William Hood Simpson
William Hood Simpson was a senior United States Army officer who served with distinction in both World War I and World War II. He is best known for being the commanding general of the Ninth United States Army in northwest Europe during World War II.
A graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, where he was ranked 101st out of 103 in the class of 1909, Simpson served in the Philippines, where he participated in suppression of the Moro Rebellion, and in Mexico with the Pancho Villa Expedition in 1916. During World War I he saw active service in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive on the Western Front on the staff of the 33rd Division, for which he was awarded the Army Distinguished Service Medal and Silver Citation Star. Between the wars he served on staff postings, attended the Command and General Staff College and the Army War College, and commanded the 3rd Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment.
During World War II he commanded the 9th Infantry Regiment and was the assistant division commander of the 2nd Infantry Division. In succession he commanded the 35th and the 30th Infantry Divisions, the XII Corps, and the Fourth Army. In May 1944, with the three-star rank of lieutenant general, he assumed command of the Ninth Army. Simpson led the Ninth Army in the assault on Brest in September 1944, and the advance to the Roer River in November. During the Battle of the Bulge in December, Simpson's Ninth Army came under command of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery's Anglo-Canadian 21st Army Group. After the battle was over in early 1945, the Ninth Army remained with Montgomery's 21st Army Group for Operation Grenade, the advance to the Rhine, and Operation Plunder, its crossing. On 1 April the Ninth Army made contact with the First Army, making a complete encirclement of the Ruhr, and on 11 April, it reached the Elbe.
After the war ended, Simpson commanded the Second United States Army, and served in the Office of the Chief of Staff. He retired from the army in 1946. In retirement, he lived and worked in the San Antonio, Texas, area. He was a member of the board of directors of the Alamo National Bank, and succeeded General Walter Krueger as a member of the board of directors of the Chamber of Commerce of San Antonio. He died in the Brooke Army Medical Center on 15 August 1980, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Early life and military career
William Hood Simpson was born on 18 May 1888, at Weatherford, Texas, the son of Edward J. Simpson, a rancher, and his wife Elizabeth Hood, the daughter of Judge A. J. Hood, a prominent lawyer. His father and uncle had fought with the Confederate Army under Nathan Bedford Forrest in the American Civil War. He lived in Weatherford until he was five or six years old, when the family moved to Hood's ranch near Aledo, Texas. He did not start school until he was eight years old, when he started riding a horse several miles each day to the local school in Aledo. He attended Hughey Turner Training School, a college-preparatory school, where he played high school football, but did not graduate.Simpson decided to pursue a military career and attend the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. He was friends with Fritz G. Lanham, the son of Samuel Lanham, the Governor of Texas. Through Lanham he was able to secure an appointment from his local Congressman, Oscar W. Gillespie. Competition was not fierce; only one other boy applied. As Simpson's academic credits were insufficient to qualify for automatic admission, Simpson had to sit an entrance examination at Fort Sam Houston in May 1905. A physical examination was conducted while he was there. He passed both, and was accepted into the class of 1909.
On 14 June 1905, a month after he turned 17, Simpson entered West Point. Amongst his cadet friends, he was known as "Greaser" because he was from Texas. He found the curriculum difficult, and by the end of his first year, he stood 116th in a class that now numbered 120; 29 members of the class had dropped out. He was poor at mathematics, but excelled at equitation; by the end of his second year he was 107th out of 108, then 100th out of 107 by the end of his third. When eight cadets, two of whom were from the class of 1909, were found guilty of hazing and suspended, it fell to Simpson, as a cadet captain, to escort them from the academy grounds. Simpson graduated on 11 June 1909, ranked 101st out of 103 in his class, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant of Infantry. Fellow members of his class included Jacob L. Devers, George S. Patton, and Robert L. Eichelberger, all of whom eventually reached four-star rank, and John C. H. Lee, and Delos C. Emmons, who reached three-star rank.
Early military career and World War I
Simpson's first assignment was with the 2nd Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment, which was stationed at Fort Lincoln, North Dakota. He acquired the nickname "Big Simp" because there was another officer in the regiment with the same surname. Because Simpson was over tall, he became "Big Simp" and the other officer became "Little Simp". Soon after he joined in the regiment on 11 September 1909, it received orders to deploy to the Philippines. He embarked from San Francisco on 5 January 1910. He went to the island of Mindanao in the Philippines and participated in suppression of the Moro Rebellion. He returned to the United States with his regiment, arriving at the Presidio of San Francisco on 10 July 1912. The regiment moved to El Paso, Texas, between 24 April and 1 May 1914. Promoted to first lieutenant on 1 July 1916, he commanded Companies C and K in the Pancho Villa Expedition in 1916. On 24 February 1917, he became aide-de-camp to Brigadier General George Bell Jr., the commander of the El Paso Military District.Simpson was promoted to captain on 15 May 1917, a month after the American entry into World War I. He followed Bell on a tour of inspection of the British and French forces on the Western Front in September and October 1917. They then returned to Camp Logan, Texas, where the 33rd Division was activated, with Bell, now a major general, as its first commander. The 33rd Division arrived in France in May 1918 and Simpson became its Assistant Chief of Staff, the staff member responsible for operations. He was promoted to major on 7 June 1918, and attended the American Expeditionary Forces Army General Staff College from 15 June to 30 August. He returned to the 33rd Division as assistant to its G-2 on 1 September, then became assistant to its G-3 on 15 September. He became G-3 again on 4 October, and participated in the Meuse–Argonne offensive. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel on 5 November, and became the division's chief of staff on 17 November, soon after World War I ended on 11 November 1918. For his services during the war he was awarded the Army Distinguished Service Medal and Silver Citation Star, and the French Croix de guerre and Legion of Honour in the grade of Chevalier. The citation for his Army DSM read:
Between the wars
Upon returning to the United States in May 1919, Simpson was posted to the 6th Division at Camp Grant, Illinois, as its chief of staff from 15 June 1919, to 25 August 1920. He reverted to his substantive rank of captain on 30 June 1920, but was promoted to major again the following day. From 26 August to 30 December, he served as its assistant chief of staff. He served in Washington, D.C., in the Office of the Chief of Infantry from 1 January 1921, to 1 August 1923. In El Paso, Texas, on Christmas Eve, 1921, he married Ruth Krakauer, an English-born widow whom he had first met while at West Point. From 1 September 1923, to 28 May 1924, he was a student officer in the Advanced Course at the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia. He then attended the United States Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, from 15 August 1924, to 19 June 1925, when completed the program of instruction as a distinguished graduate.On 1 July 1925, Simpson assumed command of the 3rd Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment, at Camp Meade, Maryland, and later Fort Washington, Maryland; his tour in command also included duty at the Sesquicentennial Exposition in Philadelphia from May to November 1926. He then attended the United States Army War College from 15 August 1927, to 30 June 1928. Upon graduation, he was assigned to the War Department General Staff in Washington, D.C., where he worked in the Latin American section of the G-2 branch. On 20 June 1932, he became Professor of Military Science and Tactics at Pomona College in Claremont, California, and was promoted to lieutenant colonel again from 1 October 1934. This posting also included duty as the Army representative at the California Pacific International Exposition in 1935. He then became an instructor at the Army War College in the G-4 Division from 12 August 1936, to 24 June 1937, and was director of its G-2 Division until 25 August 1940, with the rank of colonel from 1 September 1938.
World War II
Early war
On 30 August 1940, Simpson was appointed to command the 9th Infantry Regiment at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. He was promoted to brigadier general on 1 October 1940, and served as the Assistant Division Commander of the 2nd Infantry Division from 5 October 1940 to 4 April 1941, when Fred L. Walker succeeded him. From April to September 1941 he was the first commander of the country's largest Infantry Replacement Training Center, Camp Wolters, located in Mineral Wells, Texas. He received a promotion to temporary major general on 29 September 1941, and commanded the 35th Infantry Division, a National Guard formation, at Camp Robinson, Arkansas, from 15 October 1941 to 5 April 1942, for which he was awarded the Legion of Merit. He then commanded the 30th Infantry Division, another National Guard formation, at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, until Leland Hobbs took command. On 31 August 1942, he took command of the newly created XII Corps.Simpson then commanded the Fourth United States Army from 29 September 1943 to 8 May 1944, with the three-star rank of lieutenant general as of 13 October 1943. In September 1943, the Fourth Army was reformed as an independent organization when its combined headquarters with the Western Defense Command was separated. A cadre for the Army headquarters was provided by the Western Defense Command, but all senior officers were approved or selected by Simpson. He brought his chief of staff, Colonel James E. Moore, with him from XII Corps. Moore had previously served with him as chief of staff of the 35th and 30th Infantry Divisions. The Fourth Army headquarters was initially in San Jose, California, and it functioned as a training army. In search of more office space, the headquarters was moved to the Presidio of Monterey, California, on 1 November, and then to Fort Sam Houston in January 1944, when it took over the training mission of the Third United States Army, which had moved overseas.
File:American World War II senior military officials, 1945.JPEG|thumb|right|Senior American commanders of the European theater of World War II. Seated, from left to right, are William H. Simpson, George S. Patton, Carl A. Spaatz, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, Courtney Hodges, and Leonard T. Gerow;
standing are Ralph F. Stearley, Hoyt Vandenberg, Walter Bedell Smith, Otto P. Weyland, and Richard E. Nugent