37th Armor Regiment

The 37th Armor is an armor (tank) regiment of the United States Army. It is often remembered as the successor to the 37th Tank Battalion, 4th Armored Division, commanded by then Lieutenant Colonel Creighton Abrams (the namesake of the M1 Abrams) during World War II.

The 37th Armored Regiment (37th Armor) was constituted 13 January 1941 in the Regular Army as the 7th Armored Regiment (7th Armor) and assigned to the 4th Armored Division (4th Armored) when the Armored Division was activated on 15 April 1941 at Pine Camp (now Fort Drum), New York. The 7th Armor Regiment was redesignated the 37th Armored Regiment on 8 May 1941. The first filler personnel arrived at Pine Camp four days later, and two weeks after that a thirteen week basic training cycle was begun. Training in the fundamentals of armor began, despite the fact that there were only twenty one tanks in the entire 4th Armored Division. Many of the 37th Armor's key personnel were selected to cadre the 8th Armored Division. In October 1942, the 4th Armored Division moved to Camp Forrest in Tullahoma, Tennessee on the Cumberland Plateau for maneuvers. In November, they moved again, to the West Coast Desert Training Center, first occupying Camp Ibis near Needles, California, California (in the Mojave Desert) and the Arizona and Nevada borders. During this time, some of the lessons learned in combat in North Africa by the 1st Armored Division and 2nd Armored Division were taught to the 4th Armored Division. In early June 1943, orders came for the 4th Armored Division to dismount at Camp Bowie, an Armored Division training center near Brownwood, Texas. On 10 September 1943, the 4th Armored Division including the 37th Armored Regiment was reorganized in a new table of organization and equipment for most U. S. armored divisions. The 37th Regiment's Headquarters and Headquarters Company and its 1st Battalion and 2nd Battalion (less Company D) were redesignated as the 37th Tank Battalion. The 3rd Battalion was reorganized and redesignated as the 706th Tank Battalion and relieved from assignment to the 4th Armored Division. The 706th spent the war as a separate battalion. Reconnaissance Company was redesignated and reorganized as Troop F, 25th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, Mechanized, a separate element of the 4th Armored Division – hereafter separate lineage. Maintenance and Service Companies were disbanded, with the personnel and equipment distributed throughout the two battalions. Following the reorganization, the 706th Tank Battalion deployed from the San Francisco Port of Embarkation on 22 March 1944 and arrived at Hawaii on 29 April 1944. From there, they deployed on LSTs in support of Admiral Chester Nimitz' wing of the Pacific Island Hopping Campaign. 706th Tank Battalion was on Guam by 22 July 1944; on The Philippines by 23 November 1944; on Ie Shima by 16 April 1945; and on Okinawa by 25 April 1945. The 37th Tank Battalion (37th TB) was now, together with the 35th Tank Battalion and 8th Tank Battalion (redesignated from 3rd Battalion, 35th Armored Regiment), the nucleus of the 4th Armored Division. On 15 November 1943, Major General John S. Wood who commanded the 4th Armored Division, announced that the 4th Armored Division would deploy overseas. On 11 December 1943, the 4th Armored Division moved northeast by train, unloading at Camp Myles Standish, Massachusetts, on 20 December 1943 for winter training. The 4th AD sailed from the Boston Port of Embarkation on 29 December 1943. They arrived in England for more training on 8 January 1944, and – after getting used to the local environment, and waiting for the D Day invasion success at Normandy on 6 June, they proceeded to France on 11 July 1944 as part of the follow on force.

The 37th Tank Battalion moved to Southern England and prepared for transport to France. On 13 July 1944, the 4th AD and the 37th TB reached Utah Beach, but for the most of the remainder of July 1944, the 37th simply waited in reserve as the 4th AD relieved elements of the weary 4th Infantry Division. The 4th Armored Division was ordered to combat on 28 July 1944, as the U. S. First Army launched its breakout attack. The infantry divisions on both sides of the 4th AD attacked and "pinched out" the division, then the 4th AD attacked through the infantry divisions lines and began to race for the neck of the Brittany peninsula. The 37th was traveling at the forefront of this move with Colonel Bruce C. Clarke's Combat Command Alpha (CCA). The next day, Coutances fell, and then Avranches, at the northern edge of the neck of Brittany, fell on 30 July. On its way across Brittany, the 4th Armored became part of General Patton's Third Army when it became operational on 1 August 1944. By 9 August 1944 the 37th was approaching Lorient, on the southern edge of Brittany. On 14 August 1944 the siege of Lorient was turned over to the 6th Armored Division and the 37th turned eastward with the rest of the Third Army, which was beginning its historic race across France. VII Corps was the southernmost corps of the Third Army, 4th Armored Division was on the VII Corps southern flank, and the 37th Tank Battalion was protecting the southern flank of the division. There was nothing south of the 37th except the Loire River and the Germans. The commander of the 37th Tank Battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Creighton W. Abrams (who later became commander of all U. S. Forces in Vietnam and then the Army Chief of Staff), in an odd move, detached a task force under Major Edward Bautz to blow up the Loire River bridges between Blois and Tours, but they found upon arrival that their work had been done by the Wehrmacht. This task force then followed the Loire's northern bank, paralleling the advance of the main body. On 16 August 1944 a German column was sighted on the south bank. Major Bautz's tankers attacked this column, inflicting losses and driving the Germans back from the river. The 37th crossed the Seine on 25 August 1944, and the Marne on 23 August 1944. The Marne Canal was bridged and the town of Châlons was attacked from the east, to the consternation of the defending garrison, which was expecting an assault on the western edge of town. On 31 August 1944, in a quick attack during a driving rainstorm, the 37th captured the bridge across the Meuse River at Commercy before the Germans could blow it up. The next day, the gasoline ration had run out, and the 37th ground to a halt. By this time, the 37th had advanced 700 mile (1127 km) in seven weeks, crossed three major rivers and was within one day's motor march of the German border, only seventy miles to the northwest. On 13 September 1944, the M4 tanks of the 37th crossed the Moselle River. On 14 September 1944 they overran the rear command post of the 15th Panzer Grenadier Division at Arracourt and, in Valhey, caught the same division's forward echelon command post before it could retreat. It was at Valhey, that Sergeant Joe Sadowski of Company A, 37th Tank Battalion, would become a Medal of Honor recipient. This non commissioned officer from Perth Amboy, New Jersey was commander of the second tank column as the 37th rolled into the French town. Swinging north around a corner, Sadowski's M4 tank clattered into the village square, where a German armor piercing round found its mark and set the Sherman afire against the town's water trough. Sadowski had his crew dismounted and took shelter behind a building after running a gauntlet of machine gun and small arms fire. The bow gunner was found to be missing, and a quick glance at the burning tank showed the gunner's hatch still closed tight. Sadowski "ran back to his tank, clambered up the smoking front slope plate and tried to pry open the gunner's hatch with his bare hands. He stood on the smoking tank and strained at the hatch until he had been hit so many times he could no longer stand. He slid from his medium [tank] and died in the mud beside its tracks". His father and mother were given his posthumous Medal of Honor. From 19 September through 22 September 1944 the Germans tried to push the 37th back across the Moselle River. At Moyenvic, the 37th saw one of the largest tank to tank engagements of the war, losing 14 Sherman tanks while claiming to have knocked out 55 Panther and Tiger tanks. The German counterattack was unsuccessful. On 22 September 1944 the 37th's M4 tanks swept south again through Coincourt and Bures to the Rhine Marne Canal. Counterattack followed counterattack as the desperate Wehrmacht tried to dislodge the 3rd Army from its position, but as the toll of Panthers mounted, the attacks dwindled in intensity and finally ceased. The 37th was relieved on 12 October 1944 by elements of the 26th (Yankee) Infantry Division. For its tenacity in the Moselle River valley, the 37th was awarded (4th AD cited) its second French Croix de guerre with Palm (its first when the 4th AD was cited for Normandy). The 37th's tankers were pulled off line for a rest after 87 straight days of combat. The 37th moved out in a downpour on 9 November 1944 to deprive Hitler of the industrial Saar River Valley. On 11 November 1944 the 37th was caught on the road and lost six tanks because they could not maneuver off road due to the bottomless mud. On 8 December 1944 the 37th passed through the old French Maginot Line and took Singling. Two days later it was relieved again, by elements of the 12th Armored Division, and sent to the rear for another rest, although not so far back that elements of the battalion were not in intermittent contact with German forces.

On 16 December 1944, Sherman tanks of Company A, 37th Tank Battalion were the first 4th Armored Division vehicles to enter Germany when they chased several German tanks back into the woods near Rimling. The same day Company A entered the Reich, Hitler had played his last trump north of where the 4th Armored Division was resting from its five months in action. The German 5th Panzer Army, the last of the German strategic reserves, spearheaded the attack by Field Marshal Model's Army Group B that opened the "Battle of the Bulge". Its objective was the port of Antwerp and allied depots nearby. On 18 December 1944, the 37th got its march order—to move north against the German penetration, which was causing alarm to the Allied High Command. On the same day, the 101st Airborne Division was moved by truck to establish a strongpoint at the key road and rail junction of Bastogne, in Belgium. By the time the 37th arrived at the south flank of the German penetration, the 101st Airborne was cut off on all sides by the enemy drive. The 37th became the spearhead of the 4th Armored Division's drive to relieve the paratroopers in Bastogne. The 37th moved out in a feathery snowfall at 0600 hours on 22 December 1944, attacking northward against German airborne troops. The 37th Tank Battalion and the 53rd Armored Infantry Battalion made up the 4th Armored Division's Combat Command B (CCB). In a bloody engagement against German paratroopers wearing American uniforms, CCB took Bigonville. At 0200 Christmas morning, CCB marched thirty miles west to the 4th Armored Division's left flank. At 0700 the 37th jumped off from Bercheaux and swiftly took Bauxles Rosieres, Nives and Remoiville. At dawn on 26 December 1944, the 37th struck again, taking Remichampagne, and then seizing the high ground near Chochiment, only three miles from Bastogne. Announcing the plan to relieve the surrounded 101st Airborne Division, LTC Abrams, commanding the 37th, made the undramatic statement, "We're going in to those people now." The lead vehicle in that attack was a Sherman tank nicknamed "Cobra King" and commanded by 1st Lt. Charles Boggess Jr., of Greenville, Illinois. Boggess was the commanding officer of Company C, 37th Tank Battalion. There were but eight other tanks in Company C when the "move out" order came, but at 1515 hours all nine sets of sprockets turned, leading the 37th northward to the embattled 101st Airborne Division. Two towns lay between the 37th and Bastogne, Clochimont and Assenois, and they were both heavily defended by German troops. Beyond Assenois was a heavy wood, concealing the blockhouses that enclosed the road to Bastogne. Company C's mission was to barge through these defenses in high gear, stopping for nothing and leaving the mopping up to the companies following, which were supported by the 53d Armored Infantry Battalion. At 1645 Lt. Boggess shook hands with 2nd Lt. Webster of Company A, 326th Airborne Engineer Battalion, 101st Airborne Division and in twenty five minutes Lt. Col. Abrams and his S3, Capt. William Dwight, reported to BG Anthony C. McAuliffe, acting Commanding General of the 101st Airborne Division. The fight was not over. Lt. Boggess' tank company now consisted of just four M4 Sherman tanks, and the rest of the 37th suffered similarly. By now the 37th was joined by elements of the 26th Infantry Division in fighting to hold the corridor open to Bastogne. Counterattack followed counterattack, until on 9 January 1945, the German penetration had been pushed to the east of Bastogne. The shattered German forces began to withdraw to their homeland. For its relief of Bastogne, the 37th was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation (4th AD cited). On 10 January 1945, the 37th was attacking east of Bastogne when the order came to halt. After a masterful disengagement and an icy road march south to Luxembourg, the 37th again found itself in the Third Army reserve, ready to answer a fire call.

In the rugged country of the Rhineland, it was mainly an Infantry war, but the 37th followed close behind the attackers, ready to break through the West Wall when a breach was secured. Finally, on 22 February 1945, General Patton unleashed his tanks and Outscheid (24 February), Mioderwinger, Baustert, Feilsdorf, and Koosbrisch quickly fell to the 37th, which was then with Combat Command B under the command of the 80th Division. On 25 February 1945, Company B, 37th Tank Battalion, with Company B, 51st Armored Infantry Battalion, took the bridge over the Prum at Remesdorf. Companies C of the 37th and 51st took the high ground around Rittersdorf and established a base of fire while the combined A Companies of the two battalions took Rittersdorf and a bridgehead over the Nims River. More than 1,000 prisoners of war were taken in this action. In only four days the 37th had led the 4th AD and the Third Army as it pierced the Siegfried Line. A German counterattack near Sefferweich was repulsed while the 37th rested for the next venture. Farther north, the U. S. First Army was fighting its way into Cologne to set the stage for the dash to the Rhine. On 5 March 1945 the 37th's M4 tanks attacked through the 5th Infantry Division's bridgehead over the Kyll River and immediately cut across German combat zones to a distance of 13 mile (21 km). On 16 March 1945, LT Joe Liese, the commanding officer of Company B, 37th Tank Battalion, captured General von Rothkirch, commanding general of the German 53rd Army Corps (LIII. Armeekorps). General von Rothkirch was driving his car on an inspection tour near Potzberg, where he stumbled on Company B. By the afternoon of that day, the 37th was even past German artillery positions. Prisoners from the German 10th Woodchopping Battalion surrendered to the advancing tankers. The 37th sped on to Ochtendung, and captured a billeting party from the German Seventh Army rear command post. When almost to the Rhine, LT Liese's tank company overtook a German wheel column and, with assistance from artillery and light aircraft, shot it up badly. Then the 37th moved to the Rhine and took up positions over watching the river. During the night, remnants of the Wehrmacht tried to get back across the Rhine. In doing so, numerous enemy vehicles stumbled into the 37th's position and were captured or destroyed. On 7 March 1945 the U. S. First Army thrust north from Cologne, pinning what was left of the German Seventh Army between it and the 4th Armored Division. It was in this drive that the U. S. 9th Armored Division captured the Remagen bridge intact. On 8 March 1945, Colonel Abrams left the 37th to command CCB and Major Bautz assumed command of the 37th Tank Battalion. For the next two weeks the 37th was engaged in cleaning out the Palatinate, the triangle formed by the Saar, Rhine and Moselle Rivers. On St. Patrick's Day 1945 the 37th entered the Spa City of Bad Kreuznach, and on 21 March 1945 it returned to the banks of the Rhine at Worms. On 25 March 1945, the U. S. Third Army crossed the Rhine. The 5th Infantry Division crossed in United States Navy landing craft near Oppenheim before the Germans could fire a shot. When the east bank was secure, a pontoon bridge was quickly constructed, and by 0300 on 26 March 1945, the 37th was across with the rest of the 4th Armored Division. The 37th advanced through the 5th Infantry Division perimeter; by noon Company D's light tanks and Infantry from the 10th Armored Infantry Battalion captured a railroad bridge intact near Aschaffenburg over the Main River. Meanwhile, Combat Command A (CCA) had secured the Main crossing near Hanau. The 37th, with the rest of CCB, sideslipped west and followed CCA across the Main on 28 March 1945. By dusk, the 37th's M4 tanks were in Giessen, 40 mile (64 km) north of Hanau. The Frankfurt Berlin Autobahn was the 4th Armored Division's axis of advance. The 37th reached Hersfeld (today Bad Hersfeld) the last day of March. On 2 April 1945, under heavy air attack, the 37th crossed the Werra.

The 3rd Battalion, 37th Armored Regiment saw combat in the Persian Gulf War from 24 February 1991 through 4 March 1991 organized as Task Force 3/37th Armor, the unit was composed of HHC, B, and C Companies, 3/37th Armor; A and D Company, Second Battalion, Sixteenth Infantry; First Platoon of B Company and Second Platoon of C Company, Second Battalion, Third Air Defense Artillery; C Company, First Engineer Battalion; and Ground Surveillance Radar Team B, One Hundred and First Military Intelligence Battalion. As part of the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division and VII Corps main effort, Task Force 3/37th Armor breached the Iraqi defense on 24 February 1991, clearing four passage lanes and expanding the gap under direct enemy fire. The Task Force then attacked 300 kilometers across southern Iraq into northern Kuwait, severing Iraqi lines of communication, and then drove north once again into Iraq to assist in the seizure of the City of Safwan, Iraq, and the securing of the Safwan Airfield; the Scout Platoon (HHC,3/37 AR) was part of the guard force under command of 1LT Craig Borchelt for the Coalition Forces Iraqi Cease Fire negotiations. During the operation, over fifty enemy combat vehicles were destroyed and over 1700 prisoners were captured. Throughout the Ground War, the soldiers performed with marked distinction under difficult and hazardous conditions. Their gallantry, determination, and Esprit de Corps guaranteed victory and maintained the finest traditions of the United States Army. After the Gulf War, the Dauntless Battalion continued to serve at Fort Riley as part of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team (Dagger), 1st Infantry Division from 1991 to 1996. In March 1996, Lieutenant Colonel Ronald G. Houle and Command Sergeant Major Craig Salminen cased the battalion's colors as the unit was re designated as the 1st Battalion, 13th Armored Regiment as part of the 1st Infantry Division's move to Germany (2/1 ID reflagged to the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division). Although the 3 37AR's service on Custer Hill at Riley came to an end its former Soldiers still proudly maintain its memory and pay tribute to its rich heritage as a U. S. Army armored unit. Courage Conquers NO SLACK! Link to the 37th Armored Regiment Alumni Page https://courageconquers. com

The 4th Battalion is known as the Thunderbolts, a name taken from the name of LTC Abrams' tank during World War II.

Some of its component units were stationed in West Germany in the 1960s, home base being Fort Knox Ky, attached to the 194th Armor BDE throughout the nineteen sixties and seventies. It supported the Armor school and rotated as an alert unit for El Dorado Canyon. 4–37 AR saw combat in the Persian Gulf War as part of the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division.

Description: A silver color metal and enamel device in height overall consisting of a shield blazoned: Argent, a wyvern glissant, sans legs, tail nowed Vert, langued, eyed and barbed Gules. Attached below the shield a silver motto scroll inscribed "COURAGE CONQUERS" in black letters. Symbolism: The shield is green and white (silver), the colors of the Armored Force. The wyvern is representative of the deadliness of the tank. Background: The Distinctive Unit Insignia was originally approved for the 37th Armored Regiment on 1 June 1942. It was redesignated for the 37th Tank Battalion on 12 November 1943. On 29 November 1946 it was redesignated the 37th Constabulary Squadron. Due to the unit inactivation, the distinctive unit insignia was redesignated for the 37th Tank Battalion on 30 November 1953. Effective 28 January 1958, the insignia was redesignated for the 37th Armor.