From battlefront interviews with leading U. S. generals and from the
reports of the team of “Time” and LIFE correspondents he was in
charge of on the Western Front, Charles Christian Wertenbaker included
the following in what was described as “the pattern of the victory
in western Germany,” and published in the April 16, 1945 issue of
LIFE Magazine.
During the First Army’s push to the Rhine, General Patton’s Third
Army, which had been stretched from the northern tip of Luxembourg 80
miles south to Saarbrücken, had been under orders to keep pressure on
the enemy and to get bridgeheads over the Kyll River, but not to do
anything rash. By March 4 Patton was through three-fourths of the
Siegfried line and had his bridgeheads across the Kyll. Then Bradley
struck simultaneously from the north and west.
It was a difficult operation, and particularly difficult to time it to
the minute. Bradley not only had to hold back the impetuous Patton
until Hodges reached the Rhine, but he had also to hold back Hodges’
III Corps, which had been set to push south for days, until the VII
Corps gained its objective. On March 5 the VII Corps fought its way
into Cologne while the III Corps, led by the 9th Armored Division, cut
south parallel to the Rhine. Patton’s armor sliced into the Eifel in
two places and the great 4th Armored Division sparked by Lieutenant
Colonel Creighton Abrams, Jr., started eastward on the journey that
was to carry it over more miles of German territory than any other
division in this battle.
By March 6 the 4th Armored was halfway from the starting point to
Koblenz, and Hodges’ 9th Armored was racing for Remagen. At ten
minutes to 4 in the afternoon of March 7 a sergeant named Mike
Chinchar of the 27th Armored Infantry Battalion led his platoon out on
the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen and ran for the farther shore. By
nightfall the lucky bridgehead was secure and, to the south, the 4th
Armored Division was in sight of Koblenz.
Next day Patton’s Fourth Armored and 11th Armored met outside of
Koblenz with a pocketful of prisoners caught between them. The
following day Hodges’ V Corps cut south into Patton’s territory
and caught another bag. For the next four days the two armies had a
prisoner race while Patton pushed down to the Moselle and Hodges built
up strength in his bridgehead. Hodges was impatient to attack but
Bradley wouldn’t let him. “I told Courtney,” Bradley said later,
“to stay there and swell out his chest.”
“Brad,” says a member of his staff, “plays on his Army
commanders like little David playing on the strings of his harp. Take
Patton, for instance. Sometimes he plays so soft and sweet that Patton
thinks he thought of the idea himself, and sometimes he just says,
‘Georgie, I know you won’t like this but this is the way it’s
got to be.’”
By now Phase III was developing and this time it was Hodges on whom
Bradley had to play. Neat little Courtney Hodges doesn’t have
Patton’s flair for publicity, but his army, on the whole, has fought
more and accomplished more than Patton’s. Now, through a stroke of
luck and fast thinking, he stood on the farther banks of the Rhine and
saw a chance to do something spectacular. Bradley would have none of
it; he was already timing his next move. He told Hodges to expand his
bridgehead a few thousand yards and to wait until Patton crossed the
Rhine.
Southward in the Saar and the Palatinate Patton and Lieutenant General
Alexander Patch of the Seventh Army were repeating the maneuver with
which Hodges and Patton had bagged so many prisoners in the Eifel.
Again the coordination between corps and armies was almost perfect.
While Patch kept the enemy tied down in the Siegfried positions of the
Saar, Patton struck twice across the Moselle. Between them Patch and
Patton caught one bag of prisoners and held another bag for the
advancing Seventh Army. With army boundaries erased, Patton continued
south as far as Speyer, but if the Germans had known that he had left
the 4th Armored Division between Mainz and Worms, they might have
guessed what was coming next.
On Friday, March 23, Phase IV opened without air or artillery
preparation when Patton’s 5th Infantry Division jumped the Rhine
near the town of Oppenheim. Both the time and place were well chosen.
The bulk of the remaining German armies was either in the north, where
Montgomery had been slowly building up to cross the Rhine and was to
do so before the next dawn, or around Hodges’ bridgehead or south of
where Patton crossed. Patton immediately sent the 4th Armored across
the Rhine and within 24 hours this irrepressible division was 18 miles
east of the river. The 6th Armored Division followed, striking north,
and Hodges burst out of his bridgehead.
By this time Hodges had three corps across the Rhine and was facing
elements of 16 German divisions. His armor struck eastward along the
small roads of Germany. Patton’s Fourth Armored, meanwhile, had
turned north toward Giessen and an enveloping move was in progress.
The battle of the Rhine had gone faster than General Eisenhower had
dared to anticipate, even in February 1945. He had foreseen two
battles: one west of the Rhine and the other to the east. Bradley
changed all that. The luck of Remagen and Patton’s quick crossing
had enabled him to overrun an area of Germany as large as the Saar and
the Palatinate. Now he had two armies striking north from Giessen
toward Paderborn, while the Ninth Army under Montgomery, north of the
Ruhr, was fighting eastward toward Hamm.
Bradley now had power to spare--so much that he could send the 4th
Armored Division out on raiding expeditions, one southeast toward
Nurnberg. The German armies were broken up and scattered; they fought
halfheartedly if at all; on one day the First and Third Armies
together had only 35 men killed.