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Retired Col. William B. "Bull" Miller continues;

"We stayed there for the evening and the infantry had secured that.  But during the night, evidently the Germans had come across on the bridge and reinforced something there.  They attacked and they drove the infantry and overran an anti-tank gun (an A.T. open cage gun) and of course they didn't know how to use it.  In a position like that, the tanks would pull back to a position quite a number of yards from the line.  If the infantry got in trouble, this gave them a capability of falling back or somehow adjusting their lines and preparing a counter-attack.  If we were up on the front line like that, we'd be caught up in a counter-attack and overrun and lose the tank, like the anti-tank people lost their A.T. gun, first thing.  So the philosophy was always to come back away from the front line.  But this was not always true in towns; we generally tried to stay involved with the infantry in towns."     

"The next day, we went into the attack again and caught them bringing some assault guns up a firebreak and along with their infantrymen, suffered heavy casualties and lost all four assault guns.  Lt. Wilfred Hansen was killed by a sniper on a recon. mission with an infantry battalion commander to look over a position where they were going to counter-attack through some territory they had lost to the Germans.  This turned out to be a highly successful attack, the next day."

W.W.I French Renault Tank Abandoned During W.W.II

The Wizda diary tells of the hornet's nest the Company "C" men attached to the 319th Combat Team went through on the 7th of September: 

"Our company of tanks supported by the 3rd Battalion, 319th Infantry, attacked Fort Villey Le Sec en-masse.  Our first experience with the fort proved unsuccessful.  Villey Le Sec was geographically important since it guarded the approaches to the large city of Nancy.  Our 75 mm guns had little effect on this three-war-old fort.  It would take more than a company of tanks to assault it."

At "A" Company, on the 8th, the company diary states:

"Lt. East, S/Sgt. Smalley and P.F.C. Palmer were ordered to go on reconnaissance with Capt. Smith at 10:00 A.M., to Dieulouard.  They left Dieulouard for a small island in the Moselle River and proceeded to recon for a suitable spot for the tanks to ford the river.  T/5 Blew, when returning with the peep, reported machine gun fire, small arms and hand grenade explosions.  Captain Smith, Lieutenant East, Staff Sergeant Smalley and Private First Class Palmer are listed as Missing In Action." 

The Hendricks diary of "B" Co., for the same day states:

"Giles - Today was a bad day for us.  Our Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Wilfred Hansen was killed by a sniper on a reconnaissance mission, prior to our attack to recover ground lost by a German counter-attack.  Lt. Francis P. Ford assumed command by order of Lt. Col. Ralph Talbot.

Another attack.  During this attack, Sgt. Kocyan's tank was knocked out by one of three 610th Tank Destroyer guns captured by the Germans.  Later in the battle, the guns were knocked out along with four machine gun nests and an ammunition dump and we captured seventy-five prisoners.  The 318th Infantry Regiment fought well, while we gave them good support and so ends another day."