On one trip during the autumn I stopped briefly in a forward location to talk with several hundred men of a battalion of the 29th Infantry Division. We were all standing on a muddy, slippery hillside. After a few minutes’ visit I turned to go and fell flat on my back. From the shout of laughter that went up I am quite sure that no other meeting I had with soldiers during the war was a greater success than that one. Even the men who rushed forward to help pick me out of the mire could scarcely do so for laughing.
At times I received advice from friends, urging me to give up or curtail visits to troops. They correctly stated that, so far as the mass of men was concerned, I could never speak, personally, to more than a tiny percentage. They argued, therefore, that I was merely wearing myself out, without accomplishing anything significant, so far as the whole Army was concerned. With this I did not agree. In the first place I felt that through constant talking to enlisted men I gained accurate impressions of their state of mind. I talked to them about anything and everything: a favorite question of mine was to inquire whether the particular squad or platoon had figured out any new trick or gadget for use in infantry fighting. I would talk about anything so long as I could get the soldier to talk to me in return.
I knew, of course, that news of a visit with even a few men in a division would soon spread throughout the unit. This, I felt, would encourage men to talk to their superiors, and this habit, I believe, promotes efficiency. There is, among the mass of individuals who carry the rifles in war, a great amount of ingenuity and initiative. If men can naturally and without restraint talk to their officers, the products of their resourcefulness become available to all. Moreover, out of the habit grows mutual confidence, a feeling of partnership that is the essence of esprit de corps. An army fearful of its officers is never as good as one that trusts and confides in its leaders.
There is an old expression, “the nakedness of the battlefield.” It is descriptive and full of meaning for anyone who has seen a battle. Except for unusual concentration of tactical activity, such as at a river crossing or an amphibious assault, the feeling that pervades the forward areas is loneliness. There is little to be seen; friend and foe, as well as the engines of war, seem to disappear from sight when troops are deployed for a fight. Loss of control and cohesion are easy, because 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. Here is where confidence in leaders, a feeling of comradeship with and trust in them, pays off.
My own direct efforts could do little in this direction. But I knew that if men realized they could talk to “the brass” they would be less inclined to be fearful of the lieutenant. Moreover, it was possible that my example might encourage officers to seek information from and comradeship with their men. In any event I pursued the practice throughout the war, and no talk with a soldier or group of soldiers was ever profitless for me.
All these visits were, in addition, the occasion for serious discussion of problems, involving particularly replacements, ammunition, clothing, and equipment for winter weather and future plans. Staffs of all echelons are, of course, constantly working on these matters and, according to the manuals, all of the needs of troops are automatically supplied through the working of the staff systems. Nothing, however, can take the place of direct contact between commanders and this is far more valuable when the senior does the traveling, instead of sitting in his headquarters and waiting for subordinates to come back to him with their problems.
Morale of the combat troops had always to be carefully watched. The capacity of soldiers for absorbing punishment and enduring privations is almost inexhaustible so long as they believe they are getting a square deal, that their commanders are looking out for them, and that their own accomplishments are understood and appreciated. Any intimation that they are the victims of unfair treatment understandably arouses their anger and resentment, and the feeling can sweep through a command like wildfire. Once, in Africa, front-line troops complained to me that they could get no chocolate bars or anything to smoke, when they knew that these were plentifully issued to the Services of Supply. I queried the local unit commander, who said he had requisitioned these things time and again, only to be told that no transport was available to bring them to the front.
I merely telephoned to the rear and directed that until every forward airfield and front-line unit was getting its share of these items there would not be another piece of candy or a cigarette or cigar issued to anyone in the supply services. In a surprisingly short time I received a happy report from the front that their requisitions were being promptly filled.
One of these distressing affairs developed in the fall of 1944. The two items in shortest supply on the front seemed to be gasoline and cigarettes. A true report came out that in Paris there was a flourishing black market in both these articles, conducted by men of the SOS. We promptly put a group of inspectors on the job and uncovered all the sordid facts. That some men should give way to the extraordinary temptations of the fabulous prices offered for food and cigarettes was to be expected. But in this case it appeared that practically an entire unit had organized itself into an efficient gang of racketeers and was selling these articles in truck- and carload lots. Even so, the blackness of the crime consisted more in the robbery of the front lines than it did in the value of the thefts. I was thoroughly angry.23
However, I realized that a whole American unit had not suddenly become criminal. It was logical to believe that the sorry business had been started by a few crooks and others had been gradually drawn into it almost without conscious will and, once started, saw no easy way of getting out.
I instructed the law-enforcement staffs to push prosecution of the guilty—fortunately these were not so numerous as first reported—but that no sentence in the case would be finally approved until brought to my personal attention. When this was later done I explained my plan. This was to offer to each of the convicted men a chance to restore himself to good standing by volunteering for frontline duty. The sentences, which were severe, had already been published to the command, so the forward troops knew that the guilty were not escaping punishment. But now I was determined to give the offenders a chance. Most of them eagerly seized the opportunity, removed the stigma from their names, and earned honorable discharges. This same opportunity was not, however, extended to the officers who participated in the affair.
Because of the miserable conditions along the front we began to suffer a high percentage of non-battle casualties. Trench foot was one of the principal causes. Cure is difficult, sometimes almost impossible, but the doctors discovered that prevention was a relatively simple matter. Effective prevention was merely a matter of discipline: making sure that no one neglected the prescribed procedure. This was to remove the shoes and socks at least once daily and massage the feet for five minutes. To make certain that this was done properly the normal practice was to take the treatment in pairs; each man was to rub the feet of his partner five minutes by the clock. Nothing much; but as soon as we knew the answer and applied it rigorously in all affected areas we reduced the number of serious casualties by thousands per month.
The medical service was efficient; the ratio of fatalities per hundred wounded was, in the American Army of World War II, less than one half the ratio of World War I.24 For this there were many reasons. Among them were penicillin and the sulfa drugs, early use of blood plasma, and an efficient system of evacuation, a great deal of it by air. With respect to the wounded, the job of the doctor is to get the man fit again for combat as quickly as possible, and where the wound is permanently disabling to get him quickly, safely, and comfortably to a hospital in the homeland. In both tasks the doctors, the nurse corps, and their associates did a remarkable job. Some wounded men returned several times from the hospitals to the front in a single year of campaigning. I have seen other men unloaded at base hospitals, hundreds of miles from the front, within hours of receiving a permanently disabling wound.
The soldier’s welfare is always the business of commanders of all grades. But in the fall of 1944 it was of particular importance. The Allied soldier faced all the hardship and danger of ordinary battle, while the elements made his daily life almost unendurable. It was a struggle in housekeeping as well as against the enemy. Yet my associates and I were convinced of the necessity of maintaining the tempo of operations. The job was to maintain a punishing pace against the enemy, to build up our strength in troops and supplies throughout the fall and winter, and to be ready in the spring to deliver the final killing blows.
Commanders in the American Army were all of my own choosing. Ever since the beginning of the African campaign there had existed between General Marshall and me a fixed understanding on the point. He said, “You do not need to take or keep any commander in whom you do not have full confidence. So long as he holds a command in your theater it is evidence to me of your satisfaction with him. The lives of many are at stake; I will not have you operating under any misunderstanding as to your authority, and your duty, to reject or remove any that fails to satisfy you completely.” General Marshall never violated this rule, and I, in turn, prescribed the same procedure for my senior subordinates.
Early in the Overlord operation Prime Minister Churchill and Field Marshal Brooke took occasion to inform me that they also were prepared, at any moment I expressed dissatisfaction with any of my principal British subordinates, to replace him instantly. Allied co-operation had come a long way since the first days of Torch!
We had splendid troops and fine commanders, both on the ground and in the air. More were arriving daily from the United States. All we needed, in addition to our growing strength, was supply in the forward areas. We were certain that by the time we could provide this we would have the strength needed to begin the final battles to finish off the enemy in the West.
As we pushed rapidly across western Europe the wildest enthusiasm greeted the advancing Allied soldiers. In France, Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg the story was everywhere the same. The inhabitants were undernourished and impoverished, but the regaining of their individual liberty, of their right to talk freely with their neighbors and to learn of the outside world, seemed to overshadow, at least for the moment, their hunger and their privation. The people had lived in virtual captivity for more than four years.
During that period their trade with other nations had ceased, their industries were perverted to the use of the Nazis, and their daily lives were never free from fear of imprisonment and worse. Even their news of the outside world was filtered to them through Nazi-controlled newspapers and radios. On a clandestine basis they did, of course, receive some information from British and American broadcasting stations but such news could not be freely circulated to the whole population and those who listened were, if discovered, subject to stern punishment. With the coming of the Allies popular exuberance sometimes was so emotional as to embarrass our soldiers, but there was no room left for doubt concerning the people’s great joy in deliverance from the Nazi yoke.
The re-established governments of western Europe co-operated wholeheartedly with the Allied high command. Labor and other assistance were made available to us so far as the capacity of each country would permit. There were, of course, dissident elements. Men who, with arms in their hands, had long served in the underground, who were accustomed by stealth and violence to accomplish their purposes of sabotage, did not easily adapt themselves again to the requirements of social order. In some cases they wanted to maintain and magnify their power, to become the dominant and controlling element in the liberated country. While these things caused some local, and at times worrisome, difficulty, they were overshadowed by the eagerness of the population to earn again, under free institutions, their own living.
Because France had been divided into occupied and unoccupied segments by the armistice of 1940 and because the underground in that country was not only strong but very aggressive, more than normal difficulties were encountered in the re-establishment of stability. However, as always, the French peasant was devoted to the soil and continued assiduously to attend his crops. In the cities there was greater confusion because Communist penetration in trade unions and elsewhere had created sharp political division within the country which was reflected in divided councils and some disunity, even, in the prosecution of the war. For example, great portions of the former underground, or, as they were called, Maquis, refused to enter the Army except as separate units. They insisted upon forming their own regiments and divisions under their own leaders.
Unless their demands were met, it was feared they might even maintain themselves in various parts of the country as armed bands ready to challenge the authority of the Central Provisional Government. Their plan could not be wholly accepted by the government because the manifest result would have been the establishment of two French armies, one serving under and loyal to the generally recognized government, the other responsible only to itself. However, the government developed a plan to accept the Maquis in units no larger than battalion size.
Thoughtful Frenchmen frequently discussed with me the reasons for their national collapse in 1940. In other countries an opinion prevailed that the French military debacle came about because of an excessive faith in the efficiency of the Maginot Line. I did not find any Frenchmen who agreed with this. They felt that the fortified line along the eastern border was necessary and served a good purpose in that it should have allowed the French Army to concentrate heavily on the northern flank of the line to oppose any German advances through Belgium. Militarily, they felt, their difficulties came about because of internal political weaknesses. One French businessman said to me, “We defeated ourselves from within; we tried to oppose a four-day work week against the German’s six- or seven-day week.”
In general, the liberated peoples were startlingly ignorant of America and the American part in the war. Our effort had been so belittled and ridiculed by Nazi propaganda that the obvious strength of the American armies completely amazed and bewildered the populations of western Europe. In numerous ways we tried to place before them the facts of the American position prior to our entrance in the war and our contribution thereafter to its waging. But so great was the chasm of ignorance that we were only partly successful. The job is yet far from done.
The war, moreover, did not purge France of its divisive influences. Apparently Communistic doctrines had flourished in great segments of the underground movement and with the coming of liberation the Communists, as a minority but a very aggressive body, began to weaken the national will to regain France’s former position of power and prosperity in western Europe.
This partisan disunity in localities behind us did not affect the Allied military position; whatever their political affiliation, the liberated peoples were friendly to us. But there was a threatening physical weakness in our communications zone, stretching from the French coast to the front, that did endanger our future offensive operations. The lifeblood of supply was running perilously thin throughout the forward extremities of the Army.
Chapter 17
AUTUMN FIGHTING ON
GERMANY’S FRONTIER
IN SEPTEMBER OUR ARMIES WERE CROWDING UP against the borders of Germany. Enemy defenses were naturally and artificially strong. Devers’ U. S. Seventh and French First Armies were swinging in eastward against the Vosges Mountains, which formed a traditional defensive barrier. In the north the Siegfried Line, backed up by the Rhine River, comprised a defensive system that only a well-supplied and determined force could hope to breach.
For the moment we were still dependent upon the ports at Cherbourg and Arromanches, and because of their limited capacity and the restricted communications leading out of them the accumulation of forward reserves was impossible. It was even difficult to maintain adequately the troops that were daily engaged in constant fighting for position along the front. This would continue to be true until we could get Antwerp and Marseille working at capacity. Of
the former, Bradley wrote to me on September 21: “… all plans for future operations always lead back to the fact that in order to supply an operation of any size beyond the Rhine, the port of Antwerp is essential.”1 He never failed to see that logistics would be a vital factor in the final defeat of Germany.
With the advent of bad weather, road maintenance presented additional problems to the Services of Supply because of the shallow foundations of many of the European roads, particularly in Belgium. In numerous instances our heavily laden trucks broke completely through the surfaces of main highways and it seemed almost impossible to fill the resulting quagmires with sufficient stone and gravel to restore them to a semblance of usefulness.
To reduce dependence on roads we brought in quantities of railway rolling stock to replace that destroyed earlier in the war.2 To do this expeditiously, railway engineers developed a simple scheme that was adopted with splendid results. Heavy equipment like railway cars can normally be brought into a theater only at prepared docks. Unloading is laborious because of the need for using only the heaviest kind of cranes and booms. Our engineers, however, merely laid railway tracks in the bottom of LSTs. They then laid railway lines down to the water’s edge at the beaches of embarkation and debarkation and, by arranging flexible connections between ground tracks and those in the LSTs, simply rolled the cars in and out of the ships. But while waging and winning, during the autumn months, the battle of supply, we found no cessation of fighting along the front.
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