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They appear principally when they often could not resist including some matter of peculiar but limited
interest.
It was decided that, since the book is scarcely intended for readers with no military associations,
a very appreciable saving in space could be accomplished by using throughout abbreviations well-
known to persons in the Army. If the style called for spelling out Lieutenant General Doe's title, then
certainly the same treatment should be accorded Technician Fifth Class Roe. Equally, the Umpteenth
Fumigation and Bath Company would take up more room in a line than the 5th Infantry Division, and to
what purpose? The more informal usage has been employed, therefore, (save in rare cases where a
distinguished personage is being brought into the narrative for the first time); a list of common military
abbreviations as applied in Appendix "D" to assist memories grown a little rusty with the passing years.
All photographs, except where otherwise noted on the same page, were taken by US Army
Signal Corps photographers, most of them by personnel of that fine company of combat photographers
which accompanied Third Army and the XII Corps all the way through the fighting, "from the Beach to
Bavaria." In almost all cases the captions have been taken directly from the back of the prints used. It
proved only rarely possible to cross-check these captions -- on the spelling of names, for example.
Therefore, if a reader objects to being "slugged" as T/5 Isam Etheridge of Centralia, Washington, or as
Jaypnaip Thackart of Fishtrap, Kentucky there is not much use blaming the XII Corps History
Association. That's the way the name is spelled on the back of the appropriate Signal Corps
photographs; and the Signal Corps photographs, as is well known, were often taken under fire under
other circumstances which made the securing of full accurate captions extremely difficult. With almost
as many pages of photographs as of text, and with these photographs and captions designed to tell XII
Corps' story almost as fully as the text, it was considered desirable to place them in order and in such
arrangement that the reader not interested in details could go smoothly through them and get the general
outlines of the whole story without reference to the text. Accordingly, with few exceptions they appear
on right hand pages in logical sequence. This makes the relationship of any given picture page with any
given facing page of text likely to be disappointing. An attempt to overcome this deficiency has been
made by liberally citing photographs at appropriate points in the narrative.
Maps used in this history came from a variety of sources, and were probably the most vexing
single element to find, prepare, check, and reproduce by the numerous technical processes available.
Although the map produced in Germany by XII Corps' "own" company of topographic engineers, as
credited to them in detail elsewhere, has been supplemented by some fifty others in color or black-and-
white, it is believed that the majority of readers for the majority of purposes will find the "topo"
company's Battle Route map, in the end papers of this volume, most satisfying. This is not to discount
the hours of patient and painstaking work which many men, as indicated below, put into the other maps.
For special and more detailed reference purposes these "close-ups" will be found indispensable.
3. Credits
No such labor as this history could possibly have been done by one person alone. It was bound
to be, and is, the end product of the work of many hands. Too many of these invaluable helpers could
not be identified; wherever practicable they are fully credited at appropriate points in the course of the
narrative. It would be an unforgivable omission, however, to fail to accord here additional recognition
to the certain persons whose contributions were outstanding.
Members of the Executive Committee listed above were active and unfailing in their support of
the venture. The Chairman, Brigadier General Ralph J Canine, true to his character all through combat,
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