My mother was contacted by my fathers Tank Commander who was trying to get a reunion together years ago. My father had already passed away. We went to meet him. Among the things he gave us was a copy of the following letter. My father was the driver of the tank that Mr. Moot was in. I posted an excerpt of the letter to a bulletin board for the 10th Armored and received a request for the whole letter by the sysop who said he considered this to be a historical document.
10th Armored Division, 420th AFA, Team Cherry. Bastonge. Battle of the Bulge.
Part 1 due to length constraints.
October 1981:
My name is Carl W. Moot, Jr.
At the time of this army battle in December 1944 I was a Second lieutenant —ASN — 0—529853 in the United States Army, assigned to Headquarters Battery of the420th Armored Field Artillery Battalion of the Tenth Armored Division I was assigned the duty of Forward Observer (one of 3) for the 420th AFA Bn. I operated out of a Medium Tank (Sherman).
A recent visit with Gen. Crittenburger (Ret.) and a vacation tour of the 10th Armored Division battle area of World War II have prompted me to write down some of my battlefield experiences before my memory dims any further.
I regret that I did not do this years ago since I have forgotten the names of many of my comrads involved in this action.
The battle at Longvilly, prior to the encirclement of Bastogne, was so intense that much of it is still quite clear in my memory. The following is my recollection of the events of that battle:
December 16. 1914
No battle action in immediate area. The 420th AFA Bn. was bivouacked in the small town of Wehingen, between the Saur & Mosel rivers. The line between the German and American Armies was the Saur River. The three forward Observers were taking turns each night, watching across the Saur River from a prominent hilltop. Our mission was to report any gun positions, German movement, etc., that we could see, and to direct the artillery on any worthy targets that we could observe. I was assigned as the all night Observer on this night and proceeded to the hilltop shortly
after dark. Nothing unusual happened all night, just the normal gunfire sounds and muzzle flashes. I recall hearing German vehicle engines running as if trucks, tanks or other vehicles might be moving across the river, however those noises were common, had been heard for several days, so no significance attached to them.
December 17. 1944
I returned to the 420th Bn. Hq. shortly after dawn. Battalion Commander Colonel Brown, most of the Bn Staff and a number of other officers were there. Col. Brown said that the 420th was to move out as soon as possible, the Division was moving to the vicinity of Luxembourg. There had apparently been a German break thru northeast of Luxembourg and the Division was to help stop it as soon as possible. There was a flurry of activity preparing to move out and as I recall the Battalion rolled out onto the road within an hour or two. We preceded toward Luxembourg, I think we traveled 70 or 80 miles and ended up in a small town in Luxembourg about dark. I was assigned as Bn. Duty Officer and spent the night sorting maps and making up sets of maps for each Observer, Btry Co, etc.
December 18 1944
We moved out that morning toward the northeast. I remember the Luxembourg people cheering and
waving as we passed thru some of the small towns. The Tenth Armored Division was formed into
Combat Commands that day, however I cannot remember how the Combat Teams were formed.
Normally I would have reported to a Tank Bn. Hq. for instructions and assignment to a Combat
Team. Everyone was moving down the road.
However, along toward dark I had joined the Third Tank Battalion, Task Force Cherry and Team
Haiduk and was moving along with the point platoon of tanks. I cannot remember the lieutenant's
name who was in command of this platoon of tanks. There were 4 or 5 tanks in the platoon, plus my
tank, and I was riding in the middle of the column, 3rd or 4th tank from the point, or front tank.
There was some Armored Infantry just behind us, but I cannot recall what unit they were from. I had
worked with the 3rd. Tank Bn. before, Col.Cherry and Lt. Haiduk, so I was pleased to be with them
again, rather than someone I did not know.
It was after dark when we moved up near the German position. We went thru the little town of
Margaret and everything was quiet. At Longvilly we stopped just short of town and pulled off to the
side of the road and waited. It is my recollection that we were planning to jump off from Longvilly
the next morning. We had always been on the offensive, and I think everyone on the team expected
us to take the offensive next morning and start pushing the Germans back.
Shortly after stopping , that night, I started looking for a map of the area. I had a complete set of
maps that I had put together the night before. After an hour or two of pouring over these maps (by
flashlight inside the closed tank), I knew that I did not have a map of the locality that we were now in. However, the boundry of one map was just short of the town of Longvilly. I called the 420th Bn. Hq. by radio and informed them of my map problem. They already knew about it and told me that the Bn. had gotten the wrong maps, however they had gotten some maps of the area and would send me a set by jeep as soon as possible.
Later that night some vehicles of the 9th Armored Division began moving back past our tanks, going
toward Margaret. Also, later I discovered that there was a battery or more of artillery M-7's of the
9th Armored Division just to our left flank, over a small rise. They were not firing, everything was
fairly quiet in the immediate vicinity.
Much later in the night (2 or 3 A.M.) I called the 420th Bn. Hq. again and asked about the maps,
since I had not received any. I was informed that they could not or would not bring them to me and
that I would have to get by with what maps I had. This upset and angered me because I needed map
coordinates to initiate an artillery mission. A little later I was monitoring the 3rd. Tank Bn. radio
channel and learned that the town of Margaret, behind us, had been invaded by the Germans after
we went through, and there was a fight going on to re-open the road thru it. I then understood why
the Bn. Hq. could not send any maps to me. I drew in some coordinate lines past the edge of the one
map, and located the approximate location for Longvilly on them, so that I would have some kind of
approximate coordinates to call in if and when I wanted to adjust some artillery fire.
December 19. 1944
Just before dawn the flow of vehicles and soldiers coming back past our tanks increased
continuously. There were all kinds of vehicles from jeeps and R & R cars to halftracks and medium
tanks. After daylight this column toward the rear was jammed up, bumper to bumper and moving
very slowly. Some of the soldiers going by asked us what we were going to do and we told them we
had come up to help stop the Germans. They said we were crazy, that there were thousands of
Germans just behind them. Most of them appeared to be badly demoralized and just trying to get
away from the fighting. Shortly after dawn the fighting started, and we began receiving mortar,
and/or artillery fire, along with some rocket fire and a lot of small arms fire. Soon there was an anti-tank gun or two firing into the jam of vehicle a from a direction about northeast of Longvilly. However I could not see these anti-tank weapons and I could not determine their position close enough to direct any artillery fire on them. I think it was purely luck that our tank platoon had stopped and pulled off to the left side of the road, the night before, in a place where the anti-tank guns could not fire on any of us. They were , however, knocking out vehicles on the road about 50 yards in each direction from our nearest tanks. A medium tank pulled off the road opposite our tanks, toward the east, (away from us) and was knocked out after he got stuck about 100 ft. from the road. There were a lot of men on foot about this time, heading toward the rear, many of them from vehicles that had been knocked out or abandoned in the traffic jam. Some of the M-7s from the artillery outfit on our left flank started trying to move out and back down the road. I don't think any of them got out, but it is possible some of them made it.
Shortly after the anti-tank firing started, which was fairly early in the morning, German infantrymen
could be seen coming over a hilltop to our Northeast, Moving toward Longvilly. They came over the
hilltop standing up in full view. One of them, apparently an officer, was standing on the highest
point and looking all around. This was my first artillery target. The other tanks with me began firing
on the hilltop, mostly machine gun fire, with a few high explosive rounds from their big guns. Using
my improvised map I finally got an artillery round that I could identify, adjusted it on the hilltop,
and called for a battalion barrage. This was fairly early in the morning and I got the entire 420th Bn.
(18 guns). The Artillery fire covered the hilltop, and this stopped all visible movement over the hill.
I did not see any Germans on it again. From our position, just southeast of the town of Longvilly, we
could not see the buildings in town below a level of 6 to 8 feet above the street level, but
we could see the upper parts of nearly all the buildings in town.