by Alan Axelrod
As he resumed work on plans for Operation Husky, he received congratulations from Marshall—“You have done a fine job and have justified our confidence in you”—and from Eisenhower: “I hope that you . . . personally will accept my sincere congratulations upon the outstanding example of leadership you have given us all.” In the privacy of his diary, Patton, who always craved recognition and praise from others, seemed to suggest that he had now moved beyond this need: “As I gain in experience, I do not think more of myself but less of others. Men, even so-called great men, are wonderfully weak and timid. They are too damned polite. War is very simple, direct, and ruthless. It takes a simple, direct, and ruthless man to wage war.” Then, looking at the words he had just written, Patton wrote: “Some times I wonder if I will have to laugh at myself for writing things like the above.” He must have lifted his pen from the paper and paused before adding: “But I think not.”14
CHAPTER 8
Conqueror of Sicily
AS ORIGINALLY DRAWN UP IN WASHINGTON AND LONDON, far from the scene of the proposed action, the plan for Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily, was admirably straightforward. The British Eighth Army (designated the Eastern Task Force), under Bernard Law Montgomery, would land around Catania on the eastern shore of Sicily, and the I Armored Corps (the Western Task Force), commanded by Patton, would land near Palermo on the northern shore. The two task forces were to secure these major port cities, which would enable an orderly buildup of additional troops as the task forces drove along the eastern and northern coastal roads to link up at Messina on the northeastern tip of the island. In this way, not only would Sicily be conquered, but the Allied armies would end up in an ideal position from which to launch an invasion of the Italian mainland.
The broad, slashing strokes of this unadorned plan greatly appealed to Patton. Montgomery, however, saw it very differently. To him, it was as an egregious example of “penny-packet” warfare because the plan divided the assault forces, spreading them out over some 600 miles of Sicilian coastline. Montgomery feared that Husky would suffer the fate of the early assaults in Tunisia, which General Sir Claude Auchinleck had conducted in similarly piecemeal fashion. The plan was, he pronounced, “a dog’s breakfast,” and his criticism led to three months of tortured wrangling among the British themselves and between the British and the Americans. Patton, who must have recognized that the others regarded him as a fighter, a field commander and tactician, not a strategist, mostly stayed out of the debate, which reached a three-hour anticlimax in a meeting of April 29, 1943. Tempers flared and, as Patton wrote to Beatrice afterward, “It ended in stalemate. It was one hell of a performance. War by committee.”1
Then, three days later, it was all suddenly resolved.
On May 2, Montgomery strode into Allied headquarters, Algiers, asked for Eisenhower’s chief of staff, Walter Bedell Smith—universally called Beetle or Beadle—and was told he was in the lavatory. Montgomery walked into the lavatory, cornered Beadle Smith, and took him to a mirror hanging over the sink. He breathed on the mirror and, with his finger, outlined the inverted triangle of Sicily. He then traced a plan in which his Eighth Army landed at two locations on the northeast corner of Sicily on either side of Messina while Patton’s I Armored Corps (to be redesignated the Seventh U.S. Army once it landed) would make three landings below Montgomery along the eastern coast at Gela, Scoglitti, and Licata for the sole purpose of supporting Montgomery’s assault.
In an Algerian men’s room, Montgomery succeeded in doing what three months of conference-room debate had failed to do: formulate an acceptable plan for the invasion of Sicily. Patton hardly relished being cast in the shadow of Montgomery, and wrote in his diary, “The U.S. is getting gypped,” then he reminded himself that “the thing I must do is retain my SELF-CONFIDENCE. I have greater ability than these other people and it comes from, for lack of a better word, what we must call greatness of soul based on a belief—an unshakable belief—in my destiny.” For Patton, that destiny meant that “The U.S. must win—not as an ally, but as a conqueror.” To his staff, he allowed himself a rare expression of disgust with Eisenhower, complaining that Montgomery’s dominance of Operation Husky is “what you get when your Commander-in-Chief ceases to be an American and becomes an Ally.”2
To his field officers at all levels, Patton expressed neither discontent nor doubt. Instead, on June 5, he issued a letter of instructions in which he distilled into aphorisms some of his most memorable war-fighting principles:
There is only one sort of discipline—perfect discipline. . . .
Discipline must be a habit so ingrained that it is stronger than the excitement of battle or the fear of death. . . .
Officers who fail to correct errors or to praise excellence are valueless in peace and dangerous misfits in war.
Officers must assert themselves by example and by voice. . . .
There is only one tactical principle which is not subject to change. It is: “To use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of wounds, death, and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of time.”
Never attack [enemy] strength [but rather his weakness]....
Casualties vary directly with the time you are exposed to effective fire. . . . Rapidity of attack shortens the time of exposure. . . .
If you cannot see the enemy . . . shoot at the place he is most likely to be. . . .
Battles are won by frightening the enemy. Fear is induced by inflicting death and wounds on him. Death and wounds are produced by fire. Fire from the rear is more deadly and three times more effective than fire from the front. . . .
Few men are killed by bayonets, but many are scared by them. Having the bayonet fixed makes our men want to close. Only the threat to close will defeat a determined enemy. . . .
Never take counsel of your fears. The enemy is more worried than you are. . . .
A good solution applied with vigor now is better than a perfect solution ten minutes later. . . .
IN CASE OF DOUBT, ATTACK!3
To the 90,000 men he led in the initial landings, Patton published a message as he sailed with them from Algiers: “We are indeed honored in having been selected [for] . . . this new and greater attack against the Axis. . . . When we land we will meet German and Italian soldiers whom it is our honor and privilege to attack and destroy.” He admonished his men to “keep punching,” warning that “in landing operations, retreat is impossible. To surrender is as ignoble as it is foolish. . . . No man is beaten until he thinks he is. . . . The glory of American arms, the honor of our country, the future of the whole world rests in your individual hands. See to it that you are worthy of this great trust.”4 There was, of course, no hint in this message of Patton’s feeling of “being gypped.” For one thing, that is not what a general tells men about to go into battle, and, for another, Patton was already thinking about how he would follow orders by supporting Montgomery’s attack, but also, in the process, not merely upstage him, but steal the whole show.
The landings took place before dawn on July 10, 1943. Montgomery met little initial resistance, quickly seized Syracuse, then was pinned down outside of Augusta, a dozen miles up the coast. The landing of Patton’s troops was hampered by fierce winds and high waves; however, naval artillery bombardment performed magnificently against enemy shore batteries, and the combined fire of the first American ground forces ashore and the naval batteries drove back German and Italian resistance at Gela. That resistance was renewed, and fiercely, on the following day, just as Patton and his staff were coming ashore. Attired in a freshly pressed uniform, complete with necktie and polished riding boots, exploding shells hitting the water not 30 yards away, Patton waded through the surf at 9:30 A.M. and proceeded directly to Gela to pay a visit on a fighting officer he greatly admired, Lieutenant Colonel William Darby, commander of the famed Rangers. Just as
Patton entered Gela, German and Italian troops launched an assault. Patton was thrilled to find himself thrust into the front lines,
and, as he always did in such situations, he strode among the troops, offering himself as a target, shouting encouragement, giving personal commands, exhorting the men to “Kill every one of the goddamn bastards,” and even lending a hand in laying (aiming) mortars.5
After he was satisfied that the enemy had been repulsed, Patton continued down the coastal road to the position commanded by Terry de la Mesa Allen, one of Patton’s most colorful subordinates. After arranging with Allen and subordinate commanders Theodore Roosevelt Jr. and Hugh J. Gaffey to attack on the following day, he drove back to Gela, where he again deliberately exposed himself to aerial bombardment as well as ground fire in order to inspire the men on shore. “I earned my pay,” he noted in his diary.6
In North Africa, Patton had discovered that the British not only habitually underrated the fighting ability of the American army, but also underestimated the great speed with which it was capable of moving, especially under his command. He decided to exploit this misconception to his advantage in the Sicily operation. Unknown to Montgomery, Patton had come ashore having decided to race, and beat him, to Messina.
After some delay, Montgomery finally took Augusta and began his advance to Catania along the route to Messina. Encountering very strong resistance, however, he decided to deploy his forces not only on the coastal road, which the battle plan had assigned to him, but on the inland road as well, which had been reserved for Patton’s forces. With the inland road suddenly (and, as he saw it, unfairly) appropriated, Patton could not proceed with his drive to Messina and, once again, found himself relegated to protecting Montgomery’s flank and rear. But instead of raging against Montgomery for violating the rules of engagement, Patton decided to make a change of his own and take Palermo, distant from Messina on the island’s northwest coast. There was no pressing strategic reason to take this objective at that time, but Patton knew that capturing the capital city of Sicily would score headlines as well as glory for the American army, not to mention for himself. Understandably fearful of being denied permission to take Palermo, Patton asked Alexander for authorization to take Agrigento and Porto Empidocle, more modest objectives next to one another on the south-central coast. Somewhat reluctantly, Alexander agreed. Patton then assigned the highly reliable Lucian Truscott to take Agrigento and instructed Omar Bradley, commanding II Corps, to yield the inland road to Montgomery then to attack to the north.
In the meantime, General Alexander issued an explicit order that Patton’s Seventh Army was to do nothing more than guard Montgomery’s rear. Patton flew back to North Africa on July 17 to lodge a personal protest with Alexander for this humiliating public order. With Montgomery now embarrassingly bogged down along both the inland and coastal roads, Patton felt emboldened to reveal to Alexander his plan to take Palermo. Embarrassed at having impugned the valor of an ally, Alexander hastily agreed.
Patton wasted no time. On his return to Sicily, he quickly formed a Provisional Corps, assigned it to his deputy commander, Major General Geoffrey Keyes, and ordered him to make an all-out effort to take Palermo. In just 72 hours, Keyes’s Provisional Corps covered 100 mountainous miles, mostly on foot. Truscott had rigorously trained the 3rd Division (which formed a major part of the corps assigned to Keyes) to march at the rate of five miles per hour instead of the army’s prescribed three. This celebrated “Truscott trot” helped get Keyes to Palermo on July 21, and the city quickly fell to him. Patton toured Palermo on the twenty-third, then returned to Agrigento on the following day. There he made sure that the press got an earful of how the American army had killed or wounded 6,000 Italian troops and captured 44,000 more in a glorious campaign that had seized the very heart of Sicily. Contrary to what some of his detractors claimed, Patton assiduously avoided taking personal credit for the conquest. It had been the work of General Keyes, he scrupulously told reporters. Indeed, the night before he was to take Palermo, Keyes called on Patton to invite him to enter the city first. “You took it,” Patton replied. “You enter and I will enter it after you.”7 There was never any question that Patton craved glory, but not just for himself; he craved it for his command and, ultimately, for the entire United States Army.
The triumph was not without its controversies, two of which contributed to the ever-growing Patton myth. To begin with, General Alexander had apparently regretted the blanket permission he gave for the assault on Palermo and, on July 19, had sent an order sharply curtailing Patton’s mission brief. Popular legend holds that Patton ignored the order, complaining that it was garbled in transmission. In fact, it was his chief of staff, Hobart “Hap” Gay, who intercepted the order, withheld it from his boss (as he knew Patton would want him to), let the limiting part of the order get lost in a desktop paper shuffle, then, after much delay, found the order and complained that it had been garbled in transmission. By the time it was retransmitted, of course, Palermo had fallen.8
The second incident took place on or about July 22. Near Licata, one of Patton’s armor columns ground to a halt at a bottleneck on a one-way bridge. In his typical fashion, Patton personally inspected the situation and discovered that the tanks and other vehicles were being exposed to enemy fire, including aerial strafing, because a pair of balky mules pulling a Sicilian farmer’s cart refused to budge. While the farmer and others cajoled and pleaded with the animals, Patton pulled out his revolver, shot each mule in the head, and then had both pushed off the bridge, still hitched to the cart. When the driver protested, the general admitted in a letter to his wife that he ended the dispute by breaking his walking stick over him. Patton (he explained to Beatrice) refused to have “human rights . . . exalted over victory.”9
Once Palermo was his, Patton turned his full attention to resuming the race to Messina. He met with Alexander and Montgomery on July 25 to hammer out troop dispositions. Montgomery was stymied on the Catania plain and also on the western path around Mount Etna; therefore, Patton was given permission to use both the northern coastal road and the parallel inland road to attempt a push toward Messina. He made no secret that he intended to defeat the Germans and Italians as well as Bernard Montgomery and his Eighth British Army. To his commander of the U.S. 45th Division, Troy Middleton, Patton wrote on July 28: “This is a horse race, in which the prestige of the U.S. Army is at stake. We must take Messina before the British. Please use your best efforts to facilitate the success of our race.”10
But no horse race was ever run through rugged mountains stubbornly defended by German and Italian troops. Outnumbered and cut off from supply and reinforcement, the defenders knew that Sicily would fall, but they intended to make the island’s conquest as costly as possible, and they worked to buy ample time for the evacuation of Axis troops onto the mainland. Patton was not so intent on winning his horse race that he neglected the objective of destroying the enemy. From a reluctant navy, the general wheedled as many landing craft as it thought it could spare, and then looked for a way to make an end run to the northern shore of Sicily in order to disrupt the Axis withdrawal. He was frustrated, however, that he could get sufficient craft to transport only about 1,500 men, too small a force to survive an Axis counterattack. Patton’s fighting instincts urged him to stage the assault, but he did not want to sacrifice a battalion for nothing. He debated with himself until, at last, on August 8, he decided to gamble and mounted the operation. By the time his men waded ashore at Santo Stefano on the north coast, the enemy was gone.
But the landings had given Patton an idea. On August 10, he decided to land another force in order to speed up the taking of Messina. Both Lucian Truscott and Omar Bradley objected. A more conservative and safer ground attack alone would, sooner or later, take Messina, they pointed out, whereas an amphibious operation was both risky and unnecessary. The idea of risking men for the sake of a “horse race” did not appeal to them. Patton listened, but insisted that the landings would take place. Truscott replied with an unenthusiastic “Alright, if you order it,” to which Patton responded: “I do.”
Concerned
about Truscott’s reluctance, Patton paid a call on him at his command post. There he saw “Truscott. . . walking up and down, holding a map and looking futile. I said, ‘General Truscott, if your conscience will not let you conduct this operation, I will relieve you and put someone in command who will.’” Truscott replied: “General, it is your privilege to reduce me whenever you want to.”
I said, “I don’t want to. I got you the DSM [Distinguished Service Medal] and recommended you for a major general, but your own ability really gained both honors. You are too old an athlete to believe it is possible to postpone a match.”
He said, “You are an old enough athlete to know that sometimes they are postponed.”
I said, “This one won’t be. The ships have already started.”
Truscott then explained the grounds of his reluctance: “This is a war of defile, and there is a bottleneck delaying me in getting my guns up to support the infantry. They—the infantry—will be too far west to help the landing.” He was afraid of being defeated in detail during a necessarily piecemeal landing on difficult terrain. Patton dismissed these concerns by citing Frederick the Great: “L’audace, toujours l’audace!” He continued: “I know you will win and if there is a bottleneck, you should be there and not here.” Audacity, always audacity. It was vintage Patton. But Patton always went beyond mere words, and, true to form, he dramatically demonstrated his absolute faith in Truscott. “I told him I had complete confidence in him, and, to show it, was going home to bed.” With that, Patton left.
“On the way back alone I worried a little, but feel I was right. I thought of Grant and Nelson and felt O.K. That is the value of history.” He followed up on his gesture of faith (as he noted in his diary on August 11) by “not going to the front today as I feel it would show lack of confidence in Truscott, and it is necessary to maintain the self-respect of generals in order to get the best out of them.”11
