Destroyer Battalion, originally a towed gun unit, re-equipped with the M18 during the summer of 1944; it was the only battalion in the Italian campaign to be fully equipped with the M18. Combat in Europe In January 1944, General Omar Bradley, commander of the First U.S. Army, refused the new M18s when he was first offered them; his older tank destroyer battalions in England had been equipped with the M10 tank destroyer for some time, and he was more interested in the development of the M36 tank destroyer than he was in the M18. As a result, the three M18 battalions initially shipped to England (the 603rd, 704th, and 705th) were assigned to General George S. Patton's Third U.S. Army. On 19 September 1944, near Arracourt, France, across the Moselle from Nancy, the 704th Tank Destroyer Battalion was attached to the 4th Armored Division. Lieutenant Edwin Leiper led an M18 platoon of Company C to Réchicourt-la-Petite, on the way to Moncourt. He saw a German tank gun muzzle appearing out of the fog 30 feet away, and deployed his platoon. In a five-minute period, five German tanks of the 113th Panzer Brigade were knocked out for the loss of one M18. The platoon continued to fire and destroyed ten more German tanks while losing another two M18s. One of the platoon's M18s commanded by Sgt. Henry R. Hartman knocked out six of the German tanks, most of which were the much-feared Panther. By the time the Battle of Arracourt ended three days later, the 704th Tank Destroyer Battalion had knocked out 39 German tanks, for the loss of four M18s destroyed and three more damaged. The M18 Hellcat was a key element during the Battle of the Bulge. On December 19–20, Team Desobry, a battalion-sized tank-infantry task force of the 10th Armored Division was assigned to defend Noville located north-northeast of both Foy and of Bastogne, just away. With just four M18 tank destroyers of the 705th Tank Destroyer Battalion to assist, the paratroopers of 1st Battalion of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment attacked units of the 2nd Panzer Division, whose mission was to proceed by secondary roads via Monaville (just northwest of Bastogne) to seize a key highway and capture, among other objectives, fuel dumps—for the lack of which the overall German counter-offensive faltered and failed. Worried about the threat to their left flank in Bastogne, the Americans organized