Courtney Hodges Archives

Courtney Hodges

General Omar Bradley: Dwight D Eisenhower’s Indispensible Lieutenant

By Cole Kingseed

Great commanders need great subordinates. In the campaigns in the Mediterranean and European Theaters of World War II, General Dwight D. Read more

In the close quarters of a rubble-strewn street in Aachen, American soldiers fire a 57mm antitank weapon against a distant German target. Urban warfare became a new concept for Allied armies, and they adapted during the advance into Germany. (National Archives)

Courtney Hodges

The Battle of Aachen: Breaking Down the Door to Europe in WWII

By Flint Whitlock

By the autumn of 1944, German resistance in the West was quickly crumbling as the British and Americans approached the German border 233 days ahead of schedule. Read more

Members of Tom Myers’s 110th Infantry cautiously move through the “green hell” of the Hürtgen Forest, November 2, 1944.

Courtney Hodges

The Battle of Hürtgen Forest: Army Rangers vs Fallschirmjägers

By James Marino

Mired in combat during the Battle of Hürtgen Forest of Germany, an American soldier wrote in December 5, 1944: “The road to the front led straight and muddy brown between the billowing greenery of the broken topless firs, and in the jeeps that were coming back they were bringing the still living. Read more

American tanks and armored gun carriers drive over snow-covered terrain to Samree during the Battle of the Bulge. Capture of the city opened the way to Houffallize, heart of the Bulge.

Courtney Hodges

The End of the Battle of the Bulge

By Arnold Blumberg

Wednesday, December 27, 1944, found the military situation in the Ardennes Forest of Belgium stalemated. After 12 days of unrelenting struggle, the American and German forces on this part of the Western Front found themselves locked in brutal combat, unable to drive each other back. Read more

Flight Nurse Madeline “Del” D’Eletto shares her stories of medical evacuation flights from the battlefields of continental Europe.

Courtney Hodges

Madeline “Del” D’Eletto: an Allied Angel of Mercy on a C-47

By Kevin M. Hymel

In a field hospital in Normandy, France, 1st Lt. Madeline “Del” D’Eletto was watching an Army doctor operate on a soldier’s head injury when one of her fellow nurses asked, “What do I do with this?” Read more

In this March 11, 1945, image, troops and M4 Sherman tanks of the U.S. First Army cross the Ludendorff railroad bridge to the eastern bank of the great Rhine River. The last natural barrier along the western frontier of Germany, the Rhine was also crossed by Allied armies in other locations.

Courtney Hodges

Assault on Ludendorff Bridge: The First Allied Crossing of the Rhine

By Jon Diamond

On a cold March evening in the Goldenrod Café in West Point, Nebraska, Mary Timmermann, a waitress there, picked up the telephone receiver when her boss told her it was Omaha calling long distance for her. Read more

Courtney Hodges

The Falaise Gap: Ike vs. Monty and a Failure of Command

By William Weidner

With the exceptions of the Normandy invasion and the Battle of the Bulge, few other World War II battles in the European Theater have received more historical scrutiny than the Battle of the Falaise Gap. Read more

Lieutenant General Omar Bradley greets Marshall in Normandy in June 1944.

Courtney Hodges

George C. Marshall: The Indispensable Man

By Eric Hammel

George Catlett Marshall was the greatest American military man of his age. If the United States Army had kicked off the 20th century with the specific intent of constructing a chief of staff to lead it to victory in World War II, it could not have done a better job than what chance provided in the triumphs and travails over the 40 years that molded George Marshall. Read more

Courtney Hodges

The Battle of Heartbreak Crossroads: Pyrrhic Victory at Wahlerscheid

By Cleve C. Barkley

Technical Sergeant Clyde Dugan flattened as another string of mortar shells ravaged the barren field. Pristine snow vomited fire and steel as chunks of frozen earth rocketed skyward then plunged to pelt his shoulders or clatter loudly on his helmet. Read more

Courtney Hodges

The Virginia Military Institute (VMI) Graduates Who Shaped WWII

By Phil Gioia

Watching his forces prepare to attack the Union Army at the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863, Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson commented to an aide, “The Institute will be heard from today.” Read more

One of Operation Cobra’s most costly casualties, the loss of General Lesley McNair, came from an unfortunate incident of friendly fire.

Courtney Hodges

General Lesley McNair: His Tragic Death During Operation Cobra

By Brian Todd Carey

As Allied bombs rained down from B-17s and B-24s on their own men to open Operation Cobra, a three-star general was visiting the front lines: Commander of Army Ground Forces Lt. Read more

Courtney Hodges

George C. Marshall: Architect of Victory

By Michael D. Hull

President Franklin D. Roosevelt was disturbed in the autumn of 1938 by the Munich agreement, at which the rights of Czechoslovakia were signed away, and by reports of mounting air strength in Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Read more

Courtney Hodges

Blood for Time: 9th Armored at Bastogne and the Battle of the Bulge

By Charles Gutierrez

In December 1944, the Ardennes front or “ghost front” was an area where either veteran Allied units rotated in to rest and recover from terrible combat losses or where new, untested units arrived to gather some combat experience from the minor skirmishes that would occasionally flare up. Read more

Courtesy of the Army Air Corps, allied airpower played a significant role in turning the tide at the Battle of the Bulge.

Courtney Hodges

The Army Air Corps at the Battle of the Bulge

by Michael D. Hull

At daybreak on December 16, 1944, three senior officers in the Army Air Corps and a Royal Air Force air vice marshal arrived at an elegant chateau near the town of Spa in southeastern Belgium that was the headquarters of Lt. Read more

From Around the Network

Erwin Rommel Frustrated By French Foreign Legion At Bir Hacheim

Massacre At Malmédy

The Memoirs of Herbert Carlton

How Franklin D. Roosevelt Prepared the U.S. for World War II