By the first week in March, 1945, the battalion was across the Erft Canal and meeting serious resistance in the area of Modrath and Frechen, the last srong point before Cologne.

With the tower of the Cathedral in Cologne in sight, the tankers knew that the Rhine River was just over the hill. But the closer they got to the river, the tougher the German resistance grew, until at one point, they were actually under fire from three sides. It was touch and go, before they finally broke through.

On March 10, the 740th was ordered to report immediately to the Seventh U.S. Army in the vicinity of Morhange, France. They were being called upon to breach the Siegfried Line again.

The battalion moved to Aachen, Germany, and loaded their tanks on railroad flat cars. Tank crews rode along with their tanks, while the wheeled vehicles and half-tracks marched overland. They made their March 15 deadline by 30 minutes and were briefly attached to the 70th Infantry Division, then shifted suddenly to the 63rd Infantry Division. Their mission was to drive a hole through the Siegfried defenses so that the 6th Armored Division could pass through and exploit the breakthrough. The Division objective was to breach the Siegfried just north of Ensheim, take the high ground, then capture St. Ingbert.

The Siegfried Line at this point was made up of large dragons' teeth in front of which deep anti-tank ditches had been dug. All roads going through the line had been blasted, forming large craters. Huge concrete bunkers with walls five- and six-feet thick and armed with 75mm high velocity anti-tank guns overlooked the area. Artillery and mortar fire was heavy when the 740th pulled up into line.

Working under cover of a smoke screen when possible, and with the help of the Assault Gun Platoon, the tanks repulsed several counterattacks and neutralized the pill boxes. The engineers eventually blasted and bulldozed enough of the dragons' teeth for the 740th to plunge out into the open. Then on to Homburg.

Later, Maj. Gen. Louis E. Hibbs, commander of the 63rd Infantry Division, assembled the entire battalion, praised the tankers for the work done in cracking the vaunted Siegfried Line, and gave out medals.

On March 28, the 740th received word from 12th Army Group to return at once to the First U.S. Army. The 8th Infantry Division was stalled trying to capture the town of Siegen on the southern edge of the Ruhr Pocket and was calling for help.

The battalion moved immediately to Sarrebourg, France; and, on Easter Sunday, April 1, 1945, tanks and tankers loaded on trains again and headed for Odendorf, Germany, in the vicinity of Bonn. They crossed the Rhine River on April 8 on a pontoon bridge, and marched on Siegen, 80 miles to the east.

On April 9, the 740th jumped off with the 8th Infantry Division to spearhead the attack through the center of the Ruhr Pocket, while two other infantry divisions on the right and the left, without tanks, protected the flanks and kept the supply lines open.

The tankers loaded as many infantrymen as possible on the backs of their tanks and moved out at high speed. A lot of Germans fled or surrendered at the sight and sound of all that armor barreling down on them. But when the enemy chose to stand and fight, the 740th inevitably lost a tank or two and some of the infantrymen. Still, the battalion roared 18 miles deep into enemy lines that first day.

When one infantry regiment pulled back to rest, another took its place. But the 740th pushed right on with the new infantrymen on the backs of their tanks. When night attacks proved to be less costly in casualties, the tankers found themselves fighting day and night at times.

The roads to the rear quickly became clogged with supply trucks, engineers, medics, and rear echelon services trying to keep up. Long lines of prisoners and vehicles of every description struggled to find their way toward the rear of the American lines.

On April 12, 1945, word flashed around the world that Franklin D. Roosevelt had dies and that Vice President Harry S. Truman had become the president of the United States.

Still, there was no respite for the 740th. As the tankers entered the heavily populated center of the Ruhr Valley, there were anti-tank gun and machine gun and mortar fire at virtually every turn in the road. Some 100 roadblocks were taken out between the towns of Winterberg and Schwelm. Some tank platoons had no more than two or three tanks operational at the time.

The battalion closed to the Ruhr River at Wetter, turned west, then paralleled the Ruhr as they advanced to Dusseldorf. It was a grueling and exhausting battle. In all, the 740th spearheaded the attack of the 8th Infantry Division for 100 miles or more. They lost as many tanks here as they did in the Ardennes.

The battle of the Ruhr Pocket ended in mid-April, 1945, when the First and Ninth U.S. Armies met at Hagen. Some 325,000 Germans were caught in the pocket and surrendered as a result.

The Division assigned additional troops to the 740th for occupational purposes in the area of Dusseldorf, and Colonel Rubel became the "Lord Mayor." He billited the 740th in the city itself and assigned each company a sector of the city, with responsibility for law and order, prisoners of war, enemy weapons, and the like. Civilians were checked for the tell-tale "SS" under their left arms.

"Displaced person" camps in the area were filled with thousands of "refugees," many of whom were foreign slave laborers, eventually found by the millions all over Germany.

This "occupation duty" was short-lived, however. The 740th was assigned to the Ninth U.S. Army on April 25 and ordered north to Ulzen, Germany, as part of a huge buildup of the 21st Army Group, commanded by Field Marshal Bernard Monrgomery, in preparation for a crossing of the Elbe River.

It was a grueling 350-mile trip overland in their tanks, and the battalion was split up again upon its arrival - between elements of the 82nd Airborne and the 8th Infantry.

With his 2,000-year Reich crumbling all around him, Hitler committed suicide in his bunker in Berlin on April 30, 1945. That same day, tankers of the 740th were busy dodging artillery and mortar fire as they crossed the Elbe River on pontoon bridges in the vicinity of Blekede.

The battalion moved a total of 760 miles in April and fought under three different armies, the First and Ninth U.S. Armies and the Second British Army.

It was May 1, 1945. With ten doughboys mounted on the back of each of their tanks, and with absolutely no forward reconnaisance, the 740th took off to meet the Russians. They simply barreled down the road until a tank hit a roadblock - a panzerfaust, an anti-tank gun, or a blown up bridge.

Tank commanders had to radio back and forth to make sure that the troops out ahead were friends or foes. It was a wild ride. German prisoners were sent streaming back down the roads to the rear for someone else to take care of.

On May 2, in the town of Gamitz, some 400 American prisoners of war and an equal number of British were liberated, along with at least 2,000 French, Italians, and Poles who had been doing forced labor there.

The tanks machine-gunned their way into Hagenow, then halted the column to shoot down the German airplanes frantically trying to take off from a large airfield at the northeast edge of the town. in a matter of minutes, 30 or more planes were burning wildly in the area.

Just south of Warsow, a small village was so heavily defended by die-hard Nazi troops that it had to be completely razed.

As the 740th column of tanks approached Schwerin, the tankers could see literally thousands of German soldiers in every direction and were more than a little nervous as they barreled into the town at high speed. But the Germans had little fight left in them, and tens of thousands came pouring in to give themselves up to the Americans.

By sundown on May 3, the roads were clogged with German soldiers as far as the eye could see, heading south in full surrender. Even an armored railway train pulled up to surrender.

On May 4, the German forces in Holland and Northwest Germany surrendered. On May 7, all German forces surrendered unconditionally. At midnight on May 8, 1945, all hostilities ceased.

It was difficult to believe. There were no cheers, and there was vey little emotion. Although the war was over for them, the tankers' thoughts and prayers were with their loved ones back home and their fallen comrades who had given their lives in battle along the way. On May 27, 1945, the entire battalion gathered in Schwerin for a Memorial Service in memory of those gallant tankers.

The Daredevil Tankers of the 740th Battalion were, and are, a proud bunch. They plunged victoriously into the breach of the Ardennes, slashed across the Cologne Plains, twice broke through the dragons' teeth of the Siegfried Line, split the Ruhr Pocket, and finally rumbled north in an all out drive to the Baltic Sea.

The battalion spent its final days in Europe in the U.S. Army of Occupation, at first with the British on one side and the Russians on the other.

The 740th was ultimately deactivated on July 23, 1946, while assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division, Third U.S. Army.

By this time, the Daredevil Tankers of World War II had either fought with or served with each of the U.S. Armies in Europe, and had even fought for a time under the banner of the British/Canadian 21st Army Group.

*****

This outline history of the 740th is taken from Lt. Col. George K. Rubel's book, Daredevil Tankers, published in Germany, September 19, 1945, and edited by First Sergeant Charles W. Edwards. Additional information was taken from the 740th Tank Battalion Association Newsletters and assorted papers, Harry F. Miller, Secretary; James H. Thomas, President. Compiled and written by Paul L. Pearson for the Belgian Memorial Service, Neufchateau, Belgium, April 24, 1999. Transcribed on this website with permission from the author.