The Danger Zone (DZ)

On 9 March 1942 the US Army underwent its greatest organisational change. It implemented the wishes of General Marshall, the Army’s Chief of Staff. It was to give order to and clean up and simplify the command structure of the American Army at the very top. Only 3 men would report directly to Marshall. Lesley J. McNair was made the head of the Army Ground Forces. Henry Arnold was made the head of...

… if it became known that American logistics and American strategy had been instrumental in bringing the autumn campaign to a standstill and, what was more, prolonging the war, a political row would ensue just at the time of the presidential elections. … Back in Washington, when  [Marshall]  had set in train the investigation into logistics in the European Theatre of Operations … , he sent a signa...

The Normandy invasion was without doubt the most ambitious amphibious operation in military history, involving thousands of ships ferrying hundreds of thousands of men across a treacherous water passage against a hostile shore. There were serious concerns that it would be a disaster, and the logistics were the key element. Lee handled it superbly. Once the invasion of France was launched there was...

After Aurand  [Colonel Henry S Aurand – a consultant to the US Army world logistic supply supremo, General Brehon Somervell]  had delivered his report and taken command of the Normandy Base Section in December, he recorded that he despatched a train of PX (Post Exchange) goods for the front. A platoon of infantry, part at the rear and part at the front, was to ensure that at long halts and in shun...

Carlo d’Este, in his biography of Eisenhower wrote: The only air plan that existed for Overlord in January 1944 vaguely proposed minimal measures for air support during a two-to-three-week period before D-Day in order to knock out coastal defenses and soften the way for the invasion force. When first briefed on air operations in January 1944, Eisenhower and Spaatz were shocked by Leigh-Mallory&#39...

In 1944/1945 General JCH Lee, was the Supremo of supply in the European Theatre of Operations under both Eisenhower, as the theatre commander, and under the great overlord of American logistics, General Brehon Somervell, who sat directly, alongside the Army commander and the Army Air Force commanders, under General Marshall, the Chief of Staff. There was no more a controversial figure in Eisenhowe...

Logistics is the ball and chain of armoured warfare  said General Heinz Guderian – and that was definitely a topic that he was qualified to speak on. Tag words: Logistics; General Heinz Guderian; Somervell; John Kennedy Ohl; Supplying the Troops; General Brehon Somervell; ETO; European Theater of Operations; SOS; Service of Supplies; Russell Wegley; Eisenhower’s Lieutenants; General JCH Lee; Gener...

The formidable Nazi war machine was powerless to stop the build up in Britain of Allied troops shipped from the USA and Canada. But in early 1943 Doenitz was winning the Battle of the Atlantic against that other, essential, component that those troops needed, being transported in very vulnerable slow or just plain vulnerable, fast merchant ships. As Paul Kennedy wrote in his book  Engineers of Vic...

To manage the buildup and subsequent supply of the American troops being shipped to Europe for the planned invasion of Hitler’s Festung Europa, Fortress Europe, Hank H Cox, in his biography of General JCH Lee,  The General Who Wore Six Stars , wrote: The Allied governments had determined that Germany would be their top priority. After Germany was defeated, they would make Japan their primary focus...

For the most part the popular historians have been even harder on  [General JCH Lee than the men who served with him] . Stephen E. Ambrose wrote in Citizen Soldiers that Lee was "the biggest jerk" in the European theater of operations. Hank H Cox, in his biography of Lee,  The General Who Wore Six Stars , gave himself the task of answering this key question when he wrote Lee’s biography: The bigge...

On December 16, 1944, there was a wedding at Eisenhower's headquarters in Paris for a young staff officer and a Red Cross nurse. …. The day before the wedding President Roosevelt had nominated Eisenhower to the five-star rank of General of the Army, along with Marshall, Douglas MacArthur in the Pacific, and Hap Arnold of the air force. Also getting multistar treatment were Adm[iral]s. William...

The reality is that Patton accepted the inevitability of death in combat but strove mightily to save the lives of his men. so wrote Carlo d’Este in his biography of Patton –  A Genius for War . Patton’s preferred nickname for himself, “Blood and Guts”, would seem to bely this assessment. Carlo d’Este had this to say about Patton’s reputation: Eisenhower was well aware that Patton's detractors...

Grudging admiration of Patton was even expressed by Adolf Hitler, who referred to him as "that crazy cowboy general." wrote Carlo d’Este in his biography of Patton,  A Genius for War . I don’t think it was grudging admiration from Adolf Hitler. I think it was a genuine compliment. Let me explain why. Tag words: Patton; Adolf Hitler; Carlo d’Este; A Genius for War; Karl May; Christa Schro...

One of the fellows under me was Orde Wingate!’ …. Rank-and-file British soldiers trained kibbutzniks in military tactics. The British militarised the Yishuv and the 'Jewish warrior — as a cultural and social model and as a fact of life — emerged during the Arab Rebellion.’ …. Wingate slapped and struck Jewish soldiers in his squads, who took this as a necessary part of their drill and called W...

The  Times  6th December 1943 edition covered a piece  written by The Quaker muckraker Drew Pearson, apparently tipped off by an OSS source, broadcast a garbled but uncensored version of the incidents during his weekly radio show  as Rick Atkinson recounted in his book  The Day of Battle . The  Times  piece read: On November 21 crusading Drew Pearson, once called a liar by the President, let his n...

Cowards. Cowardice. Fear. An army has to have soldiers who are afraid. If it didn’t it would be a disastrous army. Just enough fear is what is wanted, but if there’s too much fear then that spells disaster. To understand what I’m talking about you really have to get your head around this. Tag words: Cowards; Cowardice; Nelson Mandela; Long Walk to Freedom; Jonathon Haidt; The Anxious Generation; f...

In the space of a week, 3 and 10 August 1943, two incidents occurred that could have resulted in the sacking of Patton. He he’d slapped and otherwise abused two different men in Evacuation Hospitals calling them both cowards and apparently threatening to shoot one of them. The story had reached the ears of four reporters, attached to the Seventh Army, Demaree Bess of the  Saturday Evening Post,  M...

Patton. I stand on shaky ground speaking about this American legend if I’m going to say anything negative about him. Luckily for me all of the men who served in his Third Army are now dead so I’m unlikely to get punched in the face for what I am going to say over the next few parts of this series about the man. Carlo d’Este, in his biography of Patton,  A Genius for War  thought that this remark b...

Oliver Wendell Holmes once said,  “ Learn from the mistakes of others … You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself!” It was almost a pity, which would have been of world altering consequences, that General Omar Bradley didn’t live by these words of wisdom. He chose instead to make the mistakes himself. The lesson that Bradley and Eisenhower should have learned was one of great note. One...

Hitler’s seemingly insane gamble in the Ardennes, the Battle of the Bulge, wasn’t perhaps as crazy and desperate as it seemed or has been represented. Consider this. In Washington, after lunch on 27 December, 1944 Henry Stimson, the Secretary for War, walked over to the War Department. He went into Marshall’s office and sat down. He had come to talk about the unthinkable. Stimson later recollected...

Just a few weeks before the Germans launched their massive and unexpected offensive in the Ardennes on 16 December 1944, Major General Pete Quesada, the commander of IX Tactical Air Command, reported a conference he had had with General Hodges, commander of the First US Army:  "He went on and on about how we might lose the war …". Hodges was the last man you would want commanding exactly...

20th December 1944 proved a momentous day for Eisenhower, Bradley and Mongomery. Bradley’s ego was shattered by his best and most trusted friend. Montgomery was about to have greatness thrust upon him. The lives of the top Allied generals were reported to be in danger from Otto Skorzeny’s assassination squads dressed in American uniforms, carrying American arms and riding in American vehicles. And...

… on December 20, during Eisenhower's morning staff conference, Ike telephoned Bradley and emphatically stated, "Where is the line you can hold the best and the cheapest? I don't care how far back it is." Bradley was in no position to supply Eisenhower with answers. What had convinced Smith that a changeover was vital was that 12th Army Group had lost communications with First Ar...

On 19 October 1944,  Spaatz flew on to Luxembourg to visit Bradley. Bradley told him he planned to start his big offensive toward the Rhine on November 10. Spaatz wanted it sooner than that. Hitler's jet fighters were appearing in growing force, and they threatened to drive Spaatz's daylight bomber formations from the skies. "To maintain our present air supremacy over the Hun," w...

The Germans had launched their massive Ardennes offensive on the morning of 16th December. Bradley had brushed it off as a spoiling attack. … by Sunday afternoon, December 17, Bradley had conceded misjudgment in his previous evening's modest estimate of the enemy effort. "This is Rundstedt's all-out attack," Bradley now announced. "Pardon my French — " he said over the...