by Jeff Shaara
As planners in London and Washington focus greater attention toward the invasion of France, resources that could aid Clark’s army in Italy are gradually stripped away. The command structure begins to change as well, particularly with the British. Though Harold Alexander remains in overall command of the ground forces in Italy, his primary subordinate, Bernard Montgomery, is ordered to London, joining Omar Bradley as one of the two principal ground commanders for Operation Overlord. But throughout the fall of 1943, there is still a vacuum at the top of the Overlord command. Word reaches Eisenhower that a consensus is building that the American chief of staff, George C. Marshall, is being touted as the best choice for the command. To Eisenhower’s enormous disappointment, he learns that he and Marshall will, in effect, reverse roles. Once Marshall goes to England, Eisenhower will return to Washington and occupy Marshall’s chair, becoming the chief of staff and the liaison between the War Department and Congress. Eisenhower has no enthusiasm for the job.
In late November 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt meets with Winston Churchill in Cairo. Though the meetings are geared toward discussions of strategies regarding Russia, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean theaters, Eisenhower learns that the decision to name Marshall to overall command of Overlord is not yet set in stone. Roosevelt tells him, “It is dangerous to monkey with a winning team.” Less than one week later, Eisenhower receives a cable from Marshall, which eliminates all rumors. On December 10, 1943, Dwight D. Eisenhower is named supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, and effective January 1, 1944, he assumes command of Operation Overlord. Despite his uneasiness over Clark’s progress in Italy, Eisenhower welcomes his new responsibility, and on New Year’s Day 1944 he leaves North Africa.
Despite the ongoing struggles in Italy, vicious fights yet to be waged at Anzio and Monte Cassino, the Allies now put their greatest energy toward the invasion of France, which the planners have tentatively scheduled for May 1944. Allied commanders and their civilian leaders agree that if the war in Europe is to end, if Hitler is to be defeated, Operation Overlord cannot fail. On January 13, after a brief visit to the United States, Eisenhower reestablishes his headquarters in London and thus will begin the greatest buildup of troops and military equipment in history.
ERWIN ROMMEL
With Allied progress in Italy stymied by Kesselring’s stout defenses, Rommel sits idly at Lake Garda in northern Italy with virtually nothing to do. Though Rommel expects Hitler to name him overall commander of the entire Italian theater, such a move would place Rommel over the head of his former superior Kesselring. Hitler and his staff, satisfied that Kesselring is handling his forces with admirable skill, ignore Rommel’s wishes. Frustrated as always with inactivity, Rommel welcomes a new assignment, but feels he is once more being placed in a backwater of the war. On November 21, 1943, his Army Group B is ordered to relocate to France, and he moves his headquarters to a small town south of Paris. He is now under the command of sixty-eight-year-old Karl von Rundstedt, one of Germany’s most capable and respected commanders. Rommel effectively becomes the unofficial inspector general of Germany’s defenses along the west coast of France, known as Hitler’s Atlantic Wall. Predictably, Rommel’s aggressive personality clashes with that of the aging von Rundstedt, who, along with Hitler, dismisses predictions of an Allied invasion of the French coast.
GEORGE PATTON
To the dismay of the entire Allied command, Patton’s “slapping incident” becomes public knowledge in the United States, when the event is revealed in detail by newspaper columnist Drew Pearson. The outcry is immediate and damning, especially from Roosevelt’s enemies in Congress, and enormous effort is made in the War Department and in Eisenhower’s command to deflect the well-publicized outrage, which could certainly end Patton’s career. Patton accepts fully the responsibility for the tidal wave of negative sentiment, and in a series of well-documented appearances, he apologizes publicly to his troops. His contrition does much to blunt the calls for his dismissal, as does the unwavering support from both Marshall and Eisenhower, who understand Patton’s value as a commander of troops in the field.
As Mark Clark’s Fifth Army churns its way through Italy, Patton remains frustrated by what he sees as incompetence from yet another Allied commander. He believes with perfect certainty that the Italian campaign should have been his to lead.
As men and equipment are stripped away from the Mediterranean theater, Patton’s Seventh Army is nearly denuded of troops. By the end of November, the Eighty-second Airborne and the Forty-fifth Infantry divisions are transferred to England, as part of the Overlord buildup. Faced with command over a nonexistent army, on November 17, 1943, he tells his diary,
I have seldom passed a more miserable day. From commanding 240,000 men, I now have less than five thousand.
On November 25, his mood reaches its darkest hour.
Thanksgiving Day. I had nothing to be thankful for, so I did not give thanks.
Despite Patton’s gloom, both Eisenhower and Marshall know that Patton will not simply remain in Sicily. Though Eisenhower tells Marshall that Patton “thinks only in terms of attack” and that Patton’s need for “showmanship” can prove costly, both men agree that Patton must have a significant role in Operation Overlord.
On January 25, 1944, after receiving his new orders, Patton gratefully departs for London. He is not yet fully aware that his new position will place him under the command of his former subordinate Omar Bradley.
JACK LOGAN
After his rescue from the prison camp in Bizerte, Tunisia, Logan spends more than a month on an American hospital ship in the Mediterranean, suffering from the wound on his leg, which stubbornly refuses to heal. Once he is released, he is transferred back to the tank center at Fort Knox, Kentucky. Promoted to sergeant, he serves as a trainer to new recruits and witnesses the army’s intense campaign to modernize and improve tank design.
Logan makes considerable effort to determine what became of his crewmates after the tank battle at Sbeïtla, but neither their physical remains nor any record of their capture is ever found, and all the men, including Captain Roy Gregg, are permanently listed as missing in action. Though he intends to return to Tunisia, always believing that some documentation can be found, he never makes the journey. It is a cross he bears for the rest of his life.
With the war’s conclusion, he is discharged from the army and returns to his family home in St. Petersburg, Florida. He serves that city briefly as a police officer, but cannot ignore his love of the waters that surround his home. In 1955 he buys a fishing boat and becomes a commercial fisherman, a career that sustains him until his death in 2004 at age eighty-six. Though friends know he served in the war, he almost never speaks of his experiences, refers to himself simply as “a veteran.” He claims never to have married, but his funeral is attended by several elderly women, who offer no explanation for their presence.
HAROLD ALEXANDER
He remains in overall command of the Allied forces in Italy until the capture of Rome, in June 1944. Promoted to field marshal, he is named supreme Allied commander in the Mediterranean in December 1944 and occupies that post until the end of the war. He is the senior Allied commander to receive Germany’s final surrender in Italy, in April 1945.
After the war, Alexander becomes the last British governor-general of Canada, and in 1952 he is granted the title of First Earl of Tunis. He retires from government service in 1954, after a dismal turn as Churchill’s minister of defense.
He pens his memoirs, a book widely dismissed as inaccurate and self-serving, and yet remains a popular public figure in England until his death in 1969, at age seventy-eight. Always regarded as an extremely capable administrator, his career is nonetheless marked by criticism of his inability to confront and control those subordinates whose personalities dominate his own. Most notable among these is Bernard Montgomery.
CLAUDE AUCHINLECK
One of Britain’s most capable commanders, Auchinleck never r
eceives credit for the groundwork laid in North Africa, which provided much of the foundation for Montgomery’s enormous victory over Rommel at El Alamein. Betrayed often by the hesitation or outright incompetence of his subordinates, Auchinleck is blamed by Churchill for the loss of Tobruk, and he accepts the responsibility for the failures of his command with predictable dignity. Often ignored is that both his replacement, Harold Alexander, and his primary subordinate, Bernard Montgomery, adopt the identical strategy that Auchinleck had already proposed to confront Rommel.
In a gesture designed to save face for Auchinleck, Churchill offers him command of British forces in Persia, but Auchinleck refuses, and after nearly twelve months of inactivity, he is named commander in chief of Allied forces in India, a post he had previously held. He serves there under Lord Louis Mountbatten, who commands the entire South East Asia Theater. The two men clash repeatedly, and after the war, their conflicts continue, primarily over differences in the handling of the boiling political turmoil in India. Ultimately, Mountbatten prevails, and in 1947, at Mountbatten’s insistence, Auchinleck resigns his command.
Never one to champion his own accomplishments, he returns to London to life as a private citizen, becomes active in various civil causes, including the London Federation of Boys’ Clubs. He displays surprising talent as an artist, and despite intense commercial interest in his paintings, he never pursues his art as anything more than a hobby. He dismisses his own talents and claims that interest in his paintings comes about only because “you don’t expect field marshals to paint.”
In 1967, Auchinleck surprises his friends by moving to Marrakech, Morocco, which he believes will offer him, at eighty-two, a climate more suitable to his ailments, though he remains in excellent health. He dies there in 1981, at age ninety-six.
ANDREW CUNNINGHAM
Once the Italian government negotiates its surrender with Eisenhower, the Italian navy accepts the terms as well, and in September 1943 the fleet escapes potential capture by the Germans by fleeing to the British base at Malta. Credited with that success, the aging Admiral Cunningham has the final word in engineering Allied control of the Mediterranean Sea.
In October 1943, after nearly forty years’ service in that theater, Cunningham is named first sea lord, the highest-ranking naval office in the British military. He serves as Churchill’s chief naval adviser throughout the remainder of the war, though he often clashes with the fiery prime minister, who as a former sea lord himself often intrudes into Cunningham’s areas of responsibility.
He resigns the position in 1946, believing his service to the Crown is over. He is not quite correct; in 1950 he is appointed lord high commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.
In the mid-1950s, he writes his memoirs, an extremely popular account of his life at sea. Widely regarded as one of Britain’s most accomplished and able seamen, he dies in London in 1963, at age eighty. He is of course buried at sea.
ALBERT KESSERLING
The man known derisively as Smiling Al continues to prove that his optimism over the capabilities of his troops is completely warranted. Though Kesselring’s strategy in Italy contradicts what both Hitler and Rommel consider the wisest use of troops, Kesselring proves that Hitler’s decision to stand by him is of enormous benefit to the German cause. Throughout the Normandy invasion, Kesselring remains in Italy, and in mid-1944, after the fall of Rome, he continues to withdraw German forces northward with bloody stubbornness.
In March 1945, Kesselring replaces Karl von Rundstedt as Hitler’s highest-ranking field commander in Western Europe. As Germany collapses under the weight of Allied and Russian armies, Kesselring, alongside Admiral Karl Dönitz, maintains command of the last-gasp efforts of German forces. He is captured in May 1945 and charged by a British court with war crimes against Italian civilians, but is spared execution, instead receives a sentence of life in prison. His health begins to fail, and since he is never linked to the atrocities committed by the Nazis, the British release him from prison in 1952. Shortly after, he completes his memoirs, which are published a year later. He dies in 1960, in Bad Nauheim, Germany, at age seventy-five.
MARK “WAYNE” CLARK
Often blamed for prolonging the war in Italy by his plodding and ineffective operations, Clark is nonetheless praised by Eisenhower and Marshall as one of the Americans’ most capable commanders. Though the capture of Rome seems to be a logical and successful conclusion to the Italian campaign, Clark insists on pursuing the German forces northward and thus insures that the costly fight will continue into 1945.
In December 1944 he replaces Harold Alexander as commander of the Fifteenth Army Group, and in March 1945 while still battling German forces in northern Italy, he is promoted to full general. At age forty-eight, he is the youngest four-star general in the American army.
After Germany’s surrender, Clark commands American troops in Austria, where his no-nonsense diplomatic style puts him in constant conflict with his Soviet counterparts. In 1946, he transfers to London, where he continues to haggle over issues related to Austrian sovereignty and the Allies’ efforts to deal with the collapse of that country’s economy.
In 1947, he returns to the United States, settles in San Francisco as the commander of the American Sixth Army. He is nominated by President Truman as the first U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, but there are boisterous objections. The Italian campaign had resulted in the destruction of many Italian landmarks, including the complete obliteration of the monastery at Monte Cassino, which Clark had ordered. Whether or not he can be held culpable, the protests by Catholics in both the United States and Italy force Truman to withdraw the appointment.
In 1950, his memoirs are published, which provide a no-holds-barred examination of his life as a soldier, though of course he justifies his actions in every instance, a lightly veiled reaction to his many critics.
Two years later, Clark is named UN supreme commander in Korea, replacing General Matthew Ridgway. Clark oversees the peace talks at Panmunjom and succeeds both militarily and diplomatically in breaking the deadlock, which ultimately brings that war to a conclusion.
In 1954, Clark is named president of the Citadel, in Charleston, South Carolina, a position he occupies until 1965. He remains active after his retirement, serving as a popular and well-respected president emeritus of that institution. He dies in Charleston in 1984, at age eighty-seven, and is buried at the Citadel.
ROBERT MURPHY
The man responsible for much of the political labor between the Americans and the French in North Africa is rarely given credit for what he accomplishes in that post. Eisenhower recognizes that Murphy’s efforts allow a far more peaceful occupation of Morocco and Algeria than the army could have accomplished with force alone. Murphy is faulted by some in the State Department for being a champion of both Henri Giraud and Jean Darlan and is often dismissed by his peers in the diplomatic community, especially the British, who consider him only to be Eisenhower’s minion. It is an unfair criticism.
He continues to assist Eisenhower with the diplomatic delicacy required in North Africa and, in late 1943, is instrumental in engineering the surrender of Italy.
As Charles de Gaulle gains influence in North Africa, Murphy requests a transfer to another post, a gracious admission that he simply cannot handle de Gaulle.
After the war, Murphy assists Eisenhower once more, this time by helping to establish an Allied administrative government in occupied Germany. In 1952, he becomes U.S. ambassador to Japan, the first man to hold that post after the conclusion of the war. But Washington recalls him a year later, the State Department recognizing that his skills can be used to assist in the growth of the fledgling United Nations.
He retires in 1959, turns down an appointment as ambassador to Germany, believes that the energy required for diplomatic tap dancing is best found in younger men. He publishes his memoirs in 1964 and occasionally serves as a diplomatic adviser to Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. Murphy e
njoys a comfortable retirement in New York City and dies in 1978 at age eighty-four.
PAUL TIBBETS
The pilot of the B-17 the Red Gremlin, who so often flies Eisenhower and Clark through the treacherous skies between London and the Mediterranean, does not remain in that theater of the war past 1943. Though Tibbets has proven to be an accomplished bomber pilot in numerous combat missions over Europe and North Africa, he receives a radically different assignment. Promoted to colonel, he is transferred to Wendover Field in Utah, where Tibbets begins to train as a pilot in the far-larger B-29 bombers. In spring 1945, Tibbets is transferred to the island of Tinian, in the western Pacific. He participates in several bombing runs on the Japanese mainland, and on August 6, 1945, he is the primary officer on one mission that will change history. He pilots the B-29 Enola Gay, which drops the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
AND,
GENERAL DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER; GENERAL OMAR BRADLEY; SERGEANT JESSE ADAMS; CAPTAIN EDWIN SCOFIELD; GENERAL JAMES GAVIN; GENERAL BERNARD MONTGOMERY.
These men, as well as Patton, Rommel, and many others, will combine to create the most vivid historical event in the twentieth century. In June 1944, the world will wait breathlessly as the Allies launch the largest and most powerful military invasion in history. But that’s a story all its own.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JEFF SHAARA is the New York Times bestselling author of To the Last Man, The Glorious Cause, Rise to Rebellion, and Gone for Soldiers, as well as Gods and Generals and The Last Full Measure—two novels that complete the Civil War trilogy that began with his father’s Pulitzer Prize–winning classic The Killer Angels. Shaara was born into a family of Italian immigrants in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He grew up in Tallahassee, Florida, and graduated from Florida State University. He lives in Tallahassee. Visit the author online at www.JeffShaara.com.
