On the chilly afternoon of Tuesday, December 26, 1944, a column of mud-caked Sherman tanks, halftracks, scout cars, and tank destroyers of the U.S. 37th Tank Battalion was drawn up on a roadside in southeastern Belgium. It was ten days into the Battle of the Bulge.
For five tough days, the spearhead 4th Armored Division unit had advanced only 22 miles. It had been ordered by General George S. Patton Jr., commander of the U.S. Third Army, to “drive like hell” toward its objective: the relief of the besieged 101st Airborne Division in the strategic road-junction town of Bastogne. But the battalion had been held up by the German 5th Fallschirmjager (Parachute) Division, along with landmines, shell craters, snow, fog, and iced roads. And no one knew what lay ahead on the road to Bastogne.
A Stocky, Lantern-Jawed, Cigar-Chomping Cavalryman
The battalion was five miles short of its goal that afternoon when its commander, Lieutenant Colonel Creighton Williams Abrams, Jr., stood on a hill and gazed northward toward Bastogne. Born in Springfield, Massachusetts, the oldest son of a Boston & Albany Railroad repairman, Abrams was a stocky, lantern-jawed, cigar-chomping cavalryman who had graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1936 and become a courageous, resourceful professional soldier respected by all who knew him. He had earned the respect of Patton.
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