“The movement of Headquarters, Third Army and General Patton to the Continent was top secret. Interception of German radio messages gave definite proof that Hitler thought the original landing was a feint and that the main invasion would be made between the Somme and the Seine rivers and that General Patton, due to his great success in the amphibious landings in North Africa and in Sicily, would be in command of this main effort. The G-2 Section of Allied Headquarters had aided and abetted this belief by Hitler. In fact, so successful were they that many German divisions were held in reserve by Hitler in order to meet this phantom attack.”
July 6, 1944. Shortly after the morning briefing at Braemar House, Salisbury, our final headquarters in England, we drove to the nearby airstrip. Al Stiller and I checked with Meeks on the bedding rolls and personal effects. General Patton, followed by Willie,{37} briskly mounted the steps of his C-47. Climbing aboard a few moments later, we found Willie already curled up and asleep in the General’s peep, which, with wheels blocked, was lashed aft. The General himself was in his accustomed forward seat securing his safety belt.
“We’ll pick up our air cover before hitting the Channel,” the pilot said. The General nodded.
“O.K. to start, sir?”
“Go ahead,” the General said.
The engines turned over, coughed, settled to a normal hum. Down the runway, gathering speed. An imperceptible lift. Airborne. Plenty of room to spare. The General looked at his watch. “Ten-twenty-five,” he said. “Exactly a year ago to the minute we cast off from Algiers on the Monrovia for Sicily.”
“This time I doubt if we get our feet as wet,” Al said.
“I know,” the General said gloomily. “A hell of a way to make an amphibious landing.”
Since D day the possibility that the war might end suddenly had preyed on the General’s mind. He had been edgy, restive. Now he was silent, almost despondent.
We passed over some scattered clouds. Ahead the coast line. Over the Channel at ten thousand feet the ocean surface seen through a light haze appeared an unreal gray-green blur. From above and to the right two of our escorts swooped past and under with a wing-waggle salute. Over a cloud bank, like a solid snowdrift in the sunlight. The sea again, sparkling. Suddenly, and at an unexpected angle, the coast line of the Cotentin Peninsula, and, directly below, the familiar squat pavilion of the French Line at the end of its now sadly crumpled pier. The General’s head was pressed to the window. “Cherbourg,” he said. “Not too badly bashed up, I should say.”
Now we were following the coast and the wavy white line of breakers. Soon the landing beaches came into view, an appalling spectacle of chaos and destruction. Half-submerged ships and landing craft of all kinds at crazy angles. Uprooted beach obstacles, shattered pillboxes, piles and piles of supplies, from which, like columns of ants, long lines of miniature trucks moved slowly up over the grassy dunes and inland.
With a wide curve seaward we came in for a landing on the narrow airstrip behind Omaha Beach. As we taxied up to the end of the strip Chet Hanson, General Bradley’s aide, came running out to hand-wave our pilot in. Once more the General looked at his watch. “Eleven-twenty-five,” he said. “From Norfolk to Casablanca it took us eighteen days. From Algiers to Gela, Sicily, five days. And now France in one hour.” He sighed. “Well, come on. Let’s see if there is still a war going on.”
The distance to General Bradley’s headquarters in a partially wooded field south of Isigny was only a few miles, but what with the endless two-way stream of trucks, weapon carriers, half-tracks, and peeps, we arrived an hour late for lunch. The General spent the afternoon conferring with General Bradley and General Hodges and later with Lightning Joe Collins, Commander of the VII Corps. Having got Al and me fixed up with a tent next to theirs, Chet and Lou Briggs (who had gone to meet us at Utah Beach, in case we had been forced to land there) brought us up to date. Due to the proximity and intensity of the Corps artillery barrage, the briefing took some time. It was past midnight when we crawled into our bedding rolls. “I don’t believe,” Al yawned, “the General need worry about missing his war.”
July 7, 1944. Morning session with General Bradley and his staff, for which Monty and his Chief of Staff, General de Guingand, drove over from Bayeux.
“They put in several hours,” the boss said later, “explaining why they had not yet taken Caen, their D-day objective.”
After lunch the General bade them farewell and we drove off in the direction of Carentan to find our first C.P. in France. It took some finding, as General Gay and an advance party had taken pains to locate it in a thoroughly secluded apple orchard whose only approach was a narrow grass-covered lane in the bocage country southeast of the small town of Bricquebec near the village of Nehou (near St. Sauveur) in the center of the Cotentin Peninsula and less than ten miles behind First Army’s front lines.
The ground was hard and dry, the tents nestling beneath the conveniently spaced apple trees invisible from the air.
The General was pleased with the setup. But he is not going to be happy until Third Army becomes operational and the divisions now attached to First Army, together with other units to arrive from England, come under his full control and command.
July 12, 1944. This morning, your first letter since we left England, and very welcome it is. What, you ask, is a typical day. One rises with the sun from one’s wet sleeping bag, wrings the dew out of one’s uniform, shaves with a helmet full of cold water and a small hand mirror swinging from the nearby apple tree—we are still in the orchard. Breakfast in the General’s mess tent with the Old Man, Generals Gaffey and Gay, Harkins, Odom, and the other aides. With luck a quick visit to the latrine in the woods before accompanying the General to morning briefing. The latrine, incidentally, is something the General can take or leave.
“I guess I’m made like a horse,” he says. “Can go anytime. Very convenient.”
The briefing is held in a sizable wall tent. Big situation map. Folding camp chairs. The assembled staff members rise as the General enters with aides and Willie. He takes his seat, under which Willie curls up in a ball and goes to sleep. Each section chief—G-1, G-2, G-3, et al.—goes before the map and gives a snappy resume of yesterday’s activities and the picture as of this morning. Sometimes the General asks a question or two, or makes a short statement; sometimes not.
During the briefing, Mims and another driver have brought the General’s and a spare peep to the tent entrance. The briefing over, the General steps into his peep, Al and I take our places, and we are off. If the General is to visit corps or division headquarters (the usual objectives) Al or I, or both, will have previously checked with Colonel Brent Wallace, Chief of Liaison Section, and marked on our maps the ever-changing position of each corps or division to be visited. By the time one gets there, it has often moved. Al and I more or less alternate riding with the General. The other follows, or leads, in the second peep, whose function is to serve as protection and a spare in case of tire trouble or breakdown. Both peeps are equipped with machine guns. Leading can be rather hectic—the General likes to drive fast—and map reading in a fifty-or sixty-mile breeze while trying to identify road signs—often removed, misplaced, or reversed by the departed enemy—is not always easy. Several times we have got him hopelessly lost. He is quite good-natured about it.
In the last few days we have visited all the divisions of VIII and XV Corps and numerous abandoned German rocket-launching sites—including a gigantic project on which, up until D day, several thousand slave laborers had been working. Nobody here seems to understand its exact purpose or function. “Obviously intended for a go at London,” the British tell you. “More likely New York,” say our engineers. Take your choice.
We usually get back to the orchard in time for supper and Willie’s play hour. He likes to be swung around in the air while attached, with bulldog tenacity, to the end of an apple branch. After supper the General retires to his trailer to write up his diary, and Al and I creep back into those sleeping bags.
July 14, 1944. Bastille Day. This morning the General went with the engineering officer to look over Utah Beach, so I got hold of Bunny and we took a peep ride through some of the neighboring towns. In the main place of Bricquebec—there was some sort of fair going on—we stopped to look around. A crowd collected around our peep. Two little girls, aged perhaps five and seven respectively, came up and solemnly handed each of us a small bouquet. We thanked them, reciprocating with two small pieces of chocolate, which, with dignity, even a certain reserve, they accepted. I realized afterwards that this exchange of amenities constituted, for me at least, first contact of any kind with French civilians since landing in Normandy. Such is the self-containment of the U. S. Army.
A few minutes later—we were still conversing with the local citizenry—the smaller of the two little girls, blond with very round blue eyes, popped up again beside the peep and held out an expectant hand. Bunny and I were both reaching for our chocolate bars when the elder sister, a darker and sterner edition, pushed her way through the crowd, seized the more volatile member of the family by the arm. “Enfin” she said, marching her off, “faut pas exagérer, hein?” In contrast to the insistent “cigarette, chewing gum” refrain of North Africa, Sicily, and the Middle East, a refreshing expression of French mesure.
July 15, 1944. Late yesterday afternoon, I went with the General to the funeral of General Theodore Roosevelt, who had died in his sleep the night before. The service was up quite near the front. As the casket was being lowered, the reverberations of our antiaircraft opening up on a German photographic plane re-echoed through the wooded cemetery.
“Roosevelt would have liked that,” the General said on the drive home. “A great leader and a very brave man. Bad luck that he was not killed in action.”
July 16, 1944. This morning the General inspected the German defenses around Cherbourg and immediately ordered a detailed study thereof. “We’ll undoubtedly be running into the same kind of setup in Brittany and other places,” he said.
On getting back, there was a message to the effect that Harvey Bundy{38} and his boss, Mr. Stimson, would arrive by air tomorrow morning.
July 17, 1944. Quite a busy day. Immediately after breakfast we drove to the airfield outside Cherbourg to meet Mr. Stimson and his party. Delayed by fog, their plane was an hour and a half late. General Bradley, who was also supposed to meet the Secretary, was even later. However, after their arrival, there still remained time for a visit to the beaches and an alfresco lunch at First Army Headquarters. “The Sec,” as Harvey calls him, was in fine fettle and seemed impressed by what he saw, particularly the beaches. For visiting firemen they are sure-fire.
July 30, 1944. Two more funerals. That of General Lesley McNair (Chief of the Army Ground Forces), who was top-secretly visiting the front lines and instantly killed by a “short” from one of our own bombers. The death of Paddy Flint (Colonel Harry A. Flint, Commanding Officer of the 39th Infantry Regiment), shot through the head leading an attack, was a blow to the General, who liked and admired him deeply. “I hope I die as well and as painlessly,” he said.
Day before yesterday the signal for which the General has been itching came through. As of August i, Third Army will be fully operational and General Bradley has adopted practically all of General Patton’s plan. Four days ago First Army started its push on Saint-Lo. For the last three days, the General, if not Third Army as such, has himself been operational in a big way.
Have been on the go early and late. The Old Man is now really taking charge. What with visiting all the units, marching in ranks with an Infantry regiment on its way into the lines, flying in L-5’s up and down the front at low altitude, the last few days have been busy ones. They are likely to become even busier. Today we are breaking camp and tomorrow the headquarters will move up to another or-chard southeast of Coutances.
August 8, 1944. What a week. Have been riding postilion with the General throughout practically every daylight hour. By the time you receive this, you will doubtless know that on August 1, Third Army exploded out of the Cotentin Peninsula through the Avranches corridor and since then has been going in every direction at once. The Old Man has been like one possessed, rushing back and forth up and down that incredible bottleneck, where for days and nights the spearheading Armored divisions, followed by motorized Infantry, have been moving bumper to bumper. More marching in ranks, the General occasionally darting out to haul an officer out of a ditch in which he has taken refuge from a German plane, or excoriating another for taping over the insignia on his helmet. “Inexcusable,” he yells. “Do you want to give your men the idea that the enemy is dangerous?” Pushing, pulling, exhorting, cajoling, raising merry hell, he is having the time of his life. Our headquarters moves daily, in a series of one-night stands, and we are for the moment located in a tree-covered gully near Avranches.
A few days ago, in Avranches itself, we were blocked by a hopeless snarl of trucks. The General leaped from the peep, sprang into the abandoned umbrella-covered police box in the center of the square, and for an hour and a half directed traffic. Believe me, those trucks got going fast, and the amazed expressions on the faces of their drivers as recognition dawned were something.
We have been bombed, strafed, mortared, and shelled. The General thrives on it. Yesterday on the way back to our headquarters we were speeding along through choking dust under a high blue heaven crisscrossed with the vapor contrails of our tactical planes. It was a bad stretch of road from which our bulldozers had recently pushed to either side of the reeking mass of smashed half-tracks, supply trucks, ambulances, and blackened German corpses. Encompassing with a sweep of his arm the rubbled farms and bordering fields scarred with grass fires, smoldering ruins, and the swollen carcasses of stiff-legged cattle, the General half turned in his seat. “Just look at that, Codman,” he shouted. “Could anything be more magnificent?” As we passed a clump of bushes, one of our concealed batteries let go with a shattering salvo. The General cupped both hands. I leaned forward to catch his words. “Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance.” His voice shook with emotion. “God, how I love it!”
And here, I believe, in the unabashed enthusiasm, more, the passionate ardor for every aspect and manifestation of his chosen medium, lies the key to General Patton’s success. The A.D.C. of an Army Commander is afforded the opportunity of observing the personal approaches and techniques of scores of other commanders from battalion to the summit. I am quite ready to believe that there may be other E.T.O. Commanders who equal our own in mere technical proficiency. I have seen or heard of none, however, who can even remotely compare with General Patton in respect to his uncanny gift for sweeping men into doing things which they do not believe they are capable of doing, which they do not really want to do, which, in fact, they would not do, unless directly exposed to the personality, the genius—call it what you will—of this unique soldier who not only knows his extraordinary job, but loves it. Here in France, as in Sicily, an entire army, from corps commander to rifleman, is galvanized into action by the dynamism of one man. Even his military superiors find themselves irresistibly, if reluctantly, drawn into his magnetic field, and what was originally planned in the rarefied atmosphere of higher headquarters as the securing of a modest bridgehead bids fair to develop into a race across the Continent. Rash? Far from it. The General knows exactly what he is doing, and if at times the higher staffs turn green around the gills when across their astonished situation maps flash the prongs of seemingly unprotected spearheads launched deep into enemy territory, it is only because they have yet properly to gauge the man’s resourcefulness. As for his subordinates, more than one corps and division commander, in the course of a whirlwind visit from the Old Man, has felt a sinking in the pit of his stomach on finding himself and his command catapulted into outer space, but all of them have learned that he never lets them down. They know that if the unexpected happens, he will find a solution, and what is more, he will be up front to see that the solution is applied.
Three times in the last few days, in as many tents and wooded fields, the same dialogue with minor variations:
“Division commander: “But my flanks, General?”
The General: “You have nothing to worry about. If anything develops—and it won’t—our tactical Air will know before you do, and will clobber it. That will give me plenty of time to pull something out of the hat.” A pat on the shoulder. “Get going now. Let the enemy worry about his flanks. I’ll see you up there in a couple of days.”
And he does, too. Evening before last, at supper, the General, looking up from a report which a messenger from Operations had just delivered, said sharply:
“Tomorrow morning have my peep and an armored car ready. Immediately after the briefing we’ll go up and take a look at the Sixth Armored.”
A1 led off in the armored car and I rode with the General in his peep. For the next three hours we pursued the 6th Armored up the Brest peninsula. Soon we were well ahead of our own Infantry and I found myself sympathizing with the division commander’s concern in regard to his flanks and rear. At more and more frequent intervals we ran into groups of F.F.I.’s (French partisans) who were having a field day mopping up the German detachments scattered in the wake of our Armored drive. Full of good will and Calvados, they regaled the General with glowing tales of their own prowess, together with contradictory reports as to whether or not the woods immediately ahead were still full of Boches.
For the record, the French irregulars have given very real and valuable assistance, not only in mopping-up operations, but in sabotage, bridge-blowing, and ceaseless harassment of the retreating Germans. Around noon finally, and without incident, we caught up with a combat team of the 6th and eventually located General Grow,{39} whom the General complimented on his progress thus far.
“Keep going,” the General said as we left. “There is nothing to stop you between here and Brest.”
Cross-country to the 83d Division to confer with General Macon on tomorrow morning’s attack on Saint-Malo. Home via VIII Corps Headquarters near Saint-James.
In the last letter I failed to mention the landing of Leclerc’s 2d Division Blindée. You would have loved it. On the way home from some errand or other, I ran into them unexpectedly as they humped their way up over the dunes from the beach. Naturally I turned my peep around and rode along with their leading column. In the first small village, only a handful of people, two or three old men, half a dozen women, some children. From their point of view, nothing unusual about a column of presumably American tanks rumbling through the place. Nothing, that is, until through the hatch of the leading tank popped an unmistakably Gallic head encased in a woman’s silk-stocking skullcap. Singling out a hefty citizeness with two children and a pronounced mustache, the tanker leaned precariously in her direction. “Dis, donc, ma mignonne, on t’emmène à Paname, hein?” The lady’s jaw dropped almost to her ample bosom and the eyes of the other villagers bulged as they caught sight of the small tricolor flag painted on the tank’s side. By the time they came to, the leading tank of the first French fighting unit to land upon the soil of occupied France was well out of town. The next village was a larger one. Had some intuitive grapevine been at work? I don’t know. But thronging the place were at least fifty people, their arms loaded with flowers, fruit, bottles, jugs of cider, loaves of bread.
The column entered the place at a good clip. In no time at all the excited villagers, laden with the produce of Normandy, were swarming up, over, and into the receptive tanks. Why no one was killed in the rush, I shall never know. Three towns later, the 2d Blindée looked more like a parade of floats in the flower carnival at Nice than an armored division on its way into the lines. Perhaps in les fruits, les fleurs, the paysans of Calvados have hit upon a particularly effective form of camouflage, or maybe they know instinctively, and better than we do, how to boost Gallic morale—as, indeed, why not? In any event, within twenty-four hours XV Corps reported that the “French 2d” was happily engaged in killing Germans with a gusto and efficiency which warmed the General’s heart.
“When we visit them tomorrow,” he said, “remind me to take along a bagful of Bronze Stars.”
August 15, 1944. Our present C.P. is just north of Le Mans. On the way, the General visited the twelfth-century Chateau de Fougères.
At the end of yesterday’s briefing the General addressed the staff.
“In the last two weeks Third Army has advanced farther and faster than any other army in history. In the weeks to come it is my intention to advance farther and faster still.”
After that we took off in two L-5’s—over very fluid territory, I may say—to visit XV Corps, where the General apprised General Haislip of the plan to launch XV, XX, and XII Corps on Dreux, Chartres, and Orleans respectively.
“If I say so myself,” the General said, “it is a hell of a good plan, and wholly mine.”
General Haislip agreed.
You will probably be hearing a good deal about the Falaise pocket, within whose confines, if the General had been allowed to carry out his plan, the entire German Seventh Army could have been and should have been destroyed. To close the narrow gap between Falaise and Argentan, the General had thrown together a provisional corps comprised of the 2d French Armored and two Infantry divisions, the 80th and 90th. Led by General Gaffey, the provisional corps had actually reached a point less than ten miles from Falaise, into which advance elements of Canadian Armor and Infantry were already filtering, when Army Group cracked down with a halt order. The General is beside himself, but to no avail. The Ninth Air Force is having a field day slaughtering the fleeing Germans, but many, far too many, are slipping through the unclosed gap. It looks from here as though higher headquarters will have some tall explaining to do.
Two announcements on the radio today: General Patch and Seventh Army landed this morning in the south of France. Later: General Patton is now in command of Third Army.
“The first I’ve heard of it,” the General said.
August 16, 1944. Today the General and Al and I made a cross-country run to Chartres. General Walker met us at the bridge, where we waited until the firing had abated a little. Here and there the town itself was scarred, but the cathedral stood there as of old, calm, serene, timeless. The stained glass, removed and stored away early in the war, had been temporarily replaced by ordinary greenish panes.
August 17, 1944. Colonel Griffith, XX Corps G-3, was killed today by a sniper, and Charley Odom was hit while driving through the same stretch of woods through which we had passed with the General only a short time before. Charley was lucky. The bullet was deflected by a rib and he says he should be O.K. in a few days.
August 19, 1944. Last evening the General got word that his old friend and World War I instructor at the Staff School at Langres, General Koechlin-Schwartz, was living in retirement at Vannes, up towards the end of the Brest peninsula.
“Codman,” he said, “take a plane, take two planes. I don’t care how you do it, but bring my old friend back here to me.”
This morning at crack of dawn my flight of two L-5’s took off from the nearby airstrip. The first hour and a half backtracking over the familiar green and brown checkerboards of the Sarthe and Mayenne was lovely, but with the unrolling of the Brittany landscape the weather began to foul up. Clouds, gray and black ones. Rain. Bumpy as hell. Can’t see the other plane. About fifty more miles to go. To land or not to land. Let’s try to get through. After a while it clears a little. Ahead a sizable town and an airdrome. Vannes? Hope so. Yes. Good landing. No one around. Vannes, eight kilometers. Start off on foot. Hitchhike a ride in farmer’s truck—one of the old charcoal burners. Nice reception in town. Cheers—flowers, even.
“Where lives the General K.S.?” Willing guides. A nice old house. A nice old bretonne. “Monsieur le général is in his bureau.” A nice old man in tweeds and felt slippers. At the mention of my General’s name he jumped up, raising his arms to heaven. “I knew it,” he cried. “As soon as I learned of those mad columns forging their separate ways up the peninsula, I knew that once again my friend Patton was amongst us. Only he would have the audacity. Where is he? I will go anywhere to rejoin him.”
“Perfect, mon général. I have two planes at the airport.”
“Planes!” His face fell. “In this weather? You will stay to lunch and I will consult my wife.”
“Are there any American units in Vannes?”
“No.”
“Never mind, I’ll be back in an hour with transportation for the airport.”
Visit to the new sous-préfet, recently of the maquis.
“I got tired of hiding in an attic waiting for the Vichy incumbent to leave,” he said, “so with the help of a few friends, I threw him out and moved in. Transportation? Difficult. Plenty of cars, but no essence.”
“You need essence, monsieur le préfet; I need a car—to transport a General, one of your Generals. Perhaps something can be worked out.”
