Clarence R. Huebner

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Clarence R. Huebner as Major General in World War II

Clarence Ralph Huebner (born November 24, 1888 in Bushton , Kansas ; † September 23, 1972 in Washington, DC ) was an American Army officer, most recently Lieutenant General , who served in the 1st Infantry Division ("Big Red One") in World War II. and led the V Corps and was Chief of Staff and Deputy Commander of the United States European Command (EUCOM) in the post-war period and briefly military governor of the American zone of occupation in Germany in 1949 .

Life

Huebner was born as the eldest son of a second generation immigrant family in rural Kansas; his paternal grandfather came from Stuttgart . After high school, Ralph, as his family and friends called him, first went to a business college in Grand Island , Nebraska, and after graduating, worked for a railroad company before joining the Army in 1910 at the age of 21 reported. He was inducted into the Regular Army as a private and assigned to the 18th Infantry Regiment. After six years of service as a private and sergeant and his participation in the Mexican Expedition in 1916, he successfully passed the officer examination and was promoted to second lieutenant in the summer of 1916 . This was followed by training at the Infantry Service School in Fort Leavenworth until the USA entered the First World War .

In the summer of 1917 Huebner and his new regiment, the 28th Infantry, were shipped to France as part of the 1st Infantry Division and came to the front near Lunéville in November 1917 . In March 1918 he was wounded near Toul when a machine gun bullet hit him in the front of his helmet, and the wound caused health problems for the rest of his life. In the battle of Cantigny at the end of May , Huebner , who had the rank of captain , temporarily took over command of the 2nd battalion of his regiment after the commanding officer was fatally wounded. After the end of the battle he was promoted to major and kept his command. In the Battle of Soissons in July, he was wounded again when a shrapnel struck his forehead. He took part in the Battle of St. Mihiel in September and was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and appointed regimental commander of the 28th Infantry during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in October . For his work in the First World War, Huebner received the Distinguished Service Cross with oak leaf cluster, the Distinguished Service Medal , the Silver Star and twice the Purple Heart , in addition to foreign awards. After the war he was involved in the occupation of the Rhineland in the area of ​​the Koblenz bridgehead until the summer of 1919 .

After returning to the United States, he was downgraded to his old rank of captain and initially took over a battalion in Camp Taylor, Kentucky . Soon he switched to the infantry school in Fort Benning as an instructor , where he was a tactics teacher until 1922. In 1924 he began a course at the Command and General Staff School (CGSS) at Fort Leavenworth , which he graduated as the sixth-best of 256 students, and then returned to Fort Benning. In 1927 he was promoted to major here. This was followed in 1928 by the course at the Army War College in Washington, DC , before Huebner returned to the CGSS as an instructor. In 1934 he was appointed to the Washington Office of the Chief of the Infantry , where he served until 1938 and was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. This was followed by a stay in Hawaii with the 19th Infantry Regiment. In 1940 Huebner became head of the training department in the Washington General Staff and was promoted to colonel here in 1941 .

In May 1943 Huebner was assigned to the Commander in Chief of the 15th Army Group set up for Operation Husky , the British Harold Alexander , as Deputy Chief of Staff. In early August, at Alexander's request, he replaced the commander of the 1st Infantry Division, Terry de la Mesa Allen , and led it in the final weeks of the Battle of Sicily. As a troop leader, Huebner attached great importance to drill and discipline, which his men felt in the following months. The division was shipped to England in the fall of 1943 to prepare to take part in Operation Overlord . As part of the latter, Huebner led his troops in the landing at Omaha Beach in June 1944 , in the subsequent battles for the bridgehead, in Operation Cobra , the breakout into the interior of the country at the end of July, in defending against the German counter-offensive Operation Liège and in the battle for the Falaise cauldron . In the course of the persecution of the German troops to the imperial borders, there was the battle for the pocket of Mons , and in October the battle for Aachen , in which the 1st Infantry Division played a leading role. Huebner retained command of the division during the first phase of the battle in the Hürtgenwald until he was appointed temporary commander of the V Corps in December 1944. He officially took over this from his predecessor Leonard T. Gerow in mid-January .

With the V Corps, Huebner took part in the defense of the German Ardennes offensive in the Spa area , then in Operation Lumberjack in the Eifel and in the Rhine crossing in the Remagen area . There followed a rapid advance across Germany, which led the corps via Kassel to the Leipzig area . Parts of the corps advanced as far as Torgau an der Elbe , where contact with the Red Army was made on April 25, 1945 ( Elbe Day ) . In the last days of the war it was used in western Czechoslovakia .

After a stay in the USA, where he was Assistant Army Chief of Staff G-3 in the General Staff, Huebner returned to Germany in August 1946, where he became Chief of Staff of the United States Forces, European Theater (from 1947: EUCOM) in Frankfurt am Main became. From 1947 he was also Deputy Commander of EUCOM and Commander of the United States Army Europe and was promoted to Lieutenant General. In May 1949 he succeeded Lucius D. Clay as acting commander in chief of EUCOM and at the same time acting military governor of the American zone of occupation. The post of military governor was replaced in the summer of 1949 by that of the American High Commissioner (in the person of John Jay McCloy ). On September 2, 1949 Huebner handed over the post of Commander-in-Chief of EUCOM to General Thomas T. Handy , under whom he then worked again as a deputy. Huebner left his EUCOM post in August 1950 and retired from active service at the end of the year. He died in 1972 at the age of 83.

Awards (selection)

literature

  • Martin Blumenson, James L. Stokesbury: Masters of the Art of Command. Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1975.
  • Major RJ Rogers: A Study of Leadership in the First Infantry Division During World War II: Terry De La Mesa Allen and Clarence Ralph Huebner. Master's thesis, US Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 1965.
  • Steven Flaig: Clarence R. Huebner: An American Military Story of Achievement. Master's thesis, University of North Texas, 2006.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Huebner, Clarence R.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Huebner, Clarence Ralph (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American Lieutenant General
DATE OF BIRTH November 24, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Bushton , Kansas
DATE OF DEATH 23rd September 1972
Place of death Washington, DC