The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945
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Authors: Rick Atkinson
Tags: #Non-Fiction, #War, #History
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To those who knew neither thee nor me, yet suffered for us anyway
But pardon, gentles all,
The flat unraisèd spirits that hath dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object. Can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France?
Shakespeare,
Henry V,
Prologue
C
ONTENTS
“This Long Thin Line of Personal Anguish”
How Easy It Is to Make a Ghost
The Loveliest Story of Our Time
“Harden the Heart and Let Fly”
“Five Barley Loaves and Three Small Fishes”
“Do Not Let Us Pretend We Are All Right”
A Town Too Small for the Tragedy
“Providence Decrees and We Must Obey”
“We Are All So Human That It Is Pitiful”
Staking Everything on One Card
“Go Easy, Boys. There’s Danger Ahead”
A Rendezvous in Some Flaming Town
“The Enemy Has Reason to Fear Him”
Lovers’ Quarrels Are a Part of Love
M
APS
1. Mediterranean and European Theaters in World War II
2. Assault on Normandy, June 1944
3. Final
OVERLORD
Plan, June 6, 1944
5. The Advance Inland, June 6–30, 1944
6. Operation
GOODWOOD
, July 18–20, 1944
7. Operation
COBRA
Breakthrough, July 24–27, 1944
8. German Attack at Mortain, August 7, 1944
9. The Falaise Pocket, August 16–21, 1944
10. The Liberation of Paris, August 23–25, 1944
11. Operation
DRAGOON
, August 1944
12. Pursuit Up the Rhône, August 29–September 14, 1944
13. Pursuit to the German Border, August 26–September 11, 1944
14. Operation
MARKET GARDEN
, September 17–26, 1944
15. Battle for Aachen, October 7–21, 1944
16. Fight in the Hürtgen Forest, November 2–9, 1944
17. Third Army at Metz, November 8–December 2, 1944
18. Capture of Strasbourg and Stalemate in Alsace, November 26, 1944
19. The Siegfried Line Campaign, September 11–December 15, 1944
20. The Bulge: Sixth Panzer Army Attack, December 16–21, 1944
21. The Bulge: Fifth Panzer Army Attack, December 16–19, 1944
22. Bastogne, December 21–26, 1944
23. The Western Front, January 3, 1945
24. The Colmar Pocket, January 20–February 5, 1945
25. Over the Roer: Operations
VERITABLE
and
GRENADE
, February–March 1945
26. Crossing the Rhine, March 1945
27. Operation
VARSITY PLUNDER
, March 24–28, 1945
28. Encircling the Ruhr, March 28–April 14, 1945
29. Victory in Europe, May 8, 1945
P
ROLOGUE
A
KILLING
frost struck England in the middle of May 1944, stunting the plum trees and the berry crops. Stranger still was a persistent drought. Hotels posted admonitions above their bathtubs: “The Eighth Army crossed the desert on a pint a day. Three inches only, please.” British newspapers reported that even the king kept “quite clean with one bath a week in a tub filled only to a line which he had painted on it.” Gale winds from the north grounded most Allied bombers flying from East Anglia and the Midlands, although occasional fleets of Flying Fortresses still could be seen sweeping toward the Continent, their contrails spreading like ostrich plumes.
Nearly five years of war had left British cities as “bedraggled, unkempt and neglected as rotten teeth,” according to an American visitor, who found that “people referred to ‘before the war’ as if it were a place, not a time.” The country was steeped in heavy smells, of old smoke and cheap coal and fatigue. Wildflowers took root in bombed-out lots from Birmingham to Plymouth—sow-whistle, Oxford ragwort, and rosebay willow herb, a tall flower with purple petals that seemed partial to catastrophe. Less bucolic were the millions of rats swarming through three thousand miles of London sewers; exterminators scattered sixty tons of sausage poisoned with zinc phosphate, and stale bread dipped in barium carbonate.
Privation lay on the land like another odor. British men could buy a new shirt every twenty months. Housewives twisted pipe cleaners into hair clips. Iron railings and grillwork had long been scrapped for the war effort; even cemeteries stood unfenced. Few shoppers could find a fountain pen or a wedding ring, or bedsheets, vegetable peelers, shoelaces. Posters discouraged profligacy with depictions of the “Squander Bug,” a cartoon rodent with swastika pockmarks. Classified advertisements included pleas in the
Times
of London for “unwanted artificial teeth” and cash donations to help wounded Russian war horses. An ad for Chez-Vous household services promised “bombed upholstery and carpets cleaned.”
Other government placards advised, “Food is a munition. Don’t waste it.” Rationing had begun in June 1940 and would not end completely until 1954. The monthly cheese allowance now stood at two ounces per citizen. Many children had never seen a lemon; vitamin C came from “turnip water.” The Ministry of Food promoted “austerity bread,” with a whisper of sawdust, and “victory coffee,” brewed from acorns. “Woolton pie,” a concoction of carrots, potatoes, onions, and flour, was said to lie “like cement upon the chest.” For those with strong palates, no ration limits applied to sheep’s head, or to eels caught in local reservoirs, or to roast cormorant, a stringy substitute for poultry.