Fifth Army in the SGW
Hugh Drum (1939-1940)
Daniel MacArthur (1941)
Robert L Eichelberger (1941)
Walter Krueger (1942)
One of the original six Armies to be reconstituted in 1940 under Chief of Staff Sturgiss’ rearmament plan. Fifth Army was given the same area of operation as it had in the First Great War, but now it would be doing so on former Virginian territory. Headquartered in Culpeper West Virginia it was initially under the Command of Hugh Drum. Initially it was given priority in resources and equipment fearing the rearmed Confederacy might attempt a third attack on Philadelphia. Drum successfully managed the build up of first Army and the defenses along the Rappahannock. While most other field armies were under strength at the outbreak of war, Fifth Army had Eleven Divisions two more than the next largest field Army. Not wanting to be caught off guard as it had in 1914, the General Staff ordered Fifth Army to stand on the defensive in June of 1941. The General Staff still believed that the invasion of Ohio was only a feint and as late as July 23rd, a month into the Ohio invasion. It was only then that reinforcements mobilizing and being sent for the east were directed westward. These reinforcements proved to no avail.
In the late summer of 1941 General Daniel MacArthur was put forward by the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War to lead the attack on Virginia. MacArthur’s plan was to attack several heavily-fortified Confederate positions along several river lines, hoping the Confederates would be overstretched by their invasion of Ohio. Despite its pretension to ensure the war was led to a swift conclusion, the Committee approved Mac Arthur’s suicidal plan. MacArthur was confident about his chances against the Confederates, taking no account of their tenacity and will to win into his plans. He instead assumed that US soldiers would be marching into Richmond on a very short basis. This hubris was to cost the USA dearly as the offensive opened in late October after several delays.
Fall of 1941 Offensive
MacArthur launched his attack over the Rappahannock to the west of Fredericksburg. Entrenched Confederate guns and barrels cost his force several thousand casualties, but by nightfall the USA had a bridgehead on the south bank. The Americans battled their way across trench systems toward the Rapidan, where they were stopped by a fierce defense. After several days of further attacking, a US force crossed the Rapidan River and established a bridgehead in a tangle of terrain and forest called the Wilderness. In their drive to the south, the US Army had exposed their right flank as it brushed against the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. First Corps, under the command of Abner Dowling, was the unit in charge of watching the flank. Dowling made sure to watch the mountains for any sign, but MacArthur's orders were to advance south. Under Featherston's order, General George Patton struck First Corps in a lightning counterattack and pushed the USA back several miles. Although Dowling recovered the situation and held off Patton from reaching the USA's rear, MacArthur was forced to call off the attack through the Wilderness, which was holding up the US bridgehead there.
While both sides of the line settled down for winter quarters, their respective high commands made plans for renewed assaults in the spring. With reinforcement flowing into the region Fifth Army swelled in size, now at an un wieldy seventeen divisions, with a responsibility for defense of most of the Western Virginia border. The War Department prepared to break the Army up into the Seventh and Fifth Army. Wanting to keep operational control all forces in the Mid-Atlantic Theater, MacArthur proposed the creation of Army groups with theater commanders. The lack of theater commanders and fighting between army commanders had been an issue of the Great War. MacArthur was made the first theater commander of the Virginia Theater. Fifth Army was officially split into Fifth and Seventh Army in January 1941. Fifth Army now commanded by Robert L Eichelberger and Seventh Army commanded by John P. Lucas. With Seventh Army now responsible for Western Sector of the front, Fifth Army moved their attention eastward.
Battle of Fredericksburg
In early 1942 the Confederate General Staff quietly began removing veteran units away from Northern Virginia and sending them northwest to Ohio for the renewal of their assault. General MacArthur also spent his winter making plans. Initially, he wanted to land a force on the Virginia Peninsula and march on Richmond from the east, ala George McClellan in 1862, even securing support from the US Navy's Rear Admiral William Halsey, Commander of the Chesapeake Squadron. The US General Staff, informed by Dowling that MacArthur had attempted to take a division from Dowling's First Corps to go into the landing force, quietly ordered him to scuttle the plan. MacArthur began his revised attack by sending in engineers to build pontoon bridges across the Rappahannock under artillery fire. Unlike Custer’s successful bridging of the Tennessee River in 1917, MacArthur failed to include any element of surprise. The engineers were slaughtered, as were several regiments of soldiers waiting to cross from the far bank. After a lull in the fighting, during which reinforcements were brought forward on both sides of the river, the USA attacked again, this time managing to secure a bridgehead inside Fredericksburg. Once the US force began advancing south, Confederate guns opened up again and pinned the force down, creating thousands of casualties. Several days later, MacArthur ordered the remaining troops to fall back across the river, never having advanced outside the town itself toward Marye's Heights.
MacArthur and several US officers were criticized in the press and before the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. MacArthur chose to throw Fifth Army commander Eichelberger to the Joint Committee, relieving him of command in the summer of 1942. MacArthur chose to replace him Walter Kreuger, a surprising choice since Krueger was largely known for his intellectual prowess over combat experience. Kreuger had been one of the leading Army military theorists, staff officers and proponents of Barrel warfare. Many believed he would have been a likely replacement for Chief of Staff McNair, had President Smith not have been killed. Chief of Staff McNair happily approved a command that took Kreuger out of Philadelphia. With all resources being devoted to halting the Confederate advance into Western Pennsylvania. Krueger immediately halted the wasteful fifth Army attacks in and around Fredericksburg, and moved to reorganize the force built around a combined infantry-barrel-artillery and airpower centric warfare. Kreuger saw Fifth Army’s mission as to keep pressure on the Army of Northern Virginia, which would prevent the Confederates from sending more forces further west. Fifth Army continued to make limited advances into the area marked as the wilderness. For the rest of 1942 and the first half of 1943 nearly all of the nations resources were poured into driving the Confederates out of Pennsylvania and Ohio and then supporting the invasion of Kentucky and Tennessee. Again Firth Army’s main mission was to give support by renewing operations in Western Virginia in the area around the wilderness.
1944 Offensive
Even while fighting in Georgia and Alabama raged, the USA made plans to resume the war on the Virginia front. General Kreuger is largely aknowledged as the architect of General MacArthur’s Army Group’s drive on Richmond. Under his plan Fifth Army would pin Confederate resources down near Fredericksburg, meanwhile Seventh, Fifth and Ninth Army would capture Richmond and the Army of Northern Virginia in a double envelopment. In February 1944 the offensive opened with a massive artillery barrage near Fredericksburg. While General Eichenburg’s Ninth Army crossed the Rappahannock east of Fredericksburg, scene of so much slaughter in 1942. In the West the Army Air Corp dropped the largest air bombardment in history flattening the area known as the wilderness with the newly invented incendiary weapons, known as napalm. Fifth and Seventh Army pushed south out of its salient in the Wilderness and drove for Spotsylvania. In a few days, the USA had reached the North Anna River line, and pushed the few Confederate defenders aside.
Fifth Army’s relentless drive towards the capitol is largely considered the cause of the failed Forrest Coup in April of 1944. This led to the execution of many of the Confederacy’s ablest Staff Officers, resulting into a continuing deterioration of Confederate command and control capabilities. Several days later, Featherston and his Cabinet fled the capital of the Confederate States, setting up Petersburg to be the temporary seat of government. By May US soldiers battled street by street through Richmond, pushing south across the James River. The city fell not long afterward, and President La Follette toured the captured site a few days later. The USA continued pushing past Richmond, driving east and west, toward Hampton Roads and Appomattox County respectively. Featherston fled Petersburg for Portsmouth, where he ordered the CSA's superbomb to be deployed against Philadelphia. A few days later, after broadcasting a defiant speech filled with lies and hate against the USA, Featherston witnessed the detonation of the USA's superbomb, dropped by aircraft over the city of Newport News. With US forces pushing steadily toward Hampton Roads, the Confederate President evacuated the region and headed for North Carolina.
Fifth Army continued to pursue the remnants of the Confederate Army into North Carolina. Despite MacArthur’s best efforts it would not be Fifth Army or any of Army Group East that accepted the Confederate surrender. That honor would belong to Morrell's Army Group West, Morrell’s Army Group West and Mark Clark's Third Army. Fifth Army would end the War as the occupation Army of North Carolina in the so called Mid-Atlantic Command. In a spate of post war retirement’s General Krueger was spared and returned to his position as the Commandant of the Army War College in Valley Forge Pennsylvania.