to help close the Argentan-Falaise Pocket containing the German Seventh Army, which it finished by 18 August near Putanges. Six days later, the outfit had sped through Courville and Chartres and was approaching the banks of the Seine River. On the night of 25 August 1944, the division began the crossing of the Seine; once completed, the 3rd moved across France, reaching the Belgian border on 2 September 1944. Liberated in the path of the division were Meaux, Soissons, Laon, Marle, Mons, Charleroi, Namur and Liège. The division cut off 40,000 Wehrmacht troops at Mons and captured 8,000 prisoners. Hurtgen and the Bulge On 10 September 1944, the 3rd, now nicknamed the "Spearhead Division", fired what it claimed was the first American field artillery shell onto German soil of the war. Two days later, it passed the German border and soon breached the Siegfried Line after taking part in the Battle of Hürtgen Forest. The 3rd Armored Division fought far north of the deepest German penetration during the Battle of the Bulge. The division worked its way south in an attack designed to help wipe out the bulge and bring First Army's line abreast of General George S. Patton's Third Army, which was fighting northward toward Houffalize. It severed a vital highway leading to St. Vith and later reached Lierneux, Belgium, where it halted to refit. Into the German heartland After a month of rest, the division resumed its offensive to the east, and on 26 February, rolled back inside Germany. In the following weeks, the 3rd bolted across the Roer River and seized several towns, crossed the Erft, and at last broke through to the Rhine River to capture Cologne by 7 March. During the engagement in Cologne, a spectacular film was shot of a 3rd Division T-26E Pershing ("Eagle 7") defeating a German PzKPfW V "Panther" that caught the Pershing by surprise in the city streets on 6 March. Two weeks later, it crossed the Rhine at Honnef, a town south of Cologne. On 31 March, the commander of the division, Major General Maurice Rose, rounded a corner in his jeep and found himself face to face with a German tank. As he withdrew his pistol either to throw it to the ground or in an attempt to fight back, the young German tank commander, apparently misunderstanding Rose's intentions, shot and killed the general. After Cologne, the division