Right & Ripe

WESTERN FRONT Right & Ripe

(See Cover) If there ever was a time for simultaneous blows against Germany from east and west, this was it. But General Eisenhower's armies had not completely recovered from the plexus punch which Rundstedt had delivered in the Ardennes, despite the rosy statements of Army press-agents at SHAEF. Yet Eisenhower had brought about a larger measure of recuperation in a shorter time than most military observers had believed possible.

Many of the U.S. divisions were tired; they needed rest which they were not getting. The doughty 1st and 4th Infantry Divisions, which had held the shoulders of Rundstedt's salient, were still fighting last week (the 4th had been caught in the Ardennes while resting from the struggle for the Huertgen Forest). At this time, they simply could not be spared. Their losses and those of other outfits had been almost fully made up. One division, which had had two regiments badly chewed up, got two complete new regiments. In addition to piecemeal replacements flowing through the usual channels, service units and other noncombat organizations in the rear were combed for fighting manpower. Special efforts were made to hurry replacement of officers.

New divisions must have been coming into the theater, for Winston Churchill declared that the western front was stronger than ever in combat effectives. Major General Leonard T. Gerow had relinquished command of the V Corps, had been promoted to three-star rank. That looked as though he might get a new army command.

The Germans, on the other hand, were weaker. They probably had less than 70 understrength divisions left in the west. At least twelve armored divisions had been whisked away. Some units of the Sixth Panzer Army, which had spearheaded the Ardennes drive, were already identified on the eastern front.

Clearly, "Ike" Eisenhower believed it was imperative to strike now, even before he was entirely ready.

Behind the Bagpipes. The most powerful smash of the week was launched in the north, east of Eindhoven, on a short stretch of front between the Rhine and the Maas (Meuse--see map). For the first time since December, SHAEF spokes men used the word "offensive" in reference to Allied action. Immediate objectives were the fortified road centers of Cleve and Goch. Field Marshal Montgomery called for a typical "Monty preparation"--an eleven-hour artillery barrage, plus an attack by 2,200 planes, including 700 heavy bombers. A German prisoner said later that six of twelve guns in his own outfit had been knocked out in the air attack.

With bagpipes skirling, General Henry D. G. Crerar's Canadians followed the barrage into Germany. Said one private from Regina: "We're conquerors now, not just liberators." In flooded areas, the Canucks bustled from one "island" to another in amphibious vehicles. They braved the thick Reichswald, gained seven miles in three days, tore the guts out of the German 84th Division. At week's end they were fighting from house to house in Cleve, against German paratroops rushed north from Alsace. Cleve fell.

A sudden thaw created a sea of mud. Standing ankle-deep in the ooze, perky little Montgomery said to correspondents: "The battle is going very well. But of course all this mud doesn't help, does it?"

"Bloody Patton." In the Ardennes, Lieut. General George S. Patton's Third Army was up to something. German radio announcer said: "Bloody Patton is lording it around. Bloody Patton is not active now, but he won't be idle long. Where will he strike next?"

Patton answered with an artillery barrage that woke the good citizens of Luxembourg, caused some of them to fear that Rundstedt was coming back. Elements of four Third Army divisions made ten crossings of the Our and the Sauer Rivers, on the Luxembourg-Germany border. Because of the thaw, the rivers were high and fast-running. Some assault boats capsized, others ran into submerged barbed wire, still others were raked by Nazi machine guns. Shells from big guns in the German rear crumped in the rivers and on the banks. Nevertheless all ten landings were made good and merged into three substantial bridgeheads. Then engineers put down bridges, and tanks and reinforcements rolled across.

Farther north, other Third Army units closed on the German town of Pueim (pop. 2,800), communications center for that sector of the Westwall. Two miles outside the town, the Germans threw in six counterattacks, but at week's end the Yanks had Pruem. "Bloody Patton's" boys told their German prisoners how close the Russians were to Berlin. One put his head on his arms and wept. Another said stolidly, "Ja, I know. But they will get nothing. Berlin is in ruins."

In Alsace, the Germans' abortive attempt to take Strasbourg ended in loss of the Colmar pocket, their most substantial bridgehead on the upper Rhine.

Four divisions--the U.S. 28th Infantry and 12th Armored, the French 1st Armored and the bearded 4th Moroccan Mountain Division--had cut the pocket in two. On one side, the Allies mopped up Germans in the deep snow of the Vosges foothills. On the other, they chased them across the Rhine. The German Nineteenth Army was badly mauled, lost 18,000 in prisoners alone. The threat to Strasbourg seemed ended forever--or at least for this war.

Water Problem. Northeast of Monschau, in the upper reaches of the Roer River, is tough fighting country--lakes, reservoirs, wooded hills, winding streams at the bottoms of gorges cut deep by long erosion. In this area last autumn the Americans had taken a town named Schmidt. They were almost immediately evicted in a heavy counterattack which cut up most of two U.S. regiments--about 6,000 men. At that time, no front dispatch or headquarters survey breathed a hint of Schmidt's importance. Last week, when the First Army's 78th Division fought back into Schmidt, the town's significance became crystal clear. It covers the approaches to the system of dams which control the Roer River's level on the Cologne plain.

Last December, the First Army had been attacking toward the Roer dams when Rundstedt launched his shattering blow farther south. Last week the Germans fought every yard of the U.S. advance, with tanks and self-propelled guns backing up their infantry. But there was no stopping the Yanks this time. They dropped 1,000 tons of shells on the German positions, seized 159 pillboxes.

Meanwhile, the British Second Army and the U.S. Ninth Army stood on a 45-mile stretch of the Roer's west bank, from Roermond south beyond Dueren. They could not risk a crossing so long as the Germans threatened to loose a flood on them from above. Before giving up the biggest dam, to the advancing First, the Germans last week demolished the floodgates. That dumped a huge volume of water into the valley, and the Allied armies on the west bank got out of its way. When the flood subsided, that danger would be gone for good.

The Roer valley is the natural platform for an attack on the Ruhr, now all the more precious to Germany since industrial Silesia has been invaded by the Russians. From the Roer Eisenhower had been preparing to attack in December when Rundstedt's blow fell. Now Eisenhower was preparing to attack again, in the same valley. He had completely regained the initiative. The place was right, the time was ripe-- and, according to the nervous Ger mans, Lieut. General William Hood Simpson's Ninth Army was accumulating potent masses of armor. Lack of armor in heavy concentration was one of the reasons why the November offensive on the Cologne plain had failed. The Ninth may soon write a different chapter in the his tory of World War II.

The Ninth. The exact size and dispositions of the Ninth Army are secret, but it is the freshest, keenest U.S. army in the west. It was called on for almost no help against Rundstedt, and clung to its Roer positions while the First and Third Armies were hammering the bulge flat.

After the Allied breakout from Nor mandy, the Ninth's first action was a swing into Brittany, while the First and Third wheeled left to liberate northern France. Later the Ninth accepted the surrender of Major General Erich Elster, Nazi commandant of southwestern France, with 20,000 enemy troops. After it captured Brest, the Ninth disappeared from the public eye, and apparently from the German eye as well, until it slammed into action north of Aachen. In the grinding progress toward the Roer, it got its first solid battle experience.

The General. The Ninth's commander is called "Texas Bill" Simpson. He is also called a doughboy's general because he loves the infantry. With Georgie Patten, who is one of his West Point classmates, he loves to argue the relative merits of tanks and foot soldiers.

Bill Simpson is 6 ft.11 in. tall, lean and hard; he wears splendidly tailored battle jackets and trousers which fit him perfectly. But he is not pompous or dramatic, and is considered to be something like Omar Bradley in fatherly devotion to his troops. Despite his arguments with Patton, he is a great believer in all kinds of machines-- especially artillery-- which save U.S. lives.

Born 56 years ago in Weatherford, Tex., son of a Confederate veteran, Simpson entered West Point in 1905. graduated 101st in a class of 103. A classmate (not Patton) says this rank was not by any means due to lack of intelligence, but to insufficient schooling before entrance.

Simpson's wife made him stop playing polo in 1925, when he hurt his back in a collision. Now his favorite diversions are golf, vigorous hiking, Lana Turner films.

He has a sense of humor about his total baldness. Once, when he commanded the 30th Division, he ordered all his officers to get strict 3/4-inch haircuts."Look," he said, snatching off his cap, "I wouldn't order you to do anything I wouldn't do myself." As a young officer, Simpson served the usual tours of duty-- Mexican border, Texas, the Philippines. He fought in World War I, was awarded the D.S.M., the Sil ver Star, the French Legion of Honor and the Croix de guerre. In 1925 he was graduated with distinction from the Command and General Staff School. In 1938 he was appointed the War College's chief of G-2 (Intelligence). In 1942 he commanded the XII Corps, the next year the Fourth Army.

Possibly because of his hard scholastic struggles at West Point, Simpson is now known as a "book general"--in the sense that he insists on a complete understanding of basic principles before experiments and innovations are embarked on.

The Main Chance. Looking eastward across the swollen but subsiding Roer, Bill Simpson last week faced the greatest chance of his career. In his sector, the Ninth was almost all the way through the concrete fortifications of the Westwall. But the Germans have backed up the older defenses with new labyrinths of trenches, mines, barbed wire, fortified villages and fortified houses. Simpson has already learned how the Germans can fight in such defenses.

The Ninth Army has remained under the overall control of Field Marshal Montgomery's Twenty-first Army Group, in order that "Monty" might coordinate the northern offensives. The Canadian thrust which reached Cleve threatened to roll up Rundstedt's right flank by a drive down the west bank of the Rhine. That threat may be a diversionary help to Simpson. Allied air power is already helping him, and the grueling strain imposed by the Russians is helping most of all. If Eisenhower and Montgomery have made his army their chosen instrument, he may be the man who will finally crack the German armies in the west.

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