CHAPTER 29
The sub-text of the episode entitled Pincers: August 1944–March 1945 was subtly emphasised by a picture of a knocked-out tank with 'America First' written on the side. The pincers in question were the break-out from Normandy and the Red Army's near simultaneous destruction of German Army Group Centre, but lack of interview material has obliged me to include the latter, Operation Bagration, in Chapter 16. This chapter covers Montgomery's attempt to end the war in 1944 with an imaginative but poorly executed operation in September to outflank the German West Wall through Holland. He hoped to seize the bridges across the three broad rivers to his front using two US and one British airborne divisions (Market), while XXX Corps made a lightning armoured advance along a single axis (Garden) to Arnhem before hooking south into the Ruhr valley. The Americans were bogged down in obdurate fighting in the Hürtgen forest and the advance halted to overcome an acute problem of logistics overstretch, not relieved until the approaches to the great port of Antwerp were cleared in November.
Hitler became obsessed with Antwerp, first bombarding it with hundreds of V-l and V-2 missiles and then making it the strategic objective of Operation Wacht am Rhein, the last great German offensive of the war better known as the Battle of the Bulge. The aim of the offensive was to divide the British Twenty-First Army Group from the US Twelfth Army Group by driving through the Ardennes, as in 1940. The attack fell on a thinly held part of the Allied front and achieved some penetration, but failed to capture the supplies it needed and was destroyed once weather permitted Allied air supremacy to manifest itself. In the course of the battle Eisenhower put Montgomery in charge of US forces north of the Bulge, and at the end nearly sacked, him because of some boastful statements amplified by the British press. The Canadian First Army fought a bitter battle to outflank the West Wall through the Reichswald in the north in February–March 1945 while in the south the US First Army seized the Rhine crossing at Remagen on 7 March. In April, Montgomery's set-piece Rhine crossing at Wesel involved the largest airborne operation in history and the war in Europe ended six weeks later.
MAJOR GENERAL SIEGFRIED WESTPHAL
Chief of Staff to Field Marshal Rundstedt
I was, together with Rommel, already convinced after the defeat of Alamein that the war was lost for Germany. The reason for this conviction was the strong superiority of the Allies in ground forces, in air and naval forces and superiority in materials. The most deciding point was of them the Air Force. But in the summer 1944 this conviction was strengthened by two events: the useless loss of the whole of the Army Group B in the centre of the Eastern Front with about twenty-two divisions only, on the stubbornness of Hitler, and then the defeat in Normandy.
MAJOR GENERAL WALTHER WARLIMONT
Deputy Chief of Wehrmacht Operations
The situation in August 1944 as we saw it from headquarters, in the west we had just lost almost the whole Army of Normandy at Falaise. Our armies were retreating towards our frontiers, Paris was lost on 25 August and there seemed no possibility to remedy this situation any more. In the east the great collapse had taken place on 22nd June, the third anniversary of the beginning of the war against Russia in 1941, and this advance of the Russian Army was still going on towards the German frontiers from the east. In Italy just the same picture, retreating German armies up to the north of Florence and in the air and sea warfare, enemy domination.
WYNFORD VAUGHAN – THOMAS
BBC radio journalist in the invasion of southern France
We were prepared to sell our lives dearly. We'd thought that the Germans would resist and a great wave of smoke went in and the barrage went down. We leapt into the warm water, it was my birthday, 15th August, and we were near St Tropez. When we reached the sand I said, 'This is it, they're going to open up any minute.' Suddenly through the mist there came a Frenchman and he carried a tray of champagne glasses and we all stopped – quite clearly, utterly unexpected. He smiled and turned to me and said, 'Monsieur, welcome, but if I venture a little criticism you are somewhat late.'
MAJOR GENERAL WARLIMONT
The tactics of Hitler under these circumstances was not at all modified; he apparently had forgotten what he had said in late 1943 when the invasion was to be expected: 'If we do not repel invasion we have lost the war.' Now there was no word any more about having lost the war, he just went on as before. The principles were: hold what you have, never give up anything voluntarily and try to regain what you gave up. He had no idea of the real situation of the day. The 19th August he announced that every occasion to take up the offensive in the west again had to be used and on the next day Hitler gave his first orders for an offensive, already thinking that the German armies in France, just beaten on every side, would be able to take up an offensive thrust against the right wing of Patton whose Army at that time was in advance towards the Rhine. And he thought it would be possibly sustained by the German Army, which came up from the Mediterranean coast. Nothing came of it, it was impossible of course.
WYNFORD VAUGHAN-THOMAS
There came a moment when the French Army paused for a moment and I remember dear General Alexander Patch saying to me, 'Mr Thomas, you know a little bit more about the French. Why aren't they advancing?' I looked at the map, at the beginning of the Burgundy vineyard country. They were studying it because it would be tragic if they fought through the great vineyards of Burgundy – France would never forgive them and they paused. A young officer arrived and said, 'Courage, my Generals – I've found the weak spot of the German defences: every one is in a vineyard of inferior quality.'
LIEUTENANT J GLENN GRAY
US Army Intelligence
Near Vienne, in a town near by, the civilians were taking revenge on girls who had slept with German soldiers. The common thing was to shear their heads and march them through the streets and everybody beat them. My friend and I took a walk through the town and we saw people beaten, some being killed, but many of them simply rejoicing in this first hour of liberation. A group of rejoicing Frenchmen about twenty yards ahead of us were marching down the street when a slim young girl detached herself from them and ran to me directly, so rapidly that I didn't know what was going on, threw herself in my arms, kissed me on the mouth and spun out of my arms and disappeared into another crowd.
MAJOR GENERAL KENNETH STRONG
General Eisenhower's Chief of Intelligence
Although we had taken some time to break out of the bridgehead, longer than we thought, once we got out the Allied troops advanced at tremendous speed and outran their supplies. The only port available was the port of Cherbourg, which really wasn't in full working order yet, and the remainder of the supplies were coming mainly over the beaches. Those who were in close touch with the situation said nothing really could be undertaken on a grand scale against Germany until more ports were available, more particularly the port of Antwerp.
MAJOR GENERAL FRANCIS DE GUINGAND
Field Marshal Montgomery's Chief of Staff
After we broke out of Normandy all supply had to come from the beaches or be carried by air, and that restricted the amount of supplies that could be given to the Army Groups and they found often they couldn't do what they wanted through lack of supplies. I think a lot of historians will now say that this wasn't sufficiently appreciated by the Supreme Commander, who didn't put sufficient pressure on Twenty-First Army Group to clear Antwerp. We got to Antwerp pretty quickly, but there was an enormous delay before the Scheldt was cleared to allow shipping to come up to Antwerp, and so that still meant that all supplies had to come through the beaches and by air.
LIEUTENANT GENERAL BRIAN HORROCKS
Commander XXX Corps
Monty argued that the German Army had a really bad defeat in Normandy and this was the moment to really hit them. What he advocated was a strong drive up the coastal plain with the right on the Ardennes and the left on the coastline, day and night, never letting up, never giving them time to recover. Of course he would be in command of this and we'd go right through, bounce the crossing of the Rhine, come around behind the Ruhr and the war would be over in 1944. That's what he thought. Eisenhower said, 'No, I don't like this, it's a pencil-like thrust and you're not touching a lot of the troops which are in France. I propose to advance on a broad front right up to the Rhine and then do a crossing of the Rhine and finish the war there.' That was perhaps safer, but it meant that the war wouldn't be finished in 1944.
MAJOR GENERAL STRONG
It's important to remember what Eisenhower's task was. He was told that he had to undertake operations to aim at the heart of Germany and to destroy the German armed forces. He then had decided to advance from a broad front, north and south of the Saar and Ruhr, and make an envelopment attack into Germany. When we broke out the Germans were in considerable confusion and Montgomery thought that was the opportunity of inflicting a decisive defeat on them, so he said to Eisenhower, 'Get me all the troops I want, give me all the supplies, give me all the support, lend me American divisions and I then can go on, by one thrust I can get to Berlin and I can end the war.' I was present at a conference at Eisenhower's headquarters, there were ten British and ten American officers round that table when this proposal was discussed and not one of those ten officers thought it was a good idea. The man who was chiefly against it was the Supply Officer: he was British, John Gale, very capable, had known the Americans in North Africa, and he said, 'It's quite impossible, we haven't got the supplies to do it, even if we ground divisions and take their transport away, we simply cannot do this.'
LIEUTENANT GENERAL GERHARD GRAF VON SCHWERIN-KROSIGK
Commander 116th Panzer Division
When we went into our own country at Aachen I tried to find a way of ending the war as quickly as possible. We found in Aachen a quite revolutionary situation: the whole population was very upset against the National Socialist government, hoping that the Army would help them and take over power in the town. Which we did, and so the whole population of Aachen became very happy to have the protection of a military commander and that the Nazis had left the town. I tried to use the orders of Hitler for staying with my division and defending Aachen to the last, to use this order to stay and be overrun by the Americans. By this way to open a large hole in the front line and helping Field Marshal Montgomery to advance very quickly, and to occupy the Ruhr basin before the end of 1944, which would mean the end of the war. But unfortunately the Americans did not advance further. They stayed before Aachen and made no attempt to occupy the town. That was not an understandable pause, and very disappointing.*75
MAJOR GENERAL STRONG
General Eisenhower said that Arnhem failed because of the bad weather, but I think it really failed because we hadn't taken sufficient account of the German resistance. At that time people were convinced the end of the war was near, that the Germans were demoralised, but it wasn't actually true; it may have been true somewhere, but not all. As regards the German resistance three things happened which were unfortunate for us. One was that just before Arnhem we discovered that there were elements of German armoured divisions refitting and getting new tanks not far from Arnhem. The second was that a copy of our plans was captured with one of the first officers who landed among the parachutists and this was whisked off to the German commander on the spot and from then he had all the information of what we were trying to do. And the third, and this is the most important, was that the local commander was Field Marshal Walther Model.
MAJOR GENERAL DE GUINGAND
If the German armour had not been met at Arnhem we would have got a bridgehead across, but it's anyone's guess whether having got that, with the bad weather setting in and winter coming along, whether we'd have been able to do anything more than achieve an expanded bridgehead over the Rhine and maintain that for several months during the winter. One knew from experience how magnificent the Germans were at retrieving a critical situation. That's one of those great question marks, whether if we had been completely successful at Arnhem it would have really succeeded in defeating the enemy in 1944.
MAJOR GENERAL WESTPHAL
I became in the beginning of September 1944 Chief of Staff of the Supreme Commander West, Field Marshal von Rundstedt. We had three Army Groups with together eight Armies, but no troops. The kernel of all reports, demands and discussions with General Headquarters was the demand for stronger reinforcements but we didn't get any answer. On 24th October I was ordered to come to Hitler, his headquarters in East Prussia, and he told me and the Chief of the Army Group in the centre that we would get end of November or beginning of December strong reinforcements. He named twenty infantry divisions, ten armoured divisions and a lot of special troops and he promised that we would be supported by the Air Force with about three thousand planes. But we were totally surprised that these were not intended for the defence in the Western Front. Hitler said that the possibility of building up a new front against the Western Allies was nearly a miracle and he had the opinion that miracles didn't repeat themselves. Therefore he had the opinion to attack and this plan for offensive in the Western Front had been developed in every detail in the headquarters.
MAJOR GENERAL DE GUINGAND
In war you can't be strong everywhere and therefore Eisenhower had to decide where he was going to be strong, where he going to be weak and he assessed the situation in the Ardennes sector was extremely difficult country, particularly in winter, snow and ice, trees and forests, and therefore he decided to thin down the Ardennes sector. The German preparations were brilliantly carried out under Hitler's control and it had produced these great armies with very well-equipped tanks, what air power they had available and everything had been prepared for this event. We really didn't have any certain knowledge that there was such a large force had been pulled back ready to conduct an offensive. Very shortly before the Ardennes campaign was launched there was someone in American intelligence who began to suspect that was something was cooking, but the Americans did not take him very seriously, and so it came as a complete surprise.
GENERAL HASSO-ECCARD FREIHERR VON MANTEUFFEL
Commander Fifth Panzer Army
The Ardennes offensive was Hitler's idea in December 1944, worked out by Chief of Operations Alfred Jodl by order and attraction of Hitler personally. Overall objectives were Antwerp and Brussels and he order two armies, First Panzer and Sixth SS Panzer Army, to break through the Ardennes in a concentrated attack and quick at once to Antwerp. And the cover of these two armies was the responsibility of the Seventh Infantry Army under General Brandeburger. Hitler hoped that with its intention to effect a blow against the coalition and to split three armies, the First American Army, Second British and First Canadian, and to capture them. And he explained to myself in November in headquarters that by 11th or 12th December he hoped a military and political falling, to a collapse of this coalition. He hoped furthermore to change the whole situation on our West Front in Germany's favour because Montgomery could be cut off from the rest of the alliance and especially to cut off their sources of supplies, which were lying and built up cast of the Meuse for the attacking the West Wall and to their drive to the Rhine. After this attack in the Ardennes he had intended other attacks on other sectors of our West Wall. He explained that Antwerp and Brussels were something of a risk and might be beyond the capacity of the forces available and their conditions. Nevertheless he had decided to stake everything on one card because Germany needed the breathing space, a defensive struggle could only postpone the decision and not change the general situation for Germany.
MAJOR GENERAL WARLIMONT
I am astonished that even today, thirty years after the war, you ask me what Hitler's role was, because Hitler was in everything from the beginning, particularly after the disaster at Moscow in 1941. It was he who ordered the offensive to drive to the coast at Antwerp. It was he who demanded, after looking out the first planning preparations, that the left wing had to be enlarged and from the right wing of the offensive had to be opened up a second attack as soon as possible. On this old basis, regardless of every modification of weapons and what else had gone on in the meantime, Hitler ordered the same kind of procedure as in 1940 during the Ardennes offensive. And there was a last moment – there had to be bad weather. Even he was convinced that it would be impossible to perform an offensive of this kind under the pressure of the British and American Air Force.
MAJOR GENERAL WESTPHAL
I think the health of Hitler at that time was not good, he had to bear the consequences of the plot of 20th July and he was the origin of the plan to attack, not the OKW [Supreme Command of the German Armed Forces]. It was a deciding role. When we came back we studied the possibilities to reach Antwerp and we were convinced that this was not possible with these forces, and we reported that this big solution was not possible to carry out. We proposed a little solution in the rear of Aachen, the first German town who had been conquered by the Americans in October. They offered attack from both sides and this was possible with the divisions we had to expect. And we compared with the game of bridge: the plan to conquer Antwerp was like 'grand slam' and the plan to attack both flanks of the American troops was like 'little slam'. Unfortunately Hitler didn't play bridge and we had the possibility to destroy ten to fifteen American divisions, a quarter of all American forces fighting in Europe, but a few days later came the answer, 'This operation is unalterable in every detail.' But we didn't resign, we sent a new proposal basing on the situation near Aachen; it was declined again. Then we had the opportunity to speak with Jodl, the Chief of Operations Staff of Hitler. He had the same opinion like we but he was too weak to persuade Hitler. Then I asked Rundstedt to go personally to Hitler because Hitler had respect for his personality, but he refused. He said he had often spoken with Hitler without any success. Hitler used monologues for one or two hours about theme and there was no solution to get. Finally on 2nd December we did meet Hitler in Berlin, in the Reichschancellery. Field Marshal Walther Model, the commander of the Fifth Panzer Army, the SS leader Sepp Dietrich and me tried a fourth time to persuade Hitler for this reasonable, only possible plan, but without any success.
MAJOR GENERAL DE GUINGAND
The final objective Hitler had in mind was the capture of the port of Antwerp, which would cut off our supplies. There was a subsidiary objective, which was to drive a wedge between the Allied forces and produce the situation where he might be able to negotiate peace with the Allies and not have to submit to unconditional surrender. He didn't achieve them and I don't think he had a chance of achieving them. He was frightfully lucky that he had the very bad weather conditions which he wanted, there was fog and blizzards, and when the attack opened they made a very deep penetration and they reached the Meuse and never crossed, and there was nothing actually between the Meuse and Brussels, our main headquarters.
MAJOR GENERAL J LAWTON COLLINS
Commander US VII Corps
The German offensive in the Ardennes was really their last gasp and Hitler was directly responsible for it. He had ordered a rather grandiose plan which was going to end the war from the German point of view and it was designed to break through this very broken country in the Ardennes, through which the Germans had gone before, so they knew the area well. They were going to break through where the American defences were very light, cross the Meuse river and then head for the port of Antwerp, which was our base port. If it had succeeded then the British and American forces would have been separated and the main base port for the whole northern half of the armies would have been lost and the war would have come to an end. Actually it was too grandiose a scheme, the German officers knew that it couldn't work, but they were forced under the system to do their best.
GENERAL MANTEUFFEL
We have reliable data about the strength of the enemies and we were informed that the forces to the other side of the hill were relatively weak. Reports of our front-line troops confirmed this data as a quick way through of our forces because they would not be expecting a German attack here and at this time. I went to the front-line troops disguised as a colonel of infantry and was there for thirty-three hours. The Americans one hour after darkness went to the villages to their rooms, or to their girls, but there were no cover between their positions during the night. And it was this manner I proposed to Hitler, so I formed strong troops and we went up, I think five o'clock in the morning, we slipped through the positions of the Americans.
MAJOR GENERAL STRONG
Some of the American divisions that were holding the area were new and not all that well trained. We knew that the Germans had a reserve army, that they were preparing for some sort of operation. It could have done several things and one of them was to come through the Ardennes. People who went up behind the American lines found a good deal of confusion. I don't think that confusion lasted very long – the attack took place on the Saturday morning and General Eisenhower made his plan for dealing with the attack on the Tuesday morning at Verdun and from then on I think he had the whole situation completely under control.
PRIVATE JOHN LOVELESS
US serviceman in the Ardennes
When we went from England, across France and through Belgium, I think most of us felt that we were just gradually going to get into the action. That was reinforced by the fact that we were going over what they called the Blue Road rather than the Red Road. The Red Road was to take the troops into the areas where the fighting was more pronounced and the Blue Road was into a more or less quiet area, which was simply preparatory to getting to the front line. So we were somewhat hopeful and cheered by the fact that we were going over the Blue Road, but of course it didn't make any difference because of the German offensive.
PRIVATE HENRY BROTH
US serviceman captured in the Ardennes
We really didn't know that we were going to be captured until we were broken down into smaller units by the Germans and they surrounded us and sort of backed our particular group up on to a hill. Then we realised that we had to surrender or that was it. The lieutenant went down and made arrangements with the German officer in charge and came back and told us we had one hour to dismantle and destroy our weapons, or dig holes and bury whatever we wanted to bury, and be ready to come off that hill within one hour.
SS COLONEL WILHELM OSTERHOLZ
Battalion Commander Sixth SS Panzer Army in the Battle of the Bulge
As a simple soldier you see more of everything on the road, you have to think there are more divisions than there really are. Therefore we had the feeling that this build-up of force might enable us to reach the final objective, which was Antwerp. And the weather was foggy, and the American and British air superiority didn't matter in that kind of weather. And in addition to that we had for support a whole artillery corps, we never knew such type of artillery support, and therefore we believed we would be successful. It was almost the same area where we had attacked when war against France was waged, and we knew that area and you know that soldiers are a little bit superstitious and everybody believed that we could repeat that rapid advance we had in 1940.
MAJOR GENERAL COLLINS
There were two key points from the American point of view, one was at St Vith and the other was at Bastogne. St Vith was what prevented the rapid movement of the Germans in the north half of the Bulge and Bastogne was what delayed Model and much of the German Army in the southern half. We held St Vith for quite a while and finally Monty ordered the withdrawal of the American forces in order to shorten the lines on our north side. Whether they could have held out longer or not will be a debatable question. Fortunately, we were able to hold at Bastogne and a very gallant fight was fought there by my good friend Brigadier General Tony McAuliffe. This plus the splendid fighting that was done by the small units of these two untried American divisions in small-unit actions. They delayed the German advance to the point where we could build up first-class troops on the north side of the Bulge and Patton was able to come up the south and we were finally able to close the gap.
MAJOR GENERAL STRONG
Intelligence knew that the Germans had managed to recover their position and were building up a reserve army which they could use for operations – somewhere, for something. When I told Eisenhower about this he said, 'Will you go and see [General Omar] Bradley and tell him exactly what you think.' I went up twice and Bradley said, 'Yes, I'm aware of this and if Germans do what you're suggesting then I think we can defeat them.' We agreed that the Germans hadn't got enough resources to carry out a full-scale strategic offensive and it would be necessary for them to capture supplies if they were going to be at all successful. Bradley had, in the area of the offensive, moved dumps of petrol, oil and so on, so the Germans couldn't get at them. When the Ardennes offensive took place the weather was extremely bad, there was no air reconnaissance and one had no information of the latest movement on the German front, and when they did attack they attacked with almost twice as many divisions as we estimated they would do. It penetrated right through Bradley's army, separated the north from the south and I got extremely worried the Germans might get so far towards Meuse that it would be impossible for Bradley to control the northern flank. When Eisenhower's plan was being carried out, which was to close on both sides of the penetration and cut it off, it seemed to me and to the others that the northern flank should be under one man and there was only one man who was suitable, Montgomery. When the Germans were defeated there was a press conference held by Montgomery in which, not intentionally but by various remarks, he gave the impression that he'd saved the Americans completely.
MAJOR GENERAL COLLINS
My own Corps was up north and we were brought down on the north side of the Bulge which had begun to develop in the Ardennes, comparable to the Falaise pocket. I had good troops and Monty used to come down to my headquarters and would discuss the situation every other day with me and General Matthew Ridgway who commanded the Airborne Corps on my left. I dealt with Monty and we always hit it off well and apparently he thought well of me. But I kept arguing with him that they were never going to be able to break through. The two initial divisions that had been hit by the Germans were new divisions, their first time in action, they were hit by 13 German divisions, but by the time they reached my area we had sealed off the north flank with experienced troops and I told Monty nobody's going to break through these troops, these are top-flight and I was confident that we could hold and then counter-attack. Unfortunately Monty positioned my Corps, which was under his direct command, on the north side of the Bulge instead of near the base. I was way out almost to the Meuse and I argued with Monty and said, 'Monty, you're going to push 'em out of the bag just like you did at Falaise. I ought to be opposite St Vith.' His reply to that was, 'Well, Joe, you can't supply a Corps over a single road.' In exasperation I finally said to him, 'Well, maybe you can't, but we can.'
MAJOR GENERAL WESTPHAL
At that moment when after the failure of the Ardennes, there was no doubt more that we would lose the war totally. I had said to Hitler before the Ardennes offensive that we could only succeed this target if we were able to cross within two days the River Meuse near Liege. Otherwise it would be better to retreat, and Hitler had another opinion. The first time the weather was good for us because we had strong fog, then Rundstedt sent my proposals on the 23rd and 24th December again to Hitler, to go back to the West Wall. But Hitler refused again, and the consequence was that we lost most of the material and many thousand prisoners.
MAJOR GENERAL DE GUINGAND
The Americans fought magnificently. It was an American battle, the British only played a very small part in the northern flank, and they held the shoulders of this great wedge pretty strongly in the northern and southern shoulders and that made it very difficult for the enemy to penetrate very much further. After two days the weather improved enormously and our massive air supremacy could be used, so we went for it hammer and tongs, particularly their railheads and their supply lines, and they began to run short of supplies and so many of their tanks and transports were grounded through lack of petrol.
GENERAL MANTEUFFEL
The Germans who had been deluded into believing in the possible victory now know that defeat could only be delayed. Hitler believed that if his panzer armies could split the rest of the alliance they would accept the stalemate on this front and allow him to switch his strength to the Eastern Front. This assumption was completely mistaken, and the result of the offensive primarily benefited the Russians.
MAJOR GENERAL DE GUINGAND
The Germans cut the Twelfth Army Group in half and left the First United States Army to the north of the Bulge. Bradley rightly made the decision to hand over the American forces of Twelfth Army Group north of the Bulge to Montgomery's command just as a temporary measure, but it was very sound because Bradley didn't have access to, or communications to, his forces north of the Bulge. Montgomery then operated with tremendous efficiency and I admired him greatly during that period. I was with him a lot of the time and I saw the effect this little man had on the morale of the Americans. Calmly he assessed the situations and he helped the American Army to do the right thing when they were very tired and exhausted. But he played a very major part in preventing that offensive becoming a success. For some time Montgomery had been pressing for the appointment of the Land Force Commander. He had said that he was prepared to serve under Bradley and he probably knew quite well that wasn't a feasible situation. He genuinely felt he was the right chap to take on this job and I suppose he got a bit cock-a-hoop with his successes and the British press became very pro-Monty and pro the appointment of Monty the Land Force Commander.*76
LIEUTENANT DENIS BEATSON-HIRD
51st Highland Division, Rhine crossing
We clambered into these Buffaloes – they were tanks with the lids off, if I can put it that way – and the route was marked out with dim lamps and you could see these Buffaloes snaking rather like a big anaconda towards the river. There was a tremendous noise going on. Bombing was taking place at Wesel, which was a little further down the river, and the whole of the divisional and other artillery was firing like mad, which was Monty's usual preparation for a battle. The only time I think we really felt worried was when we went down actually into the river, which was a hell of an incline, and one wondered and hoped that the thing would surface and come out on an even keel when we got to the water.
MAJOR GENERAL COLLINS
I went back up to Ardennes and the troops were reorganised, troops that had been brought down from Ninth Army north of Aachen to help us on the north side of the Bulge. They went back and the attack went on from that point, we broke through the Siegfried defences and across the Ruhr and were able to capture successively across the flat German plains. If the Bulge had not taken place, the German reserves which launched the attack were sitting on my right flank and we'd have one terrible time getting to the Rhine. It made it much easier when they were destroyed.
MAJOR GENERAL DE GUINGAND
When one talks about crossing the Rhine, one must acknowledge the fact that Patton's army had already crossed, they had captured the bridgehead. One of those great questions one can ask oneself after the war is whether Bradley and the Supreme Commander could have done better to have reinforced the success of Patton's army and possibly reduce the resources that were made available to the Twenty-First Army Group. Possibly it might have produced a much quicker result. But as far as we were concerned the Rhine was a very wide river, which meant all these obstacles were difficult to cross in war. The whole operation depended upon successful airborne operation over the Rhine and that depended upon good weather in March. We had good weather and the airborne operation was a great success. The Germans were holding one or two small towns, very strongly, but it didn't take us long to expand over the Rhine and really get moving into Germany proper. As an Allied team we were delighted with the success of the Americans and I think the Americans were delighted with any success we had. I don't think there was any jealousy there, I think everyone wanted the ruddy war to finish and the sooner the better.
WYNFORD VAUGHAN-THOMAS
I was with a Scots unit, the Black Watch, and we were supposed to assault the Rhine direct and cross in Buffaloes, it was supposed to be an armoured vehicle that you could ride across the Rhine in a fair amount of safety. We again were able to put the elaborate BBC recording gear in and I had my engineer with me. We got into the Buffalo and there was my brother getting into another Buffalo. My brother became a landing expert with Mountbatten and his job was to go into every one of these landings and study the problems. He looked at me and I said, 'You shouldn't be here,' and he said, 'You shouldn't be here. Who's going to tell mother about this?' I had arranged with the piper to blow the brave lads into battle and this was going to be one of the most symbolic recordings of the war. The banks of the Rhine were about twenty feet high on either side, the Buffaloes had to crawl up and then race into battle. At two in the morning the signal was given and I'll never forget the sight of the Rhine, it was blood red, every farm was burning, the whole place was leaping up and down as if somebody underneath was throwing water up, and I suddenly realised that it was mortar shells, it was the machine-gun fire, and I thought something's gone wrong with the machinery, but apparently it was bullets banging around. There was my brother's Buffalo forging across the Rhine and he was surrounded with spouts and apparently mine was equally surrounded by spouts too. As we crossed the Rhine I said, 'Now the pipes take the lads into battle,' and the piper looked at me, said, 'My pipes they will not play.' They had a bullet through what the Germans called the doodle sack.