Killing Patton Part 5

6.

WAR ROOM.

THIRD ARMY HEADQUARTERS.

NANCY, FRANCE.

DECEMBER 9, 1944.

7:00 A.M.

Col. Oscar Koch thinks that Hitler is up to something.

The G-2, as General Patton's top intelligence officer1 is known in military parlance, is certain that the German army is far from defeated. In fact, he is the only intelligence officer on the Allied side who believes that the Wehrmacht is poised to launch a withering Christmas counteroffensive.

Only, until now, n.o.body will listen to him.

The sun has not yet risen on what promises to be yet another bitter cold and wet day in eastern France. Koch stands amid the countless maps lining the walls of his beloved War Room, thirty miles south of the front lines. The forty-six-year-old career soldier stands ramrod straight. He is bald, and wears thick gla.s.ses that give him a professorial air.

Just a few feet away, George S. Patton sits in a straight-backed wooden chair as Koch begins the morning intelligence briefing. Patton wears a long overcoat and scarf to ward off the cold, even indoors. He is pensive, and eager to be once again on the attack. In just ten days, Patton is launching his Operation Tink, a bold new offensive that will take the Third Army into the heart of n.a.z.i Germany for the first time. Metz has finally fallen after two long months of battle. Patton systematically worked his way toward Metz, bypa.s.sing the network of forts as needed, while at the same time depriving their inhabitants of food and water. Fort Driant surrendered on December 8, 1944. The invasion of Germany now awaits. Patton plans to cross the Rhine and press hard toward Frankfurt, then on to Berlin.

Unlike many generals, who plan an attack without first consulting their G-2, Patton relies heavily on Koch.

And with good reason. A humble veteran soldier who worked his way up through the ranks, Koch is perhaps the most driven man on Patton's staff. He is consumed with the task of collecting information on every aspect of the battlefield. Koch arranges for reconnaissance planes to fly over enemy positions, and then has a team of draftsman construct precise terrain maps of the towns, rivers, railway lines, fence lines, creeks, farm buildings, bridges, and other obstacles that might slow down the Third Army's advance.

Koch also arranges for German-speaking American soldiers to exchange their military uniforms for peasant clothing at night and travel behind enemy lines, mingling in bars and restaurants to collect information about Wehrmacht troop movements.

And Koch and his team carefully scrutinize data radioed back from the front lines by American patrols.

Every bit of that information comes together in the War Room's centerpiece, an enormous series of maps detailing the entire Western Front. British, American, Canadian, French, and German positions are all carefully marked.

The maps' transparent acetate coverings are marked in grease pencil, with special notations for armored, infantry, and artillery. Each unit is denoted by a special symbol. Once an army is on the move, its progress is closely tracked. A rag made wet with alcohol wipes the acetate clean, and a unit's new location is once again marked in grease pencil. In this way, Col. Oscar Koch knows with almost pinpoint accuracy the location of every tank, howitzer, airfield, fuel dump, supply depot, railway station, and infantry detachment between Antwerp and Switzerland.

And that, Koch now explains to Patton as the general listens with his usual intensity, is what troubles him. There is something missing.

The Third Army's proposed route across the Rhine and into Germany is defended by a small and vulnerable German force. So, in all likelihood, Patton's Operation Tink will begin as a rousing success-though Koch never goes out on a limb to predict a victory. War is too uncertain. But, Koch goes on to point out, a real problem lies farther north, on what will be the Third Army's left flank during Operation Tink.

In particular, Koch is wary of an enormous German troop buildup. Despite the fact that the roads are empty during daylight hours, Koch has discovered that thirteen enemy infantry divisions have been relocated under cover of darkness to an area near the Ardennes Forest. This means there are an additional two hundred thousand Wehrmacht soldiers at the very location where the U.S. lines are thinnest. German forces in the Ardennes currently outnumber Americans by more than two to one.

In addition, advance scouts from the U.S. First Army report that they hear the rumble of truck engines and the heavy clank of tank treads coming through the forest from the German lines. Koch has confirmed that five Panzer divisions containing some five hundred tanks recently moved toward the Ardennes. German railway cars loaded with men and ammunition are proceeding toward the Ardennes with increasing frequency. Just three days ago, the Allies intercepted a coded message showing that a major German fighting force had requested fighter plane protection as it moved troops and supplies toward the Ardennes.

Perhaps spookiest of all: the Germans have shrouded this major movement in complete radio silence.

Koch doesn't have to remind Patton that radio silence usually precedes an attack.

Patton quietly absorbs what Koch has to say, sometimes taking notes or interrupting with a specific question. He thinks that Koch is "the best d.a.m.ned intelligence officer in any United States command," but almost every single other Allied intelligence a.n.a.lyst believes the Germans are too beaten down to launch a major offensive.

Should it take place, a German attack would be launched against positions currently occupied by the U.S. First Army, but Col. Benjamin "Monk" d.i.c.kson, the First's G-2, is not concerned. He will later claim that he foresaw the German attack, but at this moment he behaves as if he doesn't believe that the Germans pose a threat. d.i.c.kson, too, has been told of the hundreds of Panzers, the railway cars packed with elite SS divisions, and the recent appearance of Messerschmitt fighter planes in the sky after months of Allied air superiority. d.i.c.kson considers the German movements to be a regular rotation of troops in and out of the area.

This lack of concern is mirrored throughout the highest levels of the Allied command. British field marshal Bernard Montgomery writes to a fellow British general that Hitler "is fighting a defensive campaign on all fronts. He cannot stage a major offensive operation." Monty is so certain there will not be a surprise attack that he is making plans to return home to London for Christmas.

Col. Oscar Koch is the only man who believes that the Germans are ready to attack.

"Although the Allied offensive is destroying weekly a number of German divisions," Koch notes, "the enemy has been able to maintain a coherent front without drawing on the full of his infantry and armored reserves, thereby giving him the capability to mount a spoiling offensive in an effort to unhinge the Allied a.s.sault on Festung Deutschland."

Koch ends his briefing. Patton's excitement about Operation Tink is temporarily set aside as he absorbs the heavy weight of this new information. Koch is a cautious man and reluctant to speculate, preferring to speak in hard facts. His certainty about a major new German attack means a great deal.

Patton remains seated for quite some time, silently pondering the situation. Despite aggressive Third Army patrols into Germany's Saar region in the past few weeks, there has been almost no enemy resistance. This is very unusual. The Germans normally fight viciously for every inch of ground. Patton knows that ever since the time of Julius Caesar, when Germanic tribes battled the Romans, the Germans were fond of going on the offensive and employing unique tactics to gain the element of surprise. Patton finds himself reminded of the story of "the dog that did not bark," in which a cunning predator conceals himself before suddenly lunging out to fight his victim. Patton wonders if Hitler is playing such a deadly game.

But Patton is conflicted. The lack of clear-cut intelligence is easily explained. The German army is now based in its own country, rather than in a hostile nation such as France. The local citizens are patriots who will not spy on their own soldiers, as the French Resistance movement has done so successfully. And because German telephone lines are still largely intact, achieving radio silence is as simple as ordering all military officers to use the telephone instead of the radio. Seen from this perspective, the behavior of the German army is completely logical. The warnings of Col. Oscar Koch might be an exercise in paranoia.

Patton still has every intention of launching Operation Tink on December 19. It will be glorious, starting with the biggest aerial bombardment the Americans have ever poured down on the German army. He finally has the bridging material necessary for his tanks and men to continue their winter offensive for as long as their guns and their gasoline will take them. With any luck, the war might be over by New Year's Eve after all.

But what if Koch is right? What if there is danger on the Third Army's northern flank?

Finally, Patton stands to leave. He orders that in addition to fine-tuning the last-minute details of Operation Tink, planning is to begin immediately on emergency measures to rescue Gen. Courtney Hodges and his First Army should the Germans attack to the north in the Ardennes Forest. If that happens, "Our offensive will be called off," he tells his staff. "And we'll have to go up there and save their hides."

Patton's private sentiments indicate serious concern. "First Army is making a terrible mistake," he worried in his diary two weeks ago. "It is highly probable the Germans are building up east of them."

As General Patton leaves the War Room, Colonel Koch goes back to the endless business of acquiring information. It is a skill that he will one day put to good use while working for the CIA. For now, he is most pleased that General Patton wants the Third Army to be "in a position to meet whatever happens."

But Patton needs to do more than just make backup plans. He calls Gen. Dwight Eisenhower and pa.s.ses on Koch's a.s.sessment. Ike, in turn, pa.s.ses this on to his own G-2, Gen. Kenneth Strong, who relays Patton's concerns to the First Army.

Where the warning is promptly ignored.

7.

GERMAN FRONT LINES.

DECEMBER 16, 1944.

5:29 A.M.

Sunrise is still two hours away. The morning sky is completely black, without even moon or starlight. German artillery crews stand at their guns, making happy small talk and stomping their feet to keep warm. Their cheeks sting from the record December cold. They have been awake for hours, waiting for this moment. Someday they will tell their grandchildren about the great instant when Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein (Operation Watch on the Rhine) commenced, and how they were among the lucky gunners who fired the first rounds into the American lines, turning the tide of war in favor of the Fatherland, once and for all. They will regale their descendants about the brilliant deception that allowed a quarter million men, more than seven hundred tanks, and thousands of huge artillery pieces to remain camouflaged in the Ardennes Forest for weeks. And these young soldiers will talk about the glory of the surprise attack that split the American and British armies, and then the relentless push to reclaim the strategically vital port city of Antwerp. Next, Adolf Hitler successfully sued for peace with the west, thereby preserving the Third Reich and preventing an Allied invasion of the German homeland. With the Americans and British neutralized, Hitler activated step two of Operation Watch on the Rhine and launched his legendary second attack against Stalin and Russia that defeated the Communists.

That is the story they hope to tell.

But all that is in the future. Right now these young Germans are eager, awaiting the command to rain down h.e.l.lfire on their enemies.

At 5:30 a.m. that order is delivered. Up and down the eighty-mile German front lines, some sixteen hundred pieces of field artillery open fire. The silent forest explodes, and muzzle blasts light the sky as the furnaces of h.e.l.l are thrown open. "Screaming Meemie" rockets screech into the darkness, a deadly sound that American soldiers everywhere find unnerving. And big 88 mm guns fire their fifteen-inch-long sh.e.l.ls at targets almost ten miles away, hitting U.S. positions before they even know they're being fired upon. Every German soldier within a hundred yards is rendered temporarily deaf from the noise. Hand gestures replace the spoken word.

SS Obersturmbannfhrer Otto Skorzeny has never once fired an artillery piece, but he has waited for this moment just as eagerly as those men manning the big guns. His life has been a whirlwind of activity since his meeting with the Fhrer less than two months ago. For his special role in Operation Greif, as the offensive is known, he has scoured the ranks of the German military for men who speak English. He has outfitted these men in American uniforms, and acquired American tanks, trucks, and jeeps to help them travel effortlessly behind U.S. lines. Their ultimate goal is to make their way through this rugged, snow-covered terrain as quickly as possible to capture three vital bridges over the Meuse River. But their more immediate task is to sow seeds of confusion throughout the American lines. They will spread rumors and misinformation, tear down road signs, and do everything in their power to mislead the Americans as the German army pours into the Ardennes Forest.

The problem facing Skorzeny is that the Americans know all about Operation Greif. Shortly after his Wolf's Lair meeting with Hitler, some idiot in the Wehrmacht high command circulated a notice up and down the Western Front: "Secret Commando Operations," the directive stated in bold letters at the top of the page. "The Fhrer has ordered the formation of a special unit of approximately two battalion strength for commando operations." It went on to ask all English-speaking soldiers, sailors, and pilots who wished to volunteer to report to Skorzeny's training center in Friedenthal.

An irate Skorzeny went directly to Hitler to have the notice withdrawn, but the damage had already been done. As Skorzeny knew it would, the paper fell into Allied hands. It was the sort of intelligence coup that G-2s such as Oscar Koch live for. And while Skorzeny insisted that Operation Greif be canceled for this blunder, the Fhrer personally requested that it proceed. Skorzeny reluctantly complied. In the weeks of training that followed, his men were sequestered in a special camp, set apart from other German soldiers. To brush up on their English, they conversed with captured U.S. soldiers and pilots in prisoner-of-war camps. They learned to chew gum like Americans, how to swear, and casually banter using American slang. One German soldier who made the mistake of writing home about his whereabouts was immediately shot.

The sound of the 75 mm guns thundering up and down the lines signals that the time has come for Operation Greif to begin. It is a moment that fills Skorzeny with equal parts euphoria and dread.

The legendary commando is known for his ruthlessness, which is just one reason the Allies have named him the most dangerous man in the German army. But he is also extremely loyal, and fond of his men. As Operation Greif commences, he fusses over them, quietly worrying about their fate. Every mission has peril, but this one is especially dangerous, as all the men in Skorzeny's elite commando unit know.

If captured by the Americans, they will not be treated as prisoners of war, as regular German soldiers would be.

By disguising themselves as Americans, Skorzeny's men of Panzergruppe 150 are deliberately violating the Geneva Convention. If captured in German uniforms, they could expect to spend the rest of the war in U.S. captivity, but at least they would live.

But Skorzeny's soldiers will be wearing U.S. uniforms, and therefore will be cla.s.sified as spies. The punishment for being captured while wearing an enemy uniform is death by firing squad.

Skorzeny gives the order to move out.

Confusion reigns. The narrow, muddy roads leading from Germany into the Ardennes are now clogged with German tanks, trucks, horse-drawn carts, and halftracks as thirty German divisions flood toward the American lines. The front extends north to south through three countries, meaning that Wehrmacht forces are now on the attack in Germany, Belgium, and Luxembourg. Their movement was supposed to be lightning quick. But with the roads too narrow to handle all the German vehicles, the biggest surprise attack of the war has become an enormous traffic jam.

Still, Hitler's gamble is achieving some success. The American army has been caught off guard. Even as German infantry creep through the forest in their winter-white uniforms, the highest levels of Allied leaders.h.i.+p still believe that Germany is incapable of launching a major offensive. Some dismiss this as a "spoiling attack"-a diversion that weakens the American lines by forcing them to s.h.i.+ft men and supplies from some other location. Convinced that an attack through such wooded and mountainous terrain is impossible, Dwight Eisenhower considers the Ardennes to be a place of rest and sanctuary for weary American troops. "Of the many pathways that lead to France, the least penetrable is through the Ardennes," notes Gen. Omar Bradley, the commander in charge of the American front lines. "For there the roads are much too scarce, the hills too wooded, and the valleys too limited for maneuver."

Bradley is George Patton's immediate superior, in command of the U.S. Twelfth Army group, which stands poised to invade Germany. Only Dwight Eisenhower has more power among American forces in Europe.

Yet before Patton's troubles with his temper on the island of Sicily one year ago, Bradley was his subordinate. Patton now reports to Bradley. Even worse, Eisenhower has chosen Omar Bradley for several important a.s.signments that before might have come Patton's way. In particular, it was Bradley who was chosen to lead U.S. ground forces in the D-day invasion back in June. Meanwhile, Patton and the Third Army languished in England, not allowed to join the greatest ground force in history until two long months later.

Ike's message to others was clear: Omar Bradley is predictable, easily controlled, and safe. Patton, as audacious and tactically brilliant as he might be, is too unpredictable to be given command of all American ground forces.

Yet Eisenhower's pick quickly proved costly. Bradley's decision to halt Patton's troops instead of allowing them to attack prevented the encirclement of fifty thousand Wehrmacht soldiers and SS troops in mid-August. The Germans took heavy losses, but many more quickly escaped through what was called the Falaise Pocket. If Patton had had his way, his tanks would have slipped the noose around those trapped German troops, taking thousands of their best soldiers prisoner and seriously damaging the Wehrmacht's ability to wage war. "We're about to destroy an entire hostile army," Bradley noted of the opportunity. "We'll go all the way from here to the German border."

General Omar Bradley (center) with General George Patton (left) and General Bernard Law Montgomery (right) But in the end Bradley grew timid. He ordered Patton's tanks to halt at the town of Argentan, leaving a gap between the American and Canadian units that would have encircled the Germans-a gap through which the Germans soon escaped.

Patton knew Bradley was wrong but had no choice but to obey orders. On August 16, Patton wrote in his diary that Bradley's blunder was "of historical importance." Those same German units that Patton nearly captured lived to fight another day. Many of those men are arrayed against the Allied forces on the German border at this very minute. Now, even as Bradley rea.s.sures himself that the German offensive in Ardennes is nothing more than a spoiling attack, many of those same Wehrmacht and SS fighters-among them a clever young SS tank commander named Joachim Peiper-are heading toward the American lines.

Nevertheless, Bradley, who graduated alongside Eisenhower in West Point's cla.s.s of 1915,1 and who commands the million men of the Twelfth Army Group, does not see the threat. In fact, he has allowed his troops to relax.

Meantime, Patton and his intelligence officers are anxious, well understanding that there is danger in the Ardennes. But again Patton can do nothing. And it is his own fault.

Even as the furor over his Sicily slapping incidents was dying down, George Patton made a second great public relations blunder, on April 25, 1944. It happened in Knutsford, England, while he was speaking to a group comprised largely of British women. The occasion was the low-key opening of a "Welcome Club" for American soldiers, which would allow troops a place to unwind and meet their British hosts in a comfortable setting. Though Patton at first declined to attend, his headquarters was nearby, and he finally consented to drive over and say a few words. Yet his trepidation about the event was so great that he ordered his driver to arrive fifteen minutes late, hoping that the conference would already be over.

But the women of Knutsford were waiting for him.

Patton's remarks were supposed to be brief, just a few paragraphs. After citing George Bernard Shaw's famous quote that "the British and Americans are two people separated by a common language," Patton rea.s.sured the ladies that the Americans and British would rule a postwar world. The women were thrilled, not understanding that Patton had slighted the Russians.

At the time, Patton was supposed to be keeping a low profile so that the Germans would be unclear of his whereabouts before the D-day invasion. So there was just a handful of reporters present that warm spring day in Knutsford, and the few photographers on hand swore not to publish their pictures of Patton. Yet the general's comments somehow got leaked. His well-intentioned words made headlines around the world.

Stalin and the Russians were infuriated.

Patton had done it again. "This last incident was so trivial in nature," a distraught Patton wrote in his journal, "but so terrible in its effect."

As with the slapping incidents, there were public demands that Patton be fired. Controversy, it seemed, followed him everywhere.

Eisenhower elevated the agony by waiting almost a week to discuss the controversy and Patton's future. The meeting would take place at Ike's headquarters. The results were not likely to land in Patton's favor. Friendly relations with the Soviets were of vital importance to President Franklin Roosevelt. "Wild Bill" Donovan of the OSS was working hard to maintain that friends.h.i.+p, as was Eisenhower's boss back in Was.h.i.+ngton, Gen. George Marshall. A weary Eisenhower, exhausted from planning the D-day invasion, was furious at what he considered to be Patton's immaturity. Those errant remarks in Knutsford, as simple as they might have been, had the potential to unravel a peaceful postwar world.

Patton drove five hours to be at the meeting with Eisenhower. The date was May 1, 1944. There was a very good chance he would be sent home to America, and even reduced in rank to colonel. Patton described the moments before entering Eisenhower's office as a time of awaiting "possible execution."

"It is sad and shocking to think that victory and the lives of thousands of men are p.a.w.ns to the 'fear of They,' and the writings of a group of unprincipled reporters, and weak-kneed congressmen," Patton wrote in his journal. "But so it is."

Unbeknownst to Patton, it was Winston Churchill's spies who had leaked his comments, so it was appropriate that the cunning prime minister himself weigh in on Patton's side, stating that the general was "just speaking the truth." The politically astute Eisenhower could read between the lines in Churchill's comments.2 So while the meeting with Patton began badly, Eisenhower had to admit that he sorely needed the general's skills as a battlefield commander. As Patton himself once predicted, referring to the partners.h.i.+p between two legendary Confederate generals in the Civil War, "Ike, you will be the Lee of the next war, and I will be your Jackson."

Eisenhower knows his military history. He knows that Stonewall Jackson was brilliant and unpredictable. And he is also well aware that Robert E. Lee's army was never the same after a Confederate sentry accidentally shot and mortally wounded General Jackson.

So George S. Patton was spared-but damaged. From May 1, 1944, forward, Patton's chances of leading all U.S. forces in Europe were nonexistent. He was too much of a political liability. His hopes of a.s.suming a major postwar command in a world divided between the United States and the Soviet Union had all but vanished. The military career that George S. Patton loved so much would last only as long as the world needed his fighting skills.

"When I came out," he wrote after the meeting, "I don't think anyone could tell that I had just been killed. I feel like death, but I am not out yet. If they will let me fight, I will."

As the German offensive in the Ardennes gathers speed, George Patton keeps track of events from his headquarters sixty miles south, in Nancy. He is frustrated because his immediate boss is Gen. Omar Bradley, whom Patton considers his inferior and as completely lacking in the prescience and strategic forethought necessary to win a war.

The Ardennes proves it. Totally off guard, Bradley has allowed a group of professional American baseball players to tour the area the Germans are now attacking.3 The alluring film actress Marlene Dietrich is also on hand. She has just finished performing in the Belgian crossroads town of Bastogne. Tonight she is scheduled to put on a show for the men of the Ninety-Ninth Division in the Belgian hamlet of Honsfeld.

That concert has been abruptly canceled.

The Ninety-Ninth Infantry Division of the American First Army is digging in, trying desperately to stop the elite Twelfth SS Panzer Division from capturing a spot on the map known as Elsenborn Ridge, a vast, treeless hill, beautiful in the summer when wild gra.s.ses cover its summit. But there is no beauty right now. Just frozen mud, corpses, and sh.e.l.l craters. Except for those moments when fog covers the hilltop or the powerful winds are driving rain and snow into their eyes-which is often-the men of the Ninety-Ninth have optimal fields of fire from their lazy semicircle of foxholes. Any German attack will require the enemy to cover a half mile of open ground, all while running uphill.

But one hundred yards down the slope, a thick forest offers the Germans complete concealment. The woods are dark and gloomy. A dense fog makes the Germans even less visible. The Ninety-Ninth are easy targets for the German artillery guns hidden in the forest below-including the high-velocity 88 mm guns, which fire a round that travels a half mile per second.

Many men in the Ninety-Ninth are new to combat and came to the Ardennes to ease into the frontline action. They lack winter-camouflaged uniforms, ammunition, and warm clothes, and yet they stand ready to hold the line at all costs.

Because if they don't, Hitler's crazy gamble in the Ardennes just might succeed.

Like the equally strategic nearby location known as the Losheim Gap, the Elsenborn Ridge represents a vital corridor that the German army must possess in order for Operation Watch on the Rhine to be successful. The Losheim Gap is a narrow valley through which the Third Reich successfully invaded France in 1940, and is known to be the pathway for funneling tanks through the rugged Ardennes. The ridge is critical because a network of key roads lies on the other side. Capture the ridge, gain access to the roads, and the Twelfth Panzer Division suddenly stands a very good chance of making it all the way to Antwerp.

The Ninety-Ninth must hold the line.

Just yesterday they were thinking about Mel Ott, Marlene Dietrich, and Christmas. Many were even living in a warm barrack that had once belonged to the Germans, where they slept in beds and ate hot meals each morning and night.