- 2 months ago
American troops did something after every battle that no German unit ever did: they sat down, stripped rank out of the room, and argued out loud over what really happened. That simple habit, pioneered by Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshall, turned combat into a learning system and helped the U.S. Army adapt faster than the Wehrmacht expected.
From a coral island in the Pacific to the hedgerows of Normandy, this military history story follows after-action reports, combat lessons, and battlefield debriefs that fed frontline experience back into training. It traces how sergeants, captains, and generals used honest testimony to fix tactics, including the fight for the bocage, tank-infantry coordination, and the improvised hedge-row cutters that changed the pace of the advance.
The result is a gripping World War II documentary-style narration about leadership, battlefield adaptation, and the cost of learning under fire. It also shows why the German army, despite superb reports, could not match a system where the lowest man’s account was treated as evidence.
For listeners searching for WW2 stories, military history narration, World War II documentary, combat lessons, after-action reports, and hedgerow battle analysis, this is a detailed history listen built for fans of tactical warfare, army training, and forgotten war stories.
From a coral island in the Pacific to the hedgerows of Normandy, this military history story follows after-action reports, combat lessons, and battlefield debriefs that fed frontline experience back into training. It traces how sergeants, captains, and generals used honest testimony to fix tactics, including the fight for the bocage, tank-infantry coordination, and the improvised hedge-row cutters that changed the pace of the advance.
The result is a gripping World War II documentary-style narration about leadership, battlefield adaptation, and the cost of learning under fire. It also shows why the German army, despite superb reports, could not match a system where the lowest man’s account was treated as evidence.
For listeners searching for WW2 stories, military history narration, World War II documentary, combat lessons, after-action reports, and hedgerow battle analysis, this is a detailed history listen built for fans of tactical warfare, army training, and forgotten war stories.
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LearningTranscript
00:00On the 24th of November, 1943, on a spit of coral called Butaritari in the Makine Atoll,
00:06a lieutenant colonel asked an American rifle company to sit down on the ground in front of him.
00:11The island had been declared secure the day before.
00:14For three nights, the men of the 165th Infantry had held a perimeter in the dark
00:19while Japanese infiltrators came through the coconut groves in ones and twos,
00:23and now the survivors were filthy, hollow-eyed, and mostly interested in sleep.
00:29Officers sat down with them.
00:31Sergeants sat down with them.
00:32Privates sat down with them.
00:34Nobody stood.
00:36That was the first strange thing, and every man there noticed it.
00:40The colonel told them that for the next few hours, rank did not apply.
00:44He said he wanted to know what had actually happened on that perimeter, minute by minute.
00:49And he said that if a private remembered it differently from a captain,
00:53the private was to say so out loud, in front of the captain,
00:56and not one thing would happen to him for it.
01:00Then he asked his first question and waited.
01:04What followed was not a briefing.
01:06There was an argument in that company about the second night,
01:09about which men had stopped a rush at the edge of the grove,
01:13and where the machine gun had actually been sighted,
01:16and who had thrown what and when.
01:19The officers had one version.
01:20The men who had been lying flat in the sand had another.
01:25The colonel let them fight it out in front of each other.
01:28He wrote down both.
01:30When two accounts collided, he made them keep going until the collision resolved itself.
01:35Because those men had been there, and he had not.
01:39He worked several hours a day, four days running.
01:43And at the end of it, he had something no army on earth had ever held in its hands.
01:48A minute-by-minute reconstruction of a night battle,
01:51assembled out of the memories of the men who fought it,
01:54in their own words, with the mistakes left in.
01:58He had come to the Pacific to record history.
02:01He had just invented something else entirely.
02:05If you appreciate what men like these did,
02:07take a second and hit the like button.
02:09It genuinely helps this story reach the people it belongs to.
02:12And subscribe, because we are going a long way into this one.
02:17His name was Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshall,
02:20and before the war, he had been a newspaperman in Detroit
02:23who wrote two books about how the German army moved.
02:26The army had sent him to the Central Pacific
02:28to work out how combat should be written down,
02:31not how it should be fixed.
02:33Understand what he was up against on that island,
02:35because it explains why nobody had done this before.
02:38An infantry battle does not have a single witness.
02:42It has 400 witnesses,
02:44each of whom sees roughly 40 yards of it,
02:47in the dark, while being shot at.
02:50Every army in history had solved that problem the same way.
02:53The commander wrote a report.
02:56His account became the account.
02:58What the man in the third foxhole saw simply evaporated.
03:02And it evaporated everywhere.
03:04In the British army,
03:05in the Red army,
03:06in the Japanese army,
03:08and in the German army,
03:09which was widely considered
03:11the most professional military institution in the world.
03:14Marshall's discovery was that it had not evaporated at all.
03:17It was still sitting there,
03:19in the heads of the men,
03:21waiting for somebody to come and ask.
03:24His own phrase for it was that
03:25the facts laid dormant in the minds of officers and men.
03:30Now here's the part I want you to hold on to,
03:32because everything in the next hour turns on it.
03:42A private who can be punished for contradicting a captain
03:45will not contradict a captain.
03:48And the moment he stops contradicting,
03:50the army goes blind.
03:52Marshall took the punishment off the table,
03:55and the whole picture came up out of the ground.
03:58That single procedural decision,
04:00made by a reserve officer on a coral island,
04:03on his own initiative,
04:04with nobody's permission,
04:06is the beginning of the thing this story is about.
04:09Because within a year,
04:11that circle of seated men
04:12would be repeating itself across two oceans.
04:15It would happen after landings,
04:17after failed attacks,
04:19after nights nobody wanted to talk about.
04:21It would happen in a Belgian schoolhouse
04:24in the middle of the worst winter of the war,
04:26and on the east bank of the Rhine
04:28four days after a bridge was taken.
04:31American units would come out of the line,
04:33and instead of being left alone,
04:35they would be sat down and asked what had gone wrong.
04:39And on the other side of the line,
04:41something would start to go badly wrong for the Germans
04:43that they were never able to name.
04:46I want to be careful here,
04:48because this story is worthless if it turns into a cartoon.
04:51The German army wrote reports.
04:53It wrote superb reports.
04:55After Poland in 1939,
04:58German officers produced after-action studies
05:00so ruthlessly self-critical
05:02that historians still hold them up
05:04as the model of a military institution
05:06learning from its own victory.
05:08The Germans were not lazy about this,
05:11and they were not stupid about it.
05:13In 1940,
05:14they were probably better at it than anyone alive.
05:17So the question is not whether the Germans wrote things down.
05:21They did.
05:22The question is,
05:24what happened between 1940 and 1944
05:27that left the German army
05:29unable to keep up with an American army
05:31it had privately dismissed as amateurs?
05:34An army that in 1942
05:36could not coordinate its own tanks
05:39with its own infantry,
05:40and that by 1945
05:42was changing its methods
05:44faster than the Wehrmacht
05:45could design a counter to them.
05:47The answer is not equipment.
05:49It is not numbers.
05:51And it is not the thing
05:52you are probably expecting.
05:54It is something American units did
05:56after almost every fight,
05:58which every German general
05:59would have recognized as a procedure,
06:01and which no German unit ever performed,
06:04not because they never thought of it,
06:06but because in their army,
06:07by 1944,
06:09one part of it
06:10had become a crime.
06:12Fourteen months after Macon,
06:14a document arrived in training camps
06:15across the United States
06:17with the signature
06:17of the Chief of Staff
06:19of the United States Army
06:20printed on the opening page.
06:22What was inside it
06:23should never have made it up
06:25the chain of command.
06:26The booklet was small enough
06:27to fit in a field jacket pocket.
06:29It had a star on the cover
06:31and one word across the top.
06:34Unclassified.
06:35It reached units and training camps
06:37in the first months of 1944,
06:40and the introduction carried
06:41the signature of General George C. Marshall,
06:44Chief of Staff of the United States Army.
06:47The title was Combat Lessons.
06:50The subtitle told you everything
06:52about what the army had decided to become.
06:55Rank and File in Combat.
06:57What they're doing.
06:58How they do it.
06:59Turn to page 22,
07:01and you find a Staff Sergeant of Infantry
07:03named Richard E. DeLand,
07:04who had fought through Sicily.
07:07Read what he says,
07:08and remember it,
07:09because it comes back.
07:11He says,
07:12I was not taught to observe properly,
07:14nor how to use the message blank.
07:17Sit with that for a moment.
07:19A Staff Sergeant is telling
07:21the United States Army
07:22that its training failed him.
07:24Not in a private complaint.
07:26Not in a letter home.
07:28In a War Department publication,
07:31over his own name and rank,
07:32printed and distributed
07:33to the officers responsible
07:35for that training,
07:36with the signature
07:37of the most powerful soldier in America
07:39on the opening page.
07:41He goes further.
07:43He tells them what to fix.
07:45More emphasis on cover and concealment
07:47than the camps were giving.
07:49Less of the blundering approach on patrol.
07:52And he tells them something
07:54that reads like a rebuke
07:55of every training film ever made.
07:57That battles move slowly
07:59and patrols cannot go dashing about.
08:03Now ask yourself
08:04what would have happened
08:04to a German Feldwebel
08:06who put that in writing.
08:08Hold the question.
08:09We will come back to it
08:10with a number attached.
08:13DeLand is not alone in there.
08:15The booklet is full of men,
08:16named and ranked,
08:18saying things that make
08:19their superiors look bad.
08:21Captain William T.
08:24Gordon of the Infantry in Sicily
08:25reports that since the 8th of November
08:28he has had 17 officers
08:30pass through his company
08:31and he is the only one left
08:33from the original group
08:34who is still in the fight.
08:36He describes hearing enlisted men
08:38calling out in the dark in Tunisia,
08:41pinned down,
08:42asking where an officer was to lead them.
08:44That is a company commander
08:46telling the army, in print,
08:48that its junior officers
08:49were being killed faster
08:51than they could be replaced
08:52and that the men in the dark noticed.
08:55Colonel George Taylor
08:56tells them that fear is normal,
08:59that decorated veterans
09:00freely admit to being terrified
09:02and that the worst thing
09:03a new man carries into battle
09:05is his fear of being afraid.
09:07A captain named Putnam
09:09describes an attack at Branieri
09:11where his infantry sat still
09:12while the tanks went forward
09:14because nobody had ever trained them
09:16to walk with tanks.
09:18He states plainly
09:19that his regiment
09:19could have destroyed
09:20most of a German battalion
09:22and did not
09:22because they did not know how.
09:25He is confessing an opportunity
09:27thrown away, by name,
09:29in a document going to every camp
09:31in the United States.
09:33And here is the mechanism
09:34I want you to see
09:35because it is the whole engine
09:37of this story.
09:38A sergeant on Sicily
09:40says his training was wrong.
09:41That statement is collected
09:43by an observer,
09:44sent to Washington,
09:45printed under the chief of staff's signature,
09:47and delivered into the hands
09:49of the men running the camps
09:50where the next 400,000 replacements
09:52are being trained.
09:54The correction moves in a circle,
09:57from the man who bled for the lesson,
09:59up through the institution,
10:01and back down into the ground
10:02where the next soldier is being made.
10:05The Army built the plumbing
10:06for this deliberately.
10:08Army Ground Force's headquarters
10:10ran a network of combat observers
10:12whose entire function
10:14was to go and watch,
10:16write it down,
10:17and send it back,
10:18linking divisions fighting overseas
10:20to the War Department,
10:21to the school system,
10:23and to units still in the States
10:24preparing to ship out.
10:26By the end of the war,
10:28those observers in Europe alone
10:29had sent back over 1,500 reports.
10:33And at Army level,
10:34in the field,
10:35headquarters did the same thing
10:36on a shorter cycle.
10:37First Army in Normandy
10:39would publish a running series
10:41called Battle Experiences,
10:43a few pages at a time,
10:45blunt advice on German defensive habits
10:47and what the Americans were learning
10:49at the cost of learning it.
10:51None of this required genius.
10:54It required one cultural decision
10:56made over and over at every level,
10:58that the lowest man's account
11:00of what happened was evidence,
11:02and that the institution's job
11:04was to swallow it whole,
11:06including the parts
11:07that were humiliating.
11:09Now, the honest part.
11:12Reading Combat Lessons No. 1 today,
11:14you notice something.
11:16The introduction admits,
11:17almost in passing,
11:19that most of this material
11:20had already been covered
11:21in training literature,
11:22and that the shortcomings
11:24kept showing up
11:24on the battlefield anyway.
11:27That is a devastating little sentence.
11:29It means the loop was not magic.
11:32It means knowing
11:33was not the same as doing.
11:35It means that in 1943,
11:38the American army was still,
11:39by any professional measure,
11:41a clumsy instrument,
11:42and the Germans knew it.
11:44In Tunisia,
11:45they had handled these men roughly
11:46and drawn their conclusions.
11:48So by the spring of 1944,
11:51what the United States
11:52actually possessed
11:53was not a better army.
11:54It was a faster nervous system
11:56attached to a worse one.
11:58An institution that could take a fact
12:00from a sergeant's mouth
12:01in a Sicilian orchard
12:03and put it into a training camp
12:04in Georgia in a matter of weeks.
12:06That was real,
12:08and it was unique,
12:09and no other army in the war
12:10had anything quite like it.
12:12But every lesson in that booklet
12:14had been learned in places
12:16American soldiers
12:17could at least recognize.
12:19Deserts,
12:20villages,
12:21hillsides,
12:22jungle.
12:22The circle worked
12:24because the men
12:25had something to describe.
12:27In seven weeks,
12:28an American army
12:29would come ashore
12:30in a landscape
12:31that made every page
12:32of that booklet
12:33close to useless.
12:35Not one officer
12:37in a hundred
12:37would have any idea
12:39what he was looking at.
12:40The Germans would have
12:42four years of preparation
12:43and terrain
12:44that did half their fighting
12:46for them.
12:47And the standard
12:48American solution,
12:49call the artillery,
12:50then walk forward,
12:52would stop working
12:53within about six days.
12:55The nervous system
12:56was about to be handed
12:57a problem
12:58the body had never trained for.
13:01What happened next
13:02was not a lesson
13:03passed down
13:04from Washington.
13:05It came out of a field
13:06behind the lines,
13:08from a general
13:08who had run out of ideas,
13:10and from a soldier
13:11from Tennessee
13:12whose suggestion
13:13made everyone
13:14standing around him laugh.
13:15On the 15th of June, 1944,
13:19a column of American tanks
13:20moved south
13:21from the Omaha Beachhead,
13:22supporting the 120th Infantry
13:25of the 30th Division.
13:26And it took the Germans
13:27about 90 seconds
13:29to destroy it.
13:30The lead tank
13:31hit a mine.
13:32The next two
13:32were killed
13:33by an 88
13:34sighted to cover
13:35exactly that stretch of road.
13:37The infantry
13:38was out on the flanks
13:39and could do nothing.
13:40The attack
13:41stopped where it stood,
13:42in confusion,
13:43with wreckage burning
13:44on the only surface
13:45the tanks could use.
13:47Nothing about that
13:48engagement was unusual.
13:50That was the problem.
13:51It was happening
13:51everywhere along
13:52a 50-mile American front
13:54every day,
13:55and the men doing it
13:56were following
13:57their training precisely.
13:58They had come ashore
13:59into the bocage.
14:01Here is the single
14:02most revealing fact
14:03about the American army
14:04in June of 1944,
14:06and it comes from
14:07the army's own
14:08post-campaign survey.
14:10Officers were asked
14:11afterward whether
14:12they had known
14:13what the hedgerow country
14:14was before they
14:15landed in it.
14:16Not one officer
14:18in a hundred
14:18said yes.
14:19The summary
14:20put it flatly.
14:21As a whole,
14:22they were greatly surprised.
14:24A company commander
14:26in the 329th Infantry,
14:28Captain Charles D. Folsom,
14:30said the hedgerows
14:31were a problem
14:31his unit had never
14:32before encountered,
14:34and that pre-invasion
14:35training had not
14:36taken them into
14:36consideration at all.
14:38The senior men
14:39were no better.
14:40Bradley called it
14:41the damnedest country
14:42he had ever seen.
14:44Collins,
14:45who had fought
14:45on Guadalcanal,
14:47told him the bocage
14:48was as bad
14:49as anything in the jungle.
14:51Brigadier General
14:52James Gavin,
14:53second in command
14:54of the 82nd Airborne,
14:55admitted afterward
14:56that there had been
14:57some talk about
14:58the hedgerows
14:59in England
14:59before D-Day,
15:00and that none of them
15:01had really appreciated
15:02what they would
15:03turn out to be.
15:04Now picture the thing itself,
15:06because until you see it,
15:08nothing that follows
15:09make sense.
15:11A hedgerow
15:12is not a hedge.
15:13It is an earth wall
15:14built by Norman farmers
15:16over centuries,
15:18one to four feet thick
15:19at the base,
15:20and anywhere from
15:21three to 15 feet high,
15:23with a dense mat of trees,
15:25roots, and brush
15:26growing out of the top.
15:28The fields they enclose
15:30are small,
15:31roughly 200 yards
15:32by 400,
15:33and irregular,
15:35and there are thousands
15:36of them,
15:37in no pattern at all.
15:39So the country
15:40is not a battlefield.
15:41It is a honeycomb.
15:43Every field
15:44is a separate room
15:45with walls
15:46on four sides,
15:47and the enemy
15:48is in the next room,
15:49and you cannot see him,
15:51and he can see
15:53the only gap
15:54you can come through.
15:56The Germans
15:57read that terrain
15:58instantly.
15:59They put heavy
16:00machine guns
16:00dug into the embankments
16:02at opposite corners
16:03of each field,
16:04firing across the diagonals,
16:06so that anything
16:07entering the open ground
16:08was caught in crossfire
16:10from two directions
16:11at once.
16:12Light machine guns
16:13grazed the base
16:14of the side hedgerows
16:16to kill the men
16:17who did the sensible thing
16:18and hugged cover.
16:20And every one
16:21of those fields
16:22had pre-registered
16:23mortar concentrations
16:24dropped onto it
16:25the moment the Americans
16:26were pinned.
16:28That last piece
16:29is the one
16:29the veterans never forgot.
16:31German mortar fire
16:32causes much as 75%
16:34of all American casualties
16:36in Normandy.
16:37Not tanks.
16:38Not the 88.
16:40Mortars.
16:42Falling on men
16:43lying flat
16:43in a field
16:44the size of a couple
16:45of city blocks.
16:47Four or five
16:48German positions
16:49could stop an entire
16:50American infantry battalion.
16:52American commanders
16:53discovered that
16:54within days.
16:55In the American answer,
16:56the thing they had
16:57been trained to do,
16:58the thing combat lessons
16:59had been preaching,
17:00did not work here.
17:03Maneuver did not work
17:04because you cannot
17:06flank a room
17:06with four walls
17:07when every room
17:09behind it
17:09is also walled.
17:11Artillery barely worked
17:13because you could not
17:14see to adjust it
17:15and the Germans
17:16were often less
17:16than 300 yards away,
17:18close enough
17:19that your own shells
17:20endangered your own men.
17:22Company commanders
17:23could not use
17:24their 60mm mortars
17:25effectively
17:26because no one
17:27could observe
17:27the fall of shot.
17:29Platoons
17:30hacking through
17:30the vegetation
17:31lost their sense
17:32of direction entirely
17:33and could not
17:34find themselves
17:35on a map.
17:36And the tanks,
17:37which were supposed
17:38to be the answer
17:39to everything,
17:40could not get
17:41through the walls.
17:42A Sherman that tried
17:43to climb a hedgerow
17:44reared up,
17:45exposed its thin belly,
17:47and died.
17:48So the tanks
17:49stayed on the roads
17:50where the Germans
17:51were waiting.
17:52And the 15th of June
17:54happened again
17:55and again.
17:57Somebody had to do
17:58the arithmetic
17:58and somebody did.
18:00Lieutenant Colonel
18:01Robert R. Ploger
18:03commanded the 121st
18:05Engineer Combat Battalion
18:06in the 29th Division.
18:08His engineers
18:09had worked out
18:10that you could blow
18:10a hole in a hedgerow
18:12with demolitions.
18:1350 pounds
18:14would do it reliably.
18:15So Ploger sat down
18:17and worked out
18:17what that meant
18:18at scale.
18:19One tank company,
18:21one attack,
18:22a mile and a half
18:24of advance.
18:2534 hedgerows.
18:2817 tons
18:29of explosive.
18:30Per company.
18:31Per attack.
18:33Carried by hand
18:34under mortar fire
18:35by men who had
18:36to dig it into
18:37a root-filled
18:38earth wall
18:39while the Germans
18:40watched the spot
18:40where the tank
18:41had stopped.
18:43The number
18:43was not merely
18:44impractical.
18:45It was an announcement
18:46that the American way
18:47of doing this
18:48was finished
18:48and something else
18:49had to be invented.
18:50In the middle of a battle
18:52by the people
18:53already in it.
18:55And here is the detail
18:56that tells you
18:57the Germans
18:57had noticed
18:58the Americans
18:58were struggling
18:59and had noticed
19:01something else, too.
19:03Prisoners taken
19:04during the hedgerow
19:05fighting were interrogated
19:06and their assessments
19:07were written down
19:08and circulated
19:09because that is what
19:10this army did
19:10with everything.
19:12An experienced corporal
19:13from the 275th
19:15Infantry Division
19:16gave his opinion
19:17of American infantry
19:18to the men
19:18who had captured him.
19:20He said the Americans
19:21used their infantry
19:22cautiously.
19:23He said they failed
19:24to take positions
19:25that were barely held.
19:27He said his side
19:28was baffled
19:29that American artillery
19:30barrages
19:31were not followed up
19:32by a determined
19:33infantry assault.
19:35And then,
19:36he said the line
19:36that should have
19:37frightened every man
19:38who heard it.
19:39If they used it
19:40the way the Russians do,
19:42they would be
19:42in Paris now.
19:44That is a German
19:46enlisted man
19:46in captivity
19:47in the summer
19:48of 1944
19:49telling his captors
19:51exactly how
19:52to beat him.
19:54The Americans
19:55wrote it down
19:55and passed it around
19:56because of course
19:58they did.
19:59But the corporal
20:00was describing
20:00a weakness
20:01that no bulletin
20:02could fix.
20:03You cannot publish
20:04your way
20:05out of a stone wall.
20:06Somewhere in Normandy,
20:08someone was going
20:09to have to solve
20:10this the hard way.
20:11And on the 24th of June,
20:13in a field
20:14well behind the front,
20:16a general
20:16who had just watched
20:17his division
20:18shatter itself
20:19ordered an attack
20:20that nobody
20:21was allowed to win.
20:23On the 24th of June,
20:241944,
20:26in a field
20:26in the rear area
20:27of the 29th Infantry Division,
20:29an American infantry platoon
20:31attacked a hedgerow
20:32that had no Germans
20:33behind it.
20:34A tank platoon
20:36supported them.
20:37Three engineer teams
20:38went in with them.
20:40Officers stood around
20:41the edges of the field
20:42with notebooks,
20:43watching.
20:44And when it was over,
20:45they did it again.
20:47And again.
20:49All day,
20:50a rehearsal,
20:51on ground
20:52nobody needed to capture,
20:53while eight miles away,
20:55the division's
20:55rifle companies
20:56were being killed
20:57at a rate
20:58that would eventually
20:58cost the 29th
20:59almost 10,000 men.
21:02That decision,
21:03to pull men
21:05out of a battle
21:06they were losing
21:06and spend a day
21:07attacking nothing,
21:08is one of the most
21:10important things
21:11the United States Army
21:12did in the Second World War.
21:14The background is ugly,
21:16and it should be.
21:17On the 16th of June,
21:19the 29th had attacked
21:20towards Saint-Lô
21:21and gone nowhere.
21:23It attacked
21:24for two more days,
21:25and by the night
21:26of the 18th,
21:27the division was exhausted,
21:29bloodied,
21:29and finished
21:30as an offensive force.
21:32On the 20th,
21:34the 175th Infantry,
21:36and a company
21:36of the 747th Tank Battalion,
21:39tried again
21:40near Villiers-Fossard,
21:41using the doctrine
21:42they had been taught.
21:44Tanks lead,
21:45infantry follows.
21:47The tanks blew a hedgerow
21:48and drove on alone.
21:50German machine guns
21:51pinned the infantry
21:53in the field behind them.
21:54The tanks,
21:55now naked,
21:56were killed
21:57one after another.
21:59Four Shermans lost,
22:00and everyone who survived
22:02walked back
22:03to where they had started.
22:05General Charles Gerhardt,
22:07commanding the division,
22:08turned to his
22:09assistant division commander
22:10and gave him a job.
22:12Norman Coda,
22:13the same Coda
22:14who had walked upright
22:15on Omaha Beach
22:1619 days earlier,
22:18getting men off the sand,
22:19was told to find a way
22:20to beat the hedgerow,
22:22and to do it now.
22:24What Coda's people produced
22:26was not doctrine.
22:28It was the opposite
22:29of doctrine.
22:31Army manuals said
22:32tanks lead
22:33or infantry leads.
22:34The 29th Division's answer
22:37was that neither leads.
22:38That a single tank,
22:40a single infantry squad,
22:41and an engineer team
22:42fight as one organism
22:44inside one field,
22:45and none of them
22:46goes anywhere
22:47without the others.
22:49But the part that matters here
22:50is not the tactic.
22:52It is the 24th of June.
22:54They rehearsed it
22:55before they used it.
22:56And then they debriefed
22:58the rehearsal
22:58exactly the way
22:59they debriefed a battle,
23:01which is to say,
23:02they let the men
23:03who had just done it
23:04tell them
23:04what was wrong with it.
23:06The riflemen said
23:07the light machine gun
23:08was useless.
23:09It could not be moved
23:10fast enough
23:11to keep up with an advance
23:12across a 200-yard field.
23:14They wanted brownings instead,
23:16carried by men,
23:17firing on the move.
23:19The staff wrote it down
23:20and changed it.
23:22A mortar observer
23:23discovered something
23:24nobody had planned.
23:25If he stood
23:26on the rear deck
23:27of the Sherman,
23:28he could see over the wall
23:29into the next field
23:31and adjust his own rounds
23:32onto the Germans.
23:34Nobody had authorized
23:35a man to stand
23:36on a tank in an assault.
23:38It went into the method.
23:40The mortar crews
23:41worked out
23:42that they could blind
23:43German observation
23:44with smoke
23:44and cover the squad's
23:46rush that way.
23:47In.
23:49The infantry found
23:50they could talk
23:50to the tank crews
23:51through a telephone
23:52strapped to the back deck,
23:54wired into the tank's
23:55intercom,
23:55so that a rifleman
23:57lying behind the Sherman
23:58could put its gun
23:59on a machine gun
24:00he could see
24:01and the tankers
24:02could not.
24:03In.
24:04And the tankers
24:05admitted something
24:06that could easily
24:07have gone unsaid.
24:08Their machine gun fire,
24:10sprayed along the base
24:11of the far hedgerow,
24:12was going to kill
24:13American infantry
24:14unless it was controlled
24:15very tightly.
24:17They said so out loud,
24:19in front of the infantry,
24:21before anyone died
24:22proving it.
24:23Then the division
24:25operations staff
24:26drew the whole thing,
24:27phases,
24:28diagrams,
24:29explanatory notes,
24:30and issued it
24:31as a training memorandum
24:33to every regiment
24:34in the division.
24:34And the regiments
24:36went away
24:36and practiced it.
24:38Eight days.
24:39From a failed attack
24:41to a written,
24:42illustrated method
24:43in the hands
24:43of every rifle company
24:45in the division.
24:47On the 1st of July,
24:49COTA summed up
24:50where the 29th had been.
24:52They had been organized
24:53to assault a beach,
24:54he said.
24:55They had lost
24:56a great many
24:57of their key men
24:58doing it.
24:59Then they had walked
25:00straight into
25:01a different kind of war
25:02that they were not
25:03organized for at all.
25:05And now,
25:06finally,
25:06they had been given
25:07time to reorganize
25:09and give this warfare
25:10some thought.
25:12I think we will go
25:13next time,
25:14he said.
25:15Meanwhile,
25:15the same process
25:16was running
25:17in a dozen places
25:18at once,
25:19because nobody
25:20had told anyone
25:20to wait for permission.
25:23The 747th Tank Battalion
25:26welded four-foot lengths
25:27of commercial pipe
25:28to the front
25:29of a Sherman
25:30so it could ram
25:31the wall
25:31and punch two holes
25:33for the engineer's charges.
25:351st Lieutenant Charles B. Green
25:37of the same battalion
25:38looked at that
25:39and built something better
25:41out of salvaged
25:42railroad track.
25:43A bumper strong enough
25:45to tear through
25:46almost any hedgerow
25:47on its own.
25:48Ploger's engineers,
25:50the men who had done
25:51the 17-ton arithmetic,
25:53discovered that
25:54packing the explosive
25:55into empty
25:56105-millimeter
25:58shell casings
25:59made it so much
26:00more efficient
26:01that 15 pounds
26:03now did what
26:0450 had done before.
26:06And in the 2nd Armored Division,
26:08some officers
26:09and enlisted men
26:10of the 102nd
26:11Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron
26:13were standing around
26:14arguing about the problem
26:16the way soldiers do
26:17when one of them,
26:18a man from Tennessee
26:19named Roberts,
26:21said,
26:21What if we got
26:22some saw teeth
26:23and put them
26:24on the front of the tank
26:25and cut through
26:26these hedges?
26:29Most of the men
26:30standing there
26:30laughed at him.
26:32Sergeant Curtis Cullen
26:33did not laugh.
26:35Cullen was 29,
26:36from Cranford, New Jersey,
26:38and he took the idea
26:39away and built it,
26:41cutting up scrap steel
26:42from a German roadblock
26:43into a four-pronged plow
26:45and welding it
26:46to the nose of a Sherman.
26:48The tank went through
26:49the wall
26:49instead of over it,
26:51belly down,
26:52gun level.
26:53On the 14th of July,
26:55General Bradley
26:55came to watch.
26:57He stood there
26:58while Shermans
26:58went through hedgerows
26:59as though they were
27:00pasteboard,
27:01brush and bushes
27:02flying into the air.
27:04And then he gave an order
27:05that tells you
27:06what First Army
27:07had become.
27:08Between the 14th
27:10and the 25th of July,
27:1111 days,
27:13First Army Ordnance
27:14built over 500
27:15hedgerow cutters.
27:17Welders were pulled in
27:19from the beachhead
27:19and shipped over
27:20from England.
27:21The steel came
27:22from the German
27:23beach obstacles
27:24the Americans
27:25had waited past
27:25on D-Day.
27:27By late July,
27:2860% of First Army's
27:30Shermans
27:31were wearing them.
27:32Cullen tried to give
27:34the credit to Roberts.
27:35It disappeared
27:36in the publicity anyway.
27:38So,
27:39an idea from a man
27:40everybody laughed at,
27:42taken seriously
27:43by a sergeant,
27:44tested by a division,
27:46written up by a staff,
27:47and welded onto
27:48half an army
27:49in 11 days.
27:51Now hold that image
27:53because the obvious question
27:54is the one
27:55this whole story
27:56turns on.
27:58The German army
27:59was full of intelligent,
28:00experienced professionals
28:02sitting in those same
28:03hedgerows,
28:04watching the Americans fail,
28:06and then suddenly
28:07stop failing.
28:08Why did nothing comparable
28:10come back the other way?
28:11On the 29th of June,
28:131944,
28:15Adolf Hitler
28:15settled an argument
28:16that had been running
28:17inside his own
28:18high command
28:18since the invasion began.
28:20And in doing so,
28:21he answered our question
28:22before the Germans
28:23in Normandy
28:24ever got the chance to.
28:26Field Marshal
28:27von Rundstedt
28:28had wanted a mobile defense.
28:30Field Marshal Rommel
28:31had wanted to stop
28:32the Allies
28:33on the beaches.
28:34Hitler had never resolved it,
28:36so the German army
28:37had done neither properly.
28:39Now,
28:40with his reserves
28:41burned up around Caen,
28:43he issued his own solution.
28:44The Allies must never
28:46be given room
28:47to maneuver.
28:48German forces
28:50would stand in the hedgerows
28:51and fight to the last man
28:53for every field.
28:54General Paul Hauser's
28:567th Army
28:57had 35,000 combat troops
28:59and about 80 tanks
29:00holding the American front.
29:02And from that day forward,
29:04what they were permitted to do
29:05had been decided for them
29:07in East Prussia
29:08by a man
29:09who had never seen
29:10a hedgerow.
29:12Now,
29:12hold that against
29:13what was happening
29:14eight miles away
29:15in the 29th Division's
29:16rear area
29:17where a lieutenant colonel
29:19was letting riflemen
29:20tell him
29:20his new tactic
29:21was wrong.
29:23But I want to be fair
29:24to the Germans here
29:25because the easy version
29:27of this story
29:28is a lie.
29:29The German army
29:30invented
29:31modern military
29:32self-criticism.
29:34After the conquest
29:35of Poland
29:36in 1939,
29:37after a victory,
29:39German officers
29:40produced
29:40after-action reports
29:42of such brutal honesty
29:43that historians
29:44still hold them up
29:45as the finest example
29:47we have
29:47of a military institution
29:49refusing to flatter itself.
29:51They had won
29:52in five weeks
29:54and they wrote down
29:55everything
29:55that had nearly gone wrong.
29:58Then they rebuilt
29:59their training around it
30:00and eight months later
30:02they destroyed
30:03the French army.
30:04So the Germans
30:05were not incapable
30:06of learning.
30:07In 1940,
30:09they were the best
30:09in the world at it.
30:11Which makes what happened
30:13next stranger,
30:14not simpler.
30:16Consider a man
30:17we know about
30:18only because the Americans
30:19captured him.
30:20He was a German
30:21armored crewman
30:22taken in the bocage
30:24and he told
30:25his interrogators
30:26what he thought
30:26of the way
30:27his own side
30:28was fighting.
30:29He called
30:30his superior's tactics
30:31unwise.
30:33He explained it
30:34with the precision
30:34of a professional.
30:36The Panther's gun
30:37was superb
30:37at long range
30:38and at long range
30:40the Panther was safe.
30:42In the hedgerows
30:43there was no long range.
30:45There were only corners
30:46and behind every corner
30:48something waiting
30:49to shoot him
30:50in the flank
30:50at 40 yards.
30:52Putting those tanks
30:53in that country
30:54was throwing them away.
30:56He was completely right.
30:58It is exactly
30:59the kind of observation
31:00that wins battles
31:01when it reaches
31:02the people making decisions.
31:03And the only army
31:05that ever wrote it down
31:06was the one
31:07that had taken him prisoner.
31:08That is the shape
31:09of the thing.
31:11Not that Germans
31:11could not see
31:12that what they saw
31:14had nowhere to go.
31:15Understand how a German
31:17after-action report
31:18was made.
31:19It was a document
31:21composed by an officer
31:22describing his unit
31:23for his superiors.
31:25It was written
31:26in the voice of command
31:27and it moved upward
31:29through channels
31:30toward a general staff
31:31that would decide
31:32what, if anything,
31:33was doctrine.
31:35There was no procedure
31:36anywhere in the German system
31:38for sitting a rifle company
31:40on the ground
31:40and letting a Gefreiter
31:42say the captain
31:42remembered it wrong.
31:44So the German army's memory
31:45was the memory
31:46of its officers.
31:48Which meant that
31:49when the officer was killed
31:50and in Normandy
31:51they were killed constantly,
31:53the lesson died with him.
31:54And when the officer
31:56was mistaken,
31:57nothing in the system
31:58was designed
31:59to correct him
32:00from below.
32:01Now here is where
32:03it stops being a matter
32:04of organizational habit
32:05and becomes something else.
32:07In August of 1938,
32:10German military law
32:11had been rewritten
32:12to create an offense
32:13called
32:15Wehrkraftszerzetzung,
32:16undermining the war effort.
32:18It criminalized
32:20open expressions
32:21of doubt
32:21about German victory
32:23and criticism
32:24of the political
32:25and military leadership.
32:27It carried the death penalty.
32:29In 1939,
32:30it was extended
32:31to civilians
32:32and the vagueness
32:33was deliberate.
32:35Remarks made
32:36inside a man's own family
32:37could be used
32:38against him
32:39by his relatives.
32:40By the 30th of June 1944,
32:44Wehrmacht criminal statistics
32:45recorded over 14,000
32:48convictions under it.
32:50Historians who have
32:51gone through the records
32:52believe the true figure
32:53is closer to 30,000.
32:56Put a face on it
32:57because the numbers
32:58slide off otherwise.
33:00Oskar Kusch
33:01was a U-boat officer,
33:0325 years old,
33:04who had been in submarines
33:06since before the war.
33:07He let his crew
33:09take Hitler's portrait
33:10down in the wardroom.
33:11He said out loud
33:13among his own officers
33:14that the war
33:15could not be won.
33:17In January of 1944,
33:20his own first watch officer
33:22denounced him.
33:23A naval court in Bremen
33:25tried him
33:26in a single day,
33:27and although there had
33:28initially been
33:29a recommendation
33:29for imprisonment,
33:31the sentence
33:31handed down
33:32was death.
33:34That spring,
33:35a German firing squad
33:37shot him.
33:38Now go back to page 22
33:40of Combat Lessons.
33:42Staff Sergeant
33:43Richard DeLand
33:44telling the United States
33:45Army in print
33:46that it had not taught him
33:48to observe properly.
33:50Captain Gordon
33:51reporting that his men
33:52lay in the dark
33:53in Tunisia,
33:54calling out for an officer.
33:56Captain Putnam
33:57confessing that his regiment
33:59let a German battalion
34:00escape
34:01because nobody had trained
34:02them to walk
34:03with tanks.
34:05Every one of those statements
34:07is a criticism
34:08of the conduct
34:08of the war
34:09made by a serving soldier
34:11published under the signature
34:13of the chief of staff.
34:15In the German army
34:16in 1944,
34:18several of them
34:19were capital offenses.
34:21Across the whole
34:22of the Second World War,
34:24German military courts
34:25handed down
34:26something on the order
34:27of 33,000
34:28death sentences.
34:30Scholars estimate
34:32at least 20,000
34:33were carried out.
34:34For comparison,
34:36over the same war,
34:37the United States Army
34:38executed 146
34:40of its own soldiers.
34:41And exactly one
34:43of those
34:43was for desertion.
34:4520,000
34:46against 146.
34:49That gap
34:50is not a fact
34:51about cruelty.
34:52It is a fact
34:53about information.
34:55An army
34:56that shoots men
34:57for saying
34:57the wrong thing
34:58has purchased
34:59silence.
35:00And silence
35:01is the one thing
35:03a learning organization
35:04cannot survive.
35:06Every German soldier
35:07in Normandy
35:08who worked out
35:09something true
35:09about American tactics
35:11had to weigh
35:12whether saying it
35:13in the wrong words
35:13to the wrong man
35:15on the wrong day
35:16would end with him
35:17in a wood
35:17facing a squad.
35:19Most of them
35:20made the sensible choice.
35:22And the German army
35:23went deaf.
35:25Meanwhile,
35:26it kept fighting
35:27magnificently,
35:28which is what
35:28confuses people.
35:30Those hedgerow
35:30defenses were superb.
35:32German mortar fire
35:34was killing
35:34three out of every
35:35four American casualties.
35:38Their positions
35:39were wired together
35:39with field telephone lines
35:41so that observers
35:42and trees
35:43could bring accurate
35:44fire down
35:44on any field
35:45the Americans entered.
35:47They were not losing
35:48because they were bad.
35:49They were losing
35:50because they could
35:51only get better
35:52at the speed
35:53one man at the top
35:54could think.
35:56And on the 11th of July
35:571944,
35:59at six in the morning,
36:01two American divisions
36:02attacked those defenses
36:03using methods
36:05that had not existed
36:06three weeks earlier.
36:07And the results
36:08were so far
36:09outside the German model
36:11of what these amateurs
36:12could do
36:12that 7th Army's line
36:14came apart
36:15in five hours.
36:17But that same month,
36:19another American division
36:20had walked into
36:21the bocage
36:22with the same training,
36:23the same memorandum,
36:25and the same rehearsals,
36:26and had been destroyed.
36:292,100 casualties
36:31in two days.
36:32The difference between them
36:34is the thing
36:34that finally explains
36:36why this worked at all.
36:38At six o'clock
36:38in the morning,
36:39on the 11th of July,
36:411944,
36:42after a 20-minute bombardment
36:44by five battalions
36:45of artillery,
36:46the 2nd Battalion
36:47of the 116th Infantry
36:49crossed its line
36:51of departure
36:51east of San Lowe.
36:53This was the 29th Division.
36:56These were the men
36:57who had gone nowhere
36:58in June.
36:59Company B
37:00of the 121st Engineers
37:02and Company A
37:03of the 747th Tank Battalion
37:06went with them,
37:07and the two lead rifle companies
37:09had been trained
37:09and organized
37:10for exactly one thing,
37:12the method rehearsed
37:13in that empty field
37:14on the 24th of June.
37:17The first hour
37:18was slow
37:18and discouraging.
37:19The Germans held
37:21the first hedgerows hard
37:22and the battalion
37:23had to grind through them
37:25field by field.
37:26But it did not stop.
37:28The Sherman
37:29noses into the wall
37:30and opens up
37:31with white phosphorus
37:32into the far corners
37:33where the heavy machine guns are.
37:36It walks its own
37:37machine gun fire
37:38along the base
37:39of the opposite hedgerow.
37:41The 60mm mortar
37:43drops rounds
37:43into the field
37:44behind the Germans
37:45so they cannot be reinforced,
37:47adjusted by an observer
37:48standing on the tank's
37:49rear deck.
37:51The squad crosses
37:52the open ground
37:53away from the flanking walls,
37:54and when they get close enough
37:56to mask the tank's fire,
37:57they throw grenades
37:58over the hedgerow
37:59while the Sherman
38:00backs off
38:01and the engineers
38:02pack 15 pounds
38:03into the holes
38:04it has punched.
38:05The wall blows.
38:07The tank comes through.
38:09The infantry clears
38:10what is left.
38:11Then the whole machine
38:13picks itself up
38:14and does it again,
38:1540 yards further on.
38:17By 11 o'clock,
38:19the organized German defense
38:20in front of that battalion
38:21eased,
38:22and then it collapsed.
38:24The 2nd Battalion
38:25took the ridge
38:26in front of it,
38:27wheeled right,
38:28and kept moving.
38:29Before nightfall,
38:31it had advanced
38:32another mile
38:32toward Martinville
38:33and was sitting in position
38:35to keep going
38:35the next morning.
38:37In the context
38:38of the bocage,
38:39where an entire battalion
38:40could be stopped
38:41for a day
38:42by four men
38:43and a machine gun,
38:44that was not an advance.
38:46It was a rupture.
38:48Infantry casualties
38:49were relatively light,
38:50and not one Sherman
38:51was lost.
38:5330 minutes' drive
38:54to the east
38:55on the same morning
38:56at 6.30,
38:57the same thing
38:58was happening
38:58on the worst
38:59piece of ground
39:00in the American sector.
39:02Hill 192
39:03was the highest feature
39:04near Saint-Lô,
39:05and from it,
39:06German observers
39:07could watch nearly everything
39:08two American corps did.
39:10The 2nd Infantry Division
39:12had attacked it in June,
39:14four days running,
39:14and failed,
39:15at a cost of 1,253 men.
39:19Now the 38th Infantry
39:21went at it again,
39:22frontally,
39:23two battalions abreast,
39:25supported by two tank companies
39:26of the 741st,
39:28and an engineer company,
39:30using the 2nd Division's
39:31own version
39:32of the hedgerow team,
39:33in which engineers
39:34moved with every single tank
39:36and with every single squad,
39:38and two riflemen
39:39were permanently detailed
39:40to nothing
39:41but keeping Germans
39:42off their Sherman.
39:43The Germans fought for it.
39:46One tank company
39:47lost six Shermans
39:48to Panzerfaust
39:49in the first stage.
39:50At a place
39:51the Americans
39:51named Kraut Corner,
39:53a German position
39:54refused to surrender
39:55and was buried alive
39:57by a dozer tank.
39:58By noon,
40:00the 38th Infantry
40:01was on top of Hill 192,
40:03and the Germans
40:04were pulling south.
40:06Now here is the detail
40:07from that day
40:08I want you to carry with you
40:09for the rest of this story,
40:10because it is the whole argument
40:12in one sentence.
40:14One battalion commander
40:15reported afterward
40:16that in the attack
40:18of the 11th of July,
40:20he lost not a single man
40:21to sniper fire.
40:23In previous operations,
40:24snipers had caused
40:26more than half
40:26of all his casualties.
40:29That is what happens
40:30when a hundred men
40:31who survived the last fight
40:33are allowed to say out loud
40:34what killed their friends,
40:36and somebody writes it down
40:37and changes
40:38how the next attack
40:39is organized.
40:41The supporting fire
40:42that day
40:43was on a scale
40:44the Germans
40:44had no answer to either.
40:46The 2nd Division's
40:48own artillery
40:48fired 20,000 rounds
40:51in support
40:51of that single attack.
40:53All told,
40:54American guns dropped
40:5645 tons
40:57of high explosive
40:58onto Hill 192.
41:01So,
41:01the method worked.
41:03Rehearse it,
41:04debrief the rehearsal,
41:06publish it,
41:07and the same division
41:08that failed in June
41:09ruptures the line
41:10in July.
41:12Except,
41:13that is not
41:14the whole truth,
41:15and I would be lying
41:16to you
41:16if I stopped there.
41:18Go back one week
41:19to the 4th of July
41:20and about 20 miles west
41:22to the 83rd Infantry Division.
41:24The 83rd had arrived
41:26in Normandy
41:26in late June,
41:28taken over static positions
41:29near Carentan
41:30from the exhausted
41:31101st Airborne,
41:32and done everything right.
41:34It had gone
41:35and asked the paratroopers
41:36what the hedgerow fighting
41:37was actually like.
41:38It had built
41:40combined arms
41:41instruction teams
41:42at division level.
41:43It had brought in men
41:44from the 101st
41:45and from the 2nd Armored,
41:47men who had already
41:48fought in this terrain,
41:50to teach its own
41:51tank infantry
41:52engineer teams.
41:53It had worked out
41:54a two-tank method
41:55of its own,
41:56with a support tank
41:57and an assault tank,
41:59that on paper
41:59was more sophisticated
42:01than what the 29th
42:02was using.
42:03On the 4th of July,
42:04it attacked south
42:05from Carentan
42:06toward Perrier,
42:07with the 746th Tank Battalion,
42:10on a narrow strip
42:11of dry ground
42:12between marshes.
42:13And it came apart.
42:15The units had never done
42:17any of it under fire.
42:19The moment the German mortars
42:20came down,
42:21the careful choreography
42:22evaporated.
42:23Tank infantry coordination
42:25broke first,
42:26and then broke badly enough
42:27that men started
42:28threatening each other.
42:29At least one infantry commander
42:31told an armor officer
42:32he would shoot him
42:33for failing to support
42:34an attack.
42:35A tank commander
42:36threatened to gun down
42:37infantrymen
42:38who had left
42:39his vehicle uncovered.
42:40By nightfall,
42:42on the 5th of July,
42:43the division had advanced
42:441,600 yards.
42:46It had lost
42:472,100 men doing it.
42:502,100 casualties
42:52for nine-tenths of a mile,
42:54by a division that had
42:55trained specifically for this,
42:57using lessons gathered
42:58specifically from men
42:59who had survived it.
43:00So what separated
43:02the 83rd on the 4th of July
43:04from the 29th on the 11th?
43:06Not the tactics.
43:08Not the training memoranda.
43:09Not the quality of the men.
43:12The 29th division's method
43:14had been built
43:14by the survivors
43:15of the 29th division's
43:16own failures.
43:18The same officers,
43:19the same sergeants,
43:20the same companies,
43:22correcting themselves
43:23in front of each other.
43:24The 83rd had been handed
43:26somebody else's answers.
43:27The loop did not
43:29transmit knowledge.
43:30It transmitted knowledge
43:32through the men
43:32who had paid for it.
43:33And when you cut those men
43:35out of the circuit,
43:36the circuit did not carry.
43:38Which raises the question
43:39that decides the rest
43:40of the war in the West.
43:42Because on the 25th of July,
43:441st Army was going to
43:46stop crawling through fields
43:47and start moving
43:48at 30 miles a day.
43:50And a system built
43:51on sitting men down
43:52and asking them questions
43:54was about to be outrun
43:55by its own army.
43:56Between the 19th
43:57and the 25th of July, 1944,
44:00the 22nd Infantry
44:01and the 66th Armored Regiment
44:03did something
44:04that would have looked
44:05to a German officer
44:06watching from the air
44:07like an army
44:08that had forgotten
44:09there was a war on.
44:10They held classes.
44:13Tankers taught infantrymen
44:14how to mount a Sherman,
44:16how to ride it,
44:17how to get off it fast.
44:19Riflemen practiced
44:20camouflaging themselves
44:21with vegetation
44:21while sitting on the back deck
44:23of a moving tank.
44:24Tank crews ran instruction
44:26on the proper distribution
44:27of main gun
44:28and machine gun fire
44:29and on the correct way
44:30to use the rhinoceros cutters
44:31now welded to three quarters
44:33of the regiment's tanks.
44:35Platoons of the 22nd
44:37rehearsed with the 66th Armored
44:39over and over
44:40until the tank crews
44:41and the squads
44:42knew each other's faces.
44:44Six days of school
44:45inside a beachhead,
44:47four miles
44:48from the Germans.
44:49This was General Maurice Rose's
44:51Combat Command A
44:53of the 2nd Armored Division
44:54preparing for Operation Cobra.
44:57And what they had invented
44:59was the opposite
45:00of everything
45:01the bocage
45:01had forced on them.
45:03Eight infantrymen
45:04riding on the deck
45:05of every Sherman
45:06in the second wave,
45:08dismounting only
45:09when the lead tanks
45:10hit resistance.
45:12The infantry commander
45:13of the 22nd reported
45:15that his men
45:16were enthusiastic
45:16about riding the Shermans,
45:18as he put it,
45:19Russian style.
45:21They had worked out
45:22the advantages themselves.
45:24Up on the tank,
45:25you are above
45:25the grazing fire,
45:26you can see,
45:27and a target moving
45:29at irregular speed
45:30is a target
45:31that is hard to hit.
45:32On the 26th of July,
45:34the day after
45:35the saturation bombing
45:36that opened Cobra,
45:38Combat Command A
45:39passed through
45:40the 30th Infantry Division
45:41and went south.
45:43Artillery observers
45:44rode in the lead tanks.
45:47Infantry battalion commanders
45:48rode in command tanks
45:50with man-pack radios
45:51so they could control
45:52riflemen and tankers
45:54with the same breath.
45:55In two days,
45:56they went more than
45:57six miles
45:58into the German
45:597th Army's rear.
46:00They lost three tanks
46:02and fewer than 200 men.
46:04Understand what that number
46:06means against everything
46:07you have just heard.
46:08The 83rd Division
46:10had spent
46:102,100 casualties
46:12on 1,600 yards
46:15on the 4th of July.
46:17Three weeks later,
46:19an American combat command
46:20covered six miles
46:21at a cost of under 200.
46:24Same army,
46:25same enemy.
46:2722 days.
46:29So now we can answer
46:30the question
46:31this whole story
46:32has been building toward.
46:33What was the thing
46:35American units did
46:36after every battle
46:37that no German unit
46:39ever did?
46:40It was not writing reports.
46:42Everyone wrote reports.
46:44It was this.
46:46They assembled the men
46:47who had just fought,
46:48including the ones
46:49who had failed,
46:51including the ones
46:51who had run,
46:53including privates
46:54who could not read a map,
46:55and they made them say
46:57out loud,
46:58in front of their own officers,
47:00what had actually happened
47:01and whose fault it was.
47:04Rank was suspended
47:05for the duration.
47:07The account of the lowest man present
47:09was treated as evidence.
47:12And then the institution
47:14took the most humiliating parts
47:16of what he said,
47:17printed them,
47:18and mailed them
47:19to the people responsible.
47:21An army that does that
47:23is an army that has agreed,
47:25as a matter of policy,
47:26to be told it is wrong
47:28by the youngest
47:29and least important person
47:31in the room.
47:32Nothing in the German system
47:34permitted it,
47:35and by 1944,
47:37the law of the German state
47:39punished it with death.
47:41And once you see the shape of it,
47:43you find it everywhere
47:44in the American war.
47:46You find it in the Ardennes
47:48in January of 1945,
47:50where Marshall,
47:51the same man from the Coral Island,
47:53was sitting down units
47:55that had been through Bastogne,
47:57and running the same procedure
47:58in freezing Belgian villages.
48:00You find it in Army
48:02Ground Forces headquarters,
48:04where the observer network
48:05kept feeding the schools
48:06and the training camps.
48:081,500 reports from Europe
48:10by the end of the war.
48:12You find it in 1st Army's
48:14Battle Experiences pamphlets,
48:16a few pages at a time,
48:17going out to units
48:18still in the line.
48:19And you find it,
48:21most completely,
48:22in a rear command post
48:23at Hervé in Belgium
48:25in the 9th of February, 1945.
48:28That was where two men
48:29from 5th Corps,
48:30Master Sergeant Forrest Pogue
48:32and Staff Sergeant
48:33Jose Topete,
48:35sat down with a lieutenant
48:36of the 1st Infantry Division
48:38named John Spaulding.
48:40Spaulding was 30 years old,
48:42from Owensboro, Kentucky.
48:43On the 6th of June,
48:45he had led the 1st section
48:46of Company E,
48:4716th Infantry,
48:49onto Easy Red
48:50on Omaha Beach.
48:52His section had found a way
48:53up off that beach
48:54through a minefield
48:55and had gotten to the top
48:56of the bluff
48:57by 9 in the morning,
48:58one of the first penetrations
49:00of the German coastal defenses
49:01anywhere on Omaha.
49:03Five men from that one section
49:05were later given
49:06the Distinguished Service Cross
49:08by Eisenhower personally.
49:10Spaulding was one of them.
49:12By February,
49:13he was finished.
49:14He had been wounded in September.
49:17He had been through the Hurtgen.
49:19He was in very bad health,
49:21and within two weeks,
49:22he would be evacuated
49:23out of the theater
49:24for combat exhaustion.
49:26Pogue and Tepetti got to him
49:27with almost no time to spare.
49:29And this is what
49:31a Distinguished Service Cross winner
49:33chose to put
49:34into the permanent record
49:35of the United States Army
49:36about the greatest day
49:37of his life.
49:39He told them
49:40the Navy had put him ashore,
49:411,500 yards
49:43from where he was supposed to be,
49:44and then said,
49:46carefully,
49:47that he was in no position
49:48to know
49:49whether they could have done
49:49any better.
49:51He told them his radio
49:52was shot away,
49:53and he was so dazed
49:55he retracted the antenna
49:56and put the useless thing
49:57back on his shoulder anyway,
49:59because that is how
50:00he had been trained.
50:02Your training stays with you
50:03even when you are scared,
50:05he said.
50:06He told them
50:07that on top of the bluff,
50:09he traded a captured German rifle
50:11for a carbine
50:12and did not check it,
50:14and then ran into a German
50:16and pulled the trigger,
50:17and nothing happened
50:18because the safety was on.
50:20And when he grabbed
50:21for the safety,
50:22he hit the clip release instead,
50:23and his ammunition
50:24fell on the ground.
50:26And he ran 50 yards
50:28in nothing flat.
50:29I did a fool thing,
50:31he said.
50:32And then he explained
50:33why he was telling them.
50:35That business of not checking guns
50:37is certainly not habit forming.
50:40He is putting his own
50:41near-death blunder
50:42on the record,
50:43so that some replacement
50:45he will never meet
50:46does not repeat it.
50:48That is the whole thing
50:49in one sentence
50:50from one exhausted lieutenant
50:52in a Belgian command post.
50:55One month later,
50:56on a bridge over the Rhine,
50:58both armies would react
50:59to the same event
51:01within four days of each other.
51:03And what each of them
51:04sent to the scene
51:05tells you everything
51:06about which one
51:08was going to win.
51:09On the 7th of March, 1945,
51:12at about four in the afternoon,
51:13a 22-year-old lieutenant
51:15from West Point, Nebraska,
51:17walked onto the Ludendorff Bridge
51:19at Rehmagen,
51:20while German engineers
51:21were still trying
51:22to blow it up underneath him.
51:24Carl Timmerman
51:26had commanded Company A
51:27of the 27th Armored Infantry Battalion
51:30for less than a day.
51:31He had been born in Frankfurt
51:33to an American soldier
51:34and a German mother,
51:35and as a boy in Nebraska,
51:37other children had called him
51:39Hitler.
51:40He got his company
51:41across a thousand feet
51:43of open steel
51:44and onto the east bank
51:45of the Rhine,
51:46and the war in the west
51:48was effectively decided.
51:50Now watch what each army
51:52sent to Rehmagen
51:53in the days that followed.
51:55This is where
51:55the whole story lands.
51:57The United States Army
51:59sent a historian.
52:01Lieutenant Ken Heckler,
52:0330 years old,
52:04led a four-man historical team
52:06attached to the 9th Armored Division.
52:09When word reached him,
52:11he went down to Rehmagen
52:12and worked his way
52:13through the men involved,
52:14about 30 officers
52:15and enlisted men,
52:16one after another,
52:17asking each of them
52:19what he had seen
52:19and when.
52:21He found Timmerman
52:22in a bombed-out house
52:23on the east bank,
52:24shaving.
52:26Timmerman's first reaction
52:27was to wonder
52:28what all the excitement
52:28was about.
52:30Heckler wrote down
52:31what a sergeant named
52:32Alex Drabik
52:33told him
52:33about being
52:34the first man across.
52:35Running,
52:36weaving,
52:38jouncing so hard
52:39he lost his helmet
52:39before he reached
52:40the far bank.
52:42A sergeant's helmet.
52:44Preserved
52:44because somebody thought
52:46a sergeant's account
52:46was worth preserving.
52:49Germany sent a court.
52:51On the 10th of March,
52:53Hitler appointed
52:54Lieutenant General
52:54Rudolf Huebner
52:55to head the Flying Special
52:57Court Martial West
52:58and ordered the arrest
53:00and trial
53:00of the officers
53:01responsible for the bridge.
53:03Huebner had no legal training.
53:06Army Group B's
53:08own legal officer
53:09offered him a copy
53:10of the German military code.
53:12Huebner waved it away
53:13and said the only authority
53:15he needed
53:15was the Führers.
53:18He acted as prosecutor
53:19and judge.
53:21His court came
53:22with its own execution squad.
53:25Major Hans Scheller
53:26had reached the bridge
53:27at a quarter past 11
53:29on the 7th,
53:30two hours before
53:31the Americans attacked,
53:32after running low on fuel
53:34and detouring
53:35around American tanks.
53:36He was condemned
53:37for failing to destroy it.
53:40Lieutenant Carl Heinz Peters
53:42had merely been passing through,
53:44trying to get
53:44an experimental
53:45anti-aircraft weapon
53:46back across the river.
53:48Condemned.
53:50Majors Herbert Strobel
53:52and August Kraft.
53:53Condemned.
53:55Captain Willi Bratke,
53:56who had actually wanted
53:58the bridge blown early
53:59and had been overruled,
54:01was sentenced to death
54:02in his absence.
54:03He survived only because
54:05the Americans
54:05had already taken him prisoner.
54:08The four others
54:09were taken into the woods
54:10near Wimbach
54:11and shot in the back
54:12of the neck
54:13and buried where they fell.
54:15One bridge,
54:16one week.
54:18One army
54:19sent men
54:20to ask what happened.
54:21The other
54:22sent men
54:23to make sure
54:23nobody could.
54:25And that is the answer
54:27to the question
54:27we started with,
54:2860 minutes
54:29and 18 months ago,
54:31on a coral island
54:32in the Pacific.
54:33The thing American troops
54:34did after almost
54:35every battle
54:36was sit down
54:37and tell on themselves,
54:39out loud,
54:40in front of their own officers,
54:42with their own failures
54:44left in.
54:46A private
54:46could contradict a captain
54:48and nothing happened to him.
54:49A sergeant
54:50could tell the chief of staff
54:52of the United States Army
54:53that its training
54:54had failed him
54:55and it got printed
54:56under that general's signature
54:57and mailed
54:58to every camp
54:59in America.
55:01No German unit
55:02ever did that.
55:04Not because German soldiers
55:05were less honest.
55:06That armored crewman
55:08in the bocage
55:09saw the truth
55:09about his own tanks
55:10perfectly clearly
55:12but because in his army
55:14there was no circle
55:15for him to say it in
55:16and by 1944
55:18saying the wrong version
55:20of it
55:20in the wrong company
55:21was a capital crime.
55:2420,000 German soldiers
55:25were executed
55:26by their own courts.
55:28The American figure
55:29was 146.
55:32An army that will not
55:34be corrected from below
55:35can only get better
55:36as fast as one man
55:38at the top
55:39can think.
55:40An army that will
55:41be corrected from below
55:42gets better
55:44as fast as its worst day
55:46can be described.
55:48That is why the force
55:49that could not coordinate
55:50a tank with a rifle squad
55:52in 1942
55:53crossed the Rhine
55:55in 1945
55:56and why the most
55:57professional army
55:58in the world
55:59could never work out
56:01what was happening to it.
56:02As for the men
56:04Curtis Cullen
56:05who did not laugh
56:06at the man from Tennessee
56:07lost his left foot
56:09to a mine
56:10in the Hurtgen Forest
56:11four months
56:12after his invention
56:13went on to half
56:15of First Army's tanks.
56:17He came home
56:18sold liquor
56:19for a living
56:19in New York
56:20and died in 1963
56:22at 48.
56:24Eisenhower was still
56:25telling his story
56:26as president.
56:28Carl Timmerman
56:29survived the war
56:30went back into the army
56:31and died of cancer
56:32in Colorado in 1951.
56:35He was 29.
56:37John Spaulding
56:38was evacuated
56:39from Europe
56:39on the 24th of February
56:411945
56:42two weeks
56:43after he sat down
56:44in that Belgian
56:45command post
56:45and told two sergeants
56:47about the day
56:48he forgot to check
56:49his carbine.
56:50He was separated
56:51from the army
56:52that November
56:52and went home
56:53to Kentucky.
56:55Forrest Pogue
56:56who wrote Spaulding's
56:57account down
56:58spent the rest
56:59of his life
56:59on a four-volume
57:00biography
57:01of George C. Marshall.
57:04Ken Heckler
57:05went to Congress
57:05for nine terms
57:06and lived to be
57:07102
57:09and in the National Archives
57:10and at Carlisle Barracks
57:12the paper is still there.
57:15Thousands of combat interviews.
57:17Men saying the Navy
57:18put them in the wrong place.
57:19That they were too dazed
57:21to think.
57:22That they ran 50 yards
57:24and nothing flat.
57:25That nobody had ever taught them
57:27how to walk beside a tank.
57:29The German record
57:30from those same years
57:31is mostly commanders
57:33explaining themselves upward.
57:34The American record
57:36is the men.
57:37Thank you for staying
57:38with this one
57:39all the way to the end.
57:40Nearly an hour
57:41is a real commitment
57:42and I don't take it
57:43for granted.
57:44If this story
57:45meant something to you
57:46please take one second
57:48and hit the like button.
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57:50help these histories
57:51find the people
57:52who ought to see them
57:53most of whom
57:54will never go looking.
57:55Subscribe and turn on the bell
57:57so the next one reaches you.
57:58And tell me in the comments
58:00where you're watching from.
58:01And if your father
58:02your grandfather
58:03or your uncle
58:04served in the Second World War
58:06tell me his name
58:07and his outfit.
58:09This channel exists
58:10because those men
58:11are still worth talking about
58:12and because somebody
58:14once thought to write down
58:15what they said.