Chapter 1 Background Seven months earlier, almost to the day, a gloomy autumn mist blanketed the docks of Liverpool. The early November air was chilly but crisp and invigorating. By the thousands, soldiers of the 1st Infantry Division, many of whom were hard-core survivors of bitter fighting in North Africa and Sicily, descended wooden gangways and set foot upon the venerable soil of England. A band played "Dixie," followed by "The Sidewalks of New York." As the soldiers made their way to troop trains, a bevy of sharply contrasting emotions pervaded their ranks. Some were just happy to be out of combat. Many daydreamed about the pleasures Britain offered-pubs, beer, liquor, sightseeing, shelter, running water, but most of all, women. Some of those who had been with the division during its pre-combat training in Britain the year before looked forward to renewing acquaintances with British friends.
In several instances, men were so excited that they let out spontaneous whoops of joy. "You can imagine the crescendo that crushed the ears of all within miles," Captain Joe Dawson, a company commander, wrote to his family in an attempt to describe the exaltation of his men. But there was an undercurrent of tension and gloom, too. The return to England could only mean one thing: the Big Red One was returning to combat, probably in the forthcoming invasion of Hitler''s Europe. After nearly a year of fighting, and a slew of victories in the Mediterranean theater, many of the soldiers felt they had earned the right to go home. Already fiercely proud of their outfit, and resentful of most outside authority, they had developed a cynical world-weariness that, for some, bordered on self-pity. After the Sicily campaign, hopeful rumors had spread that the division would be rotated back to the States to train new recruits. When the men boarded ships and found out they were heading to England, and thus eventually back to action, "it caused," in the recollection of one rifleman, "a lot of trouble among the soldiers, a lot of unrest and anger.
" For Lieutenant John Downing and his men, "the hope of going to the States . died hard. We could be sure . if we didn''t go home this time, we wouldn''t go home until the end of the war." Many of the veterans felt this was unfair and unnecessary. They complained bitterly about the idea of going back into combat. After all, they had been fortunate enough to survive to this point; more prolonged action almost certainly meant that their chances of survival would be diminished. A man could evade the law of averages only so long before his luck ran out.
"Their feeling was there must be other infantry units in the United States Army that could be utilized in the assault on Western Europe," Private Steve Kellman explained. There were, of course, other units, but none quite like the Big Red One. The division''s experience in amphibious assaults made it indispensable to invasion planners (not to mention its familiarity in the very sort of town fighting, river crossings, mountain fighting, and combined arms maneuver warfare that would follow in the months after the invasion). Among the American infantry divisions available for the coming invasion of Omaha beach, none had actually assaulted a hostile shore. Lieutenant General Omar Bradley, commander of the First Army, with control over all U.S. ground forces in the coming invasion, knew this all too well. "Although I disliked subjecting the 1st to still another major landing," he wrote, "I felt that as commander I had no other choice.
My job was to get ashore, establish a lodgment, and destroy the German. In the accomplishment of that mission, there was little room for the niceties of justice. I felt compelled to employ the best troops I had. As a result the division that deserved compassion as a reward for its previous ordeals now became the inevitable choice for our most difficult job." In essence, they could not be spared. The task ahead was far too important and far too challenging. At Liverpool, the troops boarded trains that took them to southern England, where they would settle in and begin a new round of training. Many were miffed at the standing order to remove, for reasons of secrecy, shoulder patches and all other indicators of their unit affiliation.
The lack of identifying unit insignia made them look like newly arrived stateside replacements instead of proud combat veterans. It seemed a direct affront to their pride and status. Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Wright, the division quartermaster, was so incensed at the order that he simply refused to follow it. Military police caught him, wrote him up, and referred his case to the First Army Provost Marshal. His defiance eventually evaporated, but only after the threat of a court-martial. He and thousands of other like-minded veterans grumbled, but swallowed their pride and complied with the order. Even worse, in the view of many Big Red One soldiers, was something else that had happened near the end of the Sicily campaign. Bradley had decided to relieve Major General Terry de la Mesa Allen, the 1st Division''s popular and colorful commanding officer.
Allen was a soldier''s soldier, a down-to-earth cavalryman who loved polo, whiskey, and earthy language. The son of a West Point graduate and the grandson of a Civil War officer, he was born to be a soldier. As a young man, Allen had washed out of West Point because of his independent nature and maverick tendencies, a dismissal that must have smarted for the scion of such a distinguished military family. True to his resilient nature, though, he rebounded from the setback to earn a degree from the Catholic University of America and a subsequent Regular Army commission. Allen''s personality meshed perfectly with the independent professionalism of the 1st Infantry Division. In combat, he was the embodiment of an inspirational commander-courageous, relentless, and energetic-the sort of general who circulated easily among subordinates from the lowest-ranking private to staff officers. On the Tunisian front, he had made a point of regularly visiting the forward positions and speaking to each man personally. "There is nothing that is more inspiring than to have a general walking about the front lines when the bullets are flying, talking with the men," one of his aides wrote about him in a letter home.
"He doesn''t know what the word fear is and he is just like a hypodermic to the men of his command." He had little patience for niceties. In action, he dressed in a simple, rumpled olive-drab uniform, helmet often askew or at his side, smoking cigarettes, grinning, tossing around one-liners. He was a natural backslapper and storyteller. He enjoyed an easy familiarity with his men, yet he managed to maintain a strong command presence. Almost everyone who served in the 1st had encountered him firsthand and had come to love him, in part because of his magnetic personality, in part because of his competence, but mostly because of his obvious concern for their welfare. "Do your job," he once told his division. "We don''t want .
dead heroes. We''re not out for glory. We''re here to do a dirty, stinking job." Over the many months of combat in North Africa and Sicily, he had inculcated an aggressive spirit in his division. True to his cavalry roots, he believed in swift maneuvers, slash and dash, night attacks and esprit de corps. He cared little for his own promotion or his postwar military career. Command of the unit was the limit of his ambition. The men sensed that they were his first priority, and they loved him for it.
"General Allen was loved by his soldiers because he really cared about them," Corporal Sam Fuller once wrote. "He didn''t give a damn about playing politics or being famous." Allen had no tolerance for anyone who messed with his boys, whether that meant the Germans or higher command. In combat, this attitude contributed to success, but when the unit was off the line, it sometimes led to disciplinary problems. In the Mediterranean, the 1st earned a reputation as a hard-fighting outfit on the line, but a hard-drinking, rebellious, troublemaking group away from combat, contemptuous of rear-echelon troops, higher authority, and, for that matter, anyone who wasn''t affiliated with the division. Allen seemed not only to tolerate this attitude but to encourage it, at least in the view of Bradley, George Patton, Dwight Eisenhower, and other senior officers in the theater. The most notorious example occurred in the spring of 1943, after the Tunisia campaign. The combat-weary men of the division yearned to visit the bars and brothels of Oran, a city they had actually captured during the initial invasion of North Africa back in the fall of 1942.
However, only soldiers in rear-echelon-style khaki uniforms were allowed into the city. The Big Red One soldiers were still clothed in the same filthy olive-drab wool uniforms they had worn all winter during the hard fighting among the hills of Tunisia. The combat men felt that if anyone should enjoy the pleasures of Oran, it should be the front-line soldiers who routinely risked their lives. Therefore, they deeply resented being excluded from the city at the expense of the "typewriter commandos," as they often referred to the service troops. Allen was clearly sympathetic to the views of his men. He defied the off-limits order and issued passes for his soldiers to enjoy some R&R in the city. A substantial amount of brawling, drinking, and mayhem ensued, involving both officers and enlisted men. "I can still remember the feeling I had when I landed a punch to some fat major''s belly," Captain Edward Kuehn said.
"We had taken Oran before, and we had lost a lot of good men doing it. Rearguard troops were not going to keep us from taking it this time, eith.