General William Hoge
Details On The Artifact
HBT cut down and custom tailored to Ike style jacket
A Bit Of History About William Hoge
There are times that an officer must disregard a task handed them by their superiors. General Hoge in charge of Combat Command B, 9th Armored Division was ordered to proceed south down the banks of the Rhine River in search of a suitable crossing area, but he disregarded those orders on seeing the Ludendorff bridge standing. “I got up to the Rhine and stood there on the bank and looked down, and there it was,” Hoge recalled. “The bridge was there right above the town. I couldn’t believe it was true. I issued an order right away to go down and grab that bridge, go down through the town and put tanks on both sides of the bridge, firing parallel to it.” The risk was exceptional—what if the Germans destroyed the bridge while Hoge’s forces were crossing it or even allowed some to cross before cutting them off. 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,” remembered Hoge. “It couldn’t wait. If you had waited, the opportunity [would be] gone. That was probably the greatest turning point in the crossing of the Rhine and the Allied thrust into the heart of Germany.