The Red Ball Express

History records that the invasion...

which was to liberate Europe from the German army...

began in July of 1944.

D-day was already behind us.

We'd stormed the beaches and fought through the hedgerows...

and reached the rubble of village streets.

For a while, we thought it was gonna be a walkover,

but 30 miles inland, between the towns of Saint-ô and Périers,

we ran into it...

A wall of German men and guns planted there by der Führer with one order:

Hold or die.

The Germans didn't have any corner on giving orders.

Break through.

And so, on July 27, the Allied armies swung all the way from the floor,

and we hit the west wall with everything we had,

Lightning Joe Collins's Seventh Corps showing the way.

It took three long, never-forgotten days,

but the wall cracked,

and the crack became a hole...

and the hole a doorway.

And through the door, more armor poured into France than the Germans knew existed.

General Courtney Hodges's First Army moved east toward the Seine.

Field Marshal "Monty" Montgomery's 21st Army Group...

took a cut north, heading for Antwerp.

And General George S. Patton's Third Army...

Well, George, he took his tanks, his men,

added a dash of his private brand of courage...

and led them straight up the center for Paris.

Hey, knock it off, you jerk!

You feel like makin' some noise,

get down the road and join the war!

I'll give you 10 seconds to get out of there!

Yeah? Well, I'll give you just 10 seconds to knock that racket off...

before I give you a punch right in the...

Good morning, sir.

I hope I didn't break up a crap game, Lieutenant.

No, sir.

Why are you lying doggo here in the road?

- Are you lost or afraid or both? - Neither, sir.

It's just that we only had one can of gas left, and I thought we'd save it.

Save it for what?

You can't win a war against enemy you don't capture or terrain you don't take.

So get back in that tank and start moving!

Yes, sir.

Wow.

So we burn up our last can of gas. Then what?

Maybe there's some gas stations along the road somewhere.

Aw, sure. This is a regular Route 66.

Free air, free water and registered restrooms.

Yeah. They wash your windshield with an 88-millimeter shell.

Why don't they send up those back-line supply troops?

Are you kidding? Those jokers?

If you expect them to keep up with Old Blood and Guts,

I'll bet my bottom stripe we take Berlin with slingshots.

Hey, Charlie.

They got another cartoon in here about General Gordon.

I'd give $20 to see his face when he sees...

Get your money up, Lieutenant.

I hope it was worth it.

Now get on that telephone and get the advance section of the communications zone...

Colonel Carter. It's in Le Mans.

Yes, sir. Make the call, Corporal.

Yes, sir.

This is Tippecanoe 6. Give me Tatter Forward.

This is a high-priority call. Get that... a high-priority call.

I want Colonel Carter...

for Major General Lee Gordon on General Patton's staff.

Yeah, yeah. Who is it?

This is Major General Lee Gordon speaking. Can you hear me?

Yes, sir. Yes, General. Can you hear me?

Doesn't make any difference whether I can hear you...

because you're not going to be doing any of the talking.

Ten days ago, you told me that supplies were being sent up. Where are they?

Uh... Uh, well, you see, sir, uh...

I'm fed up with promises!

I want gasoline and gasoline and more gasoline.

And I want small-caliber ammunition and rations,

and I want them sent up here as fast as you can get them to me.

I know how you feel, General, but your outfit's been moving...

four times as fast as anybody thought it would.

We'll catch up to you eventually.

"Eventually"!

Get me those supplies!

Ten-hut!

Here's the situation, men. At ease.

In the 23 days since the Allied troops...

broke their way through the main German line of defense,

General Patton's army has fought its way to the Seine River.

That's 270 miles into enemy-held territory.

It's the most important push in the war,

but General Patton has outrun his line of communications support.

He's virtually drinking gasoline,

chasing krauts with .30-caliber bullets.

He's dangling out there all by himself.

It's our job to get him off that hook and keep him rolling.

No reflection on Patton's ability as a field commander, General,

but military history has proved that war is an inchworm.

The head has to stop while the tail catches up.

- Now, our supply line... - Right now, Colonel,

General Patton is rewriting military history.

He's already demonstrated that many military concepts are obsolete,

especially our concept of supply.

But, General, how do you supply an army that's moved as fast as his?

There are no forward airfields worth discussing,

and it'll take our engineers 60 days to put those railroads back into shape.

I'll tell you how we're gonna do it...

With trucks, trucks and more trucks.

We'll clear our own private route.

We'll make it off-limit for everyone...

from French civilians to combat units.

We'll set up our own one-way private road to Patton and back.

But that road will have to go through points that Patton's bypassed.

How do trucks get through enemy pockets?

They fight their way through.

What's your vehicle situation, Colonel?

I could have better than 6,000 trucks ready to roll by morning.

All right. Before we leave Le Mans tonight,

we'll have a beachhead-to-front Red Ball Express...

One way out and one way back.

General, we might have the trucks,

but we haven't men enough to put in all of them.

Then get the men.

Every man in the E.T.O. Who isn't shooting or kicking krauts out of their holes...

is going to find himself pushing a truck.

All right, gentlemen.

We'll reassemble here at 1300. Put all the plans together and get this Red Ball rolling.

Ten-hut!

I'd give a six-hour pass if I knew what this was all about.

I already did. I still don't know.

Then stop beatin' your brains out thinkin'.

You do guess it right, they'll change the whole thing,

even if they have to lose the war.

This is the highest-prize quiz show of all times.

We're in the Transportation Corps, aren't we?

That means we'll be driving trucks.

Yeah. The kind of work they don't care who does.

Trucks. Who wants to drive a truck?

Nobody. And most of all me.

Somebody oughta tell the government what's goin' on over here.

A year and a half we train.

The Fightin' 104th, they call us.

And I know what it means. Only 104 of them are gonna fight.

The rest of us are gonna wind up as wheel jockeys.

Why don't you stop beefin'?

Drivin' a truck is the softest touch in the world.

You sit down all day long.

You pick up some stuff here. You put it over here.

Nobody breathin' down your neck.

Carry a couple of jugs of cognac.

And mademoiselles...

What they won't do for a ride and a gallon of gasoline to take home to Papa...

can't be done.

Hey, you make it sound like heaven.

I wouldn't even want to drive a truck in heaven.

I don't know the first thing about one of these gadgets.

It's a cinch. Take you 10 minutes to learn.

Back in the States, I pushed rigs from one coast to the other.

All kinds of weather... Rain, snow, desert.

- Yeah? - Yeah.

Let me tell you about the time I was on the Mojave Desert run.

It was 120 in the shade, and I was loaded with popcorn.

All of a sudden, this stuff started to pop.

Boom, boom, boom.

And would you believe it? By the time I got to Phoenix,

all I had to do was add the butter and the salt.

Yeah.

Very entertaining.

Oh, that was nothin'.

Once I was drivin' in the Rockies, see?

Rockies? And it was... Yeah.

I pushed a few rigs over those hills myself.

Oh? Pretty cold, wasn't it?

Hey, what are you workin' on there...

A formula for a secret weapon?

Oh, this? This, my friend, is my future fortune...

The first real novel that's gonna come out of this war.

Well, what are you gonna call it?

How do I know? Haven't finished it yet.

What, what, what? Why, why, why?

Look, Shakespeare, you write anything about this outfit,

leave me out of it, will you?

I'm beginnin' to feel like an end man in a minstrel show.

Then why don't you tell a joke?

Aw, come on. He was only kiddin'.

Company, halt!

Left face!

Rest.

Al right, you men, the army's got a bug in its ear.

That's new? Don't it always?

Hurry, hurry, hurry, and then you never go anywhere.

Well, this time the army's gonna make it up to you.

This time, you're really goin' some place.

Hey, Sarge, don't we have at least a general or somethin' in charge of us?

There will be an officer here in a minute, wise guy.

And when he gets here, I want you to show him you're in the army.

That means you act like soldiers,

not clerks, messengers or ward boys,

even though that's what you were a few hours ago.

Detail! Ten-hut!

How are you, Red?