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| BRADLEY SITS UNDER HIS PERSONAL FLAG AS CHAIRMAN OF THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF more photo's on page 87 |
THE PERSONAL STORY OF GENERAL OF THE ARMY
OMAR N. BRADLEY
"The War America Fought"
In Africa, Bradley carries out a mission for "Ike," meets Patton, licks the Germans and earns an army
ILLUSTRATED BY BILL MAULDIN
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| SENT BY EISENHOWER TO FIND REASONS FOR U.S. DEFEAT AT KASSERINE, BRADLEY SURPRISED OFFICERS BY SEEKING OPINION OF GIs continued on page 84 |
AS the plane buzzed over our jeep, its pilot pulled up on the nose and banked steeply out over the bay where the Mediterranean dozed peacefully on the north Sicilian shore. It was a mottled brown Cub similar to the one I used as an airborne jeep. Again the plane buzzed us, pulled up, and headed out over the sea as the pilot wagged his wings. He had evidently double-checked my jeep by the red three-star plate on its rear. "Keep going," I told the driver. "If he wants us he'll land farther up the road."
It was then Sept. 2, 1943. For three hours we had been driving up this north coast road toward Messina, where Lieut. General Sir Oliver W. H. Leese, commander of the British XXX Corps, had invited me to view General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery's invasion of Italy across the Straits the following morning. Leese and I had commanded adjoining corps during the five-week Sicilian campaign then only two weeks ended. Lieut. General George S. Patton Jr. had commanded the new Seventh U.S. Army while Montgomery headed the seasoned British Eighth. My II Corps, a veteran of the Tunisian campaign, was the only one in Patton's army.
By the time my jeep rounded Cape St. Angelo, the Cub had disappeared. However, as the road straightened out, I saw the plane parked near the beach where it had landed. Captain Chester B. Hansen, my aide, sat waiting on a stone wall by the roadside.
"Sorry to break in on you," he said, "but we've just had a radio from Seventh Army. General Patton wants to see you in Palermo."
Disappointed at the thought of missing the British crossing at Messina, I nevertheless knew something was afoot else Patton would never have called me back. He knew of my plan to meet Oliver Leese at Messina. Back at II Corps headquarters, I cranked the field phone on my desk and asked for General Patton.
"Bradley calling" I said, "What’s up, sir?"
"Beats the hell out of me. Ike sent a message saying he wanted to see you early tomorrow morning. I thought we'd better get you back."
"Where am I to meet him-in Africa?"
"Nope He's coming into that advance CP AFHQ setup near Catania. I'll set up my plane to fly you over."
The advance Command Post of Allied Force Headquarters, where I was to meet General Dwight D. Eisenhower, scarcely merited so formidable a designation. We drove from an airfield near Catania to a huddle of small wall tents screened by a few olive trees in the shadow of Mt. Etna. Eisenhower had flown in from North Africa that morning to witness the signing of a short-term Italian surrender instrument with emissaries from the Badoglio government. Standing outside the tent in which Eisenhower was conferring with his airborne commanders were Major General Walter Bedell Smith, Eisenhower's chief of staff, and General Sir Harold Alexander, Army Group Commander of Eisenhower's ground forces. Smith looked dour and rumpled after the weary weeks of negotiation that had preceded this surrender.
At the moment, however, both were hugely relieved in having accomplished it before Lieut. General Mark W. Clark's assault on Salerno. At that moment, Clark's troops were loading in North Africa for an early morning assault on Sept. 9.
Eisenhower came out of his small wall tent to find me talking with Smith and Alexander. He hurried over, a lively grin on his face.
"Brad by gosh, I'm glad to see you. How long have you been waiting?"
He took me by the arm into his tent, empty save for a wooden mess table that ran the length of its earthen floor.
"I’ve got good new's for you, Brad. We've got orders for you to go to England and command an army on the invasion of France."
A bare five months before, I had been given command of a corps; now it was to be an army. After 28 years of snail's pace promotions, I was now finding it difficult to keep in stock on stars.
"When do I leave?" I asked.
Ike laughed. "Just as soon as you can. General Marshall's apparently in a hurry."
On Sept. 2, the day Eisenhower radioed me while I was driving up to Messina, a War Department radio reached AFHQ in Algiers. In it General George C. Marshall, then Army Chief of Staff, said, "Have him [Bradley] make preparation to leave for England. Tell him that he will head an army headquarters and will also probably have to develop an army group headquarters in order to keep pace with the British planning and requisitions."
In directing that I organize an army group staff while also commanding the army, General Marshall had doubled my job. For although the final decision on command of the group had not yet been made, I was to head them both for nine full months-until after the Normandy Breakout. This meant that throughout planning for the invasion, I was to wear two hats-one as the commander of the army group, the other as the commander of First Army.
That evening Brig. General William B. Kean, my chief of staff, sat up with me long past midnight sifting the corps' roster for critical personnel. I spoke what I thought was in his mind."What a helluva responsibility this is-pulling off the biggest invasion of the war." Kean nodded and stared at the map of Europe on the wall.
"But Bill," I spoke frankly, "who in the Army knows more about it than we do?"
Seven months earlier, that boast would have been an impudent one. For Kean and I were then in Florida with the 28th Division assaulting a half-drowned piece of real estate called Dog Island. I had been called to North Africa, first to act as Eisenhower's "eyes and ears" on the Tunisian front, finally to become commander of U.S. II Corps in the Tunisian campaign. There I gained my first battle experience against the German. And in Sicily I had cut my teeth on a large-scale amphibious assault. As we prepared for the flight to England, I reflected on the lessons I had learned and the judgments I had formed- lessons of tactics, strategy, command, and judgments principally of men.
ON my arrival in North Africa in February- a few days after my 50th birthday-I had gone directly to Algiers, where General Eisenhower was acting not only as chief diplomat of the Allied nations, but as strategist, logistician and commander as well of Allied troops in the field. Slumped in a chair before his situation map, a long stick in his hand, Eisenhower outlined my mission.
"Just as quickly as you can," he said, "I want you to get up to the front and look for the things I would want to see myself if I only had the time. Bedell will give you a letter telling Fredendall (Major General Lloyd R. Fredendall, commander of II Corps) and the others that you are to act as my eyes and ears."
The American defeat at Kasserine had already raised disquieting doubts in Algiers on the competency of American command, the adequacy of our training and the worthiness of our weapons. But Eisenhower was not looking for a goat, for the mistakes at Kasserine were too numerous at every echelon of command to be attributed to the dereliction of a single commander. Eisenhower insisted that he was looking primarily for lessons to be learned from the defeat.
For two days I browsed through Eisenhower's headquarters in Algiers seeking additional background on the situation at the front. Within the crowded makeshift offices of AFHQ, British and American staffs had achieved a homogeneity that was already a tribute to Ike's insistence on Allied cooperation. Ike was explicit in his orders. Troublemakers who waved the flag were to be sent straight back home-home on a slow boat, unescorted.
In forming an Allied headquarters Eisenhower had organized joint staffs in intelligence, operations and supply planning. Where a section was headed by a Briton, his deputy was an American. And where an American bossed the operation, a Briton filled in as his Number Two man.
In their intelligence activities at AFHQ, the British easily outstripped their American colleagues. The tedious years of prewar study the British had devoted to areas throughout the world gave them a vast advantage which we never overcame. The American Army's long neglect of intelligence training was soon reflected by the ineptness of our initial undertakings. For too many years in the preparation of officers for command assignments, we had overlooked the need for specialization in such activities as intelligence. It is unrealistic to assume that every officer has the capacity and the inclination for field command. Many are uniquely qualified for staff-intelligence duties and indeed would prefer to devote their careers to those tasks. Yet instead of grooming qualified officers for intelligence assignments, we rotated them through conventional duty tours, making correspondingly little use of their special talents. Misfits frequently found themselves assigned to intelligence duties. And in some stations G-2 became a dumping ground for officers ill-suited to line command. I recall how scrupulously I avoided the branding that came with an intelligence assignment in my own career. Had it not been for the uniquely qualified reservists who so capably filled many of our intelligence jobs throughout the war, the Army would have found itself badly pressed for competent intelligence personnel.
OUTSIDE of Tebessa, where a growth of scrubby Aleppo pines screened off the rocky western dorsal, Major General Orlando Ward had concentrated his heavily reduced 1st Armored Division. In both the December battle for Tunis and the German breakthrough at Faid, the division had suffered severe equipment losses. For two days I tramped the division bivouac, talking to officers and noncoms, asking what they had learned during their first few weeks of combat. Although they conceded that the enemy was both a crafty and skilled opponent, they attributed many of their troubles to their own inexperience. Whereas they had frequently blundered into attack, they spoke of how patiently the German reconnoitered his routes of advance, how skillfully he employed the wadies or gullies for cover, and how stealthily he moved in the attack. Initially, our tankers had galloped like cavalrymen into the offensive, trusting rashly in the speed of their vehicles and in the thickness of their armor. Unfortunately neither helped them when the German antitank gunners came within range.
When I asked about equipment, I learned that our gasoline-driven Shermans had already established a bad reputation among U.S. troops on the front. Because their high-octane fuel blazed too easily when the engine was hit, the crews pleaded for diesel engines to "replace these firetraps." Sergeant James H. Bowser, a tough young Alabaman, spoke for his crew. "General,"he said, "This is my third tank although I've still got my original crew. We were burned out of the other two. If they were diesels it wouldn't have happened. But these gasoline engines go up like torches on the first or second hit. Then you've got to barrel out ,and leave 'em burning."
I found the half-track also was in disrepute, for although effective as an overland personnel carrier, it offered scant protection against enemy fire. When I asked a soldier if enemy machine-gun fire pierced its light armor, he looked up at me and brightened.
"No, sir-" he said. "No, sir, it does not. As a matter of fact bullets generally only come in on one side and rattle around a bit." Actually the American half-track was a competent and dependable contrivance. Its bad name resulted from the inexperience of our troops who attempted to use it for too many things.
AS a consequence of the battle at Kasserine Pass, morale had slumped badly in II Corps and soon after I reached Tebessa Eisenhower decided to replace General Fredendall with Patton. The news fell like a bombshell on the corps CP. With sirens shrieking Patton's arrival, a procession of armored scout cars and half-tracks wheeled into the dingy square opposite the schoolhouse headquarters of II Corps at Djebel Kouif in the late morning of March 7. Even the Arabs plodding through the muddy streets picked up their robes and scurried into the nearest doorways. The armored vehicles bristled with machine guns and their tall fish-pole antennae whipped crazily overhead. In the lead car Patton stood up like a charioteer. He was scowling into the wind and his jaw strained against the web strap of a two-starred steel helmet.
Two oversized silver stars on a red plate designated his command car. On either side of its hood the car carried a rigid metal flag. One bore two white stars on a field of red. The other was lettered WTF to signify the Western Task Force, Patton's invasion command on the Casablanca landing. The following day the WTF plate was replaced by one bearing the blue and white shield of II Corps.
In the words of Eisenhower, Patton was to "rejuvenate" the jaded II Corps and bring it to a "fighting pitch." By the third day after his arrival, the II Corps staff was fighting mad-but at Patton, not at the German.
For George had set out quite deliberately to shock II Corps into a realization that the easygoing days were ended. Rather than wait for the effect of this change in command to filter down to the divisions, Patton sought a device that would instantly bring it home to every GI in the corps. He found what he was looking for in uniform regulations.
After several months in combat American front-line troops had affected the British soldier's casual disregard for conventional field dress. While not under fire, an increasing number removed their heavy helmets and wore only the OD beanie that had been issued for wear under the helmet. To Patton this beanie had become the symbol of slovenly discipline within II Corps. He set out to banish the beanie and make it the first of his corps reforms.
The blow fell with an order that prescribed the wearing of helmets, leggings, and neckties at all times in the corps sector. Rear- echelon units were not exempted from the wearing of helmets and front-line officers were not to be spared the waring of neckties while in combat. To enforce the regulation Patton established a uniform system of fines that ran as high as $50 for officers, $25 for enlisted men. "When you hit their pocketbooks," George used to say, "you get a quick response."
This beanie campaign marked the start of Patton's spit-and-polish reign in II Corps. Each time that a soldier knotted his necktie, threaded his leggings, and buckled on his heavy steel helmet, he was forcibly reminded that Patton had come to command the II Corps, that the pre-Kasserine days had ended, and that a tough new era had begun.
Though most commanders would have permitted exceptions to the rule on helmets, Patton insisted there be none. The order applied no less to nurses in their hospital tents than it did to mechanics in the ordnance pools. When ordnance asked General Patton if the order was to be enforced while these mechanics were working on their trucks, George snapped back,"You’re goddam right -they're soldiers, aren't they?"
With Patton as with Fredendall, I was still a fifth wheel on the wagon, on duty with corps but ranging the front under a directive from Algiers. In the eyes of Patton this unique assignment violated the tenets of sound command. If I was to be in his headquarters, he felt, then I should logically be part of his direct chain of command.
Although George bore me no rancor, he was disturbed by the independence that had been granted me on my mission to corps. "I’m not going to have any goddam spies running around my headquarters," he growled, and with that he rang for FREEDOM, Eisenhower's Allied Force headquarters in Algiers. General Smith answered the phone.
"Bedell" Patton shouted, "I’m calling you about Bradley and his job up here. Look, we're awfully hard up for a good Number Two man as deputy corps commander. Bradley can fill the bill perfectly. If it's all right with Ike, I'm going to make Bradley my deputy commander. He can help us out and I'd like to have him. Okay? Then clear it with Ike."
Smith queried Eisenhower, and when the approval was phoned back I became Patton's deputy commander of II Corps. This did not mean, however, that I was to cease completely being Eisenhower's legman. The week before at Tebessa he had mentioned he might make me deputy corps commander under Patton so that I might pick up some command experience in the southern Tunisian campaign. I was to continue my observations, however, and report to Algiers anything I believed might directly concern Ike.
Patton's command of II Corps brought with it a promotion. When Eisenhower reported that President Roosevelt had recommended to the Senate Patton's promotion as a lieutenant general, George's aides jubilantly unpacked a three-star flag and several sets of the new collar insignia. They had come remarkably well prepared for just such contingencies as these. Indeed had Patton been named an admiral in the Turkish navy, his aides could probably have dipped into their haversacks and come up with the appropriate badge of rank.
I joshed George and told him the promotion would not become effective until after it
had been approved by the Senate.
"The hell you say," he grinned, pinning on the extra star. "I’ve waited long enough for this one."
The evening before the Gafsa attack on March 16, George assembled his II Corps staff for a final briefing. "Gentlemen," he said, glancing around the dimly lighted room,"tomorrow we attack. If we are not victorious, let no one come back alive." With that, George excused himself and retired alone to his room to pray.
The contradictions in Patton's character continued to bewilder his staff. For while he was profane, he was also reverent. And while he strutted imperiously as a commander, he knelt humbly before his God. And while that last appeal for victory even at the price of death was looked upon as a hammy gesture by his corps staff, it helped to make it more clearly apparent to them that to Patton war was a holy crusade.
I still could not accustom myself, however, to the vulgarity with which Patton skinned offenders for relatively minor infractions in discipline. Patton believed that profanity was the most convincing medium of communication with his troops. But while some chuckled over the famed expletives he employed with startling originality, the majority, it seemed to me, were more often shocked and offended. At times I felt that Patton, however successful as a corps commander, had not yet learned to command himself.
DURING the period of Patton's preparations for the Gafsa attack, I visited Eisenhower in Algiers where he had just completed an exchange of messages with General Marshall on American planning for the Sicilian assault. Patton's I Armored Corps had already been designated the American invasion command for Sicily, and detailed planning had been started in its headquarters in Rabat even before George left there to take command of II Corps. It was intended, of course, that he return on completion of the Tunisian campaign. Ike asked me if I thought Patton should remain with II Corps for the rest of the Tunisian campaign or return to I Armored Corps for Sicilian invasion planning at the completion of the southern Tunisian attack. If Patton were to continue with II Corps, then I was to go back to I Armored Corps and substitute temporarily for him in the Sicilian planning.
"Well, I would think George ought to go back," I said, "and resume his Sicilian planning. After all the I Armored staff is his own. He could get much more out of them than I could."
"That’s just the way I feel about it too," Ike answered."When this Gafsa phase is completed, you'll take command of II Corps and we'll send George on back to Rabat. I've already cleared it with General Marshall."
TOWARD the end of March, 1943, the Luftwaffe prowled our lines near Gafsa in ever-increasing strength as our tanks attacked down the Gabes road. When Patton protested to Air Vice Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham, chief of the Tactical Air Force, he got a tart reply. At Eisenhower's request, Coningham apologized, but to make certain that we had been thoroughly appeased, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder visited Gafsa on April 3 with Lieut. General Carl ("Tooey") Spaatz, then Deputy Commander in Chief for Air, to explore the need for improvement in Allied fighter cover and air support. They met with us in a small room of the gendarmerie building there.
Tedder had scarcely repeated the air force claim of Allied air supremacy in the Mediterranean theater when four Focke-Wulf 190s sped in over the city. Strafing the streets of Gafsa, they stampeded a camel caravan past our door. At the end of the run they dropped their bombs.
Plaster flaked from the ceiling and when we went to open the door I found that the concussion had wedged it tightly shut.
Tedder packed his pipe, looked up mischievously from the table, and then smiled. Tooey looked out the window. He turned to Patton and shook his head. "Now how in hell did you ever manage to stage that?"
"I’ll be damned if I know," George shouted back, "but if I could find the sonsabitches who flew those planes, I'd mail them each a medal!"
ON April 19, I published the II Corps order for our combined attack with the British toward Bizerte and Tunis. It was a very brief half-page document with a single illustrative overlay map. Major General Manton S. Eddy's 9th Division on our left was to hack its way through the thicket of the Sedjenane Valley. On our right the 1st Division under Major General Terry de la Mesa Allen was to clear the "Mouse trap Valley" and push across to the Chouigui Hills. Soon after the attack began, Major General Charles W. Ryder would throw his 34th Division against Hill 609 and Major General Ernest N. Harmon would push his 1st Armored Division up the valley toward Mateur. Ultimately we would break the German flank north of Tunis while Eddy slammed into Bizerte.
Terry Allen's combat-wise infantrymen with the Big Red One on their shoulders had headquarters on the Beja-Mateur road in a barnyard piled high with steaming manure. Here, more than anywhere else on the line, an air of easy relaxation hid the tension that comes on the eve of attack. Not only was the 1st thoroughly blooded, but it had come overseas considerably better staffed than most of our divisions. For, unlike the others, it had not been stripped for training cadres -it got shipped out too soon.
The initiative of the 1st Division was apparent even in Allen's mess, where his rough table boasted rare roast beef while the other division COs made do with conventional tinned rations. The meat, Terry explained, was "casualty" beef, from cattle accidentally killed by enemy fire. Despite the warnings of vets on sick cattle, those casualties happened with suspicious frequency. Terry sat with his black hair disheveled, a squinty grin on his face. He wore the same dark green shirt and trousers he had worn through the Gafsa campaign. His orderly had sewn creases into his pants but they had long since bagged out. The aluminum stars he wore had been taken from an Italian private. Although Terry had become a hero to his troops, he was known as a maverick among the senior commanders. Always fighting to keep his 1st from "being dumped on by the high command," Terry was fiercely antagonistic to any echelon above that of division. As a result he was inclined to be stubborn and independent. Skillful, adept and aggressive, he frequently ignored orders and fought in his own way. I found it difficult to persuade Terry to put his pressure where I thought it should go. He would halfway agree on a plan, but once the battle started this agreement seemed to be forgotten.
ON the hillside near Sidi Nsir I awakened early the morning of May 9. In the stuffy, blacked-out G-3 war tent a duty officer logged the night's TWXs. Across the acetate sheet that covered his large-scale map, the blue lines of Harmon's advance threaded like thin veins into the enemy's sector. Our offensive had gone according to plan. Tunis and Bizerte had been ringed heavily in blue to signify that they had been captured. .
It was shortly after 9:30 that morning when Harmon telephoned corps. His gravelly voice rasped noisily over the miles of field wire from his CP near Ferryville.
"A couple of Krauts just drove in under a white flag. They want to talk surrender. What d'ya want me to tell them? Or do you want to come up and handle this stuff yourself?"
"I'll stick by here, Ernie," I said in reply, "in the event something happens elsewhere. Just tell them we have no terms. It must be unconditional surrender"
At 11 :40 that May morning Major General Fritz Krause, the poker-faced artillery commander of the Afrika Korps, listened stonily to Harmon's instructions. Twenty minutes later a surrender was negotiated for the II Corps front. Thus at noon on May 9, 182 days after the North African invasion, 518 days after Pearl Harbor, the American Army obtained its first unconditional surrender of Axis forces.
That afternoon Krause was joined in Harmon's CP by a group of senior officer colleagues. In huge Mercedes-Benz staff cars, weighted down with baggage, they had turned out in crisp dress uniforms, as though to stiffen their pride in defeat.
"You would have thought the bastards were going to a wedding," Harmon said in telling me of their arrival.
Ernie in his sweaty ODs was in no mood for amenities. When he sat down for dinner his aide handed the German officers a sack of K-rations.
ONE week before the opening battle of the Tunisian campaign Eisenhower had counseled me to be tough with the division commanders. "As a final word," he said, "let me offer one item of advice. It is that you must be tough. You must be tough with your immediate commanders and they must be equally tough with their respective subordinates. We have passed the time where we cannot demand from troops reasonable results after we have made careful plans and preparations and estimated that the task can be accomplished. . . ."
However, to command a corps of four divisions, toughness alone is not enough. The corps commander must know his division commanders, he must thoroughly understand their problems, respect their judgment, and be tolerant of their limitations. For there are few distinguishing characteristics of a successful division commander. Success comes instead from a well-balanced combination of good judgment, self-confidence, leadership and boldness.
Among the division commanders in Tunisia, none excelled the unpredictable Terry Allen in the leadership of troops. He had made himself the champion of the 1st Division GI and they in turn championed him. But in looking out for his own division, Allen tended to belittle the roles of the others and demand for his Big Red One prerogatives we could not fairly accord it.
In the 34th Division, Major General Charles W. Ryder had confirmed his reputation as a skilled tactician. Lacking the dash of Terry Allen, he subordinated himself to the division. His weakness, however, lay in the contentment with which he tolerated mediocrity in his command. For rather than relieve ineffective subordinate commanders, he overlooked their shortcomings and thus penalized the division as well as himself.
The profane and hot-tempered Ernie Harmon brought to corps the rare combination of sound tactical judgment and boldness that together make a great commander. More than any other division commander in North Africa, he was constantly and brilliantly aggressive; in Europe he was our most outstanding tank commander. Yet like all tankers, Ernie's heart rode with the Shermans and as a result he sometimes failed to make good use of his infantrymen.
But of all these commanders, none was better balanced nor more cooperative than Manton Eddy. Tactically he performed with classical maneuvers. Yet though not timid, neither was he bold; Manton liked to count his steps carefully before he took them.
THE campaign in Sicily was to be divided into several successive phases, beginning with the seizure of an Allied beachhead on July 10 and ending with the capture of the escape port of Messina. Detailed pre-invasion planning had provided only for the beach assault. Thereafter, the maneuver was to be directed from General Alexander's 15th Army Group.
On July 14, as we pressed within easy artillery range of the Vizzini-Caltagirone road that would take us up toward Enna, Patton called me to his Seventh Army headquarters in the city of Gela.
"We've had a directive from army group. It's going to raise hen with you," he said. "Monty’s to get the Vizzini-Caltagirone road in a drive to flank Catania and Mt. Etna. This means you'll have to sideslip west with your 45th Division."
Having been denied the Vizzini road, I had no other choice but to shift the 45th by trucking it back to the beaches and placing it into position on the left of Allen's 1st Division. I was certain that Alexander could not have known how awkward was this movement into which his directive had forced our corps. For want of a day and a night on the Vizzini road, we were forced to disassemble our front and patch it together again.
Weeks later, after the Sicilian campaign was ended, Patton visited Monty at the latter's CP. During their conversation George complained of the injustice of Alexander's army group directive on the Vizzini-Caltagirone road. Monty looked at him with amusement.
"George" he said, "let me give you some advice. If you get an order from army group that you don't like, why just ignore it. That's what I do."
Montgomery, of course, had oversimplified his explanation. He was first a good, if sometimes perverse, soldier. He didn't ignore his orders though sometimes he seemed to skirt them, while being careful to avoid a showdown. Basically Montgomery's comment to Patton reflected a common attitude in the British command, a view sometimes difficult for an American soldier to understand. Unlike the U.S. Army where an order calls for instant compliance, the British viewed an order as a basis for discussion between commanders. If a difference of opinion developed, it would be ironed out and the order amended. In contrast, we in the American Army sought to work out our differences before issuing an order. Once an order was published it could not be changed except by the issuing authority. Had I known of this British characteristic I most certainly would have appealed to Patton to protest the army group decision on the road.
OUR flight from Africa to England was nearing its end, and with it the time for reflection. We had learned a great deal in the Mediterranean; now the time was nearly at hand to fuse experience and imagination in meeting a new challenge. Ireland sped beneath us with a rich greenness as we turned in from the Atlantic toward Scotland. Two hours later we broke through the clouds into the pattern of barrage balloons that hung over London. Lieut. General Jacob L. Devers had motored out to Henley to greet us. A West Point classmate of Patton in 1909, Devers had been picked by General Marshall only four months before to command the ETO.
After a few days in London, I flew to the U.S. to select officers for my invasion staffs. It was a pleasant if short visit. General Marshall explained some of the problems ahead, President Roosevelt received me, I had several days with Mrs. Bradley and I saw Oklahoma! Eager to get started on planning in England, I left Washington on Oct. 1 aboard a C-54 for the Great Circle winter crossing.
Before plunging into planning on my return (the invasion had been given the code name "Overlord") I arranged for billets both in Bristol and London, for it was impossible as yet to determine how much time I would spend with First Army, how much with the army group. I proposed to spend the first part of each week in London, the remainder and weekend in Bristol. Fortunately, group was not to enter the actual chain of command over First Army until it became operational in France. Otherwise, I might have been sending directives to myself. Nevertheless an occasional TWX went to BRADLEY, CG, FIRST ARMY, signed BRADLEY, CG, FUSAG. The latter was an abbreviation of the 1st United States Army Group. This designation was later changed to the 12th Army Group as part of our deception plan on the invasion.
The selection of a supreme commander for Overlord had been under advisement as long ago as January 1943, during the conference at Casablanca. At that time, when the cross-channel invasion was being planned for 1943, it was anticipated that the assault would be primarily British. For that reason the conferees proposed that Britain name the supreme commander.
When the Overlord invasion was later postponed to 1944, British predominance in the assault gave way to the massive manpower reserves of the United States. Churchill stuck by the principle he had advocated at Casablanca and recommended that now an American be named supreme commander. At Quebec the Prime Minister suggested to President Roosevelt that General Marshall be the man. If ever a man deserved the appointment, that man was General Marshall. Yet in the Army hierarchy of command the appointment of General Marshall as supreme commander would have entailed a stepdown from his post as Army Chief of Staff. But stepdown or no, had General Marshall left Washington to go to Europe, no one-not even Eisenhower-could have taken his place.
With General Marshall out of the running, the next logical choice for supreme commander fell upon the incumbent of a comparable post in the Mediterranean theater. In terms of experience, tact and perspective, Ike was admirably equipped for the job. Although some American subordinates thought him too ready a compromiser, especially in Anglo-American disputes, Eisenhower had demonstrated in the Mediterranean war that compromise is essential to amity in an Allied struggle. I confess that at times I thought Eisenhower too eager to appease the British command, but I admit to having been a prejudiced judge. For as the American field commander I more often than not participated as the Yankee partisan in those disputes.
In early December, Eisenhower was advised by President Roosevelt that he had been chosen at Cairo to become supreme commander for the Overlord invasion. With only six months to go before D-day, Ike wasted no time in forming the beginnings of a SHAEF staff from among his Mediterranean associates.
As his chief of staff, Eisenhower named the brilliant, hard-working Bedell Smith, then with him in a similar spot at AFHQ in Caserta. In contrast to the suave and amiable Eisenhower, Smith could be blunt and curt. Yet, like his chief, he was articulate and expressive, sophisticated, and discreet during those diplomatic crises that occasionally erupted at SHAEF. "Bedell, tell them to go to hell," Eisenhower once said in referring to a mission to SHAEF, "but put it so they won't be offended."
To command the British 21st Army Group, Eisenhower turned first to his good friend and Tunisian associate, General Alexander. The friendship between Eisenhower and Alexander began in February 1943, when Alexander quit his British Middle East Command to join Eisenhower in Algiers as commander of the 18th Army Group for the last four months of the Tunisian campaign. There he not only showed the shrewd tactical judgment that was to make him the outstanding general's general of the European war, but he was easily able to comport the nationally-minded and jealous Allied personalities of his command. By the fall of 1943, with Tunisia, Sicily, and now Salerno behind him, Alexander occupied a unique position in the Allied high command. He was our only army group commander and therefore our only experienced one. At the same time he had demonstrated an incomparable ability to fuse the efforts of two Allied armies into a single cohesive campaign. Had Alexander commanded the 21st Army Group in Europe, we could probably have avoided the petulance that later was to becloud our relationships with Montgomery. For in contrast to the rigid self-assurance of General Montgomery, Alexander brought to his command the reasonableness, patience and modesty of a great soldier.
Although I was unaware of it at the time, the British rejected Eisenhower's bid for Alexander and asked instead that he be retained in Italy to sparkthat peninsula campaign. Stumped on his request for Alexander, Eisenhower settled on Montgomery.
Monty's incomparable talent for the "set" battle-the meticulously planned offensive-made him invaluable in the Overlord assault. For the Channel crossing was patterned to a rigid plan; nothing was left to chance or improvisation in command. Until we gained a beachhead we were to put our trust in the Plan.
Psychologically the choice of Montgomery as British commander for the Overlord assault came like a welcome old-fashioned at the tag-end of a tiring day: For the thin, bony, ascetic face that stared from an unmilitary turtle-neck sweater had, in little over a year, become a symbol of victory in the eyes of the Allied world. Nothing becomes a general more than success in battle, and Montgomery wore success with such chipper faith in the arms of Britain that he was cherished by a British people wearied of valorous setbacks.
My First Army staff soon learned neither to tamper with nor mock this British adulation of Monty. For in a reception tendered the British at Bristol, that staff witnessed the consequences of a slight on Monty by a jaunty Irish captain from New York. A well-bred British lady, and claimant to that title by birth, responded by dashing a glass of whisky into the astonished captain's red face. With a cool sweet smile she cautioned him to mind his tongue on Britain's hero.
When Eisenhower recommended to General Marshall that I command the 1st U.S. Army Group in France, he likewise anticipated the need for someone to take my place as commander of First Army. "One of his army commanders," Eisenhower wrote, referring to the time I would take over the group in France, "Should probably be Patton; the other, a man that may be developed in Overlord operations or, alternatively, somebody like Hodges or Simpson, provided such an officer could come to the United Kingdom at an early date and accompany Bradley through the early stages of the operations." When Eisenhower told me of his recommendation, I brightened at the mention of both Hodges and Simpson. Either would have been eminently acceptable. I did not know then that I was to have them both.
A spare, soft-voiced Georgian without temper, drama or visible emotion, Lieut. General Courtney H. Hodges was left behind in the European headline sweepstakes. He was essentially a military technician whose faultless techniques and tactical knowledge made him one of the most skilled craftsmen of my entire command. Because he was unostentatious and retiring, Hodges occupied an almost anonymous role in the war. Yet as a general's general his stature among our U.S. commanders was rivaled only by that of the Ninth Army's Lieut. General William H. Simpson. For Hodges successfully blended dexterity and common sense in such equal portions as to produce a magnificently balanced command. I had implicit faith in his judgment, in his skill and restraint. Of all my army commanders he required the least supervision.
Hodges' claim to greatness as a commander will endure in the achievements of his First Army. Without the flair of Patton's Third Army and the breeziness of Simpson's Ninth, First Army trudged across Europe with a serious and grim intensity. Yet it was the first army to cross the German border, the first to cross the Rhine, the first to close to the Elbe and join hands with the Russians. En route it ticketed more prisoners than any other American army. It also buried more American dead in the wake of its long advance.
THROUGHOUT the fall of 1943, Eisenhower had left George Patton to brood in his palace doghouse at Palermo. An army commander without an army, George had been chastened by Ike's rebuke for the notorious slapping incident. But as the rains of winter continued to darken the Sicilian landscape, the penitent Patton became melancholic. He feared that perhaps he had been left to rot on this island he had conquered.
Ike, however, had not forsaken George, much as he deplored the incident that had brought discredit to Patton. I did not learn that Eisenhower had proposed Patton as an army commander until Ike arrived in England. Had Eisenhower asked for my opinion, I would have counseled against the selection. For not only did I question George's conduct of the Sicilian campaign, but I seriously doubted the wisdom of his forcing Patton to stomach this reversal of roles in command. In Sicily, George had commanded my corps from Seventh Army. Now the tables were to be turned and I was to command his Third Army as part of the new army group. Ike assured me that George would submit without rancor.
"All he wants is the chance to get back into the war. For a time he thought he was through." Like Eisenhower, I did not dispute George's brilliant dexterity in gaining ground and there was much of it to be gained between the Channel and Berlin. But even this striking talent of Patton's could not offset the misgivings I felt in having him in my command.
To this day I am chagrined to recall how uncharitably I first responded to Patton's assignment. For when George joined my command he came eagerly and as a friend without pique, rancor or grievance. My year's association with him in Europe remains one of the brightest remembrances of my military career.
Patton arrived in England that March before the invasion with a substantial carry-over in key personnel from his Seventh Army. They established a headquarters in Cheshire. It was not long before George had thrust his neck into the pillory again. During the dedication of an Allied service club in a nearby British town George unexpectedly was called upon to speak. Instead of playing on the old saw of British-American amity, George expanded his comments.
"The idea of these clubs," he said, "could not be better because undoubtedly it is our destiny to rule the world."
What would have passed for a local boner with anyone less than Patton promptly exploded into a world crisis when it reached the press wires. Unfortunately the censor had passed it-there was no security violation at stake.
But again, as in Sicily, Eisenhower fended off the wolves. And once more George offered atonement. This time, however Eisenhower angrily admitted he had reached the end of his rope.
"I’m just about fed up," he said in speaking of Patton to me. "If I have to apologize publicly for George once more, I'm going to have to let him go, valuable as he is. I'm getting sick and tired of having to protect him. Life's much too short to put up with any more of it."
Seventeen months later Patton invited Eisenhower to keep that promise. As commander of Third Army on an occupation mission, George had sidestepped SHAEF's prohibitions on the employment of former Nazis in the restoration of railroads and public works. In explaining his actions to the press, George walked into a buzz saw when he said, "Well, I'll tell you. This Nazi thing. It's just like a Democratic-Republican election fight."
George was relieved from command of Third Army and exiled to the Fifteenth, at that time an obscure "paper" staff writing a report on the campaign. Few generals could surpass Patton as a field commander. But he had one enemy he could not vanquish and that was his own quick tongue.
It was this unhappy talent of Patton's for highly quotable crises that caused me to tighten the screws on press censorship at the time he joined my command.
" Public relations will cuss me for it," I told Bill Kean, "but the devil with them. I'll take the chance. Tell censorship that they are not to pass any direct quotes from any commander without my approval. And I want to see those quotes myself."
So scrupulously was this limitation enforced that during the Battle of the Bulge I was called to the phone shortly after the relief of Bastogne.
"We've got a direct quote from General McAuliffe," the officer at the other end said. "Do you want us to pass it?"
"What did he say?" I asked.
"Nuts," came the reply.
EVEN before I arrived in England, the 29th Division had staked out squatters’ rights on Omaha Beach. The 29th had landed in Britain in October 1942. It was commanded by Major General Charles H. Gerhardt, a peppery 48-year-old cavalryman whose enthusiasm sometimes exceeded his judgment as a soldier. When Overlord was expanded to include Utah as well as Omaha, we paired the 4th Infantry with the 29th as the second assault division. But although both divisions had undergone extensive amphibious training, neither had as yet come under fire. Rather than chance a landing with two inexperienced divisions I looked around for a veteran division to include in the lineup. .
In all of England there was only one experienced assault division. Once more the Big Red One was to carry the heavy end of our stick. When the division learned that it was to make a third D-day assault, this time in France, the troops grumbled bitterly over the injustices of war. Among the infantrymen who had already survived both Mediterranean campaigns, few believed their good fortune could last them through a third.
Although I disliked subjecting the 1st to still another landing I felt that as a commander I had no other choice. My job was to get ashore, establish a lodgment and destroy the German. I felt compelled to employ the best troops I had. Whatever the injustice, it is better that war heap its burdens unfairly than that victory be jeopardized in an effort to equalize the ordeal.
EARLY in the spring of 1944 I accompanied Eisenhower and Churchill on a three-day inspection tour of the invasion divisions. The 69-year-old correspondent hero of the Boer War tramped happily through the field, mugging under his famed derby for the benefit of the troops. And each evening at dinner on the private train, over a brandy and soda, he lectured his company on the problems and perfidies of war. However dogged his opposition to the Overlord operation may once have been, he was now enthusiastic in his support of it.
While visiting the 9th Division, Churchill confessed to an itch to tryout the American carbine. Targets were promptly put out for Churchill, Eisenhower and me. Mine was handicapped at 75 yards, Eisenhower’s at 50. The Prime Minister's was placed at 25 yards. We each fired 15 rounds in rapid succession. Manton Eddy wisely hustled us away before we could inspect the targets.·
AT 9:30 on Sunday evening, June 4, Eisenhower gathered his commanders at Portsmouth to discuss the weather reports. This time the forecast encouraged a flicker of hope. Rain squalls over the beaches were expected to clear in two or three hours. Visibility might hold up until Tuesday, June 6. Meanwhile the winds were reported slackening, the cloud base lifting. But while the weather report held out hopes for improvement, it did not excite lively enthusiasm for the adventure. Instead it looked just promising enough to tantalize Ike with the thought of taking a chance. For the clouds that were expected to close in again on June 6 might wash out air support and spoil spotting for naval bombardment.
At 9:45 Eisenhower edged reluctantly into a decision. "I’m quite positive we must give the order. . . . I don't like it, but there it is. . . . I don't see how we can possibly do anything else."
The day for Overlord was now set, save for one last predawn look at the weather on June 5 to make certain that the choice. need not be reversed.
Aboard the U.S. Cruiser Augusta we awaited a postponement signal. But none came. Overlord was underway; the Plan had taken over. For the next 24 hours the fate of the war in Europe was to ride not in the big-hulled command ships, but in the wet flat-bottomed craft where many GIs were to be seasick on the slippery steel floors as they groaned through the choppy Channel.
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FROM THE BEACHES TO THE BREAKOUT
In next week's instalment, again illustrated by Bill Mauldin, General Bradley describes problems he encountered in securing the Normandy lodgement, the accomplishment of the breakout and the beginning of the historic feud between Generals Patton and Montgomery.
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The War America Fought will appear in greater detail in a book entitled A Soldier's Story, to be published June 18, 1951 by Henry Holt and Co., Inc. It will be a July Book-of-the-Month Club selection.
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