After the Bulge came the best tactical training a US Army officer could ask for:
I suppose the best tactical training that people ever got without any great jeopardy and just enough casualties to make it exciting and serious, was as a result of the fighting we did from the end of the Battle of the Bulge to the end of the war.
There were many actions, all fought at the company and battalion level. We were mounted in trucks and had five tanks and five tank destroyers. Hopefully, the direct support artillery was in range. It was a small self-contained battalion task force. You were expected to pursue the Germans, and you fought a lot of small engagements. Each one was different. The terrain was different, the enemy weapons and strengths were different, and the circumstances were different, but the mission was always the same — to go.
Now, to me, that’s the best training anybody ever got in the world. You can almost tell which people had that experience, particularly the people who were battalion commanders and had enough force to play with, and who had an independent mission in a zone of their own. The company commander was under the control of the battalion commander, right? The regimental commander just assigned zones. So, it was a battalion commander’s war at that time.
Well, one of the things that had been impressed upon me by that time, was that we weren’t getting any direct fire suppression. We just weren’t very good at that, and by that time, you see, we were outrunning much of our artillery. We never had more than about one battalion of artillery available because we were moving too fast. So, we no longer tried to suppress only with indirect fire. My heavy weapons company, “D” Company, had six mortars and eight heavy machine guns.
I didn’t think that was enough so I took .50 caliber machine guns from the trains and made a big .50 caliber platoon. Then I would attach the three heavy machine gun platoons to a single company. And, every time we would become involved in one of these little battles, wherever it was, I’d put that company in an overwatch position. I didn’t call it overwatch then. I didn’t know that word at the time. I put it in a base of fire. The commander had eight heavy machine guns, six .50 caliber machine guns, and the light machine guns of that company, and he had the company to protect it and to help move it. So, two companies were my maneuver companies, and one company was my fire support company, my base of fire company. I’ll tell you, it really was marvelous. They just overwhelmed anything that we ran up against. My regret is that it took so long to figure that out.
Pin him down with direct fire and move around him by maneuver. The serious war was really over by the time we got smart. I always used to maneuver with the tanks and overwatch with the tank destroyers. If it was a little village, if it was the corner of the woods, if it was a hill with brush on it, whatever or wherever it was, we’d just smother it with fire and get total fire superiority. Then, we’d move around the flank and go get ‘em — usually from the rear. Almost without exception they’d all come out yelling “Kamerad, Kamerad.” It was the only way I could figure out how to get firepower out of a light infantry battalion.
I would have loved to command a tank battalion or an armored task force. That’s why the mechanized infantry squad, which we were discussing earlier, can be very small, because it can operate in the fire envelope of the armored task force. If it’s a tank company with a mech platoon, we’re only talking about 15 or 20 men who are going to get out on foot to fight, but what we’ve got is about 10 or 12 tanks and about four Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs) with automatic weapons on them that can totally suppress that woodline or those buildings.
“Pin him down with direct fire and move around him by maneuver.”
That was Patton’s practice from, at least, the Louisiana War Games. In fact you hear it in the the movie: “Hold them by the nose and kick them in the ass…’