ELEVEN
Sicily
I realize I did my duty in a very tactless way, but so long as my method pleased the God of Battles, I am content.
—GEORGE S. PATTON,
September 21, 1943
American performance in North Africa was abysmal. An army must learn to crawl before it can walk, Omar Bradley famously said, and it was in Tunisia that the American Army first learned to crawl. “The proud and cocky Americans today stand humiliated by one of the greatest defeats in our history,” Commander Harry Butcher wrote in his diary after Kasserine.1 Censorship kept the home front ignorant of the extent of American losses, but the Army had been driven back eighty-five miles in less than a week—a rout that, if measured in miles alone, exceeded that of the Battle of the Bulge two years later. Ike was saved because of German logistical problems: Rommel ran short of fuel and ammunition. Speaking off the record to newsmen, Eisenhower assumed full responsibility for the defeat, and later acknowledged that he had erred by pressing II Corps too far forward. “Had I been willing to pass to the defensive, no attack against us could have achieved even temporary success.”2
Few figures in public life have proved more adept at making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear than Dwight Eisenhower. His official report to the Combined Chiefs of Staff on the North African campaign proclaimed that the battle of Kasserine Pass, rather than being a military disaster, was, in reality, the turning point of the war. According to Ike, the “sands were running out” for Rommel, “and the turn of the tide at KASSERINE proved actually to be the turn of the tide in all of TUNISIA as well.”3 With positive thinking like that it is no wonder that Eisenhower was so popular with Churchill and Roosevelt, or why Patton persisted in referring to him as “Divine Destiny” rather than Dwight David.4
Eisenhower radiated the certitude of victory. “I have caught up with myself and have things on a fairly even keel,” he wrote Marshall in early March 1943.5 Alexander’s timely arrival had rescued the ground war, and John C. H. Lee’s supply services had ensured that everything required to finish the job was always at hand.
Ike’s optimism was contagious. He recognized that a few compelling ideas, preached relentlessly, would propel his forces forward.6 The foremost of those ideas was Allied unity. His problems were not so much with the British, who had been accustomed to fighting alongside allies for centuries, but with his American compatriots, who were notoriously insular. Mark Clark and Omar Bradley were viciously xenophobic, and George Patton, who got along famously with the French, despised the British with a particular passion. Ike’s chief contribution at this point in the war was to ride herd on his countrymen and keep them working in harness with the British, who were still doing the lion’s share of the fighting. Seventy-five percent of Allied ground forces in the theater were British, as were four out of every five naval vessels and half the air forces. As far as casualties, the British had lost eight times as many men since El Alamein as the Americans.7 “We are establishing a pattern for complete unity in Allied effort that will stand the Allied nations in good stead throughout the remainder of the war,” Ike advised the War Department in early April.8
Eisenhower studied his mistakes. “We are learning something every day, and in general do not make the same mistake twice.”9 Ike learned to be tougher with subordinates such as Fredendall. “Officers that fail must be ruthlessly weeded out,” Eisenhower wrote his old friend Leonard Gerow. “Considerations of friendship, family, kindness, and nice personality have nothing to do with the problem.… You must be tough.”10 He learned the importance of training and discipline, and how to deploy airpower and massed armor, particularly when confronting Germany’s superior panzer formations. One lesson he did not learn was the need for a proper replacement system, and here he betrayed an unwillingness to challenge official doctrine. The United States, unlike the British, the French, or the Germans, treated soldiers as interchangeable parts. As parts wore out, new parts were shipped in to keep units at full strength. These replacements were invariably green, and unit cohesion suffered from the dribble of new men constantly coming in. The British, French, and Germans, by contrast, operated on a unit basis. When a regiment wore out, it was replaced in the line with a fresh regiment and sent to the rear to refit—usually with replacements from the same region. The American system reflected the assembly line attitude that worked well producing tanks and airplanes, but fell woefully short when it came to maintaining unit morale. A product of World War I, it was vigorously embraced by General Marshall. Ike and his field commanders knew it worked poorly, but they never challenged the system.
Above all, it was in North Africa that Eisenhower made the transition from staff officer to senior commander. By the end of the Tunisian campaign he no longer felt that he had to keep Marshall and the War Department informed of his every move. He had confidence in his subordinates—Alexander, Cunningham, Tedder, and Lee—and they gave him their confidence in return. “The only man who could have made things work was Ike,” said Churchill’s chief of staff, General Sir Hastings Ismay.11 “He was utterly fair in his dealings,” said Alexander. “I envied the clarity of his mind, and his power of accepting responsibility.”12 Harold Macmillan, Ike’s political adviser, noted that Eisenhower was “wholly uneducated in any normal sense of the word. Yet compared with the wooden heads and desiccated hearts of many British soldiers I see here, he is a jewel of broadmindedness and wisdom.”13
At Casablanca, Churchill and Roosevelt agreed that after North Africa was liberated, the Allies should invade Sicily. The extended fighting in Tunisia made a cross-Channel attack all but impossible in 1943, and Eisenhower’s forces could not sit idle for the remainder of the year. The island of Sicily, ninety miles north of Tunisia and separated from Italy by the narrow Strait of Messina, offered the best opportunity. An invasion could be mounted quickly, the occupation of the island would render Mediterranean shipping lanes more secure, and the invasion of Italy (which the British pressed relentlessly) would be facilitated. The operation was code-named HUSKY, and Eisenhower was instructed to prepare for a landing in early July.14
Planning was delayed by the Tunisian campaign, but by May 12, 1943, the final order of battle was fixed. Thirteen Allied divisions—six British, six American, and one Canadian—were committed to HUSKY. The British and Canadian divisions would be commanded by Montgomery and his Eighth Army headquarters. The American divisions would comprise a newly created Seventh Army commanded by Patton. Both armies would be under Alexander’s overall command at Fifteenth Army Group.
Because of the marginal performance of American troops in Tunisia, primary responsibility was assigned to Montgomery’s Eighth Army. The British would land on the southeast coast of Sicily, press north along the coastal road, capture the port cities of Syracuse, Catania, and Taormina, and take Messina, closing off the escape route for Axis forces on the island. Patton’s troops would land west of Eighth Army on Sicily’s southern coast and cover Montgomery’s left flank as he drove north. D-Day was set for July 10, 1943.
Allied intelligence estimated the number of enemy troops on the island at three hundred thousand: mostly Italian, but including two top-of-the-line German panzer divisions. Sicily was roughly the size of the state of Vermont, and the mountainous terrain tilted the odds heavily in favor of the defenders. Mount Etna, one of Europe’s four active volcanoes, stood directly in the path of Montgomery’s advance—a ten-thousand-foot obstacle that was twenty miles in diameter.a On the other hand, the Allies would have complete air supremacy, and the Italian Navy—six antiquated battleships and eleven cruisers—would be no match for Cunningham’s combined fleet should it choose to do battle, which was highly unlikely.
Eisenhower continued to juggle his obligation to Mamie with his affection for Kay. Summersby was now working as Ike’s personal assistant, as well as driving him when the occasion arose.b “I was spending more time than ever with Ike,” she recalled. “Even in London with our seven day weeks, I occasionally visited Mummy, lunched with friends, went to the odd cocktail party. But now I trod a very narrow path. From breakfast to the final nightcap, I went where Ike went. Once when Omar Bradley was coming to dinner, Ike and I were a bit late. When we walked in, Brad said, ‘Here they are, Ike and his shadow.’ ”15
Omar Bradley, one of the few senior American commanders without a wartime sweetheart, said that Kay’s influence over Ike
was greater than is generally recognized.… Their close relationship is quite accurately portrayed, so far as my personal knowledge extends, in Kay’s second book, Past Forgetting. Ike’s son John published his father’s personal letters to Mamie, in part to refute Kay’s allegation that she and Ike were deeply in love. Many of these letters are obviously Ike’s replies to probing letters from Mamie about his relationship with Kay. To my mind, Ike protests too much, thus defeating John’s purpose.16 c
On June 6, 1943, Colonel Richard Arnold, Kay’s fiancé, was killed instantly when a fellow officer set off a trip wire during a mine-clearing operation. Kay was stunned, but her grief passed quickly. “Ours had been a wartime romance,” she wrote in retrospect. “There had been weeks and months when we had not seen each other. Each time we met it had been as exciting as a first date, and probably for that very reason our knowledge of each other had not progressed much beyond the first-date stage. Ike knew more about me and had seen more of my family than Dick ever had.… Now when I tried to mourn him, I discovered that I did not really know the man I was grieving for.”17
Mamie and Ike had not seen each other for almost a year. Ensconced in a two-bedroom apartment at Washington’s fashionable Wardman Park Hotel, Mamie found herself increasingly alone. She loathed public appearances and the limelight, preferring the company of Army wives, where she now cut a wide swath. She spent her evenings reading pulp fiction, slept late, and either went shopping downtown or played cards and mah-jongg most afternoons with her contemporaries. Always delicate, her weight plummeted to 112 pounds.
Mamie had little interest in politics. To the extent she followed national and international affairs, it was through the eyes of her ultraconservative parents in Denver. When Eleanor Roosevelt invited her for a private luncheon at the White House, Mamie declined—a social gaffe the Roosevelts never forgot. Mrs. Roosevelt attributed Mamie’s refusal to alcoholism, a rap that followed her for the rest of her life.18 When Ike paid a lightning visit to Washington six months later, FDR invited him for dinner at the White House. Mamie was not invited.d
The fact is, Mamie missed her husband and was alone for the first time in her life. She fretted about the continued presence of Kay Summersby at Eisenhower’s headquarters. Why did Ike keep her around if he knew it made Mamie uncomfortable? Susan Eisenhower, in her biography of her grandmother, puts the matter in perspective. Mamie understood Ike’s need for female companionship, wrote Susan. “She had firsthand knowledge that when ambition, rankpulling, and rivalry were part and parcel of the daily environment, a sympathetic and trustworthy listener was of inestimable value. From the earliest days of their marriage, Mamie herself had created a stress-free after-work environment for Ike—which included having friends in, playing cards, or ‘just loafing.’ ” Mamie worried that Kay had become her surrogate by providing that atmosphere for Ike in Algiers.19
Mamie evidently expressed her feelings to Ike in early June. She also included Army gossip about Dick Arnold’s messy stateside divorce. Eisenhower received the letter just after Arnold’s death, and was not amused. On June 11 he replied to Mamie.
A very strange coincidence occurred this morning. I had two letters from you … and in one of them you mentioned my driver, and a story you’d heard about the former marital difficulties of her fiancé. You said it was a “not pretty” story. Your letter gave me my first intimation that there was any story whatever. In any event, whatever guilt attached to him has been paid in full. At the same moment that your letter arrived I received a report that he was killed.… So what young Arnold did, I do not know. But here we considered him a valuable officer and a fine person. I’m saddened by his death.
Ike concluded by reassuring Mamie of his love. “You never quite seem to comprehend how deeply I depend upon you and need you. So when you’re lonely, try to remember that I’d rather be by your side than anywhere else in the world.”20
After Colonel Arnold’s death, Eisenhower became especially solicitous of Kay. When he ordered two new Class A uniforms from the finest French tailor in Algiers, he insisted that Kay be measured for two as well.
“How can I ever thank you?” asked Kay.
“Kay, you are someone very special to me,” he replied.
He laid his hand over mine. And he smiled. This was not the famous Eisenhower grin. This was a tender, almost tremulous smile. And full of love. We just sat there and looked at each other. We were both silent, serious, eyes searching eyes. It was a communion, a pledging, an avowal of love. For over a year, Ike and I had spent more time with each other than with anyone else. We had worked, worried and played together. Love had grown so naturally that it was part of our lives.21
Later that day, Ike had second thoughts. “I’m sorry about this morning, Kay. That shouldn’t have happened. Please forget it.”22
And later still, more second thoughts. “Goddamnit, can’t you tell I’m crazy about you.”
It was like an explosion. We were suddenly in each other’s arms. His kisses absolutely unraveled me. Hungry, strong, demanding. And I responded every bit as passionately. He stopped, took my face between his hands. “Goddamnit, I love you.”
Ike put his hands on my shoulders. “We have to be very careful,” he said. “I don’t want you to be hurt. I don’t want people to gossip about you. God, I wish things were different.”23
Summersby later recalled,
The acknowledgement of our love heightened the pleasure of every moment Ike and I spent together—and heightened the frustrations as well. As long as we were in Algiers, all we could hope for would be a few stolen moments of privacy—to talk. No more mad embraces. That initial passionate encounter could not be repeated. Love made no visible change in our lives; the change was all within. We picked up the threads of routine as if they had never been broken.24
…The cocktail hour was often a time we could count on for ourselves. In Algiers we would sit on the high-backed sofa in the living room, listen to records, have a few drinks, smoke a few cigarettes and steal a few kisses—always conscious that someone would walk in at any moment. We were more like teen-agers than a woman in her thirties and a man in his fifties. We were certainly a curiously innocent couple—or perhaps it was simply the circumstances in which we found ourselves.25
On June 11, 1943, the Allies captured the tiny island of Pantelleria, thirty miles off the Tunisian coast, and directly in the path of military convoys sailing for Sicily. The operation, code-named CORKSCREW, marks the first occasion in which Eisenhower asserted his authority as supreme commander contrary to the advice of his subordinates.
The Isola di Pantelleria, sometimes known as the caper capital of the Mediterranean, was a fifty-two-square-mile volcanic outcropping that had been fortified by Mussolini in the mid-1930s as counterpoise to the British base at Malta. Axis propaganda touted it as the Gibraltar of the central Mediterranean, and because of its rocky coastline with no beaches and only one small harbor less than three hundred yards wide, most military authorities considered it unassailable. Eisenhower nevertheless believed that if left in enemy hands, the island would be a serious menace. Its elaborate network of radio direction finders played havoc with Allied aircraft, and its airfield, though heavily bombed, was still capable of launching aerial assaults against nearby ships.
Eisenhower’s deputies—Alexander, Cunningham, and Tedder—stoutly opposed the operation. Alexander, in particular, with memories of Dunkirk fresh in his mind, resisted landing on the island, which he believed would result in “unthinkable casualties.” Cunningham initially agreed that it was too risky, as did Tedder. But Eisenhower persisted. Taking advantage of Allied air supremacy, he ordered a bombing campaign to pulverize the island’s defenses. In three weeks, Allied planes flew five thousand sorties against Pantelleria, dropped 6,400 tons of bombs, and left the defenders in a state of shock. Tedder and Cunningham now agreed that Italian morale was so low they would not put up much of a fight, but Alexander held firm in his opposition. Eisenhower overruled him and ordered the invasion to proceed. If Bradley, Clark, and Patton believed that Ike was merely a front man for his British deputies (as they did), Pantelleria clearly established who was in command.
In the face of Alexander’s continued opposition, Eisenhower decided it would be prudent to make a personal reconnaissance of the island. Three days before the scheduled assault, he boarded Admiral Cunningham’s flagship, the HMS Aurora, which was to lead a naval task force of cruisers and destroyers in a final bombardment of the island. This would be Ike’s first exposure to hostile fire, and Aurora moved at flank speed (twenty-eight knots). Cunningham told Eisenhower that the whole area was mined except for a narrow channel that had been swept.
“Are there no floating mines about?” asked Ike.
“Oh yes,” Cunningham replied. “But at this speed the bow wave will throw them away from the ship. It would be just bad luck if we should strike one.”26
The naval bombardment lasted several hours, and Italian shore batteries remained mostly silent. Awed by the destruction, Eisenhower told Cunningham, “Andrew, if you and I got into a small boat, we could capture the place ourselves.”27
On June 11, 1943, the Italian garrison of eleven thousand men surrendered before the first assault troops went ashore. Pantelleria was in Allied hands, the only casualty a British enlisted man who had been bitten by a mule. “I’m afraid this telegram sounds a bit gloating,” Eisenhower confessed in reporting the success to Marshall. “Today marks the completion of my twenty-eighth year of commissioned service and I believe that I am now legally eligible for promotion to colonel [in the Regular Army].”28 e If Ike were gloating, the gloating was justified. CORKSCREW had been his plan from the beginning. Despite the doubts of his senior commanders, all of whom were more experienced than he, Eisenhower had insisted upon taking the island, and had successfully done so. For Ike, Pantelleria was a watershed. In his mind, it confirmed his strategic judgment and gave him the confidence he needed for the future. The stakes had been trivial, but the outcome could not have been more significant.29
At the same time the Allies were taking Pantelleria, the political situation in Algeria began to sort itself out. To the consternation of Robert Murphy, the American State Department, Admiral Leahy, and FDR, Charles de Gaulle emerged as undisputed leader of the French war effort. On May 27, the National Council of the Resistance, meeting clandestinely in Paris, recognized de Gaulle as the leader of the Resistance and demanded that he be installed as president of the provisional government of France in Algeria.30 On May 30, de Gaulle arrived in Algiers. On June 3, the French Committee of National Liberation (FCNL) was formed with de Gaulle and Giraud as copresidents. The committee proclaimed itself “the central French power. It directs the French war effort. It exercises French sovereignty.”31 De Gaulle’s presence in Algiers triggered a wave of popular demonstrations by Frenchmen of all classes and political persuasions. Giraud, though not personally tainted by Vichy, stood for the old order. De Gaulle represented the future. Churchill and the British government made it clear they supported de Gaulle. Eisenhower—with HUSKY about to be launched—was most concerned that French North Africa be unified behind whatever leader might emerge. And Roosevelt was determined that de Gaulle be defeated. “I am fed up with de Gaulle,” the president cabled Churchill on June 17. “The time has arrived when we must break him.”32
FDR’s attitude toward de Gaulle was personal and petulant. He dug in his heels and ignored the plethora of evidence that de Gaulle, and only de Gaulle, spoke for the French nation. The president’s attitude was analogous to the combination of hubris and obstinacy he displayed in 1937 when he sought to pack the Supreme Court, and in 1938 when he attempted to purge four Democratic senators in their state primaries. Eisenhower, who was now more adept at reading the political situation on the ground, stood aside and let the drama unfold.
In July, Roosevelt invited Giraud to the United States for what he believed would be a ceremonial laying on of hands. Giraud was received politely but unenthusiastically by the North American audience, and by the time he returned to Algiers at the end of the month, de Gaulle had solidified his position as the sole president of the FCNL, which had become the de facto government of France in exile. Giraud retreated to a figurehead position as head of the armed forces, and retired the following year. De Gaulle captured the change as he described his triumphant visit to Casablanca in August 1943. “Six months before, I had had to reside on the city’s outskirts, constrained by secrecy and surrounded with barbed wire and American sentry posts. Today my presence served as a symbol and a center of French authority.”33
Eisenhower understood de Gaulle better than any other Allied leader did. They were the same age, born within a month of each other in 1890. Both came from large families, both attended their country’s military academy, and both spent their early careers working with tanks. Both read assiduously, wrote well, and possessed a remarkable command of their respective languages. Both identified with their country’s heritage, and in many respects exemplified its virtues and vices. De Gaulle’s war record was exceptional, and Eisenhower respected it. Wounded three times on the western front in World War I, he was left for dead on the field at Verdun, only to be rescued and healed by the Germans.
De Gaulle, for his part, understood and appreciated the position in which Eisenhower had been placed. “If occasionally he went so far as to support the pretexts which tended to keep us in obscurity, I can affirm that he did so without conviction. I even saw him submit to my intervention in his own strategy whenever national interest led me to do so. At heart this great soldier felt, in his turn, that mysterious sympathy which for almost two centuries had brought his country and mine together in the world’s great dramas.”34
On July 7, three days before Allied forces were scheduled to land in Sicily, Eisenhower flew from Algiers to Malta, the operational command post for HUSKY, and less than sixty miles from where Patton’s troops would go ashore. Ike said he felt “as if my stomach was a clenched fist.”35 This time, unlike TORCH, Eisenhower did not have direct operational responsibility. The ground forces were commanded by Alexander, the air by Tedder, and the naval forces by Cunningham. Ike presided over the three, ready to settle any dispute that might arise, but he did not control day-to-day operations. After the battle plan had been agreed to, the only major decision left in his hands was to give the final go-ahead.
The invasion of Sicily was the largest amphibious assault ever attempted. One hundred and seventy-five thousand troops—seven divisions, two more than would go ashore in Normandy—would land simultaneously on twenty-six beaches along a front that stretched for 105 miles. Within two days, almost five hundred thousand men would be ashore. The invasion armada, which was already at sea, stretched for sixty miles in a mile-wide corridor and comprised more than three thousand vessels, including eight battleships and two carriers. In addition to the landing force, the fleet carried more than two hundred thousand tons of supplies, half of which were munitions. John C. H. Lee, it was said, always doubled whatever his staff thought the Army needed “just in case.”36
On July 9—D-Day minus one—the weather turned foul. By late afternoon the winds had reached a gale-force thirty knots—Force 7 on the Beaufort scale. “We could barely stand on deck,” wrote war correspondent Ernie Pyle aboard the Biscayne.37 Patton’s men in flat-bottomed landing craft fared even worse. By 6 p.m. the winds had picked up to thirty-seven knots, then forty knots, churning twelve-foot seas. Marshall, who was following the weather reports hourly, cabled to ask if the invasion was on or off. “My reaction was that I wish I knew,” said Ike.38
Weather forecasters on Malta predicted the storm had peaked and would soon pass. So, too, did Cunningham, who had sailed the Mediterranean for almost half a century. Staff officers calculated that if the invasion were postponed, it would take two to three weeks to remount it, by which time the element of surprise would have been lost. Whatever Ike’s limitations as a strategist, he was never reluctant to make the tough calls. “Let’s go,” he told Cunningham. To Marshall he radioed, “The operation will proceed as scheduled in spite of an unfortunate westerly wind.”39
After the decision was made, Eisenhower and his deputies broke for dinner and hoped for the best. “To be perfectly honest,” said Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, “it doesn’t look too good.”40 Tedder observed that it was curious to be invading Italy from the south. “Even Hannibal had the sense to come in with his elephants over the Alps.”41
The troops were slated to go ashore at 0300 hours. As he waited, Ike broke the tension with a letter to Mamie. “In circumstances such as these, men do almost anything to keep themselves from going slightly mad. I can stand it better than most, but there is no use denying that I feel the strain.… Everybody is doing his best. The answer is in the lap of the Gods.”42
When the first troops went ashore at 0335 hours, a bare half hour late, the storm had subsided. The surf was high on the American beaches, but the landings were largely unopposed, marred only by the usual map-reading fiascos and occasional poor helmsmanship by undertrained landing craft operators. The exception was the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment of Matthew Ridgway’s 82nd Airborne, which was decimated by friendly fire. As the troop-carrying C-47s flew over the invasion fleet on their way to the drop zone, trigger-happy antiaircraft gunners opened fire. Of the 144 planes that took off from Tunisia, 23 were shot down and 37 were badly damaged.43 Fourteen hundred of the 5,300 paratroopers in the regiment were killed or missing—one of the worst friendly fire episodes in modern warfare.44
By nightfall on the tenth, the invasion force was four miles inland and the beachheads were secure. Panzers from the Hermann Göring Division launched a vigorous assault against the landing zone of the 1st Division, but were eventually repulsed by American artillery fire. Italian foot soldiers and coastal defense units surrendered by the thousands. More enemy soldiers were captured during the first week of fighting on Sicily than had surrendered to the U.S. Army in all of World War I.45 Others simply peeled off their uniforms and joined the hordes of refugees streaming inland—“self-demobilization,” in the terminology of the Axis high command.
As the Italian Army melted away, Field Marshal Kesselring—whose skilled defense of Tunisia had delayed the Allies for six months—arrived on the scene, bringing with him two additional German divisions, the 29th Panzer Grenadiers and the 1st Parachute Division, to reinforce the two already on the island. With Allied forces on Sicily already numbering close to five hundred thousand, Kesselring understood that defeat was inevitable. But he was determined to “win time and defend,” and recognized that Sicily’s geography afforded an exceptional opportunity to build a defensive bastion along the slopes of Mount Etna and the Messina Peninsula.
Once again, Allied planners underestimated German resiliency, minimized the topographic impediments, and overestimated American and British capacity. Two days after the landing, Eisenhower spent a day touring the beachheads and told newsmen that assuming everything proceeded satisfactorily, “We should have Sicily in two weeks.”46 Those two weeks turned into six. Eisenhower played little role in the battle. Alexander, commanding the ground war, had two scorpions in a bottle: Patton and Montgomery, who sometimes appeared more intent on watching each other than chasing Kesselring. When Eighth Army’s advance bogged down on the slopes of Mount Etna, Patton struck out on his own toward Palermo, in western Sicily. The military logic was dubious. Alexander let Patton have his way, but the Germans were mystified. Kesselring found it difficult to believe that the strong Allied forces advancing along the coast “had been dispersed to the western parts of Sicily, where the Americans just marched and captured unimportant terrain, instead of fighting at the wing where a major decision had to be reached.”47
After reaching Palermo, Patton turned east and began attacking along the north coast toward Messina. German resistance was fierce, and Patton pushed his men to the limit. On August 17, 1943, the troops of Seventh Army beat the British to Messina by a number of hours. As in North Africa, brute force had prevailed. The outstanding performance of Seventh Army under Patton was the only bright spot in the fight. Kesselring, with sixty thousand troops, had held back two Allied armies for thirty-eight days, inflicting twenty thousand casualties at a cost of twelve thousand.48 And all four German divisions, the 15th and 29th Panzer Grenadiers, the 1st Parachute, and the Hermann Göring, were evacuated intact across the Strait of Messina, along with 70,000 Italian troops, 10,000 trucks, and 47 tanks. The withdrawal, one of the most successful in military history, went largely uncontested. Eisenhower’s headquarters had made no plans for severing the strait when HUSKY began, nor did any such plan emerge as the campaign reached a climax. Not once did the senior Allied commanders confer on how to prevent Kesselring’s escape.49 The coordination of the air, ground, and naval forces was Ike’s responsibility, and in this instance he dropped the ball. An after-action report of the British War Office called Sicily a “chaotic and deplorable example of everything that planning should not be.”50 Montgomery put it more directly. “The truth of the matter is that there was no plan” to prevent the German evacuation.51
Allied euphoria over the capture of Sicily temporarily obscured the damage that had been done by permitting the German Army to escape. Like most Americans, Eisenhower rejoiced that Patton’s Seventh Army had beaten Montgomery to Messina, and privately relished Monty’s discomfiture. But that joy was short-lived. Within hours after Patton had taken possession of the city at a hastily improvised ceremony in front of city hall, Eisenhower found himself closeted with Brigadier General Frederick A. Blessé, the theater surgeon general, listening to Blessé’s confidential report about Patton’s incomprehensible conduct the week before when he had struck and verbally abused two enlisted men in the hospital.
On August 4, Patton, who was relentlessly pressing his troops forward, visited a frontline hospital, where he toured the wards and spoke with the wounded. When he discovered a soldier with no apparent wounds, Patton lost his self-control, slapped the man twice, and called him “a Goddamn coward.” He repeated the episode a week later at another field hospital, where he called another soldier, whom he thought was a malingerer, a disgrace to the Army who ought to be shot, and then pulled his pistol from its holster and threatened to do it himself. Patton then struck the man with such force that his helmet liner was knocked off.f “I won’t have these cowardly bastards hanging around our hospitals,” he told the surgeon in charge. “We’ll probably have to shoot them sometime anyway, or we’ll raise a breed of morons.”52 (Patton had struck an enlisted man before. At the beginning of the Meuse-Argonne campaign in September 1918, Patton, then a lieutenant colonel, hit a skulking soldier on the head with a shovel and wrote to his wife that he thought he had killed him.)53
Eisenhower’s initial response was to minimize the episode. “If this thing ever gets out they’ll be howling for Patton’s scalp, and that will be the end of Georgie’s service in the war. I simply cannot let that happen. Patton is indispensable to the war effort—one of the guarantors of our victory.”54 Ike instructed Blessé to conduct a confidential investigation, and then wrote in longhand a personal letter to Patton, enclosing the surgeon general’s report, and asking for an explanation. Eisenhower’s letter was hand delivered, and he assured Patton that the affair would be kept confidential. “In Allied Headquarters there is no record of the attached report or my letter to you, except in my own secret files.” Patton was instructed to reply “personally and secretly.”55 In short, there would be no official reprimand, and Patton’s service record would remain unblemished.56
“No letter that I have been called upon to write in my military career has caused me more anguish than this one,” Eisenhower wrote Patton. “In the two cases in the attached report, it is not my present intention to institute any formal investigation.… [N]evertheless if there is a very considerable element of truth in the allegations accompanying this letter, I must so seriously question your good judgment and your self-discipline as to raise serious doubts in my mind as to your future usefulness.… I assure you that conduct such as that described in the accompanying report will not be tolerated in this theater no matter who the offender may be.”57
Eisenhower instructed Patton to apologize to the men involved as well as to the doctors and nurses who had witnessed the episode. Later, Patton was instructed to apologize to all of the men under his command. Patton did so grudgingly, and did not fully grasp the seriousness of his offense. “It is a commentary on justice when an Army commander has to soft-soap a skulker to placate the timidity of those above,” he recorded in his diary on August 21, 1943.
Eisenhower did his utmost to keep the two incidents under wraps. He did not inform Marshall or the War Department, and when a delegation of newsmen flew from Sicily to Algiers to confront Ike with the results of their own investigation, Eisenhower charmed them into suppressing the story. “Patton’s emotional tenseness and his impulsiveness are the very qualities that make him such a remarkable leader,” Ike told the reporters. “The more he drives his men the more he will save their lives. He must be indifferent to fatigue and ruthless in demanding the last atom of physical energy.”58
Patton did not escape unscathed. A week after the capture of Messina, Eisenhower sent Marshall a report on his subordinates that the chief of staff might use in selecting his commanders for the invasion of France. It was widely assumed that Marshall would command the invasion and that Ike would either become his deputy or return to Washington as acting chief of staff.
Patton’s ability spoke for itself, said Eisenhower. “He has conducted a campaign where the brilliant successes scored must be attributed directly to his energy, determination and unflagging aggressiveness. He is an army commander that you can use with certainty that the troops will not be stopped by ordinary obstacles.” But Patton brought some unfortunate baggage with him. Despite his success, he “continues to exhibit some of those unfortunate personal traits of which you and I have always known and which during this campaign caused me some most uncomfortable days.… Personally, I believe that he is cured—because fundamentally he is so avid for recognition as a great military commander that he will ruthlessly suppress any habit that will jeopardize it. Aside from this one thing, he has qualities that we can’t afford to lose unless he ruins himself.”59
Eisenhower told Marshall that Bradley was running absolutely true to form. “He has brains, a fine capacity for leadership and a thorough understanding of the requirements of modern battle. He has never caused me one moment of worry.” Mark Clark, in Ike’s view, was the best of the three at planning, organizing, and training, but had not been in battle. “He will shortly have a chance to prove his worth.”60
Marshall pressed Eisenhower for a specific recommendation. Which of the three would be best to head up preinvasion planning in England and later command American ground troops? Ike recommended Bradley. He was the best rounded of the three, “and he has the great characteristic of never giving his commander one moment of worry.” Patton, said Eisenhower, was primarily a combat commander. “Many people fail to realize that the first thing that usually slows up operations is an element of caution, fatigue or doubt on the part of a higher commander. Patton is never affected by these and, consequently, his troops are not affected.”61
A week later, discussing the Army promotion list, Eisenhower wrote Marshall stressing again that he believed Bradley was “the best rounded combat leader I have met in the service. While he probably lacks some of the extraordinary and ruthless driving power that Patton can exert at critical moments, he still has such force and determination that even in this characteristic he is among our best.”62
Eisenhower, who had decided it was best to keep the slapping incidents confidential within the theater, still did not inform Marshall. Yet he elliptically noted that in Sicily, Patton had “indulged his temper in certain instances toward individual subordinates who in General Patton’s opinion of the moment were guilty of malingering. I took immediate and drastic measures, and I am quite certain this sort of thing will never happen again.”63
Following Eisenhower’s recommendations, Marshall chose Bradley to go to England, catapulting him ahead of Patton, who might otherwise have gotten the nod. Bradley had commanded II Corps in Patton’s Seventh Army, and like Ike had been five years junior to Patton in the Regular Army. It is possible that Marshall might have chosen Bradley over Patton in any event, but the slapping incidents effectively ruled Patton out. Eisenhower did not have to recite the details; his reference to Patton’s occasional lack of self-control was sufficient.
Aside from having been passed over to lead the cross-Channel attack, Patton appeared to have weathered the storm. Inevitably, however, word of the slappings filtered back to the United States. On November 21, 1943, Washington investigative journalist Drew Pearson, who in 1934 had revealed Douglas MacArthur’s escapade with Rosario Cooper, his young Eurasian paramour, told his Sunday evening NBC radio audience that Patton had slapped “a battle weary soldier,” that he had been reprimanded by Eisenhower, and that he would never have another important wartime assignment.g The story was picked up by the wire services, and most of the nation’s newspapers carried articles about Patton the following day. When it was discovered that one of the soldiers was Jewish, the outrage intensified. “These are American soldiers, not Germans,” said an American Legion spokesman. “If our boys are going to be mistreated, let’s import Hitler and do it right.”64
Pearson’s broadcast was picked up by Army monitoring stations in Algiers, and Eisenhower’s headquarters was immediately informed. Ike’s initial response was to hunker down and wait for the storm to pass. Hoping to minimize his involvement, he dispatched Bedell Smith to meet the press and answer their questions.h But instead of controlling the blaze, Smith inadvertently added fuel to the fire. Asked by newsmen whether Eisenhower had reprimanded Patton, Smith replied that no official reprimand had been administered. To be fair, Smith may not have known of Ike’s private letter to Patton, but his answer was scarcely what the reporters wanted to hear. According to The New York Times, Smith’s statement “disgusted everyone who heard it.”65 i
As Eisenhower wrote later, “The damage was done.”66 Within minutes, the news that Patton had not been officially reprimanded was flashed to the United States. Members of Congress demanded an investigation, and Marshall cabled for an explanation. What were the facts, he asked, and what had Ike done about the incident?67
Eisenhower replied on November 24. Ike’s literary ability to convert defeat into victory was sorely tested, but he rose to the occasion. Patton had been the mainspring in Seventh Army’s drive for Messina, he told Marshall. “His absolute refusal to accept any excuses for delay or procrastination resulted in the rapid advance of that army and had much to do with the early collapse of resistance in Sicily. In the campaign he drove himself as hard as he did the members of his army and, as a result, he became almost ruthless in his demands upon individual men.” Eisenhower briefly described the slapping incidents, stressing that the men were “unwounded repeat unwounded.” He had personally reprimanded Patton, “expressing my extreme displeasure and informing him that any repetition would result in his immediate relief.” Ike said he had put nothing official in Patton’s 201 file, but had forced Patton to apologize not only to the men involved, but to all of the doctors, nurses, and others who had witnessed the incidents. Those apologies had been accepted.
“To sum up: It is true that General Patton was guilty of reprehensible conduct with respect to two enlisted men. They were suffering from a nervous disorder and in one case the man had a temperature. After exhaustive investigations, including a personal visit to Sicily, I decided that the corrective action as described above was adequate and suitable for the circumstances. I still believe that this decision is sound.”68
In Washington, Secretary Stimson and Marshall rallied to Eisenhower’s defense. “Drew Pearson has spilled the beans,” Stimson confided to his diary. “The incident was not a pretty one, but I fully agree with Eisenhower’s view that Patton’s services must not be lost.”69
After dispatching a stern letter to Patton, whom he regarded as the Army’s “problem child,” Stimson deployed his vast influence on Capitol Hill to quiet the furor.j Writing to Senator Robert R. Reynolds of North Carolina, chairman of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, Stimson emphasized the War Department’s determination to gain victory as quickly as possible, with as little loss of life as possible. Eisenhower, he said, had weighed Patton’s indefensible conduct against his outstanding service in both world wars and had decided that the country could not afford to lose Patton for the fighting still to come. Stimson observed that Ike had been “obliged to consider this matter from a military viewpoint rather than that of what is termed ‘public relations.’ ” Patton’s removal, Stimson cautioned, would deny the United States “the services of a battle-tested Army commander, and also afford aid and comfort to the enemy.”70
After his return from the Teheran conference, FDR was asked at his White House press conference whether he would comment on General Patton. Roosevelt told the newsmen they might, without attributing the story to him, remember
a former President who had a good deal of trouble finding a successful commander for the armies of the United States. And one of them turned up one day and he was very successful.
And some very good citizens went to the President. “You can’t keep this man. He drinks.”
“It must be a good brand of liquor,” the President replied.71
As Eisenhower anticipated, the storm passed. On December 1, 1943, he wrote Patton, “I think I took the right decision and I will stand by it. You don’t need to be afraid of my weakening on the proposition in spite of the fact that I was more than a little annoyed with you.”72 To Kay Summersby, Ike said, “Georgie is one of the best generals I have. But he’s just like a time bomb. You never know when he’s going to go off. All you can be sure of is that it will probably be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”73
By striking an enlisted man, Patton had committed a court-martial offense.k In Patton’s case, because of his rank, it would have been a general court-martial. Eisenhower accepted responsibility and brushed the affair under the rug. Ike said later that he would never promote Patton above the rank of an army commander, but that on the battlefield he was irreplaceable.
