Courtney Hicks Hodges

Courtney H. Hodges as Lieutenant General

Courtney Hicks Hodges (born January 5, 1887 in Perry , Houston County , Georgia , † January 16, 1966 in San Antonio , Texas ) was an American general in World War II .

Courtney H. Hodges was from August 1, 1944 until his retirement in 1949, Commander-in-Chief of the 1st US Army , which played a major role in the liberation of Western Europe. They liberated Paris, were the first to march into Germany ( Battle of Aachen ), were the first to cross the Rhine and were the first to meet the Russians on the Elbe. "They took more prisoners ... [and] buried more dead Americans in the wake of their long advance than any other American army" ( Bradley : A Soldier's Story . New York, 1951).

Hodges had been responsible for training American infantry soldiers for many years of his military career and now led them on the field. He was the last of 13 US generals to be promoted to 4-Star General ( Full General ) during World War II .

Life

First failure and new beginning

Courtney Hodges was born in 1887 in Perry, a small town in Georgia about 70 miles east of Fort Benning , to the son of the Houston Home Journal , John Hicks Hodges (1851-1926) and his wife, Katherine Norwood. His grandfather, James Hicks Hodges, had been a veteran in the Southern Army. The Hodges had ten children, eight of whom reached adulthood.

After Courtney attended local schools and North Georgia Agricultural College , he entered West Point Military Academy in June 1904 at the age of 17 . Since he did not meet the requirements in mathematics, he - like his classmate George S. Patton - was dismissed after a year as unsuitable for the officer's profession . After working in a grocery store in Perry for a year, he joined the 17th Infantry Regiment at Fort McPherson , Georgia, as a private on November 5, 1906 , and received his officer license as a second lieutenant at Fort Leavenworth three years later . November 1909). In the next few years he served in the Philippines and took part in General John J. Pershing's punitive expedition against Pancho Villa as First Lieutenant in 1916/17 .

First World War

After the USA entered the First World War , Hodges was sent to France as a battalion commander in the 6th Infantry Regiment (5th Division). Here he distinguished himself so much with St.-Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne Offensive as leader of a troop to explore a suitable crossing point over the Meuse that he - alongside the Silver Star and the French Croix de guerre - in 1919 Temporary Lieutenant Colonel, who received the Distinguished Service Cross .

Interwar period

After the end of the First World War, he stayed with the American occupation army in Germany in 1919 and was demoted to the rank of major after his return to the United States . His skills as an infantry leader, tactician and instructor led to corresponding assignments as a teacher and instructor in the following years: from 1920 to 1924 he was a tactics teacher at the West Point Military Academy - the school that had 'sorted out' him as a student around 14 years earlier was the first teacher who was not a West Point graduate; 1925/26 and 1929 to 1933 at the infantry school in Fort Benning, of which he was to become commander in 1940.

In 1924/25 he studied at the Command and General Staff School in Fort Leavenworth , Kansas , and from 1926 to 1929 attended the Air Corps Tactical School in Langley Field , Virginia , where he himself also taught infantry tactics at times. Through his work there, he learned the enormous importance of coordinated infantry and artillery operations with air support in the so-called " Combat of Combined Arms ". Since there was an overhang of officers in the US Army after the First World War and the resulting traffic backlog, Hodges did not become a lieutenant colonel until 1934, after attending the Army War College in Washington, DC (1933/34) - this time for good promoted.

His teaching activity as an infantry tactician was interrupted by several troop deployments as a staff officer and commander: 1934-1936 with the 7th Infantry Regiment in the Vancouver Barracks , Washington, DC, 1936-1938 staff officer in the Philippines and 1938-1940 colonel and commander of the 7th Infantry Regiment.

In 1938 he was deputy commander and from October 7, 1940 to March 3, 1941 with the rank of Brigadier General (April 1, 1940) commander of the Infantry School at Fort Benning , Georgia. During this time he was responsible for training thousands of U.S. infantry soldiers. From May 30, 1941 to March 9, 1942, he was Major General (May 31, 1941) Chief of Infantry in the War Department in Washington, DC In this role, he was primarily responsible for the further development of American infantry doctrine, some of which are still up to date from 1914/18, and the introduction of new weapons and equipment, such as the bazooka , the jeep and a new steel helmet . After a year, Hodges was then commander of the newly established Replacement and School Command in Birmingham , Alabama, and when the X Army Corps was established on May 12, 1942 in San Antonio , Texas , he was its commanding general . On February 16, 1943, promoted to Lieutenant General, he took over as Commander-in-Chief of the 3rd US Army and the Southern Defense Command at Fort Sam Houston , Texas, from his predecessor Walter Krueger . His successor on this post was on January 26, 1944 George Patton.

Commander in Chief of the 1st Army in World War II

In the spring of 1944, Hodges became Omar N. Bradley's deputy and designated successor in the high command of the 1st Army, which was preparing in England for the invasion of mainland France. After the successful landing in Normandy in June 1944, Hodges took over on August 1st from Bradley, who now led the 12th Army Group as part of the restructuring of the army, the post of Commander-in-Chief of the 1st Army.

With this army Hodges was involved in the liberation of Paris , marched with it through Luxembourg and southern Belgium, was the first to break through the Siegfried Line and in October 44 took Aachen. After the Americans in December 1944 by the German Ardennes offensive had been surprised that they had initially underestimated and whose main load on Hodges 1st Army fell, it was - as well as several other American commanders - the British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery , whose operational control to Bradley's 1st Army, which belonged to the 12th Army Group, was relieved of his command as he thought Hodges was exhausted and worn out. But Bradley and Eisenhower stand up for him and he stayed at his post. Hodges soldiers crossed the Rhine bridge in Remagen on March 7, 1945 and on April 21, the 1st Army was involved in the encirclement of 21 divisions of the German Army Group B under General Field Marshal Model in the Ruhr area (→ Ruhrkessel ). On April 25, 1945, the spearheads of the 1st Army united with the Red Army near Torgau on the Elbe .

After the German surrender

Hodges was promoted to four-star general on April 15, 1945 as the last US general during the Second World War and, a few days before the German surrender, was commissioned to relocate his headquarters to the Philippines in order to participate in the invasion of mainland Japan ( → Operation Coronet ). Since this plan was no longer carried out after the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Japanese surrender , which Hodges witnessed on September 2, 1945 on board the USS Missouri (BB-63) , the 1st Army was transferred to the United States relocated. Hodges remained until his retirement on January 31, 1949 Commander ( Commanding General ) of the 1st Army, to 1946, first in Fort Bragg , North Carolina , then to the south of Manhattan located island Governors Iceland , New York .

Courtney H. Hodges retired in San Antonio, Texas, where he died on January 16, 1966 at Brooke General Hospital . In addition to his widow, Mildred Lee Hodges, he left two brothers and five sisters. His private papers have been in the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library in Abilene , Kansas , since 1970 .

family

Courtney Hodges was married to Mildred Lee Buchner (1895-1991) since 1928. The marriage remained childless.

Trivia

• In March / April 1945 pioneers of the 1st US Army erected a makeshift pontoon bridge over the Rhine on river barges at river kilometer 647.7 - between Bonn-Bad Godesberg and Niederdollendorf - which was called the " Hodges Bridge ". The Hodges Bridge had to be demolished again in November / December 1945 because it hindered shipping traffic.
• On May 4, 1970, building 65, built in 1904 in the historic part of Fort McPherson , which has served as the headquarters of the site commander since 1968, was named "Hodges Hall" in his honor .

Awards

Selection of decorations, sorted based on the Order of Precedence of Military Awards :

• Distinguished Service Cross (3 ×)
• Army Distinguished Service Medal (3 ×)
• Silver Star
• Bronze star

literature

About Hodges

Monographs:

• Stephan T. Wishnevsky: Courtney Hicks Hodges: from private to four-star general in the United States Army. - Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2006, ISBN 0786424346 .

Articles in reference books:

• Mark Boatner: The Biographical Dictionary of World War II . - Novato, CA: Presidio, 1996. pp. 230-231. - ISBN 0-89141-548-3
• Trevor N. Depuy, et al .: The Harper Encyclopedia of Military Biography . New York: Harper Collins, 1992. pp. 340-341. - ISBN 0785804374
• Lloyd J. Graybar: Hodges, Courtney Hicks . In: American National Biography Online , Feb. 2000. (Access Date: Tue Aug 16 2005 13:31:27 GMT + 0200)

Articles in magazines

• Gladwin Hill: For Hodges History Repeats. In: New York Times Magazine , March 25, 1945, pp. 834-35
• G. Patrick Murray: Courtney Hodges: Modest Star of World War II. In: American History Illustrated , Jan. 7, 1973, pp. 12-25

About the 1st Army

Courtney Hodges is mentioned in every book on the ground war in Western Europe during World War II. Give a good overview:

• Charles B. MacDonald: The Mighty Endeavor: American Armed Forces in the European Theater in World War II. - New York: Oxford University Press, 1969 (reprint: Da Capo Press, 1992 - ISBN 0306804867 )
• Russell F. Weigley: Eisenhower's Lieutenants: The Campaign of France and Germany 1944-1945. - Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1981 (reprint 1990. - ISBN 0253206081 )
• David W. Hogan Jr .: A Command Post at War: First Army Headquarters in Europe, 1943-1945. - Washington, DC: US ​​Army Center of Military History, 2000. - ISBN 0-16-061328-0

War diary

• William C. Sylvan and Francis G. Smith Jr .: Normandy to Victory: The War Diary of General Courtney H. Hodges and the First US Army. - University Press of Kentucky, 2008 (edited by John T. Greenwood), Hodges' war diary kept by his orderlies

Web links

• Overview of the Hodges Papers (PDF; 27 kB)