Speech by Steven L. Ossad Military Historian and Gen. Rose Biographer Rose Birthplace Dedication, September 29, 2002, Middletown, CT |
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Secondly, I want to recognize the outstanding achievements of our Keynote Speaker. General Paul Funk has had a distinguished record in both war and peace and is only the fourth man in history to have led the Third Armored Division in combat and its only wartime leader since World War II. While none of us can see into the future, he will likely be the last. I want to read to you a message I received from another distinguished veteran, Army retired Lt. General Frederick J. Brown. His father, then Colonel Fred Brown, was the Artillery Commander of the Third Armored Division, a friend of Maurice Rose, and a man who was with him the night he was killed. "Steve, well done to all. Wish I could be there. Paul Funk is a great choice. A most competent and distinguished combat leader who commanded the Division exceedingly well. He was once my deputy when I commanded the Armor Center at Knox. A superb soldier and leader. I still relish my days as Company Commander in the 1st Battalion, 33rd Armored Regiment in 1959 Looking forward to your forthcoming book. I know my Dad would have wanted to be with you at this important ceremony." Now that's the kind of performance review we all like to get. Major General Maurice Rose was the youngest of only 3 Fighting Division Commanders to fall in battle in World War II, out of 30 flag officers lost, and the only American Armored Division commander ever lost in action. To put this in perspective, our Civil War claimed a total of 160 general officers killed in action, split equally - ironically - between the Union and Confederacy. Maurice Rose was born across the street on November 26, 1899. My own link to this place began as a Wesleyan student in 1966, and in the long path that led me to his story, the discovery that Rose was born in Middletown was crucial and sparked actions that led to my decision to write his biography. My connection to Middletown, and that of my family, continues. My daughter Tova, who is in the audience here today, is also a student at Wesleyan. Maurice Rose was the youngest of four children, only two of whom survived infancy. His parents, Samuel and Katy Rose, were Jewish immigrants from Warsaw who, after living in New York City for some time moved here in 1897 and then to Denver in 1902, probably because Mr. Rose, a tailor by profession, suffered from tuberculosis. Maurice Rose grew up in an orthodox yet "Americanized" family and he achieved quick acceptance through success in school, the Boy Scouts, the paper routes, and on the ball fields of Denver. Maurice Rose did not choose a traditional path, however, and determined from a very early age that he would be a professional soldier. It was a dream that had also moved his father in childhood, but one frustrated by time and history. Sam Rose became first a tailor, and then a Rabbi, but Maurice Rose moved away, at least officially, from the religious traditions of his childhood. He declared after being wounded in 1918 at the Battle of St. Mihiel, and numerous times after that, that he was, in fact, a Christian. Maurice Rose was the epitome of the idealized "image" of a General: handsome, physically imposing at just over six feet tall, with closely cropped black hair, that turned gray under the ordeal of combat, piercing dark eyes, and in official Army Historian Charles MacDonald's words, a "firm, almost belligerent jaw". Ernest Harmon, one of his commanders, described Rose as a brilliant, but difficult to know, "cool, able soldier, distant and removed in temperament". In many photographs, including shots that were taken near combat action, he is dressed in the old style clothing of a cavalry officer, with pink whipcord breeches, shiny boots, with combat knife and standard issue '45 Automatic strapped to his hip. Many veterans describe him as looking like he had "just stepped off the bandstand". Perhaps it is not surprising that Rose should have met his end on the battlefield at the very "tip of the lance." In the age-old debate about the proper place of a combat commander, Rose came down firmly as an advocate of leading from the front, and that is where he could always be found. His VII Corps Commander, Major General Lawton "Lightning Joe" Collins, reproached him on a number of occasions for being so close to the enemy. The top Allied generals - even admirers - thought his behavior somewhat reckless, but viewed him as an effective, aggressive commander - fearless, and hard on himself and his men - and this doubtless was a consideration in his rapid promotions once the war began. Generals Bradley and Eisenhower endorsed Rose's advancement to General Officer and he was hand picked to command the 3rd Armored Division right after the Normandy Breakout. It is not difficult to see why the senior commanders chose him. He had already attracted attention in Tunisia, where in early May 1943, Rose negotiated and accepted the first large-scale German Unconditional Surrender taken by an American during WWII. His record in Sicily and during the first two months of the European Campaign was a model of battlefield success. Still, the selection of Rose was not without potential controversy. The decision to select him, a National Guard cavalryman who never attended college and whose first commission was as a Reserve Officer, was daring and somewhat unconventional. But, the "Mustang" general had arrived at the pinnacle of command, and no one ever had second thoughts. Under Rose, the 3rd Armored Division earned the reputation as the "Spearhead" of the VII Corps and the US First Army. Veterans of that outfit still feel that, while George Patton's Third Army got the headlines, they earned the victory. It was in command of the 3rd Armored that Maurice Rose's name became in Historian Martin Blumenson's words, "already wrapped in legend even in his own time." After the bitter hedgerow fighting in Normandy, and the breakout across France culminating in the spectacular closing of the Mons Pocket, Rose became a Major General and won the Distinguished Service Cross. His division - radio call sign "OMAHA" - then crossed Belgium, broke the Siegfried Line, and captured Roetgen, the first German town to fall since Napoleon crossed the German border. The men suffered through the static battles near the Roer River in the fall of 1944 and the terrible ordeal of the Bulge, and then captured Cologne in March 1945. Under Maurice Rose's command the division made the longest, enemy-opposed armored drive in history - more than 150 kilometers - on 29 March 1945 - a record that still stands. This movement resulted in the greatest encirclement battle in American history, the "Ruhr Pocket" - with over 350,000 enemy troops captured - renamed the "Rose Pocket", the only major battle in World War II to be named for an American General. Born in Middletown and raised in Denver on the threshold of a new century, the son of hard-working immigrants, and nurtured on romantic tales of valor in a time of unabashed patriotism, Maurice Rose was prepared and molded by war and by long years of lonely, hard, and unheralded service. Toiling in obscurity, like thousands of others who led us in World War II, and to whom we owe our lives and our freedom, he could not have known for what the preparation had been. Perhaps, he sensed at some point that a great test still lay ahead, but that would have been small consolation against the isolation and disappointments of twenty years of duty between the World Wars with low pay, slow promotion, and hard living conditions. But, when the ultimate test came, when the stakes were survival and our very way of life, he was ready, and the men he led were ready, and up to the terrible ordeal that no one would willingly choose. In the unforgiving and merciless crucible of war, the hero was found to be possessed of a fierce determination to succeed, and a drive for excellence, and victory, no matter what the odds, and regardless of the cost in men, machines, and most of all, to himself. He was a man who, in John Keegan's phrase, wore the "Mask of Command" tightly. On the battlefield, however, his was the face and form of the pure warrior. There, he appeared like some modern day Caesar - who wrapped himself in a red cloak so friend and enemy alike could see him - or an Alexander - always surrounded by faithful companions who fought at his side. In combat along with his men, Rose was a soldier who by his physical courage, personal appearance - and even his garb - matched the very image of the heroic leader risking death with his troops. At the very edge of the front lines, in the company of soldiers with whom he personally engaged the enemy hand-to-hand, he was cut down at the moment of his greatest triumph and at the pinnacle of his career. Like thousands of others, whom he led to glory, he sleeps under a marble cross on foreign soil drenched and liberated by the blood of Americans, some of whom are with us today and the rest, fewer every day, who still walk amongst us, unrecognized as giants. It is an honor to address you and to salute them. I want to close with the words my friends of the Third Armored Division Association use in their letters to me: Keep on Going. Omaha OUT. Thank You. |
Thank You for that
kind introduction. General & Mrs. Funk, Mayor Thornton, Honored
Veterans, Distinguished Guests, and fellow citizens; On behalf
of my co-author Don Marsh and myself, I want to first thank the
organizers of this event, especially Vic Damon and the other
veterans of the 3rd Armored Public Information Office [PIO].
Because of their efforts, there will be a permanent memorial
to one of the greatest fighting generals ever produced by our
country, here at his birthplace.
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