(Omar N. Bradley, A Soldier’s Story, The Modern Library, 1999, pages 196-297).
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7) Page 66: Another CO for the 90th Division
On June 13, 1944, the 90th got its second commanding officer since arriving in France, Maj. Gen. Eugene M. Landrum, who had been deputy CO of VII Corps. After replacing McKelvie, Landrum was advised by General Bradley to ‘clean house.’ Also on June 13, the 357th Infantry Regiment got a new CO, Col. John W. Sheehy. Two days later, Sheehy was killed, and replaced by Lt. Col. Charles Schwab, who was replaced on June 17 by Col. George Barth. On June 16, the 358th also got a new CO, Col. Richard Partridge. Several battalion and company commanding officers were also replaced in the first days of Landrum’s command of the T-Os.
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8) Page 142: The destruction of the Mulberry artificial harbor
The storm of June 19-22 was not a particularly severe one. Winds did not exceed 36 mph. Nevertheless, the artificial harbor moored off OMAHA beach, called Mulberry A, fell apart at the moorings and was battered by free-floating ships.
A second harbor, Mulberry B, sat off the British invasion beach at Arromanches. It survived the storm, though not without taking severe damage, leaving many craft driven ashore. Until the end of August, 9,000 tons a day were offloaded at Mulberry B.
During the last week of June following the storm, even without its artificial harbor, OMAHA averaged 13,500 tons a day, far exceeding planners’ expectations. The decision was made not to repair Mulberry A, principally because of the success of the delivery of American supplies over the open beaches.
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9) Page 223: The death of a platoon CO
Each week during the seven weeks of the 90th’s combat in the hedges and hills of Normandy, the division lost 48 percent of its infantry platoon leaders. The average tenure of an infantry lieutenant was 2½ weeks.
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10) Page 247: The relieving of the 359th’s CO
Colonel Clarke Fales, a West Pointer, had commanded the 359th Regiment since 1942. His relief by General Landrum came as a shock to many in the unit, as Fales was a beloved and respected CO. 90th Division histories speculate that Fales’s only weakness as a leader was that he was too forgiving of his subordinates. When the regiment bogged down in the bocage and on Mont Castre, Landrum, himself a failing commander, may have let Fales go to shift some of the blame for the poor progress away from himself.
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ii) Page 252: The gasoline gangs of Paris
Once Paris was liberated, the demand for gasoline became astronomical. Every business that relied on transportation was an overnight success with it, and a pauper without.
Millions of gallons of U.S. Army gasoline disappeared into Paris at the hands of AWOL soldiers who came to the City of Light and stayed behind when their units moved east. These soldiers either joined forces with the existing underworld mobs of Paris—such as the Voltaire gang—or made up their own gangs. The gasoline gangs were centered in the Montmartre and Montparnasse sections.
Gasoline was acquired illegally in many ways. The most common were petty theft, where gang members simply cruised Paris and stole jerricans from unattended vehicles, and the most brazen and simple method of driving up to a POL dump with 200 empty jerricans and saying, ‘Fill ‘em up.’ Because of the speed of the advance against the crumbling German resistance in France, gas dumps got into the habit of servicing every and all GI trucks, without question. There was no time to ascertain if a soldier was telling the truth, and no proper system of acquisitioning had been set up. The practice was ripe for abuse.
Life in Paris was expensive during the first days of liberation. AWOLs quickly ran out of cash. At the prostitution houses of Montmartre and Montparnasse and on the café grapevine, they were recruited into the gasoline gangs with tales of easy money in the black market.
The gangs could grow as large as sixty men. They were often highly organized, sometimes along the lines of military units, with reveille, special orders, promotions, passes to town, and duty rosters. In each gang, there was always one man who was the ‘brains.’ The Vincennes gang was run by an AWOL medic, who dressed as an MP lieutenant and rounded up AWOLs in Montmarte bars. He told them they faced death by hanging for desertion. But if they did him a favor, he would relent. The favor turned out to be driving his trucks and joining his outfit.
The AWOLs made money so fast, their success was what inevitably tripped many of them. CID (Criminal Investigation Division) agents assigned to break up the gas gangs spotted many of them when the GIs tried to send home thousands of dollars in War Bonds or postal orders. The soldiers flashed wads around in cafés or were caught driving expensive cars. Many were nabbed by chance or in AWOL roundups. Other times, the French themselves put the finger on the Americans, such as women jilted by their GI lovers, spurned Frenchmen who lost their girlfriends to the lavish-spending Americans, and otherwise patriotic Parisians who disliked the Yanks exploiting the pain of their city.
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12) Page 329: The invention of the steel tusks for the Sherman tanks
For six weeks, the Norman hedgerows had frustrated American efforts to get tanks involved in the fighting. With the breakout—Operation COBRA—looming closer, Eisenhower and his Generals knew that for COBRA to be a success it would be essential that armor forces break loose and not get mired in the bocage.
Several days before COBRA, General Bradley received a phone call to meet Lt. Gen. Leonard Gerow, CO of V Corps, at 2nd Division HQ. ‘We’ve got something that will knock your eyes out,’ Gerow said.
General Bradley wrote:
‘The invention came on the eve of its greatest need, for the hedgerows that had frustrated our tanks in Normandy extended into the path of our [COBRA] blitz....
‘I found Gerow with several of his staff clustered about a light tank to which a crossbar had been welded. Four tusk-Like prongs protruded from it. The tank backed off and ran head-on toward a hedgerow at ten miles an hour. Its tusks bored into the wall, pinned down the belly, and the tank broke through under a canopy of dirt. A Sherman similarly equipped duplicated the performance. It, too, crashed into the wall, but instead of bellying skyward, it pushed on through. So absurdly simple that it had baffled an army for more than five weeks, the tusklike device had been fashioned by Curtis G. Culin, Jr., a 29-year-old sergeant from New York City....
‘[Lt. Col. John] Medaris [ordnance officer of First Army] sped back to the CP where he ordered every ordnance unit in the army on round-the-clock production of those anti-hedgerow devices. Scrap metal for the tank tusks came from Rommel’s underwater obstacles on the beaches.... Within a week, three out of every five tanks in the breakout had been equipped with the device. For his invention Culin was awarded the Legion of Merit by corps. Four months later he went home to New York after having left a leg in Hürtgen Forest.’ (Bradley, page 342).
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13) Page 337: The surrender on Sèves Island
On July 23, 1944, Feldwebel (Sergeant) Alexander Uhlig of the 16th Company of the 6th Fallschirmjäger (Parachute) Regiment, led fifty men in a charge across open ground straight at the CP of 1st Battalion, 358th, on Sèves Island. His unit’s charge was to avoid being killed by American artillery creeping up behind him. Uhlig’s unit was accompanied by two panzers from 2 SS Das Reich (Division).
The resultant surrender consisted of eleven officers and two hundred and fifty-four men. The eleven officers were taken to the German CP in the loft of a large farmhouse. There, they were presented to the German CO, Major von der Heydte, who in turn introduced them to their captor. Sergeant Uhlig. Everyone present took tea together.
Three days afterward, Sergeant Uhlig—who had been awarded the Knight’s Cross by von der Heydte—was captured by elements of the 357th, while in command of a delaying force. Years later, he hosted a reunion of German paratroopers and T-Os at Sèves Island.
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14) Page 343: Chaplains collecting wounded and dead at S
èves Island
Three American chaplains defied strafing aircraft and small-arms fire from both sides to seek out wounded and bodies during the conflict on Sèves Island. Armed only with Red Cross flags, they walked into the open; the Germans were sufficiently impressed with the chaplains’ courage to stop firing. The Americans did also, except for the artillery to the rear. The chaplains were: Father Joseph J. Esser, Catholic, Cleveland, Minnesota; Chaplain Edgar H. Stohler, Spavinaw, Oklahoma, Salvation Army; and, Pastor James M. Hamilton, Fort Worth, Texas, Disciples of Christ.
A German captain came forward to greet the chaplains, who were directing stretcher teams to the wounded they had found. The officer and the chaplains spoke with the help of a German-speaking American soldier. The captain decided to inform his CO, Major von der Heydte, of what was happening. Von der Heydte recommended a cease-fire and a trade of wounded prisoners.
The casualty numbers in the 358th for the day of July 23, 1944, on Sèves Island were one officer and sixty-eight men killed, five officers and ninety-nine men wounded, plus the mass surrender mentioned above.
Three weeks earlier, Major von der Heydte had also acted compassionately toward an American unit following battle. On July 4, the 6th Fallschirmjäger’s troops had stopped an attack of the 83rd Infantry, causing nearly fourteen hundred American casualties in an assault south of Carentan, toward Périers. Von der Heydte sent captured American medics back to Maj. Gen. Robert C. Macon, the division commander, with a note remarking that he thought Macon probably needed them. Von der Heydte also asked that, if the tables were ever turned, he hoped General Macon would ‘return the favor.’
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15) Page 356: Release of the news that Patton was fighting in France
Again, General Bradley:
‘For the first two weeks after commitment on the heels of the Breakout, Third Army had been cloaked under a censorship stop. By hiding the identity and strength of that flanking force, we sought to mislead the enemy of our intentions. For had Hitler known it was Patton’s tanks which swarmed around von Kluge’s flank, he might have called off his attack at Mortain. I knew how impatiently Patton would chafe under the anonymity forced upon him by this censorship stop and for that reason was eager to lift it just as soon as we could. George was stimulated by headlines, the blacker the headlines the more recklessly he fought.
‘On August 12, I suggested to Ike that the stop on Patton be removed.... “Not yet,” he said, “after all the troubles I’ve had with George, I have only a few gray hairs left on this poor old head of mine. Let George work a while longer for his headlines.” Several days later [August 15] Ike relented and Third Army flashed into the news in the United States. George had begun to fight his way out of the Sicilian doghouse.’ (Bradley, page 393).
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16) Page 369: Another new CO for the 90th
On July 28, 1944, the 90th Division’s CO, Major General Landrum, was replaced by Brig. Gen. Raymond McClain, the division’s third CO in less than two months of fighting. According to Bradley, Landrum had not yet got the 90th Division in ‘fighting trim. He had cleaned house but not enough.’ After the debacle on Sèves Island, the decision was made to replace Landrum, who was described in a 90th Division history as ‘short, fat, uninspiring; could not lift up or motivate troops. Commanded ... from an armchair in a cellar. No faith or confidence... gloomy and pessimistic.’
McClain was the second choice for the 90th, after the untimely death of Brig. Gen. Theodore Roosevelt, one of the heroes of UTAH beach and the oldest man there at 57. Roosevelt passed in his sleep from a heart attack on the eve of being named CO of the 90th. Bradley gave the division to McClain, a distinguished Oklahoma City banker and long-serving National Guardsman. His background was as an artilleryman, and he had served in Africa. Under McClain, the 90th would achieve some of the greatest successes of any combat division in the ETO.
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17) Page 382: The defense of Mortain
The powerful German counterattack toward Avranches, which began on August 7, 1944, was designed to drive a wedge between Allied forces in Normandy and force them back to the Channel. Elements of four panzer divisions faced off against a single American infantry division near the town of Mortain. By holding their ground, the 30th enabled the inevitable encirclement of the German forces farther to the east, the Argentan-Falaise pocket. This cost the Germans an army and won France for the Allies. For their dogged defense, the 30th became known as ‘the Rock of Mortain.’
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18) Pages 407, 415: The destruction inside the Argentan-Falaise pocket
General Dwight Eisenhower described the scene in chilling language:
‘The battle at Falaise was unquestionably one of the greatest “killing grounds” of any of the war areas. Roads, highways and fields were so choked with destroyed equipment and with dead men and animals that passage through the area was extremely difficult. Forty-eight hours after the closing of the gap I was conducted through it on foot, to encounter scenes that could be described only by Dante. It was literally possible e walk for hundreds of yards at a time, stepping on nothing but dead and decaying flesh.’
(Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe,
Doubleday, 1948, page 279).
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19) Page 415: The failure to close the Argentan-Falaise gap
On August 12, General Patton telephoned General Bradley to inform him that Patton had troops in Argentan, on the southern shoulder of the gap, ‘Let me go on to Falaise,’ Patton urged, ‘and we’ll drive the British back into the sea for another Dunkirk,’
Nothing doing, Bradley told Patton. Bradley was afraid of colliding with Montgomery’s forces. In the speed and flash of combat, had the two forces not recognized each other on the battlefield the results might have been catastrophic. Patton was ordered not to go beyond Argentan. Patton had already ordered armored elements of his XV Corps to push into the gap. The tanks were recalled immediately.
While the Americans waited for Montgomery to close the gap at Argentan, the Germans reinforced the opening. In the first two days, leading units of panzers and SS troops had already slipped through to the Seine. However, rather than push harder to shut the door, Montgomery chose to attack the fleeing Germans farther to the west, which resulted in squeezing the Germans even faster toward the gap, like a tube of toothpaste. The British tactics mystified Bradley, dismayed Eisenhower; and enraged Patton.
Bradley prevented Patton from spinning a skirmish line across the gap because he doubted Patton could hold it. Nineteen German divisions were heading pell-mell for the opening. Patton had only four divisions in the area, and with them he was already barring three escape routes, at Alençon, Sees, and Argentan. Had Patton stretched his line to Falaise as well, he would have extended his roadblocks to forty miles. Patron’s troops would likely have gotten trampled in the stampede. Bradley forbade it.
For two days, Bradley waited for Montgomery to close the gap. In the interim, more Germans slipped through. On August 14, when Montgomery neither asked for help nor moved his forces into the gap, Bradley allowed Patton to send two divisions racing to the Seine to intercept the escaped Germans at their crossing points.
On that day, just after those two divisions had embarked to the northeast, Montgomery contacted Bradley to recommend that their two armies meet at Chambois, fifteen miles south of Falaise. Bradley was flabbergasted; had he hesitated and not allowed Patton to send two divisions to the Seine—seventy-five miles east of Chambois—he might have succeeded with Montgomery in closing the gap immediately. But the die was cast.
The move of the two divisions to the northeast accelerated the Americans’ bridgehead on the Seine. It also postponed the closing of the gap, which would have resulted in more POWs taken. Later, Bradley remarked that this was the first and only time during the war that he went to bed worrying about a decision already made. He was never sure if he’d made the right call.
Montgomery closed the trap on August 19. At Ch
ambois, his 10th Polish Dragoons, spearheading for the Canadian force moving south out of Falaise, met with advance units of the 90th Division.
On August 18, Field Marshal Guenther von Kluge was relieved of command of the Normandy theater as a result of the Seventh Army’s fiasco. Field Marshal Walter Model took control. The next day, on the road to Metz, von Kluge committed suicide by taking potassium cyanide.
Estimates of the damage to the surrounded German Seventh Army are that over 70,000 men were captured or killed in the pocket, along with an immense loss of vehicles and materiel. Some historians project that as many as 100,000 troops escaped. The battle for France was, in effect, over. However, those German soldiers who escaped the pocket would resurface, at the Siegfried Line, and. in December at the Battle of the Bulge.
David Robbins - [World War II 04] Page 53
