work. Thank you most graciously to Steven Smith, Tara Lichterman, our editor Richard Kane, and the expert team at Casemate without whom none of this would be possible. Thanks also to my beloved clan: my wife Freya, my children Allycia and Ashley Rae, my brother Graham and my sisters Sandra and Debbie, my brother-in-law Marc, nephews Ben and Jake and my niece Rachel, my cousins Alan and Merle. Not forgetting clan Roberts: Julie, Marc, Samantha, and serving naval officer Jonathon. Posthumous thanks to my late Grandfather Private Joseph Henry Pumford who fought at Passchendaele in World War One and provided invaluable inspiration for all my early interest in Military History. He was promoted to corporal but then demoted for punching out a sergeant. He was unique in managing to terrify both sides in that conflict.

Special thanks to my dear friends Lt. Col. Jason Nulton and his wife Missy, Comdr. Jeffrey Barta, and Gen. Graham Hollands for their wonderful support and encouragement. Grateful thanks to our friend Mr. Roland Gaul at the National Military Museum in Diekirch for providing us with some excellent photographs for this volume. Top forensics expert Dr. Carlton Joyce provided invaluable information about the weaponry used in the siege. Thank you to the personnel at USAF Fort Dix and USAF Spangdahlem for their tremendous encouragement. Thank you also to Mrs. Carol Fish and the staff at the United States Military Academy at West Point for their ongoing support. Also, many thanks to the staff at the Pentagon. My thanks to Mrs Laura Passuello at Speciality Tours for her support and for helping to preserve history along with the Capital Area WWII Roundtable and the Hershey-Derry Township Historical Society Thank you also to the team at the Heintz Barracks Nuts Cave in Bastogne for allowing us unique access to everything we needed there.

Thank you to my friend and brother Battle of the Bulge veteran Mr. John R. Schaffner for his limitless wisdom and wicked sense of humor and Jeff Prior, who provided his fathers diaries for the book. Thanks to the Battle of the Bulge Veterans Association for their excellent work and support. Not forgetting the Belgian connection, Dirk de Groof, Kristine, Rudy Aerts and Adeline who always kept our glasses filled and our appetites satiated.

Last but not least, a deep and heartfelt thank you to all the wonderful veterans who allowed us to interview and film them for this volume. They are the reason we do this. They are all national treasures and their stories need to be read.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young.
Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

(The Ode of Remembrance is an ode taken from Laurence Binyons poem, For the Fallen, which was first published in The Times in September 1914)

MARTIN KING

PREFACE

It seems regrettable to me that Combat command B of the 10th Armored division didnt get the credit it deserved at the battle of Bastogne. All 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 into Bastogne if it had not been for the defensive fighting of the three elements of the 10th Armored division who were first into Bastogne and protected the town from invasion by the Germans.General Anthony McAuliffe, Acting Commander, 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne

M any people assume that the 101st Airborne Division was solely responsible for the defense of Bastogne and the surrounding area. Granted, the Screaming Eagles did supply the greatest number of soldiers and played the starring role in the drama that unfolded around this critical crossroads town, but the limelight enjoyed by the American paratroopers does detract from the attention that should be paid to the remarkable accomplishments of the tankers of the 10th Armored Division who preceded the 101st Airbornes arrival at Bastogne. Terrify and Destroy was the motto of the 10th Armored Division, which was also known as the Tiger division.