S. - O. - S.

[jim armstroong]

 

Here's another long read but hope you find it informative.

 

Note:- Gen. J.C.H.Lee was known to us Combat GIs as J***S C****T Himself!! Not affectionately!!

 

Gen. J.C.H.Lee was in charge of the supplies for all of the ETO and he had a tremendous staff. He was ordered by Gen. Eisenhower NOT to move to Paris but to a location in the suburbs around Paris. However,he ignored Gen. Eisenhower and moved all of his people(the total 10,000 sticks in my mind-wrong see correct number below) into Paris and immediately set up shop. The first order of business was to requisition ALL of the hotels and in some cases apartment buildings for his people which was exactly what the Krauts had done and this made the Parisians more than a little PO'd. Again a NO NO to Ike!!!!!

 

This type of requisitioning meant that his people had the choice quarters-heated and safe from the elements. Their quarters in many cases had running HOT water and even Maid service. Since they had the control of the supplies coming in they had many items before the Front Line Troops even knew they were available such as combat boots,sleeping bags etc. They also had access to their pick of the cigarettes,candy,soaps,rations etc. which many of them used to please their "girl friends" and believe it or not they had access to the Jerry cans of gasoline which was sold to the civilian population for big bucks.

 

There was one unit (and even the Col. who was the CO was involved) the 716th RR BN. that went so far as to sell railroad cars of supplies to the blackmarketeers. Ultimately they were caught and went to prison but that is another story. The CID Div of the MPs requested help from an Intel Group due to the magnitude of the operation-that's how I know. It was a huge operation believe me!!

 

The thing that frosted us was that before the rules were changed if a man got to Paris on leave he in many cases would be assigned a COT in a school gym for quarters,using a community shower if there was one and eat in a mess hall type of place. Remember the Rear Echelon Commandos could be eating in a dining room with all the fancies that went with it.

 

You have no idea of how the REC's lived while we were freezing our butts off, had only rations to eat and many were not hot food. We had no hot water to wash or shave but that should give you the big picture of the difference. These guys were better off than many of the men that were Stateside.

 

Paris was taken in August but we didn't get any extra blankets and never saw a sleeping bag until long after they had them and they also had the shoepacs to keep their feet dry before we got them even though they weren't much better than our boots. Sorry to run on but even today this gets me POd big time

 

Question Posed to me "Err- Top!!:-

I kinda remember reading on this story a long time, but I am not sure. Was that general, JCH Lee, relieved for defying Gen. Ike?"

 

My Answer:-

Both General Omar Bradley and J. C. H. Lee, Communications Zone (ComZ) Europe, ordered the release of prisoners within a week of the war's end. This SHAEF order was countermanded by Eisenhower on May 15, 1945.

 

This I know to be true but whether or not Gen Lee still had Supply I can't say positively but he was still on the SHAEF Staff. I had no access directly to SHAEF

 

NOTE:-

I have to correct my figure of 10,000 as above to what follows:- "They stated the obvious at the height of the supply crisis, Lee had spent his precious time organizing the move, then used up precious gasoline, all so that he and his entourage could enjoy the hotels of Paris". It got worse. With 29,000 SOS troops in Paris.

 

It was a good thing that the men "on the line" didn't know that these many men were in the rear while men from the front were RTU(return to unit)ASAP after being wounded or that units that were not up to full complement had to draw troops from the Repple Depples(Replacement Depots) fresh from the States in some instances and in the ETO only weeks!!!

 

By March 1945, there were 160,000 SOS troops in the Department of the Seine. Many had never heard a shot fired or were ever in the Field!! The irony was that because they had been in the ETO longer than some of the COMBAT TROOPS they had amassed more of the required Points for discharge and were able to go home before some of us did.

 

We had another name for them but I'll not use it here.

 

Sgtleo

[Walt's Daughter]

Yes, I can see why that would still rub ya raw and get your ire and blood pressure up a few notches. Especially the part about gaining those ever-so-precious points that meant you were going home sooner.

 

I myself like to hear the behind the scenes stories such as this one. Personal and up close.

 

Gasoline was very, very precious in France at that time, and that really was a make-it/break-it item. Sounds like a very frivilous waste of such a scarce resource.

[chambers]

Sgtleo, thanks again for sharing your experiences.

 

Brooke

[Custermen]

Okay. I'm still wondering what "SOS" stands for??

 

Steve

[Walt's Daughter]

SERVICES OF SUPPLY darlin'!

[Walt's Daughter]

Here's more info on this subject. Copyright © 1997 by Ambrose-Tubbs, Inc. Converted for the Web with the permission of Simon & Schuster. This text is from Chapter 14 of Stephen E. Ambrose's book "Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army From The Normandy Beaches, To The Bulge, To The Surrender Of Germany.

 

 

 

The biggest jerk in ETO was Lt. Gen. John C. H. Lee (USMA 1909), commander of Services of Supply (SOS). He had a most difficult job, to be sure. And of course it is in the nature of an army that everyone resents the quartermaster, and Lee was the head quartermaster for the whole of ETO.

 

Lee was a martinet who had an exalted opinion of himself. He also had a strong religious fervor (Eisenhower compared him to Cromwell) that struck a wrong note with everyone. He handed out the equipment as if it were a personal gift. He hated waste; once he was walking through a mess hall, reached into the garbage barrel, pulled out a half-eaten loaf of bread, started chomping on it, and gave the cooks hell for throwing away perfectly good food. He had what Bradley politely called "an unfortunate pomposity" and was cordially hated. Officers and men gave him a nickname based on his initials, J.C.H. -- Jesus Christ Himself.

 

Lee's best-known excess came in September, at the height of the supply crisis. Eisenhower had frequently expressed his view that no major headquarters should be located in or near the temptations of a large city, and had specifically reserved the hotels in Paris for the use of combat troops on leave. Lee nevertheless, and without Eisenhower's knowledge, moved his headquarters to Paris. His people requisitioned all the hotels previously occupied by the Germans, and took over schools and other large buildings. More than 8,000 officers and 21,000 men in SOS descended on the city in less than a week, with tens of thousands more to follow. Parisians began to mutter that the U.S. Army demands were in excess of those made by the Germans.

 

The GIs and their generals were furious. They stated the obvious at the height of the supply crisis, Lee had spent his precious time organizing the move, then used up precious gasoline, all so that he and his entourage could enjoy the hotels of Paris. It got worse. With 29,000 SOS troops in Paris, the great majority of them involved in some way in the flow of supplies from the beaches and ports to the front, and taking into account what Paris had to sell, from wine and girls to jewels and perfumes, a black market on a grand scale sprang up.

 

Eisenhower was enraged. He sent a firm order to Lee to stop the entry into Paris of every individual not absolutely essential and to move out of the city every man who was not. He said essential duties "will not include provision of additional facilities, services and recreation for SOS or its Headquarters." He told Lee that he would like to order him out of the city altogether, but could not afford to waste more gasoline in moving SOS again. He said Lee had made an "extremely unwise" decision and told him to correct the situation as soon as possible.

 

Of course Lee and his headquarters stayed in Paris. And of course there was solid reason for so doing. And of course the combat veterans who got three-day passes into Paris could never get a hotel room, and had to sleep in a barracks-like Red Cross shelter, on cots. The rear-echelon SOS got the beds and private rooms. And their numbers grew rather than shrank. By March 1945, there were 160,000 SOS troops in the Department of the Seine.

 

The supply troops also got the girls, because they had the money, thanks to the black market. It flourished everywhere. Thousands of gallons of gasoline, tons of food and clothing, millions of cigarettes, were being siphoned off each day. The gasoline pipeline running from the beaches to Chartres was tapped so many times only a trickle came out at the far end.

 

Most of this was petty thievery. It was done at the expense of the front-line troops. As one example, the most popular brand of cigarettes was Lucky Strike, followed by Camel. In Paris, the SOS troops and their dates smoked Lucky Strikes and Camels; in the foxholes, the men got Pall Malls, Raleighs, or, worse, British cigarettes.

 

But a large part of the black market was run by organized crime. Here is a story told to me by a former lieutenant who worked as a criminal investigator for the SHAEF adjutant general's office. There was a colonel from the National Guard, born in Sicily, who was in Transport Command. His administrative job gave him the use of a C-47. On every clear day he flew, with a co-pilot, from London to Paris and back. He took in cartons of cigarettes and brought back jewels and perfumes. His trade flourished but there were a lot of payoffs to make, too many people involved. By mid-December, SHAEF's criminal investigators were ready to arrest him, but he got a tip and fled in his C47, with a co-pilot and a box stuffed with jewelry.

 

"Over the Channel," the lieutenant told me, "he shot the copilot, then smashed his face beyond recognition. He was a hell of a pilot; he landed on the edge of the water at an extremely low tide near Utah Beach. The plane with the co-pilot's body wasn't found until the next day's low tide -- and the major had left his dog tags on the dead man. We learned later that a French farm couple had watched an American pilot as he stole a donkey and cart, loaded a box onto the cart, slipped into peasant's clothing, and was last seen headed toward Sicily."