~ Phoedix-Clovers-Almonty-Paw ~

The Years of Victory: 1944 - 1945

by Richard Collier

Chapter 7

"Stop!

I Have Made a Momentous Decision!

I am taking the Offensive."
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"WHAT ARE WE going to do Sarge?" Corporal Ralph Driver asked, "That water sure looks deep."Staff-Sergeant Warner W. Holzinger, who headed the five-man patrol was silent. The ruins of the wrecked bridge, which the Germans had blown only hours earlier, sprawled untidily across the brown fast-flowing River Our -- effectively blocking the advance units of the U.S. 5th Armoured Division. It was almost dusk on Monday, September 11 -- and back in Luxembourg, the commander of the 500,000 strong U.S. First Army, Lieutenant-General Courtney Hodges, urgently needed information.

"Okay, men," Holzinger ordered his little band, "We're going across," then, to their French guide, Delille, "You follow after me."Decisively, his carbine raised to chest level, he slid into the racing river. At the half-way mark, the water had reached his thighs, but still the opposite bank remained silent in the thickening dusk. Very far away, as the men floundered onto the muddy bank, guns were rumbling.

"Okay, men," Holzinger told them, "spread out! We're going to check out those buildings up there -- and then we're gonna get the hell out of here quick!" Cautiously, tensed with action, they groped their way up a steep slope -- advancing towards what seemed to be a group of abandoned farm buildings.

But appearances were deceptive. Drawing closer, they found they had chanced upon a clutch of twenty cleverly-camouflaged concrete bunkers -- one of them housing an abandoned chicken-coop -- which had plainly been deserted a few hours before. It was 6.05p.m and darkness was falling: time to report that this section of the West Wall (the Siegfried Line to the Allies) near Stolzemburg, Germany, a few miles north-east of Vianden, Luxembourg, was no longer tenanted.

Ten minutes later, the men had splashed back across the river and were doubling for their parked half-track. Thirty minutes later, their discovery was made known to the 85th Reconnaissance Squadron.One hour after that, General Hodges, was privy to the secret.For the first time since Napoleon's day, an enemy soldier had set foot on German soil in the midst of war. Unbeknown to Adolf Hitler, Staff-Sergeant Warner Holzinger had returned to the fatherland of his ancestors.
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But "Market Garden" was by no means the summit of Montgomery's ambition. On September 10, in a stormy conference held aboard Eisenhower's private plane in the airport at Brussels, the Field Marshall had bitterly criticized the American's policy of advancing on a broad front -- as opposed to the narrow rapier-like thrusts adviced by Montgomery. Patton's drive to the Saar River, he complained, was robbing him, Montgomery, of vital supplies; "jerky and disjointed thrusts" were equally impeding both armines and achieving nothing. At one point his language grew so unrestrained that Eisenhower, reaching out, patted Montgomery on the knee and rebuked him, "Steady Monty! You can't speak to me like that. I'm your boss."Montgomery's mounting anger cooled. "I'm sorry, Ike", he said quietly.

But Eisenhower remained wedded to the broad front concept. "What you're proposing is this," he told Montgomery incredulously, "if I could give you all the supplies you want, you could go straight to Berlin -- right straight to Berlin? Monty, you're nuts. You can't do it... you'd have to throw off division after division to protect your flanks from attack... Suppose you did get a bridge across the Rhine, you couldn't depend for long on that one bridge to supply your drive..."As Eisenhower later recalled it, Montgomery argued: "Just give me what I need and I'll reach Berlin and end the war." Patton, equally cocksure, boasted, "If Ike stops holding Monty's hand and gives me the supplies, I'll go through the Siegfried Line like shit through a goose..."

Thus the stage was set for disaster from the first.
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"This is a tale you will tell your grandchildren," the lean insouciant Horrocks had joked at their final briefing, "and mighty bored they'll be!"" -- yet the tale when told, would be one of endless and crippling frustration....

Cut off in cellars and attics, blasted by mortars and 88 mm guns, men survived as best they could, on iron rations or apples scrounged from outhouses, and somehow preserved their sense of humour. Radio operator J.L. Cull always recalled tuning in to the BBC after a night of non-stop shelling, to hear an announcer's voice: "You have been listening to Frank Sinatra's latest record, I couldn't sleep a wink last night. "Well Padre," Sergeant "Jack" Spratt greeted Frost's chaplain, Father James Egan, at the height of one bombardment, "they're throwing everything at us but the kitchen stove." With those words, the ceiling fell in, bringing a torrent of debris -- and a kitchen stove.

"I knew the bastards were close," said"Jack" in mock-wonder, "but I didn't believe they could hear us talking."
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It was a day when many, once on Dutch soil, felt that nothing could go wrong. Sergeant Major Les Ellis, holding a dead partridge aloft, explained to Sergeant Norman Swift: "I landed on it. It'll be a bit of all right later, in case we're hungry."

Lieutenant Leo Heaps, a young Canadian, landing west of Arnhem, found action so lacking he called in at the Wolfheze Hotel for a mug of tea, promising to return that evening for champagne.

Few men had as keen a sense of priorities as the British paratrooper whom Second Leiutenant Arthur Kaplan unearthed in a barn; although barely an hour on the ground he, with a willing Dutch maiden, was briskly fornicating in the hay loft.
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In the American lines, the same cheerfulness prevailed; to the fourteen-strong unit of Lieutenant Saul K. Padover, of the U.S. Army's Psychological Warfare Division, who had now reached the city of Luxembourg, "it was all over but the shouting." The 39-year-old Padover was less convinced; to one colleague, Major Paul Sweet, he quoted Napoleon's dictum:

"An enemy is not defeated until he thinks himself defeated.

"For did the Germans falling back beyond the West Wall by now think themselves defeated?"If we had really known," Padover commented dryly later, "we would have realized it was all over but the shooting."

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"I drew a little love-letter because I wanted U to see what u were shooting at"

David Petraeus, US Army
{Clover ST Sean}
Given decent weather, I'll whip out Cassino like an old tooth
[Major General John Cannon, U.S. tactical air-commander in Italy, on how to assault the Cassino massif, dominated by the 6,000ft Monte Cassino, the $64,000 question in Italian military textbooks]
~~!~~

Jon Michael Dye, USMC, SS
{Shibumi Buddy Cloud}
Don't stand about like a half-plucked fowl. Cast off!.
[Irate voices of British Naval Landing Officers, launching craft for D-Day landings]

~~!~~

Sean McCormick, SS
{Dillon ST Kivo}
I am not more enamoured of him than you are, but I would rather have him on the committee than strutting about as a combination of Joan of Arc and Clemenceau
[Churchill to the President of "The Prima Donna", de Gaulle]

~~!~~

Stan Goff, US Army Rangers
{Tiger Lily's Serge}
I don't think that any woman has ever had the same opportunity to alter the course of history.
[Major Kleimann on KGB/MI5 spy, Lily Sergueiev]

~~!~~

Peter Pace, USMC, JCS
{Sir Cossack Igor}
Ruhe da, wir konnen nicht schlafen
(Shut up, we can't sleep)
[Lieutenant Charles Newton to German gunners.]

~~!~~

Scott Ritter, UNSCOM, USMC
{Zhivago's Gale Clover}
I'll tell you what I see -- I see my ma on the front porch waving my insurance policy
[Army lieutenant whisper to Life photographer Robert Capa, Utah beach, D-Day]

~~!~~

Donald Rumsfeld, US5
{Zhen Elefente Keyes}
We hoped to land a wild cat that would tear out the bowels of the Boche. Instead we have stranded a vast whale with it's tail flopping in the water!
[Winston Churchill to Alexandra, on Anzio-Cassino Monastry bombing]

~~!~~

Jesse Ventura, US Navy

{SSD Bayonet Lynn}
What are the smart GIs doing to your English women while you are fighting and getting killed over here? Easy to guess eh? ... Heard about Private Fox? Went on patrol and stepped on a shoe mine... all his guts were blown away. Go easy, boys. There's danger ahead.
["Axis Sally" broadcasting from Radio Roma]

~~!~~

Nicholas Zarkosy, FFL, FCIA
{Pink Peasant's Wizzard}
Los sanglots longs
Des violins
De l'automne
Blessent mon coeur
D'une langueur
Monotone
(The long sobbing of the autumn violins,Wounds my heart with a monotonous languor)
[Six lines taken from Paul Verlaine's sonnet, Chanson d'Automne: the password for the Anglo-American invasion of France, as reported to the Abwehr, by Oberstleutnant Oscar Reile, of the Paris-based section IIIF, the bane of the French underground, based on the interrogations of two captured resistants. The first part of the signal, up to and including the word "l'automne", would be broadcast by the BBC on the first and fighteenth days of given months. The second would be broadcast when the landings were scheduled for the next forty-eight hours -- the time to be counted from midnight of the day of the initial transmission. Thus, on June 2, Reile had alerted his chiefs, that on the day preceding, Bush House, via radio station Daventry, had repeated the first segment several times between 1.20 and 2.30 p.m. On June 4, Reile informed twenty-three addresses that the second part of the alert had been broadcast no less than fifteen times between noon and 2.30 pm on June 3.]

~~!~~

'Alex Hallahan', FFL, IRA
{Cead Mile F'ailte}
Three old women with brooms could keep the Rangers from climbing that cliff
[Naval intelligence officer proven wrong, by 220 U.S. Rangers, under Lieut-Col. James E. Rudder, who scaled the 100 ft. cliffs of Omaha, using ropes and extension ladders borrowed from the London Fire Brigade, to destroy the powerful battery reported by Centurie sector chief Andre Farine at Pointe du Hoc.]

~~!~~

William K. Wallace; UK Paratroopers, MI6
{Flanagan VII "Pro"}
There was blood upon the risers, there were brains upon the chute;
Intestines were a-dangling from this paratrooper's boots;
They picked him, still in his chute and poured him from his boots.
He ain't gonna jump no more.
Gory, Gory, What a Helluva way to die
Gory, Gory, what a Helluva way to die
Gory, Gory, what a Helluva way to die
He ain't gonna jump no more.
[Paratrooper's song, Blood Upon the Risers, sung to the tune of The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Sung in training by paratroopers: packing and re-packing of the T5 parachute assembly, the practice drops from the 250ft tower, the first jump from a C-47; such as Private Donald Burgett, from Detroit, trained at Ft. Benning, GA, before becoming a member of A Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, the SCREAMING EAGLES.]

~~!~~

Harry Wallace, UK Grenadiers, MI5
{HawkIsle Irish Whisper}
We are all in the same game. Sometimes one side wins, sometimes the other. You win this time, we will be victorious next time: it's all a question of sportsmanship, isn't it, gentlemen? My criticism of the Fuhrer is purely military. He did fine things for Germany... Hitler came forth as the champion against Versailles, and all of us, the whole nation, backed him up on that. Furthermore, his Socialist ideals attracted the German people. We old officers are Socialists too, of course. For example we believe in common effort and comradeship and all that -- that's real Socialism. Hitler, as an old soldier, was naturally also a Socialist like the rest of us and that is why he could win over the German people.
[Prisoner of War: Generalleutnant Kurt Dittmar, formerly Army High Command broadcaster, to Lieutenant Hart, a G-2 Colonel from Simpson's Ninthy Army, & Lieut. Saul K. Padover, U.S. Army's Psychological Warfare Division, in a Luftwaffe barracks at Brunswick, Lower Saxony.]

~~!~~

Vladimir V. Putin, Kremlin, KGB
{Tramp's Ascalon Treasure -- U ST Thunder}
She is not going to work for you!
[Captain Mikhail Koriakov, saving Helen Springer from the 3rd Army's Russian style liberation tactics, in Bunzlau, Silesia. Formerly combat correspondent of The Country Falcon, to the 6th Red Air Force, he nourished a curious preoccupation for a man at war: the restoration of God to the Russian people. A native of the Sayan Mountains of Siberia, he asked himself with ever-growing urgency, what spiritual lessons would this cataclysmic war bring about? What changes would there be in relation to freedom of conscience? On Sunday, May 21, he learned with deep sorrow, of the death of Sergei, Patriarch of Moscow and all the Russians. Attending a church in Volhynia, Western Ukraine, he enquired whether there would be a Requiem for the Patriarch. He was subsequently found "ideologically unfit to serve as military correspondent."]
..

God is ओn your side?
Is He a Conservative?
The Devil's on my side, he's a good Communist!
[Stalin in response to Churchill's "With God's will", in Tehran arguing on a firm date for Overlord, and the naming of a Supreme Commander]

~~!~~

Andrei Lugovoi, KGB, NKVD
{Alex II Kugan}
Hitler is the greatest man of all time. I've never been more serious. They're all against Hitler (now that the war is over). They've always been against Hitler. So that means that Hitler alone, without help or encouragement from anybody in Germany started the war, licked all Europe... murdered five million Jews, set up 400 concentration camps, created the biggest army in Europe and made the trains run on schedule. It takes a pretty good man to do all that by himself.
[Lieut. Saul K. Padover, to his driver, Private Joe Dorferlein, who responded with "I getcha. For a moment I though you was kiddin."]

~~!~~

George Tennet, CIA
{Sun Slamdunk Tzu}
As you know, the army is short of pilots, petrol, planes and ammunition... We find ourselves at an impasse. There is just one last resort left to us: to crash on the decks of enemy aircraft carriers, as your comrades have done before you. Two hours ago, our squadron received the order to form a Special Attack Corps... I am compelled to ask you... But, of course, you are free to choose. I will give you twenty-four hours to think it over.
[Commandant Suenaga, to 24 assembled cadet pilots of the 24th Advanced Training Squadron, at Kagohara airfield, forty miles north-west of Tokyo.]

~~!~~

Josh Rushing, USMC, P-Al'Qaeda
{Man-O-War}
At the present moment, I feel lower than that whale's arse.
[General George S. Patton, at Regensburg, Bavaria, on hearing the news of VE Day, ate their meal in total silence from first course to last. Upon retiring he called to mind a species of whale said to spend much of its time lying in the deepest part of the ocean.]

~~!~~

Andreas von Beulow, Abwehr,
{Forest King Breaker}
Keep in line! Keep in line! ... U.S. Rangers, man your stations!... This is it, men, pick it up and put it on, you've only got a one-way ticket and this is the end of the line... I'll do your praying for you from here on in. What you're going to do today will be a prayer in itself!... Now hear this! This is probably going to be the biggest party you boys will ever go to -- so let's all get out on the floor and dance!
[5.45 am. 45 minutes before H-Hour. Lieut. Gen. Omar Bradley about the flagship Augusta, before plugging his ears with cotton wool.]

~~!~~

Michael Martin, US Army SF, Blackwater
{Geronimo Phoenix Green}
"Sir, can I ask you a question?"
"Of course, what is it?"
"When we die, sir, is that the end or do we go on?"
[Summerhouse Hill, 19 April, Kohima: the sole battlefield of WW II to focus on a tennis court: a solid asphalt court 20 yards wide constructed below Deputy Commissioner Pawsey's bungalow by the Burmah Oil Company. Now the Royal West Kents under Major Tom Kenyon lobbed off volleys of grenades where Slazenger balls had once bounced.]

~~!~~

Timothy J. McVeigh, US Army, Blackwater, NSA
{Oxford ST-Champ Ruble -- God Almonty Stillwell}
... he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
[Henry V -- Shakespeare]
..
When the nations lose their war-sense,
And the world gets back it's horse-sense
What a day for celebration that will be.
When somebody shouts 'the fight's up!'
And 'It's time to turn the lights up!'
Then the first thing to be lit up will be me...
[A popular song of the hour I'm Going To Get Lit Up When the Lights Go On in London, during the blackout, dubbed the capitals best-known bottle hymn, caught the mood for a longed-for peace.]

~~!~~

Erik Prince, Blackwater, US Navy
{Rock Lake Paw}
"I have verified your ability to make a deal...
I am prepared to sell you one million Jews. Not the whole lot -- you wouldn't be able to raise enough for that. But you could manage a million. Blood for money -- cash for blood. You can take them from any country you like... Hungary, Poland, from Auschwitz, wherever you like. Who do you want to save? Men capable of procreation? Women who can bear children? Old people? Children? Sit down, Herr Brand, and tell me.If you return from Istanbul and tell me that the offer has been accepted, I'll close Auschwitz and bring ten percent of the million I've promised you to the frontier. If you don't come back, they'll all go to Auschwitz."
[Adolf Eichmann to Herr Brand]
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