The Danger Zone (DZ)

In World War I, one of the great miracles happened on 24th August 1914, just weeks after the war began, to save the British Army from disaster – the Angels of Mons. Judging from Dunkirk, the British Army frequently needed a lot of divine intervention to save it.

The Historic UK website gives this account of the miracle, which I’ve taken the liberty to edit for dramatic effect. This is the story it told:

a British sol...

In November, Major General Harold R. Bull, Eisenhower's G-3, had traveled to Washington at the head of a special mission to present the European Theater's emergency appeal for action to ease the persistent ammunition shortage. … Though Washington had remained consistently skeptical of Eisenhower's and his subordinates' laments, Moses's statistics were so compelling and unassailable, and Bull was a sufficiently prestigious an...

Montgomery would have been staggered had he listened in at Lutes' final interview with Bedell Smith, who told him: `No one can say supply has failed. At the front it is OK.'

Wrote Graham Dominick and Shelford Bidwell in their book Coalitions, Politicians and Generals. The Americans were concealing from the British what their true situation was, and that was not nothing because it was those same American Allies that were then on...

Bradley, Patton and Hodges had rattled the cages of Somervell’s command in Washington about what they said were failures by General Lee’s ComZ to issue their armies with adequate supplies of ammunition. This was now blowing up in the press in the United States, and was getting dangerously close to putting Eisenhower’s job on the line – not the intended result. Bedell Smith first got rid of one of Somervell&r...

On 9 March 1942 the US Army underwent its greatest organisational change. It implemented the wishes of General Marshall, the Army’s Chief of Staff. It was to give order to and clean up and simplify the command structure of the American Army at the very top. Only 3 men would report directly to Marshall. Lesley J. McNair was made the head of the Army Ground Forces. Henry Arnold was made the head of the Army Air Forces, and...

… if it became known that American logistics and American strategy had been instrumental in bringing the autumn campaign to a standstill and, what was more, prolonging the war, a political row would ensue just at the time of the presidential elections.

…

Back in Washington, when [Marshall] had set in train the investigation into logistics in the European Theatre of Operations … , he sent a signal to Bro...

The Normandy invasion was without doubt the most ambitious amphibious operation in military history, involving thousands of ships ferrying hundreds of thousands of men across a treacherous water passage against a hostile shore. There were serious concerns that it would be a disaster, and the logistics were the key element. Lee handled it superbly.

Once the invasion of France was launched there was in fact a huge logjam of supplies p...

After Aurand [Colonel Henry S Aurand – a consultant to the US Army world logistic supply supremo, General Brehon Somervell] had delivered his report and taken command of the Normandy Base Section in December, he recorded that he despatched a train of PX (Post Exchange) goods for the front. A platoon of infantry, part at the rear and part at the front, was to ensure that at long halts and in shunting yards, agents of...

Carlo d’Este, in his biography of Eisenhower wrote:

The only air plan that existed for Overlord in January 1944 vaguely proposed minimal measures for air support during a two-to-three-week period before D-Day in order to knock out coastal defenses and soften the way for the invasion force. When first briefed on air operations in January 1944, Eisenhower and Spaatz were shocked by Leigh-Mallory's prediction that it was still un...

In 1944/1945 General JCH Lee, was the Supremo of supply in the European Theatre of Operations under both Eisenhower, as the theatre commander, and under the great overlord of American logistics, General Brehon Somervell, who sat directly, alongside the Army commander and the Army Air Force commanders, under General Marshall, the Chief of Staff.

There was no more a controversial figure in Eisenhower’s command than General Lee &...

Logistics is the ball and chain of armoured warfare said General Heinz Guderian – and that was definitely a topic that he was qualified to speak on.

Tag words: Logistics; General Heinz Guderian; Somervell; John Kennedy Ohl; Supplying the Troops; General Brehon Somervell; ETO; European Theater of Operations; SOS; Service of Supplies; Russell Wegley; Eisenhower’s Lieutenants; General JCH Lee; Gener...

The formidable Nazi war machine was powerless to stop the build up in Britain of Allied troops shipped from the USA and Canada. But in early 1943 Doenitz was winning the Battle of the Atlantic against that other, essential, component that those troops needed, being transported in very vulnerable slow or just plain vulnerable, fast merchant ships. As Paul Kennedy wrote in his book Engineers of Victory:

The increasing flood of U....

To manage the buildup and subsequent supply of the American troops being shipped to Europe for the planned invasion of Hitler’s Festung Europa, Fortress Europe, Hank H Cox, in his biography of General JCH Lee, The General Who Wore Six Stars, wrote:

The Allied governments had determined that Germany would be their top priority. After Germany was defeated, they would make Japan their primary focus. But conquering Germany me...

For the most part the popular historians have been even harder on [General JCH Lee than the men who served with him]. Stephen E. Ambrose wrote in Citizen Soldiers that Lee was "the biggest jerk" in the European theater of operations.

Hank H Cox, in his biography of Lee, The General Who Wore Six Stars, gave himself the task of answering this key question when he wrote Lee’s biography:

The bigger question is whether Lee...

On December 16, 1944, there was a wedding at Eisenhower's headquarters in Paris for a young staff officer and a Red Cross nurse.

….

The day before the wedding President Roosevelt had nominated Eisenhower to the five-star rank of General of the Army, along with Marshall, Douglas MacArthur in the Pacific, and Hap Arnold of the air force. Also getting multistar treatment were Adm[iral]s. William Leahy, Ernest King, and Chester Ni...

The reality is that Patton accepted the inevitability of death in combat but strove mightily to save the lives of his men.

so wrote Carlo d’Este in his biography of Patton – A Genius for War.

Patton’s preferred nickname for himself, “Blood and Guts”, would seem to bely this assessment. Carlo d’Este had this to say about Patton’s reputation:

Eisenhower was well aware that Patton's detracto...

Grudging admiration of Patton was even expressed by Adolf Hitler, who referred to him as "that crazy cowboy general."

wrote Carlo d’Este in his biography of Patton, A Genius for War.

I don’t think it was grudging admiration from Adolf Hitler. I think it was a genuine compliment. Let me explain why.

Tag words: Patton; Adolf Hitler; Carlo d’Este; A Genius for War; Karl May; Christa Schroeder; H...

One of the fellows under me was Orde Wingate!’ …. Rank-and-file British soldiers trained kibbutzniks in military tactics. The British militarised the Yishuv and the 'Jewish warrior — as a cultural and social model and as a fact of life — emerged during the Arab Rebellion.’ …. Wingate slapped and struck Jewish soldiers in his squads, who took this as a necessary part of their drill and called Wi...

The Times 6th December 1943 edition covered a piece written by The Quaker muckraker Drew Pearson, apparently tipped off by an OSS source, broadcast a garbled but uncensored version of the incidents during his weekly radio show as Rick Atkinson recounted in his book The Day of Battle. The Times piece read:

On November 21 crusading Drew Pearson, once called a liar by the President, let his ...