The Story of the 10th Armored Division cont.
Task Force Hankins grabbed bridges across the Rems and Fils Rivers intact, rolled 32 miles in two days to reach Kircheim April 20 and slam the back door to Stuttgart, then under assualt by French troops. The remainder of CC A, then commanded by Col. Thomas M. Brinkley, all of CC B, and Reserve Command closed rapidly on the same target.
Two days later, TF Chamberlain and TF Richardson stood on the goal line — the fabled Danube River. Fleeing Nazis had no time to destroy one of the river's spans near Ehringen. The Tigers' 70-mile dash in four days had paid dividends.
By late April, the Third Reich was writhing in death throes. British pushed on Hamburg; American First and Ninth Armies lined the Elbe facing Berlin; Patton's Third Army entered Czechoslovakia.
The 10th poised above the vaunted National Redoubt. Here, the Nazis, by their own admission, would resist to a bloody end. Resistence was there — but when struck by the Tigers' mailed fist, it crumpled like a wind-filled paper bag.