All this must be taken with a pinch of salt. The CCS was bound to offer a reprieve on behalf of the air force because its members agreed that the unqualified purpose of the campaign was to establish it in Italy, but the bill for its maintenance, the equivalent of one whole army, had not yet been presented for payment. In effect, the paper gave notice that the resident fleet that remained after December 15 would have to be larger than the CCS had envisaged, whether or not amphibious operations were undertaken. However, in such calculations variables were disguised as constants; they were “cockshies”, more assumption than fact. At this comparatively early state of the art a few of these variables were the methods of loading craft, their turn-round time, serviceability and repair, the endurance of their crews and the casualty rate of ships. The staff figures were, naturally, conservative as the very successful supply of Lucas’ force from January until May, maintained in the teeth of naval complaints that the ships were being driven too hard, was to demonstrate.
Bedell Smith was the sponsor of this study. An astute man, although not a very military one, he was nobody’s fool and was playing the game of politics on behalf of his own campaign as, he well knew, were the staffs in Washington and London on behalf of their own special interests. At about this time, he was required to answer a CCS proposal at the QUADRANT conference in September on the merits of a landing in the south of France to divert German divisions from SOVERLORD in the spring of 1944.7 He poured cold water on the idea. Its feasibility, he argued, would depend on the Pisa–Rimini line having been reached by then. In that case there might be better ways of engaging German forces and of employing shipping. He suggested three: an end-run around the Pisa–Rimini line, a land thrust into southern France or one into Yugoslavia. Bedell Smith was a consistent opponent of the invasion of southern France which was shortly to be given the code-name ANVIL, unlike his master who wavered, unable to comprehend its military shortcomings. But it was Bedell Smith who established the principle that as ANVIL depended on the progress being made on the Italian mainland, the CCS would have to provide adequate shipping for the latter if it wanted the former. Thus ANVIL would serve Italy by compelling the CCS to leave more shipping in the Mediterranean which might be available for Anzio and subsequent operations and also for the general maintenance of land operations.
This marked the beginning of ANVIL as a bargaining chip in a strategic tug of war between the air forces and the armies and between OVERLORD and the Mediterranean. When Eisenhower was appointed Supreme Commander for OVERLORD in December, taking Bedell Smith with him to England in January, he changed sides on ANVIL, adopting the CCS view that it ought to be mounted, but he still wavered between the political wisdom of pleasing Marshall and the military logic of Brooke, Montgomery and Bedell Smith, who were against it.
ANVIL seemed an ally to the commanders in Italy when Eisenhower, provoked by Ultra intelligence and realising that shipping, time and the weather were all pressing him for action, called the commanders to a conference at Carthage on November 3. The outcome was a rehash of the ambitious scheme for the Eighth Army to attack towards Pescara and then to effect a right hook through Avezzano to threaten Rome from the east. The Fifth Army would take advantage of the east-coast offensive to thrust northwards and then land a force at Anzio when its main front reached Frosinone. None of this was new and all of it fanciful: Rome and the Pisa–Rimini line were still the objectives. But it served as a dish to set before the CCS to tempt it to relent over landing craft. Even then Eisenhower played his cards like a politician. Having received the blessing of the CCS on his “plan” on the 6th, he then gave them the bad news about shipping and asked for an extension until December 15, on the grounds prepared by Bedell Smith’s study. Having received that bonus on the 8th he asked for a further extension until January 15 as his amphibious plans would take rather longer to prepare.
The politics of ANVIL and the Italian landings was made the more Byzantine when Clark was named to plan and command the former, if and when it were mounted, on the assumption that that would not be until the Fifth Army reached the Pisa–Rimini line. In this appointment there lay a potential conflict of interest although Clark’s immediate concern was to resume the advance that he had halted in mid-November to regroup his forces. Then his aim was to break through the Gustav Line, reach Frosinone and mount the Anzio operation. On December 10, when it was clear to him that without more troops he could not even reach the Gustav Line, Clark proposed that the force for Anzio be enlarged from one division to two in order to panic the Tenth Army into a retreat on the main front and to give the landing force additional security as it would have to hold out for longer than was originally intended. The proposal assumed that the troops for it would come from North Africa. At this time the Eighth Army was fighting desperately at Orsogna and Ortona, beyond the Sangro river but short of Pescara. In fact, Montgomery was about to close down his operations on the east coast. By December 18, after he had been advised that he had to make a final decision about Anzio and Montgomery had called a halt on his front, Clark wisely and naturally recommended that Anzio be cancelled.
By this time the CCS had agreed to extend the date for the return of Eisenhower’s landing craft to January 15 in accordance with decisions taken in Cairo and Teheran where Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill had conferred. One of these decisions led to the restoration of Anzio, although it was restored without taking into account factors that had caused Clark to recommend its cancellation.
The heads of state and their chiefs of staff went to Cairo towards the end of November and on to Teheran for a summit meeting with the Soviet leaders. Afterwards they returned to Cairo to wash up the dirty dishes, as it were. It was at Teheran that Joseph Stalin put the question to Roosevelt, “Who will lead the cross-Channel attack?” Roosevelt had procrastinated over making that important decision and was caught on the wrong foot. “That old Bolshevik is trying to force me to give him the name of our Supreme Commander,” he whispered to Admiral Leahy, “I just can’t tell him because I have not made up my mind.” Actually, Stalin’s point reiterated the one made by Montgomery to the point of tedium about every Allied operation from HUSKY onwards: that commanders, not staff officers, ought to make military plans. Until a commander for OVERLORD had been appointed there could be no plan for it, and with no commander’s plan how could Stalin be anything but sceptical of the Allies’ intention to attack across the Channel? Stalin had a very good point, quite lost on Roosevelt, who believed that “planners” made plans and commanders simply carried them out. Montgomery was very soon to show that the commander was the boss from the beginning of the conception of a plan and that the planners were simply his hired help.
While the iron was hot Stalin struck again. He persuaded the Americans to place OVERLORD, ANVIL and Italy in strict order of priority. Since all of them could not be pursued equally, and ANVIL was confirmed as part of OVERLORD at Teheran, to be simultaneous, Italy was doomed to be milked at ANVIL’S expense, ANVIL, in effect, became the Mediterranean branch of OVERLORD with the same priority. May 1944 was the target date for both. The Americans were pleased to have Russian support in preventing the British making Italy into a major campaign, and ANVIL was an insurance against that happening, as Marshall knew. For their part the Russians were happy to prevent the British using Italy as a springboard to the Balkans, where they intended to pursue their own, expansionist policies. As a consolation prize Churchill received an assurance that the capture of Rome should precede OVERLORD and that the Pisa–Rimini line ought to be attained before ANVIL. AS shipping had to be allocated for the purpose, the date for its return to England had been postponed until January 15 – a concession that did not seem to be of great moment as the Italian front was not expected to break open by then. That conclusion discounted the ability of Winston Churchill to exploit the slightest toehold to argue for his own favoured policy were anyone rash enough to offer it.
At Cairo, after the party left Teheran, Roosevelt was goaded into naming a
supreme commander for OVERLORD and he appointed Eisenhower. The news reached Algiers and became official on December 10. Consequently when Churchill recovered from a bout of pneumonia, which kept him in bed for some days after his arrival in Tunis on the 11th, and began to rekindle what he called a dying theatre of war, Eisenhower, destined for greater things, stood on the sidelines. He was unwilling either to oppose Churchill’s proposals, so much like those he himself had put forward in November, to anticipate the opinion of his successor, General Maitland Wilson, who was to assume the post on January 8, or to reveal himself as an interested opponent now that he was the commander designate of the rival OVERLORD. “Jumbo” Wilson, as he was known, was no stranger to the political problems of high command and was a shrewd, even cunning operator who had to strike a cautious balance between the wishes of his prime minister and his position as an international commander.8 Furthermore, the general-post that had been set in train by Eisenhower’s appointment took Bedell Smith away with him and brought General Jake Devers from England, where he had been the supreme American commander, to be Wilson’s deputy. Devers was Marshall’s choice as an officer who would see that US interests were upheld in Wilson’s HQ. Montgomery was told on December 21 that he was to command 21st Army Group in the invasion of France. Oliver Leese, one-time commander of 30th Corps in the Eighth Army, was brought back from England to command the Eighth Army. Clark and Alexander were to remain in their posts.
With the supreme commander neutral, whether he was Eisenhower or Wilson, the decisions were made by Alexander, weak, compliant and eager to please Churchill, whose protégé he was, and the ambitious and impatient Clark, also a favourite of Churchill’s. Churchill’s intention was to disinter Anzio and capture Rome before the landing craft were removed to England.
On December 19, when Churchill had recovered from his pneumonia sufficiently to despatch telegrams energetically the body was still warm, for Clark had cancelled Anzio only the day before. The stagnation of the whole Italian campaign was “becoming scandalous”, Churchill informed the British Chiefs of Staff. No use had been made of the landing craft in the theatre since Salerno, he asserted (inaccurately). Obligingly the British chiefs agreed that use ought to be made of existing craft. With this neutral admission in his pocket Churchill took the game a stage further. He announced that Rome must not be sacrificed today for the French Riviera tomorrow. Churchill had never liked ANVIL and the “French Riviera”, and intimated that he envisaged the stalemate continuing until the following May, by which time it would be too late to take Rome. Something had to be done quickly. On these grounds he lobbied vigorously among senior officers at Tunis and uncovered a solution that appeared to satisfy everyone there. In principle, Anzio, which became code-named SHINGLE, was possible with two divisions if the requisite craft were held in the Mediterranean until February 5. So Churchill cabled Roosevelt to ask for his agreement before moving on to Marrakech to convalesce.
Churchill had breathed new life into the campaign at just the right moment for Clark. In the long December evenings, after a gruelling day of visits to units and of office work, Clark often looked at the calendar and pondered his future. His hope of taking Rome and later taking his own Fifth Army to southern France, where it would be part of the great adventure of OVERLORD, had receded. It looked as though he was to remain in what was becoming a backwater while others went on to new adventures. Montgomery was leaving the Eighth Army to command the landing phase of OVERLORD. Omar Bradley, who had commanded the 2nd Corps in Sicily and was junior to Clark, was to command the First US Army under Montgomery and would then command the 12th Army Group in which Patton would command the Third Army. Patton had been the commander of the Seventh Army in Sicily until his unfortunate behaviour over the slapping incident, but he had been too valuable not to forgive. Patton was no friend of Clark’s, but Devers he neither liked nor respected and certainly distrusted. Clark found it depressing that Devers was to have an influential position as Wilson’s deputy where he would have time on his hands to get into mischief. Alexander, it appeared to Clark, was being left on the shelf in his present post and as long as he remained in it there would be no promotion for Clark. Indeed the tide had seemed to be ebbing under both men’s keels and Clark noted in his diary that Alexander looked depressed. Both men therefore welcomed Churchill’s initiative not only for their own sakes but also because it would raise the spirits of their troops.
The men of the Fifth Army had had a miserable time, as we have mentioned, attacking range after range of mountains that dominated the two roads leading in the right direction: to Rome. They had captured the ruins of bleak, stone villages smelling of dung and perched on ridges at the ends of mule tracks. They had crossed and re-crossed the sinuosities of the tributaries of great rivers which flooded and swept their bridges away overnight, leaving them without food or ammunition. Carrying ninety-pound loads 1,500 feet up stony re-entrants with the occasional steep pitch had made them disinclined to take on the enemy waiting for them at the top. Squads and platoons fought isolated actions miles from any road; hot food was a rarity. Wet clothes, hardly noticed in the activity of daylight, froze at night and made the soldier shake when he was sleepless, hungry and nervous. There was a high and increasing incidence of battle fatigue. Perpetually wet feet produced “trench foot” if socks were not changed regularly. It was a nasty ailment that many junior officers at first ignored because they believed it to have been peculiar to the Western Front. It could cripple a man, however, unless attended in its early stages and it added to the long list of sick and wounded.
Physical isolation from friends was a new and unwelcome experience for most men, and harder to bear at night when a line of rocks easily became an enemy patrol in the imagination. A post on some craggy knife-edge would be held by four or five men, all that was left of a full “squad”, as Americans called the basic unit of infantry. If one of them were wounded he would have to remain with the squad or find his own way down the mountain to an aid post. It was Hobson’s choice. If he stayed he was a burden to his friends and would freeze to death or die from loss of blood. If he tried to find his own way down the mountain it was all too easy for him to succumb to the temptation to rest in a sheltered spot where he would fall into a bemused sleep from which he might never waken. It was also easy to lose his way when his mind was not too sharp, and die of exposure. Shelling was a severe test for isolated men, particularly at night when shells made a louder and more frightening noise and sounded closer than in fact they were. Often the fate of being wounded again on the way to a dressing station deterred men from making the attempt.
A steady drain of casualties and simultaneous losses from sickness and exhaustion reduced units to shadows of their original effectiveness in a couple of months at most, without their engaging in any large battles. Their rapid replacement by trained men was essential but the American method of doing so was severely criticised in Italy. Although American battalions were larger than British ones they often became less effective because they were kept in the line until they were what the Germans called “used up”: their fire-teams having been disrupted by casualties, the rifle companies simply went through the motions of attack, making a lot of noise but moving very little. Yet it was impossible for the Gl staff – the branch responsible for personnel – to sustain divisions in continuous fighting trim when there was usually no more than one at a time out of the line resting and refitting and infantry replacements were not arriving in the theatre, for the Fifth Army was at the mercy of a reinforcement and training system in the United States over which its staff had no control. As we have mentioned, the basic problem for British, American and Commonwealth staffs was that as the strain of casualties fell overwhelmingly on one part of the division, the “infantry strength”, relatively few casualties – expressed as a proportion of the total divisional strength – rendered the division ineffective. The point to note is that it is the “fighting strength” and, still more, the “infantry strength” of the divisi
on, that indicated the sharpness of its cutting edge. A few figures will illustrate this point.
29th Panzer Grenadier Division, (strength on July 2, 1944)9
Fighting Strength i.e. infantry, armour, artillery and engineers
5,217
Infantry Strength i.e. 6 battalions less heavy weapons
1,734
Total Strength i.e. including staff and supply
12,889
2nd New Zealand Division (Average strength, 1944)10
Fighting Strength 5,400
Infantry Strength i.e. 6 battalions including heavy weapons of the
infantry
1,800
Total Strength 14,000
In reading these figures remember that 90 per cent of all casualties were suffered by the infantry which comprised only 13 per cent of the divisional strength. When a division undertook a set-piece attack and suffered, say, 800 casualties in a week’s fighting, it could not remain efficient. Compelled to perform when 700 of its infantry were missing from the line, its actions were unlikely to inconvenience the enemy greatly. In defence, provided morale held up, units at half strength could give a good account of themselves provided that they were well supported by their heavy weapons units, in which casualties were seldom high. Hence the Germans enjoyed an advantage even though their units were weak.
There are some related points to make before we leave this subject. Mark Clark, and virtually every senior American with the exception of Dwight Eisenhower, expressed the opinion that the British were less determined in attack than Americans. Although, they observed, British infantry was as brave, or even braver than American, it performed less well. They attributed this to British commanders’ need to conserve manpower and their recollections of the Somme and Passchendaele deterring them from driving their men. They believed, too, that the British junior officers were poor tacticians. While there was some truth in this it was based on a false premise about performance, for the Germans ranked British infantry above American although they thought their tanks were inferior. And while it is true that Sir Ronald Adam warned commanders in Italy that infantry reserves were running out when he visited them in October 1943, there is a more fundamental explanation for the way the British spared their infantry and for the way American commanders drove theirs. It is illustrated by the difference in their replacement systems, a subject already mentioned in connection with the mutiny of British reinforcements on the beach at Salerno. In the British system the unit was treated as an organism to be preserved. It was a complex of human relationships, a team, like the Montreal Expos, Manchester United or the New York Islanders, liable to be completely disrupted by heavy casualties unless properly trained and acclimatised reserves were available. When fire-teams were destroyed or replacements outnumbered original team members, their efficiency and that of the whole unit in the line was reduced. The American system, described as brutal by more than one American, had replacements arrive in units as complete strangers. Furthermore, it did not train them to perform all the skills that would be required of them in battle when there were casualties to key men. It certainly produced large numbers of uniformly trained men but they were drafted into units like spare parts into an automobile. The system was industrial in conception, not organic as was the British.
Tug of War Page 15
