115. Crossroads

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The Crossroads:

Warfare in the first half of the 20th century.

Yesterday I happened upon an account of a minor infantry engagement in WW2 that is only known to people because of a book and TV mini-series. Thinking about the account later, I realized that it is a wonderful look at how infantry fighting changed in the first half of the 20th century. But let me say right now that much of this is surmise on my part. The accounts of the engagement I've seen haven't given as much detail as I would have liked.

Late in 1944 the German and Allied armies stood on either side of the Rhine near it's mouth, where the land was mostly flat polders and bordered by dikes. The Allied advance since the Normandy breakout had run out of gas (literally in some cases) and the Germans were still trying to recover from the disaster they suffered around Falaise. This stretch of the front was quiet and thinly held on the Allied side of the river. In the particular area we are concerned with, a small road ran from near, but not on, the river back into the rear of the regiment holding the line. To be even more specific, the road ran between the areas covered by two different infantry companies. Neither company had enough men to keep eyes on the entire front, so small patrols were periodically sent out into the gap in between them. 

The Germans, noticing this weakness, decided to attack down that gap so as to penetrate the weak Allied line and create havoc in the rear. With luck, they could hit regimental headquarters before anyone could organize a counter attack. This wasn't the main assault, but intended as a diversion to tie-down Allied regiments while confusing them about where the real attack would come.

But this is 1944, not 1814 or even 1864, so there would be no general on horseback leading a daring charge. Instead, the order for the operation was given to a Waffen SS battalion commander (equivalent in rank to an American Major) who gave the job to two companies of his unit. (This is one of the places where I'm fleshing out the story. I know the companies were SS so they must have belonged to a battalion though the accounts don't mention it.) They had to quietly cross the Rhine, (probably in small boats) make their way to the Allied line, force their way through, place small blocking forces on their new flanks to keep the Allies at bay (a platoon with a few well placed MG 42 machine guns should do the trick) and then race through to do their job. 

This was not an attack that would win a war, but it had every chance of at least limited success. But that's not what happened. As so often happens in warfare, poor training and an excess of stupidity on one side, combined with good training and intelligence on the other side, to produce a surprising outcome.

The evening the Germans started crossing the river, an American patrol ran into their advance force and were mauled. They pulled their wounded back to company headquarters and reported the contact. At this point the Germans were still crossing the river and were not in position to attack. Their advance force should have been lying low and avoiding contact. But let's say the American patrol caught some of them out in the open so they had no alternative but to engage. Once the Americans were driven off, they ought to have concealed themselves -- tried to convince the Americans that two patrols had run into each other by chance, but that that was the end of the story and there was nothing more to see here. Failing that, they should have dug in, taking advantage of the high ground of the dikes and stayed quiet until the remainder of their force was assembled for the attack -- unless they were attacked.

The left side of the gap, when viewed from the Allied perspective, was held by Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Regiment, of the 101st Airborne Division. Captain Winters, commander of Easy, immediately set out with a squad of his men (a small force just a step up from a patrol) to investigate what was happening on his right flank. When they approached the scene of the prior fight they saw one of those splendid German MGs firing down the road -- where there were no troops. Winters positioned his small unit to attack the MG position and they succeeded in taking it out but discovered there were many more Germans on the other side of a dyke (the Germans were still assembling), so Winters pulled back into a covering position and called in the remainder of the 1st platoon, plus some additional light machine guns. 

Now this is where it gets really weird. At first light, the Germans had arrived but were still forming up for the attack and thus in considerable disorder. Still, there were two companies of Waffen SS versus a reinforced platoon of paratroopers. Winters ordered his men to fix bayonets and lead a charge across hundreds of yards of flat terrain (where most all of his men were delayed by wire fences) with his machine guns providing suppressing fire. Because the Germans had no security at all, apparently, the Americans caught them in the open and slaughtered many, captured eleven, and drove the survivors back to the river.  

Winters then called in a second platoon from a neighboring company (Fox) and followed the Germans to the river where they fought an indecisive engagement, but convinced the Germans that this was not the best place for their attack. The Waffen battalion commander was probably happy to get any of his men back across the river in safety.

Easy company is best known for their textbook attack on a German artillery position behind Omaha Beach during the Normandy Invasion. But this engagement, known as The Crossroads, is, from my perspective, even more outstanding and characteristic of post -Somme infantry warfare. Winters did everything right. (Though the bayonet charge was a huge risk.) Most of the casualties suffered on the American side were in the initial patrol ambush and when the platoons were pulling back from the river and were caught at the crossroads by German artillery. Even then they only lost one KIA. 

The Germans, on the other hand, did almost everything wrong. On paper, this operation works every time, but that's assuming officers and men know their jobs and actually perform them. Back in 1814 or 1864 a commander of a company would only have been required to hold his position within the regiment. And if he had screwed up there would have been regimental and possibly divisional staff on hand to set him right. Winters was independently engaging enemy forces maybe six times larger than his own (though he didn't know that, and this doesn't count the rest of his company that didn't take part in the engagement.)

Here are some clips from the mini-series. Unfortunately, they simplified and altered and added some explosions for the sake of TV. They still give you some idea of what happened. I can't show them here but I'll give you the links,

The night battle

The morning charge

Candide

Chapter 18. Something Voltaire didn't know, and couldn't imagine, was that the Americas didn't have wheeled transport before the Conquest. There would have been no carriages in Eldorado. 

P.S. This assumes the people of Elderado are supposed to be Native Americans, which would seem to be true except that I've also heard that Elderado was actually based on the Pennsylvania colony.

Vertigo

p117 We finally learn our hero's name, Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer, historian, of Landeck, Tyrol. Here's the Wiki entry on the actual person with this name. And that's where I found this, quote from Fallmerayer, 

For nearly eighteen aeons [Äonen], all history has been the result of the struggle between two basic elements, split apart by a divine power from the very beginning: a flexible life-process on the one side, and a formless, undeveloped stasis on the other. The symbol of the former is eternal Rome, with the entire Occident lying behind her; the symbol of the latter is Constantinople, with the ossified Orient.... That the Slavs might be one of the two world-factors, or if one prefers, the shadow of the shining image of European humanity, and therefore that the constitution of the earth might not admit philosophical reconstruction without their assent, is the great scholarly heresy of our time.^[15]

Doesn't that suggest Settembreni's position? Here's something else from Wiki "...in November 1850, the Munich Professor Johann Nepomuk von Ringseis delivered an 'explosive' lecture at a public session of the Bavarian Academy, where he denounced the arrival in Bavaria of a 'philosophical Left' [Fallmerayer], marked by liberalism and irreligiosity, that viewed all religion as a 'pathological condition....'"

Later we are told that,

He is remembered as "a co-founder of Byzantine studies, as discoverer of the divisive Greek theory, as a prophet of the world-historical opposition between Occident and Orient, and finally as a brilliant essayist."^[40]

Fallmerayer's account of the split between "Occident" and "Orient" hinged on his interpretation of the Russian Empire, which he perceived as a powerful blend of Slavic ethnic characteristics, Byzantine political philosophy, and Orthodox theology. Although he initially perceived this constellation with admiration, and viewed Russia as the potential savior of Europe from Napoleon, his view changed in the mid-1840s, perhaps as a result of his encounter with Fyodor Tyutchev, and he soon came to see Russia as the major threat to Western Europe. By the late 1840s he was convinced that Russia would conquer Constantinople and the Balkans, and perhaps further the Slavic lands of the Habsburg and Prussian Empires. In the mid-1850s he was overjoyed by the success of the European/Ottoman coalition in the Crimean War.^[56]

Alas, our hero is clearly established in the 20th rather than the 19th century. Confusion grows.

Slight delay

I would have posted this earlier but I've had a cold (or something) and decided to put it off a couple days. I'll say this for my cold, it is fast moving. The first night I had a very sore throat so I bought sorbet the next day. By evening my throat was not particularly sore. The sorbet is good though.

Next - 116. Abusing QCD & synesthesia