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Volume CXXXII, Number 20 |
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Overload and Europe re-entry
KID WONGSRICHANALAI
STAFF WRITER
June 5, 1944. In the English Channel there was much movement. Hundreds and thousands of ships from the huge destroyers to the small transport craft awaited the signal to begin moving in towards the beach. As the sea gently rolled up against the powerful steel hulls of the American and British warships there was much excitement aboard. The vessels moved slowly, out of British docks and converged at sea, sailing to their assigned positions, ready for the strike, which the supreme commander had authorized for the morning. On board one of those ships-actually, the U.S. flagship-was an older gentleman who had seen much in his days. After graduating from Bowdoin College in 1912, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania-native Philip Cole had gone on to fight in the First World War, seeing action at St. Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne. He was commissioned in the Field Artillery Reserve after that conflict and then went on to complete courses in the Command and General Staff School and the Army War College Intelligence Course. In the Second World War he had three sons who were serving in the Air Force and he himself had earlier received the Air Medal for a daring flight in an unarmed plane, which took him over six thousand miles into enemy territory to gather intelligence. Philip Cole was a veteran and he knew, as did many others on that night of June 5, 1944, that he was witnessing, once again, history in the making.
Cole arose at midnight and made his way to the bridge of the U.S. cruiser. As a representative of the Tactical Air Forces he was there to ensure that things were happening smoothly. Allied parachute battalions were already operating behind enemy lines to disrupt German communications and secure essential bridges for the troops, which would follow with the dawn. That assault was still yet to come but preparations for the landings were already underway. Cole remembered, "The enemy coast was blazing. Our bombers were plastering it with the heaviest concentrated preparatory bombardment in history. I saw bombers with their engines on fire, fall into the sea, having been hit by enemy flack. I saw our troop-carrier airplanes dropping flares in long lines."
The hours ticked by slowly and below decks men were preparing for the assault. Thousands of American, British and Canadian infantrymen were loaded onto amphibious tanks and transports; their weapons were checked; their prayers were said. As dawn broke and the clock struck 6:30, the first troops landed at 'Utah Beach' amidst heavy defensive fire. On other beaches there was less opposition by German troops. Cole observed the assault: "The air was full of airplanes bombing and strafing the beach and its defenses. Then the smaller landing craft went in. The defenses had been so softened up that on most sections of the beach our infantry had very small losses." By that night 155,000 Allied troops had successfully made it ashore.
Following this initial lodging, Allied troops quickly massed supplies and reinforcements on the continent. It was not until July 25 that the U.S. First Army was able to breach the German defensive lines surrounding the landing zones. After that, both American and British armies raced east, liberating countries as they went. A month after that break through in the German lines, Paris was liberated.
On December 16, 1944, German troops launched a massive counter-offensive in the Ardennes, which halted the Allied juggernaut. Intense fighting occurred in what was to become known as the Battle of the Bulge. For days the two sides fought a savage mobile war in the heartland of Europe. In the end though, it was the Allies, which triumphed and halted Hitler's hopes of stopping them before they reached German soil. The Allies pushed on.
As a New Year dawned greeting cards were dispatched to the Bowdoin men in the service. Each year, since the war started, President Sills had dispatched letters to his former students, no matter where they were. The 1944-1945 letter was typical of such notes:
Another year has gone by and again the College is sending a line to her many sons in all quarters of the world to express the old, old wish for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. We have lost many of our very best and think often of them and of you all. Good luck and a safe return to the College that will be changed in some ways but will be the same College you all know and love.
Often these letters provoked a smile and a thought of home, and in many instances, a letter with interesting news, such as the one received from George H. Carter, fighting his way through Germany:
I little thought that I would ever participate in a conflict of this sort deciding the fate of nations. I thought our world was too civilized. I was wrong.
I don't know how all the other Bowdoin men over here feel about this war but I can put my own basic thoughts into a few words. I would be willing to sacrifice anything to keep the war over here. After seeing the chaos and destruction already brought upon France I can only thank God that we were able to come over here and meet the might of Germany before it crossed the ocean and brought death and destruction to our home-land. Many learned gentlemen will say that Germany could never have invaded us, could never have brought her armies to our shores, but personally, after seeing how strong she is at the end of so many years of conflict, I have no doubt but what we would have been invaded and seriously "put to it" before driving them out.
It is my sincere hope that this year will see the end of the wars with Germany and Japan, and that Bowdoin students of the near future will be able to concentrate on preparation for a peaceful life and a good one.
As Carter hoped, 1945, turned out to be the last year of the war and nowhere was that more evident than in Germany, where Hitler's dreams of a thousand year Reich were collapsing around him. Campaigning in "the Fatherland," a Bowdoin graduate reported:
A beautiful country [Germany] but for the thoroughly demolished cities, hats off to a very efficient job by the AAF and the RAF. I cannot for the life of me see any justification for Hitler's plea for "Lebensraum". The country seems twice as spacious, the people are a clean and intelligent looking lot, and are either extremely sullen or rather hateful. … This idea of non-fraternization has taken a telling effect on the people, and I am sure that know now that it is them who are the "conquered."
"Conquered" was one way to put it. The power German armies, having once caused panic and spread terror over much of Europe were, by May, 1945 unable to protect their own homeland from American, British, and Russian troops. At the end of April, Hitler committed suicide, leaving his generals to fight on till the bitter end. Without their "führer," and lacking arms, supplies, and the other essentials of war, however, the once proud German legions began to surrender. Wrote Joseph Johnson of the Class of 1944, who was on hand to witness this collapse:
The sight of the thousands upon thousands of German prisoners is really something of behold. I would say that I saw a good thirty thousand just this morning being taken to rear areas.
A few mere days after the Bowdoin graduate wrote these words, Germany surrendered unconditionally. The fighting had lasted long and the going had been rough. Many thousands more were added to the long lists of casualties. Among them were good Bowdoin men such as Curtice L. Mathews, Jr. (Class of 1946)-who, on April 3, 1945, threw himself on top of a live grenade and absorbed the blast that would have taken out many others in his unit-and Joel Y. Marshall of the Class of 1934, who died in March and whose wife received the following words from President Sills: "Your husband's name will be inscribed on our list of those Bowdoin men who have given their lives for their country in World War II and he will be gratefully remembered by his alma mater." There were many other Bowdoin men who also perished to liberate Europe; Kenneth Sills and Paul Nixon mourned them all and were instrumental in ensuring that these former students would not be forgotten. But despite these casualty lists there was great celebration in the major cities of the Allied powers. Hitler, the tyrant, who had unleashed so much hate and evil, was now dead; his Germany in ruins. Now, all that was left was to secure the surrender of Japan.
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