The Time
Wars are always won by logistics. Whichever side has the most guns, beans, and bullets, and can move them forward fast enough, is going to win. That's been true since the days of the Roman Army, and it's still true today. In World War Two, it was proven and then some.
The Second World War was no exception to that rule. There is an apocryphal story about a British Colonel in North Africa in 1943, standing at a port and watching American ships unload a never-ending stream of trucks and guns and trucks and ammo and trucks and tanks and trucks and men and trucks and artillery and trucks and trucks. The Brit commented, supposedly, that Americans “don’t so much solve their problems as overwhelm them.”
True or not, it’s a good point. In World War 2 in particular, in Europe and in the Pacific, it was American industrial might that won the war; even the Soviet Union, while losing truly horrible numbers of people, still fought with a lot of American trucks and aircraft.
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Never was this more true than in the summer and fall of 1944, when General George Patton’s Third Army was racing across France, headed for Germany. His supplies were tenuous because Old Blood and Guts kept pushing, and pushing, never allowing the enemy to stop and regroup. This caused any number of problems, but for every problem, there’s a solution. In the summer of 1944, that solution was the men of the Red Ball Express.
The Men
The U.S. Army was segregated in World War 2. That was a great injustice, but that was then, and this is now. Black men in the Army were, for the most part, relegated to support roles. There were some notable exceptions, such as the famous Tuskegee Airmen, and outfits like the 761st Tank Battalion, which received a notable compliment from General Patton:
Men, you're the first Negro tankers to ever fight in the American Army. I would never have asked for you if you weren't good. I have nothing but the best in my Army. I don't care what color you are as long as you go up there and kill those Kraut SOBs. Everyone has their eyes on you and is expecting great things from you. Most of all, your race is looking forward to your success. Don't let them down and damn you, don't let me down! They say it is patriotic to die for your country. Well, let’s see how many patriots we can make out of those German SOBs.
75 percent of the men in the Red Ball Express were black. They had something to prove, and were determined to prove it, even by driving a truck.
The Task
What these men faced wasn’t easy.
The term “Red Ball” came from a term used in the railroads, starting in the 1800s, to designate priority shipments. Following the invasion of Normandy, once the American and British armies broke out into open country, many units were so close on the retreating Germans’ heels that they were outrunning their supply chains. Traffic control was poor, there were few good maps, and there was only the makeshift port at Normandy to land supplies. Each combat division required about 750 tons of materials – gas, bullets, food, medical supplies, repair parts, and everything else – to carry out operations. There were no clearly defined supply routes. The whole thing wasn’t organized.
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Enter a man named Colonel Loren Ayers. Ayers was known as “little Patton,” in large part because he didn’t give an ounce of rat’s urine about anything but moving tonnage. After only 36 hours of planning and coordination, Colonel Ayers rounded up a huge truck force of 2 ½ ton GMC trucks, called “deuce and a half” by the drivers, and 1 ½ ton Dodge trucks. He rounded up drivers, most of them black; Ayers didn’t care, all he cared about was moving tonnage. He seized highways and banned civilian traffic, which didn’t make the locals happy, but all he cared about was moving tonnage. And on August 25th, 1944, the tonnage started moving. Two highways eventually were taken, from Cherbourg to a forward supply base at Chartres. The northern highway was used for delivering supplies. The southern highway was used for returning empty trucks.
Day and night, the trucks ran. The drivers, when they had a chance to sleep, often slept in their trucks. Blackout rules were dismissed. The Allies, but this time, had overwhelming air superiority, but the Luftwaffe still prowled by night, so there was always the chance of an attack. Colonel Ayers was willing to accept the risk; all he cared about was moving tonnage. And they moved, day and night, seven days a week. Gears grinding, engines roaring, men shouting – they moved.
Another apocryphal story involves a German officer on a hilltop, drawn there by the sound of engines. He was behind American lines, with some scouts, and when they crested the hill they couldn’t believe what they were seeing: Two steady lines of American trucks, one moving forward, full, the other heading back, empty. On two parallel roads. Non-stop, never-ending. When the young German officer returned to his headquarters, nobody believed him, but he had seen the Red Ball Express for himself, and he knew that the Wehrmacht couldn’t match it – and that Patton couldn’t be stopped.
In the end, it was General Eisenhower, not the Germans, that brought Patton to a halt. The British General Montgomery, who may have been the most overrated officer in the war, was demanding fuel and transport for his ill-advised Operation Market Garden. Patton lost his fuel, ammo and supplies; his tanks ground to a halt with empty gas tanks. The fulminous Patton was enraged, but there was nothing he could do; he was stopped.
The Red Ball Express concluded operations on November 16, 1944, after not quite three months of non-stop operation. They had done their job, and they did it with magnificent determination and guts. New logistics routes had been formed, and some rail traffic was even moving. The drivers of the Red Ball Express went back to their original outfits, or to another truck company moving on one of the new routes.
Many of the black men of the Red Ball Express had joined up to prove they were as good Americans as anyone else. In the Red Ball Express and elsewhere, they proved that and to spare.
