 This is Ned Calmer reporting from Governor's Island, historic landmark in New York Harbor, headquarters of the first United States Army, formed in 1918, tested on the battlefields of Europe in two world wars. In a moment, the first Army story. He presents an official report produced for the armed forces. 1917, the American Expeditionary Force, under General John J. Pershing, poured ashore in France, expecting to fight as a separate Army. But the Allies had suffered heavily during three years of fighting, and some American units were sent directly into the lines to strengthen French and British positions. Our dough boys tasted trench warfare for the first time, and their initiation was a rugged one. Pershing presented to Marshal Pétain his plan to form an independent American field Army soon after the arrival of the AEF. But the time required to assemble such an Army delayed its formation. The pressure of German drives in Picardie, along the Somme and on the Marne in the spring of 1918, forced the deployment of American combat units on various parts of the front. Although Pershing had more than a million soldiers under his command, he was unable to bring them together into one effective field Army. But the men who would make up such a force when the time came, gained experience quickly. Pershing prepared the status of veterans as the German drives were stopped and finally driven back. In late July 1918, General Pershing created the first United States Army under his command. And immediate steps were taken to concentrate American forces at one point on the line. That point was Samuel. The Germans had held a salient 25 miles wide since early in the war. Penetrating the Allied lines 16 miles, it enabled the enemy to harass operations toward Metz or Sedan. More than half a million First Army troops assembled for the task of crushing it out of existence. 15 infantry divisions were moved into position. By the end of the day on September 11, 1918, First Army was ready for its first independent operation against the enemy. At dawn on the 12th, in a drizzling rain, the attack was launched. It was an unpleasant surprise. Within four days, the salient was obliterated and the Americans were deployed along a new line. General Pershing considered the victory a birthday gift to him on September 13th. And in a statement issued to the man, he said, this striking victory probably has done more than any single operation of the war to encourage the tired allies. A massive offensive had been planned by the Allies, in which First Army would play a critical and decisive role. The Muse-Argonne campaign, west of Verdun. In one of the most spectacular troop movements of all time, Colonel George C. Marshall, then First Army's operations officer, planned and directed the transfer of 600,000 men with complete secrecy. A three-hour barrage softened up the German trenches before First Army infantry launched their attack. The offensive Lieutenant General Hunter Liggett assumed command of First Army. The Muse-Argonne campaign was not the quick victory of Samuel, but it helped to smash the Hindenburg line and speed the German surrender. After the armistice was signed, First Army remained in France until its return to the States in 1919. They were welcomed by a proud nation. First Army's 23 divisions had written a chapter of history unaccelled in accomplishment, unsurpassed in courage. Many men and many outfits had captured the imagination of the American people and won a place of honor in their hearts. Sergeant Alvin York of the 82nd Division, while Bill Donovan's fighting 69th, Major Charles Whittlesley's lost battalion, General Douglas MacArthur of the 42nd Division, and the famous Hat in the Ring Flying Squadron of Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, all shared the glory which covered the First Army. At New York's famed polo grounds, the soldiers were entertained by the city at a giant picnic rally held in their honor. First Army's success had been well deserved. The result of a coordinated national effort carried out quickly and capably. The soldiers returned to the popular belief that the Great War had been the last. Inactivated in 1919, First Army seemed for a few years a part of the past, but the complacency of the 20s soon gave way to the threat of European unrest. In 1933, Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur recreated First Army as part of a broad army reorganization. Although largely a paper army during the Depression, First Army, under the command of Lieutenant General Hugh Drum, was once more turned into a fighting force before our entry into the Second World War. Between 1940 and 1944, Germany dominated Western Europe. Under the heel of the Nazi boot, most free European countries were ground into subjection. Balkans in the south to the rugged coast of Norway, Europe had become one mighty Nazi fortress. The swastika was the symbol of brutality and oppression, and Hitler, the personification of evil. During the first two years of our participation in World War II, the First Army had been honed for the ultimate thrust, the assault on Fortress Europe. Moving to England in the fall of 1943, it retraced the first of many miles it had traveled 25 years earlier. There were few veterans, but the spirit, the determination, and the courage of the soldiers who formed its ranks would once again make history. England meant work, endless grueling hours of activity to bring the men to the peak of their performance. Every skill was polished, every muscle hardened, every mind tuned to the gigantic struggle which lay ahead. The Allied plan for the invasion called for a twin-pronged assault on the Normandy beaches by British Field Marshal Montgomery's Second Army and the United States First Army led by General Omar Bradley. In the spring of 1944, the build-up in England was complete. In May, units began to move out and converge upon channel embarkation ports. Hitler's legions waited behind case-mated guns. Mines, underwater obstacles, tank traps, and other devices cluttered the coast, designed to impede the momentum of attempted Allied landings. The German general staff had stationed 60 divisions in France, but there was a major weakness in the channel defense in the much-touted Atlantic wall. The Allied attack would concentrate on that weakness at two points on the Normandy coast, Omaha Beach and Utah Beach. Shortly after dark on June 5, 1944, First Army paratroopers from the 82nd and the 101st Airborne Divisions boarded their aircraft. Not a single man had ever parachuted into action, immediately after a devastating shore bombardment. 29th Divisions assaulted Omaha Beach, while the 4th and 90th Divisions drove in upon Utah Beach. Offshore, General Bradley personally coordinated operations during those early critical hours. As the assault cut through Nazi defenses and moved inland, more men and equipment poured in upon the beaches. Behind the beaches bordering the fields were the hedge rows, each one a potential death trap. The enemy made effective use of these natural defense barriers and yielded them fanatically. June 10th saw the beachheads joined, and on June 26th the Great Port of Sherbourg fell to the First Army. The German 7th Army at Saint-Lô, which stood directly in Bradley's path, included many battle-season divisions. Orders from Hitler were to defend the Saint-Lô area at all costs. As First Army pressed close to the city, the enemy defenses tightened. In spite of stubborn opposition, Saint-Lô fell to the First Army on July 18th. The Americans advanced slowly until the 25th. Then, after heavy Allied bombing, came the breakout west of Saint-Lô. First Army got a new commander in General Courtney Hodges, when Omar Bradley moved up to take charge of the 12th Army Group. The Nazis were determined to split the Allied forces and roll them back to the sea. Five cracked Panzer divisions were gathered for a powerful counter-offensive in the Mortin area. Their main drive was aimed at Avranche to cut off First Army supply lines, as divisions repulsed every enemy thrust. The Nazi failure set the stage for one of the worst military disasters of the war, the Félez-Argenton pocket. Here, Hitler's supermen died or surrendered by the thousands. War correspondent Alan Moorhead had this to say, the best of Van Kluge's army came here en masse 48 hours ago, and now one turns sick to see what has happened to them. This was Germany's best in weapons and men, their strongest barrier before the Rhine. It had been brushed aside, shattered into bits. Frenchmen cheered the advancing First Army as it pushed on. Ahead lay the rest of France, the Low Countries, and Germany itself. In August 1944, Paris had fallen to the First Army, and the liberators paraded for the populace. Then the main thrust of First Army smashed across eastern France. September 11th penetrated the Siegfried Line north of Aachen, October 2nd, and captured that city on the 21st. In the desperate fighting in the Hurtkan Forest, one soldier observed that the forest would carry the scars of the fighting long after those of the army had healed. The First Army was eloquent in a language the Nazis had learned to understand. In December 1944, the enemy probed a thin American defense line in the Ardennes Forest of Belgium, south of First Army's Rohrer Offensive. The Nazis had concentrated 14 infantry divisions and 10 panzer divisions behind a 75-mile line. On the 16th, they launched the most desperate counter-attack of the war, the Battle of the Bulge. Americans were taken by surprise as the Germans drove a wedge 60 miles deep through the snow-covered Belgian countryside. First Army divisions together with Third Army units struggled to slow the advance, and names such as Elsenborn Ridge, Saint-Viet, Malmedy and Bastogne took on a new and lasting significance. Finally, the Germans were stopped. Many of the men were able to celebrate a late Christmas with hot showers and hot food. First Army drove across the Rohrer to the banks of the Rhine. At Raymagen, where the Nazis failed to destroy the Ludendorff Bridge in time to stop them, soldiers from First Army's 9th Armored Division rushed across under fire and secured the bridge. Words, they tell what happened. On March 7th, Grimble, as my advanced guard commander, my column came to the hill there, which commands a view of this whole valley. I formally had a plan to come into the town and reach the approach to the bridge. Movement began. When the head of the column got to the end of the bridge and the other side, the tanks immediately took position and began firing across the bridge to the approaches on this side at the Germans who were on the bridge. The infantry then started moving across. It was about 3.30 at that time. I received a message about that time that the bridge would be blown at four o'clock. In a few minutes, two detonations occurred on the bridge. Looking at the bridge, I could see that the infantry was still moving over and that the bridge was still in one piece and it would be available for our foot troops to move over. And that's all there was to it. Now, I'd like to have Lieutenant Grimble tell his story. We went right on down to the bridge. The bridge was manned by German engineers in the towers. There were lots of snipers and some machine guns. The tanks covered the towers and fired on them. The Germans jumped from the top to the towers to the bridge. They ran back across the bridge and our infantry pursued them. A pontoon bridge was quickly thrown across the Rhine by first-army engineers to handle the traffic overflow pouring into the bridgehead. It was completed in less than 12 hours with the men working much of the time under enemy shell fire. On March 17th, weakened by enemy shells and bombs, the Ludendorff Bridge collapsed of its own weight. Engineers had worked for 10 days trying to salvage the sagging structure and many were forced to jump from the bridge at the last minute. Rescuers quickly pulled them from the rushing waters of the river but first-army was across the Rhine. By March 24th, 10 infantry divisions and three armored divisions had passed through Raymagen aimed at the heart of the crumbling Nazi fatherland. Hitler had unleashed the dogs of war and by the spring of 1945, they lay whipped and stunned amidst the wreckage. For Nazi Germany, any hope of survival had passed. The thunder of her military machine had become the national death rattle. One Nazi soldier wrote in the diary taken from him at his capture, It's Sunday. My God, it's Sunday. I can hardly stand anymore. Everywhere are tanks and holds of Americans. Murderers fire with them, but they're no longer taken cover and they are not stopped. First-army swept wide around the rural industrial area to the north and captured 300,000 Germans in the rural pocket. The arrival of American soldiers in Germany meant liberation for many. Tragedy stared out from the faces of unfortunate victims as they were released from the living death of Nazi concentration camps. For these people, horror had long been the only reality. Sickened by the fruits of Hitler's harvest, American soldiers helped where they could. The first Russians encountered by our advancing troops were the thousands of half-starved prisoners in the Nazi slave labor camps. But First Army pushed on to the Elbe to a happier Russian rendezvous. Jubilation was the word to describe the meeting of the two weary armies. General Hodges had looked forward a long time to this day. Jules had been the price of the reconquest of Europe. Within a week after VE Day, First Army headquarters began redeployment for the projected invasion of Japan. As they bordered their transports, these veterans had every reason to believe their task was only half complete. But the last act of the mighty drama ended sooner than expected. The Japanese capitulated before General Hodges' army was needed, and the men who had performed with such distinction in Europe were gradually returned to the United States. They left a legend as hard and enduring as the stones, which marked the resting places of their honored dead. From Sambiel to Omaha Beach, to Salo, Arkan and the Ardennes, to the Rhine and the Elbe and all the places in between, these men were soldiers. With courage, determination and sacrifice, they had earned the proudest of titles, the first United States Army.