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This infantry had already prepared for an attack and was moving northward. Their advance soon carried them against the whole length of the German columns which, thus caught on both flanks, were squeezed between the armor and infantry and raked by a murderous cross fire. Soon every highway, road and country lane in the area was a mass of burning, wrecked vehicles. There seldom has been such a quick mass slaughter as this. The battle of the Falaise gap was several days in the developing, but the slaughter, decimation and dispersion of 20,000 to 30,000 Germans in the Maubeuge-Mons area took place within a few hours.
German tanks in the middle of truck and passenger-vehicle columns were shot and blasted, careening over cars, blocking the columns. I saw one double column over a mile long—and I did not discover the end of it—in which only a few vehicles had not been burned or smashed. Volkswagen, sedans, ack-ack trucks, ammunition carriers, 47-mm. guns and hundreds of bicycles were irretrievably snarled.
Roundup. By 10 in the morning Lieut. General Ruediger von Heyking had surrendered. When the masters of the master race capitulated, the rank & file became totally bewildered. Some fled south to escape through the fields but fell in droves before our small-arms fire. Within the perimeter organized by our armored division around Mons no front or rear existed. Headquarters troops and MPs who normally do not do any fighting captured over 600 thoroughly demoralized Germans. Confused and rioting German enlisted men often broke away from officers to surrender. Some German officers sent notes to our lines saying that they would surrender 50 men an hour.
One American company captured over 2,000 prisoners. A captain in that company took 200 himself merely by going out with a white flag to the German lines. Battalions often could not fight because they were overwhelmed by prisoners. At one time a division cage had 10,000 men in it.
Free Parking. Throughout Sept. 3, 4 and 5, German columns following behind the original columns and unaware of the trap that had been sprung continued to bump into our lines around Mons. An American MP directing traffic during the night discovered that he had just motioned a Mark V tank into the assembly area and the German tank had obediently followed his hand signal. Another civilian car loaded with German officers blithely rode into the middle of an American tank column before it was discovered by an officer in a jeep and shot up.
While our armor was pushed on toward Germany, our infantry has stayed in position acting much as a shortstop catching everything that the Germans have batted their way. It is no longer a question of individual Germans surrendering here & there. They are surrendering in groups of three, four and five hundred. There are no longer enough trucks to handle the prisoners still pouring in.