(This article in the Army Newspaper Stars and Stripes in the fall of 1944 tells about my outfit (1st Batallion, 377th Infantry) in an early action, crossing the Moselle River at flood stage.)
They call this outfit the "Bravest of the Brave," high praise, richly earned in combat. Activated at Camp Swift, Texas, in July '42, the 95th rehearsed for the big show in the chigger-infested wastelands of Texas, the swamps of Lousiana, the deserts of California and the mountains of West Virginia. Training was plenty tough, but a tea party compared to the first big combat assignment--Metz.
The Metz drive started rolling on 8 November 1944 with separate pushes by the 2d and 3d Bn, 377th which wiped out the Nazi pocket extending east of Maizieres to the Moselle. For a week, elements of the division plowed through mine-sowed fields under a rain of mortar fire, blasting at Germans deeply dug-in in thick-walled farmhouses.
Another chapter in the Metz drive was the Thionville bridgehead operation by the 2d Bn, 378 Inf. They swarmed across the swollen Moselle River, captured Ft. Yutz and the much tougher, high, hard-to-get-at Ft D'Illange, all in three days.
For days, elements of the 95th pounded away on all sides at Metz forts. The historians who said that Metz was too tough to take had never met the Victory Division. By 22 November, 14 days after the drive was launched, Metz was offically ours. Nazi casualties included 1577 killed, 3546 wounded and 6082 definitely captured.
Meanwhile, the 1st Bn, 377th Joes crossed the flooded Moselle at Uckange under heavy fire, and made a bridge-head of the high ground of the east bank. But a flood, the worst in 29 years, threatened the Yanks' food and ammo supply, and the isolated troops had to be a supplied from the air by divisional artillery liason planes, which made 104 trips the first day. By 12 November, the Moselle had subsided enough for supplies to be transported by assault boats. Next day, the rest of the 1st Bn crossed to the east bank, pushed on to and captured Bertrange and Imeldange. Then Nazi infantry and armored reinforements cut off the Yanks in the two towns. After two days of savage fighting, the pressure was relieved by Task Force Bacon.
Then they became part of Task Force Bacon together with the 1st Bn, 377th Infantry, the 95th Rcn Troop and Co D, 778th Tank Bn. There followed a smashing drive from town to town down the east bank of the Moselle to Metz. Resistance was tough, but one obstacle after another was cleared. With Metz in sight, the division felt sharp. Part of the 377th got to Sansonnet, a Metz suburb, on the night of 17 November. At 1000, 18 November, elements of the 377th poured into Metz. The battle of snipers was on.
Metz was protected by a ring of bristling forts. To try to take the city by head-on assault would have been suicide. But the 378 Regiment outsmarted the Nazis by sweeping around the northern tip of the fortifications and approaching by the rear, leaving behind a small task force to make the Germans think the entire regiment was still fronting the forts.
The next big job was to push east to the Saar River, cross it and punch holes in the Siegfried Line. This was even tougher than Metz. They blasted their way from house to house, from bunker to bunker. At Fraulatern, 1st Bn, 377th Infantry fought hand to hand with the Nazis in a hotel ballroom. The Germans fought desperately. Their artillery blasted our bridges time and again, and the Engineers doggedly built them up again. The division was tired after 58 days in the line, but no matter how tough the odds, the 9th pushed on.
Right up to V-E day, when it wound up above Leipzig, the 95th lived up to its brilliant achievements at Metz and in the Saar. No ETO division did a better job of knocking out Nazi manpower and armored might. But there are still the Japs to be knocked out, and the 95th will have a hand in that job too. It's one of the first four ETO divisions alerted for tough fighting assignments in the Pacific war.