The first Red Ball convoys, however, quickly bogged down in the congestion of civilian and military traffic. In response, the Army established a priority route that consisted of two parallel highways between the beachhead and the city of Chartres, just outside Paris. The northern route was designated one-way for traffic outbound from the beaches. The southern route was for return traffic. As the war moved past the Seine and Paris, the two-way loop route was extended to Soissons, northeast of Paris, and to Sommesous and Arcis-sur-Aube, east of Paris toward Verdun.

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Staff Sergeant Chester Jones with the 3418th Trucking Company remembers the story of one soldier who was missing for several days with a jeep. His excuse for being AWOL was that he had gotten on the Red Ball priority route, had been sandwiched between two 6-by-6 trucks, and could not get off the highway for 100 miles.

The story is undoubtedly apocryphal, but it contains elements of reality. All civilian and unrelated military traffic was forbidden on the Red Ball route, and the military police (MPs) and the drivers rigidly enforced that rule. The Red Ball convoys often gunned down the middle of the highway to avoid mines on the shoulders, and would stop for nothing. One Red Ball veteran recalls a small French car sneaking onto the Red Ball highway and getting trapped between two barreling trucks. The lead truck suddenly braked for a rest area, and the car was smashed when the following truck failed to stop in time.

The Army went to great lengths to establish control over the newly formed Red Ball highway. The mimeographed sheets of rules of the road are some of the most enduring artifacts of the operation. David Cassels, a warrant officer junior grade with the 103rd Quartermaster Battalion, recalls, for example, that trucks were to travel in convoys; each truck was to carry a number to mark its position in the convoy; each convoy was to have a lead jeep carrying a blue flag; a “cleanup” jeep at the end bore a green one; the speed limit was 25 mph; and trucks were to maintain 60-yard intervals.

Nevertheless, the exigencies of a fast-moving war turned everything upside down. The real story of the Red Ball Express was often more like a free-for-all at a stock car race.

“Oh boy, do I remember that Red Ball gang!” laughs Fred Reese, a former mechanic in an ETO ambulance unit. “They were a helluva crew. They used to carry ammunition boxes twice as high as the top of the truck and when they went down the highway they swayed back and forth. They had no fear. Those guys were crazy, like they were getting paid for every run.”

Drivers quickly learned to strip the trucks of their governors, which sapped the overloaded vehicles of power on grades and prevented them from maintaining a steady and much higher speed. The governors were slapped back on for inspections.

The longest delays on the Red Ball usually occurred when trucks were loaded at the beachhead or at depots. If they waited for a convoy to assemble, they could be delayed for hours. Many trucks went out alone or in small groups without an attending officer to keep the vast supply line going. The men drove night and day, week after week. Exhaustion was a companion closer than the assistant driver, who most likely was asleep, awaiting his turn at the wheel. One Red Ball veteran recalls once being so exhausted he could not keep driving. But the convoy could not stop. He and his assistant driver switched seats as the truck rolled along.

Falling asleep was a major problem on the Red Ball. When trucks drifted out of the convoy, it usually meant a driver had fallen asleep at the wheel. Robert Emerick with the 3580th Quartermaster Truck Company was barreling along in a convoy when suddenly he felt a bump and heard blaring horns. He had nodded off and was careening off the roadway aimed right at a concrete electrical pole. He swerved back onto the road just in time.

At night, trucks drove with their cat eyes–white in front, red in back–to avoid detection. “You’d be watching those damned little blackout lights. It drove you blind. It was like hypnosis,” recalls Emerick.

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