The 20th AD Trained Others to Fight, Then Joined the Battle in Europe

The 20th Armored Division, formed at Camp Campbell, Ky., in March 1943, trained armor replacements for a full year before preparing for its own deployment to the European Theater. The division supplied more than twice its original strength to replace casualties suffered by the other armored divisions fighting in Europe. Introduced late in the war, the 20th AD still managed to get in on the fight, including a hellacious, bitter struggle at an SS training camp in the Munich suburbs, as the Reich crumbled and fanatical Nazis shot their fmal bolts. Reaching Salzburg, Austria, as the war ended in Europe, the 20th redeployed to the U. S., and were poised at a camp in California for the invasion of Japan as the atomic bomb brought the second and fmal front of the war to a sudden close before the division’s services were needed. The troopers of the 20th had always considered themselves the luckiest division in the Army, and they were, in terms of casualties. 20th AD WWll Commanders MG Stephen G. Henry March 1943 - October 1943 MG Roderick R. Allen Nov 1943 - September 1944 MG Orlando Ward October 1944 - August 1945 MG John W. Leonard August 1945 - April 1946 32 They lost only 46 killed in action and 134 wounded, compared to KIA/WIA totals of 1,810 and 6,963 for the 3d Armored Division and 1,143 and 4,551 for the 4th AD. Of coum, they were in contact a much shorter time, arriving in Europe only about 80 days before the war ended, and preparing to go to the front part of that time. Many of the tank veterans that the 20th troopers met in E m p had once been themselves members of the 20th when they trained stateside. They joked at the new arrivals, “Well, the 20th has finally arrived, so I guess the war must be close to over.” Not quite. The bitter fighting before Munich, and the horrors of the Dachau concentration camp still lay ahead. The division had quite a reputation at Camp Campbell, with a high degree of esprit, buoyed by a strong sports program. The 20th AD’S baseball team was of semi-pro quality, and its basketball team was good enough to get invited to the world professional championships at Chicago in

1944. A 20th AD engineer, a Native American named Chief Blackcloud, held the Army record for speed in the 25-mile march with full pack. The 20th was the smartest division in the Army, with an average IQ of 110. They tnined hard, too - one Campbell joke was that any man who requested ovems assignment to get out of the 20th AD was a coward. But in the Fall of 1944, anew sense of purpose inspired the men of the 20th. They were to train up for their own deployment, with an emphasis on urban fighting. The Army rightly predicted that the end of the war was in sight, and fully expected the Nazis to resist to the end, fighting block by block, cellar by cellar. This prediction wasn’t far wrong. So, as the 20th boarded trains to leave Fort Campbell in the bitter winter of 194445, they left behind a practically empty post. Campbell had trained three armored divisions and an infantry division during the course of the war. Now, hundreds of German prisoners swept the snow from the streets of the Kentucky camp. Staging at Fort Miles Standish, near Boston, the men of the 20th AD embarked on three ships - a luxury liner, the sister ship of the ill-fated Morro Castle, and a banana boat - for the 11-day Atlantic crossing. They arrived at the French Channel port of Le Havre and saw for the first time the devastation of the war - the sunken ships, blasted piers, and shattered buildings. The division moved inland and waited. At the end of M h, 1945, the 20th received orders to move up, leaving its staging area near the French coast for Germany and the front. They passed through scores of war-tom villages in France, Belgium, and Holland before arriving in Germany north of Aachen. The division’s 33rd Cavalry was the fmt subunit involved in combat, on April 3 near Horren, on the west bank of the Rhine. The 33rd also was called to help break up a not of 500 freed prisoners who had gone on a looting and killing revenge spree against their former captors. The division’s artillery was also detached for a time to support the 82nd ARMOR - MayJune 1993 and lOlst Airborne Divisions in fighting near Cologne. On April 10, the division crossed the Rhine near Bonn and moved south and east toward Bavaria. Turned loose late in the war, the soldiers of the 20th AD arrived in time to see aside of the conflict that had remained hidden until Allied forces finally pierced the German heartland. The dark secrets of the Nazi regime were rapidly unraveling, and the rioting displaced refugees were only apart of it. Stunned by the destruction of war they saw around them, the troopers were even more aghast at the inhumanity they uncovered. What seemed a quiet hospital for the insane near Haldemar was in fact the site of Nazi experiments in death by injection. Again and again, they came upon groups of slave laborers kidnapped to work in Germany - one group was of Hungarian children nine to 13 years old. Rolling through farmland and flowering orchards, the tanks shared the roads with pathetic wagons and carts, pulled by refugees. These people in rags carried all their belongings with them ‘as they trudged along, trying to walk out of hell and back home. On April 28, the division crossed the Danube on the approach to Munich. The Bavarian capital had been the mdle of the National Socialist Movement and heavy fighting was expected. In fact, the war would last only six more clays, but the tankers could not know that, nor did the SS. In the pattern of fighting that developed, the tank-infantry teams fought short, sharp engagements against delaying German troops, racing for bridgeheads over the small streams that lay on the outskirts of the city. At Schrobenhausen, attempting to secure the bridges over the Parr, D Co. of the 20th Tank Battalion was attacked by die-hards firing from cellars. The battalion overran two military hospitals and took 100 prisoners. Another 400 surrendered as the unit crossed the Gerols River at Gerolsbach. At a This 20th AD Sherman was knocked out by 88-mm AT gun fire in the attack on the SS barracks near Munich, one of the costliest battles in the war’s final days. bridge over the Glonn, near Peters-hausen, Polish and French prisoners cheered their liberators and told them of a Geman column ahead. The column was attacked and destroyed, and 150 survivors surrendered. At the Amper River crossing, a fast-moving column secured the bridge before its demolition. Moving into Bioerbeck to seize another Amper River bridge, white flags flew from the building, but the SS fired on the column anyway. The town was destroyed with highexplo-sive and phosphorus shells. Each rapid move held the potential for sudden tragedy, as happened at the woods near Neuherberg, where three hidden 88-mm guns quickly destroyed four tanks. An SS ambush at Lohhof sniped infantrymen off the tanks’ back decks. The commander of CCB, Colonel Newton Jones, lost his life to a sniper holed up in a building. His tank crew fired the building and killed its inhabitants. StiU ahead were two major military installations, the largest SS barracks in Germany and the Wehrmacht’s antitank school. Defending the SS complex were 1.500 troops, with 88-mm AT guns and AA guns on ground mounts. The building itself was six stones high, 300 yards long, and made of thick, reinforced concrete. Around it was a thick, concrete wall ten feet high. The grounds were riddled with trenches, ditches, and hardened, multilevel underground bunkers. From the upper stories of the SS building, observers could see the American tanks foming up for the assault a mile away. The tankers in the fmt wave found little to shoot at, with so much of the defense hidden and at ground level. Artillery fngments bounced off the hulls, rifles and machine gun fire rip-pled from the 500 windows of the barracks, and panzerfausts squittered through the air like deadly footballs. Tanks fell to the flat-shooting 88s and to electricallydetonated ground mines. Losing two or three tanks here, three or four there, the division attacked, regrouped, attacked again. Artillery moved up, including a 240-mm mortar that began to punch large gaps in the tall concrete fortress. Hiding in the multileveled bunkers, the defending SS would remain in the lower levels during each bombardment and then spring back to their guns as the attacks went in. Dozer tanks were brought up to seal the embrasures. One by one, the bunkers fell silent. By evening, the day-long fight was over. Accompanying the 45th and 42nd Infantry Divisions, the tankers brought them to the gates of Munich, where the infantry took over. By then, resistance was cooling; in one case, a German medic on a bicycle led a column of tanks to the sites of hidden AT guns. The city’s residents seemed relieved. As the division history de-ARMOR - MayJune 7993 33

The Attack on the SS Barracks Excerpts from the 20th AD Unit History, The 20th Armored Division in World War I! “The attack was scheduled for 0700 in conjunction with the 180th Regiment of 45th Infantry Division after a 45-minute artillery preparation by the 413th. The line of departure was the woods north of Neuherberg, where “C” Company had had h-ouble the day before. “C” Company was to attack on the left, “A” on the right, with “D” aslride highway 13 in the middle. The prospect was formidable. The enemy estimated strength, 1,500 or more, was solidly entrenched in width and depth in underground emplacements with overhead cover. In addition to the elaborate bunkers and emplacements, the ground was broken by series of trenches, World War I style. Some of the emplacements were two levels underground, having concealed exits as much as 50 yards from the emplacements. 0thers were linked with connected trenches and most had communication with the forward side of the SS barrac ks...” “All [the SS] troops were young, and had lived almost an entire lifetime under Hitler indoctrination. They were pledged to die in defense of the city. The 700 in the outside emplacements did...” An 88-rnrn AT gun knocked out of action in front of the SS barracks. ‘The fast light tanks of ‘D” Company advancing on the left of the road dodged, turned, backed up, stopped, and went to throw off the accuracy of 88 gunners, and still they fired...” “... Another tank was lost to an 88, while “C” lost three more to 88s. This force, withdrew to the comparative safety of narrow woods 500 yards to the rear to reorganize and rearm. “Meanwhile “A” and the rest of “D” moved out at 0930. They ran into the same intense defense. Small arms and automatic fire came from the 500-odd windows in the SS Barracks. It was hard to know where to go, where to shoot, where to start. Firing was everywhere. This force also lost three tanks.” ‘‘Armored doughboys moved out behind the tanks with their tracks. Assault gun and mortar platoon acted sometimes as infantry, firing pint blank down the mouths of the deadly bunkers. Infantry followed with grenades. Many didn’t follow far.... Tank dozers were hauled in to cover the entrances of the bunkers. That was one way to silence ’em. The tanks were still leading, still dodging panzerfaust. “Slowly the defending fire died down, as bunker after bunker was permanently silenced. Men died with a look of incredible surprise, but others kept fighting. Slowly the following infantry found them all...” tion of death. On the railroad siding The last few days of the war were 20th AD History (Cont’d.) nearby, a train of 40 boxcars held anticlimatic for the 20th, now rushing hundreds of dead. Hundreds of others, toward Austria, where the Allies scribed it, “It was crazy. It was more stacked like cordwood, awaited the feared the Nazis would make a last like a liberation than a conquest.” crematory ovens. A few prisoners still stand in the Austrian Alps. They were Racing around Munich, the fast-alive were too weak to walk and too just outside Salzburg when the war in moving tankers came upon Dachau sick to eat. Among them, too, were Empe came to a close. They were suddenly,“catching it in themiddleof the SS dead, skulls bashed in. The glad of that: “Nobody had wanted to its macabre, ghastly work.” Only re-bullet-riddled corpses of once-vicious crack the Alps open. It could have cently abandoned, the concentration guard dogs littered the kennels. been rough. The strain of impending camp looked a bit like a campus from Shocked, the tankers heard those few combat was gone. It was like the fvst the outside, but appearances con-survivors recall the horror that had spring day, with a warm wind from ceded a factory for the mass produc-happened there. the south.” 34 ARMOR -