12.
AMERICA’S FIGHTIN’EST GENERAL
BEWDLEY, ENGLAND,
MAY 31, 1944
On May 31, 1944, a restless crowd of more than three thousand American soldiers waited for the big moment. The tall trees lining the roads into Camp Bewdley were swaying gently in a breeze that stirred across the West Midlands. The air was bright and fresh, and on a field facing the camp, a farmer and his horse methodically tilled the soil, row after row. Atop a nearby hill, a group of local boys gathered, waiting to see the show. Hank Reed, now a full colonel, sat on a platform with a dozen other XII Corps commanders watching long columns of troops march down the hill by company, counting cadence, then turn left up the rise into a roped-off field. This was the first time that the entire camp had turned out en masse. The young soldiers were still unused to being so far from home. Most had arrived only weeks or days before. But today, they marched with a distinct sense of purpose.
From Reed’s vantage point, the hillside soon became a solid mass of uniformed men, each with an expectant look on his face. To keep order in the large crowd, military policemen wearing white belts, leggings, and white-banded helmets swarmed everywhere, efficient and unsmiling, directing each company to its place on the grassy embankment. The sounds of the men marching in, sitting down, and murmuring to one another were not loud enough to drown out the birdsong that Reed could hear in the distance. Soon, men lit cigarettes and settled down to wait.
After a few minutes, the bright sound of brass horns filled the air when a band situated next to the waiting speaker’s platform struck up a rousing march. The PA system crackled as a nervous-looking sergeant tapped a waiting microphone several times. Then a captain stepped up to the microphone and said, “When the general arrives, the band will play the General’s March, and you will all stand.”
A moment later, a soldier stationed near the road turned and started to wave as a jeep full of uniformed MPs roared up the road. Behind it zoomed a long black car, blindingly shiny in the bright sunlight.
IN MAY 1944, THE NUMBER of Allied troops and armaments stockpiled in England was staggering. Millions of soldiers needed to be supplied with uniforms, weapons, ammunition, food, and medical supplies. In depots across England, cow pastures had been hastily converted into military parking lots where jeeps, planes, tanks, and artillery were lined up in long rows. Pundits joked that the island was so overloaded that only the silver barrage balloons kept it afloat. An estimated five million tons of equipment awaited shipment east across the English Channel. All of this man and machine power would have to be carried across the water by a vast array of amphibious craft. The buildup had started more than five years earlier; in the words of Eisenhower, it seemed as if the entire United Kingdom had been transformed into a giant military base. In Berlin, Hitler was aware of this massive Allied buildup and had begun a large-scale fortification project along the coast of northwest Europe. The only question was where and when the Allies would strike.
In May 1944, while the men in Janów Podlaski, Poland, were preparing to flee with the Arabians, and the white stallions of Vienna were putting on their last wartime performance, Colonel Reed and his men were enjoying the mild spring afternoon at Camp Bewdley while awaiting a visit from the commanding general of the Third Army.
THE DOOR TO THE BLACK CAR swung open, and out stepped General George S. Patton, now secretly in England, where he was participating in a mock mission to confuse the Germans about the Allied invasion. Resplendent in high brown cavalry field boots and a gleaming helmet, he walked briskly down the hillside toward the ten-man guard of honor, who stood at attention. Patton passed slowly in front of them, looking each soldier up and down and then peering into each man’s face. From there, he walked straight up onto the platform.
The corps chaplain stepped up to the microphone to give the invocation, asking for divine guidance so that the Third Army might help speed victory to an enslaved Europe. Next to speak was Lieutenant General William H. Simpson. “We are here,” he said, “to listen to the words of a great man, a man who will lead you all into whatever you may face with heroism, ability, and foresight. A man who has proven himself amid shot and shell.” Most of these soldiers were awestruck, having never seen the famous commander in person, but this was not the case for Patton’s fellow cavalryman Hank Reed, who had been acquainted with him for many years. Since the invasion of North Africa and Sicily, in which the general had played a starring role, George Patton’s name had been familiar in every American household. But Reed had known him as a rough-and-tumble polo player possessed of a foul mouth and a fierce competitive spirit.
Though Patton was eighteen years Reed’s senior, the two officers shared a strong tie. Each had been a member of the prestigious War Department polo team, Patton in the 1920s and Reed in the ’30s. Patton’s ferocity on the polo field was an army legend. He seemed to go to war every time he galloped out onto the pitch. Even among tough competitors, the general was renowned for the particular bellicosity with which he approached the game. Once, while playing at the Myopia Hunt in Massachussetts, he was hit so badly in the head with a mallet that blood started streaming down his forehead. Patton wrapped a bandage around his head, shoved his helmet back on top of it, and continued to play. Another time, he fell so hard that he sustained a severe concussion. His daughter, Ruth Ellen, who was watching the match, knew something was terribly wrong because it was the first time she had ever seen him let go of the reins when he fell off a horse.
Patton, like many others in the army, had believed that in peacetime, when men had no chance to experience combat firsthand, the horseback battles played on the polo field were the best way to train a man for combat. If Patton’s theory was right, then the ace polo player Hank Reed was among the best-prepared soldiers at Camp Bewdley that day. None of the 2nd Cavalry men had seen real combat before, including their leader, Colonel Reed.
The general approached the microphone and looked out over the great mass of soldiers standing at attention on the hillside. “Be seated,” he said. His amplified voice echoed out across the hillside, high and clear. His tone was firm and commanding. In an undulating wave, the men sank back down onto the grass.
“Men, this stuff we hear about America wanting to stay out of the war, not wanting to fight, is a crock of bullshit! Americans love to fight—traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. When you were kids you all admired the champion marble player, the fastest runner, the big league ball players, the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win—all the time…”
Up on the hillside, the men of the 2nd Cavalry listened intently. All of them knew that General Patton was the one who got called in when the going got tough. Indeed, the general then strictly admonished the crowd that his presence in Bewdley was to be kept top-secret. Nobody knew exactly what was coming next; they just knew that they would be part of something bigger than all of them.
From Patton’s vantage point up on the platform, the assembled men of the Third Army looked like an enormous sea of humanity gathered with a common purpose. Despite the uniforms that made them resemble one another, every man sitting there that day had his own life story, his own pathway that had brought him to that place. Born in 1915, blue-eyed Jim Pitman was one such soldier. He had the face of a sprite, all upturned angles, quick to smile, his smooth skin radiating youth. Hank Reed had had twenty years to prepare for this moment; Jim Pitman had just four. Graduating from West Point in 1940, he joined an army gearing up for war and had been swept right into the heart of it.
Major Pitman hadn’t seen his wife and child in over six weeks. He didn’t have much to remember them by, just the mementos most men carried—a creased letter, read until memorized, and a couple of photographs. But he’d never forget the moment he said goodbye to his wife and baby son, only two months old. How many milestones would Pitman miss while he was away? The first birthday? The first step? The first word? His tiny son would not even remember him when he returned. His wife, Tee, so beautiful, had seemed so fragile when he looked at her the last time. How would she hold up without him? He pictured her in their little house in Columbia, South Carolina, washing dishes in the kitchen, or sitting with the baby while the radio played in the background, or sometimes he remembered her face as she smiled and looked up when he returned home from a long day. He thought of his golden cocker spaniel jumping up and licking his hand to greet him. He remembered the moment he had taken his saber from West Point and tucked it away in the little cupboard behind the kitchen. On their wedding day, they had used it to slice their cake. Someday, he would pass that saber along to his son—and maybe his son would follow him into the service.
All of these flitting thoughts did not distract Pitman from the subject at hand. Since the days of his boyhood near Mount Holly, New Jersey, he had always wanted to be a soldier. Jim and his younger brother, Don, spent hours with their father, out hunting pheasant and quail in the area around their home. He loved dogs and especially prized their bird dogs. Before he ever entered West Point, he was a crack shot with a rifle. At West Point, he had learned to ride horseback, played some polo, and excelled at tennis. He was respected and well liked because he was serious but friendly—a man you could count on. Most of his fellow 2nd Cavalry officers had many years on him, but Major Pitman’s face was calm and his blue eyes steady as he focused on Patton, whose high-pitched, somewhat nasal tone was amplified over the tinny loudspeaker.
“You are not going to die,” Patton exhorted the men. “Only two percent of you here, in a major battle, would die. Death must not be feared. Every man is frightened at first in battle. If he says he isn’t, he’s a goddamn liar.” Every man on that hillside was asking himself the same question: How would he react when his moment came? Not just would he be killed but, more important, would he be brave enough? Here on the hillside, it was all narrowing down to the essence: one group, one task, and one goal.
Patton continued with his speech, hurling out examples of what he once called “eloquent profanity.” According to Patton, “An army without profanity couldn’t fight its way out of a piss-soaked paper bag.” True to style, Patton peppered every sentence with colorful epithets, giving it to them “double-dirty,” as he called it.
JIM PITMAN WITH HIS WIFE, TEE, IN FRONT OF THEIR HOUSE IN COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA.
“We are advancing constantly and we are not interested in holding on to anything, except the enemy’s balls,” Patton said. By now, the crowd was stirred up and laughing appreciatively. But there was a serious message within. Pitman recognized the cavalry rhetoric in Patton’s speech. His admonitions to keep moving, over, under, or through, were just what the young major’s commanders had shouted at him as he galloped in formation across the plains of Fort Riley during his cavalry horsemanship training back in ’42.
Finally, Patton paused and, gripping the microphone, cast his gaze out over the assembled men. “Remember this,” he said. “Thank God that at least thirty years from now, when you are sitting around the fireside with your grandson on your knee, and he asks what you did in the great World War II, you won’t say, ‘I shoveled shit in Louisiana.’ ” En masse, the crowd of soldiers erupted in raucous laughter. “No, sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say, ‘Son, your granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a son of a goddamned bitch named Georgie Patton!” The sounds of guffawing, thigh slapping, and cheers rang up from the assembled soldiers. “Old Blood and Guts” had scored well with the men.
Just six days later, on June 6, 1944—D-day—the invasion of France began. The men of the 2nd Cavalry were as surprised by the magnitude of the operation as any civilian when they saw the skies jammed with fighters and bombers heading for the south coast of England and on to France. That day, Pitman understood that all of his past years of training were about to be put to the test. But he and his fellow cavalrymen had little time for reflection as they waited their turn to ship out for France. The next six weeks were a frenzy of preparation and movement: The 2nd Cavalry underwent introduction to new kinds of weapons, built and memorized relief maps, helped unload wounded German prisoners, and took classes in French and German. One day, they got their marching orders. They were headed for the Continent.
On the morning of July 16, Jim Pitman caught his first view of the gray waters of the English Channel when he arrived in the town of Broadmayne, on the coast. The next few hours were filled with an endless series of details: The men camouflaged their tanks, half-tracks, and jeeps, then reported to the billeting area to fill out forms. Each man received two hundred French francs (the equivalent of four dollars) before moving to the port of embarkation at Portland. On July 20, they boarded the transport ships called LSTs (or landing ships, tank), large vessels that had been specially designed to transport both troops and vehicles across the Channel—each LST’s bow flipped down to form a landing ramp for debarkation of equipment directly onto the beach. Once aboard, the men first lashed down all of the vehicles and then settled themselves inside their cabins. At five A.M., their convoy set sail.
The convoy’s thirty-one ships made a stately procession across the English Channel, escorted by U.S. Navy destroyers and corvettes. Three hundred feet above, the sky was dotted with silver barrage balloons, one anchored to each LST, that made a zipping sound as they tugged at their steel cables. From time to time, they passed through ghostly banks of fog, but mostly, the sea was calm. Inside Jim Pitman’s landing ship, the atmosphere was jittery, a heady mixture of dread and anticipation. Jim and the other men ate and drank heartily, not knowing when they would see their next hot meal. The crossing was smooth, and most of the men were feeling pretty good—at least physically. But Pitman was summoned when the commanding officer on board, Major Stephen Benkowsky, started to feel sick. What seemed like a simple upset stomach soon developed into sharp pain, nausea, and fever.
By eight P.M., the convoy had sailed about sixty-five miles, and dropped anchor just off Utah Beach, north of Sainte-Mère-Église, France. They were now surrounded by hundreds of other craft, each flying a silver barrage balloon. The plan was to prepare to disembark at two A.M.
Inside the ship, Benkowsky’s condition was worsening, and within a couple of hours, it was clearly serious. The doctor diagnosed a ruptured appendix. Benkowsky needed to be evacuated off the ship; he required an immediate operation or his life was at risk. But at eleven P.M., red flares shot up through the fog, giving the clouds a lurid hue. Ships anchored nearby, off Omaha Beach, had detected enemy aircraft in the vicinity; quickly, a smoke screen was laid down to camouflage the ships. The convoy was under threat of imminent attack. On board, Benkowsky’s fever rose, and his pain was worsening. But now evacuation off the ship was impossible. With few options available, the ship’s doctor made a split-second call: He was going to operate. In a bank of fog, with the red flares flashing overhead, he improvised a surgical field on the ship’s dining room table and, with a steady hand on the scalpel, tried to save Benkowsky’s life.
Just a few hours earlier, Jim Pitman had been second in command. Now he had taken over as leader of the 42nd Squadron of the 2nd Cavalry, 120 men. By two A.M. the alert had ended, and Benkowsky was stable. The 2nd Cavalry was cleared to proceed with debarkation. When they landed, Pitman’s first official duty was to dispatch the recovering Benkowsky to the medics.
The English Channel was at Pitman’s back; in front of him stretched the continent of Europe. Somewhere, thousands of miles away, his beautiful young bride, Tee, was sitting in a rocking chair with their baby, James, the radio most likely playing a Glenn Miller song in the background, the tranquil streets of America outside her window. Baby James might be sleeping contentedly, his eyes fluttering gently, his small body carefully wrapped in clean blankets, with no idea that his father was stepping boldly toward an uncertain future, driven by his sense of duty, honor, and courage. As Pitman’s feet touched the sandy soil of France for the first time, the newly anointed commander of the 42nd Squadron would have had two goals in mind: to accomplish the aims of his commanding officer, Colonel Reed, and to make his son proud.