Armageddon - Max Hastings [254]
As Sister McBryde dressed the man’s wounds later, she noticed by his bedside “a photograph of a good-looking young soldier in Scottish dress with his arm about the waist of a smiling girl . . . if this was our sergeant, his girlfriend was in for a shock.”
IN THE FEBRUARY drive to the Rhine, Allied forces were to advance across a front of some 250 miles. From Strasbourg south to the Swiss border, French divisions would hold firm in their positions on the upper Rhine. Further north the forces of Bradley and Montgomery, together with Patch’s Seventh Army, would close up to the Rhine through a series of river assaults and exploitations. Patton’s Third Army had furthest to go—some eighty miles. Simpson and Hodges, together with the British and Canadians, faced an advance of just over thirty miles. They knew it was overwhelmingly likely that the Germans would destroy all the Rhine bridges, but cherished hopes of a lucky break, a chance to seize at least one intact crossing which would enable them to push on across Germany without a pause.
Following the Bulge operations, twenty-one of the forty-seven U.S. divisions deployed on the Western Front were concentrated between the Hürtgen Forest and the Moselle. First Army began its attack on a front some ten miles wide, south of the Hürtgen and the Roer dams. Its units faced hard going through the thick woodlands of the Eifel before reaching open ground. On the eve of the new offensive, Bradley had to repulse a rash last-minute proposal from Eisenhower, to transfer several divisions southwards to finish off the Colmar Pocket. The German toehold there looked messy on the map, but was strategically irrelevant. Bradley lost his temper with SHAEF when this plan was telephoned to him during a meeting with Hodges and Patton. Patton said: “Tell them to go to hell and all three of us will resign. I will lead the procession.” Eisenhower backed off. The French, with American armoured support, finally closed the Colmar Pocket on 9 February.
Bradley’s attack began well, despite freezing weather. It was led by Ridgway’s airborne divisions, who showed all the dash in attack for which they were famous. By 4 February, the Americans were well inside the first defences of the West Wall. On the right, the U.S. VIII Corps at first made less headway against 9th Panzer Division before eventually gaining momentum. German counter-attacks delayed the advance, but lacked the punch to stop it. By 12 February the Americans had taken the town of Prüm, and closed up to the Prüm river.
The assault crossing of the Sauer river, which began on the night of 6 February, proved a painful experience. The same early thaw which so cheered the Germans on the Oder swelled the modest Sauer into a fast, treacherous fifty-yard-wide torrent. Under fierce German fire, assault boats drifted out of control or sank, troops were lost, engineers struggled to create pontoons. A dozen American-built bridges were broken. Private Charles Felix was at a battalion headquarters with his colonel, whom he much admired, on the night of 6 February, when VII Corps began its crossing. A signaller, Felix recorded the CO’s radio conversation with one of his platoon commanders as they confronted the difficulties of launching boats under German mortaring:
“Lieutenant, are you across yet?”
“We had to turn back. We were under heavy fire.”
“Where are you now?”
“We’re in the woods.”
“Lieutenant, you’ve got to get those men moving. You’re holding up the advance.”
“These men have had it, sir! They won’t budge for me or anybody else! I’ve tried everything! They won’t move!”
“Lieutenant, I know it’s tough up there, but you’re going to have to go over right now. The longer you wait, the worse it’ll be . . . quit screwing around.”
After a further altercation, the reluctant platoon set off. But it was a night of disasters across the whole front of the advance. Felix’s Colonel Rudd was enraged to discover that men were seizing litter handles to provide themselves with an excuse to get