Citizen Soldiers_ The U.S. Army from the - Stephen E. Ambrose [16]
The next day the Jabos got him. A British fighter shot up his staff car, and Rommel had a serious head injury. On July 20, a group of conspirators tried to kill Hitler. Rommel went home to recover. Three months later he was forced to commit suicide because of the assassination plot, even though he had not been directly involved.
The conspiracy and Hitler's retaliation against the officer corps put a severe strain on the German army, but, amazingly, it was not split asunder. Throughout the Nazi empire, from Italy to Norway, from Normandy to Ukraine, officers of the Wehrmacht did their duty despite the turmoil created by the assassination attempt. And they acceded to the demand made by the Nazi party that henceforth the salute would be given with an extended arm and a "Heil Hitler," rather than bringing the hand up to the cap brim.
Corporal Adolf Hohenstein of the German 276th Division later said that the enlisted men convinced themselves that shortages of supplies and ammunition were the fruits of treachery by their own officers. Actually, it was the Jabos. There is no evidence that during the Battle of Normandy any German officer gave less than his full ability to sustain the men in the line.
They needed it. Corporal Hohenstein watched morale ebb in his squad:
"The lack of any success at all affected the men very badly. You could feel the sheer fear growing. We would throw ourselves to the ground at the slightest sound, and many men were saying that we should never leave Normandy alive."
As if the Jabos were not effective enough as it was, the Americans were constantly improving their ground-to-air communications system. Solutions came because of Major General Elwood "Pete" Quesada, CO of Ninth Tactical Air Force, who went to Bradley to explore new methods. For example, Quesada said, artillery units have forward observers who radio target information to the gunners. Why don't we equip planes and artillery units with VHF radios so that they can spot for each other? They tried and it worked.
Why not put radio sets in tanks so the tankers could talk to the pilots?
Quesada wondered. This too worked. So well, in fact, that by late July the radiomen on the ground could bring aircraft in as close as 500
metres. And it was an awesome amount of explosive a P-47 carried: two five-inch by four-foot missiles under each wing, plus two 500-pound bombs, plus 6400 rounds of .50-calibre shells.
Major Gerhard Lemcke of the 12th Panzer Division testified to the effectiveness of the American improvements in communication.
"Whenever a German soldier fired his panzerfaust," Lemcke complained, "all of the American tanks, artillery, mortars, and planes in the area concentrated their fire upon him. They would keep it up until his position was pulverized."
The US Army air-ground team in ETO continued to improve through to the end of the war. Its communication system was vastly superior to anything the Germans ever developed. Meanwhile, the Eighth Air Force B-17s continued to pound targets in France, particularly bridges and railroads, as did the Marauders of Ninth Air Force. But through July, 50
per cent of the missions for all planes in England and France had to be scrapped due to weather.
On the ground the Americans continued to advance, slowly but all along the front, except at St. Lo, the key crossroads city in lower Normandy. Outside St. Lo the 29th Division had been locked in a mortal embrace with the German 352nd Division since D-Day. In each division there was scarcely