Armageddon - Max Hastings [315]
For men who had survived years of battle, it seemed especially cruel to meet death now. Lieutenant Kingsley Field’s entire troop of the King’s Own was destroyed by a single German tank in the space of a few minutes near Gock. “It seemed a stupid time to die,” wrote Flight-Lieutenant Richard Hough, an RAF Typhoon pilot. OKH in Berlin signalled to all army groups on 18 April: “On the Elbe front a weakish assault troop of ours without effort brought in 40 American prisoners. The Americans surrendered for the reason that they had no idea of letting themselves be shot dead so near the end of the war. This fact is to be notified to the troops . . . German actions must prove to [the Americans] that their campaign is no pleasure trip through Germany.”
In that final phase on the Western Front, the confrontation between reasonable men who aspired to behave in a reasonable way and unreasonable, often hysterical men and children willing to embrace death became more painful than ever. In the history of the Second World War, much has been written about the “fanatical” performance of the Japanese soldier. Yet Japan surrendered without fighting a battle for its homeland. It was Germans who fought to the last in the rubble of their own towns and villages, some of Hitler’s soldiers who displayed a fanaticism matching and perhaps surpassing that of the armies of Nippon. Kesselring sent a withering signal to LXXXII Corps on 18 April, alleging that its resistance around Nuremberg had been crippled by “a deficiency of leadership, initiative and resource, for which responsibility must be brought home to individuals.” This was a familiar Nazi figure of speech for selecting scapegoats for military failure to be shot.
Among the Allied armies, even in these days of victory, no man could assure himself of safety. Private Ralph Gordon of First Army’s 18th Infantry was vastly relieved that after the Hürtgen Forest nightmare he and his friend Pete were posted from a rifle company to the regimental supply column. On 31 March, Pete took forward a jeep-load of ammunition without troubling to put on his helmet. He was hit in the head by shrapnel and died of wounds a fortnight later. Gordon “felt like I could kill every Jerry left in the country.” Andy, a close friend of both men, appeased his rage by evicting the German occupants from the houses around their positions, telling them to sleep in the fields. A fortnight later, Gordon saw his old rifle company advancing in column up the road into the town of Hochstedt, among them an old buddy named Ben. “Take it easy, kid,” his friend called after him. C Company met Germans, and Ben was fatally hit in the chest. It was just three weeks before the end. In Lieutenant Howard Randall’s battalion of the 417th Infantry, a newly arrived lieutenant refused to risk his neck by going on patrol in the last days. This officer was transferred to Civil Affairs. Another lieutenant sought to diminish the risks of reconnaissance by placing German civilians in front of his own riflemen as they approached built-up areas.
As the advancing Allies entered German towns and villages thus far untouched by war, some sensitive men felt uncomfortable about their intrusion upon communities which looked close kin to their own, occupied by people who seemed not unlike those among whom they lived and worked back home. A squeamish Civil Affairs officer with the U.S. 30th Division complained in a report:
Consideration was not given to sick and elderly people, and mothers with very young children. The attitude of higher command seemed to be that these people . . . should be made to feel the full significance of war and what their troops had done to other people.