Free Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II by Belton Y. Cooper Page B

the side of the truck, and into the foxhole. The driver of the truck awakened and smelled the chlorine gas. Needless to say, the events of the previous hours had a great deal to do with what happened next. The terrified driver screamed, then fainted dead away. The assistant driver sharing the foxhole with him woke up, saw the slumped body of his buddy, and, smelling the gas, thought the man was dead. He immediately panicked and screamed, “Gas! Gas!” at the top of his voice.
    All hell broke loose. Other soldiers awakened and immediately relayed the gas signal. Some fired three shots, and the sentries whirled claxtons again. One radio operator hollered, “Gas! Gas! Gas!”
    In a matter of seconds the alarm spread throughout the entire First Army beachhead, and pandemonium broke out. Men abandoned their foxholes and ran around in the dark screaming and looking for their gas masks. Had the Germans realized what was happening, they could have attacked against a completely disorganized army. After a while, the men realized that this was another false alarm; the sentries’ gas patches, which changed color when exposed to gas, did not indicate that any was present.
    How could a well-trained, disciplined army have been subject to such sudden hysteria? Perhaps because this generation of young men grew up hearing stories about the terror of gas in World War I.
    No one, perhaps even to this day, really knows how profoundly this panic could have affected the security of the army. The next morning, the CCB commander, General Truman Boudinot, called a meeting of all the unit commanders. Boudinot expressed his shock and amazement at the disintegration of discipline among the troops. In all of his years in the army, he had never seen anything like it, and he was not about to put up with any more of it in the future. He gave a direct order from General Omar Bradley, commander of the First Army, which is abbreviated as follows.
    In view of the experience of the previous evening, it has been concluded that had the Germans actually used gas, the physical damage to our troops could not have possibly been as disastrous as the pandemonium that resulted from the gas alarm. Thus, you are hereby ordered to instruct all personnel that the gas alarm will be given under no conditions, even in the event of an actual gas attack. All claxtons and other types of gas alarm signals are to be taken up. The gas identifying patches on the sentries will remain, to be used for their personal protection. Any soldier giving the gas alarm, regardless of the circumstances, is to be shot on sight by the closest available soldier.
    This was the strongest order I’ve ever heard given by an army commander. I’m not sure whether General Bradley had the authority to issue it, but the order was effective and was probably necessary at the time. At least it got our attention and we had no more gas alarms.

3
    The Breakthrough
    Preparation: The Hedge Chopper
    The division spent the next few days regrouping. New personnel replacements were integrated into their units. The maintenance battalion continued to work around the clock trying to catch up on some of its backlog. In addition, replacement tanks and other vehicles were coming in across the beach directly from Tidworth Downs.
    The tanks had to be refurbished by the maintenance people before being issued to the combat units. The vehicles supposedly had all the equipment on board, but some of it that was still in boxes and other wrapping had to be taken out, cleaned, and installed. This could have been done at the depot and saved the maintenance crews in the fields some time, but because the depot people were not familiar with all the equipment and how it was used, the vehicles still had to be checked in the field regardless of their condition when received. In many cases, tank crews were assigned to the maintenance battalion to help refurbish these replacement vehicles, because only experienced tank crews knew the proper