[Rhodes22-list] WWII History Buffs

[brad haslett]

Ed, 

You can get the New York Times at nytimes.com.  You
have to register and establish a password but there is
no charge and I haven't been deluged with junk mail as
a result.  I haven't read Patton's grandson's book but
have put that on the list to aquire for my next trip. 
Have you read "The Last Days of Patton" by Ladislas
Farago?  Farago recognizes Hans Weindl in the
acknowledgments and quotes Weindl's remembrance of
Patton riding through Bad Tolz at the end of the war. 
Hans was married to my ex-mother-in-law.  He died
about six years ago but was the public affairs officer
for the Flint Kaserne, an American Army base in Bad
Tolz that was a former SS training camp and became
Pattons base at war's end.  I vacationed in Bad Tolz
from 1985 through 1992 and have some wonderful
memories drinking beer and re-fighting the war with
old German warriors.  About 1988 or so we went to
Octoberfest courtesey of the US Army as guests of the
Commander of the base.  It closed about 1993.  While
in Florida sailing last month I met my former
mother-in-law for dinner and re-lived some of the
wonderful times Hans and enjoyed.  

The New York Times article is attached below.  The
link has already been removed but you can find it
under the search button.  Here it  

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

April 5, 2003
When a Dash Becomes a Siege
By ROBERT PATTON

 
ARIEN, Conn.
Gen. George S. Patton, my grandfather, has received a
lot of mention lately in connection with the
astonishing dash of the American military across more
than 300 miles of Iraq in less than a week. Beginning
with the breakout from Normandy in August 1944,
Patton's Third Army similarly used speed and
maneuverability to press the attack, stretching supply
lines to the breaking point while gobbling up huge
tracts of territory and taking thousands of enemy
prisoners. 

Much of what we've seen of Gen. Tommy Franks's battle
plan calls to mind Patton's favorite battlefield
dictums. "A good plan today is better than a perfect
plan tomorrow" would seem to apply to the accelerated
commencement of the ground offensive after the missile
strike on the Iraqi leadership on March 18. The
apparently improvised jump-start clearly surprised
Iraqi defenders expecting, per the 1991 Persian Gulf
war, weeks of aerial shock and awe in advance of tanks
and infantry, and it helped coalition forces to secure
the southern oil fields and the Euphrates bridges at
Nasariya before they could be sabotaged. 

Likewise Patton's oft quoted "hold 'em by the nose and
kick 'em," which in tactical terms translates to
pinning the enemy in place while flanking him with the
bulk of your force, is reflected in the coalition's
"leapfrogging" of Iraqi towns en route to the main
objective, Baghdad. "There is no purpose in capturing
manure-filled, water-logged villages," the general
told his men. "Straight frontal attacks are prohibited
unless there is no other possible solution."

Yet in September 1944, Patton deviated from his
preference for maneuvering and received what he called
"my first bloody nose" as a result. The fortified city
of Metz, in the Lorraine in northeastern France,
blocked the Third Army's route to the Rhine. And while
no one should compare that city of 83,000 with Baghdad
and its 5 million inhabitants living in an area larger
than New York City, the perils and pitfalls of
Patton's siege are worth contemplating as General
Franks readies his troops for the last phase of
Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Simply put, Metz — with its formidable network of 35
outlying concrete forts — got Patton "off plan," to
use a current Central Command phrase. Frustrated by
bad weather, poor air support and above all, "too
little gas and too many Germans," he probed the city's
defenses with small units and was repulsed; the
casualties soon mounted. With Third Army supplies and
manpower diverted to the British-led Market Garden
campaign to the north, Patton's ammunition allotment
was limited to seven rounds per gun per day,
completely precluding any continued drive toward
Germany.

The delay tormented him. "Once people stop, they get
cautious and the enemy gets set," he said. The 65
reporters attached to Third Army pestered him for
positive news and action, and his ego, accustomed to
headlines, was rankled. Patton wrote his wife: "I fear
I am off the first page for the moment as we are not
going so fast. Metz is hard to take."

He continued to strike the city with inadequate
company- and battalion-sized units with the excuse
that he was trying to maintain his army's attitude of
aggressive initiative. Gen. Omar Bradley, his
superior, urged him to quit "this pecking campaign"
and accept the so-called October Pause imposed in the
aftermath of Market Garden's 12,000 Allied casualties.
But Patton claimed a need to "blood" his newer
recruits to the realities of combat. As if hoping to
generate a self-fulfilling prophecy, he declared Metz
conquered on several occasions, only to have to
retract the claim in the face of continued German
resistance. 

The siege had become personal, and he exhorted his
friend in the Air Corps, Gen. Jimmy Doolittle, "to
blow up this damn fort so that it becomes nothing but
a hole." But even a severe bombing campaign couldn't
dislodge the defenders behindits 15-foot-thick walls.
The steadfast resistance forced Patton to mount a
bloody siege that he described as "a mutual
crucifixion."

The last of Metz's defenders surrendered out of thirst
and starvation in mid-December 1944, three months
after Patton predicted the city would fall in 10 days.
The Battle of the Bulge was around the corner, and he
and his army would find redemption in their pivotal
northward thrust into the southern flank of the German
attack. But the siege of Metz remains an instructive
example of a gifted commander losing sight of his
army's strengths as a result of external pressures
having little to do with the enemy. One military
historian wrote that at Metz, Patton "became
preoccupied with local problems and lost sight of the
broader issues."

General Franks shows no signs of losing sight of the
broadest issue: the subjugation of the Iraqi command
in Baghdad. We can only guess at the the manner in
which the actual battle of Baghdad, potentially the
riskiest part of the campaign, will be waged. Perhaps
coalition forces will drive to the heart of the
capital without hesitation; perhaps they will continue
inexorably to degrade and compress Iraqi defenses in
hopes that the regime will implode through internal
defections and rebellion. But whatever the strategy,
I'm confident that Central Command will remain on plan
— a plan based on mobility, flexibility, opportunism
and superior firepower.

Patton, for a brief period in the fall of 1944, lost
sight of his army's proven battlefield strengths and
was deeply chastened by the experience. "My attack
will go on with its present short means," he wrote in
his diary during the few days between the fall of Metz
and the start of the Battle of the Bulge. "It is
certainly up to me to make a breakthrough, and I feel
that, God willing, it will come about." History
confirms that it did.

Robert Patton is author of "The Pattons: A Personal
History of an American Family.''



Copyright 2003 
is.


--- Kroposki <kroposki@innova.net> wrote:
> Brad,
> 	Another one of your heavy weight citations, but I
> don't get the
> New York Times.  I like internet references with hot
> keys so I can read
> what was really said.  Have you read George Patton's
> son George (retired
> 2 stars) book?
>             Ed K
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: rhodes22-list-bounces@rhodes22.org
> [mailto:rhodes22-list-bounces@rhodes22.org] On
> Behalf Of brad haslett
> Sent: Saturday, April 05, 2003 9:01 AM
> To: rhodes22-list@rhodes22.org
> Subject: [Rhodes22-list] WWII History Buffs
> 
> There is a great article in todays NY Times Op/Ed
> page
> written by General Pattons grandson on the Battle of
> Metz.  Fortress Metz has been involved in about
> every
> war on French soil in the last 400 years but little
> has been written about its role in WW2.  One of the
> reasons I knew about it was that about a third of
> the
> old photos that my dad never looked at but I spent
> hours pouring over as a kid were from Metz.  About
> ten
> years ago I got stuck in Cedar Rapids, Iowa
> babysitting a broken airplane and the cab that
> picked
> us up had a 95th Infrantry Division decal on it.  I
> asked the cabbie what that was about and he said
> "oh,
> that's the owners old Army unit, he bores us to
> tears
> with stories about it".  Well, that was Dad's old
> unit
> so I got together with the owner and he filled me,
> over a few beers, with all the stuff I could never
> get
> out of Dad. My parents 50th wedding anniversary was
> a
> few months later and I told the story of the chance
> meeting to my Dad and a handful of his war buddies. 
> "That's Kid Shaeffer, all he talked about during the
> war was going back to Cedar Rapids and starting a
> cab
> company.  We wondered what happened to him". 
> Anyway,
> small world.  It was interesting to read the account
> of Metz in todays paper, a small bit of history that
> has fallen through the cracks.
> 
> Brad
> 
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