March 2nd, 1945. At the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Paris, far removed from the mud, smoke, and blood of the front lines, a message arrived that immediately disrupted the rhythm of an otherwise routine morning. The headquarters, housed in elegant buildings untouched by artillery fire, was a place of maps, polished boots, and quiet tension. Orders flowed in and out here, carried by clerks, radio operators, and couriers who understood that each line of text might decide the fate of thousands of men.

The message was addressed to the Supreme Commander himself, General Dwight D. Eisenhower. It came from the commander of the U.S. Third Army, General George S. Patton.

Ordinarily, messages between generals followed a predictable pattern. They were precise, restrained, and stripped of personality. They spoke of fuel shortages, unit positions, casualty figures, and timetables. There was no room for humor, sarcasm, or emotion. War, at this level, was supposed to be managed like an equation.

This message was different.

It was brief. It was sharp. And it carried a tone so unmistakable that it made several staff officers pause as they read it. The words seemed to crackle with defiance as they were spoken aloud in the operations room.

“Have taken Trier with two divisions. Do you want me to give it back?”

For a moment, the room fell silent. Some officers stared at the paper as if unsure they had read it correctly. Others exchanged uneasy glances. A few laughed, not because it was funny, but because they understood exactly what had happened. They knew the backstory. Just hours earlier, Supreme Headquarters had issued an urgent order to Patton.

The order had been explicit. Do not attack Trier. Bypass the city. It is too strong. Military estimates indicated that it would require at least four divisions to capture it. Eisenhower was telling Patton to stop, to wait, to move around the objective rather than through it.

But by the time the order reached the front, it was already obsolete.

Patton had done what he so often did. He had acted first. He had ignored conventional wisdom. He had taken Germany’s oldest city with half the forces deemed necessary. And now, with that short, razor-edged message, he was daring his commander to object.

To understand why that telegram carried such weight, one has to understand the battle that preceded it, and why capturing Trier was considered nearly impossible.

In February 1945, the U.S. Third Army stood before one of the most formidable defensive systems ever constructed: the West Wall, known to the Allies as the Siegfried Line. Built at Hitler’s command, it stretched for miles along Germany’s western frontier. It was not a single line, but a vast zone of death. Concrete bunkers crouched low in the earth. Artillery was hidden in forests and hills. Minefields waited beneath frozen mud. Rows of dragon’s teeth—jagged concrete pyramids—were designed to halt tanks and channel them into kill zones.

The weather only made matters worse. Winter clung stubbornly to the land. The ground was a thick, freezing sludge that swallowed vehicles to their axles. Trucks stalled. Tanks slid sideways on narrow roads. Soldiers endured trench foot and exhaustion. Visibility was poor, and movement was painfully slow.

Most generals looked at the Siegfried Line and hesitated. They wanted overwhelming artillery preparation. They wanted clear weather for air support. They wanted time to amass ammunition and supplies. Safety, at least by the standards of war, was the priority.

Patton did not believe in waiting.

He understood something about the German army that many others failed to grasp. Defensive works were only as strong as the men who held them, and by early 1945, those men were exhausted. They were short of fuel, short of ammunition, and short of hope. Patton believed that speed could shatter defenses that brute force could not.

He summoned one of his most trusted commanders, General Walton Walker. Walker was short, aggressive, and relentless, a man Patton admired deeply. He referred to him affectionately as his bulldog.

Patton spread a map across the table and pointed to a triangular area formed by the Saar River and the Moselle River. At the tip of that triangle lay Trier.

Trier was not just another city. Founded by the Romans over two thousand years earlier, it was the oldest city in Germany. Its ancient gates and bridges stood as symbols of history and endurance. But beyond its symbolic value, Trier was a crucial road junction. Whoever controlled it controlled the supply routes leading east toward the Rhine.

“I want you to punch a hole in that line,” Patton told Walker, his finger tapping the map. “Then I want you to go for Trier.”

Walker studied the terrain. Steep hills. Dense forests. Concrete pillboxes guarding every approach. It was a nightmare for attackers. But Walker did not argue. He did not ask if it could be done. He asked when.

To break the Siegfried Line, Patton committed one of his finest formations: the 10th Armored Division, known as the Tiger Division. On February 19th, the attack began.

There was no subtlety to it. It was a frontal blow, delivered with speed and violence. American tanks surged forward, engines roaring, smashing into the dragon’s teeth. Combat engineers ran alongside them under intense machine-gun fire, planting explosives to blast paths through the concrete obstacles. German artillery answered from the hills, shells tearing into the mud and steel alike.

The 94th Infantry Division advanced with the tanks, clearing bunkers one by one. It was brutal work. Grenades were shoved through firing slits. Flamethrowers were used to force defenders out of reinforced concrete. Each position had to be taken at close range, often at terrible cost.

For three days, progress was painfully slow. The mud seemed as deadly an enemy as the Germans. Tanks slid off roads and became easy targets. At Supreme Headquarters in Paris, Eisenhower’s staff watched the situation unfold on their maps. The Third Army appeared to be inching forward. Casualty reports mounted. Anxiety grew.

They began discussing contingency plans. If Patton bogged down, his fuel and supplies could be diverted north to Field Marshal Montgomery, who was preparing his own massive operation to cross the Rhine. Montgomery demanded resources relentlessly, and Eisenhower often obliged.

Patton understood this dynamic well. He knew that hesitation could cost him not just momentum, but support. He went forward to the front lines himself, standing ankle-deep in mud, shouting at tank commanders and infantry officers alike.

“Keep moving,” he barked. “If you stop, you die. Keep moving.”

On February 24th, the breakthrough came. The 10th Armored Division smashed through the main belt of the Siegfried Line. Suddenly, the terrain opened up. The German rear guard began to crumble. American tanks surged eastward toward the Saar River, momentum building with every mile.

By late February, Patton’s forces were closing in on Trier.

The Germans, however, were not prepared to surrender the city easily. Trier sat in a natural defensive bowl, surrounded by hills and protected by the Moselle River. The German high command ordered it held at all costs. Approaches were flooded. Bridges were rigged with explosives. Anti-tank guns were concealed among ancient ruins.

At Allied headquarters, intelligence reports painted a grim picture. Estimates suggested thousands of German troops remained in and around the city. Doctrine was clear: to capture a fortified urban center, an attacker needed at least a three-to-one advantage, preferably four-to-one.

Patton had only two divisions available: the 10th Armored and the 94th Infantry.

Eisenhower’s operations staff urged caution. They warned that Patton risked becoming trapped in costly street fighting. The recommendation was clear. Bypass Trier. Encircle it if necessary. Let follow-on forces deal with it later.

Eisenhower agreed. The order was drafted and sent down the chain of command.

But in 1945, orders did not travel at the speed of thought. Messages had to be encoded, transmitted, decoded, typed, and physically delivered. While the paper moved slowly from Paris toward the front, Patton was already acting.

He sensed the hesitation from above. He knew an order to halt was coming. And so he decided to make the decision irreversible.

He called Walker and issued a simple command.

“Take Trier,” Patton said. “Do it tonight.”

The night of March 1st, the 10th Armored Division stood on the hills overlooking the city. Below them, Trier lay dark and silent. The Moselle River cut through it like a barrier of black water.

There were only two viable crossings: the Kaiser Bridge and the ancient Roman Bridge. Both were prepared for demolition. If the Germans destroyed them, American tanks would be trapped on the wrong side of the river, and infantry assaults would become a slaughter.

The plan was audacious and dangerous. There would be no artillery preparation to soften defenses. Speed would be the weapon. Shock would be the strategy. The tanks would rush into the city under cover of darkness and seize a bridge before the Germans could react.

Lieutenant Colonel Jack Richardson led the attack.

At 0200 hours, engines roared to life. The column surged forward, smashing through roadblocks and plunging into the valley. German flares shot into the sky, bathing the streets in harsh white light. Machine guns opened fire from windows and rooftops. Panzerfaust rockets streaked through the night.

A lead tank was hit and burst into flames, but the column did not stop. It shoved the burning wreck aside and kept moving.

They reached the Kaiser Bridge just as a massive explosion tore through the darkness. The bridge collapsed into the river.

There was no time to mourn. Only one chance remained.

Richardson ordered his men to race for the Roman Bridge.

They navigated narrow medieval streets where maps were useless, following the river by instinct. When they turned the final corner, the bridge stood before them, intact but deadly. Machine-gun nests covered the approach. The demolition charges were ready.

Infantry leapt from the tanks and sprinted forward under fire. Bullets sparked against ancient stone. Men fell, but others pushed on. Step by step, they crossed the bridge, expecting at any moment to be blown apart.

The explosion never came.

The Americans reached the far side. They found the wires and cut them. They cleared the bridgehouse with bayonets and gunfire. A green flare rose into the night.

Moments later, Sherman tanks thundered across a bridge built by the Romans nearly two millennia earlier.

By dawn, resistance inside Trier collapsed. German troops surrendered in large numbers. The American flag was raised over the ancient gate. Trier was secure.

Later that morning, Patton received Eisenhower’s order to bypass the city.

He laughed, picked up a pencil, and wrote the message that would echo through military history.

“Have taken Trier with two divisions. Do you want me to give it back?”

When the telegram arrived at Supreme Headquarters in Versailles, it rippled through the staff like an electric current. Officers who had spent the night poring over maps and casualty estimates stopped what they were doing. The words were read once, then read again, as if repetition might somehow soften their edge. They did not. The message was unmistakably Patton—bold, insolent, and backed by undeniable results.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower was not a man easily surprised. As Supreme Commander, he had balanced egos, nations, and competing strategies for years. He had dealt with Montgomery’s relentless demands, de Gaulle’s political sensitivities, and Patton’s explosive temperament. Yet even Eisenhower could not help but feel a flicker of admiration when he read the telegram. It was not simply that Trier had fallen. It was how it had fallen—fast, unexpected, and ahead of schedule.

Eisenhower folded the paper carefully. He did not issue a rebuke. He did not summon Patton to explain himself. There would be no court-martial, no formal reprimand. You did not punish a general for delivering a decisive victory, especially one that cracked open the western gateway into Germany itself. Instead, Eisenhower issued a brief response: congratulations, and an instruction to continue the advance.

But behind that calm exterior, the implications of Patton’s success were already being weighed.

The capture of Trier was more than a tactical victory. It altered the operational picture across the entire front. With the Moselle River crossed and secured, the Third Army now had a firm foothold for further operations toward the Rhine. Supply routes that had been choked by German resistance were suddenly open. What had been projected as a slow, grinding campaign now had the potential to accelerate dramatically.

For Patton, this was precisely the point.

He believed, with near-religious conviction, that speed saved lives. Every day the war dragged on meant more dead soldiers, more destroyed cities, more suffering. Waiting for perfect conditions, in his mind, only gave the enemy time to recover. Trier was proof that audacity could shatter assumptions, that the enemy’s will mattered more than concrete and steel.

Within the Third Army, the news spread rapidly. Soldiers heard it first through rumors, then through official briefings, and finally through the stories passed from unit to unit. “Did you hear what the old man sent to Ike?” they whispered in mess halls and foxholes. The story grew with each retelling, but the core remained the same. Their commander had done the impossible and had the nerve to joke about it.

It gave the men a sense of identity. They were not just another army. They were Patton’s army—fast, aggressive, and unpredictable. The telegram became a symbol, a kind of quiet badge of honor. They believed they were part of something different, an outfit that broke rules because it could.

Meanwhile, the German command reeled from the loss.

Trier had been expected to hold. Orders had been explicit: defend the city to the last man. Yet the defense had collapsed in a matter of hours. Reports filtering back to higher headquarters painted a grim picture. Units were surrendering en masse. Bridges thought secure had fallen intact. American tanks were advancing through areas previously considered defensible.

For the already strained German war effort, this was another devastating blow. The West Wall had been breached. The Moselle crossed. The illusion of an organized, coherent defense in the west was dissolving.

Patton wasted no time exploiting the success. Orders were issued almost immediately to press forward. Reconnaissance units fanned out, probing for weak points. Engineers worked to reinforce crossings and repair roads. Supply columns surged ahead, keeping pace with the advancing combat units.

This relentless tempo was not accidental. Patton understood that the enemy was reeling. German commanders were being forced to make decisions with incomplete information, units were retreating without clear orders, and reserves were either nonexistent or poorly positioned. Every hour mattered.

At Supreme Headquarters, discussions turned to the broader consequences. Montgomery’s plans in the north were still proceeding, but Patton’s advance was now threatening to outpace them. The long-standing tension between cautious, methodical planning and aggressive maneuver was once again on full display.

Eisenhower, ever the diplomat and coordinator, sought balance. He recognized the value of Patton’s success but also understood the political and logistical realities of coalition warfare. Supplies were finite. Fuel was precious. Every decision to prioritize one army meant another would have to wait.

Yet Trier had changed the calculus. The Third Army was no longer asking for resources based on promises. It was delivering results.

For Patton personally, the moment carried a deep sense of vindication. He had long felt constrained by what he saw as excessive caution from above, particularly the favoritism he believed Eisenhower showed Montgomery. Trier was proof, in his mind, that his instincts were right.

Still, Patton was not naïve. He knew his reputation was precarious. His past controversies—the slapping incidents in Sicily, his blunt language, his open disdain for caution—had nearly ended his career more than once. He also knew that success was the only shield he had. As long as he kept winning, his superiors would tolerate his behavior.

And so he pressed on.

The days following the capture of Trier blurred into a continuous surge eastward. German resistance became increasingly fragmented. Roadblocks appeared and disappeared. Isolated pockets of defenders fought briefly and then surrendered. The Third Army’s advance took on a rhythm that felt unstoppable.

Behind the front lines, the story of the Roman Bridge took on an almost mythic quality. Soldiers spoke of infantry charging across ancient stones under fire, of tanks rumbling where Roman legions once marched. It felt symbolic, as if history itself had bent to the momentum of the advance.

For Eisenhower, the telegram was quietly filed away. He did not forget it, but neither did he dwell on it. There were still immense challenges ahead. The Rhine loomed. German forces, though battered, were not yet defeated. The war was entering its final, most desperate phase.

Yet the lesson of Trier lingered.

It demonstrated, with stark clarity, that doctrine was not destiny. That intelligence estimates could be wrong. That initiative at the operational level could transform the strategic picture. Patton had not simply taken a city; he had seized time, and in war, time was everything.

Years later, historians would debate the capture of Trier. Some would argue that Patton took an unnecessary risk, that luck played a role, that the Germans were weaker than intelligence suggested. Others would point out that luck favored the bold, and that waiting would have allowed the enemy to regroup.

What was undeniable was the outcome.

A city thought to require four divisions had fallen to two. A fortified river line had been crossed intact. And a single, sarcastic sentence had become immortal.

“Do you want me to give it back?”

It was more than a joke. It was a challenge to convention, a declaration of confidence, and a reminder that war is ultimately fought by human beings, not spreadsheets. While planners debated possibilities, Patton had acted.

And in doing so, he had pushed the war one step closer to its end.

The shockwaves from Trier continued to ripple outward long after the gunfire faded. Within the corridors of Allied command, the victory forced a quiet reassessment of assumptions that had guided months of planning. Maps were redrawn. Timelines were adjusted. What had been labeled “high risk” was now an accomplished fact, and facts, once established on the battlefield, had a way of silencing debate.

Eisenhower did not publicly praise Patton beyond the brief congratulations, but privately he understood the value of what had been achieved. The crossing at Trier was not merely symbolic; it was operationally decisive. It allowed the Third Army to pivot, to fan out, and to threaten German positions that had been considered secure only days earlier. German commanders now had to respond to Patton’s movements, rather than shape the battle on their own terms.

In the German rear, confusion reigned. Communications were fragmented. Units retreating from the West Wall encountered clogged roads, destroyed bridges, and streams of refugees fleeing eastward. Orders from higher headquarters often arrived too late or contradicted one another. The psychological effect of Patton’s speed was as damaging as the physical losses. German officers reported that American units seemed to appear where they were least expected, striking before defenses could be organized.

This was exactly the effect Patton sought.

He believed that warfare was as much about breaking the enemy’s will as destroying his forces. Trier had sent a message not only to Eisenhower, but to the Germans as well. It told them that their ancient walls, their carefully prepared demolitions, and their doctrinal calculations could be rendered irrelevant by audacity.

Within the Third Army, Patton’s presence loomed large. He visited units frequently, his polished helmet and ivory-handled pistols instantly recognizable. He spoke in blunt, profane language that left no doubt about his expectations. Move fast. Hit hard. Do not give the enemy time to think. To many of his soldiers, he seemed larger than life, a commander who shared their risks and understood the brutal simplicity of combat.

Yet Patton was also acutely aware that success bred scrutiny. Every bold move invited criticism, every deviation from orders risked backlash. The telegram to Eisenhower, for all its bravado, walked a fine line. Had Trier failed, it would have been remembered not as wit, but as insubordination. Patton knew this. He accepted it.

The war, in his view, was not won by those who avoided mistakes, but by those willing to risk them.

As March wore on, the Third Army continued its relentless push. Rivers that planners had expected to slow the advance were crossed with speed. German defenses, hastily assembled and poorly coordinated, crumbled under pressure. The sense of inevitability grew stronger with each passing day.

Stories from Trier became part of the army’s oral history. Veterans would later recall the surreal sight of tanks crossing the Roman Bridge, the ancient stones trembling under modern steel. They remembered the silence just before dawn, the uncertainty of whether the bridge would explode beneath their feet, and the sudden realization that it would not. These memories fused into a shared narrative of daring and fortune.

At the highest levels, Eisenhower faced a familiar challenge: how to harness Patton’s aggression without letting it fracture the coalition. Montgomery remained methodical, insisting on deliberate preparation. Political leaders watched closely, sensitive to any sign of favoritism or recklessness. Eisenhower’s role was to balance these competing forces, to allow initiative without losing control.

Trier made that balance more difficult, but also clearer. Results mattered. Momentum mattered. And Patton, for all his flaws, delivered both.

In later years, Eisenhower would reflect on his commanders with measured judgment. He recognized Patton’s brilliance and his volatility, his capacity to inspire and to offend. The telegram about Trier captured that duality perfectly. It was insubordinate in tone, yet impossible to refute in substance. It challenged authority, yet served the larger mission.

The war would soon move toward its climax. The Rhine would be crossed. Germany would collapse under the combined weight of Allied advances. In that vast tapestry of events, Trier might appear as a single thread, easily overlooked amid grander battles and larger forces.

But for those who understood the dynamics of command and combat, Trier stood as a defining moment.

It showed how hesitation could be defeated by speed. How doctrine could be overturned by instinct. How a commander, trusting his judgment and his men, could reshape the battlefield in a single night.

And it left behind a sentence that endured long after the maps were folded and the armies disbanded.

“Have taken Trier with two divisions. Do you want me to give it back?”

It was said half in jest, half in challenge, and entirely in confidence. A reminder that victory often belongs not to those who calculate the safest path, but to those who seize the moment when it appears—unannounced, fleeting, and unforgiving.

Patton seized it at Trier. And history remembered him for it.

The meaning of Trier continued to deepen as time passed, not because of its size or even its strategic value alone, but because it crystallized a truth about how the war in Europe was now being fought. By early March 1945, Germany was no longer a coherent defensive machine. It was a collapsing structure held together by orders, ideology, and fear. What Patton had sensed—what he had acted on—was that the enemy’s center of gravity was no longer steel or concrete, but morale and time.

Every mile gained without pause magnified German disarray. Every river crossed intact saved weeks of fighting. Trier was proof that hesitation would only harden resistance, while speed dissolved it.

In the days after the city fell, Third Army columns flowed through the Moselle crossings almost without interruption. Engineers worked around the clock, reinforcing bridges, clearing debris, widening roads that had once served Roman carts and medieval wagons. Fuel trucks followed tanks in long, snaking convoys. The sound of engines became constant, echoing through valleys and over ridgelines.

German prisoners, exhausted and bewildered, were marched westward. Many were young boys or older men, pulled into service during the final desperate months. They spoke of confusion, of orders that changed by the hour, of officers who had vanished or surrendered. Trier, which had been meant to inspire resistance as a symbol of German history, had instead become a symbol of inevitability.

Within Patton’s headquarters, the victory was already being treated not as an endpoint, but as a stepping stone. Maps were updated, objectives reassigned. There was no pause for celebration. Patton did not believe in resting on success. He believed in exploiting it until the enemy could no longer respond.

He moved among his staff with visible energy, barking orders, questioning assumptions, pushing everyone to think faster. To those around him, it was clear that Trier had only reinforced his worldview. The cautious voices from Paris, the warnings about doctrine and ratios, all seemed distant and abstract compared to the tangible reality of captured bridges and surrendered divisions.

Yet even as Patton drove forward, the political undercurrents remained. Eisenhower continued to manage the delicate equilibrium of Allied command. He understood that Patton’s methods could not be universally applied, nor could they be universally endorsed. But he also understood that suppressing such initiative would be a mistake.

The telegram, preserved and quietly circulated among senior officers, became an unspoken reference point. It was never officially discussed, never formally reprimanded. It simply existed, a reminder that command authority ultimately rested on results.

Among the soldiers, the legend grew. The story was told and retold, sometimes exaggerated, sometimes stripped to its essentials. Patton took Trier. Ike told him not to. Patton asked if he should give it back. That was enough. The details mattered less than the message. Their commander trusted them to do what others said could not be done.

As the Third Army pushed deeper into Germany, resistance continued to weaken. The psychological shock of rapid advances compounded German losses. Units surrendered rather than be encircled. Bridges were abandoned rather than defended to the last. Trier had taught the enemy a lesson they could not unlearn.

When the Rhine was finally crossed and the end of the war drew near, Trier receded into the background of history, overshadowed by larger operations and the final collapse of the Third Reich. Yet among those who studied the campaign closely, it retained a special significance.

It was a moment where initiative overcame instruction, where speed defeated preparation, where one commander’s refusal to wait altered the tempo of an entire front. It illustrated the tension at the heart of coalition warfare: the need for coordination versus the necessity of decisiveness.

Patton would not live long after the war to reflect on it. His death, sudden and ironic, froze his legacy in time. Trier remained one of the episodes that defined him—brilliant, reckless, insubordinate, effective.

And Eisenhower, who would go on to lead a nation, understood perhaps better than anyone the value and the danger of men like Patton. The telegram did not offend him because it was sarcastic. It amused him because it was true.

Trier had been taken. The bridge had held. The war had moved on.

And no one, not even the Supreme Commander, wanted it given back.

In the final accounting of the war, moments like Trier often risk being reduced to footnotes—compressed into dates, arrows on maps, and brief mentions in official histories. Yet for those who were there, and for those who later sought to understand how victory was actually achieved, Trier remained vivid because it revealed something fundamental about leadership under pressure.

What made the episode endure was not just the city itself, but the decision that preceded its capture. Patton did not act out of ignorance. He knew the estimates. He knew the doctrine. He knew the order was coming. He chose to move anyway because his reading of the battlefield told him that delay was the greater risk. In that choice lay the essence of his command philosophy.

War, as Patton saw it, was not a sequence of perfectly planned moves executed according to theory. It was a contest of wills conducted in chaos, where hesitation could be fatal and opportunity fleeting. Trier was an opportunity that existed for only a narrow window of time. German forces were off balance, their defenses incomplete, their morale brittle. Waiting for four divisions would have allowed that window to close.

By acting when he did, Patton transformed a theoretical impossibility into a practical reality.

The Roman Bridge, standing intact after two thousand years, became a symbol of that transformation. It represented continuity amid destruction, but also the idea that the past did not dictate the present. Ancient stone had outlasted empires, and now it carried modern armor into the heart of a collapsing Reich. The image resonated deeply with soldiers who sensed, even if they could not articulate it, that history was turning beneath their feet.

As the war ended and veterans returned home, the story of Trier followed them. It surfaced in memoirs, interviews, and quiet conversations decades later. The details varied, but the core truth remained unchanged. A city was taken against expectations. An order arrived too late. A general answered with a line that captured both triumph and defiance.

For Eisenhower, the episode reinforced lessons he would carry into peacetime leadership. Effective command required judgment, restraint, and the ability to tolerate difficult personalities when they produced results. Patton was not easy to manage, but he was indispensable at moments when boldness mattered more than consensus.

For historians, Trier became a case study. It illustrated how intelligence estimates could misjudge enemy strength, how rigid adherence to doctrine could obscure opportunity, and how individual commanders could shape outcomes beyond what planning alone could achieve. It also underscored the fragile balance between initiative and insubordination—a balance that could only be justified by success.

And for Patton himself, Trier was vindication. It affirmed his belief that instinct, speed, and relentless pressure could crack even the strongest defenses. It justified his impatience with caution and his contempt for delay. It gave him, in a single sentence, a way to remind his superiors that war did not wait for permission.

“Do you want me to give it back?”

The question lingered not because it demanded an answer, but because it did not need one. The city was taken. The bridge was secure. The advance continued. The war moved closer to its end.

In the end, that was all that mattered.