A Cipher Clerk’s Advance Into Germany

The following is taken from notes that my father John Weston made on his war experiences. He often talked about them and I am afraid it did provoke the reaction at times of “Not the war again, Dad”. It was only later that we came to realise what a life-defining period it was and I persuaded him to write an account for his granddaughter, then studying World War Two at school. He joined the RAF Code and Cipher Branch and was posted to the Ministry of Defence in King Charles Street, Whitehall. Prior to D Day, he was seconded to General Bradley’s US 12th Army Group HQ, landed at Omaha and went on to Paris. This is his story.

******

From Paris we went onto Verdun and then Luxembourg. I made friends with a former member of the government and was invited to his house. He produced champagne from his cellar and served them with lovely cakes with kirsch in them.

It was now December and bitterly cold — lots of ice and snow. Out of the blue at 4a.m. on December 16th came a major attack on the American front.

Hitler had banned the use of radio and thus our interception posts could not provide any intelligence for us to break. Also with the awful weather, planes were fog bound on the runways, so no intelligence on troop movements was being gathered. The GIs on the American front were in that area for rest and refit, and others had not even been in combat, having just arrived from the USA. Colonel Monk Dickson (Patton’s intelligence officer did say in a report that “The Germans are still capable of making a strong attack in the Ardennes sector”.

The day before the attack, I was in the little village of Echternach on the German border, visiting some men in hospital. The Germans had spotter places flying at a very high level, so I set off to drive back to Luxembourg.

There was pandemonium as the Germans broke through the US lines, troops retreating and the populations streaming back from the German advances. The GIs ran out of ammo. and threw their rifles away — some 8000 were taken prisoners of war. We were cut off in Luxembourg city as the Germans had separated the 12th Army from the US 1st Army further north as they were making for Brussels. We carried thermite bombs in a safe in our operations vehicle to be used to destroy our codebooks and machines. We had rifles fully loaded with us at all times.

The weather did improve somewhat and we were dropped supplies of food and more important the GIs got further weapons and ammo. supplies. At one stage we were being served up boiled sweets for one meal!

The Germans were now using their radios and we broke an incepted signal which spoke of a Col. Otto Skorzeny along with 50 or 60 English speaking Germans, dressed in GI uniforms from GI prisoners of war or dead GIs, had broken through the US lines, near the city. Their plan was to kill Eisenhower or any other US general. Anyone moving around that night not giving the correct password (which was Betty Grable), was shot on the spot. The GIs were very trigger-happy. Col Skorzeny got away but many of the others were killed or taken prisoner.

There was another crisis when we broke a German signal indicating they were in the vicinity of St. Vith where there was a 3 million gallon gasoline dump. They were desperate for fuel, but for some unexplained reason they veered away from St. Vith before they actually reached the town, so the panic ceased.

The Germans had shot their bolt by mid January being pounded by allied aircraft.

We cracked a signal from von Runstedt to Hitler, which read “Our troops are exhausted, we have little fuel, we are retreating”. After this we moved north of Luxembourg to Malmedy on the west bank of the Rhine.

On March 7th 1945, there was great excitement in our operations vehicle. We learned that a railway bridge across the Rhine at Remagen was still intact — the charges had failed to explode. A US infantry battalion rushed across the bridge to the east bank.

General Hodges of the US 1st army and General Pete Quesdata of the US 9th Tactical Air Force came to our operations truck, asking us to send an immediate signal to Montgomery, as they wanted to push tanks and more men across the still standing bridge. I was on duty that night - it was around 7pm. Within the hour we had a signal back form Monry refusing permission. He said it would interfere with his plans to cross the Rhine. The American Generals’ language was salty — they were mad! They then asked us to contact Eisenhower back in Versailles. His reply was “go ahead”. About 9000 GIs went across to hold a bridgehead. Six days later the Germans shelled the bridge and put paid to any further movements.

I crossed into Germany at Trier. I recall that vividly. Patton’s tanks were ahead of us and were nearing the Rhine. His engineers threw a pontoon bridge across and we followed. I was driving our operations vehicle — there were GIs on the bridge with machine guns, urging me to push on quickly in case of air attack. We made it and an hour later drove into Wiesbaden to what had been the Luftwaffe’s former HQ.

One day when I was off duty, I went to the railway station, which had been badly bombed. Outside I found 12 German cars. I looked at what I thought was the best, tried to start it — no joy. So I got word back to the US motor pool and someone came out with a battery, fitted it and I drove away to the HQ.

It was my birthday [April 15th] when I handled one of the last signals Hitler radioed to his generals. It read, “Germany will never be Russian. Austria will be German gain and Germany will become a great nation”. This was sent from his bunked where he later committed suicide.

V-Day arrived. The GIs went wild, but we took it all quietly, with coffee and doughnuts from the Red Cross post — very very nice!

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.