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8 Army Hist. 1 (1985)

handle is hein.milandgov/aryhsy0008 and id is 1 raw text is: The ARMY HISTORIAN A PUBLICATION OF ThE UNITED STATES ARMY CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY Number 8 Washingtor, D.C.. Summer 1985 The Bridge at Remagen: A German-American Staff Ride to Study Its Capture Bitly A. Arthur and Irue H. Semon Just a little over forty years ago, on March 7, 1945, U.S. Army 2d U. Emmet i. 1iurrows and his con- pany commander, 1st [I, Karl H. Timmerman, stood on a hill overlooking the German resort town of Remagen and thrilled at w they saw. Far below them and off to the right, clearly visible up the Rhine gorge tn the haze, stood the Ludendoriff Bridge, still intact, sp~aning the Last major barrier between the advancing Allies and the heartland of the Third Reich. Allied planners had not dared hope for an in- tLci bridge across the Rhine. When they got this one, it was not as a result of a battle in any real sense, but rather of a military accident. As a military breakthrough, it was more pay hological than strategic-an exhilarating rorale-booster for the Americanm and devastatingly demoralizing for the Germans. As German generals repeatedly told US. Army historian SL A. Marshall after the war, Remagen killed us. how could it have happened? We are a military people. We are not that careless. Forty years later, West Germans and Americans are friends and allies cooperating in a wide variety of fields-one of them that of military history. This past May, two U.S. Army historians, together with seven U.S. Army offcers, joined t150 German Anny officers and NCOs to study what did happen around R emagen on the ground where the history was made. Called a military historical terrain study, the project was sponsored by the German Heeresatn (Army Office), an organization having no exact counterpart in the U S. Army but which would roughly corres- pond to a Department of the Army-level agency com- binng the Training and Doctrine and Army Materiel Commands. The Heeresanmt invited American par- ticipation to tell the story of the capture of the bridge from the other side of the hil -in this ease, ours. Maj. Gen. Charles I. Fiala, U.S. Army, Europe (USAREUR). Chief of Staff, approved cooperation of the command's Military History Office in the proj- ect. Even at the earliest stages of the planning, it was clear that there were enormous gains to be made from such a project, combining as it would the military history assets of two of the higfhst allied headquarters in Europe. The principal gain would be the opportunity af- forded the participants in the conference to anal)ie the operations of both opposing forces at Remagen in terms of tactics and terrain. Secondly, the proj- ect would contribute to interoperability bctween American and German forces. Interoperabihity, a buaword of the 1970s, Is d fined as the capabllity of one armed force to interchange services with the armed forces of other allied nations. It has been a fac of life in the NATO alliance for the last ten yars. but it had not played such a formal role in miltary history education in Eurcope until the Renagen pro- ject. Occasionally, American and German sister units in the USAREUR Partnership Program have done combined staff rides over European battlefields under the direction of their own chains of command and with the technical assistance of the USAREUR Military History Office, but the Remagen project was the first time that professional U S. Army historians were directly involved. See Remiagen , p. 4 Ludenidorff Bridge frutm atopq Erpeler Ley. (USi Army phrotto,

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