The Story of the 10th Armored Division cont.
Warfare had been a brutal, exacting teacher but Tiger neophytes had learned their lesson well. They were to apply thiS knowledge with vigor in the Battle of the Bulge which began two weeks later.
Trier — Prey to Tiger's Claws
REPARING for the final blow in mid-February, 1945, Western Front Armies straightened kinks
in the line, massed men and materiel along the Reich's frontier.
Gen. Patton's Third Army had already cracked the vaunted West Wall east of the Luxembourg border, but the Saar-Moselle triangle to the south, which had served as a protective screen while von Rundstedt funneled supplies and troops through Trier forh December offensive, remained an unplucked thorn. Still a potential marshalling area for a German attack south ward, the triangle hung like the Sword of Damocles over the Allied-held portion of the Saar Basin. It had to be elimnated before futher eastward advances could proceed.