Trechos de Field Marshal: The Life And Death Of Erwin Rommel (2015), de Daniel Allen Butler.
[August 1] war was declared on France and Russia a day later.
Immediately [Erwin] Rommel asked his commanding officer for permission to return to the 124th Infantry, a request that was readily granted. The regiment was assigned to the 53rd Infantry Brigade, itself part of the 27th (2nd Royal Württemberg) Division.
- - -
Acording to Rommel's account of the journey to the front, there was an almost festive air about the mobilization:
The trip to the front on August 5, through the beautiful valleys and dells of our native land and amid the cheers of our people, was indescribably beautiful. The troops sang and at every stop were showered with fruit, chocolate, and rolls. Passing through Kornwestheim, I saw my family for a few brief moments. [todos os trechos em itálico são daqui]
Once at the German border, the men left the trains behind and began marching, arriving on August 18. Four days later, Leutnant Erwin Rommel, Jr., in command of a rifle platoon, had his baptism of fire.
It was near a village called Bleid, just inside Belgium, itself intrinsically unimportant to either side.
- - -
Two days earlier, Rommel had led his men in clearing the village of Conses, "with fixed bayonets, fingers on triggers, and all eyes studying doorways and windows for telltale evidence of an ambush," but all they encountered was an old woman who assured them that the French soldiers had already left. This time, there was no mistaking where the French were.
- - -
The action at Bleid, while all but inconsequential to the overall course of the war, looms large in the life of Erwin Rommel, beyond it being his introduction to combat. Courage, decisiveness, an understanding of the power of tactical surprise as a force multiplier - a skill that would receive the necessary honing in the years to come - and boldness.
- - -
Again, not waiting to give his enemies time to gather their wits, he rushed forward, bayonet in hand (wiry and strong for his size, Rommel prided himself on the skills in hand-to-hand fighting he'd acquired in peacetime), only to be knocked off his feet when a rifle bullet hit his left thigh, blowing out a fist-sized chunk of flesh. Seeing their officer go down, the men of Rommel's platoon pressed home their attack, and soon he was safely behind German lines and on his way to a field hospital. Transferred to a corps hospital two days later, he underwent surgery to repair some of the damage to his leg - none of which was, fortunately for him, permanent - which was followed by three months of recovery and limited duty. The wound also earned Rommel his first combat decoration, the Iron Cross, Second Class.
- - -
Rommel found himself leading his company in one such attack on January 29 [1915], on a stretch of front in the Argonne Forest just east of Verdun. [...]
Amazingly, the brash tactic worked, and the startled French attackers were thrown back in confusion long enough to allow Rommel to extricate his men through the barbwire entanglement and back to the German lines, losing only five men along the way. For this action, he was awarded the Iron Cross First Class.
- - -
On August 27, 1916, in what can only be described as an act of monumental stupidity, Romania had declared war on Austria-Hungary. [...]
Despite some initial successes, within a matter of two weeks, the Romanian forces were stopped in their tracks. [...] On September 18 the Germans and Austrians began their counterattack, and over the next 10 days, the Romanians were tumbled pell-mell out of whatever gains they had made and back into Romania itself. By the middle of October, however, they were able to stop the Germans at the passes of Vulcan and Szurduk.
- - -
We climbed over a narrow footpath and our packs with their four days' uncooked rations weighed heavily on our shoulders. We had neither pack animals nor winter mountain equipment, and all officers carried their own packs. We climbed the steep slopes for hours.
It began to rain as we started to climb without benefit of a guide. The rain grew heavier as night began to fall and it was soon pitch black. The cold rain turned into a cloudburst and soaked us to the skin. Further progress on the steep and rocky slope was impossible, and we bivouacked on either side of the mule path at an altitude of about 4,950 feet. In our soaked condition it was impossible to lie down and as it was still raining, all attempts to kindle a fire of dwarf pine failed. We crouched close together, wrapped in blankets and shelter halves and shivered from the cold. ... After midnight the rain ceased, but in its stead an icy wind made it impossible for us to relax in our wet clothes.
When we reached the summit, our clothes and packs were frozen to our backs. It was below freezing and an icy wind was sweeping the snow-covered summit. Our positions were not to be found. Shortly after our arrival a blizzard enveloped the elevated region and reduced visibility to a few yards. ... The surgeon also warned that a continued stay in the snowstorm in wet clothes, without shelter, without fire, and without warm food, would result in many sick and much frostbite within the next few hours. We were threatened with court-martial proceedings if we yielded one foot of ground.
Numerous cases of high fever and vomiting were reported, but renewed representations to sector were without effect. ... When day broke the doctor had to evacuate forty men to the hospital. Captain Gossler had decided to move off with the remainder of the companies, come what may; ninety percent were under medical treatment because of frostbite and cold.
- - -
Skillful use of terrain for concealment along with coordinated fire-and-movement by infantry sections, coupled with effective, concentrated covering fire to keep the Romanians' heads down, resulted in the capture of Mount Lesului with astonishingly light casualties.
- - -
Rommel cooly adjusted his positions and continued to hold off the Romanians until Major Sprösser could bring up reinforcements, after which the Romanians gave up on their attack and withdrew, although exchanges of rifle fire continued throughout the morning. Another Romanian attack materialized in mid-morning, but by this time the fog had burned off, and the Romanian advance was halted in its tracks well short of the German lines.
- - -
On November 27, 1916, Oberleutnant Erwin Eugen Johannes Rommel married Lucia Maria "Lucie" Mollin. [...]
The newlyweds had a bare two weeks together before Rommel had to return to the Mountain Battalion, though it wouldn't be until mid-January 1917 before he again saw any significant action. Bucharest fell to the Germans on December 6, two-thirds of Romania was now in the hands of the Central Powers, and the remnants of the Romanian Army retreated into northeastern and eastern Romania, behind a line of rugged ridges on the west bank of the Siret River, a defensive position of tremendous natural strength. Holding on like a thorn in the Central Powers' flesh, just to the west of the ridgeline, was a strong Romanian force dug in around and atop Mount Cosna, southeast of the town of Targu Ocna. The ridge behind Mount Cosna was the key to the entire Siret River Line; before the Germans and Austrians could mount any sort of attack on the enemy's main position, they first had to drive the Romanians off Cosna. To take Cosna, they first had to capture the village of Gagesti (modern-day Paragesti), which sat just below Cosna's southern slope.
- - -
The Germans and Austrians had failed to take and hold the whole of Mount Cosna the previous December, and the Romanian Army, once all but left for dead, experienced something akin to a resurrection in the spring and early summer of 1917.
- - -
From the Allies' perspective, the Romanian government's decision to go to war had been a colossal blunder: a neutral Romania had protected the southern flank of the Russian Army in its struggles with the Germans and Austrians - now, a Romanian defeat along the Siret would lay that flank bare to the Central Powers, and the consequences for Russia would be disastrous.
- - -
The Romanians fought bravely and they fought hard, and immediately launched a counterattack to drive the Germans off the ridge. Their lack of proper training, despite the best efforts of their French advisors, coupled with their lack of combat experience, led to clumsy, uncoordinated attacks. They might have done well against the armies of 1914, but courage and tenacity were no match for men who already seen three years of war. The Romanians fell back yet again, this time to the slopes of Mount Cosna itself.
- - -
Over the next three days the Romanians launched a series of strong, determined counterattacks, trying to retake the mountain; they fought fiercely and gave the German mountain troops all that they could handle, more than one company coming near to exhausting its ammunition supply in trying to hold back the Romanians. But again, superior training and bitter experience won out over élan and grit; the Romanian attacks were driven off every time.
- - -
Fortunately for Rommel, the whole of the Alpenkorps was withdrawn from Mount Cosna on August 25. It was not a moment too soon:
In the afternoon, because of a high fever, I began to babble the silliest nonsense, and this convinced me that I was no longer capable of exercising command. In the evening I turned the command over to Captain Gossler and ... after dark I walked down the ridge road across Mount Cosna, back to the group command post, a quarter of a mile southwest of Headquarters Knoll.
- - -
At 2:00 A.M. on October 24, a thousand German and Austrian guns, firing as fast as they could be reloaded and re-registered, erupted in a four-hour bombardment of the Italian defenses along the Isonzo.
- - -
Rommel saw immediately that, with its heavy barbwire obstacles and deep trenches, even a halfhearted defense by the Italians would make direct assault akin to suicide. While pondering his next move, Rommel noted a steep-sided gully (he called it a "camouflaged path") running off to his left just below the Italian line.
- - -
It was October 25, 1917: what followed would be, without a doubt, the most amazing single day in the whole of Erwin Rommel's remarkable life.
Rommel and his three companies moved out at first light, traversing the slope to the right so that they could come at the Italians from an unexpected direction. Using the skill he'd acquired in Romania at using dead ground to conceal movement, Rommel brought his detachment to a point less than 200 yards from the top of the ridge.
- - -
The 5,400-foot peak of Monte Matajur, to the west, was the objective, and Rommel began pressing in that direction as hard and as fast as he could, exploiting the surprise of his unexpected appearance in the Italian trenches to overrun and disarm as many of the enemy troops as possible, enlarging his foothold on the ridge in anticipation of the promised support from Major Sprösser. Suddenly, the entire detachment came under heavy rifle and machine-gun fire as Italians in a support trench, along with troops farther up the ridgeline, opened up on Rommel and his men - enemy infantry could be seen massing for a counterattack a hundred yards ahead - and Rommel's 2nd Company, sent forward to keep up the pressure on the Italians, was in danger of being overrun. Time was limited - and so were options.
Outnumbered and outgunned - again - Rommel quickly realized that there were no good defensive solutions to his dilemma, so he did what came most naturally to him - he attacked.
- - -
The Italians halted their attack against the 2nd Company and tried to turn and face the 3nd Company. But the 2nd Company came out of its trench and assailed the right. Attacked on two sides and pressed into a narrow space, the enemy laid down his arms. ... An entire battalion with 12 officers and over 500 men surrendered in the saddle three hundred yards northeast of Hill 1192. This increased our prisoner bag on the Kolovrat position to 1,500.
- - -
With the line of the Isonzo River defenses split wide open, the Italians had no choice but to retreat.
- - -
Rommel and Sprösser would each be awarded the Pour le Mérite for their respective parts in the capture of Longarone, which would be remembered as one of the Italian Army's greatest humiliations. [...]
He would remain a staff officer for the remainder of the war, until Germany signed an armistice with the Allies on November 11, 1918 and the hostilities of the Great War ceased.
Mais:
http://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxwrrqPyqsnIY2RNbUdKcUE1Y0k
http://docs.google.com/file/d/143Cn0TTXZeYjXonrXpFH45IY1sVjep-p
Immediately [Erwin] Rommel asked his commanding officer for permission to return to the 124th Infantry, a request that was readily granted. The regiment was assigned to the 53rd Infantry Brigade, itself part of the 27th (2nd Royal Württemberg) Division.
- - -
Acording to Rommel's account of the journey to the front, there was an almost festive air about the mobilization:
The trip to the front on August 5, through the beautiful valleys and dells of our native land and amid the cheers of our people, was indescribably beautiful. The troops sang and at every stop were showered with fruit, chocolate, and rolls. Passing through Kornwestheim, I saw my family for a few brief moments. [todos os trechos em itálico são daqui]
Once at the German border, the men left the trains behind and began marching, arriving on August 18. Four days later, Leutnant Erwin Rommel, Jr., in command of a rifle platoon, had his baptism of fire.
It was near a village called Bleid, just inside Belgium, itself intrinsically unimportant to either side.
- - -
Two days earlier, Rommel had led his men in clearing the village of Conses, "with fixed bayonets, fingers on triggers, and all eyes studying doorways and windows for telltale evidence of an ambush," but all they encountered was an old woman who assured them that the French soldiers had already left. This time, there was no mistaking where the French were.
- - -
The action at Bleid, while all but inconsequential to the overall course of the war, looms large in the life of Erwin Rommel, beyond it being his introduction to combat. Courage, decisiveness, an understanding of the power of tactical surprise as a force multiplier - a skill that would receive the necessary honing in the years to come - and boldness.
- - -
Again, not waiting to give his enemies time to gather their wits, he rushed forward, bayonet in hand (wiry and strong for his size, Rommel prided himself on the skills in hand-to-hand fighting he'd acquired in peacetime), only to be knocked off his feet when a rifle bullet hit his left thigh, blowing out a fist-sized chunk of flesh. Seeing their officer go down, the men of Rommel's platoon pressed home their attack, and soon he was safely behind German lines and on his way to a field hospital. Transferred to a corps hospital two days later, he underwent surgery to repair some of the damage to his leg - none of which was, fortunately for him, permanent - which was followed by three months of recovery and limited duty. The wound also earned Rommel his first combat decoration, the Iron Cross, Second Class.
- - -
Rommel found himself leading his company in one such attack on January 29 [1915], on a stretch of front in the Argonne Forest just east of Verdun. [...]
Amazingly, the brash tactic worked, and the startled French attackers were thrown back in confusion long enough to allow Rommel to extricate his men through the barbwire entanglement and back to the German lines, losing only five men along the way. For this action, he was awarded the Iron Cross First Class.
- - -
On August 27, 1916, in what can only be described as an act of monumental stupidity, Romania had declared war on Austria-Hungary. [...]
Despite some initial successes, within a matter of two weeks, the Romanian forces were stopped in their tracks. [...] On September 18 the Germans and Austrians began their counterattack, and over the next 10 days, the Romanians were tumbled pell-mell out of whatever gains they had made and back into Romania itself. By the middle of October, however, they were able to stop the Germans at the passes of Vulcan and Szurduk.
- - -
We climbed over a narrow footpath and our packs with their four days' uncooked rations weighed heavily on our shoulders. We had neither pack animals nor winter mountain equipment, and all officers carried their own packs. We climbed the steep slopes for hours.
It began to rain as we started to climb without benefit of a guide. The rain grew heavier as night began to fall and it was soon pitch black. The cold rain turned into a cloudburst and soaked us to the skin. Further progress on the steep and rocky slope was impossible, and we bivouacked on either side of the mule path at an altitude of about 4,950 feet. In our soaked condition it was impossible to lie down and as it was still raining, all attempts to kindle a fire of dwarf pine failed. We crouched close together, wrapped in blankets and shelter halves and shivered from the cold. ... After midnight the rain ceased, but in its stead an icy wind made it impossible for us to relax in our wet clothes.
When we reached the summit, our clothes and packs were frozen to our backs. It was below freezing and an icy wind was sweeping the snow-covered summit. Our positions were not to be found. Shortly after our arrival a blizzard enveloped the elevated region and reduced visibility to a few yards. ... The surgeon also warned that a continued stay in the snowstorm in wet clothes, without shelter, without fire, and without warm food, would result in many sick and much frostbite within the next few hours. We were threatened with court-martial proceedings if we yielded one foot of ground.
Numerous cases of high fever and vomiting were reported, but renewed representations to sector were without effect. ... When day broke the doctor had to evacuate forty men to the hospital. Captain Gossler had decided to move off with the remainder of the companies, come what may; ninety percent were under medical treatment because of frostbite and cold.
- - -
Skillful use of terrain for concealment along with coordinated fire-and-movement by infantry sections, coupled with effective, concentrated covering fire to keep the Romanians' heads down, resulted in the capture of Mount Lesului with astonishingly light casualties.
- - -
Rommel cooly adjusted his positions and continued to hold off the Romanians until Major Sprösser could bring up reinforcements, after which the Romanians gave up on their attack and withdrew, although exchanges of rifle fire continued throughout the morning. Another Romanian attack materialized in mid-morning, but by this time the fog had burned off, and the Romanian advance was halted in its tracks well short of the German lines.
- - -
On November 27, 1916, Oberleutnant Erwin Eugen Johannes Rommel married Lucia Maria "Lucie" Mollin. [...]
The newlyweds had a bare two weeks together before Rommel had to return to the Mountain Battalion, though it wouldn't be until mid-January 1917 before he again saw any significant action. Bucharest fell to the Germans on December 6, two-thirds of Romania was now in the hands of the Central Powers, and the remnants of the Romanian Army retreated into northeastern and eastern Romania, behind a line of rugged ridges on the west bank of the Siret River, a defensive position of tremendous natural strength. Holding on like a thorn in the Central Powers' flesh, just to the west of the ridgeline, was a strong Romanian force dug in around and atop Mount Cosna, southeast of the town of Targu Ocna. The ridge behind Mount Cosna was the key to the entire Siret River Line; before the Germans and Austrians could mount any sort of attack on the enemy's main position, they first had to drive the Romanians off Cosna. To take Cosna, they first had to capture the village of Gagesti (modern-day Paragesti), which sat just below Cosna's southern slope.
- - -
The Germans and Austrians had failed to take and hold the whole of Mount Cosna the previous December, and the Romanian Army, once all but left for dead, experienced something akin to a resurrection in the spring and early summer of 1917.
- - -
From the Allies' perspective, the Romanian government's decision to go to war had been a colossal blunder: a neutral Romania had protected the southern flank of the Russian Army in its struggles with the Germans and Austrians - now, a Romanian defeat along the Siret would lay that flank bare to the Central Powers, and the consequences for Russia would be disastrous.
- - -
The Romanians fought bravely and they fought hard, and immediately launched a counterattack to drive the Germans off the ridge. Their lack of proper training, despite the best efforts of their French advisors, coupled with their lack of combat experience, led to clumsy, uncoordinated attacks. They might have done well against the armies of 1914, but courage and tenacity were no match for men who already seen three years of war. The Romanians fell back yet again, this time to the slopes of Mount Cosna itself.
- - -
Over the next three days the Romanians launched a series of strong, determined counterattacks, trying to retake the mountain; they fought fiercely and gave the German mountain troops all that they could handle, more than one company coming near to exhausting its ammunition supply in trying to hold back the Romanians. But again, superior training and bitter experience won out over élan and grit; the Romanian attacks were driven off every time.
- - -
Fortunately for Rommel, the whole of the Alpenkorps was withdrawn from Mount Cosna on August 25. It was not a moment too soon:
In the afternoon, because of a high fever, I began to babble the silliest nonsense, and this convinced me that I was no longer capable of exercising command. In the evening I turned the command over to Captain Gossler and ... after dark I walked down the ridge road across Mount Cosna, back to the group command post, a quarter of a mile southwest of Headquarters Knoll.
- - -
At 2:00 A.M. on October 24, a thousand German and Austrian guns, firing as fast as they could be reloaded and re-registered, erupted in a four-hour bombardment of the Italian defenses along the Isonzo.
- - -
Rommel saw immediately that, with its heavy barbwire obstacles and deep trenches, even a halfhearted defense by the Italians would make direct assault akin to suicide. While pondering his next move, Rommel noted a steep-sided gully (he called it a "camouflaged path") running off to his left just below the Italian line.
- - -
It was October 25, 1917: what followed would be, without a doubt, the most amazing single day in the whole of Erwin Rommel's remarkable life.
Rommel and his three companies moved out at first light, traversing the slope to the right so that they could come at the Italians from an unexpected direction. Using the skill he'd acquired in Romania at using dead ground to conceal movement, Rommel brought his detachment to a point less than 200 yards from the top of the ridge.
- - -
The 5,400-foot peak of Monte Matajur, to the west, was the objective, and Rommel began pressing in that direction as hard and as fast as he could, exploiting the surprise of his unexpected appearance in the Italian trenches to overrun and disarm as many of the enemy troops as possible, enlarging his foothold on the ridge in anticipation of the promised support from Major Sprösser. Suddenly, the entire detachment came under heavy rifle and machine-gun fire as Italians in a support trench, along with troops farther up the ridgeline, opened up on Rommel and his men - enemy infantry could be seen massing for a counterattack a hundred yards ahead - and Rommel's 2nd Company, sent forward to keep up the pressure on the Italians, was in danger of being overrun. Time was limited - and so were options.
Outnumbered and outgunned - again - Rommel quickly realized that there were no good defensive solutions to his dilemma, so he did what came most naturally to him - he attacked.
- - -
The Italians halted their attack against the 2nd Company and tried to turn and face the 3nd Company. But the 2nd Company came out of its trench and assailed the right. Attacked on two sides and pressed into a narrow space, the enemy laid down his arms. ... An entire battalion with 12 officers and over 500 men surrendered in the saddle three hundred yards northeast of Hill 1192. This increased our prisoner bag on the Kolovrat position to 1,500.
- - -
With the line of the Isonzo River defenses split wide open, the Italians had no choice but to retreat.
- - -
Rommel and Sprösser would each be awarded the Pour le Mérite for their respective parts in the capture of Longarone, which would be remembered as one of the Italian Army's greatest humiliations. [...]
He would remain a staff officer for the remainder of the war, until Germany signed an armistice with the Allies on November 11, 1918 and the hostilities of the Great War ceased.
Mais:
http://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxwrrqPyqsnIY2RNbUdKcUE1Y0k
http://docs.google.com/file/d/143Cn0TTXZeYjXonrXpFH45IY1sVjep-p
