Fort George G. Meade: The First 100 Years

WORLD WAR I YEARS
Five of Hearts: WWI Tank Crewed by Heroes
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America’s deadliest battle is the WW1 Meuse-Argonne
offensive. In 47 days of hard fighting, more than 26,000
U.S. soldiers were killed and 95,000 wounded. The carnage
was greater than the bloodiest battle of the Civil War and
those fought by America during WWII.
The Meuse-Argonne Offensive began in late September
1918 when infantry, artillery, and tanks of the American
First Army attacked well-fortified German positions
along a 20-mile front west of Verdun. In the attack, 165
tanks of the 304th Tank Brigade were commanded by Lt.
Col. George Patton. The brigade included two American
battalions–the 344th and 345th–equipped with Frenchbuilt
Renault FT tanks.
The tank had a two-man crew, weighed 6.5 tons,
and had a top speed of about 4 miles per hour. Crosscountry,
the tank could only go about 1.5 miles per hour,
somewhat faster than the infantry it supported could
advance. Armed with either a Hotchkiss 8mm machine
gun or a 37mm cannon, the Renault FT’s armor was only
16mm thick, which was generally sufficient for protection
against machine guns bullets and splinters from artillery
rounds. The driver, typically a corporal, sat in the front of
the tank while the commander, usually a sergeant, stood
in the turret and manned the tank’s main armament.
Communication between commander and driver was by
yelling and the commander kicking his foot to direct the
driver.
Despite its simple engineering and operation, the
Renault FT, with its rotating turret and rear-mounted
engine, was a revolutionary tank design. During the
Meuse-Argonne offensive, Patton’s Renault FTs provided
support to infantry formations by attacking German
machine gun nests. Losses among Patton’s tankers during
the battle were three officers and 16 enlisted men killed,
plus 18 officers and 128 enlisted men wounded, for an
approximate total of 165 casualties.
Now, some 100 years later, all the WWI veterans are
gone and little remains to bear witness to America’s
deadliest battle. One artifact that survived the war is the
“Five of Hearts” Renault FT which was recently moved
to the future U.S. Army Museum at Fort Belvoir, Virginia,
from its home at the Fort George G. Meade Museum.
Not only is it a combat veteran of the Meuse-Argonne,
By Marc Romanych and Patrick Osborn
but it is also one of only two tanks known to exist used
by American forces in combat during WWI. Officially, the
tank was designated by its serial number (No. 1516) but
to the soldiers who crewed it, the tank was called Five
of Hearts because of the tactical symbol painted on its
turret–a red heart inside a white diamond along with
the number five used to identify the tank’s company and
platoon. In that fashion, Five of Hearts was the fifth tank
of 2nd Platoon (a red heart), of C Company (a white
diamond), 344th Light Tank Battalion.
On the morning Oct. 4, 1918, nine days into the Meuse-
Argonne offensive, Five of Hearts was crewed by platoon
leader Lt. Harlow A. Wood and his driver Cpl. Horatio R.
Rogers. Wood’s platoon, located south of the Germanheld
village of Exermont, was ordered to support an
infantry attack on the village. The operation began at 5:30
am with Lt. Wood’s Five of Hearts and a second tank
crewed by Sgt. Arthur Snyder and Cpl. Kelly advancing
forward of the infantry. Five of Hearts soon came under
German machine gun fire, and Lt. Wood was wounded by
splitters from bullets hitting near the turret’s vision slits.
Unable to continue forward, Wood and Rogers withdrew
to safety behind the American infantry. There, Cpl. Rogers
left the shelter of the Five Hearts and crawled forward
through the front line under heavy artillery, machine-gun,
and rifle fire to tell Sgt. Snyder to continue the advance,
but Sgt. Snyder’s tank was soon disabled by a shell from
a German field gun. With their tank now out of action,
Snyder and Rogers crawled back across the battlefield to
the Five of Hearts.
Learning that Lt. Wood was wounded, Sgt. Snyder took
command of Five of Hearts and returned to battle with
Cpl. Rogers as his driver. By now the infantry attack had
bogged down in the face of German machine gun fire,
so Snyder advanced Five of Hearts forward beyond the
infantry positions and engaged a large dug-in German
machine gun nest. The Germans returned fire, hitting
Five of Hearts and severely wounding Cpl. Rogers. With
Rogers blinded by blood from his wounds, Sgt. Snyder
directed the Five of Hearts back to the rear and took
Rogers to a medical aid station.
Now lacking a driver, Sgt. Snyder found a tank corps
soldier who was separated from his own unit, B Company