While Monty was discussing his new campaign plan with Bradley on August 17, Patton was pushing reconnaissance east of Orleans and Dreux, which fell the day before. Three divisions were attached to First Army to close the Falaise Gap, but vvdthin the shift, Patton acquired two more divisions for his Brittany reduction. He pushed Haislip’s XV Corps to the northeast to seize crossings on the Seine as part of the wide envelopment to interdict any German vvdthdrawals from the Falaise area.
Within a day he had forces on the Seine and by the 19th, while Eisenhower and Bradley met, Patton had a bridgehead at Mantes Gassicourt northwest of Paris. First Army and the Canadians closed the “Gap” on the 20th at Chambois. XII Corps, now commanded by Man ton S. Eddy who replaced the ill Gen. Cook, added Seine bridgeheads to Patton’s eastern drive.
Patton, whose success spurred Bradley to propose a two-army advance to Metz and Germany by the 12th Army Group, proposed two alternative plans to his boss.
“Plan A” would swing Third Army north pivoting on the Seine to take the enemy’s rear east of the Seine and in front of the other three Allied armies; “Plan B” sent Third Army east to Germany and the Rhine.
Having already sold Eisenhower on an advance to the Saar, Bradley immediately rejected Plan A. Patton’s orders, however, included the statement, “... be prepared to change direction and execute Plan A on Army order.” That order never came.
The Seine was the point of no return in the “great argument.” Plan B ended the last chance at an even-handed approach to a “single thrust.” Had Patton swung north, Eisenhower could still have modified the thrust to send Patton towards Aachen from the south, and the full body of two army groups towards the Ruhr, with Eisenhower in command.
But with Patton racing east, every day made Eisenhower’s “broad front” decision more irreversible. Montgomery continued to argue for his plan but now demanded Patton’s halt, an unfortunately necessary requirement to consolidate logistical support behind his own advance. Refusing to abandon his plan, Ike permitted Patton’s advance and held against Montgomery’s demand for total ground command.
By August 25 when Paris surrendered to Leclerc, Patton’s six divisions were angled to the southeast from Paris all along the Seine with “P” Wood’s 4th Armored characteristically 30 miles (48km) further out in front at the city of Troyes. He still had five divisions in Brittany and, despite having lost XV Corps to First Army as the result of closing the “Gap,” Patton still looked east towards Germany.
His columns were being fed, fueled and rearmed by the “Red Ball Express,” an ad hoc grouping of more than 130 truck companies, making up to a 600-mile (960km) round trip to carry essential supplies direct to the advancing divisions.
Bradley stopped Third Army for a day in accordance with Eisenhower’s priorities to build up, but then unleashed Patton who was determined to drain his tanks and trucks of gas going east and then continue his army’s advance on foot. Mesmerized by getting his two corps on the Rhine, Patton headed for the World War I battlefields where he had first commanded tanks in battle.
August’s final days brought further spectacular successes, seemingly belying predictions of a future halt in operations. Montgomery’s British and Canadian forces, whose hard-bought advances against the bulk of the German armor in the west brought them to the Seine about a week after Hodges’s and Patton’s armies, now readied their grand advance. They began crossing the Seine as part of the general Allied attack on the 26th, Dempsey’s British Second Army with Horrocks’s XXX Corps in the lead began its pursuit to the Belgian-Dutch border, and within days would match Patton’s best time by covering 250 miles (400km) in six days, freeing Brussels by September 3.
Crerar’s Canadians moved to take the vital Channel ports. Hodges’s First Army pivoted on Paris with “Lightning Joe” Collins’s US VII Corps racing north encircling a further 25,600 Germans in the “Mons Gap.”
When Eisenhower took command of the AUied Force on September 1, 21st Army Group’s 14 divisions had a bridgehead on the Somme and within ten days would overrun the Chaimel coast; investing the key ports, freeing Brussels, capturing Antwerp, and would be sitting on the Dutch border.
Hodges’s First Army raced 100 miles (160km) to the Belgian border and by the time logistics stopped Monty, most of Belgium and all of Luxembourg would be liberated, and patrols would be probing across into Germany. First Army prepared to attack the Siegfried Line, using Collins’s VII Corps in the Aachen corridor. Patton crossed the Meuse at Verdun by the 1st, and with only six divisions pressed rapidly east reaching the Mosel from Metz to Nancy. But even Patton could be stopped by a supply famine.
Finally, logistics halted the general advance while limited attacks tried to strain forward. Eisenhower’s four armies were no longer tightly joined presenting a powerful front, but holding a front of approximately 300 miles (480km). By September 10, the pursuit was over, and the war in northwest Europe entered an entirely new stage.
World History
