circuit to the main switch at Twelfth Army Group, half a hundred vehicles, dozens of men of peculiar talents, an establishment large enough to take care of fifty war correspondents--it was unbelievable!
"When we were in San Antonio," one colonel said, "I never saw two newspapermen in a week, and only then if we called 'em up." Word came that the Ninth Army was going to put feet under itself by taking over the Brittany segment of Third Army, the VIII Corps and its five divisions. The fact that Ninth was actually being spring- boarded into operations gave urgency to my requests, so I took a copy of my proposal to General Simpson's aide, Major Johnny Horn, of Greenwich, Conn. "Show it to General [Brig. Gen. James E.] Moore," he said. "He has a grasp of these things. If he okay's it, that'll stop the rest of the staff debating over it."
The quickness with which General Moore pondered the recommendations, and the questions he asked, which were both penetrating and reasonable, gave me great respect for him from the beginning.
"You've had the background in it. If you say so, I'll take your recommendations," said he. Not only did he take them, he had each of the requisition forms signed by General Simpson himself! No supply dump would ever argue with that signature, and the personnel section stirred itself to get the men and talents specified.
On the third of September, as capitulation around Brest seemed more remote than ever, the Eighty-third Infantry Division, com- manded by Maj. Gen. Robert C. Macon, of California, Maryland, was stretched 185 miles along the Loire from the Bay of Biscay to a point east of Orl6ans. Its job was to guard the north bank of that slow- moving stream and provide a flank protection to the wild-running Third Army. The thinness of this line had perturbed Maj. Gen. Manton S. Eddy, whose XII Corps was open on that side of Patton's thrust.
"Doesn't that flank worry you?" Eddy asked Patton one day as they were scanning the map.
"Not me," said Patton blithely. "It just depends on how nervous you are by nature."
With the German Armies now clearing out of France very rapidly and falling back on the prepared positions on the Siegfreid Line, Hitler had sent a direct order to Generalmajor Erich Elster to round up all German forces in the south of France, from Bordeaux to Marseilles, and bring them back in column to Germany. Even though Lt. Gen. Alexander M. Patch, with his Seventh Army, was rolling up from the Riviera, on Hitler's map it looked easy for Elster to skin between Patton and Patch through the Beffort Gap. None of this was known to Colonel E. B. Crabill, of Palm Beach Shores, Florida, whose 329th Infantry Regiment of the Eighty-third had surveillance from seventy miles west of Blois to the vicinity of OrMans. He summoned his Intelligence and Reconnaissance Platoon leader, First Lieutenant Samuel W. Magill, of Ashtabula, Ohio. Magill's area extended from Blois to Orleans, about forty-five miles along the eastern edge. His unit had been beefed up by a platoon of quadruple .50-caliber-mounted half- tracks, a platoon of 105-mm. howitzers, and a hundred Frenchmen of the FFI. In using the latter, it was necessary to teach them scouting and patrolling and reporting.
The colonel was disturbed for an unusual reason. "Sam," he said, "what's happened to all those Germans who were shooting at us from the other side of the river?" Sam indicated his own worries about it, too. Both of them knew they had orders not to cross the Loire, but between Magill and Crabill there was an understanding. The colonel did not tell Sam to violate any orders, he just told him he wanted him to know what was going on. He had never been in the habit of spelling out method for Sam. Magill went back to his I&R platoon and talked over his problem with his driver, Corporal Christopher Vane of Baltimore, Maryland. Leaving the major portion of his unit in charge of Sergeant Herbert E. Berner of St. Louis, he told his Belgian interpreter, Felix van de Walle and his radio operator, Robert A. Alvey of San Diego, California, to get aboard. At Mer-sur-Loire, Magill crossed in a rowboat to Muides, a small village where the French were so happy to see the American they built him a raft to bring the jeep and his crew over as well. Contact was established almost at once with a member of the Free French, who said the Germans had all withdrawn farther to the south. He had heard a rumor that there was a German element of unknown strength willing to surrender to the Americans, but not to- the French. Magill sent a message back to Berner telling him of his plan to move deeper into German-held territory and instructing Berner to get other members of the twenty-four-man platoon across the river and placed at intervals to insure a radio relay.
Magill found his forward movement suddenly restricted when his small patrol ran into the flank guard of the Eleventh Panzer Division a tough tank battalion. Thousands of German troops, in columns and in every kind of conveyance, were filtering past it on all sides. Alvey, cranked up his radio and fed back dozens of messages to the 329th giving locations, march objectives, strength and state of equipment One of these radio messages brought an air strike which destroyed tw4 thirds of a ten-mile-long German column on the Route Nationale east of Chateauroux. The Magill patrol took frequent cover, once spending five hours in the woods. Eventually the main body of the Germans behind the formidable Eleventh Panzer, flowed by.
With the XIX TAC, commanded by Brig. Gen. 0. P. Weyland strafing a column miles further to the south, Magill now though seriously of the possibilities of prisoners from whom he could get the more detailed information which Colonel Crabill wanted. With his mind on Germans who might surrender, Magill ran up a white flag of truce and Vane drove the jeep ahead toward Issoudun. There was occasional, desultory fire from the roadsides, as much from surprise French as from the disorganized Germans.
The bridge leading into Issoudun was alive with German guards who held their guns on the approaching jeep, but let it come up to the bridge. Van de Walle, in German, asked to talk to the commander and they settled back to await some major or, at most, lieutenant colonel. "Look," said Van de Walle suddenly, "that officer coming up on the other side of the bridge. See the red stripes on his pants leg that's a major general." Hastily Magill got out of the jeep with Van de Walle and they moved forward to meet the German, who asked what they wanted and how they came to be there. '
Sam's mouth was dry, but through the Belgian, he said: "I came here to see you because your cause is hopeless. I know you're trying to get back to Germany, but thousands of troops are in your way now waiting for you to come in range. I thought if I came to talk to you, you would see that you could surrender with honor-and save the lives of your men who will otherwise die unnecessarily." Because of the shambles he had noted in his 100-mile penetration, Sam was of the opinion that the General's strength at most, would be around two Battalions.
The German consulted a moment with his staff. "How much strength do you represent?" he asked. Sam was thinking only of his platoon, rather than the division. "I've got my platoon...."
The German turned apoplectic. "What?" he spluttered. "Surrender twenty thousand men to a platoon? Phantastisch!"
When Van de Walle translated twenty thousand he choked a little and Magill almost fell off the Issoudun bridge. In carrying out Colonel Crabill's simple order to find out what had happened to the Germans, he had stumbled right into the main column. Stunned as he was, Magill, who had once thought he wanted to be a minister, turned his seriously honest face to the German general, and repeated that it was not the platoon which was important, but the inevitable clash of arms which awaited the column up ahead. General Eister quieted somewhat. The lieutenant was not so wrong, after all. The column had been sniped at constantly by the Free French and the Communist FTPF (Force Tireur Partisan Franeais), while the planes of XIX TAC came out of the sky at all daylight hours to harass him. His losses had already been great. A surrender, he said, might be negotiated if certain terms could be met - terms which would insure surrender with honor.
"What are the terms?" asked Magill. "A show of force," said Elster. "How big?"
The German studied a moment, looked at his tired but determined men. "if you can confront me with two battalions," he decided, "it could be a surrender with honor." He might as well have asked Magill for the moon, but Sam told him he would be back the next day with word from the division commander.
Night was fast failing, and on the way back, Sam changed drivers to give Vane a rest. Big, burly Ralph Anderson of Lancaster, Ohio, took the wheel and pointed it toward Beaugency. The road was blocked from time to time by logs which had been thrown across it by snipers. The rules demanded that headlights be blacked out, but as long as Magill was way out of the rule book already, he told Anderson to turn on the lights for quick flashes to see it the road was clear, then run for it to the next ftim. By using this harrowing method, they avoided roadblocks. By the time Sam got back across the Loire and reported to Colonel Crabill in his bed, it was past midnight. Crabill thought enough of the proposal to get into his