The World at War (73 page)

PRIVATE HAMMERSLEY

The troops really thought they were forgotten because any time we got an English newspaper there was never any mention of the Fourteenth Army. And mail from home, we got a letter around every four months and we just thought that people had forgotten that we were there. We had nothing from home such as recreational equipment or anything that was any use to us and the troops thought they had really been forgotten – that was not just my division, it was right through the Army.

VERA LYNN

Popular singer known as 'The Forces' Sweetheart'

My songs spoke of a better time ahead and I think also reminded them of home. It brought them a little bit nearer and linked them with the loved ones that they left behind, and I think the accumulation of the feel of the songs at that particular time built up to a strong feeling that they've never forgotten and always remember. Once I'd been there – and the boys were talking to me wherever I went – it came out that they were the Forgotten Fourteenth. They were short of everything, they said, and the entertainment was very small and they never even seemed to get their cigarettes. Because this was a very important point, when I got home I was to see that they had more cigarettes sent out to them. They really thought they were the
Forgotten Army and I think they probably were.

CHAPTER 29
WESTERN EUROPE

The sub-text of the episode entitled
Pincers: August 1944–March 1945
was subtly emphasised by a picture of a knocked-out tank with 'America First' written on the side. The pincers in question were the break-out from Normandy and the Red Army's near simultaneous destruction of German Army Group Centre, but lack of interview material has obliged me to include the latter, Operation Bagration, in Chapter 16. This chapter covers Montgomery's attempt to end the war in 1944 with an imaginative but poorly executed operation in September to outflank the German West Wall through Holland. He hoped to seize the bridges across the three broad rivers to his front using two US and one British airborne divisions (Market), while XXX Corps made a lightning armoured advance along a single axis (Garden) to Arnhem before hooking south into the Ruhr valley. The Americans were bogged down in obdurate fighting in the Hürtgen forest and the advance halted to overcome an acute problem of logistics overstretch, not relieved until the approaches to the great port of Antwerp were cleared in November.

Hitler became obsessed with Antwerp, first bombarding it with hundreds of V-l and V-2 missiles and then making it the strategic objective of Operation Wacht am Rhein, the last great German offensive of the war better known as the Battle of the Bulge. The aim of the offensive was to divide the British Twenty-First Army Group from the US Twelfth Army Group by driving through the Ardennes, as in 1940. The attack fell on a thinly held part of the Allied front and achieved some penetration, but failed to capture the supplies it needed and was destroyed once weather permitted Allied air supremacy to manifest itself. In the course of the battle
Eisenhower put Montgomery in charge of US forces north of the Bulge, and at the end nearly sacked, him because of some boastful statements amplified by the British press. The Canadian First Army fought a bitter battle to outflank the West Wall through the Reichswald in the north in February–March 1945 while in the south the US First Army seized the Rhine crossing at Remagen on 7 March. In April, Montgomery's set-piece Rhine crossing at Wesel involved the largest airborne operation in history and the war in Europe ended six weeks later.

MAJOR GENERAL SIEGFRIED WESTPHAL

Chief of Staff to Field Marshal Rundstedt

I was, together with Rommel, already convinced after the defeat of Alamein that the war was lost for Germany. The reason for this conviction was the strong superiority of the Allies in ground forces, in air and naval forces and superiority in materials. The most deciding point was of them the Air Force. But in the summer 1944 this conviction was strengthened by two events: the useless loss of the whole of the Army Group B in the centre of the Eastern Front with about twenty-two divisions only, on the stubbornness of Hitler, and then the defeat in Normandy.

MAJOR GENERAL WALTHER WARLIMONT

Deputy Chief of Wehrmacht Operations

The situation in August 1944 as we saw it from headquarters, in the west we had just lost almost the whole Army of Normandy at Falaise. Our armies were retreating towards our frontiers, Paris was lost on 25 August and there seemed no possibility to remedy this situation any more. In the east the great collapse had taken place on 22nd June, the third anniversary of the beginning of the war against Russia in 1941, and this advance of the Russian Army was still going on towards the German frontiers from the east. In Italy just the same picture, retreating German armies up to the north of Florence and in the air and sea warfare, enemy domination.

WYNFORD VAUGHAN – THOMAS

BBC radio journalist in the invasion of southern France

We were prepared to sell our lives dearly. We'd thought that the Germans would resist and a great wave of smoke went in and the barrage went down. We leapt into the warm water, it was my birthday, 15th August, and we were near St Tropez. When we reached the sand I said, 'This is it, they're going to open up any minute.' Suddenly through the mist there came a Frenchman and he carried a tray of champagne glasses and we all stopped – quite clearly, utterly unexpected. He smiled and turned to me and said, 'Monsieur, welcome, but if I venture a little criticism you are somewhat late.'

MAJOR GENERAL WARLIMONT

The tactics of Hitler under these circumstances was not at all modified; he apparently had forgotten what he had said in late 1943 when the invasion was to be expected: 'If we do not repel invasion we have lost the war.' Now there was no word any more about having lost the war, he just went on as before. The principles were: hold what you have, never give up anything voluntarily and try to regain what you gave up. He had no idea of the real situation of the day. The 19th August he announced that every occasion to take up the offensive in the west again had to be used and on the next day Hitler gave his first orders for an offensive, already thinking that the German armies in France, just beaten on every side, would be able to take up an offensive thrust against the right wing of Patton whose Army at that time was in advance towards the Rhine. And he thought it would be possibly sustained by the German Army, which came up from the Mediterranean coast. Nothing came of it, it was impossible of course.

WYNFORD VAUGHAN-THOMAS

There came a moment when the French Army paused for a moment and I remember dear General Alexander Patch saying to me, 'Mr Thomas, you know a little bit more about the French. Why aren't they advancing?' I looked at the map, at the beginning of the Burgundy vineyard country. They were studying it because it would be tragic if they fought through the great vineyards of Burgundy – France would never forgive them and they paused. A young officer arrived and said,
'Courage,
my Generals – I've found the weak spot of the German defences: every one is in a vineyard of inferior quality.'

LIEUTENANT J GLENN GRAY

US Army Intelligence

Near Vienne, in a town near by, the civilians were taking revenge on girls who had slept with German soldiers. The common thing was to shear their heads and march them through the streets and everybody beat them. My friend and I took a walk through the town and we saw people beaten, some being killed, but many of them simply rejoicing in this first hour of liberation. A group of rejoicing Frenchmen about twenty yards ahead of us were marching down the street when a slim young girl detached herself from them and ran to me directly, so rapidly that I didn't know what was going on, threw herself in my arms, kissed me on the mouth and spun out of my arms and disappeared into another crowd.

MAJOR GENERAL KENNETH STRONG

General Eisenhower's Chief of Intelligence

Although we had taken some time to break out of the bridgehead, longer than we thought, once we got out the Allied troops advanced at tremendous speed and outran their
supplies. The only port available was the port of
Cherbourg, which really wasn't in full working order yet, and the remainder of the supplies were coming mainly over the beaches. Those who were in close touch with the situation said nothing really could be undertaken on a grand scale against Germany until more ports were available, more particularly the port of Antwerp.

MAJOR GENERAL FRANCIS DE GUINGAND

Field Marshal Montgomery's Chief of Staff

After we broke out of Normandy all supply had to come from the beaches or be carried by air, and that restricted the amount of supplies that could be given to the Army Groups and they found often they couldn't do what they wanted through lack of supplies. I think a lot of historians will now say that this wasn't sufficiently appreciated by the Supreme Commander, who didn't put sufficient pressure on Twenty-First Army Group to clear Antwerp. We got to Antwerp pretty quickly, but there was an enormous delay before the Scheldt was cleared to allow shipping to come up to Antwerp, and so that still meant that all supplies had to come through the beaches and by air.

LIEUTENANT GENERAL BRIAN HORROCKS

Commander XXX Corps

Monty argued that the German Army had a really bad defeat in Normandy and this was the moment to really hit them. What he advocated was a strong drive up the coastal plain with the right on the Ardennes and the left on the coastline, day and night, never letting up, never giving them time to recover. Of course he would be in command of this and we'd go right through, bounce the crossing of the Rhine, come around behind the Ruhr and the war would be over in 1944. That's what he thought.
Eisenhower said, 'No, I don't like this, it's a pencil-like thrust and you're not touching a lot of the troops which are in France. I propose to advance on a broad front right up to the Rhine and then do a crossing of the Rhine and finish the war there.' That was perhaps safer, but it meant that the war wouldn't be finished in 1944.

MAJOR GENERAL STRONG

It's important to remember what Eisenhower's task was. He was told that he had to undertake operations to aim at the heart of Germany and to destroy the German armed forces. He then had decided to advance from a broad front, north and south of the Saar and Ruhr, and make an envelopment attack into Germany. When we broke out the Germans were in considerable confusion and
Montgomery thought that was the opportunity of inflicting a decisive defeat on them, so he said to Eisenhower, 'Get me all the troops I want, give me all the supplies, give me all the support, lend me American divisions and I then can go on, by one thrust I can get to Berlin and I can end the war.' I was present at a conference at Eisenhower's headquarters, there were ten British and ten American officers round that table when this proposal was discussed and not one of those ten officers thought it was a good idea. The man who was chiefly against it was the Supply Officer: he was British, John Gale, very capable, had known the Americans in North Africa, and he said, 'It's quite impossible, we haven't got the supplies to do it, even if we ground divisions and take their transport away, we simply cannot do this.'

LIEUTENANT GENERAL GERHARD GRAF VON SCHWERIN-KROSIGK

Commander 116th Panzer Division

When we went into our own country at
Aachen I tried to find a way of ending the war as quickly as possible. We found in Aachen a quite revolutionary situation: the whole population was very upset against the National Socialist government, hoping that the Army would help them and take over power in the town. Which we did, and so the whole population of Aachen became very happy to have the protection of a military commander and that the Nazis had left the town. I tried to use the orders of Hitler for staying with my division and defending Aachen to the last, to use this order to stay and be overrun by the Americans. By this way to open a large hole in the front line and helping Field Marshal Montgomery to advance very quickly, and to occupy the Ruhr basin before the end of 1944, which would mean the end of the war. But unfortunately the Americans did not advance further. They stayed before Aachen and made no attempt to occupy the town. That was not an understandable pause, and very disappointing.
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MAJOR GENERAL STRONG

General Eisenhower said that
Arnhem failed because of the bad weather, but I think it really failed because we hadn't taken sufficient account of the German resistance. At that time people were convinced the end of the war was near, that the Germans were demoralised, but it wasn't actually true; it may have been true somewhere, but not all. As regards the German resistance three things happened which were unfortunate for us. One was that just before Arnhem we discovered that there were elements of German armoured divisions refitting and getting new tanks not far from Arnhem. The second was that a copy of our plans was captured with one of the first officers who landed among the parachutists and this was whisked off to the German commander on the spot and from then he had all the information of what we were trying to do. And the third, and this is the most important, was that the local commander was Field Marshal Walther Model.

MAJOR GENERAL DE GUINGAND

If the German armour had not been met at Arnhem we would have got a bridgehead across, but it's anyone's guess whether having got that, with the bad weather setting in and winter coming along, whether we'd have been able to do anything more than achieve an expanded bridgehead over the Rhine and maintain that for several months during the winter. One knew from experience how magnificent the Germans were at retrieving a critical situation. That's one of those great question marks, whether if we had been completely successful at Arnhem it would have really succeeded in defeating the enemy in 1944.