General William E. DePuy: Preparing the Army for Modern War

3. The 90th Division Goes to School

 The 0th Division Goes to School The consequences of all this leadership failure could have been predicted. My regiment simply did not perform, notwithstanding the heroic effort and tragic losses among lower ranking officers and the bewildered troops. —DePuy on the 357th Infantry in June–July 1944 By the end of the Normandy Campaign the U.S. military had developed an all around military proficiency. —Russell A. Hart, military historian The 90th Division was so ill prepared for combat and so badly led that it came close to being disbanded. Division and regimental commanders were assigned and fired until competent, indeed outstanding, leaders were found. At company and battalion levels leadership came from below as those tested passed or failed the unforgiving test of leading soldiers in combat. The bloody fighting in Normandy and the war of movement after the breakout from the beaches would produce two positive outcomes in DePuy’s division : effective leadership and confidence in that leadership among the troops. The 90th would become one of the most reliable of the American divisions in Europe. The transformation from “problem division” to a very good one, however, took place by degrees. Bill DePuy saw that transformation and would never forget it. He called the 90th Division of June and July 1944 the greatest killing machine in Europe—of Americans. Activated in March 1942 at Camp Barkley, Texas, the division continued individual and unit training until it boarded ships in New York bound for England in March 1944. Two years would seem to be sufficient time to train troops. In later wars, draftees were trained, fought in Korea and Vietnam, and returned to the United States for demobilization within two years.  General William e. DePuy The unofficial history of the Division says, “The Division had been well trained, by the standard of its day.”1 That claim fails to make a distinction between individual training and the effectiveness of commanders in blending the combined arms: infantry, armor, and artillery. The former is much simpler than the latter. Military competence at squad, platoon, company, and battalion was rudimentary, but commanders and staffs at regiment and higher echelons were untested. Newly commissioned officers, Bill DePuy and thousands like him, were amateurs. Regular Army officers were few and lacking experience in war. “The standard of the day” was not the gold standard. DePuy would learn his trade in war. He would later describe the race junior combat leaders ran between combat experience and death. The attrition rate among leaders at squad, platoon, and company levels was shockingly high. Mistakes were literally fatal. Leaders came from the ranks of those who survived combat, who learned their violent new trade in the process. They were young. DePuy was a veteran battalion commander at the age of twenty-five when the war ended and he was made division G-3. Those who took to combat brushed aside the less martial men, the older men, and deadwood. It was a brutal, elemental way to learn. The better young officers died or commanded battalions. Some did both. To put the age of these World War II leaders in perspective, in 1961, when DePuy commanded a battle group in Schweinfurt, his twenty -five-year-old officers were lieutenants. The 90th Division got off to a terrible start. Poor performance in combat should have been anticipated, because the preparation for combat was a bad show. Neither leaders nor soldiers knew enough to know how bad they were. They would find out. DePuy later described what passed for planning as late as 1944 in England. He was “borrowed” by the division staff to go to Headquarters , European Theater of Operations, U.S. Army, in London. His mission was to coordinate the shipping that would take the 90th to Utah Beach as the follow-up division behind the 4th Division. His bosses from the 90th found more interesting things to do in London, leaving the young captain to sort things out. He called it “sheer pandemonium .” DePuy found “an elderly major” of the transportation section of the Quartermaster Corps who “seemed to be the only one who knew where all the ships were.” When the major asked which ships Atlantic Ocean North Sea Baltic Sea Adriatic Sea Mediterranean Sea English Channel Paris Berlin Frankfurt London Prague Battle Route of the 90th Division 0 100 200 kilometers 100 0 200 miles Siegfried Line Maginot Line Paris rankfurt t DENMARK GREAT...