War as I Knew It

by George S. Patton

  1From a letter from Colonel John L. Hines, Jr., to Mrs. Patton:

  “My combat command, C.C. ‘A’ of the 6th Armored Division, had crossed the Rhine and passed through the 5th Infantry Division on the left of our C.C. ‘B.’ Our mission was to clear the angle between the Main and Rhine rivers and attack the bridges into Frankfurt and Frankfurt itself. We had pushed through some very difficult wooded and swampy terrain and after a brisk fight had taken the village of Morfelden. My advance guard of my right combat team, the 9th Armored Infantry Battalion (reinforced) under Lieutenant Colonel Britton, was pushing on through scattered woods against heavy infantry and machine-gun opposition to clear the airport. The airport we knew had a large concentration of 88 and 105 anti-aircraft artillery and we were receiving heavy fire from them. Also we were receiving some 150 millimeter artillery, probably from Frankfurt. I had left Morfelden in my tank and gone on with the advanced troops to push through the airport as rapidly as possible and get to the bridges in hopes of capturing one or more intact. When I reached our road junction near the autobahn, very heavy artillery caught our advanced reconnaissance, setting several vehicles on fire. This artillery was moving down the road near the road junction where I was and was about two hundred yards away. I moved about two hundred yards off to the flank across country to avoid this concentration. I remember we flushed some German infantry in foxholes who came past us to surrender. I was standing in the turret of my tank talking on the radio telephone. The tank had been swung around so that its tail end was toward Frankfurt. I had been talking first to my other task force to ascertain its progress, and then I was either talking to or trying to contact Colonel Britton and looking over the rear of my tank toward Frankfurt when a shell which I did not hear coming hit the deck of my tank and the side of the turret. I had my left hand on the hatch and was facing the shell. I remember seeing the explosion and trying to pull down the hatch with my left hand only to find that I had lost the fingers of it. I remember dropping down into the tank and finding that I was choking from bone and shrapnel fragments in my throat and scooping them out with the fingers of my right hand. I then remember trying to call to report our situation and to have someone take my place, but I am confused as to whom I called or what I said. General Grow told me later that I had called and said substantially what General Patton quoted. I was then taken to the rear in my tank and I remember later talking to General Grow somewhere down the line. I have a confused recollection of not being able to say anything a|}d of trying to, but he says I actually did talk to him and asked him to get me back to the Division as soon as possible. . . .”

  Later, I met General Walker at the rear echelon of the XII Corps and we completed arrangements for the 80th Division to cross the Main with one column and the Rhine with another.

  On reaching Headquarters, I discovered that a task force of the 9th Armored Division, First Army, had broken loose to the south, and Bradley asked me if I wished it to come to Wiesbaden, which I was about to attack. I immediately assented and then flew to Bad Kreuznach to see Colonel Hines. When I got there, he was on the operating table and unconscious. It was a very painful sight.

  On the twenty-seventh, we moved the Command Post to Oberstein and occupied the barracks of the former 107th German Infantry Regiment (Colonel Gronaw commanding). Here we captured a tremendous carved eagle which we sent to the United States Military Academy as a gift from the Third Army.

  On the twenty-eighth, considerable complication arose from the fact that the 80th Division had completed its crossings of the Rhine and the Main without much difficulty and was headed on Wiesbaden, as was the combat team of the 76th and also the task force from the 9th Armored Division. It looked for a while as if each of the three would shoot into the other two. Eventually we got the 9th Armored and the 76th stopped and returned to their proper places.

  Colonel E. M. Fickett, commanding the 6th Cavalry Regiment, with a task force from the VIII Corps, crossed the autobahn and kept on east, doing a very splendid job, while the 4th Armored advanced more than two-thirds of the way to Giessen. The 6th Armored had also forced its way across the Main River into the heart of Frankfurt, and was moving north.

  On the other hand, we were very much disturbed because we could get no information at all as to what had happened to the task force sent east from the 4th Armored Division.

  While talking to Bradley about the boundaries between the Third and First Armies, I made the suggestion that, after we took Kassel, for which we were then heading, we should turn east into the Dresden—Leipzig Triangle. This idea was partly the result of my own study of the map and partly from conversation with General Giraud of the French Army. Bradley was quite sympathetic, and at the time we made plans for this operation.

  Giraud stated that members of his family—his wife and two daughters-in-law, I think—were prisoners somewhere in the vicinity of Weimar. I suggested that his Aide accompany the 4th Armored Division, which at the time seemed most likely to get there first. The Girauds were eventually rescued, as well as a Belgian princess, who had some very interesting stories to tell about what she referred to as a lager for important women north of Berlin. She said that in this lager there were some four thousand German women whose husbands occupied important positions and that they were, in effect, hostages. Apparently they were fairly well fed, but the Germans executed a large number of young girls where she could see it from her window. These executions apparently took place every night, so she lost considerable sleep. We considered her story quite an exaggeration.

  On the twenty-ninth, the 70th Infantry Division (Major General A. J. Barnett) and the 13th Armored (Major General J. B. Wogan) were attached to the Third Army, but had to be held in SHAEF Reserve west of the Rhine. This eased the situation in the rear a good deal, and we put the 70th along the Rhine from Coblentz to Oppenheim. We also got the use of all four cavalry groups assigned to the Third Army, as heretofore we had been required to hold one in reserve. Bradley asked that I leave one infantry division in an assembly area for Army Reserve somewhere in the vicinity of Frankfurt or Wiesbaden. We selected the 5th Infantry Division for this role.

  For the rest things were going very well. The 4th and 6th Armored Divisions had made substantial advances, although the 11th Armored Division, which had turned east, was held up beyond Hanau. The northern division of the VIII corps was also slowed down, owing to the fact that the First Army had made a boundary of its own without reference to the boundary prescribed by the Twelfth Army Group, with the result that the right boundary of the First Army cut across the line of advance of the 87th Division. This was eventually straightened out.

  On the thirtieth, the German radio announced that the American armored division attacking Hammelburg had been captured and destroyed.1

  We received instructions to move as rapidly as possible to the line of the Werra—Wesser Rivers, and after that to move east on the Elbe River. It was suggested by Higher Headquarters that we make this move slowly. However, we pointed out that the only way to avoid casualties was to move fast.

  The 6th Armored Division, supported by elements of the 80th and 65th Infantry Divisions, reached a point twelve miles southwest of Kassel.

  On March 31, I flew to Headquarters of the XII Corps east of Frankfurt and explained that, after passing the Werra—Wesser Rivers, this corps would confine itself to advancing approximately fifteen miles a day. I had intended to fly to the XX Corps to explain the same thing to them, but Walker arrived at XII Corps Headquarters and we completed the arrangements there.

  I then drove to the airfield for the purpose of taking off for the VIII Corps, when General Sibert, G-2 of the Twelfth Army Group, landed and signaled me to stop. He had a plan for the capture of the German communication center in the vicinity of Gotha, Erfurt, Weimar, and Ohrdruf, which, when he explained it to me, seemed full of promise. I telephoned from the airfield to hold Walker at XII Corps Headquarters until Sibert and I got there. Unfortunately, Walker had left, but they caught him, and he a
rrived back at Headquarters about the same time Sibert and I did. We then explained the idea of the rapid advance on the Weimar Quadrilateral—Eddy on the right, Walker on the left. I told them they would have the greatest chance in history to make names for themselves, and to get moving. I gave Walker permission to by-pass Kassel in order to accelerate the operation.

  Then I flew to the Command Post of the VII Corps, just west of Limburg. The Limburg airfield was taking on gasoline from the Troop Carrier Command at the rate of sixty planes an hour. Had it not been for the Air Transport Command, we would have run out of gasoline again. Each plane carried 115 five-gallon cans.

  Before leaving Headquarters, Gay had agreed with me to telephone the boundary between the VIII Corps and the XX and XII Corps, as we proposed to put the VIII Corps in the middle. Middleton had just received the boundaries and was satisfied with them. However, in view of the impending attack on the Weimar Quadrilateral, and the possibility of a German counterattack from the vicinity of Hanau, I told him not to start his operation, because, in the position he then occupied near Limburg, he was ideally situated to stop any attempt on the part of the Germans through Hanau.

  Flying home, Codman and I followed the gorge of the Rhine and took photographs from the air of the two crossings, made in the gorge, by the VIII Corps.

  At 1830, Bradley called to state that General Eisenhower was somewhat perturbed about the risk we were taking in our proposed rush on Weimar, but after we discussed it, I got permission to continue the attack.

  I made arrangements to reconstitute the two companies of the 4th Armored Division, which we now definitely knew had been captured. After forcing a crossing over the Main east of Frankfurt, in which the Captain in command was slightly wounded, they continued the attack and reached the outskirts of Hammel-burg. There they ran into elements of three German divisions which, as we hoped, had been drawn by their attack. While some of the tanks and some of the armored infantry engaged these divisions, other tanks went to the prison camp, some six miles to the north, and released the prisoners. These tanks, accompanied by some twelve hundred prisoners, rejoined the rest of the force in the vicinity of Hammelburg and started back over the road they had taken. The following report was made by my Aide, Major Stiller, who was with them hut not in command. He suggested that, instead of returning over the road already used, the column strike north. The officer in charge declined that advice and the column stopped to refuel. While engaged in this refueling, they were attacked by three regiments of German infantry from three different directions, and scattered. When the confusion had cleared, Major Stiller, the Captain in command of the force, and five enlisted men continued to fight until they had used up all their ammunition and had their vehicles destroyed, when they surrendered.

  On the first of April, two years from the day Jenson1 was killed, we were not going so fast, due primarily to road blocks or demolitions. However, the 4th Armored Division was six kilometers west of Eisenach, while the north column of the 11th Armored Division, also in the XII Corps, was in Oberfeld. We received a message from the Twelfth Army Group that, if we could not get Weimar by the night of the first, we had better stop and wait until the First and Ninth Armies came abreast of us. However, we persuaded them to let us continue until 1700 hours on the second.

  On the second of April, the VIII Corps began to move in, as planned, between the XX on the north and the XII on the south, and to take over the 4th Armored Division. The 80th Division of the XX Corps resumed the attack on Kassel and had a rather rough time of it, but whenever we turned the 80th Division on anything, we always knew that the objective would be attained.

  It was reported, on this date, that a certain number of German troops, later discovered to be members of the 2d Mountain Division, had escaped from the hills northeast of Frankfurt, and, cutting across the rear of the XII Corps, had captured a hospital column, killed one officer and two enlisted men, and also captured an ammunition dump. The first reports, which came in at night, gave a most horrible account of atrocities, including the murder of all members of the hospital, the raping of all nurses, and the destruction of the ammunition dump. This is simply another illustration of my opinion that the report of no incident which happens after dark should be treated too seriously. They are always overstated.

  1Major Richard N. Jenson, General Patton’s Aide, killed by an air bomb in Tunisia.

  In this particular case an officer and two enlisted men were killed in the first fighting. Thereafter, the Germans, while helping themselves to the trucks and ambulances, which they used for their own transportation, in no way molested the doctors, nurses, or enlisted personnel of the hospital. Furthermore, when they reached the ammunition dump, which was defended by some dusky soldiers who ran away, they did not take the trouble to ignite it, but hurried on in an attempt to get clear. We rounded them up next day with the 71st Infantry Division, the 10th Infantry Regiment (Colonel R. P. Bell) of the 5th Infantry Division, and the Reconnaissance Battalion (Lieutenant Colonel M. W. Frame) of the 13th Armored, which had been released to us that day. In all some eight hundred prisoners were taken and probably five hundred killed, as the soldiers were still under the impression that atrocities had been committed.

  The total casualties for the whole army on this day amounted to 190 men killed, wounded, and missing, which is the most eloquent statement of the weakness of the opposition.

  The Werra River proved more of an obstacle than we had anticipated, as it practically stopped both the 6th and 4th Armored Divisions and slowed up the 11th Armored. Also the 6th Armored Division, on this day, received very heavy German air attacks while attempting to bridge the river.

  On the-third, we moved the Command Post to a German barracks on the northern exit from Frankfurt. Codman and I drove there from Oberstein. The valley leading to Mainz is very reminiscent of the Kaw Valley in Kansas. The roads were in extremely good condition, and all the German civilians were out, working violently to clean up their towns. The city of Mainz itself was very badly bashed in. I would estimate that at that time at least two-thirds of it was in ruins. All the bridges over the Rhine were blown up by the Germans, but fortunately the railway bridge, which collapsed north of Oppenheim, made a complete barrier, so that the Germans could not float either barges or mines down to destroy our bridges north of the railway bridge.

  On the way we stopped at Bad Kreuznach to see Colonel Hines, but he had been evacuated about two hours before our arrival.1

  We did see a number of recaptured prisoners of war, who were in fairly good shape considering where they had been. In this particular group there were at least six enlisted SIW’s (self-inflicted wounded), including one officer, the only one I had ever seen. I gave them my usual speech, which ran something like this:

  “Did you get the man who shot you?”

  “No, sir. I done it myself.”

  “Oh, you did! What time did it happen, in the daytime?”

  “No, sir, it was at night.”

  “Did you suffer much?”

  “No, sir, my buddy fixed me up right away.”

  “Do you know what you are?”

  “No, sir, I don’t.”

  I would then say, “Now, all of you other soldiers listen,” and would use about three lines of choice profanity and state that, by wounding himself, he not only showed he was a coward, but also added to the labor and risk of the brave men who did not use this means of getting out of battle. I gave the officer a special treatment.

  On arriving at the new Headquarters, we discovered that the 4th Armored Division was in the vicinity of Gotha, and Combat Command “B” of the 11th (commanded by Colonel W. W. Yale) was twelve kilometers southwest of Ohrdruf. We also had a definite order from Higher Headquarters that, on reaching the line Meiningen—Ohrdruf—Gotha—Mühlhausen, we were to stop and await the arrival of the First and Ninth Armies.

  1Colonel Hines recovered, but lost the sight of both eyes.

  On April 4, we were given new boundaries between
ourselves and the First and Seventh Armies, also the new halt line running through Meiningen—Gotha—Suhl— Langersalz-Mühlhausen. After reaching this line, we were ordered not to advance more than a few miles a day until the First and Ninth Armies could close up. This would require a long period of time, because two of the four corps of the First Army and one corps of the Ninth were still engaged in cleaning up the Germans trapped in the Ruhr Pocket. We had loaned the 5th Infantry Division and 13th Armored to Hodges to help.

  Fortunately, General Patch of the Seventh Army was present when we got the boundaries and the halt line.

  I then visited the Headquarters of the three corps. In the XX Corps the 6th Armored Division had taken Mlihlhausen, and the 80th Division had removed the final resistance in Kassel and also most of the town. There they captured a German general and four hundred men. This general stated that he believed that Germany would still win. His ideas seemed at variance with his action in surrendering. Furthermore, he was the first German general who had stated he thought Germany would win. All the others said Germany was defeated, but that they continued the battle because they were ordered to.

  In the VIII Corps I saw twenty-nine World War I German standards which that unit had captured. These were later sent to the Adjutant General in Washington.

  That evening two lieutenants, who had been liberated from Hammelburg and made their way across country to our lines, paid me a visit.2

  Late that evening, Patch called up to say that three other officers from Hammelburg had reached his Headquarters and told him Colonel Waters had been badly wounded. Patch said he would do everything in his power to capture the camp on the fifth.