3. GEORGE PATTON: THE SPECIALIST
“You have no balance at all”: Bland, Marshall Interviews, 582.
“strange, brilliant, moody”: Harmon, Combat Commander, 69.
Marshall concluded that Patton: Bland, Marshall Interviews, 547.
“General Patton has . . . approached”: Hobbs, Dear General, 37.
“The General immediately flared up”: This and subsequent quotations from Blumenson, Patton Papers, 330–33.
“not more than one in ten”: Douglas MacArthur, Reminiscences (McGraw-Hill, 1964), 94.
when he informed MacArthur: D. Clayton James, “Eisenhower’s Relationship with MacArthur in the 1930s: An Interview,” August 29, 1967, OH-501, Eisenhower Library, 3. For a more sympathetic account of MacArthur’s actions that day that also relies on Eisenhower but does not reflect Eisenhower’s account that MacArthur said he did not want to see the orders, see Geoffrey Perret, Old Soldiers Never Die: The Life of Douglas MacArthur (Random House, 1996), 159.
“George Patton continues to exhibit”: Hobbs, Dear General, 121. See also Eisenhower to Marshall, August 24, 1943, in record group 185, box 44, document 116, National Archives.
“respected their positions as fighting soldiers”: Eisenhower, Crusade, 181. Eisenhower would later justify relieving another officer, Maj. Gen. Ernest Dawley, in precisely democratic terms: “Lives of thousands are involved—the question is not one of academic justice for the leader, it is that of concern for the many and the objective of victory”; Eisenhower, Crusade, 188.
“the evident destiny of the British and Americans”: Pogue, Marshall, vol. 3, 384.
“apparently he is unable to use reasonably good sense”: Pogue, Marshall, vol. 3, 385.
“I am thoroughly weary of your failure”: Pogue, Marshall, vol. 3, 385.
“frankly I am exceedingly weary”: Hobbs, Dear General, 160.
“admittedly unbalanced but nevertheless aggressive”: Pogue, Marshall, vol. 3, 385.
“but he couldn’t spare him”: “Reminiscences of James M. Gavin,” interview by Ed Edwin, Columbia Center for Oral History, Columbia University, 1967, 7.
When the war began, it had been Patton: Eisenhower, At Ease, 237; Blumenson, Patton Papers, 15.
“Hell, get on to yourself, Ike”: Blumenson, Patton Papers, 432.
Patton also told Eisenhower: Blumenson, Patton Papers, 55, 168.
“He is the most modern general”: Blumenson, Patton Papers, 654. See also B. H. Liddell Hart, The German Generals Talk (Berkley, 1958), 215.
“a master of fast” . . . “United States Army has known”: Eisenhower, At Ease, 172–73.
4. MARK CLARK: THE MAN IN THE MIDDLE
“It makes my flesh creep” . . . “Clark is always in danger”: Blumenson, Patton Papers, 157, 361.
the assault was a “near disaster”: General Mark W. Clark, Calculated Risk (Enigma, 2007), 152.
“Mark, leave enough ammunition”: Frank James Price, Troy H. Middleton: A Biography (Louisiana State University Press, 1974), 169.
British Gen. Harold Alexander: Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943–1944 (Henry Holt, 2007), 231.
But Clark needed to settle blame: Clark, Calculated Risk, 164.
“I do not want to interfere”: Brian Reid, “The Italian Campaign, 1943–45: A Reappraisal of Allied Generalship,” Journal of Strategic Studies 13, no. 1 (1990), 140.
“For God’s sake, Mike”: Atkinson, Day of Battle, 234.
“handled his job as well”: Fred Walker, From Texas to Rome (Taylor Publishing, 1969), 258. By 1944 Walker did not much like Clark, especially after Clark ordered him to fire his assistant division commander, Brig. Gen. William Wilbur, despite Wilbur having received a somewhat political Medal of Honor a year earlier. Walker wrote in his diary that Clark had said that “Wilbur was a bad influence in the Division.” Walker disagreed: “Wilbur knows his business. Back at Salerno, Wilbur . . . was highly praised by Clark when he urged me to accept him as my Assistant Division Commander.” See From Texas to Rome, 322.
“It seems that when the going is really tough”: Hobbs, Dear General, 128. See also Eisenhower to Marshall, September 20, 1943, record group 165, box 44, folder 2, National Archives, 1.
At first Marshall had some “misgivings”: Sidney T. Matthews, Howard Smyth, Maj. Roy Lemson, and Maj. David Hamilton, Office of the Chief of Military History, “Interview with General George C. Marshall, Part One,” July 25, 1949, reel 322, Marshall Library, 8.
“His concern for personal publicity”: General Lucian Truscott, March 21, 1959, Pogue Oral History Collection, Marshall Library, 6.
“I have sometimes thought”: Lucian Truscott, Command Missions: A Personal Story (Dutton, 1954), 547.
“I always had a feeling that”: Gavin to Ridgway, September 1, 1978, in Matthew Ridgway Papers, series 2, Correspondence 1960–1991, box 36, USAMHI.
To his opponents: Atkinson, Day of Battle, 223.
“a sensitive and compassionate man”: Julian Thompson, “John Lucas and Anzio, 1944,” in Brian Bond, ed., Fallen Stars: Eleven Studies of Twentieth Century Military Disasters (Brassey’s, 1991), 189.
“I felt like a lamb” . . . “certainly prolong the war”: Lucas typed diary, box 6, John P. Lucas Papers, USAMHI, 285, 295. See also Martin Blumenson, “General Lucas at Anzio,” in Kent Roberts Greenfield, ed., Command Decisions (U.S. Army Center of Military History, 2000), 333.
“The strain of a thing like this”: Lucas diary, 328. See also Thompson, “John Lucas and Anzio,” 199.
the “draining sore” of Gallipoli: Eisenhower, Crusade, 264.
“But in Italy the situation was quite the other way”: Sidney T. Matthews, Howard Smyth, Maj. Roy Lemson, and Maj. David Hamilton, Office of the Chief of Military History, “Interview with General George C. Marshall, Part II,” July 25, 1949, reel 322, 2–3, Marshall Library.
Confronted with the mess at Anzio: This paraphrases pages 152–53 of Lloyd Clark, Anzio: Italy and the Battle for Rome—1944 (Atlantic Monthly, 2006). See also Carlo D’Este, Fatal Decision: Anzio and the Battle for Rome (HarperCollins, 1991), 159.
“That ended the matter”: Truscott, Command Missions, 314.
“He arrives today with eight generals”: Lucas diary, 394.
“In one paragraph the commander of VI Corps”: Lloyd Clark, Anzio, 198.
“My own feeling was that Johnny Lucas”: Clark, Calculated Risk, 244.
“was one of my saddest experiences”: Truscott, Command Missions, 328.
“his removal was both necessary and timely”: Thompson, “John Lucas and Anzio,” 206.
“Unlike Lucas, who had not often ventured”: Martin Blumenson, Anzio: The Gamble That Failed (Cooper Square, 2001), 146.
“He thinks he is God Almighty”: Atkinson, Day of Battle, 506.
“Clark proved one of the more disappointing U.S. commanders”: Williamson Murray and Allan Millett, A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War (Belknap, 2000), 379.
5. “TERRIBLE TERRY” ALLEN: CONFLICT BETWEEN MARSHALL AND HIS PROTÉGÉS
“Terrible Terry” Allen was as Old Army as they came: A. J. Liebling, “Find ’Em, Fix ’Em, and Fight ’Em,” part 1, The New Yorker, April 24, 1943, 23.
In 1920, he represented the Army: Astor, Terrible Terry Allen, 70–71. See also Atkinson, Army at Dawn, 81.
Allen was in the same class: Liebling, “Find ’Em,” 25.
he had made bathtub gin: On the gin, see Carlo D’Este, Patton: A Genius for War (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 291; on the polka, see John S. D. Eisenhower, General Ike: A Personal Reminiscence (Free Press, 2003), 39.
Allen, who could become so staggeringly drunk: Astor, Terrible Terry Allen, 276.
“of that unusual type”: The Papers of George Catlett Marshall, vol
. 2, 172.
“Terry Allen, nobody wanted to give a star to”: “Telephone interview with H. Merrill Pasco, November 4, 1986,” Ed Cray Collection, box 1, Marshall Library, 12.
Lt. Col. Allen was being chewed out: Thomas Dixon, “Terry Allen,” Army Magazine, April 1978, 59.
“I must explain to you”: The Papers of George Catlett Marshall, vol. 3, “The Right Man for the Job,” December 7, 1941–May 31, 1943 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 285. See also Astor, Terrible Terry Allen, 171.
“It is the most honorable place”: A. J. Liebling, “Find ’Em, Fix ’Em, and Fight ’Em,” part 2, The New Yorker, May 1, 1943, 30.
Early on the morning of March 17, 1943: Maj. R. J. Rogers, “A Study of the Leadership of the First Infantry Division During World War II: Terry de la Mesa Allen and Clarence Ralph Huebner” (quoting a 1964 interview of Allen by Capt. E. W. Martin), U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 1965, 23–24.
“I think the division has done fairly well today” . . . “motor trouble,” he sneered: Liebling, “Find ’Em,” part 2, 28.
Gen. Allen’s finest day of the war: Terry Allen, “A Summary of the Sicily Campaign, During World War II,” n.d., Terry Allen Papers, box 6, USAMHI, 8.
“I question whether any other U.S. division”: Bradley, Soldier’s Story, 130. I generally have tried to avoid quoting Bradley’s two memoirs in his book, because of questions about how much of them he actually wrote, especially the second one, A General’s Life, which was published two years after his death. I made an exception here in part because the phrasing is consistent with other statements made by Bradley. Similarly, I have not relied on Stephen Ambrose’s extensive writings about Eisenhower because of questions about the veracity of his work, including about quotations he attributed to the general. In my years of research for this book, I became familiar with both Eisenhower’s written voice and his conversational one (in oral history interviews) and was struck that some of the phrases Ambrose attributes to him do not sound to me like Eisenhower. The historian Jean Edward Smith concludes in his new biography, Eisenhower in War and Peace (Random House, 2012), 730, that some of Ambrose’s assertions about Eisenhower are not credible and simply were fabricated. For more, see especially Richard Rayner, “Channeling Ike,” The New Yorker, April 26, 2010, and Russell Goldman, “Did Historian Stephen Ambrose Lie About Interviews with Dwight D. Eisenhower?,” ABCNews.com, April 27, 2010.
Westmoreland, whose artillery battalion was attached: Westmoreland oral history with Cameron and Funderburk, Westmoreland Papers, USAMHI, 104.
“the hardest battle”: Blumenson, Patton Papers, 304.
toughest of the war to that point: Atkinson, Day of Battle, 158.
“they had been ordered to hold Troina”: Allen, “Summary of the Sicily Campaign,” 13.
Bradley removed Allen as commander: Blumenson, Patton Papers, 301; see also Albert Garland and Howard Smyth, Sicily and the Surrender of Italy (U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1993), 56.
“it was painful to see Terry break down”: Rogers, “Study of the Leadership,” 49.
He had been “shanghaied”: Astor, Terrible Terry Allen, 238.
the puzzled notes Allen wrote in pencil to his wife: Allen to his wife, August 5, 1943, Terry Allen Papers, correspondence, box 2, USAMHI.
“inconsistent and confusing”: Maj. Richard Johnson, “Investigation into the Reliefs of Generals Orlando Ward and Terry Allen,” School of Advanced Military Studies, Fort Leavenworth, 2009, 30.
“Allen had become too much of an individualist”: Bradley, Soldier’s Story, 155. For another analysis of Bradley’s conflicting accounts, see Astor, Terrible Terry Allen, 222–24.
“won the respect and admiration”: The Papers of George Catlett Marshall, vol. 4, 45.
By the end of September: On September 23, 1943, Maj. Gen. M. G. White wrote a note of response to Marshall about what division Allen might command; record group 165, entry 13, box 54, folder 210, file 311, National Archives.
“Terry was nothing but a tramp”: General Wade Haislip, interview by Forrest Pogue, January 19, 1959, Pogue Oral History Collection, Marshall Library, 45. Note that transcript has a typographical error saying “have” when Haislip clearly meant “gave.” J. Lawton Collins discusses the Allen situation in his own interview with Pogue, January 23, 1958, Pogue Oral History Collection, Marshall Library.
Joe Collins, his corps commander: “J. Lawton Collins, General, USA, Retired,” interview by Lt. Col. Charles Sperow, 1972, Collins Papers, box 1, USAMHI, vol. 1, 242–43.
Allen was especially impressive: Collins, Lightning Joe, 274–77.
“The whole artillery section functions beautifully”: Charles MacDonald, The Siegfried Line Campaign (U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1963), 621.
“Misfits defeat the purpose of the command”: Eisenhower, Crusade, 75.
6. EISENHOWER MANAGES MONTGOMERY
“Certainly I can say”: Bernard Law Montgomery, The Memoirs of Field-Marshal the Viscount Montgomery of Alamein (K.G. World, 1958), 17.
“I know well that I am regarded”: Montgomery, Memoirs, 160.
“not permit smoking in his office”: Clark, Calculated Risk, 18.
Even after leaving the meeting: Kay Summersby, Past Forgetting (Simon & Schuster, 1976), 28.
“in their dealings with people”: Chester Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe (Harper, 1952), 427.
“The characteristic American resentment”: Wilmot, Struggle for Europe, 463.
“demanded a degree of patience”: Wilmot, Struggle for Europe, 596.
Montgomery lost as many as four hundred tanks: Jonathan Jordan, Brothers, Rivals, Victors: Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley and the Partnership That Drove the Allied Conquest in Europe (New American Library, 2011), 346.
Marshall ordered Eisenhower to transfer: Bland, Marshall Interviews, 540.
On September 1, Eisenhower formally became: Cornelius Ryan, A Bridge Too Far (Simon & Schuster, 1974), 64–65.
“The British, who had uninterruptedly fought”: Norman Gelb, Ike and Monty: Generals at War (William Morrow, 1994), 338.
Patton wanted 400,000 . . . German aviation fuel: Robert Allen, Lucky Forward: Patton’s Third U.S. Army (Manor, 1974), 103, 107.
“Ike was very pontifical”: Blumenson, Patton Papers, 537.
“Ike is drinking too much”: Blumenson, Patton Papers, 420.
Eisenhower hobbled a mile: This account is drawn mainly from Butcher, Three Years, 658–59, but also from D’Este, Eisenhower, 604–5. The quotation about “a miserable walk” is from Eisenhower, Crusade, 305. The story of the engine malfunction is mainly from Laurence Hansen, What It Was Like Flying for Ike (Aero-Medical Consultants, 1983), 38–39. The information on Eisenhower’s coffee consumption is from David Eisenhower, Eisenhower at War, 218. The description of his arrival at his villa that evening is from Summersby, Past Forgetting, 239.
“arrogant, hawk-like loner”: Russell Weigley, Eisenhower’s Lieutenants: The Campaign of France and Germany, 1944–1945 (Indiana University Press, 1990), 146.
Eisenhower found Churchill’s preference: Eisenhower, Crusade, 211.
“just at present” . . . “at lunch tomorrow”: Montgomery, Memoirs, 244.
he was mocked by some American officers: Butcher, Three Years, 667.
“I explained my situation fully”: Montgomery, Memoirs, 246–47.
“ignorance as to how to run a war”: Alistair Horne with David Montgomery, The Lonely Leader: Monty, 1944–1945 (Macmillan, 1994), 267.
Montgomery opened the discussion: The details in this paragraph rely mainly on the account given in Weigley, Eisenhower’s Lieutenants, 279, but also in Wilmot, Struggle for Europe, 488–89; in Gelb, Ike and Monty, 360; and in D’Este, Eisenhower, 606.
“Well, they’re balls”: Larrabee, Commande
r in Chief, 479. In a footnote, Larrabee stated that this was the first time this contemptuous remark had been published. His source was “Interview with Major General Sir Miles Graham,” who was chief administrative officer to Montgomery and attended the meeting, with the interview conducted on January 19, 1949, and now located in the Wilmot Papers, Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, Kings College, London.
“I not only approved Market Garden”: David Eisenhower, Eisenhower at War, 465.
“Almost every feature of Operation Market Garden”: John Ellis, Brute Force: Allies Strategy and Tactics in the Second World War (Andre Deutsch, 1990), 414.
It was indeed a powerful demonstration: This paraphrases Ellis, Brute Force, 419.
“got driven back and he was still talking”: Dwight D. Eisenhower, interview by Forrest Pogue, Gettysbury, PA, June 28, 1962, Pogue Oral History Collection, Marshall Library, 11.
Montgomery, for his part, muttered: Terry Brighton, Patton, Rommel, Montgomery: Masters of War (Crown, 2009), 354. See also Montgomery, Memoirs, 298.
“The American generals did not understand”: Montgomery, Memoirs, 243.
Montgomery had put him on notice: Butcher, Three Years, 737.
“The speed of our movements”: Blumenson, Patton Papers, 607.
“Joe, you can’t supply a corps”: Collins, Lightning Joe, 292.
“One was that they were unteachable”: Bernard Lewis, “Second Acts,” The Atlantic Monthly, November 2007, 25. My italics.
When British Gen. Harold Alexander made a crack: Matthews, Smyth, et al., Marshall interview, 20.
“What was astonishing was the speed”: B. H. Liddell Hart, ed., The Rommel Papers (Easton Press, 1953), 521–23.
“I don’t think the British ever solved”: Friedrich von Mellenthin, Panzer Battles (Ballantine, 1984), 179.
In a series of battlefield studies: Mansoor, The GI Offensive in Europe, 263.
In a recent analysis, Meir Finkel: Meir Finkel, On Flexibility: Recovery from Technological and Doctrinal Surprise on the Battlefield (Stanford University Press, 2011), 181–82.
“really tired and worried”: De Guingand, Generals at War, 108.
The Generals Page 47
