G Company's War: Two Personal Accounts of the Campaigns in Europe, 1944-1945

Notes

Notes INTRODUCTION The words of Charles Ardant du Picq in the epigraph are quoted in Richard Holmes, Acts of War: The Behavior of Men in Battle (New York: Free Press, 1985), 18. 1. Page Smith, Trial by Fire, vol. 5 of A People's History ofthe Civil War and Reconstruction (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1982), 472-73. PROLOGUE 1. Related by Wilbur Munns to Bruce Egger at a get-together of old G Company buddies. See also Harold P. Leinbaugh and John D. Campbell, The Men of Company K: The Autobiography of a World War II Rifle Company (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1985), 11, where the authors mention the derision infantrymen felt for the former ''ASTP boys"-or "Whiz Kids," as they called them-who had been assigned to K Company when their programs were terminated . 2. Russell E Weigley, Eisenhower's Lieutenants: The Campaign ofFrance and Germany 1944-1945 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981), 374. 3. One historian has recently commented on the shortsightedness of the World War II allocation ofmanpower: "Not only did Army Service Forces drain off the technical specialists they needed, but also the Army Air Forces took a large portion of the men who finished in the two highest categories on the AGCT [the armed forces intelligence test]. As a result, a survey conducted in 1943 indicated, combat soldiers in the Army Ground Forces had lower AGCT scores than men in the Army Service Forces or the Army Air Forces; combat soldiers were also shorter and weighed less. A historian of the Army's Personnel Division went as far as to say, 'Army Ground Forces got the dregs.' But beginning in 1943, priorities began to shift. Army Service Forces lost their skimming privileges and Army Ground Forces were favored. The ASTP men fed into combat units were a valuable transfusion." Lee Kennett, G.I.: The American Soldier in World War II (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1987), 38. 282 • NOTES TO PAGES 8-40 4. The 97th Division was never sent to the Pacific, but in March 1945, the last trained division left in the United States; it was sent to the ETO. Weigley, Eisenhower's Lieutenants, 571. 5. This short summary of the history of the 26th Division has been culled from The History of the 26th Yankee Division, 1917-1919, 1941-1945 (Yankee Division Veterans Association, 1955), 1-33; History ofthe 26th Infantry Division in World War II (G-3 Section, 26th Infantry Division, 1945), 1-3; and Sgt. Ralph A. Anderson, Jr., Handcar White: A History of the Second Battalion, 328th Infantry, European Theatre ofOperations (Hor Vlatavice, Czechoslovakia, 1945), 9. 1. FIRST BLOOD 1. For this brief summary of military developments in France in the summer and early fall of 1944 the editor has relied mainly on Weigley, Eisenhower's Lieutenants; Hugh M. Cole, The Lorraine Campaign (United States Army in World War II: The European Theater ofOperations) (Washington, D.C.: Historical Division, United States Army, 1950); and Chester Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe (New York: Harper & Row, 1952). For Third Army operations, Aug. 1Sept . 25, 1944, see ''After Action Report Third U.S. Army, 1 August 1944-9 May 1945" (no place or date of publication), vol. 1, 16-84. See also Patton's directive of Sept. 25, 1944, placing the Third Army on the defensive, ibid., 84. 2. Anderson, Handcar White, 9-14; S/Sgt. Jerome J. Theise, ed., History of the 328th Infantry Regiment (26th Infantry Division) (Verlagsdruckerei Weis, Austria, n.d.), 11; Cole, The Lorraine Campaign, 285, 290-91. 3. History of the 26th Yankee Division, 40-41. 4. "... so capable were German officers in transforming individual soldiers into cohesive units that in the German army the company developed a sufficient sense of comradeship and solidarity to constitute a primary group, whereas in the American army the usual primary group was the squad, or at the largest, the platoon." Weigley, Eisenhower's Lieutenants, 29. 5. Cole, The Lorraine Campaign, 296-300. 6. Ibid., 301, 303, 318-20; Anderson, Handcar White, 18. 7. Weigley, Eisenhower's Lieutenants, 24. 8. Ibid., 390-91; Cole, The Lorraine Campaign, 321-32. 9. Anderson, Handcar White, 21. 10. Theise, ed., History of the 328th Infantry, 12. 11. Anderson, Handcar White, 23. 12. Weigley, Eisenhower's Lieutenants, 24. NOTES TO PAGES 45-88 • 283 2. THE MUD OF LORRAINE 1. Weigley, Eisenhower's Lieutenants, 399-400; Cole, The...