First United States Army

You'll help him out.» None of that happened.

The 6-761st, I think, was under First Army by that point.

There's no documentation whatsoever.

Uh, there's a story where he does something similar in Italy, uh, with the 92nd Infantry Division, 92nd being an all-Black infantry division.

And if the game does start on time, we'll almost certainly have the lights turned on.

Behind home plate, where the First United States Army New York Band-

Now the First United States Army-

With the colored services color guard-

The Army with the color guard will be coming out

1944, Battle of Aachen.

The US First Army attacks Aachen, the first German city captured by Allied forces during the Second World War.

And in 2010, the Copiapó mining accident in Chile comes to a happy end as all 33 miners arrive at the surface after surviving a record 69 days underground.

That's pretty amazing, isn't it? Make sure to be having your, um, having your cups of coffee this morning, folks.

So they, they were able to get the surrender of all the, the guards and that sort of thing.

And was that it? I mean, were these guys, like, whisked back to OSS headquarters or, or something along those lines once they had actually made contact with First Army?

Yeah.

Well, so first they had to be restored to health.

It was the deadliest single V-2 rocket attack of the war.

The initial German artillery bombardment had cut the field telephone lines, so Courtney Hodges and the First Army headquarters at the Belgian town of Spa, so famous for its mineral baths and resorts that its name became synonymous with such places, received only a few isolated reports and believed they were looking at a local diversionary attack.

Hodges issued orders for the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division to advance toward the River Ruhr, unaware that the unit was at that moment fighting a desperate holding action against German panzers.

In order to have any hope of success, this German offensive needed, first, to achieve surprise.

However, George Patton did not command a force in combat for 11 months, 11 months in arguably the fiercest war in the world's history, a war that General Patton felt he was born to be a part of.

In September, Omar Bradley, who was Patton's junior in both rank and experience, was selected to command the First United States Army forming in England to prepare for Operation Overlord.

This decision had been made before the slapping incidents were made public, but Patton blamed them for his being denied the command.

Eisenhower felt the invasion of Europe was too important to risk any uncertainty and that the slapping incidents had been an example of Patton's inability to exercise discipline and self-control.

[laughs] Anyway, they had more respect for Patton than any other Allied commander, and considered him to be central to any plan to invade Europe from England.

Now, because of this, Patton was made a prominent figure in a deception scheme called Operation Fortitude during the first half of 1944.

Through the British network of double agents, the Allies told the Germans and the intelligence, they gave them a set, steady stream of false reports about troop sightings, and that Patton had been named commander of the First United States Army Group.

They did this to convince the Germans that Patton was preparing this massive command for an invasion at Pas de Calais.

When the, you know, I guess the clock struck 5:00 or whatever, when all business was over, they were still old friends.

Um, I know that Bradley, when he leaves for Europe, uh, from the Mediterranean to take command of First Army, he's been put in charge of all the forces going in on D-Day, that he just sees Patton just crushed with depression.

He's worried he might commit suicide.

And he's lending him his aircraft so Patton can travel.

[laughs] Knowing what's going on, yeah.

Yeah.

And, and John, I'll just add, um, when, what they did was Marshall sends MacArthur a letter saying, "Hey, these generals want to have a role in the Pacific fighting," and Omar Bradley was part of the list, and Courtney Hodges, commander of First Army, and then there was like 10 other names, with Patton's name in there.

And, uh, MacArthur sends the list back with Patton's name missing, and says, "Yes, I approve of all these." You know, so I mean [laughs] it wasn't, no one would...

Take us into that moment.

Yeah, so the, the US First Army did not know that Colditz was a POW camp.

Uh, the SS had set up, uh, heavy artillery behind the castle, and it was about to turn ugly, so, uh, the American artillery had begun hitting the castle.

A guard was killed.