The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945

by Rick Atkinson

  COMZ improvised, with mixed results: “Pluto: Pipeline Under the Ocean,” AB, no. 116 (2002): 2+ (“Bambi”); Moore, “Operation Pluto,” Proceedings (June 1954): 647+; Freeman W. Burford, “The Inside Story of Oil in the European War,” Nov. 25, 1946, NARA RG 319, CMH background file, 2-.37 CB 6; Mason, ed., The Atlantic War Remembered, 417 (“scandalous waste”).

  A terrestrial innovation was the Red Ball Express: Henry F. Pringle, “Weapons Win Wars,” n.d., CMH, 2-3.7 AB.B, 188; Andrew T. McNamara, “QM Activities of II Corps … and First Army Through Europe,” 1955, chapter 46, PIR, MHI, 142 (Cub planes); BP, 691 (300,000 gallons of gasoline); “Red Ball,” Feb. 3, 1945, NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #281, 1–3, 14, 16–18, 28–29, 40, 55, 56–57, 63–65 (“steep hill”); memoir, Robert P. Patterson, ts, 1947 (?), a.p., 273 (“gas splashing inside”); “Shipping Situation and Supply Requirements,” Nov. 25, 1944, COM Z, G-4, CARL, N-6726 (“deadlined”); OH, Henry S. Aurand, 1974, William O. Morrison, SOOHP, MHI (nine thousand were trucks). At war’s end, the U.S. Army had 464 truck companies in Europe, each typically with 48 trucks (Eudora Ramsay Richardson and Sherman Allan, “Quartermaster Supply in the ETO in WWII,” vol. 1, 1947, QM School, Camp Lee, Va.).

  Roads deteriorated in the autumn rains: Waddell, United States Army Logistics, 124–31; “Supply: Oversea Theaters of Operations,” 1945, NARA RG 319, background files, 2-3.7 (ruination of five thousand tires); D’Este, Patton: A Genius for War, 649 (Lee requested thirteen infantry battalions); “Subsistence in the ETO,” 1959, Robert M. Littlejohn papers, HIA (shoot-to-kill authority); Gropman, ed., The Big “L,” 389 (400000 tons); LSA, vol. 2, 140; OH, Henry S. Aurand, 1974, William O. Morrison, SOOHP, MHI (“greatest killer of trucks”).

  A single train could haul: Gropman, ed., The Big “L,” 389–90 (almost five thousand miles of track); LSA, vol. 1, 551 (obliterated by years of Allied bombing); “Supply and Maintenance on the European Continent,” USFET General Board study no. 130, NARA RG 407, E 427, 97-USF5-0.3.0, 30–36; Waddell, United States Army Logistics, 118 (creeping across bridges); “Military Railway Service,” USFET General Board study no. 123, NARA RG 407, E 427, 97-USF5-0.3.0 (line to Paris and as far away as Persia); H. H. Dunham, “U.S. Army Transportation in the ETO,” 1946, CMH, 4-13.1 AA 29, 232 (flagging with lighters); “Activities and Organization of COMZ,” U.S. Senate hearing, May 28, 1945, NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #89, 21–22 (thirteen hundred muscular American engines); memo, COMZ assistant G-5, Feb. 18, 1945, NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #494U (eleven thousand miles).

  “the number of divisions required to capture the number of ports”: Whipple, “Logistical Bottleneck,” IJ (March 1948): 6+.

  Fifty-four ports had been studied: R. W. Crawford, “Guns, Gas and Rations,” SHAEF G-4, June 1945, NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #145; “American Port Plans, August to November 1944,” n.d., NARA RG 319, background files, 2-37 CB 6 (half eventually played a role); RR, 575 (one-third of all Allied supplies); LSA, vol. 2, 71 (Cherbourg tripled its expected cargo); OH, Henry S. Aurand, 1974, William O. Morrison, SOOHP, MHI (“Napoleon’s hand”); Whipple, “Logistical Bottleneck,” IJ (March 1948): 6+ (two hundred by mid-October).

  Clearly the solution was to be found in Antwerp: LC, 211; LSA, vol. 2, 52 (“blood transfusion”); John Connell, “Over Age in Grade,” n.d., 11th Port Engineer Special Brigade Group, MHI, 99–100 (“What a life!”).

  Every Village a Fortress

  A stubby C-47 transport plane: Margry, ed., Operation Market-Garden Then and Now, vol. 1, 27 (B-58); http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_Airport.

  There he found Eisenhower: Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect, 1890–1952, vol. 1, 348. Ambrose puts the meeting on Eisenhower’s B-25 aircraft.

  “Well, they’re nothing but balls”: OH, Miles Graham, Jan. 19, 1949, “Allied Strategy After Fall of Paris,” R. W. W. “Chester” Wilmot, LHC, LH 15/15/48; Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect, 1890–1952, vol. 1, 348–49 (Patton actually running the war).

  For a long hour they bickered: Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe, 489 (capture the Ruhr with twenty divisions); TSC, 255.

  Eisenhower agreed that the Ruhr: OH, DDE, n.d., CJR, box 43, file 7 (“What the hell?”).

  “Our fight must be with both hands”: VW, vol. 2, 22; SLC, 120–22.

  “Just when a really firm grip was needed”: BLM to Brooke, Sept. 10, 1944, AB papers, LHC, 6/2/27.

  Regardless of American requirements: OH, Miles Graham, Jan. 19, 1949, “Allied Strategy After Fall of Paris,” R. W. W. “Chester” Wilmot, LHC, LH 15/15/48 (350 to 400 tons); Hinsley, 542 (Dieppe and Le Havre); VC, 310 (“one good Pas de Calais port” and “last priority”); Second Army war diary, “The First 100 Days,” Sept. 7, 1944, UK NA, WO 285/9; VW, vol. 2, 131–32 (would not open until mid-October), 15; SLC, 208; Hastings, Armageddon, 23 (fourteen hundred three-ton British trucks); Crosswell, Beetle, 707.

  Another grim battlefield development: Hamilton, Monty: Final Years of the Field-Marshal, 1944–1976, 42 (War Office cable); Longmate, Hitler’s Rockets, 164–74 (Stavely Road and “flying gas mains”); Collier, The Defence of the United Kingdom, 406; AAFinWWII, 542 (refused to publicly acknowledge).

  The true culprit, the V-2 rocket: Collier, The Defence of the United Kingdom, 521; Germany VII, 438 (fifty big train engines). A 1960 movie based on Von Braun’s life, I Aim at the Stars, inspired the proposed subtitle, “But Sometimes I Hit London.” Mallon, “Rocket Man,” review of Michael J. Neufeld, Von Braun, New Yorker (Oct. 22, 2007): 170+ (young Prussian Junker).

  The rocket had long been expected: minutes, British chiefs of staff meeting, July 11, 1944, NARA RG 331, E 3, box 129; Hinsley, 421–23 (Saturation bombing of Peenemünde); Germany VII, 443 (tendency to break up); Howard, British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. 5, Strategic Deception, 180–81 (British government also considered evacuating).

  The initial volley had been fired: M. C. Helfers, “The Employment of V-Weapons by the Germans During World War II,” 1954, OCMH, NARA RG 319, 2-3.7 AW, 72; Collier, The Defence of the United Kingdom, 408 (outside Nijmegen); King and Kutta, Impact, 245 (“Will you please report” and “It must be towards Arnhem”); OH, Miles Dempsey, June 4, 1946, R. W. W. “Chester” Wilmot papers, LHC, 15/15/30 (favored a more easterly advance).

  “This delay,” he added: VW, vol. 2, 22.

  “E. is spending a few days in bed”: diary, Kay Summersby, Sept. 11, 1944, DDE Lib, PP-pres, box 140.

  “Monty seems unimpressed”: desk calendar, DDE, Sept. 11–13, 1944, Barbara Wyden papers, DDE Lib, PP-pres, box 1.

  “He let himself go on subject of Monty”: Love and Major, eds., The Year of D-Day, 137.

  At a moment when strategic harmony: OH, SLAM, 1973, George J. Stapleton, SOOHP, MHI, III, 2–3; VW, vol. 2, 351–52; msg, DDE to ONB, Sept. 15, 1944, ONB papers, MHI (“There is no reason”); PP, 552 (“‘clever son of a bitch’”); OH, DDE, n.d., CJR, box 43, file 7, 17, 36–37 (“psychopath”).

  He also authorized Montgomery to communicate directly: Chandler, 2133–34; VW, vol. 2, 24 (“Ike has given way”).

  “Montgomery suddenly became obsessed”: Chandler, 2144.

  Just after six P.M. on the warm, clear Monday: After various units claimed to have been first into Germany, an Army historical investigation concluded that Holzinger and his patrol had earned the distinction. Emerson F. Hurley, “Study of the First Entry into Germany in World War II,” n.d., NARA RG 407, E 427, 605-CAV-0.20; SLC, 3.

  Up the slope for four hundred yards: “Unit History, 85th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron,” 5th AD, n.d., and letter, W. W. Holzinger, Nov. 3, 1947, NARA RG 407, E 429, 95-USF 2-0.3.0; Pogue, Pogue’s War, 264.

  By midnight, other patrols from the 4th and 28th Infantry Divisions: Pogue, Pogue’s War, 264; MacDonald, The Battle of the Huertgen Forest, 6 (Three corps abreast); memo, commanders’ conference, First Canadian Army, Oct. 16, 1944, National Archives of Canada, RG 24, vol. 1054 2, file 215A21.016(9
) (“cuckoos”); Heinz, When We Were One, 29, 258 (“eating away at each other”); RR, 223 (spied French dragoons); Robichon, The Second D-Day, 295–96; William K. Wyant, “Seventh Army History,” n.d., NARA RG 319, background historical file, FRC 4.

  From the North Sea to the Mediterranean: Greenfield, ed., Command Decisions, 345; BP, 701–2; Roskill, White Ensign, 390 (evacuating southern Greece); “Germany’s War Effort and Its Failure,” Oct. 8, 1945, U.K. chiefs of staff committee, Joint Intelligence Subcommittee, ANSCOL, NARA RG 334, E 315, 91 (operational life of a U-boat commander); GS V, 343–45; SLC, 14 (114,000 officers and 3.6 million enlisted).

  “I would like to place the Western front”: Rundstedt also had presided over a kangaroo “court of honor” convened to expel from service officers implicated in the July 20 assassination plot. Barnett, ed., Hitler’s Generals, 201.

  From his new headquarters near Koblenz: Germany VII, 632–35 (fighting strength in the west); VC, 317–24 (“roughly 1,700”); interrogation, Erich Brandenberger, Sept. 1945, Third Army Intelligence Center, NARA RG 407, E 427, ML #978, 1–2, 14 (two hundred postal detachments); “Weaknesses in Germany’s Capacity to Resist,” JIC assessment, UK COS brief and action report, Sept. 27, 1944, NARA RG 331, E 3, SHAEF SGS, box 132 (tanks and trucks to ammunition and uniforms); LC, 33 (created in late summer); SLC, 15 (Begun in 1936).

  The Siegfried Line: interrogation, Erich Brandenberger, Sept. 1945, Third Army Intelligence Center, NARA RG 407, E 427, ML #978, 11; SLC, 34–35 (Fatherland had been made invincible); “Combat Engineering,” Aug. 1945, CE, historical report no. 10, CEOH, box X-30, 63 (disguised as electrical substations), 57; LC, 548–51 (fields of fire); G-2 analysis, XIX Corps, Sept. 14, 1944, Thomas L. Crystal papers, HIA (fifteen big bunkers might be found); “Breaching the Siegfried Line,” Dec. 5, 1944, Seventh Army, special intelligence bulletin, NARA RG 200, E 4100 (UD), Garrison H. Davidson personal office file, box 1.

  But years of neglect had ravaged the West Wall: interrogation, Erich Brandenberger, Sept. 1945, Third Army Intelligence Center, NARA RG 407, E 427, ML #978, 17–18; Lucian Heichler, “The Germans Facing V Corps, September 1944,” May 1952, NARA RG 319, R-series, #37, 2–5 (Farmers laid roadbeds); OH, Gerhard Graf von Schwerin, ETHINT 18, Oct.–Nov. 1945, MHI, 34 (tool sheds or storage bins); Rudolf Freiherr von Gersdorff, “The Battle of Schmidt,” Nov. 1945, FMS, #A-891, MHI (hideouts for soldiers); White, Conquerors’ Road, 12–13 (“more like sewage works”).

  Hitler in mid-August ordered: LC, 548–51; Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe, 478 (finding keys to locked doors); Germany VII, 633 (League of German Maidens); Cooper, The German Army, 1933–1945, 517 (plucked from depots); Lucian Heichler, “The Germans Facing V Corps, September 1944,” May 1952, NARA RG 319, R-series, #37, 5 (Captured weapons from the Eastern Front); Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff, ETHINT 53, Nov. 24, 1945, MHI, 1 (large barrel of the MG-42).

  With characteristic agility, Rundstedt manned: SLC, 43; Henry P. Halsell, “Hürtgen Forest and Roer River Dams,” n.d., CMH, 314.7, I-20 (improvised with dismounted panzer crews); Lucian Heichler, “The Germans Opposite XIX Corps,” May 1953, OCMH, NARA RG 319, R-series, #21, 77 (49th Infantry Division); Cooper, The German Army, 1933–1945, 517 (two Luftwaffe divisions); Germany VII, 634–35 (160,000 stragglers had been redirected to the front).

  “holding of the position until annihliation”: John W. Mosenthal, “The Establishment of a Continuous Defensive Front by Army Group G,” Nov. 1955, OCMH, NARA RG 319, R-series, #68, 11; Lucian Heichler, “The Germans Facing V Corps, September 1944,” May 1952, NARA RG 319, R-series, #37, 30 (“Every bunker, every block of houses”).

  “It is a monument to stupidity”: Semmes, Portrait of Patton, 223.

  But the U.S. Army had little experience: Hogg, The Biography of General George S. Patton, 116; “Combat Engineering,” Aug. 1945, CE, historical report no. 10, CEOH, box X-30, 65–66 (single bunker atop a hill south of Aachen).

  Ordinary artillery barrages: SLC, 45 (“dust off”); “Breaching the Siegfried Line,” XIX Corps, Oct. 2, 1944, CARL, N-7623, 9–15 (Napalm), 23–26 (jeep-towed arc welder); Kleber and Birdsell, The Chemical Warfare Service, 602–3; “Combat Engineering,” Dec. 1945, CE, NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #547, 70 (twenty-five to fifty pounds of explosives), 66 (made it hard for defenders to breathe); memo, Albert H. Peyton to First Army CG, Oct. 20, 1944, NARA RG 407, ETO G-3 OR, box 9 (large pillboxes required half a ton).

  As Rundstedt rushed defenders into the line: AAR, “Reconnaissance in a Tactical Air Command,” 10th Photo Group, XIX Tactical Air Command, Ninth AF, 1945, CARL, N-9395, 29 (200,000 aerial photos); LC, 55; SLC, 37; “Mobility, Unused: Study Based on Lorraine Campaign,” Oct. 1952, MHI, OCMH WWII Europe Interviews (“a ripe plum”).

  Hitler had other ideas: Doubler, Closing with the Enemy, 127 (elaborate constellation of forts).

  The next morning, a battalion from the 5th Infantry Division: LC, 139–41, 145–46, 157 (“hell hole”); AAR, 2nd Bn, 11th Inf, n.d., NARA RG 407, ETO G-3 OR, box 11; John K. Rieth, “We Seek: Patton’s Forward Observers,” 2002, a.p., 101.

  Patton would gain other bridgeheads: LC, 93–96; Rickard, Patton at Bay, 107, 160, 230–31; Ludewig, Rückzug, 22 (“thrash about and bite”); Ayer, Before the Colors Fade, 166 (“I have studied the German”).

  Farther north, First Army’s prospects: SLC, 46–48, 56.

  “We all seemed for the moment”: Baker, Ernest Hemingway, 539–40.

  On Friday, September 15, the division command post: AAR, “Penetration of Siegfried Line,” 4th ID, n.d., CARL, N-12159.1; SLC, 52–53, 61–65.

  On First Army’s left flank, XIX Corps: SLC, 106, 111–15; MacDonald, The Battle of the Huertgen Forest, 58–59.

  That left the last, best chance: SLC, 66, 29; OH, JLC, Jan. 21, 1954, CBM, NARA RG 319, OCMH background file, 2-3.7 CB 3 (“the real route”); Blue Spaders, 74 (twin fortification belts).

  Collins now made a tactical choice: OH, JLC, 1972, Charles C. Sperow, SOOHP, MHI, 219; Blue Spaders, 76; Clay, Blood and Sacrifice, 213; Collins, Lightning Joe, 269, 279; Wheeler, The Big Red One, 329 (Germans would abandon Aachen).

  The sudden appearance of VII Corps: Lucian Heichler, “The Germans Opposite VII Corps in Sept. 1944,” Dec. 1952, CMH, CMH 2-3.7 EB, 12, 18–19.

  Into this chaos: SLC, 71, 81; Gerhard Graf von Schwerin, ETHINT 18, Oct.–Nov. 1945, MHI, 44 (“Santa Clauses”); http://www.waffenhq.de/biographien/biographien/schwerin.html; Whiting, The Home Front: Germany, 176 (“splendid battlefield commander”); Fritz Krämer, ETHINT 24, Nov. 17, 1945, MHI, 1 (“He was intelligent”).

  “I stopped the absurd evacuation”: Gerhard Graf von Schwerin, ETHINT 18, Oct.–Nov. 1945, MHI, 37–41.

  A day passed, and then another: MacDonald, The Battle of the Huertgen Forest, 37; Reynolds, How I Survived the Three First Wave Invasions (half-eaten meals).

  But the momentum had seeped out of Collins’s attack: SLC, 86; Meyer A. Edwards, Jr., et al., “Armor in the Attack of a Fortified Position,” May 1950, AS, Ft. K, NARA RG 337, 62–64 (two-hundred-mile round-trip); Blue Spaders, 77 (Fifty rounds from a tank destroyer). The official Army history contends that the 3rd Armored Division was authorized 232 tanks, but it was one of two “heavy” armored divisions actually authorized more than 300.

  The dawning realization that the Americans intended: Clay, Blood and Sacrifice, 214 (Wild Buffaloes); Stolberg: Penetrating the Westwall, 19; SLC, 81–82 (forcibly evacuated); Lucian Heichler, “The Germans Opposite VII Corps in Sept. 1944,” Dec. 1952, NARA RG 319, R-series, #38, 56; Gerhard Graf von Schwerin, ETHINT 18, Oct.–Nov. 1945, MHI, 48–53 (“Fate”).

  A German counterattack on Sunday: Wheeler, The Big Red One, 332; Lewis, ed., The Mammoth Book of Eyewitness World War II, 434 (“like a huge torch”); Heinz, When We Were One, 23–25 (“a Last Greeting”).

  After five days of fighting, Collins had gashed: SLC, 86; Blue Spaders, 84–85 (meandering stone town); Collins, Lightning Joe, 270; Stanhope B. Mason, “Reminiscences a
nd Anecdotes of World War II,” 1988, MRC FDM, 234 (tacked blankets across holes); “Aachen: Military Operations in Urban Terrain,” 1999, 26th Infantry Regiment Association, 10.

  Three German divisions soon sealed: Lucian Heichler, “The Germans Opposite VII Corps in Sept. 1944,” Dec. 1952, CMH, CMH 2-3.7 EB, 83–84, 36 (“Each and every house”); SLC, 88 (“the last bullet”).

  A Market and a Garden

  Since its founding in 1835: Ivan Sache and Jan Martens, “Presentation of Leopoldsburg,” Apr. 14, 2006, http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/be-vlilp.html.

  Now the Germans were gone, again: memoir, J. S. W. Stone, Royal Engineers, LHC, folder 5, 70–71 (painted wooden hives); http://home.mweb.co.za/re/redcap/rmp.htm; Horrocks, A Full Life, 210; AAR, “Operation Market Garden,” 21st AG, n.d., UK NA, AIR 37/1249, appendix D (two thousand truckloads).

  On the radiant Sunday morning of September 17: C. D. Renfro, 101st AB, liaison to XXX Corps, “Operation Market,” Oct. 10, 1944, NARA RG 407, E 427-A, CI, folder #226; Ryan, A Bridge Too Far, 146 (“sniper’s smocks”); Horrocks, Corps Commander, 98–99 (huge sketch map).

  At eleven A.M. Lieutenant General Brian Horrocks: Horrocks, Corps Commander, 98–99; Moorehead, Eclipse, 239 (“ecclesiastical face”).

  Horrocks was made for such moments: Keegan, ed., Churchill’s Generals, 225–36; MMB, 238–39; Warner, Horrocks, 101–3, 110 (Montgomery summoned him in August); Baynes, Urquhart of Arnhem, 101 (a tad frail).

  Eyes alight, graceful hands gliding: Urquhart, Arnhem, 184–85; C. D. Renfro, 101st AB, liaison to XXX Corps, “Operation Market,” Oct. 10, 1944, NARA RG 407, E 427-A, CI, folder #226; AAR, Operation Market Garden, 21st AG, n.d., CARL, R-13333, 3 (“dominate the country”); Belchem, All in the Day’s March, 224 (V-2 rocket sites); Verney, The Guards Armoured Division, 99 (spearheaded by three armored divisions); code names, NARA RG 407, E 427-A, CI, folder 226-A (HAMLET).