HELLO BBC

The Fourth Armored Division was heard on numerous news broadcasts. Following is the script of a typical broadcast:

ROBERT REID TO BBC LONDON VOICECAST FOURTH ARMORED DIVISION

Hello BBC this is Robert Reid speaking from Third U. S. Army on March 21 with dispatch number 108—Title Fourth Armored Division. This story has been censored.

When the story of the big break up of the German army west of the Rhine is finally told it will be largely the story of the Fourth Armored Division of the Third United States Army—a division which staged a super blitzkrieg in the homeland of the blitzkrieg inventors, tearing the better part of the German army into ribbons and opening the way for the conquest of a huge slab of Nazi territory.

The Fourth had already made a name for itself back in Normandy and Brittany, and more recently when it burst through into beleaguered Bastogne. But its achievements of the past fortnight surpass all those other breathless adventures. It has become an epic of dash and audacity—the sort of thing the division’s first commander was possibly thinking about when he said that the Fourth would never need a motto. It would be known by its deeds alone.

When the Fourth was given the job of first of all breaking through to the Rhine from the Kyll River it set off in typical Fourth style—right out into the blue with ten days rations packed in its trucks for it fully expected to be cut off—a situation to which it is not unaccustomed and which, by the way, has given rise to what has almost come to be the divisional motto. It is credited to one of its sergeants and goes back to Brittany. During one tough spot down there this notability was heard to remark, “Gee, we’re cut off again, the poor so-and-so’s.”

But the Fourth was not cut off this time. True its line was a very thin one—perilously thin—as it burst out of the Kyll River bridgehead and raced Rhinewards cutting a corridor—according to the current crack sixty-five miles long and twenty-five feet wide—that being the width of the road which carried them to the banks of the Rhine, through the depths of the Eifel Forest in fifty-eight hours. Nothing could stop them. They just rode down everything in their path leaving six thousand Germans prisoners to stream back behind them, capturing more than 500 German transports, 80,000 shells, Vee bomb sites, and so on.

But that was not the end of the story. There was still that huge tract of German countryside away to the south of the Moselle to be conquered before the last stretch of Rhineland was ours and once again the Fourth was given the job of bursting it open.

From a bridgehead secured by the Fifth and 90th Infantry Divisions across the Moselle River, two columns of the Fourth Armored Division suddenly burst as though from a catapult—shooting south and south east—two spearheads of steel cutting two long lanes deep into enemy territory then doubling and swerving and changing direction so often and so quickly that the Germans simply could not cope with these steel will of the wisp tactics and became swamped in general confusion which resulted in such little things as siezing three invaluable bridges intact over the river Nahe—one of the prizes of this rat race.

But if all this was an exciting job it was also a lonely job at times. The Fourth was roaring ahead with the infantry following up miles behind and mopping up the towns it had over-ridden. So when units of the Fourth took the little Rhineland spa town of Bad Kreuznach they hadn’t too many men to spare to act as patrols during the night to guard against any surprise counter attack by the Germans, or to patrol the streets in any force on the lookout for snipers.

What they did smacks of Red Indian warfare. It was both effective and spectacular and figuratively cocked a snook at any stray German plane who might also come nosing around during the night. Piles of wood were collected and bonfires lit at every entrance leading into the town—a device calculated to throw up in silhuette anything or anybody approaching the place.

Not that the Fourth was always lonely on this trip. There were some quite lively moments early on in the race when the Luftwaffe sent out its planes to try and stop the tanks. But the Fourth has a jolly good ack-ack battalion of its own and those gunners brought down thirty-two Jerry planes in three days.

Commanded by Major General Hugh J. Gaffey, a soft spoken Texan, who fights his battles in immaculate riding breeches and boots you could use as a mirror, the Fourth Armored Division has done one of the biggest jobs on the Western Front—and from what I have seen of General Gaffey and his men they intend to continue in the same way.