Isegoria

In 1953 Gen. DePuy ended up back in Europe, testing battalions:

It was very strenuous because each one of those tests lasted for a day and a half. We didn’t get any sleep and then, after one day of rest, we would test another battalion. I went through a little over 20 battalions each year. I watched people do it right, and I watched people do it wrong. I saw a lot more do it wrong than I saw do it right. I was struck by the fact that those who had commanded battalions in war were something like five times as good and those who hadn’t. I blamed a little of that on Leavenworth, because the ones who hadn’t commanded in war, more or less took a passive attitude, and waited for voluminous recommendations from their staff. With all of that going on, there was never time enough to move the troops, or to let them dig in, or to do all of the things that they had to do. They were always late, or lost, or mixed-up in one way or another. Now, the guys who previously had commanded battalions, more or less made up their own minds, and the staff ran around behind them and made it work. They gave the troops plenty of time to move and to dig in, which made it a lot better.

After the war, DePuy found himself working as an attaché in Hungary, where he stumbled into intelligence:

I did have one experience in Hungary which almost changed the whole pattern of my life. It almost turned me into the intelligence game permanently — something that I did not want. We really were not trained to collect information in a clandestine manner although at the time, Eastern Europe was a boiling pot of clandestine activity. We military chaps were amateurs. But, one day we received a message from Washington to go to Mohacs to report on the Danube bridge which the Germans had dropped in late 1944, as the Russians started their envelopment of Budapest. Some intelligence analyst in Washington was trying to complete the book — there was one being compiled on each country — and there were reports that the bridge was being rebuilt. So, one sunny autumn day in 1949, I put on my Air Force fur collared flight jacket — no hat — civilian trousers and shirt, and stirred up my Hungarian jeep driver — a blond crew cut chap in a field jacket with no hat — and we drove south to Mohacs.

Mohacs, by the way, is the site of the defeat of the Hungarian Army by the Turks. It lies 10 miles or so west of the main highway into Budapest from the southeast, which is the link with Rumania along the north bank of the Danube, and with Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia. It is about 75 miles south of Budapest. The trip down was uneventful and the bridge, it turned out, was not being rebuilt. As we returned to the main road leading north to Budapest, we encountered a Russian military convoy proceeding north. It consisted of US jeeps, 2 1 /2-ton trucks, stake and platform 10-ton trucks, plus artillery and towed antitank guns. The convoy seemingly was endless. So, as we sat there at the road junction, we counted the vehicles and recorded bumper numbers. The march units were closed up but there were gaps between serials. After an hour we became impatient and pulled into a gap. The only identification on our jeep was a small 6 by 8 inch enamel US flag on the right base of the windshield. Fortunately, we looked like all of the Russian jeeps in the convoy. Anyway, about 30 miles up the road, the column turned into a huge forested area on the right or east of the highway. A large group of officers and MPs were on the road and there was no way we could avoid turning in so we tucked up close behind a 2 1 /2-ton truck and scooted in with the convoy. The delegation on the road looked at us hard but didn’t stop us.

Inside the forest the road swept around in a large circle. We were moving counterclockwise. To the right, at intervals of perhaps 200 to 300 yards, were parking areas and bivouacs, most of them occupied with Russian troops and equipment. After about a mile, the element we were following turned into one of these areas and we were alone on the circular inner road — and a bit nervous I might add. Soon we came up behind a Budapest municipal water sprinkler wetting down the road. We could see no way out except to follow the circular road. It led us by tank parks, artillery parks, and command posts with lots of radio antennae, etcetera. I kept notes and counted everything. Lo and behold, we finally came back to the point near the main highway where we had entered. The MPs were still there and we chose not to exit through them so we started our second trip around the circuit. After more counting and more nervousness we reached the far side of the circle and found a small firebreak road which we followed to the east. It finally took us out of the forest and we found back roads which led to the main highway north of the Russian encampment.

In the legation I stayed up most of the night preparing a very voluminous and detailed report. In those days we had a book of Russian bumper numbers which identified divisions and regiments. It turned out that we had seen ninety percent of the 17th Guards Mechanized Division moving from the USSR to Hungary in preparation for the invasion of Yugoslavia from the north. In those days we had no satellite photography or other coverage. My report on a scale of A to F for reliability of the source, and 1 to 5 for accuracy of the information, was rated A1 . For a short time I became the darling of the US intelligence community. It nearly did me in professionally. It nearly sucked me into the intelligence business permanently, but after one tour with the Central Intelligence Agency, I was able to squirm out of an assignment to G-2, US Army, Europe (USAREUR), in 1952, and resume my career as a tactical officer with infantry units and staffs.

The infantry is a sensor, Gen. DePuy explains:

One of the comments that I’ve made has infuriated the Infantry School. Now, I don’t blame them for being infuriated, but I honestly concluded at the end of World War II, when I soberly considered what I had accomplished, that I had moved the forward observers of the artillery across France and Germany. In other words, my battalion was the means by which Field Artillery forward observers were moved to the next piece of high ground. Once you had a forward observer on a piece of ground, he could call up five to ten battalions of artillery and that meant you had moved combat power to the next observation point — more combat power than the light infantry could dispose of. Now, you needed the infantry to do that. You needed the infantry to protect them, but the combat power came from this other source, and I think that trend has accelerated ever since. I think the infantry has the dirtiest job of them all. But, if you want to be rigorously analytical about what you’re really trying to do, it’s trying to move combat power forward to destroy the enemy, and the combat power that you are moving forward has been, in the past, mostly artillery, and that is even more true today. The infantry has a lot of ears and a lot of eyeballs. Now, it can call forward even more artillery fire and different kinds of munitions — Cannon Launched Guided Projectiles (CLGPs), the Family of Scatterable Mines (FASCAMs), Dual Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions (DPICMs), high explosive (HE), smoke, and illumination, and soon they will also have terminally guided anti-armor munitions. The infantry is a sensor. It’s a sensory organization that works into the fabric of the terrain and the enemy, and can call in all of this firepower — including artillery and TAC air that can really do the killing.

After the Bulge came the best tactical training a US Army officer could ask for:

I suppose the best tactical training that people ever got without any great jeopardy and just enough casualties to make it exciting and serious, was as a result of the fighting we did from the end of the Battle of the Bulge to the end of the war.

There were many actions, all fought at the company and battalion level. We were mounted in trucks and had five tanks and five tank destroyers. Hopefully, the direct support artillery was in range. It was a small self-contained battalion task force. You were expected to pursue the Germans, and you fought a lot of small engagements. Each one was different. The terrain was different, the enemy weapons and strengths were different, and the circumstances were different, but the mission was always the same — to go.

Now, to me, that’s the best training anybody ever got in the world. You can almost tell which people had that experience, particularly the people who were battalion commanders and had enough force to play with, and who had an independent mission in a zone of their own. The company commander was under the control of the battalion commander, right? The regimental commander just assigned zones. So, it was a battalion commander’s war at that time.

Well, one of the things that had been impressed upon me by that time, was that we weren’t getting any direct fire suppression. We just weren’t very good at that, and by that time, you see, we were outrunning much of our artillery. We never had more than about one battalion of artillery available because we were moving too fast. So, we no longer tried to suppress only with indirect fire. My heavy weapons company, “D” Company, had six mortars and eight heavy machine guns.

I didn’t think that was enough so I took .50 caliber machine guns from the trains and made a big .50 caliber platoon. Then I would attach the three heavy machine gun platoons to a single company. And, every time we would become involved in one of these little battles, wherever it was, I’d put that company in an overwatch position. I didn’t call it overwatch then. I didn’t know that word at the time. I put it in a base of fire. The commander had eight heavy machine guns, six .50 caliber machine guns, and the light machine guns of that company, and he had the company to protect it and to help move it. So, two companies were my maneuver companies, and one company was my fire support company, my base of fire company. I’ll tell you, it really was marvelous. They just overwhelmed anything that we ran up against. My regret is that it took so long to figure that out.

Pin him down with direct fire and move around him by maneuver. The serious war was really over by the time we got smart. I always used to maneuver with the tanks and overwatch with the tank destroyers. If it was a little village, if it was the corner of the woods, if it was a hill with brush on it, whatever or wherever it was, we’d just smother it with fire and get total fire superiority. Then, we’d move around the flank and go get ‘em — usually from the rear. Almost without exception they’d all come out yelling “Kamerad, Kamerad.” It was the only way I could figure out how to get firepower out of a light infantry battalion.

I would have loved to command a tank battalion or an armored task force. That’s why the mechanized infantry squad, which we were discussing earlier, can be very small, because it can operate in the fire envelope of the armored task force. If it’s a tank company with a mech platoon, we’re only talking about 15 or 20 men who are going to get out on foot to fight, but what we’ve got is about 10 or 12 tanks and about four Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs) with automatic weapons on them that can totally suppress that woodline or those buildings.

Gen. DePuy describes how close air support worked in World War II:

Well, generally, we didn’t have any close air support. They didn’t have a system back then like we have now. There was no tactical air control system. When we first went to Mayenne and to Le Mans, they had Air Force officers in trucks with radios with our two lead battalions. That was the only time in the war that I saw that — the only time! They talked to the fighters, the P-47s and P-51s, and got them to attack the German tanks and troops that the column ran into. It worked pretty well. In fact, it worked very well. I think flights were rotated over the head of the column, more or less, as a result of preplanning, and when they got there the Air Force officers on the ground would pick them up by radio and direct them in on the target. This was Task Force Weaver. We had priority because this was the breakout from Normandy.

Another story. Across the Saar, I needed some emergency resupply. In order to do that I had to call back to my regiment on the other side of the river and have them go to division. Division went all the way back to the XIX TAC, which was a part of the Ninth Air Force working with Third Army. They launched fighters that had ammo and medicine packed in the wing tanks. They flew up to where we were and found the corner of the woods where we had put out a couple of fluorescent panels in the form of a cross. We had asked that they drop it in the corner of the woods, northwest of the panel, and they did. So, that was sort of remote control. But, other than that, I don’t remember any close air support. The first real use of close air support was in Korea. The Air Force made its money in WWII by armed reconnaissance. It just went out and killed everything it saw.

Apparently [the Germans did have close air support] in Russia, particularly with the Stukas. The Stukas had radios that could talk to a regiment on the ground. They did that a lot, which was closer to close air support than what we had. But, they didn’t use Stukas against the Western Allies because Stukas couldn’t survive against our fighters. Stukas could survive against Russian fighters but they couldn’t survive against P-47s, P-51s, Hurricanes, and Spitfires. So, they didn’t use them at all against us.