The only thing my father, Arthur Thorspecken ever told me about World War II was that a bullet hit a tank rather close to his leg. I was less than 10 years old at the time, so I might not be remembering that correctly. The tank he would have been standing next to would be the Sherman Tank. This Sherman tank was right in front of Winter Museum 1944 in Gingelom Belgium.
1st Lieutenant Dick Sassin of the 75th Infantry Division remembered Belgium. “There were a series of hills up there in Belgium. I saw in the spring of 1945 a farmer plowing a field, and shells were going both ways. This guy’s got to get his crops in. I mean that is his urge. He’s got to get his crops in, so he can eat. Now that’s another war, a real war.”
Someone had the brilliant idea of mounting huge bright spot lights on top of Sherman tanks. The thought was that the light would blind the enemy, and make it easy for the 75th Infantry soldiers to pick off the Germans at night. The problem was that the spot light was an easy target for the Germans to shoot out. And it negated any form of camouflage. The same tank with the huge light mounted on it tried to cross a bridge, but the weight of the tank caused the bridge trusses to give out. They managed to back out of the situation without loosing the tank.
The 290th, 75th Infantry Division, C-Company was assigned to the Ninth Army, 12th Army Group, but attached to the British Second Army for operations and the British VIII Corps for administration. The Air Force launched OPERATION CLARION, which blocked German transportation from the Ruhr. The targets were bridges, communication centers, dikes, and railroad yards. 42,000 flights dropped 5000 tons of high explosives. Not all bombs found their targets so there was plenty of cilvilan damage.
The 75th Infantry relieved the 6th British Airborne Division. The 75th occupied a 24 mile stretch along the West Bank of the Maas River. They mostly had to deal with harassing mortar and artillery fire from the Germans on the opposite bank of the river.