The Errors of Ralph Ingersole

by CHARLES H. TAYLOR

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RALPH INGERSOLL’S Top Secret purports to be the “inside story" of the campaigns in Western Europe. The author concentrates on what happened at the higher levels of command, on the personalities involved, and on the reasons for major decisions of strategy and tactics. These matters, and the minds and motives of generals, he interprets in a fashion that has the sweep and finality of history itself. Reviewers have disliked many of his larger judgments; they have wondered how one officer, in a subordinate staff section, could know quite as much as Mr. Ingersoll does; they have pointed out that practically no general — save two that Mr. Ingersoll worked directly for—fails to emerge as incompetent or worse.

But the reviewers have done very little to challenge the foundations of Mr. Ingersoll’s military theses, and a great many readers are probably under the impression that, regardless of his opinions, Top Secret is an authoritative account of the operations in Europe by a man who “knows his stuff.” Many readers, too, have undoubtedly been impressed because Mr. Ingersoll gives so many fine and authentic passages of personal experience, including combat, which seem to lend authenticity to the larger treatment. But Mr. Ingersoll’s gift as a reporter, describing what he saw as it happened, obviously has little relation to his capacity to interpret operations as vast and complex as those of the European campaign.

Mr. Ingersoll’s views cannol be better than his knowledge of the military facts. Let us take a reasonably large section of the work, check it in some detail, and see what facts the author uses, how carefully he handles them, and what and how many are omitted. For this purpose, the campaign in Normandy (June to August, 1944) affords a fair sample — about 100 pages of the 354 in the book.

To begin with, there are a large number of outright errors on spot events. Many may concern matters of limited importance; yet they are not without significance as to the care used by an author who builds up reader confidence by making so many flat and unqualified assertions. Four samples of such mistakes can be cited from three pages. Since Mr. Ingersoll’s main interest is with the mistakes of Allied generals, he may be pardoned for naming Von Kluge instead of Von Rundstedt as German Commander in the West at the time of the invasion (p. 153). And since the account is at all points very vague on the plan of the invasion, perhaps the front of the initial assault (six divisions rather than seven, as stated on p. 151) is of little moment. There is a good story (p. 153) about the hesitation of the German underlings to “lift a telephone” or sound the alarm for hours on D Day after “the first reports of the approaching Allied fleet reached the headquarters of Colonel General Von Kluge (sic).” Unfortunately for the tale, the Seventh German Army’s War Diary and Telephone Journal record the enemy’s full exchange of views on the coming attack between Western Command, Army, and Army Group staffs as early us 0230, when the first airborne troops were landing —four hours before the seaborne assault.

As for Mr. Ingersoll’s account of what happened at Omaha Beach (p. 151), the survivors of that grim action might be entitled to take exception to every particular in his short but precise account. He has them pinned on the beach “for six hours until the destroyer screen swung in close and battered the pillboxes”; actually, elements of all eight assault infantry battalions were past the bluffs within two to three hours after the initial landings, and the destroyers’ work while important — was mainly to help the follow-up units.

The only other reference to Omaha (p. 128) is equally erroneous, since Mr. Ingersoll there alludes to the trouble the assault troops were in because they had no tanks ("on the beach, without tanks to help them”). This was not the case Although most of the amphibious tanks launched were swamped, half of them were carried in all the way to the sand by LST’s, and altogether, nearly two thirds of the 06 tanks scheduled to support the first waves were landed. What the real troubles on Omaha Beach were, and how they were met, is not even suggested in this account.

Other mistakes like these can be picked up. In some cases one hesitates to call them minor, since they are used in connection with broader problems. For example, in order to deny the British Army any credit for holding down strong German forces and helping the July break-through, Mr. Ingersoll argues (pp. 179-180) that about July 25 the German troops, if counted battalion by battalion,” were “slightly stronger" in front of the Americans than on the British sector, though he admits that the Germans did have “a higher percentage of armor in reserve at Caen.” On looking more closely at this phrasing, it is hard to refrain from use of the word “specious.”Actually, the Germans had at least five panzer divisions on the British front (and very little of their armor was held in reserve!) as against two facing the Americans. Just what does “slightly stronger” mean in this context, or making a count “battalion by battalion”? And what of the estimate for the same period recently published in General Eisenhower’s Report, which gives the Germans (p. 88) a real (effective) strength of nine divisions of all types on the British front as against seven and one-half on the American?

For anyone concerned with the importance of terrain in military operations, Mr. Ingersoll produces some startling generalizations. The Bocage, or hedgerow, country he locates (p. 154) as starting just east of Caen and running thence in a shallow arc “sixty or seventy miles inland” south and then west toward Avranches. That he includes the British sector entirely in this country is perfectly clear (see the references to terrain on pp. 162-163; also the last paragraph on p. 189). One wonders if Mr. Ingersoll ever really saw the comparatively open country near Caen, or the long bare slopes that stretch along the hilly roads from Caen toward Thury-Harcourt and Falaise? Or even if he read the G-2 descriptions of this country in the OverlordNeptune (invasion) plans? Nothing could be more unlike this section than the terrain a little farther west, where real hedgerow country sets in.

But even here, Mr. Ingersoll’s description is misleading. In the Bocage he tells us (p. 154), “the ground is broken into a continuous succession of tiny hills without marked ridge lines.” Actually, there are large and definite areas, particularly South of St-Lô and east of the Vire, where the ridge lines are long and pronounced, and the phrase “tiny hills" verges on the absurd. So many of these ridges lay across the axis of possible American attack in this region that they were considered something of a military obstacle. But Mr. Ingersoll’s loosest, observation on terrain (p. 154) is the simple assertion thal “beyond the Bocage country, France is flat”! If the interior of Brittany, the highlands of the Pcrche district, the country toward Lisieux, le Mans, and Laval, are flat, then topographic maps (and the word “flat”) have lost all meaning. Even in a relative sense, level country really begins near the Loire River and on the plains of Chartres.

Mr. Ingersoll furnishes (p. 155) one map to illustrate some 75 pages of text; on it, the most prominent feature is a solid black wedge which apparently marks the area of the great First Army break-through that started on July 25. The strange thing about this wedge is ils indication that St-Lo lies in the very middle of the break-through zone, whereas in the actual operation the five-mile front of main attack (described on p. 167) lay entirely west of St-Lo and across the Vire River. Under any circumstances, to call this operation the “StLô break-through” leads to confusion, and the map raises the question as to whether the confusion is here only one of nomenclature.

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BUT there are mistakes, of commission or omission, much more weighty than those so far cited. One, of potentially large proportions, is contained in a single matter-of-fact sentence, set down without the slightest suggestion of any qualification. “The force on Omaha,” so runs the text (p. 152), “made a clean break-through and on D plus 1 were only halted by orders from Montgomery himself.” This statement lends itself admirably to the author’s thesis, elaborated a few pages later, that the British commander was getting ready at this time to steal the show by attacking at Caen.

But the statement bears no slightest resemblance to the facts of V Corps operations for the period. So far from making any break-through on D plus 1, the two divisions of that corps were still trying to reach the initial beachhead line set for D Day. They only fought up to this line on D plus 2. So far from stopping even then, the corps issued new attack orders for D plus 3, and continued to attack every day until June 13 (D plus 7), when they stopped on orders from General Bradley, who was concentrating his main effort toward Cherbourg.

Where did this precious bit of misinformation come from, to reach the pages of Top Secret? The only clue seems to be the opening sentence of Mr. Ingersoll’s foreword: “I could never unscramble my sources of information for this book.”

Another flat mistake, developed at some length, concerns German plans after the landings. According to Mr. Ingersoll (p. 153), “the first enemy command decision with which Montgomery had to contend was not . . . an order to counter-attack the beachhead.” Instead, the Germans are said to have moved up reserves and Formed their troops into a “continuous line,” ordering them to “dig in” and contain the beachhead.

Nothing could be farther from the real story as revealed in the headquarters journal of the German Seventh Army (it was captured in August, and parts of it were published in SHAEF reports as early as September, but Mr. Ingersoll doesn’t like SHAEF or its documents). Hitler began to “order battles” on D Day—not, as the author states, on D plus 60 (p. 179). On the evening of D Day, Seventh Army was ordered to concentrate all available armor and destroy, first, the British beachhead by immediate counterattack. During the next week, Von Rundstedt and Rommel made every attempt to carry out this order: one after another their four nearest panzer divisions arrived and attempted to strike. Except locally at VillersBocage these efforts had small success, and for two reasons: Allied air forces disrupted ail preparations for coordinated attack, and the British Second Army kept the pressure on and gave the enemy no chance to get set. But the Germans had tried to attack, and they suspended the effort about D plus 7 only in order to build up more armored striking force before resuming an offensive at Caen.

They never got this force built up, and their own detailed records show why: Allied attacks kept the German lines fully strained, and forced them to fritter away offensive units in defensive work.

Having attributed to the German command a policy which was the reverse of the facts, Mr. Ingersoll turns (pp. 156-163) to Field Marshal Montgomery’s policy, which was to go on the offensive at Caen about D plus 7. The author makes it clear that he considers that this “bold decision” was made for motives of personal prestige, and that it was a great, error. But he also makes it clear that he has forgotten salient features of the invasion plans. On p. 156 he sums up the general situation about D plus 7: “So Commander-in-Chief Montgomery’s problem, as soon as sufficient forces had landed to give him troops to command, was to break out from the Bocage country somewhere.”

This statement ignores the Overlord-Neptune plan, which assigned certain definite first objectives to be attained by the Allied armies during the first few days and weeks while the lodgment area was being built up. Most of these objectives had yet to be reached: Cherbourg and the Cotent in and St-Lô had not yet been taken by the Americans; the British had not yet taken all their D Day objectives, notably Caen, and did not have the country just south of Caen, which was suitable for airfields.

Unless the Overlord-Neptune plan was to be immediately departed from, the British should certainly go on the offensive to round out the beachhead assigned to them. And this they did, and this was the battle “of his own making” and the nature of the “bold decision” that Montgomery made! Whether he hoped for major results in doing it, and whether he expected to achieve a break-through and personal fame, are beside the point, which is that he had to attack at Caen or disregard the whole Allied plan — leaving the initiative to the Germans on their strongest sector.

Mr. Ingersoll often shows a fondness for arguing by implication. In connection with Montgomery’s decision to go on the offensive toward Caen, the author implies that the British commander could have done much better, if he had to attack, by using American divisions to aid the effort instead of making it an all-British show—(p. 157) “the bold decision to defeat the German Army facing him immediately, with his own British Second Army and without any assistance at all from the Americans to the west of him.”

Let us do what Mr. Ingersoll does not do, and look at the situation of the American forces to the west on D plus 7. In the Cotentin, VII Corps was still trying to get past Montebourg on the road to Cherbourg, and the peninsula was not yet cut. Carentan had just been captured, but this narrow link between General Bradley’s two beachheads was threatened with enemy counterattack from the south. Of the four divisions of V Corps, next to the British and holding the most advanced positions inland of any Allied force, one armored unit had been sent to Carentan and two divisions were engaged in a fierce effort to carry Hill 192 and make progress toward the important objective of St-Lo. This leaves the 1st Division, out in a salient at Caumont, facing elements of the fresh 2d Panzer Division, which had just defeated British spearheads at Villers-Bocage, and expecting attack itself. Will Mr. Ingersoll explain how use could be made of American forces in his attack near Caen, without prejudicing the drive on Cherbourg, the defense of Carentan, or the push toward St-Lô?

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As with Overlord-Neptune, so with the great breakthrough operation named Cobra: Mr. Ingersoll is so reticent with information on what the orders for that operation were, what its stated objectives, and what the main lines of its development, that one may find it hard to decide whether he really knows the plan, the orders, and the moves. Certainly on one major aspect there is wide room for doubt. Where does Mr. Ingersoll think the main forces of Third Army went after passing Avranches and the German flank after August 1? Implying great disapproval, he tells us (pp. 184-185) about two of General Patton’s armored divisions going into Brittany, while the German counterattack toward Avranches was stopped at Mortain (August 7-12). That is all we know about Patton’s columns until the point (p. 187, 4th paragraph, shows that it is after Mortain) where Patton is pictured as arguing for going to Paris, and Montgomery is arguing for an envelopment.

As far as the reader knows, no American forces have yet turned east from Brittany, and we are left to assume that that decision is made by Bradley at this time. Why has Mr. Ingersoll passed over in silence the fact that two of Patton’s corps (followed soon by a third) had turned east after debouching from Avranches, while one went into Brittany? And that by August 6, Patton’s columns were already far on the deep flank and rear of the Germans attacking at Mortain? That by August 9, le Mans had been captured, and Argentan was reached by August 12, so that the envelopment was already a fact? At the very least, these omissions hardly help the reader to understand General Bradley’s real problems or decisions at this stage.

But the most remarkable example of Mr. Ingersoll’s unawareness of main operational facts — and one about which there can be no slightest doubt — concerns the First Army offensive of July 3—20, which led up to and made possible the Cobra breakthrough. It was no small affair; three corps and part of a fourth were involved, and some twelve divisions. The gains were meager - five to ten miles on a forty-mile front, including la Hayedu-Puits, St-Lô, and Hill 192. The losses were perhaps the heaviest for any comparable period of the war in Europe; divisions like the 79th, 90th, 83rd, 4th, and 29th were losing up to 500 men a day in continuous, savage battle. XIX Corps lost about 12,000 soldiers; over-all losses were between 30,000 and 40,000. Months later, units that had part in this, the “Battle of the Hedgerows” par excellence, remembered it as their hardest period of the European war. Though it did not reach most of the original objectives assigned, this offensive did achieve major results: it got First Army out of swampy, low ground and into terrain where the break-through effort could be, and was, launched.

Much more of military interest could be said about this battle. But the point to note here is that Mr. Ingersoll either doesn’t know about it at all, or (you can take your choice after reading the short paragraph at the foot of p. 164) he places the action in June before the fall of Cherbourg!

He tells us that General Bradley, using less than half his force in the drive toward Cherbourg, had “plenty for his other divisions to do.”“The order was to attack constantly inland, away from the marshes and the flooded areas back of where the peninsula joins the mainland. The attacks were unspectacular; some of them were obvious and heavy-handed . . . involving heavy casualties. But through the weeks they edged forward until, by the time Cherbourg fell [my italics], they had spread some miles south from the base of the peninsula. Now the Americans had room to maneuver, with a net of good roads.”

If it referred to July, this summary would correspond roughly to the costly offensive that led up to Cobra. But placed before the fall of Cherbourg (June 20), the battles described by Mr. Ingersoll exist only in his own imagination. In actuality, until July 3 our forces at the base of the Cotent in were on the defensive.

As for July, the author maintains a strange silence on any events of that month before Cobra: the more strange because Mr. Ingersoll has told us that, Cherbourg captured, Bradley was “set to go. And when did he go? You may search the pages of Top Secret in vain to find what Bradley and First Army did from June 26 to July 25. Surely one o.f the strangest periods of quiescence in military annals — if it were true!

It would be hard to find a more basic or total misconception of main operations than is here involved. And the error could be followed further — except that there is evidently no use in asking Mr. Ingersoll if he knows the relation of the July battle to the Overlord-Ncptune plan; or its relation to Montgomery’s orders (these orders, mentioned at bottom of p. 165 as though they were not followed, actually led to the early July offensive); or even to inquire if Mr. Ingersoll realizes that the code name of this July battle was Lucky Strike, since he attaches that name to the break-through campaign (p. 168).

Other more or less pointed queries could be put about other parts of the French Campaign, but enough has been noted here to suggest a tentative conclusion: facts are sometimes the pay-off, and when he wrote Top Secret, Mr. Ingersoll remembered little of the fundamental military operations which he takes it upon himself to appraise and judge. And beyond that conclusion, two opinions: that his appraisals and judgments are not likely to be better than his knowledge of the main features of the operations; and that the care (or lack of it) shown in dealing with simple facts is an index to the validity of the author’s far-reaching interpretations and criticisms.

For me, Top Secret was particularly uncomfortable reading because Mr. Ingersoll and I agree so completely on one point; for me, as for him, General Bradley is the great field general of the war in Europe. And for this very reason, and also because of my estimate of his character, it seems entirely unnecessary and unfitting to give General Bradley a build-up at the expense of his commander, his allies, his fellow generals, and above all — of the facts.