page_title: Battle of Remagen
section_title: Conflicting orders
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Remagen / Battle for the bridge / Conflicting orders
caption_attribution_description: English: Major-General John W. Leonard, commander of the 9th Armored Division during 1945
context_page_description: The Battle of Remagen during the Allied invasion of Germany resulted in the unexpected capture of the Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine. After capturing the Siegfried Line, the 9th Armored Division of the U.S. First Army had advanced unexpectedly quickly towards the Rhine. They were very surprised to see one of the last bridges across the Rhine still standing. The Germans had wired the bridge with about 2,800 kilograms of demolition charges. When they tried to blow it up, only a portion of the explosives detonated. U.S. forces captured the bridge and rapidly expanded their first bridgehead across the Rhine, two weeks before Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery's meticulously planned Operation Plunder. The GIs' actions prevented the Germans from regrouping east of the Rhine and consolidating their positions.
  The battle for control of the Ludendorff Bridge caused both the American and German forces to employ new weapons and tactics in combat for the first time. Over the next 10 days, after its capture on 7 March 1945 and until its failure on 17 March, the Germans used virtually every weapon at their disposal to try to destroy the bridge.
context_section_description: Major General John Millikin, commanding officer of III Corps, had previously ordered Leonard to direct Combat Command A of the 9th AID south on the west bank of the Rhine, across the Ahr River, and connect with Patton's Third Army. Hoge did not have orders to cross or capture the bridge, but he decided to disobey his orders and reroute those forces across the bridge to reinforce the bridgehead instead. With some forces already on the bridge, Hoge got new orders to stop what he was doing and move his unit south to Koblenz. Hoge waited for a platoon to reach the far bank, hoping the bridge would stand, and then called 9th Armored Division commander Maj. Gen. John W. Leonard to inform him the bridge had been captured. If his gamble failed, Hoge risked a court-martial. He later described his feelings in that moment:
  I felt inside me that I could never live with the knowledge that I had given up that opportunity without making a try for it. I couldn’t have spent the rest of my life—and I knew it was, well, a dangerous thing, unheard of; but I just had the feeling that here was the opportunity of a lifetime and it must be grasped immediately. It couldn’t wait. If you had waited, the opportunity [would be] gone. That was probably the greatest turning point in my whole career as a soldier—to capture Remagen.
  Colonel Harry Johnson, Leonard's chief of staff, relayed the news up the chain of command to Colonel James H. Phillips, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army III Corps at about 5:00 pm. Milliken ordered that the 47th Infantry Regiment be motorized and dispatched to Remagen as soon as possible. Millikin attached the 7th Armored Division to III Corps so they could relieve the 9th Infantry Division who were already crossing the Rhine. He also ordered the 2nd Infantry Division to relieve the 78th Infantry Division so it too could cross the Rhine and defend the bridgehead. First Army commander Courtney Hodges confirmed Millikin's decision to continue to enlarge the bridgehead.
  Hodges relayed the news to General Omar Bradley's 12th US Army Group headquarters at 8:15 pm. General Harold "Pinky" Bull, Eisenhower's G-3, was at Bradley's 12th Army Group headquarters when they learned the bridge had been captured. Bull was skeptical of any plans to use the Remagen crossing, and he told Bradley, "You're not going anywhere down there at Remagen. You've got a bridge, but it's in the wrong place. It just doesn't fit in with the plan." Bradley replied, "What the hell do you want us to do, pull back and blow it up?"
  Bradley contacted SHAEF commander Dwight Eisenhower at his forward headquarters in Reims, France, where Eisenhower was having dinner with several airborne commanders. Eisenhower's aide called him to the phone, where he learned of the bridge's capture. He told his guests, "That was Brad. He's got a bridge across the Rhine. And he apologized for it, said it was badly located at Remagen." Eisenhower told Bradley to redirect five divisions to Remagen since they were no longer needed to seize Cologne because it had already surrendered. Eisenhower then tactfully called Montgomery to relay the news, since it affected Montgomery's huge Operation Plunder.
  Official orders were passed to Hoge to seize the bridge. By dusk, the combat engineers had partially filled the crater in the approach ramp with a tank dozer and once the sun went down, used the darkness to begin hasty repairs of the bridge. Until midnight of 7 March, the east bank was secured by only about 120 troops from Company A, 27th Armored Infantry Battalion and 1st Platoon, Company B, 9th Armored Infantry Battalion. If the Germans had mounted an effective counterattack against this small force, they might have prevented the Americans from establishing the bridgehead.
  Stars and Stripes combat correspondent Andy Rooney was 32 kilometers (20 mi) away when he heard the bridge had been captured. He was the first reporter at the bridgehead, followed shortly afterward by Howard Cowan of the Associated Press. Forty years after the event, he wrote about his luck: "It was a reporter's dream. One 
caption: Major-General John W. Leonard, commander of the 9th Armored Division
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