Jump to Introduction + Chronology
Jump back to Previous: Doctor Faustus - chapter XXXVIII
[Adrian with his usual entourage (but not Zeitblom, who gets this all second hand) goes to Zurich for another performance of Rudi’s new concerto. At a diner there, we meet the lovely Marie Godeau -- a set designer currently residing in Paris. We meet her again in Munich where she is working on a local production. Zeitblom becomes aware that Adrian is smitten with Mlle Godeau, “if only because he knew Marie’s first and her last name. And we know that in society he seldom knew the name of the person he spoke with...” There follows another dinner in Munich where Zeitblom meets and approves of the young lady.]
And that concludes chapter XXXIX.
Battle of Lanzerath
I have talked -- too much, probably -- about military matters both here and in my previous blog. In particular I have in mind what I’ve written about the uneven value of troops -- that you can’t simply total up the heads on a battlefield and derive any conclusions from the numbers. Also, I’ve written about the revolution in infantry tactics after the mid-19th century as infantry defensive fire became so much more effective in thwarting attacks. And how this eventually, during and after the Great War, lead to new infantry tactics (fire and maneuver) and placed an increased importance on smaller units and especially on the training of both officers and of the men of these smaller units -- since they now had to act independently rather than simply join in mass movement of troops. as previously was the norm.
Just recently, while researching something else, I ran into a new account of an action that took place on the first day of the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, that I have since realized is the perfect demonstration of all these ideas. It was the Wiki account that I ran into, and you can read it here -- in fact I recommend you do, if you are going to continue with this as I will not be repeating it all. The previous account I read, or at at least a blurb about it, you can find here. I will be referring to this as well, and I do recommend the book.
“Battle of Lanzerath” is a fairly grandiose name for such a small action, but, for convenience sake, I will borrow the term. The first thing I want to stress is that this is the story of three units, not just the Intelligence and Reconnaissance Platoon, 394th Regiment, 99th Infantry Division, U.S. Army, but also the 1st Battalion, 9th Fallschirmjaeger Regiment, 3rd Fallschirmjaeger Division, Wehrmacht -- another unit will appear later. These two divisions and regiments had a lot in common: Both were without combat experience... "green" as it is commonly expressed. During the Great War they would have been described as men who had not yet seen the elephant... only heard about it. (What is confusing about this, to the initiated reader, is that Fallschirmjaeger (paratroop) units in general and the 3rd in particular, have a very good reputation. But, in case you haven't read the Wiki entry, this unit was virtually destroyed at Normandy and had been rebuilt with Luftwaffe units. The Luftwaffe had some of the best trained soldiers of the war, the Hermann Göring Panzer Division, for example, was unique in that it was trained both for airborne and for armored warfare. But the regiments thrown in to rebuild the 3rd Division in 1944 were not of the same quality.
Behind and just to the south of this battle, two entire regiments of the 106th Infantry Division (a green unit that had moved into the line five days before) surrendered two days into the attack as the German blitz rolled into and through their positions. But The Recon Platoon that is the subject of this Wiki entry was not of a piece with its regiment, or with the 99th and 106th Divisions in general. (Units of the 99th that survived the first few days of the attack, in particular the 395th Regiment, went on to perform well in the prolonged fighting for Elsenborn Ridge that contained the German attack.) For one thing, this platoon was specially trained to operate independently and to penetrate enemy lines and gather intelligence, which often meant capturing enemy soldiers. Not only did it have elite training but it had successfully practiced these skills in the weeks leading up to the battle. Maybe they had, to that point, only seen small elephants, but they were not unfamiliar with the breed.
Here’s my favorite detail in the Wiki account “Avoiding official channels, he [the U.S. lieutenant in command] traded his unit's collection of German memorabilia with an ordnance supply officer for an armored Jeep with a mounted .50 calibre machine gun.[2][3] ”. This tells you two things: they were busy behind enemy lines collecting both intelligence and loot; and the officer in command was proactive about improving his situation. Once the battle starts, the thing to notice is that the German officers fail to respond as they should have been trained to do, they continue to launch frontal attacks against a well defended enemy position despite the fact that that has been a recipe for defeat since the 1860s. It is only when the prolonged delay brings the 27th Fusilier Regiment, 12th Volksgrenadier Division of the Wehrmacht onto the scene that they correctly send small detachments through the woods to flank the American position. Because, as a Recon platoon, they had not been trained in defending a static position, the Americans left their flanks unguarded and were overrun and captured -- by that time they were almost out of ammunition and dealing with some casualties, so it is debatable whether they could have eluded capture in any case.
Had the Fallschirmjaeger commander employed those same, correct, tactics after his first attack was repelled, the Americans couldn’t have held out for long. So why did the Germans use such a green division to lead such an important advance? My guess is that they saw this as an easy way for the unit to gain battlefield experience. (Another possibility is that the generals saw "3rd Fallschirmjaeger Division" and assumed it was as competent as the unit with the same name had been in the summer of that year.) Taking part in an attack is relatively easy, you just follow your orders and try to keep up with the units on your flanks. In general, the German blitz swept all before it and the units in the lead mainly had to round up prisoners while continuing to move forward. In all fairness, assigning the Fallschirmjaeger division to this role made some sense. And yet wars turn on little things like this... the wrong unit in the wrong place (or the wrong man in command of a battalion). The right man in command of a platoon. This is why Clausewitz emphasized the role of luck in warfare.
No comments:
Post a Comment