Destroy the Enemy

(See Cover)

Lieut. General Omar Nelson Bradley, commander of the Twelfth Army Group, can get the weather forecast at any time from his meteorological staff, but he likes to see things for himself. So he keeps three barometers in his headquarters office, jots down the readings twice a day in his notebook.

Most of last week the barometers told kindly, soft-spoken Omar Bradley (whose oldest friends call him "Omar the Tent-maker") that the weather would not be good. He was out a lot himself in the rain and snow, wiping the steam from his glasses, getting plenty of mud on the paratroop boots into which he tucks his G.I. pants. He knew what the cold, dirty, wet and often hungry doughboys were going through. He wanted to get them out of there, and out of the war, as soon as possible. He looked forward to fishing, back in the U.S. "I know," he said recently, "a lot of nice river banks."

Nothing in the immediate prospect before Omar Bradley directly suggested the end of a war, or even the end of a campaign. But in the eye of his keen, analytical mind General Bradley could see beyond the belching, jerking guns, the wallowing tanks, the struggling infantrymen. The armies on the south flank of the Allied line were moving faster than he, because they were exploiting a weakness which already existed. Bradley was busy creating a weakness--one which may be fatal to Germany.

He could see the Germans' thinning reserves, stretched drumhead-tight west of the Rhine. The Germans had just about all their chips on the table. But the Allies still had cash in their pockets; their impressive reserves had not yet been committed. North of Bradley, Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery had thrown in only part of his armies. To the south, Lieut. General Jacob Devers, who had reserves, too, had slashed into the Germans' soft left flank in the Vosges (see below). In his own area, Omar Bradley's Twelfth Army Group pounded grimly and powerfully at the defenses of the Germans.

It was here, where the Germans were strongest, that Supreme Commander "Ike" Eisenhower apparently hoped to break them most decisively. The Big Push was violently shaking the German fence from end to end; as pickets fell off, Allied troops were shouldering through to snatch prizes like Strasbourg and Belfort. But such openings would not tear the German fence down. Only when Bradley burst through, or when Montgomery turned the end of the fence in The Netherlands, would the Allies be able to lay it flat.

Order of Battle. For this job Omar Bradley commanded the mightiest of the Allied Army Groups. Montgomery had two armies, the British First, the Canadian First. "Jake" Devers had two, the U.S. Seventh, the French Second. Bradley had three: William Simpson's Ninth, a newcomer on the front; Courtney Hodges' First (the infantry heavyweight) and George Patton's Third (the armored pile driver).

The Third was fighting far to the south of Bradley's main effort, on the lower side of the wooded uplands of the Ardennes, which stretch across Luxembourg into the central Rhineland. Strategically the Third's campaign was still a part of the U.S.-French effort to clear the Germans from Alsace-Lorraine (and incidentally to trap some of the 50,000 enemy troops which had been holding the Vosges).

In the south low-grade German troops had been caught holding the forts, the passes and the river lines, and apparently with few mobile reserves. They made only token defenses of Metz, Strasbourg and Belfort. No doubt Bradley had scheduled the start of Patton's push a week ahead of the Cologne offensive on the chance that Field Marshal von Rundstedt might shove reserves into the southern breaches. Rundstedt did not yield to this incitement. Instead he crowded more men, fire power and armor into the sector east of Aachen.

Chips on the Table. Into one 18-mile stretch of this sector the Germans packed twelve divisions, of which six were Panzer (armored) or Panzer Grenadier (motorized with some armor), and six were top-notch infantry. Practically all their known mobile reserves on this front--eight or ten divisions--were believed to be lurking behind. The Berlin radio announced that units of the barrel-bottom Volkssturm or Home Army had been thrown in on the Western front; very few of these pathetic specimens, wearing distinctive arm bands, had been encountered on the fighting lines. Substandard Wehrmacht troops were captured in fixed positions during the first shock of the attack, but as the battle wore on the prisoners taken began to look more & more like the cream of the German army.

By this week it seemed clear that the Nazi High Command intended to force a decision west of the Rhine, and specifically west of that stretch of the Rhine covering the Ruhr. The German gamble suited Generals Eisenhower and Bradley down to the ground: they both believed in the good old copybook maxim that it is more important to destroy the enemy than to capture ground.

Design for Decision. Destruction requires a mountain of supplies, and the Allied supply distribution system was well in hand. The famed Red Ball truck route across France was out of operation last week, because a more efficient rail web was now in service. While waiting for Antwerp to reach top unloading capacity, the Allies had the Dutch harbor of Flushing. They had also restored Le Havre and Rouen. If there are any more shortages, it will be because of inept estimates or because of short shipments from the home front. As General Eisenhower put it more delicately at a press conference last week, it will be because the enormous expenditure of Allied material is outrunning shipments delivered at the ports.

At the same press conference, Eisenhower implied that by now the Germans were virtually committed to fight the last western battle in front of the Rhine. His reasoning: Allied air power can destroy the river bridges behind them at any time. The steep-banked, swift-running Rhine is higher now than at any time except in early summer. Between Cologne and Dusseldorf the river is 380 yds. wide. To get back across it with the bridges down would be, for the Germans, "almost a naval operation." The Germans know this, but they are still sending reinforcements westward across the Rhine.

Eisenhower left the correspondents wondering whether his airmen had purposely left the Rhine bridges standing, to suck as many Germans as possible into the decisive battle.

Out of the Woods. Destruction of the German Army was proceeding apace last week, but it was not all one-sided. Against General Simpson's Ninth Army, the Nazis hurled the heaviest weight of tanks mustered on a narrow front since Normandy. Some were 70-ton King Tigers, which carry a beefed-up 88-mm. gun of 2,000 yds. range. The Yanks fought them off with their 75-mm.-gunned Shermans and with new 90-mm. tank destroyers. In a series of clashes the enemy lost 118 tanks--the equivalent of more than two Panzer divisions. Apparently the Ninth lost heavily also, but Simpson could look for quick replacements, whereas the Germans could not; they had been throwing in brand-new tanks straight from the factory. When the enemy armor petered out, the Ninth crunched forward five miles, approached the banks of the swollen, 300-yd.-wide Roer River, the Nazis' main water defense in front of the Rhine.

At the British-U.S. joint in the line northeast of Geilenkirchen, German thrusts dislodged Montgomery's right flank from two small villages. At Eschweiler, when the enemy counterattacks weakened, units of the First Army made a surprise pounce on the town at 3 a.m., found it almost empty, pushed on to Weisweiler.

Under the somber firs and pines of the Huertgen Forest, where other First Army forces had been shadow-boxing for nine weeks, slugging hard for ten days, the German defense caved in and the doughboys burst out on the Cologne plain. Trying to flee in the open, the Germans were slaughtered by U.S. artillery and planes.

The Commander. When the Roer was crossed, when Dueren and Juelich were taken, the Nazis would feel the Rhine at their backs. Omar Bradley was not the man to let them get their balance if he could possibly help it. He is already acknowledged as one of the finest ground commanders of this war. If he beats the Germans to their knees in front of the Rhine, his name will go down the centuries as one of the great captains of history.

Less than two years ago, when this quiet son of a Missouri schoolteacher was sent to Tunisia to serve under Patton, he had never seen any actual fighting. But he had an exhaustive knowledge of infantry tactics, and of infantrymen as human beings, and he knew training. He had made a resounding success as Commandant of the Infantry School at Fort Benning. In Africa and Sicily, Bradley so distinguished himself that Eisenhower picked him to head U.S. forces in the assault on the Atlantic Wall (TIME, May 1).

Bradley and his staff were responsible for all joint planning and coordination of Army, Navy and Air for the two U.S. landings on the Normandy beaches. But the General never for a moment forgot the doughboys. An officer of the 4th Infantry Division later recalled a meeting at which Bradley addressed the division officers a week or so before Dday:

"He said that in his experience--and he had had plenty--our training was absolutely sound. He said that if we remembered the simple things we had been taught, the division would make a name for itself. ... He talked about fire and movement, envelopment, patrolling--ABC things.

"It was good, because it took away the idea that this war was any different than what we had been trained for. You can't kid the infantry; they know they've got to go in and do the fighting; and Bradley was an ex-infantryman. It inspired confidence."

The Tactician. As a tactician, Omar Bradley is blessed with powers of accurate observation and shrewd analysis, a natural affinity for maps and a flair for topography, a prodigious memory which not only endears him to countless juniors whose names he recalls, but enables him to make quick decisions by balancing in his mind all the items of risk against the elements of possible gain. He will accept bold risks if his basic horse sense, of which he has plenty, tells him they are sound.

Future historians will fill yards of bookshelves dividing the credit for the invasion success among the Allied generals, admirals and statesmen, and the discredit among Hitler, Rommel and Rundstedt. It is generally agreed already that the Germans held back their reserves too long, and their Fifteenth Army north of the Seine until too late, because Eisenhower cleverly kept them worried about a second invasion in Pas de Calais. Bradley was the line smasher as well as quarterback for the Allied operations (as he is now). He did not fumble, and he invariably capitalized on the errors of the enemy.

Eisenhower has a pleasant and sense-making way of telling his commanders what his general strategic objectives are, then letting them devise their own tactics. It was Bradley who designed the breakthrough to the west side of the Normandy peninsula, cutting off Cherbourg, and the breakthrough at Saint-Lo which began the battle of France. For the latter, he had an unheard-of number of heavy bombers laying down a tactical preparation (causing some U.S. casualties), and he had not only regiments but divisions attacking in column. Bradley also designed the Argentan-Falaise pincers, and the scythelike sweeps to the Seine which ruined the German Seventh Army. His rush to the German border was a bid to knock out German resistance once & for all, before his supply lines snapped. He was philosophical about not winning that one: nobody can win them all.

Proof of the Pudding. Bradley is not the kind of man to worry about his place in history, and he is too busy for that now, anyway. He pops awake every morning at 7, breakfasts an hour later, has a briefing on the previous days' operations at 9:15. The rest of his day is spent in conference or in driving or flying along the front with one of his two aides, Majors "Chet" Hansen and "Lew" Bridge, while his able chief of staff, Major General Leven C. Allen, keeps the operations machinery spinning. After dinner Bradley usually sees a movie (e.g., Janie, Heavenly Body, Bride by Mistake, Dragon Seed) screened by his aides in his quarters, pecks out a letter to his wife on his portable typewriter, goes to bed early.

Most G.I.s seldom discuss officers except for the juniors with whom they come in contact. Bradley is an exception. They sometimes speak of him as Robert E. Lee's men spoke of their general around the campfires of the Civil War. Bradley's men know that he never forgets them, that he wants to send as many of them home alive and whole as he can.

How much longer will they have to fight? How far must they go before the Nazis cry quits? There are many imponderables, such as the weight and power of the expected Russian offensive on the East Prussia-Vistula front, which cannot fail to affect German resistance in the west. Ike Eisenhower said last week that he was optimistic, but added: "I hope to prevent myself from becoming complacent." If anyone had asked Omar Bradley, he would probably have answered with one of the homespun phrases he utters so often: "The proof of the pudding is in the eating."

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