The end of the war did seem at hand. Thoughts of November 1918 were in everyone’s mind. General Bradley issued instructions to store the winter clothing that was coming in at Le Havre and over the beaches, in order to use the space on the trucks bringing supplies to the front for ammunition and gasoline. He figured the war would be over before winter clothing was needed.
THE GERMAN army in retreat was a sad spectacle. Occasionally a battery of 88s or what was left of a company of riflemen and machine gunners would try to throw up a roadblock, but when they did, a tremendous barrage from American artillery, Shermans, Jabos, and small-arms fire would quickly overwhelm them. Then it was every man for himself, with the wounded left behind.
“Making it home is the motor of the old soldier,” Private Paul-Alfred Stoob, a driver of a Panther, observed. Their tank shot out from under them, Stoob and the crew commandeered a truck and took off for Belgium. Stoob recalled, “We had to scavenge for food, here a dog without a master, there a few eggs in a chicken coop. The houses were mostly empty. We found a field bakery. One room was packed to the ceiling with bread. So we filled our truck with bread and moved on.”
The German rout was so complete that the retreating troops didn’t even take the time to destroy supply dumps. Elements of Patton’s Third Army captured tons of grain, flour, sugar, and rice, along with hundreds of carloads of coal, all of which the GIs distributed to the French civilian population. At another dump Patton’s men captured 2.6 million pounds of frozen beef and 500,000 pounds of canned beef, which were distributed to the troops.
In the 4th Infantry Division, Lieutenant George Wilson felt he was engaging in “a wild, mad, exciting race to see which army could gain the most ground in a single day.” To the men of the 743rd Tank Battalion, 2nd Armoured Division, it was “holiday warfare.” There was occasional shooting but no casualties. Mainly this was because they had warning of trouble ahead. If the villages were bedecked with flowers and the people were lining the streets, holding out food and bottles of wine, the Germans had pulled out. If there was no reception committee, the Germans were still there.
On September 2 Shermans from the 743rd got to the crest of a hill overlooking Tournai, Belgium. Instead of moving down to be the first to cross the border, they sat there, because they were out of gasoline. The great supply crisis in ETO had hit the 743rd.
THE CRISIS was inevitable. It had been foreseen. It could not have been avoided. Too many vehicles were driving too far away from the ports and beaches. The Red Ball Express, an improvised truck transport system that got started in late August, made every effort to get fuel, food, and ammunition to the front lines. Drivers were on the road twenty hours a day. Between August 29 and September 15, 6,000 trucks carried 135,000 tons of supplies from St. Lo to a supply dump near Chartres. At the dump the supplies were picked up by other drivers and taken to the front. But the front line continued to move east and north, and the system couldn’t keep up.
The 743rd stayed in Tournai for four days, waiting for fuel. On September 7 the battalion filled its vehicles and took off. The GIs got a wild welcome in the Belgian villages. According to the battalion history, “They cheered, and waved, and risked their lives to crowd up to the tanks in motion and in all the demonstrative ways of a happy people they showed their enthusiastic thanks.” On September 12 the leading platoon of Charlie Company in the 743rd crossed into Holland, the first Americans to reach that country. The German border was but a few kilometres away.
Now there was opposition. German artillery boomed. Panzerfaust shells disabled a couple of Shermans. The other Shermans could still fire but not move-their fuel tanks were empty. And the Germans had got into the Siegfried Line. They had fuel problems, too, but they could dig their tanks in and use them as fortified batteries. Their supply lines had grown shorter-Aachen was just to the south, Dtisseldorf and Cologne just to the east.