When the artillery of the 7th Armored fired on the city of Chartres, the order was passed down to spare its historic sites. Many former members of the 814th believe that the word to spare the Chartres cathedral came from none other than Lieutenant Rogers.

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After reaching the World War I battlefields of Château-Thierry and Verdun, Patton's Third Army ran out of fuel. Members of the 814th Tank Destroyer Battalion later related how, encouraged by Rogers, some soldiers took advantage of this interlude to tour the historic site. They first visited the American Cemetery at St. Mihiel, then moved on to La Tranchée des Batonettes, where a trench cave-in during the Battle of Verdun had left no trace of the French soldiers in it save for their bayonets. Leading his reconnaissance platoon on patrol over a road through the World War I battlefield, replete with shell-pocks, trenches and barbed wire, Rogers conducted an impromptu history lesson over his radio. As he was explaining how a million men fell in the conflict between the French and the Germans, the sharp bark of his task force commander interrupted him: "Lieutenant Rogers–let's fight one war at a time!"

When it was once again able to advance, the 7th Armored Division, including the 814th Tank Destroyer Battalion, suffered heavy losses in its attempts to take the fortress city of Metz on the Moselle River. Relieved by the 5th Infantry Division, the 7th Armored was attached to the First Army and, on September 25, began convoying to an assembly area near Maastricht, Holland.

Assigned to plug the gap between British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery's Twenty-First Army Group and General Omar N. Bradley's Twelfth Army Group, the 7th Armored shuttled among the First Army, the British Second Army and the Ninth Army, all the time fighting against a stronger enemy force than Allied Intelligence had estimated. Two months after the 7th Armored began trying to clear the Germans west of the Maas River, two full British corps finally overcame the stubborn enemy holdouts. Casualties in the gun companies ran high in the peat bogs of the Peel Marshes because equipment had to stay on the roads, allowing no chance to maneuver. In later years Rogers recalled the sporadic enemy shelling and the patrols along the Asten-Nederweert road, even at night, to counter enemy mine-laying attempts. Nederweert, he said, was his platoon's town, and he spent three nights in the church tower observing the Germans across the canal before they put a shell through the tower on the fourth night.

During November, the 814th began replacing its M10s with the M36 tank destroyer, a gasoline-powered vehicle also built on a Sherman M4A3 medium tank chassis but mounting a 90mm gun. Assigned to the Ninth Army, the 7th Armored moved elements to attack Geilenkirchen on Germany's Roer River. Their advance toward the Roer halted when the 814th received orders to move out at 7:30 a.m. on December 17, 1944, and join the 7th Armored's convoy to Vielsalm, Belgium. Hitler's last gamble had begun. Destined to be the largest battle ever fought by American troops, it was dubbed the Battle of the Bulge by British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill.

Major General Robert W. Hasbrouck, having assumed command of the 7th Armored, ordered Brig. Gen. Bruce C. Clarke's Combat Command B to defend the French town of St. Vith. Bolstered by elements of the 9th Armored Division and remnants of the 106th Infantry, Clarke formed a horseshoe defense, with reconnaissance elements patrolling the flanks. According to battalion supply officer J. William Goodwin, after a hurried briefing by Colonel Jones, Reconnaissance Company Captain John P. Reed issued an urgent call: "Get me Lieutenant Rogers!"

The mission given Rogers included reconnoitering Poteau, a village between Vielsalm and St. Vith. An early morning incident at Poteau was described years later by Rogers during the filming of the military documentary The Battle at St. Vith. Rogers' platoon had stayed overnight in Poteau, and early the next morning the men discovered a German tank parked nearby. Rogers and one of his men went to their jeep and, after some effort, disentangled the rocket launcher from the camouflage net. Trying to pull the frozen rockets off the jeep, they chipped the ice away, pulled off the bag and the rockets fell into the mud. They managed to load the rocket launcher, but their first attempt to fire failed. They had forgotten to attach the wires. After connecting the wires, Rogers aimed, fired and his rocket hit the tank. When the smoke began to clear, Rogers saw the tank commander open the hatch and look around as the tank backed away…undamaged.

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