I made arrangements with Patch for a new boundary, hitting the Rhine south of Worms and giving the Seventh Army Kaiserslautern, when and if they got there. I told Patch that when I got to Kaiserslautern, I intended to turn at least one armored division and one infantry division south for the purpose of making contact with his VI Corps,1 thereby completely surrounding the remaining Germans, and that, as soon as this was accomplished, I would clear out of his area.
On the nineteenth, our total losses, both battle and nonbattle, were eight hundred, while we captured approximately twelve thousand Germans in addition to those we had killed.
It was amusing at the time, and it is even more amusing to remember now, the difficulty I had in securing permission to take Trier, and in getting permission to get the 4th Armored Division cut loose for the Rhine. In fact, it was necessary to use certain chicanery in order to secure permission to cross the Moselle in a southerly direction.2
While I was with Patch, he jokingly said, “George, I forgot to congratulate you for being the last man to reach the Rhine.” I replied, “Let me congratulate you on being the first man to leave it,” referring to the time when his VI Corps (commanded by Major General E. H. Brooks) had been ordered back, after having gained the Rhine.
On the twenty-first, the operations in the Palatinate were practically ended, because in the XII Corps the 90th Division had reached Mainz, and was attacking the town with two regiments. The 4th Armored was at Worms and the 11th Armored was south of Worms. In the XX Corps, the 12th Armored was closing in on Mannerheim and the 10th Armored had turned south from Neustadt on Landau. The 80th Division had cleared ' Kaiserslautern, while the 94th and 26th Divisions were both closing in that direction in spite of some confusion caused by the 6th Armored, from the Seventh Army, crossing the line of march of the 26th Division.
1Commanded by Major General E. H. Brooks.
2True to General Bradley’s desires that the Palatinate Campaign could not start unless the Third Army secured a bridge over the Moselle intact, the XII Corps rushed reconnaissance elements to the river in an effort to get one. The leading elements arrived in the vicinity of Treis and saw one of the bridges across the river still standing. It immediately radioed back, “Bridge at Treis intact. Continuing on mission.” This message was relayed from Division to Corps to Army to Group. The campaign was on; the troops moved on the Moselle. The message was the last received from the vehicle that sent it. As it proceeded to and started to cross the bridge, the bridge blew up, taking vehicle and crew along with it. It was too late to stop the attack when the news came that the bridge was no more. It did not take long to build temporary bridges of our own and the war was on again. This was the fourth time that the Third Army had crossed the Moselle.
I consulted with Eddy at Simmeren. It was evident that the Germans thought we were crossing at Mainz, and had placed two regiments in the town with orders to hold till the last. We, therefore, decided to put a smoke screen on the river at Mainz to give the impression that we were to cross there, and to make the crossing at Oppenheim. This was a particularly fortunate place to cross, because on our side there was a barge harbor which could be entered through the town without being seen from either side of the river. Our assault boats could be launched in this barge harbor without the enemy’s knowledge and slip into the river quietly. Eddy had selected this point many months before.
However, I believe I was guilty of a great mistake in not making a river crossing north of the confluence of the Main River with the Rhine; that is, north of Mainz. My reason for not doing it was the fear of being held on the high ground north of the juncture of the two rivers. On the other hand, had I crossed there, the crossing of the Main River at Frankfurt, and at its mouth, would have been avoided. This was one of the few times when I took what seemed to be good precautions and which were, in effect, too good.
In any event, we determined to cross the Rhine on the night of the twenty-second with the 5th Infantry Division. I gave a plan to Eddy, which might have been quite picturesque, of using some two hundred L-4 planes to carry one rifleman per plane across the river. By the use of these planes we would have taken two hundred men across every thirty minutes. The idea was that of Brigadier General E. T. Williams, Chief Artillery Officer of the Army, and an extremely good one.1
After things had been arranged with Eddy, we flew to Mainz and saw General Middleton of the VIII Corps, and made arrangements for him to force a crossing in the gorge of the Rhine in the vicinity of Boppard, or else near Lorch, with the idea of moving initially on Mastatten, which was a good crossroad, and gave the option of moving either northeast on Limburg or of coming south to facilitate the Mainz crossing from the east bank.
1The assembled Cub planes were nicknamed the Third Army Troop Carrier Command. In view of the situation, General Patton’s idea was to get as many men as possible across the Rhine in the shortest possible time. At this particular time he believed the strength was in the greatest numbers.
The matter of getting bridge materiel for these river crossings was extremely difficult and was only made possible by superhuman efforts on the part of General Conklin, Army Engineer, and also by the Navy Detachment1 which co-operated with us.
At this time the question of rations became quite acute, and we took steps to save everywhere we could.
The twenty-first terminates the campaign of the Palatinate, but before leaving it I believe it well to point out that our attack across the Rhine at Oppen-heim was made without halting—that is, we simply changed the direction of the 5th and 90th Divisions from south to east, while continuing south with the remainder of the two corps. This deluded the Germans into the belief that we were not making a serious attempt to cross. I felt that the way to get across the Rhine was by a coup de main. The execution of this coup was magnificently planned by General Eddy and gloriously executed by General Irwin.
Casualties as of March 21 were:
1Navy Detachment (Naval Unit N-2) consisting of twelve LCVP’s and their crews were attached to the Third Army. They had practiced at Toul especially for the crossing of the Rhine. They were moved forward in time to be launched in the water and operating at 0730 on the twenty-third of March. This unit greatly expedited the crossing.
2The prisoner of war total as of 13 March was 220,000, so during the Palatinate Campaign 62,900 German prisoners were captured.
On March 23, I published General Order Number 70 covering the operations for the period January 29 to March 22. Since this order expressed my ideas of the Palatinate Campaign, it is inserted here:
General Order
Number 70
23 March, 1945
To the Officers and Men of the Third Army
And
To Our Comrades of the XIX Tactical Air Command
In the period from January 29 to March 22, 1945, you have wrested 6484 square miles of territory from the enemy. You have taken 3072 cities, towns, and villages, including among the former: Trier, Coblentz, Bingen, Worms, Mainz, Kaiserslautern, and Ludwigshafen.
You have captured 140,112 enemy soldiers, and have killed or wounded an additional 99,000, thereby eliminating practically all of the German 7th and 1st Armies. History records no greater achievement in so limited a time.
This great campaign was only made possible by your disciplined valor, unswerving devotion to duty, doubled with the unparalleled audacity and speed of your advance on the ground; while from the air, the peerless fighter-bombers kept up a relentless round-the-clock attack upon the disorganized enemy.
The world rings with your praises; better still, General Marshall, General Eisenhower, and
General Bradley have all personally commended you. The highest honor I have ever attained is that of having my name coupled with yours in these great events.
Please accept my heartfelt admiration and thanks for what you have done, and remember that your assault crossing over the Rhine at 2200 hours last night assures you of even greater glory to come.
G. S. P
atton, Jr,
Lieutenant General, U.S. Army,
Commanding
7 FORCING THE RHINE, FRANKFURT-AM-MAIN AND ACROSS THE MULDE
22 March to 21 April, 1945
At this period of the war, speed was of the essence. Capture of terrain was more important than the mopping-up of a beaten enemy. Total disruption of the enemy's interior was in order. Only confused and bewildered enemy organizations were left; fighting everywhere was by remnants.
Sensing this, General Patton ordered the first assault crossing of the Rhine to be made by the XII Corps on the night of March 22-23.
Behind advanced elements of the Third Army9 already along the Rhine from Coblentz to Speyer, was a mass of confused Germans, and also some confused Americans. Everyone was heading east, Americans advancing, Germans retreating, and some of the advancing Third Army units reached the Rhine ahead of the Germans retreating before the Seventh Army. As these American divisions hit the Rhine, they came to a bottleneck. As the Germans hit it, they became prisoners.
At 2200 on the night of March 22, the 5th Infantry Division of the XII Corps rowed across the Rhine on schedule. There was no artillery preparation, no air blitz, no dropping of paratroops. The crossing was made so quietly and efficiently that it surprised not only the enemy but our own troops as well.
For the ensuing month, though some casual pockets of resistance had to be forced, the war, for the most part, became a road march. In fact, at one time on the autobahn, north of Frankfurt, two armored and two infantry divisions, on both sides of the road, were moving north abreast, toward Kassel, while in the center of the same road tens of thousands of German prisoners were moving south without guard.
German reserves were overrun, rear installations crushed or ignored, and the civilian population bewildered. Nazi atrocities came to light and cries of the phantom “redoubt" went up.
By the end of a month, the advanced elements of the Third Army had overrun the district of Saxe, Coburg, and Gotha, were on the outskirts of Chemnitz, and beyond Nuremberg. The Mulde had been crossed when orders from above indicated a new direction of attack —not to the east, but to the southeast, through Bavaria, along the Czechoslovakian border. (See Map, pages 282-283.)
Except in Italy, on all other fronts the situation was fluid. All the Allied Armies on the Western Front were across the Rhine. The Twenty-First Army Group was on the Elbe River in the north; the First, farther south, reached the outskirts of Dresden. Nuremberg fell to the Seventh Army. The Russians took Vienna and Danzig. The air forces continued their strikes in support of the ground troops on all fronts.
The Commander An-Chief, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, died on April 12.
P.D.H.
“The Rhine, the Rhine, the German Rhine”
On March 22, the 10th and 11th Armored Divisions, one with the XII and the other with the XX Corps, had relieved the 4th Armored Division in the vicinity of Worms. Elements of the 12th Armored Division, in the XX Corps, were moving on Ludwigshaven, while the 10th Armored Division had got a combat command at Landau. Finally, one combat command of the 12th was moving on the town of Speyer. When it reached Speyer, all the German exits over the Rhine, in my area, were cut off.
On the twenty-second, we reached our height, up to that time, in prisoners taken in one day—eleven thousand.
General Weyland, Colonel Codman, and I drove from Saarburg via St. Wendel to Kaiserslautern, and from there through the woods, for about twenty kilometers, in the direction of Neustadt. Here we witnessed one of the greatest scenes of destruction I have ever contemplated. A German column entering the road from the northwest, and consisting mainly of animal transport and guns, was struck on the right flank by a company of medium tanks of the 10th Armored Division. The Germans were moving up a rather steep canyon with a precipitous cliff on their left, while the tanks came in between them and the mountain. For more than two miles horses and vehicles were,pushed over the cliff. You could see the marks of the tank treads on the flanks and shoulders of the horses, and see the powder marks on the men and horses where they had been shot at point-blank range. In spite of my pride in the achievement of the 10th Armored, I was sorry for the poor creatures.
When we got back to Headquarters about dark, we found that elements of the 10th Armored had made contact with elements of the VI Corps of the Seventh Army in the vicinity of a town called Schwanim, thus completely pocketing the German troops. I also got a telegram from Grow, now commanding the Fifteenth Army, saying, “Congratulations on surrounding three armies, one of them American.”
On the night of the twenty-second the Fifth Infantry Division, jumping off at 2230, crossed the Rhine and made its twenty-third successful river crossing at Oppenheim; it got six battalions across before daylight with a total loss of twenty-eight men killed and wounded.
In connection with this crossing, a somewhat amusing incident is alleged to have happened, The Twenty-First Army Group was supposed to cross the Rhine on March 24, and, in order to be ready for this earthshaking event, Mr. Churchill wrote a speech congratulating Field Marshal Montgomery on the first assault crossing over the Rhine in modem history. This speech was recorded and, through some error on the part of the British Broadcasting Company, was broadcast, in spite of the fact that the Third Army had been across for some thirty-six hours.
Owing to the fact that the 10th Armored Division was so deep in the Seventh Army area, I swapped it for the 6th Armored Division, which was on the left of the Seventh Army, by mutual agreement between General Patch and myself.
On March 24, Codman, Stiller, General Eddy, and I crossed the Rhine at Oppenheim, stopping to spit in the river. When we got to the far side, I also deliberately stubbed my toe and fell, picking up a handful of German soil, in emulation of Scipio Africanus and William the Conqueror, who both stumbled and both made a joke of it, saying, “I see in my hands the soil of Africa” or “. . . the soil of England.” I saw in my hands the soil of Germany.
We then flew to the Headquarters of the VIII Corps to see about the crossing at Boppard, which took place the night of the twenty-fourth, and the crossing of the 76th Division at St. Goar on the next night, the twenty-fifth.
It was rather prophetic, I thought, that we should cross at St. Goar, near the legendary site of the Lorelei— one of the sacred spots of German mythology.
The Rhine crossing was going very well for the XII Corps. All the 5th Infantry, two regiments of the 90th, and most of the 4th Armored were across, and arrangements were made for the 6th Armored to start crossing on the morning of the twenty-fifth. In the meantime, the XX Corps was assembling in the vicinity of Mainz, where we had decided to construct a railway bridge, because the railway net was such that this was of necessity on our main supply line.
The plan for the ensuing operation envisaged sending one combat team of the 76th Division south along the Rhine, so as to take the high ground covering the crossing opposite Mainz; to have the 5th Division cross the Main River in the vicinity of Mainz, and the 80th : Division cross the Rhine north of the confluence of the Rhine and Main, while the rest of the XII Corps crossed the Main east of Frankfurt, with an initial rendezvous point at Giessen where the VIII Corps was also headed. I told each Corps Commander that I expected him to get there first, so as to produce a proper feeling of rivalry.
At this time I had an idea of creating a completely armored corps of three armored divisions, supported by one motorized combat team from an infantry division, putting them all under Walker and making a rush for Kassel or Weimar, depending on circumstances.
On the twenty-fifth, the 87th Division succeeded in making its crossing and had two regiments over the river by daylight, in spite of the fact that all the historical studies we had ever read on the crossing asserted ! that, between Bingen and Coblentz, the Rhine was im- • passable. Here again we took advantage of a theory of our own, that the impossible place is usually the least well defended.
We had quite a heavy German air attack on our bridge
sites—at least two hundred sorties—but, thanks to our anti-aircraft guns and to the XIX Tactical Air Command, the bridge was not hit, although one raft ' was struck and sunk.
On March 26, I crossed the Rhine with Codman and directed Eddy to send an expedition across the Main River to Hammelburg. There were two purposes in this expedition: first, to impress the Germans with the idea that we were moving due east, whereas we intended to move due north, and second, to release some nine hundred American prisoners of war who were at Ham- ! melburg. I intended to send one combat command of the 4th Armored, but, unfortunately, was talked out of it by Eddy and Hoge, commanding the 4th Armored Division, so I compromised by sending one armored company and one company of armored infantry.
I learned that Colonel John Hines, son of my old friend Major General John L. Hines, had been struck in the face with a solid 88 and had both eyes taken out while leading his tanks in the attack on the airfield south of Frankfurt. After he was wounded, he took the radio telephone, called the Division Commander, gave an exact statement of the situation and ended up by saying, “And also, General, you had better send someone to take my place, as I am wounded.”1 For this super-heroic act he was given an Oak Leaf Cluster to the Distinguished Service Cross which he had won during the Saar Campaign. He was a very great soldier and should not die. General Grow was upset by the loss of Hines; in fact, so upset that he didn’t do anything for a day afterward and had to be prodded to take Frankfurt.
War as I Knew It Page 26