The U.S. Ninth Army under General William H. Simpson crosses the Elbe River astride Magdeburg, and reached Tangermünde—only 50 miles from Berlin.
General William Hood Simpson (May 18, 1888 August 15, 1980) 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 April 1 the Ninth Army made contact with the First Army, making a complete encirclement of the Ruhr, and on April 11, 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 the member of the Board of Directors of the Chamber of Commerce of San Antonio. He died in the Brooke Army Medical Center on August 15, 1980, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
The Ninth Army is a field army of the United States Army, garrisoned at Caserma Ederle, Vicenza, Italy. It is the United States Army Service Component Command of United States Africa Command (USAFRICOM or AFRICOM).
Activated just eight weeks before the June 1944 Normandy landings, the Ninth Army was one of the main U.S. Army combat commands used during the campaign in Northwest Europe in 1944 and 1945. It was commanded at its inception by Lieutenant General William Simpson. It had been designated Eighth Army, but on arrival in the United Kingdom it was renamed to avoid confusion with the famous British formation of the same designation, taking the name of a unit of the fictitious First United States Army Group prepared for Operation Quicksilver. All American field armies in the European Theatre of Operation were designated with odd numbers, even numbered field armies served in the Pacific Theatre of Operations.