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Shelley said that the poets "Learn in suffering what
they teach in song." Had I the gift of composition I would
translate the suffering of the 3rd Armored Division and put it
to music. The world would possess a symphonic masterpiece indeed.
That contribution would serve as an eternal inspiration to posterity.
In that "Spearhead" Symphony I would capture and put
on paper the cadent pianissimo of the Louisiana birth of history's
greatest armored unit. In swaddling clothes of the thin-skinned
and untried armor, this youngster romped through the Southland's
spongy swamps, grew into adolescence with the hot music of the
desert on its lips, saw the purple twilight melt into the star-studded
night and in moon-drenched sand dreamt of manhood. The clickety
clack of wheels on twin bands of steel carried this robust young
giant to Camp Pickett, thence to Indiantown Gap, on to Camp Kilmer,
New York's sky line and the Atlantic. (CONTINIED below the following
two photos and caption)
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PHOTOS ABOVE: In top photo, Chaplain
Maurer presides at Villiers Fossard, Normandy, at first burial
of 3AD soldiers in July, 1944, and, in lower photo, on April
2, 1945, near Ittenbach, Germany, for the burial of 3AD Commander,
Maj. Gen. Maurice Rose. |
(Continued): Fear of the unknown and mysterious deep failed
to still the song within his ironclad heart -- a song in which
one caught the echoes of Crusader's airs, hymns of Pilgrim and
Pioneer, chanting paens of praise as they blazed a path from
East to West, a prayer in their hearts, a gun in their hands.
The swish-swash of waves through fair weather and fog brought
the Division to England. Comparative peace prevailed. Dance orchestras
at Red Lynch, War-minster, Wincanton, Sutton Veny, Fonthill Bishop,
were unsuccessful in silencing the martial strains which insistently
challenged his every day with reveille and closed it with taps.
Salisbury's dismal plains, frosty, starflecked and chill, ushered
in an English spring replete with all the uncomfortable damp
and soggy trappings.
Restlessness and a burning desire to engage the foe in mortal
combat finds the 3rd Armored lying on LSTs and LCTs for three
days and three nights as the worst storm in twenty years strikes
and lashes the Channel. The tempo of that gale is as nothing
compared to the force with which this unit will sweep through
France and Belgium in a few days.
Now to capture the music of high courage as the Third hits
the Normandy Beach, then the singing of the birds in the apple
orchards of the Calvados punctuated by guns fired in anger at
the enemy beyond St. Lo. Recall that whirring din from out of
the blue as three thousand planes unload their lethal cargoes
and the ground boils. Villers-Possard and the 3rd Armored reaches
man's estate! St. Jean de Daye, Mortain, Purple Heart Hill --
prayers beside little crosses and stars of David at La Cambe,
Marigny, Gorron -- "I Am The Resurrection And The Life.
. .," "Sh' Ma Yisreayl . . .," "Requiescant
in Pace. . .," hallowed harmonies of Protestant, Jew and
Catholic, joined in the requiem of death from whose graves a
living, vibrant and impassioned chorus emanates. (Take up that
refrain and with reverent hands touch your instruments and play
that refrain again and again.)
But we must be away into the struggle at Ranes, Fremontel,
Falaise-Argentan, Corbeil and the Seine, on and on this mighty
symphony of Heroism rises and swells as it sweeps relentlessly
forward. Tanks at Chateau Thierry, sacred soil, tanks at the
Marne, tanks at Soissons, tanks, tanks blasting enemy armor into
a blackened and charred debacle at Mons, tanks at Charleroi,
tanks at Namur, tanks at Liege and reaching a crescendo chord
of triumph as they lunge with mighty thud against and through
and over and beyond the steel and iron of the Siegfried Line
after a wild, swift, cyclonic drive unparalleled in military
history. No, I have not forgotten the sound of those droplets
of blood, drip, drip, drip, from a mangled stump of an arm or
that brave smile. I have not forgotten the long lines of singing
wires of the Signalmen; Engineers bridging stream after stream
in total darkness; the sound of motors in the night; long supply
columns; the protechnics of the Ack Ack; the chatter of typewriters
in the hands of clerks, destined to play their part in this vast
score; the crunching bull-dozers chewing hedgerows; Artilleriests
feeding the hungry maw of the big guns; Airmen in their tiny
craft; the skilled hands of our Medics; the muddy, slugging guts
of our doughboys; the hurried heartbeats of men in foxholes --
tortuous, numbed hours -- the stench of death, decay, desolation
and destruction; the pensive stare of a young child with a wounded
doll in her arms; the clippety-clop of wooden shoes. I haven't
forgotten the clanging discords, the utterly demonical glee of
the SS, Pride of Prussian Panzerdom, their whipped arrogance
in our PW cages, where Herren Volk melodies were forever stilled
in defeat.
Through it all we hear the overtones of a grim loneliness,
heart-breaking agony, bleeding experience, indomitable courage,
an unrelenting uncompromising, unswerving devotion to the Spearhead
Division and the fortitude of trusting faith in our officers
-- General Rose, conducting this mighty symphony, a baton, not
red with blood, but a baton crowned with an eagle and pointing
to the stars.
"And after this tumultous surge of war's music, the closing
bars would bring the soft, clear, ringing chime of a church bell,
calling the Third to worship in the holy hush of a sanctuary,
far removed from the sounds of warfare. Then the comfort and
peace of hearth and home, a maiden's prayer, a father's hand
clasp, the devotion of a loyal wife, a mother's tender lullaby
and a babe wrapped in sleep -- home is the tanker from the wars.
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