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The Day of Battle

Page 82

by Rick Atkinson


  Churchill could sense: Cartwright, “The Military District of Washington, 1942–1945,” 116–18 (“largest feeding operation”); Hart, 92, 135 (“Madhouse”); NYT, May 2, 1943, 3 (twelve thousand men); Washington Evening Star, May 15, 1943, 1 (draft dodgers).

  Among other signs: NYT, May 2, 1943 (“rumor clinics”); NYT, May 9, 1943, 26 (“White or Colored”); Brinkley, 185 (forty-six errors); NYT, May 12, 1943 (blond hair).

  Amid the mania: Hart, 178.

  They got to work: William Seale, The President’s House, vol. II, 918, 937–76; Danchev, 403 (massive desk).

  Five months earlier: Matloff, 123; Cline, 219; Garland, 17 (“grand design”).

  The president’s brain trust: FRUS, 19 (“The man from London”); Coakley, 62 (“No closed minds”).

  “What should come next?”: FRUS, 25–26.

  The prime minister had used the phrase: Cline, 218; GS IV, 145 (“underbelly”); FRUS, 25–26; Churchill, The Hinge of Fate, 794 (“occupation of Italy”). Churchill, in a conversation with Joseph Stalin in August 1942, also used the phrase “soft belly” while sketching a crocodile intended to represented Axis-occupied Europe. Churchill, The Hinge of Fate, 481.

  There it was, the British strategy: FRUS, 30; Churchill, The Hinge of Fate, 794; John S. D. Eisenhower, Allies: Pearl Harbor to D-Day, 63 (“cigarette-holder gesture”).

  This impasse persisted: Kenneth S. Davis, Experience of War, 393; FRUS, 223 (“Global Strategy of the War”).

  A tall, austere man: Eric Larrabee, Commander in Chief, 102–3 (a clean-desk man), 99, 112; OH, Gen. Lord Ismay, Oct. 18, 1960, FCP, transcript, tape 40, GCM Lib (“a little aloof”); OH, Andrew J. Goodpaster to author, Washington, D.C., Aug. 17, 2004 (“Are you confident”); author visit, Dodona Manor (Marshall home), Leesburg, Va., Apr. 1998. Churchill’s “greatest Roman” accolade came in 1945.

  Invading Italy: FRUS, 44–45.

  Arguments spilled: Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower, vol. I, 242; Garland, 17 (twelve million tons); Albert C. Wedemeyer, Wedemeyer Reports!, 134 (lacked sufficient ports); GS V, 115 (“side-shows”); Maurice Matloff, Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1943–1944, 74 (“unremunerative scatterization”).

  “Mediterranean operations”: Wedemeyer, 218.

  Listening attentively: Danchev, 247 (“great gentleman”), 448, xvi, xiv (“Froggie”), 400; Moran, 121 (“a year off my life”); Bryant, 685 (“the night work”); David Fraser, Alanbrooke, 341 (Southeran’s shop); Kennedy, 290 (Birds of the Ocean).

  Now he quarreled: FRUS, 225.

  Brooke pressed the point: FRUS, 41–45, 269; Coakley, 64–65.

  A stack of studies: Cochran, “Spectre of Defeat,” 297 (“If Italy collapses”); Coakley, 64 (“breaking the Axis”).

  But, Brooke warned: FRUS, 43, 45.

  Momentary silence fell: Wedemeyer, 211 (“no intention”); Coakley, 65 (“divert our forces”).

  At Marshall’s suggestion: Danchev, 403.

  Washington lacked: GS IV, 410 (endless meetings); “Notes for Mr. Aubrey Morgan” (black-tie affairs).

  Fans at a Washington Nationals: “Memoirs of Sir John Dill, 1942–1944,” Reginald Winn Collection, GCM Lib, 36; FRUS, 39 (Helen with Paris); corr, Anna Roosevelt Boettiger to John Boettiger, May 15, 1943, Boettiger Papers, box 5, FDR Lib (Churchill sat transfixed).

  To escape both official Washington: Pogue, 202–3.

  If Washington had been atwitter: Gerald Horton Bath, “A Report on the Visit of the British High Command to Colonial Williamsburg, May 15th and 16th, 1943,” ts, n.d., Frank McCarthy Collection, box 27, folder 29, GCM Lib.

  Sunday morning: ibid.; Danchev, 423 (Gould’s Birds).

  While the chiefs went south: memo, May 11, 1943, Secret Service records, file 103-1: President Roosevelt, 1943, box 5, FDR Lib; Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History, 729 (Whittier’s ballad); Moran, 101 (“gabbled the whole poem”).

  For three days they unbent: letter, Anna Roosevelt Boettiger to John Boettiger, May 14, 1943, Boettiger Papers, box 5, FDR Lib (“picks his teeth”); Jon Meacham, Franklin and Winston, 225, 234 (“Isn’t this a beauty”).

  They had much in common: Larrabee, 13 (“loved the military side”); Maurice Matloff, “Mr. Roosevelt’s Three Wars: FDR as War Leader,” Harmon Lecture, No. 6, U.S. Air Force Academy, 1964, 6 (“diversionist tendencies”); Pogue, 316 (combat casualty figures); Meacham, 228 (“a wonderful old Tory”).

  Churchill could draw near: Larrabee, 644; OH, Stephen T. Early, June 9, 1947, MHI, OCMH, WWII, General Miscl (“wished to have things done”); Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won, 261 (“Not a tidy mind”); Larrabee, 644 (“He decides”).

  He reduced his own political philosophy: Overy, 260; Larrabee, 626 (Four Freedoms); Kimball, ed., vol. I, 337 (“same decade”); Elliott Roosevelt, As He Saw It, 130 (“on the decline”).

  America was ascendant: memo, Robert Sherwood to Harry Hopkins, May 13, 1943, H.L. Hopkins Papers, Sherwood Collection, book 7, TRIDENT, box 329, FDR Lib.

  But if Britain was on the decline: Harold Macmillan, War Diaries, 316 (“great torso”); Roosevelt, 126 (sinus condition); Matloff, “Mr. Roosevelt’s Three Wars,” 4–5.

  Negotiations resumed: GS IV, 419 (“spirit of the chase”); Garland, 21 (refused to concede); FRUS, 114 (“extremely difficult”).

  It was a curious compromise: msg, WD to DDE, #278, May 26, 1943, CCS cables, OCMH, NARA RG 319, 270/19/6/3, box 243; GS IV, 432.

  The baby had been cut: Danchev, 407.

  TRIDENT had another week: diary, Henry A. Wallace, May 24, 1943, micro, FDR Lib (“We Anglo-Saxons”); Danchev (fourteen stone steps); Fraser, 346–47 (two rare bird books).

  Rarely content: FRUS, May 23, 1943; Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time, 439 (exhausted president); Leahy, 162; Moran, 103–4 (“a very tired man”).

  Harry Hopkins warned: Goodwin, 439 (“spoiled boy”); FRUS, 198 (“piece of baggage”); Moran, 111 (“too much for us”).

  Still, the sweep of his rhetoric: Gerald Pawle, The War and Colonel Warden, 234; Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. VII, 409 (“War is full of mysteries”); Times (London), May 20, 1943, 4 (“By singleness of purpose”); Grace Tully, F.D.R., My Boss, 329 (“catch phrases”).

  For the first time: Harriman and Abel, 211; Leahy, 165 (“mellow light”); FRUS, 377 (“complete meeting of minds”).

  “over-egged the pudding”: Brian Holden Reid, “The Italian Campaign, 1943–1945: A Reappraisal of Allied Generalship,” Journal of Strategic Studies, vol. 13, no. 1 (March 1990), 128+.

  “the best I could get”: Leahy, 163.

  The dispatch of Allied armies: Matloff, 76, 244.

  Perhaps the greatest achievement: André Malraux (“Let victory belong to those who made war without liking it”), quoted by Jean-Paul Sartre, Modern Times, cited in Danchev, xxvi.

  At four P.M. on Tuesday: PREM 4/72/3, UK NA.

  Roosevelt sat in the armless wheelchair: Seale, 947, 976–77 (bulletproof glass); FRUS, 211–20 (899th press conference); Times (London), May 27, 1943, 1 (“shaking the life”).

  CHAPTER 1: ACROSS THE MIDDLE SEA

  Forcing the World Back to Reason

  The sun beat down: corr, Heinz Seltmann to author, June 9, 2005 (neckties); memo, GSP, No. 57, June 17, 1943, NARA RG 338, II Corps, plans & policy file, box 146 ($25 fine).

  Algiers seethed: Eric Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream, 362 (merchant mariners); Paul W. Brown, The Whorehouse of the World, 134–35 (“El Alamein”); Benjamin A. Dickson, “G-2 Journal: Algiers to the Elbe,” MHI, 76 (“Sand in your shoes”); Peter Schrijvers, The Crash of Ruin, 120 (index fingers).

  Electric streetcars: memo, DDE to E. Hughes, July 23, 1943, PP-pres, DDE Lib, box 58 (amnesty); Malcolm S. McLean, “Adventures in Occupied Areas,” ts, 1975, MHI, 31–32 (“every conceivable”); Sevareid, 361 (young Frenchmen and Hotel Aletti); F. Eugene Liggett, “No, Not Yet: Military Memoirs,” ts, n.d., ASEQ, 158th FA, 45th Div., MHI (pantaloons); “History, Mediterranean Base Section, Sept. 1942�
��May 1944,” CMH, 9-4 CA, 1944 (ban on prostitution).

  Above it all: “History of Allied Forces Headquarters,” CMH, 8-4 AD, vol. 2, Sept. 1945, sketch.

  Hewitt lowered his salute: “U.S. Naval Operations in the Northwestern African-Mediterranean Theater,” ts, n.d., HKH papers, box 3, NHC, 18.

  With the ceremony at an end: “History of Allied Forces Headquarters,” 243–46 (approached four thousand); “The Administrative History of the Eighth Fleet,” ts, n.d., U.S. Naval History Division, #139, folder 3, 9–10 (twelve thousand); “Notes for Meeting with Colonel Warden,” Jan. 14, 1944, NARA RG 331, AFHQ micro, R-225-B (seven undersea cables); S. W. Roskill, The War at Sea, 1939–1945, vol. III, part 1, 127 (“Carry out”).

  He was a fighting admiral: OH, Floride Hewitt Taylor to author, Apr. 12, 2005, Newport, R.I.; L.S.B. Shapiro, They Left the Back Door Open, 118 (“well-upholstered”); OH, HKH, John T. Mason, 1961, Col U OHRO, 5–6 (“Softly Now”); “Keuffel & Esser correspondence,” HKH, NHC, box 2; George Sessions Perry, “Why Don’t They Write About Hewitt?,” Saturday Evening Post, Dec. 16, 1944, 22+ (“does his barking”); OH, HKH, n.d., Julian Boit and James Riley, NHC, box 6, 1–2, 9 (soup kitchen).

  He called for his staff car: Walter Karig, Battle Report: The Atlantic War, 233; David Williams, Liners in Battledress, 151–53 (false bow wave); Ivan H. “Cy” Peterman, “U.S.S. Savannah,” Philadelphia Inquirer, Sept. 1943, SEM, box 55, NHC; Pyle, 6–7 (Precautions against fire).

  Hewitt’s flagship: war log, U.S.S. Monrovia, NARA RG 38, OCNO, WWII war diaries, box 1233; Karig, 233 (ten to twenty officers); A. J. Redway, “Admiral Jerauld Wright: The Life and Recollections of the Supreme Allied Commander,” ts, 1995, NHC, 295 (fourteen hundred men); action report, U.S.S. Monrovia, July 17, 1943, NARA RG 38, OCNO, WWII Action & Operational Reports, box 1231 (200,000 rounds).

  Twenty typists: Alexander S. Cochran, “Chicken or Eggs? Operations TORCH and HUSKY and U.S. Army Amphibious Doctrine,” paper, 14th Naval History Symposium, USNA, Sept. 1999.

  Hewitt could remember: Perry, “Why Don’t They Write About Hewitt?”; OH, Floride Hewitt Taylor to author, Apr. 12, 2005.

  More than three thousand: No two lists agree on the total number of vessels in HUSKY; estimates generally range from 2,500 to 3,200. Roskill, 127; SSA, 28; HKH, AAR, “The Sicilian Campaign,” n.d., 1; “The Administrative History of the Eighth Fleet,” 20 (“the most gigantic fleet”).

  tiny fortified island of Pantelleria: Edith C. Rodgers, “The Reduction of Pantelleria and Adjacent Islands,” May 1947, AAF Historical Studies, No. 52, Air Historical Office, 40–45; “Allied Commander-in-Chief’s Report, Pantelleria Operations, June 1943,” 59–60; MEB, “The Fall of Pantelleria and the Pelagian Islands,” Feb. 1959, NARA RG 319, E 145, OCMH, R-Series Manuscripts, 270/19/30-31/6-2, R-115, 24–32a; memo, “Lessons from Operations Against Pantelleria,” July 12, 1943, AFHQ, “Survey and Analysis,” Pantelleria, CMH, Geog Italy, 384.3; Solly Zuckerman, From Apes to Warlords, 185–95.

  A map of the Mediterranean: Robert A. Hewitt, SOOHP, Earl D. Bevan, 1982, MHI, 126; Thaddeus V. Tuleja, “H. Kent Hewitt,” in Stephen Howarth, ed., Men of War, 315 (two variables).

  nine new variations of landing craft: S.W.C. Pack, Operation Husky, 44; Evelyn M. Cherpak, ed., The Memoirs of Admiral H. Kent Hewitt, 181 (never been to sea); “Notes on the Planning and Assault Phases of the Sicilian Campaign,” Combined Operations HQ Bulletin No. Y/1, Oct. 1943, 4 (little was known).

  Much had been learned: Harold Larson, “Handling Army Cargo in the Second World War,” ts, 1945, CMH, 4-13.1 AA 19, 242, 250 (Schenectady Plan); H. H. Dunham, “U.S. Army Transportation and the Conquest of Sicily,” Mongraph No. 13, March 1945, NARA RG 336, Chief of Transportation, ASF, Historical Program Files, box 141, 29 (no plans for loading); Walter B. Smith, “Mediterranean Operations,” Oct. 13, 1943, ANSCOL, L-2-43, SM-67, NARA RG 334, NWC Lib, 4 (neglected to make room); HKH, AAR, “The Sicilian Campaign,” n.d., 47 (Every unit pleaded).

  Despite the risk: AAR, Amphibious Force Transport QM, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, Aug. 6, 1943, in Army Observers, Amphibious Forces, MHI, 1–2; William Reginald Wheeler, ed., The Road to Victory: A History of Hampton Roads Port of Embarkation in World War II, 99; “The Administrative History of the Eighth Fleet,” 35 (no bread pans).

  gas shells: Eventually the mustard would turn up in several Sicilian ammo dumps, including a stockpile fifty miles inland at Nicosia, three weeks into the campaign. “History of Ordnance Service in the Mediterranean Theater, Nov. 1942–Nov. 1945,” CMH, 8-4 JA, 54.

  “I was frequently partisan”: “The Reminiscences of George W. Bauernschmidt,” 1969–70, USNI OHD, 160.

  A satire of censorship regulations: John Mason Brown, To All Hands, 193–94.

  One airman tried to comply: Fred Howard, Whistle While You Wait, 160; Steve Kluger, Yank, 101 (“headed for trouble”).

  More than half a million: “Summary of Activities,” analysis and control div., NATOUSA, June 1, 1944, CMH, 3; Brown, To All Hands, 7 (civilian occupations).

  “fierce world of death”: Pyle, 2.

  In the seven weeks: E. N. Harmon to GCM, Aug. 13, 1943, GCM Lib, corr, box 70 (“question of discipline”); JPL, 13–14 (“felt very sorry”); Bernard Stambler, “Campaign in Sicily,” ts, n.d., vol. 2, CMH, 2-3.7 AA.L, 3 (“self-maiming”); corr, Joseph T. Dawson to family, May 22, 1943, 16th Inf, MRC-FDM (“self-commiseration”).

  “sense of the soldiering self”: Samuel Hynes, The Soldiers’ Tale, 151; They were young: “Age of Soldiers in Civil War, World War I and World War II,” Legislative and Policy Precedent File, 183/122, NARA RG 407, 270/49/17/7, box 34; John Muirhead, Those Who Fall, 9 (“our youth”).

  “our most democratic war”: Samuel Hynes, introduction, Reporting World War II, one-vol. abridgment, xx; The Princeton Class of 1942 During World War II; Lynn H. Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, 223 (“men of a new profession”).

  And what did they believe: “Extract from Monthly Sanitary Report,” Aug. 31, 1943, MWC, corr, Citadel, box 3; Eric Larrabee, Commander in Chief, 626 (Four Freedoms); Chandler, vol. II, 1276 (“less than half”); Margaret Bourke-White, Purple Heart Valley, 73 (“I was drafted”).

  Their pervasive “civilianness”: Brown, To All Hands, 224; Donald McB. Curtis, The Song of the Fighting First, 132; Lawrence D. Collins, The 56th Evac Hospital, 90; Paul Dickson, War Slang, 113–23; Three Years, 389 (A single crude acronym).

  Yet they held: Brown, To All Hands, 224; George Biddle, Artist at War, 123; John Sloan Brown, Draftee Division, 103 (“lick those bastards”).

  The same surveys: Larrabee, 626.

  “Many of the men”: George Sessions Perry, “A Reporter at Large,” New Yorker, July 24, 1943, 50+; Muirhead, 106–7 (“could not bear the shame”).

  “a gentle obsolescent breed”: Samuel Hynes, The Soldiers’ Tale, 143.

  “fighting for their right to be hypocrites”: corr, George Henry Revelle, Jr., to Evelyn, July 7, 1943, author’s possession.

  Across the great southern rim: Paul A. Cundiff, 45th Infantry CP, 6; Hamilton H. Howze, A Cavalryman’s Story, 78–79; Hamilton H. Howze, “35 Years and Then Some,” ts, n.d., Howze papers, box 10, MHI, VII, 1–2 (locust swarms); Charles F. Ryan et al., “2nd Armored Division in the Sicilian Campaign,” May 1950, AS, Ft. K, 57 (a hundred flatcars); Donald E. Houston, Hell on Wheels, 148 (engineer at gunpoint).

  the 45th Infantry Division: “History of Planning Division, Army Service Forces,” vol. 1, n.d., CMH, 3-2.2 AA, 90–92; Joseph Bykofsky and Harold Larson, The Transportation Corps: Operations Overseas, 195; Cundiff, 19; Wheeler, 86 (mine detectors); Alfred M. Beck et al., The Corps of Engineers: The War Against Germany, 133 (all nineteen troop-ships); Leo J. Meyer, “Strategy and Logistical History: MTO,” ts, n.d., CMH, 2-3.7 CC5, XIII-61 (ordered to the Pacific); Emajean Jordan Buechner, Sparks, 64 (Company J); Don Robinson, News of the 45th, 52 (iced tea); Brown, To All Hands, 27, 41, 228 (“Happy Hour”).

  The 45th was a National Guard division: E. J. Kah
n, Jr., “Education of an Army,” New Yorker, vol. 20, no. 35, Oct. 14, 1944, 28+; Flint Whitlock, The Rock of Anzio, 18–19 (“no good”); Peter R. Mansoor, The GI Offensive in Europe, 102 (“better prepared”); unit history, Ben C. Garbowski, ASEQ, 157th Inf., MHI; Frank Farner, ed., Thunderbird: 45th Infantry Division, 15 (Wolftown Guards); Whitlock, 20–21; George A. Fisher, The Story of the 180th Infantry Regiment (war dance).

  Chancre Alley: Loyd J. Biss, “Three Years, Four Months and Twenty-seven Days,” ts, n.d., author’s possession, 19; Fred Sheehan, Anzio: Epic of Bravery, 48 (“provost marshal’s report”); Frank James Price, Troy H. Middleton: A Biography, 146 (brandy); Kenneth D. Williamson, “Tales of a Thunderbird,” ts, n.d., 45th ID Mus, 73, 84, 87 (scooping up dimes).

  Along with the money: DDE to CG, NATOUSA SOS, June 3, 1943, NARA RG 165, E 422, OPD Exec Files, box 16; OH, John E. Hull, 1974, SOOHP, James W. Wurman, MHI, 57 (bayonets too dull).

  Three hundred and forty crow-flying miles: Quentin Reynolds, The Curtain Rises, 309–10; Cherpak, ed., 188–89.

  “solid forest of masts”: “Notes on PT History in Mediterranean: Letter from LCDR S. M. Barnes, commander of Motor Torpedo Squadron 15, to CDR Bulkley,” n.d., SEM, NHC, box 54, 33; memo, Bert M. Rudd, “Landing Craft and Bases,” AGF Observer, July 16, 1943, ANSCOL, NARA RG 334, NWC Lib, box 150, 1 (“into anchored vessels”); Edmund F. Ball, Staff Officer with the Fifth Army, 344 (“Poems are made”); Paul W. Pritchard, “Smoke Generator Operations in the Mediterranean and European Theaters of Operation,” Chemical Corps, n.d., CMH, 4-7.1 FA 1; Pyle, 6 (Luftwaffe raiders); Anders Kjar Arnbal, The Barrel-Land Dance Hall Rangers, 100 (steel hail); Nigel Nicolson, The Grenadier Guards in the War of 1939–1945, vol. II, 347 (“Bring up your children”).

  “Florida”: OH, William Francis Powers, Aug. 1985, CEOH.

  None of the namesake camps: Howard, 30, 103 (“wog wine”); AAR, 3/26th Inf, July 1–5, 1943, MRC FDM; Jean Gordon Peltier, World War II Diary of Jean Gordon Peltier, 91–92 (peppermint); AAR, “1st Embarkation Group, Eastern Base Section,” Aug. 1943, CARL, N-2763, 39–48 (German field ranges); Maxwell D. Taylor, Swords and Plowshares, 48; Clifford W. Dorman, “Too Soon for Heroes,” ts, n.d., author’s possession, 57 (TNT); diary, July 7, 1943, JMG, MHI, box 10 (ten young bulls).

 

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