“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 and 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).
Linking these towns was a single narrow highway: SLC, 131; GS V, 527–28 (Nine substantial bridges); SLC, 131–32; www.rollintl.com/roll/rhine.htm (“distributaries”); Baedeker, Belgium and Holland, 400 (retirement mecca); Middlebrook, Arnhem 1944, 49 (“exceedingly healthy atmosphere”).
Horrocks paused, glancing at his notes: AAR, “Operations in Holland,” First Allied Airborne Army, Dec. 1944, ANSCOL, NARA RG 334, E 315, Act R A-104, box 62, 19; OH, Brian Urquhart, Jan. 24, 1967, CJR, box 108, folder 6 (“carpet of airborne troops”).
As this unfolded, the land assault: SLC, 133–34; Horrocks, Corps Commander, 98–99 (“absolutely vital”).
“the enemy has by now suffered”: weekly intelligence summary no. 26, SHAEF, Sept. 16, 1944, JMG, MHI, box 15.
German strength facing the 100,000-man XXX Corps: AAR, Operation Market Garden, 21st AG, n.d., CARL, R-13333, 36; Fitzgerald, History of the Irish Guards in the Second World War, 486 (“easier for a rich man”).
Irish Guards officers looked especially pensive: Horrocks, Corps Commander, 100.
Tanks trundled forward, slowly: ibid., 209–10.
“What do you think of the plan?”: C. D. Renfro, 101st AB, liaison to XXX Corps, “Operation Market,” Oct. 10, 1944, NARA RG 407, E 427-A, CI, folder #226.
Horrocks was in fact fretful: Badsey, Arnhem 1944, 11–12; Keegan, ed., Churchill’s Generals, 236–38 (“I shan’t invalid you”); Horrocks, A Full Life, 210 (no attack he had launched on a Sunday).
From a nearby radio came word: Horrocks, Corps Commander, 100–101.
Many others invested in MARKET GARDEN: Chandler, 1947 (Under relentless pressure); office diary, First Allied Airborne Army, Sept. 10–17, 1944, Floyd Lavinius Parks papers, MHI, box 2 (less than a week); Greenfield, ed., Command Decisions, 334 (created at War Department insistence); Brereton, The Brereton Diaries, 343 (eighteen operational plans); Baynes, Urquhart of Arnhem, 76 (WILD OATS); Lewin, Montgomery as Military Commander, 338 (“cowpats”).
Some commanders worried about MARKET’S dispersal: corr, A. C. McAuliffe to A. C. Smith, Feb. 8, 1954, NARA RG 319, OCMH, 2-3.7 CB3; Willmott, The Great Crusade, 361–63; Hamilton, Monty: Final Years of the Field-Marshal, 1944–1976, 22–24; Weigley, Eisenhower’s Lieutenants, 295; OH, ONB, 1974–75, Charles Hanson, MHI, V-58-61 (“foolhardy”); Bradley Commentaries, CBH, MHI, boxes 41–42 (“Flabbergasted”); Bradley, A Soldier’s Story, 402 (“astonishing faculty”).
Personalities added fat to the fire: Blair, Ridgway’s Paratroopers, 181; MMB, 61–62; Brereton, The Brereton Diaries, 342 (“Mystify, mislead”), 308–9; Bradley Commentaries, CBH, MHI, boxes 41–42 (“not sincere nor energetic”); Blair, Ridgway’s Paratroopers, 299 (“Thank goodness”); Taylor, General Maxwell Taylor, 97.
If Brereton’s interactions with his fellow Americans: Blair, Ridgway’s Paratroopers, 181 (“stupid ass”); Badsey, Arnhem 1944, 36 (false uhlan front); OH, Eddie Newbury, Browning personal secretary, n.d., CJR, box 108, folder 6 (kicking over the furniture); Hastings, Armageddon, 36 (“popinjay”); diary, July 2, 1944, CBH, MHI, box 4 (“too deliberate a smile”); MMB, 66 (high hurdles). Hitchcock later directed another movie based on a du Maurier short story, The Birds (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daphne_du_Maurier).
Browning so loathed Brereton: Brereton, The Brereton Diaries, 337–38; Badsey, Arnhem 1944, 12.
“enemy appreciation was very weak”: OH, E. T. Williams, May 1947, FCP, MHI.
The road bridge over the Neder Rijn: Margry, ed., Operation Market-Garden Then and Now, vol. 1, 27; Hinsley, 544 (radio decrypt).
“But the Germans, how about the Germans”: Gavin, On to Berlin, 150. Other accounts put this comment a bit earlier, during planning for the stillborn Operation COMET. See http://www.pegasusarchive.org/arnhem/stanislaw_sosabowski.htm.
someone “with a vivid imagination”: Sosabowski, Freely I Served, 140; Middlebrook, Arnhem 1944, 8 (“fighting-the-Germans bit”). Sosabowski’s Polish rank had no direct Anglo-American equivalent, and is variously translated as either brigadier or major general (David T. Zabecki, note to author, May 9, 2012).
Guessing which Germans would be fought: Hinsley, 544; TSC, 282–83 (“low category”), 142; Lucian Heichler, “Holland, Allied Invasion from the Sky,” Oct. 1953, NARA RG 319, R-series, #5, 16 (lacked field kitchens); Margry, ed., Operation Market-Garden Then and Now, vol. 1, 79 (II SS Panzer Corps); Zetterling, Normandy 1944, 336–39, 344–47 (nine thousand casualties); Bennett, Ultra in the West, 151–53 (120 tanks).
Montgomery’s senior staff officers almost to a man: Crosswell, Beetle, 717–18; Powell, The Devil’s Birthday, 42–43 (Smith flew to Brussels); SLC, 122. Biographer Crosswell believes Smith never physically traveled to Montgomery’s headquarters (Beetle, 717).
“Montgomery ridiculed the idea”: OH, W. B. Smith and Pink Bull, Sept. 14, 1945, OCMH WWII Europe Interviews, MHI; OH, W. B. Smith, Apr. 18, 1949, SLAM, NARA RG 319, OCMH, 2-3.7 (“waved my objections”).
Montgomery’s insouciance was understandable: Ryan, A Bridge Too Far, 144 (“weak, demoralized, and likely to collapse”); Saunders, The Red Beret, 212–13 (no larger than a brigade); Hinsley, 543; SLC, 121–22; OH, Brian Urquhart, Jan. 24, 1967, CJR, box 108, folder 6; VW, vol. 1, 52 (Dutch underground); Middlebrook, Arnhem 1944, 56; Margry, ed., Operation Market-Garden Then and Now, vol. 1, 79; Horrocks, Corps Commander, 93; Ralph Bennett, “Ultra and Some Command Decisions,” in Laqueur, ed., The Second World War, 232. Bennett reports that Browning was included on the Ultra distribution list (“tanks at Arnhem”).
Boy Browning declared himself ready: memo, G-3, 82nd Airborne, Oct. 23, 1945 [sic], JMG papers, CJR, box 100, folder 3; SLC, 137–39; Hills, Phantom Was There, 251 (“That means business”); Saunders, The Red Beret, 216 (British sergeant strutted).
“Emplane!”: memoir, Dwayne Burns, 508th PIR, n.d., NWWIIM; Ryan, A Bridge Too Far, 173 (more than twenty thousand troops); Middlebrook, Arnhem 1944, 83–85 (“floated up and down”).
The first British pathfinders jumped: McNally, As Ever, John, 53 (“plowing up dirt”); Kershaw, “It Never Snows in September,” 66 (snowflakes); SLC, 137–39 (within eighty minutes); Middlebrook, Arnhem 1944, 112 (“Jingle Bells”).
That this welcoming chorus congregated: AAR, “Airborne Division Report on Operation Market,” UK 1st Airborne Division, Jan. 10, 1945, CARL, N-5647, 43; Airborne Forces, 174; John C. Warren, “Airborne Operations in World War II, European Theater,” 1956, AFHRA, historical study no. 97, 149; Murray and Millett, A War to Be Won, 441; Urquhart, Arnhem, 6–7; Middlebrook, Arnhem 1944, 54–55;
The second complication was evident: MARKET troop carrier commanders argued that the shorter days of mid-September made two missions more difficult to sq
ueeze in (John C. Warren, “Airborne Operations in World War II, European Theater,” 1956, AFHRA, historical study no. 97, 150).
Pleas by airborne commanders and by an emissary: Powell, The Devil’s Birthday, 33–34; Baynes, Urquhart of Arnhem, 92; SLC, 131–32 (up to four days).
The day went well enough for the Yanks: “Kinnard’s Operation in Holland,” 1st Bn, 501st PIR, 1946, Battalion and Small Unit Study No. 1, ETOUSA, history section, CJR, box 100, folder 5; Simpson, Selected Prose, 129 (“laid there to die”).
Nine road and rail bridges stood: “Eindhoven,” 506th PIR, n.d., NARA RG 407, E 427A, CI, folder #226; OH, Lynn Compton, 506th PIR, n.d., NARA RG 407, E 427, HI; John C. Warren, “Airborne Operations in World War II, European Theater,” 1956, AFHRA, historical study no. 97, 105 (sprint south and seize Eindhoven).
Twenty miles north, 7,300 troops: A. D. Bestebreurtje, “The Airborne Operation in Netherlands in Fall 1944,” De Militaire Spectator, English trans. from Dutch, Jan. 1946, CJR, box 100, folder 4; SLC, 159 (All but one of 482 planes); Gavin, On to Berlin, 161; corr, JMG to CJR, Nov. 16, 1966, and to A. D. Bestebreurtje, July 9, 1973, JMG papers, CJR, box 100, folders 4 and 9.
With the ascension of Matthew Ridgway: Muir, ed., The Human Tradition in the World War II Era, 178; Nordyke, All American All the Way, 412 (youngest major general); D’Este, “Raw Courage,” World War II (July–Aug. 2011): 30+.
adopted as a toddler: memoir, “Beyond the Stars,” ts, 1983, James M. Gavin Irrecovable Trust, JMG, MHI, box 2, 3, 10, 21–27 (invoked the Holy Family), 410–11; Booth and Spencer, Paratrooper, 26–27 (soaped miners’ beards), 42–43 (He lied about his age); West Point application, 1925, JMG, MHI, box 9 (filling station); Fauntleroy, The General and His Daughter, 124 (Book-of-the-Month Club); “Generalship,” JMG, MHI, box 10; OH, JMG, 1975, Donald G. Andrews and Charles H. Ferguson, SOOHP, MHI, 23 (“two o’clock in the morning”); Nordyke, All American All the Way, 412 (“charm of manner”).
After combat jumps into Sicily: Fauntleroy, The General and His Daughter, 105 (“the scuffle”); Gavin, On to Berlin, 152 (“bank account”); “Personal Diary,” Sept. 14, 1944, JMG, MHI, box 10 (“looks very rough”).
The Liberation Trilogy Box Set Page 318