“COBRA” GOT THERE FIRST

American Tank Headed the Relief of Bastogne

By Joseph Driscoll New York Herald-Tribune, January 1945

Cobra King is the name of a shell-scarred, stout, armored forty-ton Sherman tank. With a first lieutenant from Texas in the turret the Cobra sliced through the German circle about Bastogne the afternoon of December 26, 1944. Other men and tanks of the Fourth Armored fought as hard to relieve Bastogne, but the Cobra got there first—at 4:45 p. m. the day after Christmas.

The tank commander was Lieutenant Charles P. Boggess, Jr., who played high school football at Greenville, Ill., before moving to Austin, Texas.

At the tank’s 75-millimeter gun was Corporal Milton B. Dickerman, of Newark, who made bomb racks in a Kearny, N. J., factory before he became a tanker three years ago.

The loader, Private James G. Murphy, hails from a small farm near Bryan, Texas, and was attending Sam Houston State Teachers College at Huntsville, Texas, until he got in the Army two years ago.

The bow gunner was Private Harold Hafner, of Arlington, Wash., who was graduated from Arlington High School in 1943 right into the Army.

A Georgia tractor farmer, Private Hubert J. J. Smith, of Cartersville, drove the tank. His initials stand for James Jackson, but he has no idea why he has two middle names.

By noon of December 26 Cobra King squatted on a ridge south of the Belgian hamlet of Clochimont. Its heavy-barreled snout pointed north-east toward Bastogne three miles away.

One of the great tank fighters of this war, Colonel Creighton W. Abrams, of West Newton, Mass., commander of the 37th Tank Battalion of the 4th Armored, swept his arm forward in the signal to advance. Cobra King snorted into the attack at the head of a column of tanks and armored infantry halftracks. The armored vehicles charged up the snow-covered road like a gray file of trumpeting elephants.

Incidentally, we saw a real elephant on this road one day, passing tanks going the other way and making an odd contrast, but it was a circus elephant entertaining children.

Lieutenant Boggess, commanding nine mediums in the tank push that relieved Bastogne, had warned his men that it wasn’t going to be a picnic. The men haven’t been on a picnic since the Fourth Armored left the States a year ago, so that was all right with them.

A veteran of thirty-three years, Lieutenant Boggess described the situation:

“The Germans had these two little towns of Clochimont and Assenois on this secondary road we were using to get to Bastogne. Beyond Assenois the road ran up a ridge through heavy woods. There were lots of Germans there too.”

“We were going through fast, all guns firing, straight up that road to bust through before they had time to get set. I thought of a lot of things as we took off. I thought of whether the road would be mined; whether the bridge in Assenois would be blown, whether they would be ready at their anti-tank guns.”

“Then we charged, and I didn’t have any time to wonder.”

Spraying machine-gun and cannon fire, the tanks charged with throttles open.

“I used the 75 like a machine-gun,” Gunner Dickerman said. “Murphy was plenty busy throwing in the shells. We shot twenty-one rounds in a few minutes and I don’t know how much machine-gun stuff.”

“As we got to Assenois an anti-tank gun in a halftrack fired at us. The shell hit the road in front of the tank and threw dirt all over. I got the halftrack in my sights and hit it with high explosive. It blew up.”

Dirt from the enemy shell burst had smeared the driver’s periscope.

“I made out okay, although I couldn’t see very good,” Driver Smith drawled. “I sorta guessed at the road. Had a little trouble when my left brake locked and the tank turned up a road we didn’t want to go. So I just stopped her, backed her up and went on again.”

Unlucky Assenois was blowing to bits under artillery barrages laid down by American guns. Through the smoke, dust, flying debris and shell splinters the armor drove on. Our artillery kept the enemy down and cut short his defensive fire.

“Bastogne was the next town down the road, but we still had those woods to go through,” Lieutenant Boggess recalled.

Kafner kept his bow machine gun playing around the fir trees and the road ahead. Dark enemy figures ran and fell in the dusk. In the forest darkness a square concrete blockhouse painted green loomed ahead. Dickerman sent three shells smashing into it. Later the infantry found twelve Germans there.

Lieutenant Boggess pulled the galloping Cobra down to a canter. Colored parachutes clotting the countryside; some of them caught in the tall trees, indicated where ammo, food and penicillin had been dropped to the American paratroops and tankers besieged in Bastogne and its defense perimeter. The question now was whether the Cobra King was among friend or foe.

“I spotted some foxholes filled with men in G. I. uniforms,” Boggess continued. “I yelled for them to come out, because we thought the Germans might have men in our uniforms around Bastogne ready to knock us off. Nobody moved, so I called again.

“After they heard me say that it was okay and we were the 4th Armored, a lieutenant from the engineers climbed out of his hole and said he was glad to see us. They had me covered, too, I found out.”

“You know,” commented New Jersey’s Dickerman, “We never really got to see that town of Bastogne after all. Wasn’t the M. P.’s fault, either—no off limits business. Soon as we got to the perimeter defenses we turned right around to guard the road on the edge of town.”