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The Trap. A German Mark-VI and four Mark-IV tanks suddenly appeared on the road. Atop a bare ridge, Sergeant Stanton Dobbins and his men got set with rifle grenades (see p. 68). When the tanks were 60 yards away Dobbins cried: "Let 'em have it." The first volley set one tank afire, knocked the treads off another. Other tanks came up, concentrated their fire on the slopes where the Americans lay. Some of the soldiers fled. Three more tanks were hit; the rest turned away.
German artillery raked the battalion the rest of the day. A shell from a German 88 hit a company commander pointblank, hurled his body 60 feet. But the men clung to the hills by the bridge, awaiting reinforcements. They did not come. The regiment was trapped. That morning, while the Americans attacked toward the bridge, the Germans had taken a town far to the rear. The enemy had evidently watched the regiment's advance the night before, had skillfully moved in behind it. Parts of an armored division and a motorized division, outnumbering the Americans, had sheared through the extended U.S. column, isolated the regiment's tank destroyers, most of its artillery and its reserves of food, water, gasoline, ammunition. The regiment's officers now remembered the old man at the crossroads trying to tell them something about the Germans.
Lieut. Colonel Edwin Stephenson and three enlisted men saw a German tank running down a road and knocking down U.S. infantrymen like bowling pins. Another tank headed for Colonel Stephenson, Corporals Perry Baker and Alvin Copeland and Private Eli Franklin. The Colonel said: "Boys, let's stay."
"Yes, sir," they said. They and the Colonel crawled into a ditch by the road, fired when the tank was ten feet away. The tank began smoking and the German crew, screaming with pain, started to climb from the turret. Colonel Stephenson said: "My men cut them down one by one with rifles as they climbed out."
By dusk two battalions with their artillery had been completely cut off, and another was in danger. One battalion, sadly thinned, was pulled back from the hills by the Sele. All were grouped in close defensive rings. The 105-mm. guns were turned around, faced the way the regiment had marched the night before. Only 15 rounds remained for each gun, and they were silent.
The Germans were silent, too, and the trapped men felt that the enemy was closing around them. A lieutenant from Chicago pulled out a snapshot of his girl and said: "There's the thing. If I live to see her again. . . ."
For reasons unknown, the Germans did not attack that night. Next morning artillery thundered in the distance, a relief column appeared under German fire, and the battalion 105s spat their hoarded ammunition. Cabled Correspondent Lang:
"The regiment had fought off day attacks. It had been sleepless for two nights. Now it had not only hope but a deep and bitter hatred. There were a great many Americans killed and wounded when the Germans had the upper hand. There were dead men who had been old buddies of the survivors, who had trained with them at home and fought successfully with them in Sicily. There is still fierce fighting for this bridgehead, but this regiment will yet avenge its dead."