Lucian K. Truscott

Lucian K. Truscott as Commander in Chief of the Fifth Army

Lucian King Truscott Jr. (born January 9, 1895 in Chatfield , Texas , † September 12, 1965 in Alexandria , Virginia ) was an American general . In the Second World War he last led the 5th US Army in the Italian campaign .

Life

Truscott was born the son of a doctor and grew up in rural Oklahoma . He learned and temporarily practiced the profession of teacher before he joined the US Army as a volunteer in April 1917 . Because of his training, he was given the opportunity to take a crash course at an Officers' Training Camp to acquire an officer’s license. He was then assigned to the 17th Cavalry Regiment as 2nd Lieutenant, with whom he was not deployed overseas during the First World War. After a stationing in Hawaii and some other uses, he served as an instructor at the Cavalry School at Fort Riley . From 1934 to 1936 he graduated from the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth , where he then taught. In 1940 he was called to the Army War College as a student , but before beginning his course he was assigned to the 1st Armored Division at Fort Knox. At the beginning of 1941 he was appointed to the General Staff of the IX. Corps transferred. There he made friends with Dwight D. Eisenhower , then Chief of Staff of the Corps. In the same year he received command of the 5th Cavalry Regiment at Fort Bliss .

In April 1942, Truscott was posted to Great Britain as an envoy for the War Plans Division to serve as a liaison officer at the British Combined Operations Headquarters . This was soon followed by the establishment of the first unit of the United States Army Rangers based on the model of the British Commandos. In August 1942, Truscott witnessed the failure of Operation Jubilee near Dieppe , in which a small ranger unit also took part.

For Operation Torch in November 1942, Truscott was appointed deputy to George S. Pattons as commander of the Western Task Force and personally led the landing of the 9,000-strong sub-task force Goalpost at Port Lyautey in Morocco . After their success he was promoted to major general and served on behalf of Eisenhower as his representative in the advanced command post in Constantine , including during the battle of the Kasserin Pass in Tunisia . At the beginning of March 1943 he took over command of the 3rd US Infantry Division in Morocco , which he prepared for the landing in Sicily ( Operation Husky ).

Truscott's division landed on July 10 near Licata in southeastern Sicily with the task of securing the western flank of the 7th US Army . The 3rd Infantry Division was the fastest advancing division of the Allies and captured Palermo and Messina . On September 18, 1943, the division landed at Salerno on the Italian mainland and led the advance to the Gustav Line . In Operation Shingle in January 1944, it was one of the two attack divisions. As part of the following battle for the Anzio bridgehead , Truscott took command of the superior VI at the end of February. US Corps. Units of his corps were the first to enter the capital Rome on June 4th .

The corps was then pulled out of the front to prepare for the landing in southern France ( Operation Dragoon ). Here fell the VI. US Corps played the main role in the landings, then it penetrated into the Vosges . Promoted to Lieutenant General in September 1944, Truscott returned to Italy in late October to become the new Commander-in-Chief of the US 5th Army . He led this in the final operations of the Italian campaign until the end of the war. After the deactivation of his army in October 1945, Truscott replaced the late General Patton as Commander in Chief of the 3rd US Army and military governor in Bavaria and returned to the USA in May 1946.

After leaving the army in the same year, he served temporarily in the CIA , among other things as a special advisor to the High Commissioner in Germany . In 1954 he was promoted to four-star general by a law of the US Congress on the Retired List . He died at the age of 70 in Walter Reed Military Hospital and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Awards

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

• Distinguished Service Cross
• Army Distinguished Service Medal (2 ×)
• Navy Distinguished Service Medal
• Legion of Merit
• Purple heart

Fonts

• Command Missions: A Personal Story
• The Twilight of the US Cavalry: Life in the Old Army, 1917-1942

literature

• Wilson A. Heefner: Dogface Soldier: The Life of General Lucian K. Truscott, Jr. University of Missouri Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-8262-7212-6 .
• Harry Paul Jeffers: Command of Honor: General Lucian Truscott's Path to Victory in World War II. NAL Caliber, 2008. ISBN 0-451-22402-7 .

Web links

Commons : Lucian K. Truscott  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Lucian K. Truscott at arlingtoncemetery.net