Category Archives: Second World War

Henry-Chapelle American Cemetery

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In 2009, I visited the Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery in Belgium where many of the American casualities suffered in the Hürtgen Forest and Ardennes battles are buried. It was a Saturday near Veterans Day. As I arrived, a small group of civilians were just completing some unscheduled ceremony. After they stowed their flags and musical instruments into their cars, they moved onto the platform that overlooks the grave plots.

I approached one gentleman, asked if he spoke English (which, of course, he did), and asked about the ceremony we had just missed. It seems that his small group drove 90 miles to the American Cemetery to pay their respects to American war dead. At that point he took my hand firmly within his grasp and said “Thank you. We will never forget what you did to liberate us.” I shook his hand – but only on behalf of the men in the valley that spread out below us.

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Capture of Fort Eben-Emael

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The fortifications at Eben-Emael were key to the Belgian delaying operations in front of the Dyle-Breda Line. The German plan to send its Sixth Army around Liège required that the river crossings west of Maastricht be captured intact. The bridges across the Albert Canal at Kanne, Vroenhoven, and Veldwezelt were under the fortress’s guns, and they had to be neutralized for any invasion in this sector to succeed.

Built in 1935, Eben-Emael was thought to be the strongest fort in the world. Its armaments included two 120-mm guns and sixteen 75-mm guns – all of them in armored turrets or casemates. To the northeast, the canal cut’s steep sides rose 40 meters above the canal waters and formed an ideal glacis for protection from attack across the canal. In other directions, antitank trenches, barbed wire, and bunkers provided protection. Machine guns swept the approaches. Defensive positions were linked by tunnels that also linked the underground barracks, storerooms, and hospital. Ventilation was provided through filters which offered protection from poison gas. Twelve hundred men commanded by Major Jean Jottrand were assigned to the fort, although many were billeted in the neighboring villages and hence not permanently within its perimeter.

40 Capture of Fort Eben-Emael
10 May 1940
Region: Wallonia
Country: Belgium

A French Battlefields “Virtual Battlefield Tour” as described in Fields of War: Fifty Key Battlefields in France and Belgium.

Summary: In the predawn darkness of 10 May, eleven gliders left airfields around Cologne. Their departure was timed for arrival at the fort at 05:30, H-hour for the invasions of Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg. Towed behind fifty-two Junkers JU 87 transport aircraft, the gliders climbed to an altitude of 2,100 meters before being released 20 km from the Belgium frontier. Two of the attack gliders became lost during the flight, including that of the assault commander, Oberleutnant Witzig.

Major Jottrand had alerted his troops at approximately 03:00, when he received reports of German troop movements toward the border. The confusion caused by the silent approach of the gliders and small arms fire from the direction of the canal bridges, however, had prevented the fortress from firing. Antiaircraft gunners hesitated to fire against aircraft that they could not definitely identify as hostile.

View Capture of Fort d’Eben-Emael – A Virtual Battlefield Tour by French Battlefields (www.frenchbattlefields.com) in a larger map

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US 1st Infantry Division – WW II

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US 1st Infantry Division (WW II)

This Virtual Battlefield Tour presents the locations of the numerous commemorations in Europe to the men of the 1st Infantry Division.

Unit History:

The US 1st Infantry Division is the oldest division in the United States Army with units dating back to the American Revolution. It was the first American unit to arrive on the First World War battlefield. Units of the division fired the first artillery shot of the American Expeditionary Corps and suffered the first three soldiers killed. In 1918 it launched America’s first offensive operation against the Germans at Cantigny. In September the entire division was committed in the Battle of the Mihiel Salient and only two weeks later in the decisive Meuse-Argonne Offensive where it fought as far east as Sedan. The unit insignia provides its nickname as well, a ‘Big Red One’ on a brown/ grey background.

The division entered Second World War when it landed near Oran, Algeria on 8 November 1942. It fought in North Africa under the Tunisian garrison surrender on 9 May 1943. In July 1943, it landed in Sicily and fought in the brutal mountain campaign. The Big Red One returned to England for refitting and led the Normandy Invasion by being the first infantry unit on Omaha Beach. It continued to participate in the Normandy fighting and across France to the German border near Aachen, where it captured the first German city by direct infantry assault. The 1st fought in the Hürtgen Forest until, completely exhausted after almost six months of continuous fighting, its men were moved back on 7 December. The German Ardennes Offensive was launched nine days later and the 1st Infantry was quickly called back into action. It fought in the Ardennes, broke through the Siegfried Line, and crossed the Rhine at the Remagen bridgehead. The unit was fighting in Czechoslovakia when the war ended.

Motto: “No Mission Too Difficult, No Sacrifice Too Great—Duty First!”

 

View US 1st Infantry Division (WW II) – A Virtual Battlefield Tour by French Battlefields (www.frenchbattlefields.com) in a larger map

Richard (Dick) D. Winters Leadership Monument

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The Richard (Dick) D. Winters Leadership Monument was dedicated on 6 June 2012. Before his death in 2011, Major Winters personally approved of the design and location of the twelve-foot bronze statue that presents him in an aggressive ‘attack’ position leading unseen men against an unseen enemy. His approval was predicated upon dedication of the memorial to all of the junior officers which found themselves commanding men in combat during the Second World War. The statue’s plinth includes a quote from Winters: ‘Wars do not make men great, but they do bring out the greatness in good men.’

The monument is located is Ste-Marie-du-Mont, less than one-half mile from Brécourt Manoir, the site of an thirteen-man attack against a vastly superior force, led by Winters, which eliminated a four-gun German position that was firing upon Utah Beach. The monument stands along causeway #2, one of the four selected Allied routes across flooded lowlands from Utah Beach landing sites to an inland ridge. The Brécourt Manoir guns commanded that causeway and could have inflicted numerous casualties on troops moving inland if not destroyed. Nominated for the Medal of Honor, Winters was awarded American’s second highest medal for bravery under fire, the Distinguished service Cross. Three men were awarded the Silver Star and nine men the Bronze Star.

The attack was famously portrayed in the D-Day episode of the television miniseries ‘Band of Brothers’ based upon a Stephen Ambrose book of the same title, which followed the men of Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, from their training in Camp Toccoa, Georgia; through major battles in France, Holland and Belgium; to the capture of Hitler’s retreat in Berchtesgaden, Germany.

After the war, Winters returned to his home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania where, as he promised himself he would do after the heat of combat on D-Day, he brought a farm and lived quietly and peacefully for the remainder of his ninety-two years.

6 June 1944

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Today is the 68th Anniversary of the massive and critical Operation Neptune, the Invasion of Normandy by American, British, Canadian, and French forces. As I have been preparing Fields of War –  a Second World War battlefield travel guide, my thoughts have been focused on Lower Normandy, its terrain, cities, and highways – and its men.

The similarities with the Norman Invasion by the English Army of King Edward III 598 years earlier are striking. Much like Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt, the French believed that the invasion was aimed at Calais and they had their fleet patrolling off the Pas-de-Calais coast. Edward III landed his army along the coast of the Cotentin Peninsula only 21 km north of Utah beach. Just like German 6th Fallschirmjäger Regiment commander, Major Friedrich von der Heydte, the French commander of Carentan, Robert Bertrand, burned the four bridges north of the city to delay the English advance as reinforcements moved north. Just like US 29th Infantry Division’s commander, Major General Charles Gerhard, Edward III attacked St-Lô from its vulnerable eastern side. And, just as in 1944, the key to Normandy was the capture of Caen.

It was with these events in mind that a new Virtual Battlefield Tour was created which follows Edward III and his army from their landing at St-Vaast-la-Hougue to their seizing of the city of Caen. It can be found on my blog at Invasion of Normandy 12 July 1346