One Tank Against an Army: The “Broken” Sherman That Stopped Hitler’s Panzers

The Belgian winter of 1944 did not just bring snow; it brought a wall of steel. On December 19, the Ardennes Forest was a chaotic landscape of retreating American columns and surging German Panzers. Hitler’s last great gamble, Operation Watch on the Rhine, was in full swing. The objective was simple but devastating: smash through the Allied lines, capture the fuel at Spa, race to the Meuse River, and split the Allied armies in half.

In the path of the elite Second Panzer Division—a veteran force of the Russian and African fronts—was a single, isolated American crossroads near the village of Foy-Notre-Dame. And guarding that crossroads was a single M4 Sherman tank nicknamed the Colorado Kid.

I. The Crew and the Machine

Staff Sergeant William McWater was a 24-year-old from Denver who had seen enough war to last a lifetime. His crew was a microcosm of America: Corporal James Rothwell (Gunner, Ohio), PFC Tony Caserta (Loader, Brooklyn), and Private Eugene DeLeo (Driver, Pennsylvania).

By military doctrine, holding a crossroads against a division required a full company of tanks and infantry support. McWater had four men and a 75mm gun.

As the temperature plummeted, they positioned the Colorado Kid behind a small stone wall. They didn’t have to wait long. At 14:30 hours, the horizon began to crawl with the grey shapes of German motorcycles, followed by the terrifying silhouettes of Panzer IVs and Panthers.

II. The First Blood

McWater held his breath as the lead Panzer IV lumbered to within 800 yards. “Fire!” he barked. The Sherman’s 75mm gun roared, sending an armor-piercing round straight through the German tank’s glacis plate. Smoke erupted from the Panzer.

Minutes later, a second Panzer IV tried to flank them, but it bogged down in a snow-covered ditch. Rothwell didn’t miss. Two kills. The massive German column, stretching ten miles back, ground to a halt. The Germans, assuming they had hit a major defensive line, began to deploy cautiously. McWater had bought his first fifteen minutes.

III. The Panther and the “Broken” Tank

The real test came when a Panther tank—vastly superior in armor and firepower—rumbled forward. A Panther’s 75mm long-gun could shred a Sherman from miles away.

The Panther fired first. The shell struck the Colorado Kid’s frontal armor at a shallow angle, deflecting upward. The impact was so violent it felt like being inside a giant bell. The strike did two things: it shattered the tank’s radio antenna and severed the connection to the right track.

The Colorado Kid was now “broken.” It was immobilized—a sitting duck.

McWater looked at his men. Standard protocol was clear: if a tank is immobilized against superior forces, scuttle it and retreat. But if they left, the crossroads was open. The German 2nd Panzer Division would reach the Meuse bridges on schedule, potentially winning the battle for Hitler.

“Anyone who wants to leave can go,” McWater told his crew. “No judgment.”

The three men looked at the burning German wreckage and then at each other. Rothwell spoke for the group: “We stay.”

IV. The Six-Hour Siege

For the next six hours, the crossroads became a graveyard for the “invincible” Panzers. Because the Sherman was hidden and stayed silent between shots, the German commanders grew paranoid. They couldn’t believe a single tank was doing this; they reported “extensive anti-tank defenses” and “multiple tank companies” to their headquarters.

As the sun began to set, the Germans called up 88mm Flak guns to pound the crossroads. These guns outranged the Sherman and could penetrate its armor with ease. One shell struck the Colorado Kid’s turret directly.

Silence filled the tank. The crew waited for the explosion. It never came. The shell was a dud—likely sabotaged by a slave laborer in a German munitions factory. However, the impact jammed the turret’s hydraulic traverse. To aim, they now had to crank the massive turret by hand.

V. The Fist of God

At 17:30 hours, the Germans launched a final, overwhelming assault. Five Panthers spread out across the fields, supported by Panzergrenadiers. McWater told his men to hold their one last armor-piercing round until the lead Panther was at 250 yards.

Just as the German tanks prepared to fire, the sky seemed to collapse.

A massive American artillery barrage, called in by a distant observer who had spotted the German bottleneck, rained down. It was the “Fist of God.” Panthers were flipped like toys; infantry scattered. In the chaos, Rothwell hand-cranked the turret and fired their final shot. It struck the nearest Panther in its thinner side armor. Fifth kill.

The German attack broke. The 2nd Panzer Division, frustrated by a “ghost” defense and now hammered by artillery, withdrew to regroup.

VI. The Aftermath

Twenty minutes later, a column of M10 Tank Destroyers arrived. The commander dismounted and stared in disbelief at the Colorado Kid. The Sherman was a wreck—missing a track, turret jammed, radio gone, and pockmarked with shrapnel.

“How long have you been holding here?” the commander asked.

McWater checked his watch. “Five and a half hours.”

The delay at that crossroads threw the German schedule into terminal disarray. Reinforcements poured into the sector, and the 2nd Panzer Division never reached the Meuse. The “Bulge” began to shrink.

VII. The Truth of the Hero

General George S. Patton himself later pinned the Distinguished Service Cross on McWater and Silver Stars on the crew. When Patton asked why he decided to stay at a “hopeless” position, McWater didn’t give a Hollywood answer.

“Someone had to hold it,” he said. “We were there, so we stayed.”

The Colorado Kid never fought again; it was too damaged and was eventually scrapped for parts. The crew, however, stayed together, naming their replacement tank Colorado Kid II. They fought through the rest of the war and survived to return home.

For decades, the story was forgotten. German war diaries recorded a “major American armored counter-attack” at Foy-Notre-Dame. It took historians nearly forty years to realize that the “major counter-attack” was actually just four exhausted men in a broken tank who refused to move.

McWater passed away in 1991. He lived a quiet life in Denver, working in construction, never telling his children that he was the man who stopped a Panzer Division. To him, he wasn’t a hero; he was just a soldier who did his job. But the crossroads near Foy-Notre-Dame stands as a silent testament to the fact that sometimes, the only thing required to change history is the courage to stay.