Crossing the Rhine

The Rhine was the last great barrier into Germany, and every army on the Western Front expected to cross it with a full-scale set-piece assault. Third Army did not wait. On the night of March 22, 1945, infantry of the 5th Division paddled across at Oppenheim in assault boats without a preliminary bombardment and were on the far bank before the Germans knew it.

The boats in the follow-up waves were U.S. Navy landing craft, trucked overland across France for exactly this job and crewed by sailors who had never expected to see a river. Smoke screens hung on the water. Behind them the far-bank towns were already burning.

Patton telephoned Bradley the next morning: don't tell anyone, but I'm across. Montgomery's crossing to the north began the following night.

The coxswain stands at the stern, the only upright figure, both hands on the wheel. In front of him the infantry sit packed and hunched, helmets and rifle barrels in a single dark cluster, nobody's face visible. The far bank is spires and smoke, and the sun comes through it low and pale, laying a path across the water that the next boats follow in. Ripples take up half the picture. The painting is about the width of the river and how long it takes to cross.