The American and British Air Forces continued their support of the ground forces and their bombing of the inner Reich.
As the period ended, the British had made their ill-fated paratroop drop at Arnhem; the First Army was breaching the Siegfried Line in and around Aachen; the Ninth Army completed operations on the Brittany Peninsula, except for Lorient and St. Nazaire; the Seventh Army, after clearing Epinal, was approaching the Belfort Gap.
P. D. H.
Touring France with an Army
When I was at Peover Hall, the initial Headquarters of the Third United States Army in England, in March, April, and May, 1944, it became evident that the Third Army would land either on the Cherbourg Peninsula or in the vicinity of Calais. Personally, I favored the latter place, because, while the landing would have been expensive, the subsequent price would probably have been less. In amphibious operations we should land as near the objective as possible. Calais was nearer this objective7 than was Cherbourg.
Thinking over the probable course of events, I picked out certain points which I felt sure would be the scenes of battles or else be very critical in the operation. In fact, I told Mr. J. J. McCloy, the Assistant Secretary of War, when he visited Peover, that the first big battle of the Third Army would be at Rennes. Actually it was the second big battle.
I also picked Laval, Chateaubriant, Nantes, Angers, Tours, Orleans, and Bourges and Nevers, because at that time I felt we should go south of the bend of the Loire. I am still not sure that we should not have done so.
Many other points, at most of which we subsequently fought, were selected; but since I have not my map here, I cannot name them all. I do remember that Chartres and Troyes and, strange to say, Worms and Mainz, were marked. It is of interest to note that this study was made on a road map of France, scale 1:1,000,000, and if “The greatest study of mankind is man,” surely the greatest study of war is the road net.
It is my opinion that, in the High Command, small-scale maps are best because from that level one has to decide on general policies and determine the places, usually road centers or river lines, the capture of which will hurt the enemy most. How these places are to be captured is a matter for the lower echelons to determine from the study of large-scale maps or, better still, from the ground.
I also read The Norman Conquest by Freeman, paying particular attention to the roads William the Conqueror used in his operations in Normandy and Brittany. The roads used in those days had to be on ground which was always practicable. Therefore, using these roads, even in modern times, permits easy by-passing when the enemy resorts, as he always does, to demolition.
We2 left the United Kingdom on July 6, taking off by plane at exactly 1025. That was a year to the minute from the date on which we left Algiers on the road to Sicily. As we flew down the east coast of the Cherbourg Peninsula, there was a tremendous mass of shipping lying off shore. After we landed and drove along the beach, the sight of the destruction of vessels was appalling. Some of this had been done by enemy action, but a great deal of it was due to the storm which raged for several days just after the initial landing. The beach defenses, particularly the pillboxes, were impressive. The fact that the Allies made a successful landing demonstrates that good troops can land anywhere.
Leaving Omaha Beach, we drove to General Bradley’s Headquarters south of Isigny, where I spent the first night in the midst of the most infernal artillery preparation I have ever heard. Bradley’s Headquarters was well in front of the corps artillery and right amongst the batteries of the divisional units.
Next day we drove to our first Command Post on the Continent at Nehou, southeast of Bricquebec. This chateau, Bricquebec, is supposed to have belonged to one of Caesar’s lieutenants, and is interesting in that the principal tower is eleven-sided and shows the transition from the early square tower to the round tower. In driving to the Command Post, we had to cross the bridge at Carentan, which was supposed to be under fire and had to be crossed at high speed with big distances between vehicles. When I went over, I saw four of our soldiers sitting on it, fishing. However, every visiting fireman whom I subsequently met told me of the dangers he had encountered crossing the bridge.
Our Command Post had been very well laid out by General Gay1 in an old apple orchard.
While there I took occasion to examine the German defenses around Cherbourg both from the ground and from the air. I also had the Army Engineer, Colonel Conklin, make drawings of them, as I felt that the Germans, being a methodical people, would probably use the same form of defenses wherever we should meet them. In my opinion, these defenses were not too formidable and the results proved me correct.
1Brigadier General, later Major General, Hobart R. Gay was General Patton’s Chief of Staff throughout the war with the exception of a brief period in England and the initial months on the Continent. See Appendix F.
The whole northern tip of the Cherbourg Peninsula was covered with launching sites for V-l bombs. These were very interesting. Usually a small concrete road, camouflaged to look like dirt, led off from a main road and eventually came to a concrete slab about the size of two tennis courts.
On the edges of this slab were semicircular points where trucks could be left. Down the center of the slab were a number of holes. At some of the sites were caves or dugouts in which rockets could be stored. In others these were absent. The method of procedure was that, during the night, a convoy containing a certain number of rockets and a knocked-down ramp moved up. The ramp was erected by placing the uprights in the holes previously mentioned. It had an angle of about thirty degrees to the horizontal. The rocket was placed on this ramp, which had been carefully pointed to reach a certain area of England, and was then discharged. When the supply of rockets was exhausted, the whole outfit picked up and left, while a detail remained to restore the camouflage. Very few of the sites I visited had been successfully bombed.
There was another enormous construction, the reason for which has, so far as I know, never been explained. It consisted of a concrete block approximately a mile long and about sixty to eighty feet square. In the hills at either side, wedge-shaped excavations, approximately one hundred feet deep and two hundred feet wide at the top, had been made and filled with concrete. It is my opinion that there was more material in this construction than in the Great Pyramid. Some three thousand slave laborers had worked on it for over two years, and it was not more than half-completed.
On July 12 General Teddy Roosevelt1 died, and while we were attending his funeral services at the cemetery near St. Sauveur our anti-aircraft guns sounded a fitting requiem for a brave soldier.
Secretary of War Stimson, accompanied by Mr. Bundy2 and General Surles,3 visited us on the seventeenth.
On the twenty-fourth, Colonel Flint4 was killed, and he and General McNair1 were buried on the twenty-sixth. Paddy would have been pleased with his funeral. We had a special coffin made for him and he was carried to his grave in a mechanized cavalry half-track. He had an Army Commander, three Corps Commanders, an Army Chief of Staff, and a Deputy Chief of Staff, and all the cavalrymen around Headquarters for his pallbearers.
General McNair’s funeral, on the other hand, was, for security reasons, a small affair. Only Bradley, Hodges, myself, Quesada,2 and his personal aide were present.
1Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt, Assistant Division Commander of the 1st U.S. Infantry Division at the time of his death.
2Mr. Harvey H. Bundy, Special Assistant to the Secretary of War.
3Major General Alexander D. Surles, Chief of War Department Public Relations Branch.
4Colonel Harry A. (Paddy) Flint, Commanding Officer of the 39th Infantry Regiment of the 9th Division at the time of his death.
On the twenty-fourth, General Henry3 spent the night and we had a very pleasant time examining the launching sites and spoke to the 6th Armored Division.
The first Sunday I spent in Normandy was quite impressive. I went to a Catholic Field .Mass where all of us were armed. As we kne
lt in the mud in the slight drizzle, we could distinctly hear the roar of the guns, and the whole sky was filled with airplanes on their missions of destruction . . . quite at variance with the teachings of the religion we were practicing.
I shall always remember very unpleasantly the time spent in the apple orchard, because I was obsessed with the belief that the war would end before I got into it. I was also certain that, by pushing harder, we could advance faster. I stated at the time, and still believe, that two armored divisions, preceded by a heavy artillery concentration using air bursts, and followed by two infantry divisions, could have cut straight down the west coast to Avranches without the necessity of waiting for an air blitz.
My belief in the practicability of this operation was greatly strengthened when the 3d Armored Division invented the hedge-spade for tanks, which was subsequently improved by Colonel Nixon.4 All the Cherbourg Peninsula
1Lieutenant General Lesley J. McNair, Chief of the Army Ground Forces.
2Lieutenant General, later General, Omar Bradley, Commanding General of the Twelfth U.S. Army Group in Europe. Lieutenant General C. H. Hodges, Commanding General, First U.S. Army. Major General E. R. (Pete) Quesada, Commanding General, Ninth Tactical Air Command.
3Major General Guy V. Henry, War Department Staff.
4Colonel Thomas F. Nixon, Chief Ordnance Officer for General Patton throughout the war.
“Bocage” country—that is, it is composed of innumerable and a great deal of eastern Brittany is what is called small fields separated by banks of earth from four to six feet high surmounted by hedges. These form ideal delaying positions for infantry. The tank spade, however, cut through them like a spoon through warm butter.
An arresting sight were the crucifixes at road intersections; these were used by Signal personnel as supplementary telephone posts. While the crosses were in no way injured, I could not help thinking of the incongruity of the lethal messages passing over the wires.
While the Third Army did not become operational until 1200 on the first of August, General Bradley appointed me to command it by word of mouth on the twenty-eighth of July and explained the plans for the initial use of two corps, the VIII (Middleton) on the right and the XV (Haislip) on the left.1
In conformity with this plan, I visited the troops near Coutances on the twenty-ninth and found an armored division sitting on a road, while its Headquarters, secreted behind an old church, was deeply engrossed in the study of maps. I asked why they had not crossed the Sienne. They told me they were making a study of it at the moment, but could not find a place where it could be forded. I asked what effort they had made to find such a place and was informed that they were studying the map to that end. I then told them I had just waded across it, that it was not over two feet deep, and that the only defense I knew about was one machine gun which had fired very inaccurately at me. I repeated the Japanese proverb: “One look is worth one hundred reports,” and asked them why in hell they had not gone down to the river personally. They learned the lesson and from then on were a very great division..
The morning of July 31, we moved our Command
VIII Corps (Middleton)
4th Armored Division 6th Armored Division 8th Infantry Division 79th Infantry Division
XV Corps (Haislip)
5th Infantry Division 83d Infantry Division 90th Infantry Division
The remainder of the Third Army, consisting of the XII Corps (80th Division) and XX Corps (2d French Armored Division), was not ready for action at this time.
Post to a point north of the Granville—St. Sever—Lendelin road. It was here that Willie contracted a violent love affair with a French lady dog and also exhumed a recently buried German, to the shame and disgrace of the military service.
Gaffey, Gay, and I stayed in the old Command Post until 1545, but were not idle, because during that time we succeeded in talking the Communications Zone out of three cavalry groups which we badly needed. After supper, Gaffey and I drove to the Command Post of the VIII Corps at Brehal. Middleton was very glad to see us, as he had reached his objective, which was the Selune River, and did not know what to do next. I told him that, throughout history, wars had been lost by not crossing rivers, and that he should get over at once. While we were talking about how to bridge it in the vicinity of Pontaubault, the telephone rang and we were told that the bridge, though damaged, was still usable. At the time I considered this an omen of the future success of the Third Army. We also heard that the 4th Armored Division had just captured the dams east of the bridge, which also served as crossings and that they had taken four thousand prisoners. As a result of this news, I told Middleton to head for Brest and Rennes, with the 6th Armored Division and the 79th Infantry Division on Brest, and the 8th Infantry Division and 4th Armored Division on Rennes and also to create a task force under General H. L. Earnest1 to go along the north coast of the Peninsula.
Returning to Headquarters, we passed one of the deadest Germans I have ever seen. He was half-lying, half-sitting, under a hedge in full uniform with his helmet on his chin strap in place, and was perfectly black. I had never before seen this happen to a corpse.
On the morning of August 1, everyone was busy at our camp except Harkins8 9 and myself, so at high noon he and I decided to celebrate the birthday of the Third Army with a drink. The only thing we could find was a bottle of alleged brandy given Harkins by Campanole.1 We tried to drink this, but gagged.
The passage of the two Army Corps (VIII and XV) through Avranches is one of those things which cannot be done, but was. It was only made possible by extremely effective use of veteran staff officers and by the active part taken in it by corps and division commanders who, on occasion, personally directed traffic. It was very evident that if a jam occurred, our losses, particularly with truck-borne infantry, would be terrific, and I had to say to myself, “Do not take counsel of your fears.”
The immediate mission of the Third Army was to secure and maintain a bridgehead over the Selune River between Avranches and St. Hilaire-de-Harcouet. I conceived this had best be done by the immediate capture of Brest and Lorient and proceeded on that assumption.
By evening of August 1, the 6th Armored Division had taken Pontorson where Beatrice2 and I spent a night in 1913, when we visited Mont St. Michel. In this operation the 6th lost a battery of self-propelled guns, due to stupidity. The guns were too far to the front, too close together, and had no security detachment. The officer responsible for this was killed in the action. On the same day the 4th Armored Division was near Rennes. Here a very amusing thing happened. About an hour before sundown we received a report that an armored column was fifteen kilometers southwest of Rennes, moving in rapidly. I asked General Weyland, commanding the XIX Tactical Air Command, to send some fighter bombers to stop it. The bombers were unable to find the column, because it actually was the 4th Armored Division moving in from the northeast. However, the planes did do some very effective work knocking out enemy resistance ahead of the 4th Armored Division and this was the precursor of many other such jobs. It was love at first sight between the XIX Tactical Air Command and the Third Army.
On the second of August, Stiller and I joined the column of the 90th Division marching east from Avranches, and walked in ranks with them for some hours. At that time the efficiency of this division was extremely dubious, but had just secured the services of General McLain1 and General Weaver.1 When we got to a point where the road turned south to St. Hilaire, I met McLain and Haislip, and was informed that the fighting down the road was caused by Weaver personally leading an assault over a bridge.
1Colonel N. W. Campanole, Chief Civil Affairs Officer, Third Army. See Appendix F.
2Mrs. Patton.
This was the beginning of the making of one of the greatest divisions that ever fought, and was due largely to these two men. The division subsequently had a series of great commanders.1
Driving back to Army Headquarters with Haislip, I saw a young officer leap wildly out of a peep and int
o a ditch. I went up to find out what was the matter and they said an enemy plane was overhead. That was true, but it was so high it was practically innocuous; just another instance of the nervousness of a first fight. They got back into the car even faster than they got out.
Coming back from Avranches, sometime around the second of August, I saw one of the worst accidents I have ever witnessed. One of our engineers had fallen off a bulldozer and been run over lengthwise, so that he was practically split in two. He was still alive, and I stayed with him and gave him morphine until an ambulance came.
During this period we had a great deal of enemy air over us, although in comparison with what we gave them it was probably quite paltry. I remember one night distinctly hearing a hundred different explosions in about an hour. Of course, the fact that I could hear them showed that they were scattered.
Another night the enemy deliberately bombed and strafed their own prisoners in one of our cages. The Provost Marshal in command there turned them loose, and out of several thousand, all but fifty came back. Those who returned were extremely mad with the Germans and talked very freely.
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