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Major General Terry Allen commanded the 1st Infantry Division in North Africa and Sicily. |
Born at Fort Douglass, Utah on April Fools Day in 1888, Terry Allen attended West Point before flunking a mandatory class and instead graduated from Catholic University in Washington D.C. Following in his father's footsteps, he entered the army cavalry and went to France as a captain when World War 1 broke out.
No ordinary commander, Allen personally led an attack at St. Mihel where German artillery fire burst close enough to him to tear into his shoulders and legs, knocking him unconscious. He awoke and found himself on a stretcher being carried to the rear. When he came to his senses, he jumped off the liter, tore off his first aid tag, rushed back to the front lines, organized his disarrayed unit and advanced on the enemy. They were met by several German machine gunners and Allen took a bullet in his jaw. Undaunted, he took on his attackers in hand-to-hand combat, killing or capturing all within minutes. He ended the war with the Silver Cross for exceptional bravery.
During the years between the World Wars Allen remained in the army. He married and had one son, Terry Allen, Jr. In 1940 Allen was promoted to brigadier general on the same day his old friend and polo partner, George S. Patton, was made the same rank. At the time Patton wrote, "My dear Terry: Congratulations!! The army has certainly gone to hell when both of us are made. I guess we must be in for some serious fighting and we are the ones who can lead. All we need now is a juicy war. At least they have had the sense to promote the two damn best officers in the US Army."
Allen took cammand of the 1st Infantry during the Carolina Maneuvers in May of 1941, then took the division overseas to England aboard the Queen Mary. As a battlefield commander Allen was one of the most attack-minded general officers of the War. He rallied his men with the battle cry "Nothing in hell must stop or delay the First Division." He praised them often and earned their respect and affection. The general who took over the division after Sicily fell said nobody could have gotten what Terry Allen did out of his men.
During the famous Battle for El Guettar, which was the first solid defeat we handed to the Germans in North Africa, Allen demonstarted a command of battlefield tactics blended with quick wit. At one point a radio expert broke into the German battle codes and passed along a report revealing that their high command was renewing an attack at 4:00 PM. When the time grew near, a second message was intercepted saying it was to be delayed until 4:45. Allen, grabbing the moment, sent a message back to the Germans saying, "What the hell are you waiting for? We have been ready since 4:00 PM. Signed, First Division."
Forever proud of his men and always thinking of their welfare first, during the final push for victory in North Africa Allen wrote in a letter to his wife, "We are fighting the best German soldiers that Rommel has and we have made our way inch by inch through very desparate resistance. I went to church Easter Sunday to say prayers for my men (while) airplanes were flying overhead and our artillery was firing behind the next hill, just 100 yards away." After the fighting stopped, he penned another letter to his son proudly saying, "The casualties were severe, but the casualties we inflicted on the Germans were far worse. German prisioners testified that the effectiveness of the 1st Division's artillery fire was far worse than they ever encountered in Russia or elsewhere." After crediting his men for the praise the division was receving in stateside papers and magazines by this time, and refusing to take any of the credit himself, he gave the division further training in preparation for the Invasion of Sicily.
Allen led his men ashore onto Gela Beach on the southeastern shores of Sicily on July 9, 1943. During the next morning, the Hermann Goering Division launched brutal panzer strikes which continued for two days in an attempt to throw the 1st Division back into the sea. According to one First Division account, "The enemy's attack was repulsed by one of the finest exhibitions of discipline and courage in the division's history." Personally at the front in a slit trench commanding the action, Terry Allen was asked over the deafening sound of attacking German tanks and infantry if he was going to order a general retreat. With a pistol waving in his hand, Allen stood up and in his raspy voice screamed, "Retreat? Hell no. They haven't overrun our beach yet!" Then he charged off the hill that he was commanding from to organize one of the units being fired upon in front of him.
His men were exhausted after holding the beachhead, but Allen issued the order to attack inland during the night after the Hermann Goering retreated. His logic was simple. "We're going to sock the hell out of the damn Heinies before thay can get set to hit us again," he told his senior officers before the general order was issued. The division then slugged its way up the center of the island while the British were bogged down in the eastern half beneath the shadows of showering Mount Etna. After Patton's armies seized Palermo in the west they were able to advance rapidly towards the Straits of Messina at the top of Sicily because the Fighting First had broken the hinge of German resistance in their path with Allen's steady, well-executed thirty-three day march inland. After the fighting ceased, both Allen and his men were featured back in the states on the cover and in an inside article of Time Magazine. Part of the praise said, "Upon Terry Allen and his 1st Infantry Division, as upon no other commander in Sicily, there has fallen a special mark in war and history; a mark reserved for front-lined fighting men, and esteemed by them. It is the mark of the greatest division in being and a great division commander in the making. These inseparable reputations are the first to be publically recognized in the US Army of World War II."
Despite the personal luster this gave Terry Allen, he was later quoted as saying, "You know who is responsible for that - the enlisted men!" Allen was referring to the fact that when he brought his men overseas, all but six of the nearly 15,000 men who came with him were volunteers.
In what was one of the more profound moments of the war, Terry Allen was relieved of his duties after Sicily fell. He believed it was a normal rotatation in command, something supported by both Patton and General Eisenhower. Patton said he carried the weight of the attack in Sicily. Eisenhower said that he had the longest, most arduous and most successful combat record of any general officer to that point in the war. But, the accolades that probably meant the most to Terry Allen came from his men when they bid him goodbye, ending a deep emotional bond shared between them. One lieutenant remembered, "Tough old Terry Allen was strict on discipline, but he would go to bat for any of his men, colonel or private. No one died uselessly under him. When he departed, even shaggy old regular army sergeants wept unashamedly as he drove off."
Terry Allen returned to the states and was reunited with his family before being given command of another division to take to Europe. In August of 1944 he brought the 104th Division, the "Timberwolves," all volunteers, overseas and went right into the front lines in Belgium where he and his men fought for 195 days before the war ended. He was reunited with the 1st Divison on the battlefield in Aachen, Germany, an experience he remembered as one of the highlights of his life. War correspondent Drew Middleton waxed eloquent about this moment in a column back to the states saying, "The division turned itself inside out to do him honor and spectators said the sight of hairy-eared veterans trying to show their affection for their Terry (Allen allowed war corrspondents to call him by his first name) through barriers of discipline and rank was incredibly moving."
Allen retired from the army at the end of the war and returned to his home in El Paso, Texas. Sadly, however, he had to fight one last difficult battle before his life ended. His only son, Terry Allen, Jr., had followed in his footsteps and entered the army after attending West Point. He was serving as a battalion commander in Vietnam, ironically for the 1st Infantry Division, when he was killed in action. Allen, never a quitter, maintained his dignity for all to see, even at this time of tremendous loss. After his son's funeral, he held a reception at his home, where he admonished everyone, "Let there be no tears in this house. This is the home of an infantryman."
Terry Allen died in September of 1969 following a car accident at 81 years of age. He was buried beside his son at Fort Bliss National Cemetery in El Paso with full military hours. |
Theodore Roosevelt was the assistant division commander of the First Infantry in North Africa and Sicily. |
One of the most respected and beloved generals of his time, General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. grew up in a priviledged and wealthy environment as the son of President Theodore Roosevelt. However, the younger Roosevelt steered his life in many different directions.
After graduating from Harvard, Roosevelt started an investment banking firm and built his own tidy fortune before being commissioned as a major in the First Infantry during World War I. A daring commander, Roosevelt led attacks right at the front lines. Criticized for taking unnecessary risks, he reportedly said, "We're officers, aren't we? I thought an officer's job was to lead his men, not follow them!"
And he certainly did. He was wounded twice during the war, gassed and hospitalized. He refused to remain in the hospital when the fierce fighting at Cantigny began, and he was later awarded the Distinguished Service Cross after going back to the front to fight in this battle which made the First Division famous back home.
During the interwar years, Roosevelt entered public service, first in the New York legislature, then as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. He was later appointed governor of Puerto Rico, then governor general of the Philippines before re-entering the army when World War II broke out, again in the First Infantry where he served as General Terry Allen's assistant division commander.
Roosevelt certainly knew how to hold his men together. During the raging counterattacks on the division when Sicily was invaded, he walked right into the front lines brandishing his walking stick to rally his men. In a voice that was described as "a bellow only a few decibels higher than a moose call," he poked his stick at the Germans and barked, "These guys can't hit me. They've been trying through two world wars. And if they can't hit an old grandfather like me, they sure can't hurt you!"
After leaving the divison when Sicily fell, Roosevelt was assigned to a headquarters position in Algiers. Fearing he might not get into battle again because of his age and questionable health, he wrote to General Omar Bradley begging for an assignment during the Invasion of Normandy, going so far as to say, "If you ask me, I'll swim in with a 105 strapped to my back!"
On D-Day Roosevelt was one of the most inspirational general officers to lead his men ashore. He landed on Utah Beach with the first wave of soldiers in his division, and held them together against intense German shelling. Despite being wounded, he stomped up and down the beach, waving his cane and making morale his primary business. He never took refuge in the inviting sand. Then, after discovering that the men he led ashore had landed in the wrong place, Roosevelt announced, "We'll start the war from right here!" Then he led them inland.
A division historian later wrote, "Roosevelt's bravery had to be seen to be believed. He had an antique disregard for his personal safety and a great gift for holding his men together." On the eve of what was to be a battlefield promotion to command a division in mid-July of 1944, Roosevelt crawled into a captured German supply truck after his men begged him to rest. Sadly, he was not present when the news came, for he died of a massive heart attack that night.
General Omar Bradley bestowed high praise in his final tribute to Roosevelt saying, "He braved death with an indifference that destroyed its terror for thousands upon thousands of younger men. I have never known a braver man nor a more devoted soldier." Roosevelt was buried at the Normandy American Cemetary in France after the war and was posthumously given the Medal of Honor, the United States of America's highest award for valor. | | |
