WHILE THE SUMMER AND FALL FIGHTING WAS IN full swing we received word that the President and the Prime Minister and their staffs were preparing to hold another joint meeting, this time near Cairo.1 Egypt was not then within the limits of our theater, but aside from insuring safe passages through our area we were called upon to provide secure places for preliminary meetings and for the accommodation of individuals. The usual swarm of United States Secret Service men preceded the President into every locality where he was expected to stop even briefly. They began with my staff the reconnaissance work that was intended to guarantee the safety of the President but which also, inevitably, advertised his coming.
The secret concerning plans for the conference leaked, apparently, either in Washington or London; and because of the great amount of comment inspired in the press of the world, including some embarrassingly accurate statements in the Cairo papers, the home governments became very much worried. Even after the principals were en route to the meeting place the home governments suggested a complete change in the program.2 An urgent proposal came from the War Department to shift the meeting place to Malta or possibly even to Khartoum. Our responsibility in protecting and assuring the safety of the President and the Prime Minister was made heavier by the knowledge that every fanatical Nazi sympathizer was already notified as to their possible movements. After reflection I nevertheless made strong recommendations to the President against any change in plan. I believed that if we could not protect the meeting and its participants after we had made every conceivable defensive preparation, including heavily guarded enclosures and anti-aircraft defenses, then we would only be adding to the risk by making a sudden change to a place where we could not be well prepared. Almost any place would have been satisfactory for a surprise stop of one or two days. But when a meeting of several weeks’ duration is planned, the only protection lies in thorough preparation.
The Prime Minister preceded the President into our area and I met Mr. Churchill at Malta, where we had a lengthy conference.3 After considerable discussion he agreed with me as to the wisdom of adhering to the original plan for the meeting and he cabled the President to that effect.
The Prime Minister was accompanied by his military staff, and I had an opportunity to spend the day going over a number of subjects of interest to current and future operations.
Mr. Churchill, as always, was entertaining and interesting. I have never met anyone else so capable at keeping a dinner gathering on its toes. His comments on events and personalities were pointed and pungent, often most amusing. He looked forward with great enthusiasm to his meeting with the President, from whom, he said, he always drew inspiration for tackling the problems of war and of the later peace. He dwelt at length on one of his favorite subjects—the importance of assailing Germany through the “soft underbelly,” of keeping up the tempo of our Italian attack and extending its scope to include much of the northern shore of the Mediterranean. He seemed always to see great and decisive possibilities in the Mediterranean, while the project of invasion across the English Channel left him cold. How often I heard him say, in speaking of Overlord prospects: “We must take care that the tides do not run red with the blood of American and British youth, or the beaches be choked with their bodies.”
I could not escape a feeling that Mr. Churchill’s views were unconsciously colored by two considerations that lay outside the scope of the immediate military problem. I had nothing tangible to justify such a feeling—I know, though, that I was not alone in wondering occasionally whether these considerations had some weight with him. The first of them was his concern as a political leader for the future of the Balkans. For this concern I had great sympathy, but as a soldier I was particularly careful to exclude such considerations from my own recommendations. The other was an inner compulsion to vindicate his strategical concepts of World War I, in which he had been the principal exponent of the Gallipoli campaign. Many professionals agreed that the Gallipoli affair had failed because of bungling in execution rather than through mistaken calculations of its possibilities. It sometimes seemed that the Prime Minister was determined in the second war to gain public acceptance of this point of view.
In the old palace of the Knights of Malta the Prime Minister presented Alexander and me each a specially designed medal sent to us by the King; no others identical to them were ever to be produced. The occasion was informal; one of the guests commented that such an event in the same palace, four hundred years earlier, would have called for days of jousting, pageantry, and roistering in the garrison.
I was called upon shortly to go meet the President, who was arriving by ship at Oran. At Oran we transferred Mr. Roosevelt to a plane and took him to a villa on the seashore in Tunisia, which by coincidence was locally known as the “White House.” At that time the President seemed in good health and was optimistic and confident. He stayed over an extra day in Tunisia in order to visit battlefields of that area. While traveling through them he speculated upon the possible identity of our battlefields with those of ancient days, particularly with that of Zama. So far as either the President or I knew, that battlefield had never been positively identified by historians, but we were certain, because of the use of elephants by the Carthaginians, that it was located on the level plains rather than in the mountains, where so much of our own fighting took place. The President’s liking for history and his frequent reference to it always gave an added flavor to conversation with him on military subjects. The same was true of George Patton and the Prime Minister.
I wandered off to inspect some burnt-out tanks while the President and his Wac driver had their lunch. When I returned he remarked, “Ike, if, one year ago, you had offered to bet that on this day the President of the United States would be having his lunch on a Tunisian roadside, what odds could you have demanded?” This thought apparently directed his mind to the extraordinary events of the year just past. He told me, first, what a disappointment it had been to him that our African invasion came just after, instead of just before, the 1942 elections. He spoke of Darlan, of Boisson and Giraud. He talked of Italy and Mussolini and of the uneasiness he had felt during the Kasserine affair. He told of instances of disagreement with Mr. Churchill, but earnestly and almost emotionally said, “No one could have a better or sturdier ally than that old Tory!” Mr. Roosevelt seemed to be enjoying himself sincerely, but his reminiscences were interrupted by a Secret Service man who approached to say, “Mr. President, we’ve been here longer than I like. We should go on now.” The President grinned and said to me, “You are lucky you don’t have the number of bosses I have.”
The Secret Service had objected strenuously to the battlefield tour for the President but I felt so well acquainted with conditions that I thought the trip was perfectly safe. Because of the fact that it was a surprise move, executed without warning to anyone, it tended to add to rather than detract from the degree of safety enjoyed by the President.
To give General Marshall and Admiral King some release from the restrictions that inevitably accompany travel with a presidential party I invited the two of them to stay at my little cottage in Carthage. Both were outspokenly delighted to have the opportunity for a quiet evening, and both seemed to me to be in splendid health and spirits. In a before-dinner conversation Admiral King brought up the subject of future command of Overlord. He said that in early discussions between the President and the Prime Minister it had apparently been agreed that a British officer would be named to the post, possibly because an American was already commanding in the Mediterranean. Later, when the President came to realize that American strength in Overlord would eventually predominate over British, he decided that public opinion would demand an American commander. He so informed the Prime Minister, who agreed although the agreement cost him some personal embarrassment because he had already promised Alan Brooke the command.4
At the same time the President had suggested to Mr. Churchill that acceptance of this arrangement would logically throw the Mediterranean command to the British, where British Empire forces would be expected to provide the bulk of the ground and naval strength. The President had tentatively decided, King said, to give the Overlord command to Marshall, against the urgent and persistent advice of King and others who dreaded the consequences of Marshall’s withdrawal from the Combined Chiefs of Staff.5
During the admiral’s explanation General Marshall remained completely silent; he seemed embarrassed. Admiral King was generous enough to say that only because I was personally slated to take Marshall’s place in Washington could he view the plan with anything less than consternation, but that he still felt it a mistake to be shifting the key members of a winning team and declared he was going to renew his arguments to the President.
While the Prime Minister had spoken of this matter a few days earlier at Malta, this was the first time I had heard any American discuss the Overlord command, except on the basis of rumor and speculation. Admiral King’s story agreed in such exact detail with what the Prime Minister had told me that I accepted it as almost official notice that I would soon be giving up field command to return to Washington.
Incidentally, the Prime Minister, although he was disappointed that Brooke would not get the Overlord assignment, had spoken with considerable satisfaction over the prospect of Marshall’s appointment. He said, “It is the President’s decision; we British will be glad to accept either you or Marshall.” Then he added, “Marshall’s appointment will certainly insure that the American Government will put everything available into the enterprise.” He hastily added that “they always did,” but said that this development would tend to attract even greater intensity. With his usual concern for personal feelings, Mr. Churchill assured me that he was delighted with the results so far achieved in the Mediterranean, but felt I would understand the wisdom of transferring the Mediterranean to British command so long as an American was to have command of the major operation across the Channel.
On the morning following my talk with Admiral King, the President spoke briefly to me about the future Overlord command and I came to realize, finally, that it was a point of intense official and public interest back home. He did not give me a hint as to his final decision except to say that he dreaded the thought of losing Marshall from Washington. But he added, “You and I know the name of the Chief of Staff in the Civil War, but few Americans outside the professional services do.” He then added, as if thinking aloud, “But it is dangerous to monkey with a winning team.” I answered nothing except to state that I would do my best wherever the government might find use for me.
On the second day the President and his party departed for Cairo, leaving personal orders with me to join the conference in that city within two or three days. Accompanied by my principal commanders, except for Alexander, who was ill, we proceeded to Cairo to present our views concerning the forces in the Mediterranean.6
Trips such as these gave me an opportunity to provide a break for members of my personal staff. Since these individuals normally had little to do during my absence from headquarters, I would invite them, in such numbers as could be accommodated in my plane, to go with me on these journeys. Consequently they always greeted with considerable satisfaction news of an impending trip to a distant point because some four to six of them could count on a vacation to strange places and interesting sights. Officers, enlisted men, and Wacs seized a number of well-earned opportunities that otherwise could not have come to them.
So far as there was discernible any difference between the professional views of the British and American groups it appeared to me and to my associates at the Cairo Conference that the British still favored a vigorous and all-out prosecution of the Mediterranean campaign even, if necessary, at the expense of additional delay in launching Overlord; while the Americans declined to approve anything that would detract from the strength of the attack to be delivered across the Channel early in the following summer. The Americans insisted upon examining all projects for the Mediterranean exclusively in the light of their probable assistance to the 1944 cross-Channel attack; on the other hand, the British felt that maximum concentration on the Italian effort might lead to an unexpected break that would make the Channel operation either unnecessary or nothing more than a mopping-up affair.
The Prime Minister and some of his chief military advisers still looked upon the Overlord plan with scarcely concealed misgivings; their attitude seemed to be that we could avoid the additional and grave risks implicit in a new amphibious operation by merely pouring into the Mediterranean all the air, ground, and naval resources available. They implied that by pushing the Italian campaign, invading Yugoslavia, capturing Crete, the Dodecanese, and Greece, we would deal the Germans a serious blow without encountering the admitted dangers of the full-out effort against northwest Europe. My own staff, including its British members, and I continued to support the conclusions reached a year and a half previously that only in the cross-Channel attack would our full strength be concentrated and decisive results achieved.7
Because, later, the landing in Normandy was successfully accomplished without abnormal loss, it is easy to ignore the very real risks and dangers implicit in the plan. Had we encountered there a disastrous reverse, those who now criticize the concern with which some looked forward to the prospect would have been loudest in condemning the others who insisted upon the validity of the plan. One thing that opponents feared was a repetition of the trench warfare of World War I. The British had vivid and bitter memories of Passchendaele and Vimy Ridge. None of us wanted any repetition of those experiences. Moreover, the Dieppe raid of the summer of 1942 did not promise any easy conquest of the beaches themselves. That raid, carried out by a strong force of Canadians, had resulted in a high percentage of losses. From it we learned a number of lessons that we later applied to our advantage, but the price paid by the Canadians still rankled.8
Mindful of such past experiences, a number of persons, among them some Americans, were moved to consider the wisdom of avoiding the risks of a Channel crossing and, instead, to push the Italian and other campaigns in the Mediterranean to the limit of Allied ability.
However, I never at any time heard Mr. Churchill urge or suggest complete abandonment of the Overlord plan. His conviction, so far as I could interpret it, was that at some time in the indefinite future the Allies would have to cross the Channel. But he seemed to believe that our attack should be pushed elsewhere until the day came when the enemy would be forced to withdraw most of his troops from northwest Europe, at which time the Allies could go in easily and safely.
The view presented by the Allied Headquarters staff to the Cairo Conference was that the immediate and prescribed purposes of the Italian campaign had already been accomplished, namely the capture of a line covering the Foggia airfields, with Naples as a port to meet logistic needs. We agreed that the greatest possible support to the north European campaign would be rendered by the Allied armies in the Mediterranean if they could promptly advance to and be concentrated in the valley of the Po. From that region Allied forces could threaten to enter France over the mountainous roads of the Riviera. They could develop an equal threat to advance northeastward to Trieste and the Ljubljana Gap into Austria and would be in position also to launch, over the shortest possible water distances, amphibious operations either against southern France or across the Adriatic. But an advance to the Po, we believed, was possible during the winter of 1943–44 only in the event that the departure of troops from the Mediterranean to England be immediately halted and the Allied forces built up to maximum strength. We believed that with the troops then in sight there was no hope of attaining the valley of the Po before summer weather should again make possible air, land, and sea operations.9
This meant that a more modest objective had to be accepted in the Mediterranean, because to insure seizure of the Po Valley would necessitate withholding from the United Kingdom so many troops and so much vital equipment that the cross-Channel operation could not be undertaken in the spring of 1944.
My own recommendation, then as always, was that no operation should be undertaken in the Mediterranean except as a directly supporting move for the Channel attack and that our planned redeployment to England should proceed with all possible speed. Obviously a sufficient strength had to be kept in the Mediterranean to hold what we had already gained and to force the Nazis to maintain sizable forces in that area.
This was the program adopted by the Cairo Conference, and our shipment of troops and equipment to England continued without abatement.10 The psychological value of the capture of Rome was, however, emphasized to us, particularly by the Prime Minister.
Again I had an opportunity for private talks with the President, at one of which he informally presented me with the Legion of Merit. His conversation revolved more around postwar problems than those of immediate operations. He gave me his ideas on the post-hostilities occupation of Germany and listened sympathetically to my contention that occupation should become a responsibility of civil agencies of government as soon as the exigencies of war might permit. He mentioned domestic politics only to say that, much as he’d like to go back to private life, it looked as if he’d have to stand again for the presidency.
One evening General Marshall asked me with some others to dinner. It was a splendid American dinner with turkey and all that goes with it. As the guests were leaving, one said to General Marshall, “Thank you very much for a fine Thanksgiving dinner.” I turned around in complete astonishment and said, “Well, that shows what war does to a man. I had no idea this was Thanksgiving Day.”
A personally pleasing incident of the Cairo trip was an order from the Chief of Staff that I take two days’ rest and recreation. I employed them for a quick visit to Luxor, site of the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes, and a visit of a few hours to Jerusalem and Bethlehem. This was my first glimpse of these areas and the intense interest that I felt in viewing the remains of ancient civilizations came closer than had anything else during the war to lifting briefly from my mind the constant preoccupation with military problems.