As a battalion commander, Gen. DePuy got excellent results with a central idea and totally decentralized execution:
The town of Maizieres-les-Metz, six miles north of Metz, was a place where we fought a lot. General Patton got so fed up with reading about it in the Stars and Stripes that he ordered us to take it once and for all. He just didn’t want to read about it anymore. So, we put two battalions in there, the 3rd Battalion, commanded by Colonel Mason, assigned a house to each squad — he actually assigned a squad to each house. He gave them a full day to figure out how they were going to get to their assigned house and what they were going to do once they got there. Well, some of them had it all figured out — “Well, Mullen is going to throw a hand grenade in that window, then Brownlee is going to jump in that window.” That was okay; that was good. But, some of the squads hadn’t figured out who was going to do what. The companies made them plan it all out and build a little sand table or mockup and tell them, “Who goes first, who runs where, who shoots, and who throws?” Well, this attack jumped off at three o’clock in the morning. In five to ten minutes the battle was over. In five minutes the whole thing was finished. We had, oh, I don’t know, 200 prisoners — a small battalion. We lost maybe, two or three men.