The sentry at the front door wore a dark “MP” armband, which his helmet displayed in white. He saluted and greeted Griffith and opened the door for him. Griffith answered with a salute and stepped into the hut, whose six-foot-wide corridor spanned its length. Blackout curtains covered the twelve shoulder-width windows along the corridor.
Another member of the military police sat on a folding chair behind the small desk to the left of the door, below one of the covered front-wall windows. Griffith noticed that the sitting MP was slumped in his chair pulled back from the desk. The MP’s eyes were closed, and he appeared to be asleep. His carbine lay across his lap, with upturned palms wrapped around the weapon.
Griffith was appalled but silent. He tiptoed past the sentry, down the corridor, to the door bearing a sign reading, “TOP SECRET—Authorized Personnel Only,” which led into the large map room that comprised most of the hut. With his key, Griffith unlocked the door and closed it behind him. His eyes met those of the only person inside the room, Private Eugene Schulz, who was continuing to work as one of Griffith’s two clerk-typists. Ceiling lights in a row shined down on a rectangular conference table, which occupied two-thirds of the room, surrounded by desks with typewriters and small tables along the wall, each with a small desk lamp, telephone, and file trays. A bank of metal file cabinets along the sloping corrugated back wall framed a second central locked door. Six shoulder-width square-gabled windows lined the wall, each covered with a blackout shade inside.
The map room’s central table held a twelve-by-six-foot military map of southern England, northern France, and the English Channel. Griffith had instructed Schulz to keep the map covered when not in use. It pinpointed every important English military installation, camp, and depot; every Channel port, dock, and marshaling area; and, in the portion covering the Normandy coast, every coastal and inland gun emplacement, bunker, and other defensive position.
Griffith looked around and asked Schulz whether any officers were nearby. His assistant answered no, with a quizzical look. Griffith summoned him with his hand to come along and, with his index finger to his lips, to be quiet. Leading the way, Griffith drew his service .45, stepped out the map room door, and closed it quietly; then he signaled Schulz with a touch on his shoulder to wait. He stepped around Schulz, and on the right both could see the MP guard in his chair pulled back from the desk, beneath the window in the entryway, still slumped with eyes closed, asleep, his carbine lying across his lap with his upturned palms still wrapped around it. Schulz watched as Griff edged toward the MP, reached out slowly, grabbed the carbine, and jerked it out of the guard’s hands. The guard startled awake, groping for his weapon to no avail, and looked up with a horrified gaze. Griffith held his own weapon with both hands, ready, as if poised to attack. The guard looked toward Schulz, who stood frozen in the corridor between Griffith and the map room door, gazing back at the guard.
Griffith glared into the eyes of the guard. “What’s your name, soldier?”
The soldier, shaking, mumbled his name and looked again at Schulz.
Griffith pointed to the door with the guard’s carbine and asked the guard whether he could see the sign on the map room door. The guard acknowledged yes—it read, “TOP SECRET.” Griffith reminded the soldier that it was his duty to guard the building and keep unauthorized personnel out; then he stiffened his neck and hunched his shoulders back. Hesitating briefly, but without waiting for the soldier to answer, Griffith turned to look at Schulz and told him to head back into the map room and call the MP office.
Schulz pulled a key ring out of his pocket, unlocked the door to the map room, and hurried inside; in a minute he’d returned to the corridor.
Two minutes later, Griff heard a vehicle skid to a stop, its occupants emerging with the slam of a door. Three MP-helmeted and arm-banded soldiers swung open the front door and burst into the corridor, weapons drawn, followed by the outside sentry with his weapon and an astonished look on his face. The MPs looked at the colonel, still standing in front of the sentry holding the man’s carbine.
The lead MP, with a sergeant-striped shoulder patch on his shoulder, approached Griff.
“Sergeant, I am Colonel Griffith, G-3.”
“Yes, Sir. I know, Sir.”
“This is Private Schulz. What’s your name, Sergeant?”
The sergeant answered with his name and MP unit number.
“Sergeant, this private is one of your sentries, and he has a big problem. Schulz and I just found him asleep at his post.” Handing the weapon to the sergeant, Griffith said, “Here, take his weapon. Confiscate it, and take him into custody for violation of his first general order—being asleep at his post while on duty, posted as a sentry.”
“Yes, Sir. We will, Sir.”
“Sergeant, I guess I don’t need to explain to you what building we are in and that it makes this sentry’s problem a pretty serious one—serious as the business end of a .45.”
“Yes, Sir. I do, Sir.”
The sergeant stepped forward, reaching to pull the guard up from his chair.
“C’mon, Private.”
Helping the guard up from his chair, the sergeant signaled one of the other MPs to take the sentry’s weapon from Griffith. The third MP opened the door. The sergeant called to the outside sentry, pointing for him to move to the inside sentry position, and ordered one of the newly arrived MPs to remain as the new outside sentry. As they headed outside, the sergeant told the arrested MP to get into the jeep with the remaining MP, and Griff heard them drive off.
As the new sentry entered the building, Griffith glanced toward both Schulz and the new sentry to confirm whether they were listening.
“Schulz, be careful now. You’ll have to remember what you just saw.” With that, Griffith touched Schulz on the shoulder to guide him to return with him back into the map room, leaving the new sentry standing in the corner next to the desk while both the hut front door and the map room door closed.
“Let’s get back to work. I’ll have to write this up for Colonel Collier and General Walker.”
Inside the room, Griffith turned to Schulz. “Gene, there’ll be a court-martial. You and I are probably gonna have to testify.”
“Sir, do you think so?”
“Yep. We’re at war. What we’re doing here is too damn important to let something like this go. Too many soldiers are risking their lives here to let our guard down. You know what we’ve been planning in this room.”
“Yes, Sir. I do, Sir.”
“With the sentry asleep, any damn person might’ve gotten in here. Our secrecy could’ve gone up in smoke. Think of the thousands—hundreds of thousands—who’d be in danger if our plans leak.”
“Yes, Sir. I understand. But, Colonel, I feel bad for the guy and what he’s up against. Any of us can fall asleep. He couldn’t have been out for more than a few minutes. And the door into this map room was locked. I feel sorry for the guy.”
“I know, Gene. But we all have responsibilities.”
“Yes, Sir. I understand. But the guy’s just as young as me. What do you think’ll happen to him?”
“I expect he’ll need to serve some time in the brig and probably will miss the fight, and he could be dishonorably discharged.”
Gene Schulz returned to his desk and started in on his work. He looked back at Griffith, who sat slumped in the chair and stared out the partially covered window next to Schulz’s desk, pausing for a moment. Griff arched his back, pulled his head back to shorten his neck, and closed his lips into a sternness. He reached for a pad and pen and wrote quickly while Schulz waited to begin trying to decipher the scrawl and type it out.
A month later, weeks before D-Day, at a separate camp, in a hut the same as the war room, a court-martial of judge advocate officers convened to try the sentry, who stood accused of violating the 86th Article of War—being asleep while posed on guard as a sentry. Both Griffith and Schulz were subpoenaed to testify at trial.
Sixty-eight years later, in
his memoir about the war, Eugene Schulz would recall how nervous he’d felt on the witness stand as he testified that he had seen the soldier sleeping on guard duty outside the war room.
“I felt awful and sad and wondered what would happen to this young man who was probably my age.” Schulz never heard what kind of sentence the guard received, but he is sure the guard was sentenced to some confinement in the brig.
“This event,” Eugene Schulz wrote, “was never talked about openly at corps headquarters, but it was a sobering experience for me.”
Around the same time that the MP faced court-martial, on a sunny day in early May 1944 General Patton arrived at Griff’s corps command post. He couldn’t be mistaken for anyone else. He was six-foot-two in his short jacket, three stars on his cap, wearing cavalry boots and a belt holstering a pearl-handled pistol. He had recently been appointed commander of the US Third Army. Before that, he had commanded the fictitious “paper” First US Army Group, or FUSAG, in an operation code named Fortitude South. It had been dreamed up by Lieutenant General Frederick Morgan, the British general in charge of planning the Allied invasion. Under the plan, the fictitious army had been positioned around a phony dock built near Dover with major contributions by set designers from British movie studios. The array included dummy trucks, tanks, cannons, and other equipment made of inflatable rubber, canvas, and wood, which in part floated on oil drums, with large dummy oil tanks nearby to appear to be available to supply fuel for Patton’s tanks. As part of this scheme, Patton gave a number of speeches. The Germans were deceived into believing the assault would occur at the beaches of Pas de Calais rather than on the Normandy beaches.
Patton was now at corps headquarters to invite General Walker and Twentieth Corps to be part of the Third Army. For the meeting, Patton had called together the three corps commanders he had chosen in addition to Walker: Major General Wade H. Haislip of Fifteenth Corps, Major General Gilbert Cook of Twelfth Corps, and Major General Troy Middleton of Eighth Corps. Also joining was Brigadier General Otto Weyland, who headed the Nineteenth Tactical Air Command, which Patton attached to the Third Army to coordinate fighter planes to work closely with the ground troops, in a new unit that was placed within Griffith’s G-3 Section for combat operations in France. Gene Schulz was surprised by Patton’s high-pitched voice, which he guessed must have bothered the brusque general—so aggressive in wartime that he’d been nicknamed “Old Blood and Guts.” But as Patton addressed Walker and the other corps staff officers, Schulz probably heard plenty of profanity.
It was only a month before D-Day that Griff had finally learned what the corps’ role would be: Patton wanted Walker and Twentieth Corps to spearhead the Third Army’s drive across France after the bridgehead was secured. Griff’s corps would come ashore a couple of weeks after the beach assault to be in the front forces to push across France in pursuit of the Germans, who were expected to be in retreat.
After this visit by Patton, preparations intensified. General Eisenhower had come to England to take firsthand command of the Overlord operations, including final planning for landings on the French coast. Inspections stepped up, assessing efficiency in tactical-training maneuvers, billeting, living conditions, morale, and health of the troops. By the end of May, most of the planning for D-Day had been accomplished. From their bases scattered about England, the various Twentieth Corps units funneled into a marshaling area and ports from which they would move onto ships. Corps officers traveled to meetings in London. General Walker flew to the Normandy beachhead to observe the fighting. The corps war room buzzed with activity, the maps plotting positions of enemy and Allied units to be followed through the action.
On May 29, Eisenhower issued follow-up instruction to the Allied Expeditionary Force regarding preservation of historic monuments, making reference to the Allies’ recent experience at Monte Cassino—as he had in a prior order on the subject. In the May order, he wrote:
Shortly we will be fighting our way across the Continent of Europe in battles designed to preserve our civilization. Inevitably, in the path of our advance will be found historical monuments and cultural centers, which symbolize to the world all that we are fighting to preserve.
It is the responsibility of every commander to protect and respect the symbols whenever possible.
In some circumstances the success of the military operation may be prejudiced in our reluctance to destroy these revered objects. Then, as at Cassino, where the enemy relied on our emotional attachments to shield his defense, the lives of our men are paramount. So, where military necessity dictates, commanders may order the required action even though it involves destruction of some honored site.
But there are circumstances in which damage and destruction are not necessary and cannot be justified. In such cases, through the exercise of restraint and discipline, commanders will preserve centers and objects of historical and cultural significance.
Six months before, in the Italian campaign, during the pause before the Fifth Army’s assault on Monte Cassino, General Eisenhower had issued his first order, in the form of a letter to all commanders, regarding protection of cultural property. In it, he had reminded the commanders that the fight was being waged in a country that had contributed a great deal to the world’s cultural inheritance and was a country rich in monuments, “which by their creation helped, and now in their old age illustrate, the growth of the civilization . . . which is ours.” He reminded the commanders that they were bound to respect those monuments “so far as war allows” and that should they have to choose between destroying a famous building and sacrificing their own men, “then our men’s lives count infinitely more and the buildings must go.” But he pointed out that the choice wouldn’t always be so clear-cut. “In many cases,” he continued,
the monuments can be spared without any detriment to operational needs. Nothing can stand against the argument of military necessity. That is an accepted principle. But the phrase “military necessity” is sometimes used where it would be more truthful to speak of military convenience or even of personal convenience. I do not want to cloak slackness or indifference.
It is a responsibility of higher commanders to determine through AMG Officers the locations of historical monuments whether they be immediately ahead of our front lines or in areas occupied by us.
On June 11, Griffith sent a handwritten V-mail note to Nell:
Sweetheart,
Staying busy. Managed to get hold of a Scotch cap and muffler, one for you and one for Alice. Will mail them first chance. I think you will like them. Would have liked to have gotten cloth to match but that is rationed. Perhaps can get hold of some before school back.
Love you and miss you.
Grif
Midday on July 15, 1944, Griffith and the others of the corps headquarters staff, with their field gear, drove into Southampton in a column of jeeps, staff cars, trucks, and half-tracks. Along narrow streets, British men, women, and children waved farewell. When the column slowed to a halt from time to time along the way, the people gave the soldiers tea and biscuits. By late afternoon, the column (including Griffith’s staff car) drove into the marshaling area outside Portsmouth, fifteen miles southeast of Southampton. They spent the night in a large open field jammed with vehicles, equipment, and troops. They next day they checked their weapons and waited through another night.
On the seventeenth, they moved to the Southampton docks, but because their ship was not ready, they spent the night on the adjoining pier, watching cranes hoist vehicles onto ships and down into the holds. At daybreak, Griffith’s and the other headquarters’ vehicles were loaded onto a liberty ship, the SS John A. Campbell, which spent the night with a group of vessels in the shelter of the Isle of Wight.
Through the night, corps personnel anticipated the fight on a scale far surpassing what even Griff could have felt two decades before at West Point on game days before he had led the cadets’ offensive line onto their big stage.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
AT 8:00 A.M. ON THE MORNING OF JULY 19, 1944, THE SS JOHN A. CAMPbell weighed anchor, circled west of the Isle of Wight, joined a convoy of liberty ships with a destroyer escort, and sailed the eighty miles across the English Channel. Six hours later, the convoy reached the eastern side of the Cotentin Peninsula of France and dropped anchor off Utah Beach, surrounded by hundreds of other watercraft of men and equipment.
On the boat that day, Griffith, in his barely legible handwriting, squeezed a dozen short sentences onto a one-page V-mail letter addressed to Nell in Brooklyn, his script ever difficult to decipher:
Sweetheart:
My new fountain pen has disappeared. Can you through the Base Post PX or Fort Hamilton get me another like my old one which is okay, so don’t send yours. Be sure of this. I have one but want the second as insurance.
For our savings for taxes I’d like the tax exemption bonds left. They draw 2% and cost face value. I’m afraid we all tend to forget that many Bonds are earmarked for taxes. I’d bet we have to pay the taxes. Anyway we can sell tax exemption bonds if we endorsed them.
Love my Pinka. I certainly have a . . . lot to come home to. Lots of memories. I’m lonely. Love you
Grif
Please send a package of cigars . . . worked for a gift.
This was forty-three days after D-Day. There was no harbor at Utah Beach, so the US Navy had built a breakwater composed of sunken ships to protect unloading freighters. The time for unloading Griffith’s ship had not yet come, so he and the others spent the night onboard, waiting. The next morning, the weather turned bad, so they had to wait another forty hours for the storm and the rough seas to subside.
Saving the Light at Chartres Page 24
