![]() ![]() The tanks could not use their concentrated firepower and sheer bulk to force a breakthrough, though in the rugged terrain of the Apennine foothills its questionable whether they would have done better if concentrated. That wasn’t unusual many division commanders followed a similar pattern, and usually with the same result. Almond scattered the platoons of both of his attached tank battalions - the 758th with its light tanks and the Shermans of the white 760th Tank Battalion - among his infantry battalions. The Buffalo Soldiers held the far left flank of Fifth Army, from the coast of the Ligurian Sea up into the mountains behind the beaches. In early February the division began an offensive. The light tanks participated in some of these patrols, losing two tanks to mechanical failure and four men wounded. Almond maintained command of the division, which now began to gingerly probe the Axis positions along the Gothic Line. Army’s leadership blamed what they termed inherent racial defects of the troops rather than the blithering incompetence of Edward Almond. The 92nd Infantry Division suffered a humiliating defeat Indian and South African troops had to shore up their positions. The light tanks of the 758th saw no action and suffered no losses. When the Germans and their Italian Fascist allies attacked, the tanks had no hope of reaching the beleaguered front-line battalions along the narrow mountain roads before they had been overrun. The 92nd Infantry Division’s Edward “Sic ’em Ned” Almond, easily the least competent and most deeply racist American division commander in Europe, had two tank battalions attached to his division rather than the usual one, and placed them well behind his lines in reserve. ![]() The African-American battalion, equipped with M5 Stuart light tanks, had been attached to the segregated 92nd Infantry Division operating in northern Italy. The 758th Tank Battalion’s first opportunity to experience combat came on the day after Christmas 1944. ![]()
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