Bibliographical Note
Documentary Sources
Documentary sources for the history of engineer operations in Europe and North Africa during World War II consist of records generated in the various theater command headquarters, in staff sections, and in active combat, general, or special service engineer units. Now housed in the General Archives Division of the Washington National Records Center, Suitland, Maryland, they include daily journals, memorandums, correspondence, general and special orders, and periodic reports for commands and units in both theaters. The author has supplemented information drawn from these sources by soliciting comments from engineer participants in the events described through interviews, correspondence, and submission to them of early drafts of the manuscript for elaboration or correction.
Several major collections were of special value in the preparation of this account. The military series of the central files of the Office of the Chief of Engineers, War Department, contains materials on the engineer preparation for war and the later broad supervision of engineer technical affairs overseas. A wartime Historical Branch in OCE gathered a separate documentary file during the war and, as the Engineer Historical Division, later supplemented the collection with additional documentary and interview files. Ancillary collections include the Army Map Service wartime records. This material has also been retired to the Washington National Records Center.
The files of the European Theater of Operations, U.S. Army, contain the records of the chief engineer and the stated theater policies and procedures governing engineer activities in England and on the Continent. The ETO Historical Division files also deal extensively with the history of engineers in the war in Europe. The files of the base sections and the advance section likewise contain material central to the engineer support of combat operations.
North African—Mediterranean theater files, also in the Washington National Records Center, are similarly organized by command and cover engineer activities in North Africa and Italy. Records of numerically designated units are filed individually by unit number in the records center.
The amount of unpublished material on engineer units in the two theaters is also voluminous, though it is uneven in quality. The more important works are the following:
1. Twenty Engineer Historical Reports were prepared by the Liaison Section of the Intelligence Division, OCE, ETOUSA, late in 1945. Each report deals exhaustively with a single broad aspect of engineer endeavor in England and on the Continent and includes extensive appendixes that contain some basic documents, detailed drawings, technical guidance, and occasional interview transcripts. This series is filed under the heading ETO Administrative File in the General Archives Division, Washington National Records Center. There is no comparable collection
for the North African and Mediterranean theaters, though a short series of histories of base sections exists for North Africa and Italy, the latter on file at the Center of Military History. Engineer affairs are included as appropriate in these volumes.
2. A multi-volume history of the Mediterranean theater’s Allied headquarters, History of AFHQ, also has numerous references to engineer activities and to command problems involving engineers.
3. Of the 131 ETO General Board Reports, the results of investigations by specially appointed teams of ETOUSA veterans, four deal directly with engineer organizations, technical and tactical policies, and engineer equipment. Others deal with matters affecting engineer operations such as theater organization, supply policy, maintenance, and the structure of SOS, ETOUSA, and COMZ, ETOUSA. A complete set of the reports is at the Center of Military History.
4. The eleven-volume Administrative and Logistical History of the European Theater of Operations also contains considerable engineer information. Intended as a series of preliminary monographs for a major history of ETOUSA, the works were completed in the theater early in 1946. Of importance for engineer operations are the following: The Predecessor Commands: The Special Observers (SPOBS) and United States Army Forces in the British 1sles (USAFBI) by Henry G. Elliott; Organization and Command in the European Theater of Operations by Robert W. Coakley; Operations TORCH and the ETO; Neptune: Training for Mounting the Operation, and Artificial Ports by Clifford Jones; Open ing and Operating the Continental Ports by Elmer Cutts and Robert L. Davis; Survey of Allied Planning for Continental Operations by Howard L. Oleck, Henry J. Webb, and Vernon W. Hoover; The Local Procurement of Labor and Supplies, United Kingdom and Continental by Henry G. Elliott; and Troop and Supply Buildup in the United Kingdom Prior to D-day by Herbert French.
Published Sources
Important published sources include Maj. Gen. Cecil R. Moore’s comprehensive Final Report of the Chief Engineer, European Theater of Operations, 1942—1945 and the published histories of the First, Third, Fifth, and Seventh Armies, and of the 12th Army Group. A general treatment of logistical—and engineer—problems in North Africa and Italy is in the Logistical History of NATOUSA-MTOUSA (Naples, 1946). Of special value were the following volumes in the official United States Army in World War II series: Blanche D. Coll, Jean E. Keith, and Herbert H. Rosenthal, The Corps of Engineers: Troops and Equipment (Washington, 1958); Roland G. Ruppenthal, Logistical Support of the Armies, Volume I (Washington, 1953) and Logistical Support of the Armies, Volume II (Washington, 1959); Richard M. Leighton and Robert W. Coakley, Global Logistics and Strategy, 1940-1943 (Washington, 1955) and Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, Global Logistics and Strategy, 1943 –1945 (Washington, 1968). The campaign histories in the series also provided a comprehensive background for this account of engineer operations.
The chief commercially published
works used in the preparation of this book were General of the Army Omar Nelson Bradley’s A Soldier’s Story (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1951), Brig. Gen. William F. Heavey’s Down Ramp! The Story of the U.S. Army Amphibian Engineers (Washington: Infantry Journal Press, 1947), General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Crusade in Europe (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1948), General George S. Patton, Jr.’s War as I Knew It (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1947), and Wesley F. Craven and James L. Cate’s The U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948-1958), 7 volumes.
Numerous articles on engineer operations appeared during and after the war in service journals. Among the best of these were those in Military Review, The Military Engineer, the Engineering News-Record, and the Industry Journal.