Soon, Patton’s tanks were grinding to a halt, not from enemy action, but because there was no gasoline. On an average day, Patton’s Third Army and Lt. Gen. Courtney Hodges’ First Army consumed a total of 800,000 gallons of gas. But there was no logistical system in place to deliver sufficient quantities.

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It was in these desperate days of late August 1944 that the Red Ball Express was conceived during a 36-hour brainstorming session among American commanders. Its name came from a railroad phrase–to “red ball” something was to ship it express–and from an earlier Red Ball Express in Britain that rushed supplies to the English ports during the early days of the invasion. The second Red Ball operation lasted barely three months, from August 25 through November 16, 1944, but by the end of those critical months the express line had established itself firmly in the mythology of World War II. More than 6,000 trucks and their trailers transported 412,193 tons of supplies to the advancing American armies from Normandy to the German border.

What is most often overlooked about the Red Ball Express is that three-quarters of all Red Ball soldiers were African American. The U.S. Army was segregated during World War II, and black troops were most often relegated to service units–many served in the Quartermaster Corps. They served in port battalions, drove trucks, worked as mechanics, and served as “humpers” who loaded and unloaded ammunition and supplies. When the Red Ball was formed, it was the African-American troops in large measure who performed admirably and kept the express line rolling.

The need for supplies was so great that the Red Ball reached its peak performance within the first five days of operation. On August 29, some 132 truck companies, operating 5,958 vehicles, carried 12,342 tons of supplies to forward depots–a record that went unmatched during the next 14 weeks of the operation’s existence. The Red Ball Express was a classic American “can-do” response to a problem that might have proved insurmountable in another army.

There were not enough trucks or drivers in the established Quartermaster truck companies to supply the advancing armies. Before the invasion, the Army’s Transportation Corps estimated a need for 240 truck companies to sustain an advance across France. It also requested that the bulk of these units be equipped with
10-ton flatbed semitrailers. But there weren’t enough of the flatbeds. When the Normandy assault was made, the Army had authorized only 160 truck companies for the operation, and most of those would be supplied with trusty 6-by-6s, GMC 21/2-ton trucks.

The Army had to find more trucks and drivers. Infantry units, artillery units, anti-aircraft units–any units that had trucks–were raided, and many of their vehicles were formed into provisional truck units for the Red Ball.

Any soldier whose duties were not critical to the immediate war effort was asked to become a driver. Normandy was a staging area where arriving infantry divisions bivouacked for several weeks before being sent to the front. Their ranks were combed for drivers, and many infantrymen signed up for temporary duty (normally about two weeks) on the Red Ball, rather than endure the mud and boredom of their encampments. Most of those temporary troops were white.

One of the volunteers, Phillip A. Dick, a scout corporal with Battery A, 380th Field Artillery, 102nd Division, had never driven a truck before. But that did not present a problem for the Army. Dick, like so many others, was given a few hours of instruction and told he had qualified.

“Everybody was stripping gears, but by the time we got back to the company area we could make the trucks go,” Dick recalls. The motto of the Red Ball, “tout de suite” (immediately), could have come from a French phrase adopted by the Americans as they rushed to defeat the Germans. “Patton wanted us to eat, sleep and drive, but mostly drive,” remembers John O’Leary of the 3628th Truck Company.

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