On Montgomery’s flank the question for immediate decision became the priority in which these tasks should be taken up. As a first requisite our lines had to be advanced far enough to the eastward to cover Antwerp securely, else the port and all its facilities would be useless to us. This had to be done without delay; until it was accomplished the other tasks could not even be started. Equally clear was the fact that, until the approaches to the port were cleared, it was of no value to us. Because the Germans were firmly dug in on the islands of South Beveland and Walcheren, this was going to be a tough and time-consuming operation. The sooner we could set about it the better. But the question remaining was whether or not it was advantageous, before taking on the arduous task of reducing the Antwerp approaches, to continue our eastward plunge against the still retreating enemy with the idea of securing a possible bridgehead across the Rhine in proximity to the Ruhr.
RED BALL ROARS FORWARD
On Red Ball Highways “every vehicle ran at least twenty hours a day … allowed to halt only for necessary loading, unloading, and servicing.” This page
Tank Transporters Rush Armored Supply (illustration credit 16.1)
NAKEDNESS OF THE BATTLEFIELD
“… each man feels himself so much alone, and each is prey to the human fear and terror that to move or show himself may result in instant death.” This page
German 88 Pounds Paratroopers Near Arnhem (illustration credit 16.2)
While we were examining the various factors of the question, Montgomery suddenly presented the proposition that, if we would support his Twenty-first Army Group with all supply facilities available, he could rush right on into Berlin and, he said, end the war. I am certain that Field Marshal Montgomery, in the light of later events, would agree that this view was a mistaken one. But at the moment his enthusiasm was fired by the rapid advances of the preceding week and, since he was convinced that the enemy was completely demoralized, he vehemently declared that all he needed was adequate supply in order to go directly into Berlin.14
During early September, while returning from a visit to the forward areas, I suffered a minor injury incident to a forced landing on a beach. Caught in a sudden storm, we found it impossible to return to our own little landing strip near headquarters and had no place to land except on a neighboring beach. It was one of the beaches that the Germans had fortified before D-day, and had at one time been mined. This did not add to the comfort of our position but we tried to pull the plane far enough away from the water’s edge to prevent its inundation by the rising tide. In doing so, I badly wrenched a knee. My pilot, Lieutenant Underwood, helped me across the beach while I kept an anxious eye on the smooth sand in front of us for any telltale signs of buried explosives. We reached a country road and started the long trek toward headquarters. It was a miserable walk through a driving rain but we had little hope of thumbing a ride because the back road we were traveling was rarely used by our soldiers. However, within a few minutes there came up behind us a jeep into which eight soldiers had managed to crowd.
We flagged them down and the occupants, instantly recognizing me, jumped out to help. They were obviously astounded to see the commanding general in such an out-of-the-way place and limping along in the rain. I asked them to take me to headquarters and so great was their concern that they practically lifted me into the front seat of the jeep. Then, careful to avoid crowding against my injured leg, they allowed no one else except the driver to sit in front. I still do not understand how all the rest of them piled in and on the jeep and managed to get my pilot aboard, but this they did.
For two days I was confined to bed and thereafter was forced, for a time, to carry a plaster cast on my leg. Press representatives noted my absence from headquarters and surmised that I was ill, possibly because of overwork. When a story to this effect appeared in the press I had to publish the details of the affair, with the hope that my wife would not magnify the seriousness of the accident pending receipt of my letter of explanation.
Travel was temporarily difficult, but to make sure that Montgomery would be completely informed as to our plans, I met him at Brussels on September 10.15 Air Chief Marshal Tedder and General Gale were also present.
I explained to Montgomery the condition of our supply system and our need for early use of Antwerp. I pointed out that, without railway bridges over the Rhine and ample stockages of supplies on hand, there was no possibility of maintaining a force in Germany capable of penetrating to its capital. There was still a considerable reserve in the middle of the enemy country and I knew that any pencillike thrust into the heart of Germany such as he proposed would meet nothing but certain destruction. This was true, no matter on what part of the front it might be attempted. I would not consider it.
It was possible, and perhaps certain, that had we stopped, in late August, all Allied movements elsewhere on the front he might have succeeded in establishing a strong bridgehead definitely threatening the Ruhr, just as any of the other armies could have gone faster and farther, if allowed to do so at the expense of starvation elsewhere. However, at no point could decisive success have been attained, and, meanwhile, on the other parts of the front we would have gotten into precarious positions, from which it would have been difficult to recover.
General Montgomery was acquainted only with the situation in his own sector. He understood that to support his proposal would have meant stopping dead for weeks all units except the Twenty-first Army Group. But he did not understand the impossible situation that would have developed along the rest of our great front when he, having outrun the possibility of maintenance, was forced to stop or withdraw.
I instructed him that what I did want in the north was Antwerp working, and I also wanted a line covering that port. Beyond this I believed it possible that we might with airborne assistance seize a bridgehead over the Rhine in the Arnhem region, flanking the defenses of the Siegfried Line. The operation to gain such a bridgehead—it was assigned the code name Market-Garden—would be merely an incident and extension of our eastward rush to the line we needed for temporary security. On our northern flank that line was the lower Rhine itself. To stop short of that obstacle would have left us in a very exposed position, particularly during the period that Montgomery would have to concentrate large forces on the Walcheren Island operation.
If these things could be done, we would engage in no additional major advances in the north until we had built up our logistics in the rear. But we could and would carry out minor operations all along the great front to facilitate later great offensives. Montgomery was very anxious to attempt the seizure of the bridgehead.
At the September 10 conference in Brussels Field Marshal Montgomery was therefore authorized to defer the clearing out of the Antwerp approaches in an effort to seize the bridgehead I wanted. To assist Montgomery I allocated to him the First Allied Airborne Army, which had been recently formed under Lieutenant General Lewis H. Brereton of the United States Air Forces. The target date for the attack was tentatively set for September 17, and I promised to do my utmost for him in supply until that operation was completed. After the completion of the bridgehead operation he was to turn instantly and with his whole force to the capture of Walcheren Island and the other areas from which the Germans were defending the approaches to Antwerp. Montgomery set about the task energetically.16
With all of our affairs, except supply, in reasonably good order, the Combined Chiefs of Staff, in conference at Quebec, decided that it was no longer necessary for me to retain under my direct and personal command the two bomber forces stationed in Great Britain. They set up an arrangement whereby the strategic bombers were to be directly subordinate to the Combined Chiefs of Staff through the medium of a combined agency set up in London. From my own viewpoint, this was a clumsy and inefficient arrangement, but so far as our operation was concerned it made no difference whatsoever. This was because a paragraph was inserted in the directive which gave the demands of the supreme commander in Europe priority ove
r anything else that the strategic bombers might be required to do. With this safeguard and unequivocal authority, I had no objection to the new arrangement regardless of my opinion of its awkwardness.17
Spaatz protested bitterly at the new command system for the strategic bombers until I showed him that it made no difference to me. Even Harris, who had originally been known as the individual who wanted to win the war with bombing alone and who was supposed to have derided the mobilization of armies and navies, had become exceedingly proud of his membership in the “Allied team.” Here are extracts of a letter he wrote to me upon receipt of the order returning him to the direct control of the Combined Chiefs of Staff:
21st September 1944
My dear Ike:
Under the new dispensation I and my Command no longer serve directly under you. I take opportunity to assure you, although I feel sure that you will recognize that assurance as superfluous, that our continuing commitment for the support of your forces upon call from you will indeed continue, as before, to be met to the utmost of our skill and the last ounce of our endeavour.…
I wish personally and on behalf of my Command to proffer you my thanks and gratitude for your unvarying helpfulness, encouragement and support which has never failed us throughout the good fortunes and occasional emergencies of the campaign.…
We in Bomber Command proffer you not only our congratulations and our thanks, but our utmost service wherever and whenever the need arises. I hope indeed that we may continue the task together to its completion in our respective spheres.
Yours ever
Bert
All along the front we felt increasingly the strangulation on movement imposed by our inadequate lines of communication. The Services of Supply had made heroic and effective effort to keep us going to the last possible minute. They installed systems of truck transport by taking over main-road routes in France and using most of these for one-way traffic. These were called Red Ball Highways, on which trucks kept running continuously. Every vehicle ran at least twenty hours a day. Relief drivers were scraped up from every unit that could provide them and the vehicles themselves were allowed to halt only for necessary loading, unloading, and servicing.
Railway engineers worked night and day to repair broken bridges and track and to restore the operational efficiency of rolling stock. Gasoline and fuel oil were brought onto the Continent by means of flexible pipe lines laid under the English Channel. From the beaches the gas and oil were pumped forward to main distribution points through pipe lines laid on the surface of the ground. Aviation engineers built landing strips at amazing speed, and throughout the organization there was displayed a morale and devotion to duty equal to that of any fighting unit in the whole command.
In the months succeeding the conclusion of hostilities I had many opportunities to review various campaigns with the leaders of the Russian Army. Not only did I talk to marshals and generals but on this subject I spent a considerable time with Generalissimo Stalin. Without exception, these Russian officers made one pressing demand upon me. It was to explain the supply arrangements that enabled us to make the great sweep out of our constricted beachhead in Normandy to cover, in one rush, all of France, Belgium, and Luxembourg, up to the very borders of Germany. I had to describe to them our systems of railway repairs and construction, truckage, evacuation, and supply by air.
They suggested that of all the spectacular feats of the war, even including their own, the Allied success in the supply of the pursuit across France would go down in history as the most astonishing. Possibly they were only being polite, but I nevertheless wished that they could have been heard by all the men who worked so hard during those hectic weeks to see that the front got every possible pound of ammunition, gasoline, food, clothing, and supplies.
Regardless, however, of the extraordinary efforts of the supply system, this remained our most acute difficulty. All along the front the cry was for more gasoline and more ammunition. Every one of our spearheads could have gone farther and faster than they actually did. I believed then and believe now that on Patton’s front the city of Metz could have been captured. Nevertheless, we had to supply each force for its basic missions and for basic missions only.
On our right we connected up near Dijon with Patch’s advancing forces on September 11, just twenty-seven days after the landing in southern France.18 From that moment onward the only thing standing in the way of the ample supply of all our forces south of Metz was the repair of the railways leading up the Rhone Valley. As a result of the junction with Patch’s forces, a considerable number of Germans were trapped in southwestern France. These began to give themselves up by driblets except in one instance, when 20,000 Germans surrendered in a single body.19
On the extreme left the attack against Arnhem went off as planned on the seventeenth. Three airborne divisions dropped, in column, from north to south. The northernmost one was the British 1st Airborne Division, while farther southward were the American 82d and 101st Airborne Divisions. The attack began well and unquestionably would have been successful except for the intervention of bad weather. This prevented the adequate reinforcement of the northern spearhead and resulted finally in the decimation of the British airborne division and only a partial success in the entire operation. We did not get our bridgehead but our lines had been carried well out to defend the Antwerp base.
The progress of the battle gripped the attention of everyone in the theater. We were inordinately proud of our airborne units but the interest in that battle had its roots in something deeper than pride. We felt it would prove whether or not the Germans could succeed in establishing renewed and effective resistance—on the battle’s outcome we would form an estimate of the severity of the fighting still ahead of us. A general impression grew up that the battle was really a full-out attempt to begin, immediately, a drive into the heart of Germany. This gave a great added interest to a battle in which the circumstances were unusually dramatic.
When, in spite of heroic effort, the airborne forces and their supporting ground forces were stopped in their tracks, we had ample evidence that much bitter campaigning was still to come. The British 1st Airborne Division, in the van, fought one of the most gallant actions of the war, and its sturdiness materially assisted the two American divisions behind it, and the supporting ground forces of the Twenty-first Army Group, to take and hold important areas. But the division itself suffered badly; only some 2400 succeeded in withdrawing across the river to safety.20
It was now vital to avoid any further delay in the capture of Antwerp’s approaches. Montgomery’s forces were, at the moment, badly scattered. His front, in an irregular salient, reached to the lower Rhine. He had to concentrate a sizable force in the Scheldt Estuary and still provide investing troops at some of the small ports holding out along the coast. To insure him opportunity to concentrate for the Scheldt operation we sent him two American divisions, the 7th Armored, commanded by Major General Lindsay McD. Sylvester, and the 104th, commanded by Major General Terry Allen, a veteran of the Tunisian and Sicilian campaigns.
The American First Army, at the end of its brilliant march from the Seine to the German border, almost immediately launched the operations that finally brought about the reduction of Aachen, one of the gateways into Germany. The city was stubbornly and fiercely defended but Collins, with his VII Corps, carried out the attack so skillfully that by October 13 he had surrounded the garrison and entered the city. The enemy was steadily forced back into his final stronghold, a massive building in the center of the city. This was reduced by the simple expedient of dragging 155-mm. “Long Tom” rifles up to point-blank range—within 200 yards of the building—and methodically blowing the walls to bits. After a few of these shells had pierced the building from end to end the German commander surrendered on October 21, with the rueful observation, “When the Americans start using 155s as sniper weapons, it is time to give up!”21
In the south Devers’ Sixth Army Group became operational and came unde
r my command on September 15. The continuous front under control of SHAEF now extended from the Mediterranean in the south to the mouth of the Rhine, hundreds of miles to the north.
Devers’ forces included the U. S. Seventh Army under Lieutenant General Patch, and the French First Army under General de Lattre de Tassigny, previously under Patch’s operational control. Bradley’s army group comprised the First, Third, and the newly organized Ninth Army under Lieutenant General William H. Simpson.22 Montgomery still had Dempsey’s British Second Army and Crerar’s Canadian First Army. The Allied Airborne Army, temporarily assigned to him, was directly subordinate to SHAEF.
In October we learned that Leigh-Mallory was needed in another theater of war. Although reluctant to lose him, our organization had, by that time, definitely crystallized and teamwork had been perfected to the point that I approved the transfer. He was killed shortly thereafter in an airplane accident, and thus passed one of the intrepid and gallant figures of World War II.
In the late summer SHAEF began moving from Granville, its initial location on the Continent, to Versailles, just outside Paris. In selecting a new location, I desired to find a suitable spot well east of Paris in order to avoid the congested metropolitan area in trips to the front. However, because of the location of main lines of signal communications and the lack of existing facilities in the areas east of Paris, the staff was forced, originally, to accept Versailles as the most suitable spot from which to operate. I established a forward command post just outside Reims, from which point I could easily reach any portion of the front, even on days when flying was impossible.
During the three months beginning September 1, I spent a great portion of my time in travel. The front was constantly broadening and distances were getting greater, so that every visit was time-consuming. Nevertheless, they were valuable and always worth the cost in time and effort. By adhering to this practice, I could visit commanders in their own headquarters, keep personal touch with problems as they arose, and, above all, gain a feel of the troops. Two months later, as winter approached, the winding roads leading into my little camp at Reims at times became impassable. One afternoon I was bogged down for three hours while waiting for a tractor to pull my car out of a ditch. This compelled me to rejoin the main headquarters at Versailles and from that time on travel became more difficult, except when flying conditions were good.
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