The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945

  Over the years, Effects Bureau inspectors had found tapestries, enemy swords, a German machine gun, an Italian accordion, a tobacco sack full of diamonds, walrus tusks, a shrunken head, a Japanese life raft. Among thousands of diaries also received in Kansas City was a small notebook that had belonged to Lieutenant Hershel G. Horton, a twenty-nine-year-old Army officer from Aurora, Illinois. Shot in the right leg and hip during a firefight with the Japanese in New Guinea, Horton had dragged himself into a grass shanty and, over the several days that it took for him to die, he had scribbled a final letter in the notebook. “My dear, sweet father, mother, and sister,” he wrote. “I lay here in this terrible place, wondering not why God has forsaken me, but rather why He is making me suffer.”

  * * *

  This, the profoundest of all mysteries, would be left for the living to ponder. Soldiers who survived also would struggle to reconcile the greatest catastrophe in human history with what the philosopher and Army officer J. Glenn Gray called “the one great lyric passage in their lives.” The war’s intensity, camaraderie, and sense of high purpose left many with “a deplorable nostalgia,” in the phrase of A. J. Liebling. “The times were full of certainty,” Liebling later wrote. “I have seldom been sure I was right since.” An AAF crewman who completed fifty bomber missions observed, “Never did I feel so much alive. Never did the earth and all of the surroundings look so bright and sharp.” And a combat engineer mused, “What we had together was something awfully damned good, something I don’t think we’ll ever have again as long as we live.”

  They had been annealed, touched with fire. “We are certainly no smaller men than our forefathers,” Gavin wrote his daughter. Alan Moorehead, who watched the scarlet calamity from beginning to end, believed that “here and there a man found greatness in himself.”

  The anti-aircraft gunner in a raid and the boy in a landing barge really did feel at moments that the thing they were doing was a clear and definite good, the best they could do. And at those moments there was a surpassing satisfaction, a sense of exactly and entirely fulfilling one’s life.… This thing, the brief ennoblement, kept recurring again and again up to the end, and it refreshed and lighted the whole heroic and sordid story.

  In Moorehead’s view, the soldier to whom this grace was granted became, “for a moment, a complete man, and he had his sublimity in him.” For those destined to outlive the war and die abed as old men half a century hence, the din of battle grew fainter without ever fading entirely. They knew, as Osmar White knew, that “the living have the cause of the dead in trust.” This too was part of the sublimity.

  “No war is really over until the last veteran is dead,” a rifleman in the 26th Division would conclude. Of the 16,112,566 Americans in uniform during the Second World War, the number still living was expected to decline to one million by late 2014, and, a decade later, in 2024, to dip below a hundred thousand. By the year 2036, U.S. government demographers estimated, fewer than four hundred veterans would remain alive, less than half the strength of an infantry battalion.

  Yet the war and all that the war contained—nobility, villainy, immeasurable sorrow—is certain to live on even after the last old soldier has gone to his grave. May the earth lie lightly on his bones.

  NOTES

  The following abbreviations appear in the endnotes and bibliography. Some stack locations and box numbers change as archivists reconfigure their collections. A list of additional manuscripts, monographs, and unpublished documents used in this book appears online at www.liberationtrilogy.com.

  a.p. author’s possession

  AAAD Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn

  AAF Army Air Forces

  AAFinWWII W. F. Craven and J. L. Cate, eds., The Army Air Forces in World War II, vol. 3

  AAR after action report

  AB After the Battle

  AB Div airborne division

  AD armored division

  admin administration

  AF air force

  AFHQ micro Allied Forces Headquarters microfilm, NARA RG 331

  AFHRA Air Force Historical Research Agency

  AFIA American Forces in Action publications and background papers

  AG Army Group

  ag adjutant general

  AGF Army Ground Forces

  ALH Howard L. Gleck et al., “The Administrative and Logistical History of the ETO,” part 5, WD, May 1946, a.p.

  ALM Audie Leon Murphy papers, USMA Special Collections, West Point, N.Y.

  ANSCOL Army-Navy Staff College Collection, NWC Lib, U.S. National Archives

  AR action report

  Ardennes Hugh M. Cole, The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge, USAWWII

  AS Armored School

  ASEQ Army Service Experiences Questionnaire, MHI

  ASF Army Service Forces

  AU Air University

  bde brigade

  Beck Alfred M. Beck et al., The Corps of Engineers: The War Against Germany, USAWWII

  BLM Bernard Law Montgomery

  bn battalion

  BP Martin Blumenson, Breakout and Pursuit, USAWWII

  CARL Combined Arms Research Library, Fort Leavenworth, Kans.

  CBH Chester B. Hansen, including papers, diary, MHI

  CBM Charles B. MacDonald, including papers, MHI

  CCA Gordon A. Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack, USAWWII

  CCS Combined Chiefs of Staff

  CE U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

  CEOH U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Office of History

  Chandler Alfred Chandler, ed., The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower: The War Years

  CI Combat Interview, ETO

  CINCLANT Commander-in-Chief, Atlantic Fleet

  CJB Clay and Joan Blair collection, MHI

  CJR Cornelius J. Ryan, including papers, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio

  CMH U.S. Army Center of Military History, Fort McNair, Washington, D.C.

  CNO Chief of Naval Operations

  co company

  Coakley Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, Global Logistics and Strategy 1943–1945, USAWWII

  COHQ Combined Operations Headquarters, U.K.

  Col U OHRO Columbia University Oral History Research Office, N.Y.

  corr correspondence

  COS chief of staff

  CSI U.S. Army Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, Kans.

  DA Department of the Army

  Danchev Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman, eds., War Diaries, 1939–1945: Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke

  DDE Dwight David Eisenhower

  DDE Lib Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Abilene, Kans.

  diss dissertation

  div division

  DOB Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle

  DTL Donovan Technical Library, Fort Benning, Ga.

  E entry

  ET Exercise Tiger collection, MHI

  ETO European Theater of Operations

  FA field artillery

  FAJ Field Artillery Journal

  FCP Forrest C. Pogue, including background material for The Supreme Command, MHI

  FDR Lib Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, N.Y.

  FMS Foreign Military Studies

  FOIA Freedom of Information Act

  FRUS Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conferences at Malta and Yalta

  Ft. K Ft. Knox, Ky.

  Ft. L Ft. Leavenworth, Kans.

  FUSA First U.S. Army

  GCM Lib George C. Marshall Research Library, Lexington, Va.

  Germany VII Horst Boog et al., Germany and the Second World War, vol. 7, The Strategic Air War in Europe and the War in the West and East Asia, 1943–1944/45

  Germany IX Ralf Blank et al., Germany and the Second World War, vol. 9, part 1, German Wartime Society, 1939–1945

  GS V John Ehrman, Grand Strategy, vol. 5

  GS VI John Ehrman, Grand Strategy, vol. 6

  GSP George S. Patton, Jr., including papers, Library of Congress

  HCB Harry C. But
cher, including papers

  HD Historical Division

  HI “Hospital Interviews,” NARA RG 407 E 427, ML #2233

  HIA Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif.

  Hinsley F. H. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the Second World War, abridged

  HKH Henry Kent Hewitt papers

  Hq headquarters

  ID infantry division

  IFG Samuel Eliot Morison, The Invasion of France and Germany, 1944–1945

  IG inspector general

  IJ Infantry Journal

  inf infantry

  intel intelligence

  IS Infantry School, Ft. Benning, Ga.

  IWM Imperial War Museum, London

  JAG U.S. Army judge advocate general

  JB Joseph Balkoski

  JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff

  JLC J. Lawton Collins

  JLD Jacob L. Devers, including papers

  JMG James M. Gavin, including papers

  JMH Journal of Military History

  JT John Toland, including papers

  LC Hugh M. Cole, The Lorraine Campaign, USAWWII

  LHC Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s College, London

  LHD John Toland, The Last Hundred Days

  lib library

  LKT Jr. Lucian K. Truscott, Jr., including papers

  LO Charles B. MacDonald, The Last Offensive, USAWWII

  LOC MS Div Library of Congress Manuscript Division

  LSA Roland G. Ruppenthal, Logistical Support of the Armies, vols. 1 and 2, USAWWII

  MB Martin Blumenson

  MBR Matthew B. Ridgway

  MEB Magna E. Bauer

  MHI U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle, Pa.

  MHUC Medical Historical Unit Collection, MHI

  micro microfilm

  ML miscellaneous AG records, ETO

  MMB Mark M. Boatner III, The Biographical Dictionary of World War II

  MMD 29th Infantry Division Archives, Maryland Military Department, Fifth Regiment Armory, Baltimore

  MP military police

  MRC FDM McCormick Research Center, First Division Museum, Cantigny, Ill.

  msg message

  mss manuscript

  MTOUSA Mediterranean Theater of Operations, United States Army

  n.d. no date

  NARA National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Md.

  NATOUSA North African Theater of Operations, United States Army

  Naval Guns Morton L. Deyo, “Naval Guns at Normandy,” ts, n.d., SEM, NHHC, box 87

  NHHC Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, D.C.

  NSA National Security Agency

  NWC Lib National War College Library

  NWWIIM National World War II Museum archives, New Orleans

  NYT New York Times

  obit obituary

  OCMH Office of the Chief of Military History

  OCNO Office of the Chief of Naval Operations

  OCS Office of the Chief of Staff

  OH oral history

  ONB Omar N. Bradley, including papers

  OPD Operations Division, War Department

  OR observer report

  OSS Office of Strategic Services

  PIR Robert M. Littlejohn, ed., “Passing in Review,” MHI

  Para parachute

  PP Martin Blumenson, The Patton Papers, 1940–1945

  PP-pres Papers, Pre-presidential

  Proceedings U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings

  qm quartermaster

  regt regiment

  RG record group

  RN Royal Navy

  ROHA Rutgers University Oral History Archives of World War II, New Brunswick, N.J.

  Ross William F. Ross and Charles F. Romanus, The Quartermaster Corps: Operations in the War Against Germany, USAWWII

  RR Jeffrey J. Clarke and Robert Ross Smith, Riviera to the Rhine, USAWWII

  s.p. self-published

  SC Signal Corps

  SEM Samuel Eliot Morison Office Files

  SGS Secretary General Staff

  SLAM S.L.A. Marshall, including papers, MHI

  SLC Charles B. MacDonald, The Siegfried Line Campaign, USAWWII

  SMH Society for Military History

  SOOHP Senior Officer Oral History Program

  SOS Services of Supply

  STM Sidney T. Mathews

  Sylvan William C. Sylan and Francis G. Smith, Jr., Normandy to Victory

  td tank destroyer

  Texas MFM Texas Military Forces Museum, Austin

  Three Years Harry C. Butcher, My Three Years with Eisenhower

  TR Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., including papers, LOC MS Div

  ts typescript

  TSC Forrest C. Pogue, The Supreme Command, USAWWII

  TT Charles B. MacDonald, A Time for Trumpets

  UK NA National Archive, Kew, U.K. (formerly Public Record Office)

  USAF HRC U.S. Air Force Historical Research Center

  USAF U.S. Air Force

  USAREUR U.S. Army, Europe

  USAWWII United States Army in World War II

  USFET U.S. Forces, European Theater

  USHMM U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

  USMA Arch U.S. Military Academy Special Collections and Archives, West Point, N.Y.

  USMC U.S. Marine Corps

  USN U.S. Navy

  USNAd “U.S. Naval Administration in World War II”

  USNI OHD U.S. Naval Institute, Oral History Department, Annapolis, Md.

  USSAFE U.S. Strategic Air Forces Europe

  UTEP University of Texas at El Paso

  UT-K University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Center for the Study of War and Society

  VC C. P. Stacey, The Victory Campaign, vol. 3, Official History of the Canadian Army in the Second World War

  VHP Veterans’ History Project, National Folklife Center, Library of Congress

  VW L. F. Ellis, Victory in the West

  WaS S. W. Roskill, The War at Sea, 1939–1945, vol. 3, part 2

  WD War Department

  WP Washington Post

  WSC Winston S. Churchill

  WWII World War II

  XO executive officer

  YCHT York County Heritage Trust, York, Pa.

  YU Yale University Library, Manuscripts and Archives

  PROLOGUE

  A killing frost: The New Yorker Book of War Pieces, 308–9; Peckham and Snyder, eds., Letters from Fighting Hoosiers, vol. 2, 95 (“Three inches”).

  Nearly five years: Settle, All the Brave Promises, 13, 84; Ziegler, London at War, 1939–1945, 243–45 (zinc phosphate).

  Privation lay on the land: Fussell, Wartime, 200, 203; “A Yank in Britain,” ts, n.d., Thor M. Smith Papers, HIA, box 2, 31 (“Squander Bug”); Times (London), May 15, 1944, 1 (“artificial teeth”); Stafford, Ten Days to D-Day, 203–4 (“bombed upholstery”).

  Other government placards: Fussell, Wartime, 201; Calder, The People’s War, 380–81 (two ounces and roast cormorant); Essame, Patton: A Study in Command, 128 (“Woolton pie”).

  More than fifty thousand: VW, vol. 1, 29; Joseph R. Darnall, “Powdered Eggs and Purple Hearts,” ts, 1946, MHUC, MHI, box 24, 72–74 (parachute flares); Moynihan, ed., People at War, 1939–45, 169 (“searchlights”); Ackroyd, London Under, e-book, chapter 12 (“slave ship”); Ziegler, London at War, 1939–1945, 277, 270–71 (own beds).

  Even during these short summer nights: Times (London), May 15, 1944, 5; Simpson, Selected Prose, 117 (“profoundly dark”); Reynolds, Rich Relations, 414 (“battlefield of sex”); Longmate, The G.I.’s, 276 (“Marble Arch style”); Eustis, War Letters of Morton Eustis to His Mother, 191 (“madhouse after dark”).

  Proud Britain soldiered on: Joseph R. Darnall, “Powdered Eggs and Purple Hearts,” ts, 1946, MHUC, MHI, box 24, 92; Daily Mail (London), May 15, 1944, 3 (pedaled their bicycles); Times (London), May 15, 1944, 2 (“colt of the first class”), 5, 8; Stafford, Ten Days to D-Day, 17; Brown, Many a Watchful Night, 78.


  “French sailors with their red pompoms”: Calder, The People’s War, 307.

  Savile Row tailors: Taylor, Swords and Plowshares, 86; Capa, Slightly Out of Focus, 132 (pocket flask); Bradley, A Soldier’s Story, 181 (pumpkin hue).

  Nowhere were the uniforms: Forrest Pogue refers to American MPs as Snowballs. Pogue, Pogue’s War, 15. More common was the British term, Snowdrop. Mollo, The Armed Forces of World War II, 235; “History of SHAEF, Feb. 13–June 6, 1944,” July 1944, NARA RG 319, 2-3.7 CB 8, appendix 3 (146 engraved invitations); Middleton, Our Share of Night, 308 (“big men”); Naval Guns, 19 (hard, narrow benches); http://www.oldpaulinelodge.org.uk/School.htm; http://www.stpaulsschool.org.uk/page.aspx?id=8362; http://www.archive.org/stream/historyofstpaul00uoft.

  Top secret charts and maps: Kennedy, The Business of War, 328 (blankets); D’Este, Decision in Normandy, 82–83 (frock coat); “Presentation of OVERLORD Plans,” May 15 1944, PP-pres, DDE Lib, series VI, box 1 (King George VI); D’Este, Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life, 500 (Churchill bowed).

  these big men: IFG, 223 (“Mediterraneanites”); Chandler, 1901 (“in my blood”).

  The Anglo-Americans pounced: see AAAD and DOB.

  Elsewhere in this global conflagration: Weinberg, A World at Arms, 651, 656–57; Liddell Hart, History of the Second World War, 513, 520; Gilbert, The Second World War, 519, 615–17; Mansoor, The GI Offensive in Europe, 11 (six Marine Corps divisions).

  The collapse of Berlin’s vast empire: Charles V. P. von Lüttichau, “Germany’s Strategic Situation,” n.d., NARA RG 319, OCMH, R-93, box 15 (German casualties); Kimball, Forged in War, 257; GS V, 279 (193 divisions); Germany VII, 522 (almost two thousand tanks); Webster and Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany, vol. 4, appendix 44, 456 (seventy thousand tons). No two estimates of German troop dispositions precisely agree.

  In 1941, when Britain: Wilson, ed., D-Day 1944, 280; Maurice Matloff, “Wilmot Revisited,” in D-Day: The Normandy Invasion in Retrospect, 114–15 (“iron-mongering”).