The US Army's
separate armoured battalions fought in obscurity by comparison with the flashy
armoured divisions, but they carried the heavier burden in the grim struggle
against the Axis in Second World War, argues Harry Yeide in this engaging new
study of American armour. Equipped with tanks, amphibian tanks, and amphibian
tractors, these units went everywhere the Army went, from the beginning of the
war to its very end, from Bataan to Salerno, Omaha
Beach to Okinawa. During the campaigns in the Mediterranean and
Europe, the separate armoured battalions landed in North Africa in November 1942
and battled across the desert before invading Sicily in July 1943 and Italy in
September. Other battalions ploughed into Hitler's Atlantic Wall on D-Day and
fought through the hedgerows of Normandy until
breaking out and racing across France. They endured the futile hell
of the Hürtgen Forest that fall, braved snow and German panzers
during the Battle of the Bulge that winter, and
rolled into Germany for the war's final clashes
in 1945. Thousands of miles away, separate tank battalions were among the first
Americans to defend against the Japanese tide that swept across the Pacific in
late 1941 and early 1942. Following their tenacious but unsuccessful stand in
the Philippines, they
participated in every amphibious assault the Army conducted during the bloody
campaign from New Guinea and
the Solomons toward Japan. On islands like Saipan and Peleliu, they fought on sandy beaches
entrenched with pillboxes and in dank jungles infested with a fanatical foe. In
the war's last year, the battalions returned with MacArthur to the
Philippines. Frequently relying on
the words of the tankers themselves, Yeide describes the battles, large and
small, of the separate tank battalions. Victory was anything but certain, but
through grit and guts and experience gained in the welter of combat, the tank
troops became a top-notch fighting force and a vital component of the US Army's
effort to win Second World War.
