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By Root 835 0

Corps, wrote after the campaign, “. . . has not, in general, been as effective as the German infantryman . . . The desire to close with the enemy and kill him to the extent displayed by the Russians . . . is, to a great degree, missing.” Colonel Hervey Tribolet likewise observed: “There has been considerable comment about lack of aggressiveness on the part of the infantry at times . . . There is something wrong with our system . . . A soldier in a rifle company, when he is kept in [line] continuously, may anticipate only four things: to be killed; to be wounded or to get sick; to be captured; or to get combat fatigue.” Such strictures display the frustrations of professional soldiers about the performance of amateurs under their command. The battlefield behaviour, and limitations, of the Western allies reflected the societies from which they were drawn. “The British army’s reliance on overwhelming firepower did have the disadvantage that it led to a slow rate of advance,” an academic analyst acknowledges. But he adds: “it had the great advantage that it enabled troops to reach their objectives without intolerable losses and with morale more or less intact.”

By common consent, Allied artillery was very well handled. As an infantryman, U.S. Captain William DuPuy made a critical tactical point after the campaign: “When I seriously considered what I had accomplished, I had moved the forward observers of the artillery across France and Germany. You need the infantry to do that, but the combat power comes from this other source.” This is true and important. Yet one of the major causes of the Allies’ difficulties in north-west Europe was that their soldiers—and often generals—were over-impressed by the spectacle of bombardment, and sometimes failed to grasp its limitations. A soldier of the 22nd Infantry described watching a firepower demonstration during his training in the U.S. in 1942. Artillery and machine-guns plastered the ground before rifle companies assaulted it: “We walked over the hill that had been fired on and nothing could have lived after that.”

This was a delusion. It was remarkable how resistant were defenders in well-dug positions to anything save a direct hit. Every soldier suffered trauma from the experience of bombardment, yet a shell might land ten feet from a foxhole without killing its occupants. Lieutenant-Colonel Wally Aux commanded a battery of the Americans’ most powerful artillery. His regiment, attached to VII Corps, possessed 155mm and 240mm guns, together with eight-inch howitzers. The latter could throw their shells 35,000 yards. Every spectator was awed by the spectacle of these huge pieces firing on the German positions. Yet, very often, the long reach of Aux’s guns was meaningless, because targets could not be accurately observed. When they were firing upon map references transmitted by circling fighter-bombers, Aux “was never really convinced that they knew what they were asking us to shoot at.” He said: “We seldom knew what we were firing upon. Very often, it was interdiction and harassing fire on roads, a round or two an hour through the night. Much of our fire was unobserved, and of doubtful effect.”

Watching distant shellbursts, it was easy to fantasize about the anguish suffered by enemy soldiers beneath. Yet there was an immense amount of empty real estate in Europe, upon which imprecisely directed explosives could fall. At a range of 16,500 yards, Aux’s guns achieved a probable error of fifty-four yards. This may suggest remarkable exactitude, but it meant that a German tank or artillery piece could be quite undamaged, save for its crew’s nerves and burst eardrums, even by meticulously aimed shells. Allied firepower was of vital importance in deciding the outcome of the campaign. The Germans regarded American and British gunners with a respect seldom extended to their armour and infantry. But only footsoldiers and tanks could make the advance into Germany. Just sufficient Germans seemed to survive even the most intense bombardments to sustain a vigorous defence.

American and British