General Holland McTyeire "Howlin' Mad" Smith (April 20, 1882 – January 12, 1967) served several commands in the United States Marine Corps during World War II. He is sometimes called the "father" of modern U.S. amphibious warfare.
On the eve of World War II, General Smith directed extensive Army, Navy, and Marine amphibious training, which was a major factor in successful U.S. landings in both the Atlantic and Pacific. Later, he helped prepare U.S. Army and Canadian troops for the Kiska and Attu landings, then led the V Amphibious Corps in the assaults on the Gilberts, the Marshalls, and Saipan, and Tinian in the Marianas.
During the Marianas operation, besides the V Amphibious Corps, he commanded all Expeditionary Troops, including those which recaptured Guam. After that, he served as the first Commanding General of Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, and headed Task Force 56 (Expeditionary Troops) at Iwo Jima, which included all the assault troops in that battle.
On the front lines in war-torn Europe, Pfc. Edmund Dill opens the Christmas package he received from his wife for Christmas 1944. His buddies share the treat. Left, Pfc. Carl Anker; Right, Sergt. Ted Bailey.
Seen here on December 25, 1944, Sgt. Edward F. Good feeds his buddy — Pfc. Lloyd Deming — a leg of Christmas turkey as they “celebrate” the holidays far from home. Both were casualties at the 2nd Field Hosp, (San Jose, Mindoro, Philippine Islands).
Today marks the 64th anniversary of the beginning of what has come to be known as “The Battle of the Bulge.” Early on the misty winter morning of 16 December 1944, over 200,000 German troops and nearly 1,000 tanks launched Adolf Hitler's last bid to reverse the ebb in his fortunes that had begun when Allied troops landed in France on D-Day. Seeking to drive to the English Channel coast and split the Allied armies as they had done in May 1940, the Germans struck in the Ardennes Forest, a seventy-five-mile stretch of the front characterized by dense woods and few roads, held by four inexperienced and battle-worn American divisions stationed there for rest and seasoning.
After a day of hard fighting, the Germans broke through the American front, surrounding most of an infantry division, seizing key crossroads, and advancing their spearheads toward the Meuse River, creating the projection that gave the battle its name.
Stories spread of the massacre of soldiers and civilians at Malmedy and Stavelot, of paratroopers dropping behind the lines, and of English-speaking German soldiers, disguised as Americans, capturing critical bridges, cutting communications lines, and spreading rumors. For those who had lived through 1940, the picture was all too familiar. Belgian townspeople put away their Allied flags and brought out their swastikas. Police in Paris enforced an all-night curfew. British veterans waited nervously to see how the Americans would react to a full-scale German offensive, and British generals quietly acted to safeguard the Meuse crossings. Even American civilians who had thought final victory was near were sobered by the Nazi onslaught.
But this was not 1940. The supreme Allied commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower rushed reinforcements to hold the shoulders of the German penetration. Within days, Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr. had turned his Third U.S. Army to the north and was counterattacking against the German flank. But the story of the battle of the Bulge is above all the story of American soldiers. Often isolated and unaware of the overall picture, they did their part to slow the Nazi advance, whether by delaying armored spearheads with obstinate defenses of vital crossroads, moving or burning critical gasoline stocks to keep them from the fuel-hungry German tanks, or coming up with questions on arcane Americana to stump possible Nazi infiltrators.
At the critical road junctions of St. Vith and Bastogne, American tankers and paratroopers fought off repeated attacks, and when the acting commander of the 101st Airborne Division in Bastogne was summoned by his German adversary to surrender, he simply responded, "Nuts!"
Within days, Patton's Third Army had relieved Bastogne, and to the north, the 2d U.S. Armored Division stopped enemy tanks short of the Meuse on Christmas Day. Through January, American troops, often wading through deep snow drifts, attacked the sides of the shrinking bulge until they had restored the front and set the stage for the final drive to victory.
Never again would Hitler be able to launch an offensive in the West on such a scale. An admiring British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill stated, "This is undoubtedly the greatest American battle of the war and will, I believe, be regarded as an ever-famous American victory." Indeed, in terms of participation and losses, the battle of the Bulge is arguably the greatest battle in American military history.
Courtesy The United States Army Center of Military History
Following the capitulation of Holland during the Nazi blitzkrieg (“Lightning War”) across the Low Countries of Europe, German troops stationed along a street near a windmill keep a watchful eye as local citizens chat nearby. These citizens would be under Nazi rule until their liberation in 1944.
Two U.S. Army soldiers are seen holding their position in a foxhole near the front lines during the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes Forest in Belgium, December 1944.
Friday, November 28, 2008
An American Sherman M4 tank moves past another gun carriage which slid off an icy road in the Ardennes Forest in Belgium on December 20, 1944, during the push to halt advancing German troops in what was to become known as the Battle of the Bulge — the last major German offensive of WWII.
In May 1944, a month before the D-Day invasion of continental Europe, an American soldier and his English girlfriend strolling dreamily past Serpentine pond on a blissful spring evening in London’s Hyde Park, one of the favorite haunts of lonesome G.I.s.
A U.S. Marine on the island of Saipan in 1944. The Battle of Saipan was a battle of the Pacific campaign of World War II, fought on the island in the Marianas from 15 June 1944 to 9 July 1944. The invasion fleet embarking the expeditionary forces left Pearl Harbor on June 6th, 1944 — the very same day the allies launched Operation Overlord and the cross-channel invasion of Normandy. The Normandy landings were the larger amphibious landing, but the Mariana's invasion fielded the larger fleet. The American 2nd and 4th Marine Divisions and 27th Infantry Division, commanded by Lieutenant General Holland Smith defeated the 43rd Division of the Imperial Japanese Army commanded by Lieutenant General Yoshitsugu Saito.
Today we present another film for your education. It is a color Nazi newsreel from Autumn 1944. Even though the Allies were closing in on the German borders, some care was taken to show the citizens of Germany that most was well within the Reich.
Today we present Part 1 of the famous film, “With the Marines at Tarawa.” The production was a 1944 short propaganda film directed by Louis Hayward. It uses authentic footage taken at the Battle of Tarawa in November 1943 to tell the story of the participating American servicemen, from the time they get the news that they are to participate in the invasion, to the final taking of the island and raising of the Stars and Stripes.
The film is in full color and uses no actors, making it a valuable historical document. The documentary showed more gruesome scenes of battle than other war films up to that time. President Franklin D. Roosevelt himself gave the approval to show the film to the public anyway against the wishes of military leaders. It gave the U.S. population on the homefront a more realistic view of the war — as far as showing dead Marines floating in the water, etc. — subject matter that was edited out of previous films and newsreels. The film won the 1945 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject.
General Holland McTyeire "Howlin' Mad" Smith (April 20, 1882 – January 12, 1967) served several commands in the United States Marine Corps during World War II. He is sometimes called the "father" of modern U.S. amphibious warfare.
