Marshall accepted the second memo without comment. He told Eisenhower to draft a directive specifying the duties and responsibilities of a commanding general for a European theater of operations (ETO). This was the second time Eisenhower had been called upon to prepare the directive for a theater commander. The document, which Ike later referred to as “The Bible,” gave the theater commander absolute control of all American forces in the ETO, regardless of branch or service. “The mission of the commanding general, European theater, will be to prepare for and carry on military operations in the European theater against the Axis powers under the strategic directives of the combined U.S.-British Chiefs of Staff as communicated to him by the Chief of Staff U.S. Army.”84 The directive was not as concise as Grant’s 1864 orders to Meade (“Lee’s army will be your objective. Where Lee goes there you will go also”), but the chain of command was clear. The Combined Chiefs of Staff would set policy, but the European theater commander reported to General Marshall.85
Eisenhower presented the directive to Marshall on June 8. By this time Marshall had already decided he wanted Ike to command the European theater. In addition to the recommendations of Arnold and Clark, Vice Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, head of British combined operations, who was in Washington for a conference, had put in a strong word on Eisenhower’s behalf. His colleagues, he told Marshall, were quite ready to work with Ike as the senior American officer in Britain.86 Field Marshal Sir John Dill, the representative of the British chiefs in Washington, seconded Mountbatten’s appraisal.87 j But it was Marshall himself who cast the deciding vote. Marshall believed that when the invasion of Europe came, he would command it. And he wanted Eisenhower to prepare the ground as ETO commander.
When Eisenhower handed the draft directive to Marshall, he asked the chief to study it carefully because it could be an important document for the further waging of the war.
“Does the directive suit you?” Marshall asked. “Are you satisfied with it?”
“Yes, sir,” Eisenhower replied, “but you may have some suggestions.”
“I’m glad it suits you,” said Marshall, “because these are the orders you are going to operate under.”
“Me?” asked Eisenhower.
“You. You are in command of the European theater. Whom would you like to take with you?”
Eisenhower was briefly flustered. He had no combat experience, and his only command position in the past twenty years had been an infantry battalion at Fort Lewis. But he recovered quickly.
“I’d like to take Mark Clark with me,” he told Marshall.
“You can have him. When can you leave?”
“I’d like to talk with Clark before I tell you when we can leave,” said Eisenhower.88
Later that day, Ike recorded his thoughts on his notepad. “The C/S told me this morning that it’s possible I may go to England in command. It’s a big job—if U.S. and U.K. stay squarely behind BOLERO and go after it tooth and nail, it will be the biggest American job of the war. Of course command now does not necessarily mean command in the operation—but the job before the battle begins will still be the biggest outside of that of C/S himself.”89
Marshall cleared Eisenhower’s name with Stimson and FDR, and on June 11 Ike’s appointment to command the European theater was announced.90 Three weeks later he was promoted to lieutenant general, leapfrogging sixty-six major generals (including George Patton and Jacob Devers) who were considerably senior. With the promotion, Eisenhower ranked eighteenth among all officers on active duty.91 His rise had been meteoric. In little more than ten weeks, dating from his promotion from brigadier to major general, Ike had moved ahead of 228 general officers with greater seniority.
Patton wrote immediately to congratulate him. “I particularly appreciate it,” Eisenhower replied, “because you and I both know you should have been wearing additional stars long ago. It is entirely possible that I will need you sorely: and when the time comes I will have to battle my diffidence over requesting the services of a man so much senior and so much more able than myself. As I have often told you, you are my idea of a battle commander.… I would certainly want you as the lead horse in the team.”92
Before leaving for London, Eisenhower decided it would be prudent to call on Admiral Ernest King, the crusty chief of naval operations. The Navy had never served under an Army officer, and the senior American sailor in Britain was Harold Stark, a full admiral and King’s predecessor as CNO. Would Stark serve under Ike as theater commander?k King saw no problem. “He assured me that he would do everything within his power to sustain my status of actual ‘commander’ of American forces assigned to me.”93 If King was on board, the Navy was on board. FDR said that Admiral King shaved every morning with a blowtorch. He was not as gifted intellectually as Marshall or Leahy or Arnold, but his powerful command presence was precisely what the Navy needed after the defeat at Pearl Harbor.94
Eisenhower also had a personal request for King. He wanted his CBS friend Harry Butcher, a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve (USNR), to go to London with him as his naval aide. “I’ve got to have someone I can relax with,” he told King. “Someone I can trust absolutely. Someone who isn’t subservient. Someone who will talk back.”95 The fact that Butcher was an excellent bridge player and well versed in the black arts of public relations went unsaid. Again, King saw no problem. In addition to Butcher, Sergeant Mickey McKeogh, and Major Tex Lee, Eisenhower snatched Colonel T. J. Davis from the adjutant general’s office to be his own AG. Ike and Davis had shared eight years in MacArthur’s headquarters and trusted each other instinctively. Nothing is more important for a commanding general than to have an adjutant who is on the same wavelength. John Rawlins served Grant in that capacity, and few would question that he was a valuable contributor to Grant’s success.
Three days before Eisenhower departed, he received a surprise visit from Philippine president Manuel Quezon. Quezon had been evacuated from Corregidor by submarine and was in Washington to plead the cause of the now-occupied Philippines. The president-in-exile presented Ike with a citation for his service in Manila, and offered him an honorarium, evidently exceeding $100,000 ($1.1 million currently). Eisenhower accepted the citation but declined the emolument. To accept the money, he told Quezon, “might operate to destroy whatever usefulness I may have to the allied cause in the present war.”96 Eisenhower’s attitude contrasts sharply with that of Douglas MacArthur, who four months earlier had accepted $500,000 ($5.5 million) in cash from Quezon prior to the president’s departure from the Philippines. Major General Richard Sutherland, MacArthur’s chief of staff, received $75,000 ($830,000), with lesser amounts given to others on MacArthur’s staff.97
Ike’s last letter was to General Kenyon Joyce. “I cannot leave the United States without making acknowledgement to you once again of my deep sense of obligation to your inspiring example of leadership. I am keenly sensible of the enormity of the task I am now undertaking. If hard work will win—we’ll do the job. But I’ll never fail to realize that it is something bigger than one individual that is responsible for any success I may attain.”98
Eisenhower departed from Bolling Field at 9 a.m. on June 23, 1942, accompanied by Clark and his personal staff. For Mamie, Ike’s appointment to command the European theater was a mixed blessing. Not only would she be separated from her husband for an indefinite period, but she was unceremoniously ordered to clear their quarters at Fort Myer within the week. “It’s a lovely way the Army has,” said Lucius D. Clay. “When your difficulties start, they make it more difficult.”99
This was Mamie’s fourth move in less than a year. Her parents urged her to come to Denver, but she preferred to remain in Washington, surrounded by old Army friends and closer to John at West Point. Initially, she and Ruth Butcher, Harry’s wife, shared an apartment at the Wardman Park. Later she found a two-bedroom apartment there for herself, where she remained for the duration. Eisenhower, who was perpetually shy about any display of affection, asked Ma
mie not to come to the airfield to see him off, but to stand by the flagpole at Fort Myer so he could see her as the plane made its ascent over the Potomac.
* * *
a Churchill had offered the use of the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth to Marshall at the ARCADIA conference in December. When General Marshall asked how many troops the ships could carry, Churchill replied that they could take 8,000 men with access to lifeboats, or 14,000 if one ignored the safety precautions. During five years of war, the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth safely transported more than 300,000 troops. All of the crossings were made without escorts, the vessels were fully loaded on each crossing, and never once did the ships encounter an enemy U-boat. Michael Korda, Ike: An American Hero 258n (New York: HarperCollins, 2007). Also see United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States: Conferences at Washington, 1941–1942, and Casablanca, 1943 102, 192–95, 201 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968).
b Some have suggested that General Marshall occasionally called George Patton “Georgie,” though the evidence is sketchy.
c Eisenhower had served directly under Hurley in the War Department during the last three years of the Hoover administration.
d Roosevelt and Churchill, and their staffs, had met previously in Placentia Bay, off the coast of Newfoundland, in early August 1941. At that meeting, FDR and Churchill agreed on a “Hitler first” strategy, and Roosevelt undertook to expedite lend-lease shipments to Britain and Russia, and provide American escorts for British convoys. The meeting concluded with the promulgation of the Atlantic Charter, loosely defining Allied war aims. Jean Edward Smith, FDR 498–502, and the sources cited therein (New York: Random House, 2007).
e The statutory basis of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff (and an independent Air Force) was not established until passage of the Defense Reorganization Act of 1947. World War II was fought on an ad hoc basis, but the American element of the Combined Chiefs of Staff (Marshall, King, and Arnold, with Leahy as chairman) became the model for the act.
f Although soon promoted to lieutenant general and then full general, Eisenhower retained the permanent rank of lieutenant colonel until after the Sicily campaign, when he was promoted to major general in the Regular Army.
g Brigadier General Thomas T. Handy succeeded Ike as director of OPD (G-3), and later commanded American forces in Europe (1949–53). Brigadier General Crawford served later as Eisenhower’s supply officer (G-4) at SHAEF and deputy commanding general of the Services of Supply in Europe. Colonel John Hull became the Army’s G-3 after Handy, and finished his career as commander in chief of UN forces in the Far East (1953–55). Colonel Albert C. Wedemeyer, who had attended the German Kriegsakademie in Berlin (1936–38), replaced Stilwell in China, later served as the Army’s G-3, and commanded Sixth Army (1948–51).
h Remarkable as it may seem to a contemporary audience, FDR did not allow minutes or notes to be taken at meetings. As a consequence, the after-meeting diary entries of Stimson, Hopkins, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, and Marshall are the only records that exist. FDR Library to JES, December 9, 2008.
i On May 11, 1942, Eisenhower prepared a memorandum for Marshall pertaining to the organization of BOLERO and detailing the requirements for the “type of officer to serve as Commanding General, United States Forces” in Britain. “If BOLERO develops as planned, there will come a time when United States Forces’ activity in that region will become so great as to make it the critical point in our war effort. When this comes about, it is easily possible that the President may direct the Chief of Staff [Marshall], himself, to proceed to London and take over command. The officer previously serving as Commander should be one who could fit in as a Deputy or a Chief of Staff. This will insure continuity in planning and execution, and in understanding.” Eisenhower to Marshall, May 11, 1942, in The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, vol. 1, The War Years 292–93, Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1970), hereafter 1 War Years (Eisenhower’s emphasis).
j In 1956, Marshall told Forrest C. Pogue, his biographer, “I sent Eisenhower and some others over so the British could have a look at them and then I asked Churchill what he thought of them. He was extravagant in his estimation of them, so I went ahead with my decision on Eisenhower.” Churchill did not meet Eisenhower on this trip, but he evidently heard about him from the British chiefs. Pogue, 2 Marshall 339, 474.
k Eisenhower’s apprehension about Stark proved unnecessary. As soon as Ike arrived in London, Stark called on him and promised his support. “You may call on me at any hour, day or night, for anything you wish,” said Stark. “And when you do, call me ‘Betty,’ a nickname I’ve always had in the service.” Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe 54 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1948).
NINE
TORCH
I am searching the Army to find the most capable Chaplain we have in an effort to assure a fairly decent break in the weather when the big day comes.
—EISENHOWER TO PATTON,
September 5, 1942
Eisenhower arrived in London on the evening of June 24, 1942, armed with the plenary powers of a theater commander. He was met at the airfield by Lord Louis Mountbatten and members of the American headquarters staff, and then whisked off to Claridge’s—London’s most opulent hotel—where a lavish VIP suite awaited. The colonel in charge of arrangements said similar accommodations had been laid on for Mark Clark, and suggested that Sergeant McKeogh, Ike’s orderly, might find a bed at the enlisted barracks on Green Street, about two blocks away.
“My sergeant has had a long and trying trip like the rest of us,” Eisenhower replied. “I prefer to have him stay here at the hotel for at least a couple of days, until he’s had a chance to rest.”1
Eisenhower, who was solicitous about the welfare of his staff, was not pleased with the gilt-edge accommodations at Claridge’s. They were far too elegant for his tastes. The liveried footmen seemed especially out of place in wartime Britain, the ornate lobby struck him as ostentatious, and the red-and-gold Chinese wallpaper in his bedroom resembled a New Orleans bordello. “I think I’m living in sin,” he told Harry Butcher.2
Within the week Ike moved to less pretentious quarters at the Dorchester, across Park Lane from Hyde Park, another of London’s first-class hotels but one whose elegance was understated. Eisenhower’s suite, which overlooked Hyde Park, had three large rooms: a generous bedroom for him, another for Butcher, and a stately sitting room with a fireplace. “The General loved an open fire,” said Mickey McKeogh, “not so much for the warmth as to look at. He loves to sit in front of a fire and just look into it, and it is handy to throw his cigarette butts into. He always throws them into a fireplace if there’s one around.” Eisenhower was smoking three to four packs a day, and as Mickey recalled, he did not have much use for ashtrays. “He knocks the ash off his cigarettes by tapping his hand against something—the arm of a chair, the edge of his desk—and he believes that cigarette ashes are good for carpets.”3 The Dorchester would remain Ike’s London residence for the duration of the war. It was a short walk to his headquarters on Grosvenor Square, and a quick drive to Whitehall and 10 Downing Street.
“I cannot tell you how much I miss you,” Ike wrote Mamie shortly after his arrival. “An assignment like this is not the same as an absence from home on maneuvers. In a tent, surrounded by soldiers, it seems natural to have to get along alone. But when living in an apartment, under city conditions, I constantly find myself wondering, ‘why isn’t Mamie here?’ You’ve certainly become most necessary to me.”4 Eisenhower wrote 319 letters to Mamie while he was overseas, roughly two each week. And every letter was handwritten, though he sometimes complained about the time that this required. Mamie wrote to Ike just as frequently, and she saved all of his letters to her. For whatever reason, Eisenhower apparently did not keep those he received from Mamie.5 a
General John C. H. Lee, a religious zealot often referred to as “Jesus Christ Himself Lee,” who pro
ved to be a logistics virtuoso and in many ways was the unsung hero of the Allied victory in Europe. (illustration credit 9.1)
Eisenhower’s first order of business was to establish the command structure for the European theater, and he followed the model General Marshall had established at the War Department. Mark Clark, who headed II Corps, became the commander of Army ground troops; Major General Carl “Tooey” Spaatz, who led Eighth Air Force, became Ike’s air commander; and Major General John C. H. Lee would assume a post similar to Brehon Somervell’s as the commander of American service forces in the theater. Spaatz, who was a year ahead of Eisenhower at West Point, had been one of the pioneers in Army aviation. He had won the Distinguished Flying Cross for gallantry during World War I, and in 1929 set the world flight endurance record commanding a Fokker trimotor transport that stayed aloft for 150 hours—refueling in the air thirty-seven times.b A member of the Army general staff like Eisenhower, he had spent the last months of 1940 observing the Battle of Britain. When the United States entered the war, Spaatz was given command of Eighth Air Force and returned to London in March 1942.6
Major General John C. H. Lee, a 1909 classmate of George Patton’s at West Point, had been born in Junction City, Kansas, in 1887. A career officer in the Corps of Engineers, Lee had been aide-de-camp to General Leonard Wood when Wood was Army chief of staff, had fought in France, and was district engineer in Vicksburg during the great flood of 1927. When war began he commanded the 2nd Infantry Division in California. Like Somervell, Lee was an inveterate empire builder who could be relied upon to provide an army with everything from safety pins and condoms to main battle tanks. Unlike Somervell, he was an evangelical Christian who carried a Bible with him at all times, frequently quoted scripture, and earned the nickname J[esus] C[hrist] H[imself] Lee because of his sanctimoniousness. Eisenhower called Lee his “Cromwell,” and considered him “one of the best officers in the Army.”7 And to Lee’s credit, he not only got the Allies across the Channel in 1944, he melded the various service branches—ordnance, quartermaster, transportation, signal, engineers, chemical, military police, medical, dental, adjutant general, judge advocate general, and finance—into an effective supply service that freed Eisenhower from logistical concerns and allowed him to concentrate on fighting the enemy. Lee and Spaatz outranked Eisenhower in the prewar Army, just as Sherman, Meade, and Thomas had outranked Grant. It is a reflection of the professionalism of the Regular Army that this made no difference whatever. Just as Sherman, Meade, and Thomas followed Grant’s orders to the letter, Lee and Spaatz worked easily under Ike.
Eisenhower in War and Peace Page 23
