It became urgent to build a formidable combat air fleet, not only of fighters and bombers but also of troop transports, cargo carriers, observation planes, and so forth. Sixteen thousand planes were expected to roll off the assembly lines, with double that number the following year, double again the year after that, and so on. Before the war’s end Henry Ford’s giant plant at Willow Run, Michigan, was the largest airplane manufacturer in the world, turning out a bomber an hour.
IN THAT SUMMER OF 1940, during the calm before the storm, Patton had gone on leave to attend the Beverly Farms wedding of Lieutenant James W. Totten and Ruth Ellen, who would become the third Patton to don the wedding dress of Beatrice’s mother. But not without considerable ado. “Goddamnit, you can’t marry him,” Patton fumed, when told Totten was on the way to ask for Ruth Ellen’s hand. “He’s too short, he’s a field artilleryman, and he’s a Catholic!” Then he told her to go and mix up a pitcher of martinis without any vermouth. “I know you’re serious,” he told her, “because if you were just thinking about it you would have told your mother first.”
A few weeks earlier, when visiting in California, Ruth Ellen had tried the idea of marrying Totten on her aunt Nita, who took “the dimmest possible view of me marrying a Catholic,” said Ruth Ellen. She replied in tears, “Well, then I guess I will never marry; I’ll just stay home and take care of Ma.” At this, Nita drew herself up and “fairly shouted, ‘What! And be like me? One sacrifice on the altar of family loyalty is enough. Go home and marry your young man, and God help us both. I’ll come to your wedding!’ ”
Beatrice was also against the marriage, but not because of Totten’s height (he was five-foot-five) or the field artillery angle; her objection was also on religious grounds. When Totten arrived that night Patton arose and stalked out, sitting through the same movie three times at the post theater. Beatrice held what amounted to night court as Totten sat speechless while being given a long summation “on the evils of Catholicism, and how he ought to be an Episcopalian.” Ruth Ellen, meanwhile, sat mortified and “paralyzed by the whole scene.”
After half an hour Beatrice wound up and asked, “Well Mr. Totten, what about it?”
Totten rose and went over to her and very politely asked, “Mrs. Patton, what do you think of turncoats?”
“I don’t approve of them,” Beatrice replied.
“Neither do I,” said Totten, and took his leave.
Patton returned about an hour later to find both his wife and daughter distraught and in tears.
“Is it over?” he asked.
“Yes,” Beatrice replied. “He wouldn’t change.”
Patton said he never thought he would.
Several days later, Totten told Ruth Ellen he intended to “brave the lion in his den” and ask Patton for her hand. This he did the same night, and his request was granted.6
AROUND THIS TIME, Patton was perusing the newspaper when he found an article about himself that reported he had been reassigned to the Second Armored Division at Fort Benning. It was official; he was back in the tanks and as delighted as ever. Patton immediately wrote the division’s commanding general to say how excited he was at the prospect of his new assignment, closing with, “Best regards and looking forward to a short, and bloody war, I am Very sincerely.”7
On July 26, 1940, Patton assumed his duties over one medium tank regiment, two light tank regiments, a field artillery regiment, and a battalion of combat engineers. There were 350 officers, 5,500 men, 383 tanks, 202 armored cars, and 24 105mm howitzers. More tanks were coming and additional soldiers were arriving at the rate of about a hundred per day. Though a brigade is traditionally commanded by a brigadier general, Patton remained a colonel. He was thoroughly pleased with his situation nevertheless.8 He was certain now that the war would at some point draw in the United States, which would allow him to fulfill what he saw as his destiny—to become a great captain of the armed services.
Patton had championed the horse cavalry when he was a horse cavalryman, but now he sensed the strength of the fully engineered and developed tank: its great mobility that allowed for wide turning movements to get on the flanks and into the rear of a foe; its ability to produce shock and awe; and its efficiency in disrupting and degrading the enemy. Official army doctrine for the tank had always been “to assist the advance of infantry foot troops, either preceding or accompanying the infantry echelon,” but the German blitzkrieg against France had just rendered that mission obsolete.
The tank was a new weapon for a new age in warfare, where the battlefield was fluid and the commander who arrived first with armored weapons would likely win the day. Patton saw himself as that man.
* “Lightning war.”
† There are conflicting stories about the sequences of these events—Brereton’s, Sutherland’s, and MacArthur’s. To this author Brereton’s seems the most convincing but the true story probably never will be known.
CHAPTER NINE
THERE WILL BE A BIG TANK BATTLE IN THE MORNING
With the onset of war, Patton’s promotion was meteoric. In the nine months between July 1940 and April 1941 Patton rose from the rank of colonel in charge of an armored brigade to the rank of major general commanding the Second Armored Division. Within another year he was in command of an armored corps, and then leading the Fifth U.S. Army during Torch, the Allied invasion of French North Africa.
Neither Dwight Eisenhower, who retained overall command of the operation, nor Patton, who would lead the landing force at Casablanca, much liked the plan or gave it a better than even chance for success. Writing in his diary from England on August 9, 1942, where Allied planners were setting up the invasion, Patton—after dining with Eisenhower—said, “We both feel that the operation is bad and mostly political. However, we are told to do it and intend to succeed or die in the attempt. If the worst we can see occurs [heavy resistance during the landing by the French army] it is an impossible show. But with a little luck it can be done at a high price, and it might be a cinch.”1
Two months later, and a little over a month before the invasion fleet would sail from Norfolk, Virginia, Patton’s opinion remained gloomy but somewhat more optimistic. He told Eisenhower he could “rest assured that when we start for the beach we shall stay there either dead or alive, and if alive we will not surrender. When I have made everyone else share this opinion, which I shall certainly do before we start, I will have complete confidence in the success of the operation.”
Back in Washington and preparing for Torch, Patton dined with General Jimmy Doolittle, who five months earlier had returned a hero from his splendid air raid. The navy had finally figured out how to get sixteen army “Mitchell” B-25 bombers* aboard an aircraft carrier—in this case Hornet—and carry them within striking distance of Japan. The planes were launched in the North Pacific on April 18, 1942—eight hours early because an enemy picket boat had spotted the carrier force. It surprised the Japanese, who had been told no enemy could ever successfully attack the homeland.2
The real trouble for Doolittle came afterward, however, when his bombers reached China, where they were supposed to have safe landing fields. Because of the early takeoff, the planes arrived over Japanese-held China at night, in a rainstorm. With no airfields visible, they flew on until they ran out of gas and the crews bailed out in dark mountainous terrain. Two were killed and half a dozen were captured by Japanese—several of whom were executed—but the majority of the raiders survived and were conducted back to American lines by friendly Chinese.
The raid was not only a great American morale builder in a time of frightful disasters, but it also caused the Japanese to use their communication system so heavily as to enable U.S. code breakers to decipher a majority of the Imperial Navy’s top-secret messaging. This, in turn, allowed the U.S. Navy to ambush the Japanese fleet at the Battle of Midway, sinking four of their top-line aircraft carriers and halting Japanese expansion in the Pacific for good.†,3
Doolittle would now be commanding
the 12th U.S. Army Air Force, which would support Patton’s North Africa campaign. When Patton remarked that he was getting all the men and equipment he had asked for, Doolittle swilled a last glass of gallows humor: “Yes, George. They always give the condemned man what he wants to eat for his last meal.”
Patton then called on General Pershing, his old friend and mentor, who was now eighty-two and at first barely recognized his former protégé. Pershing told Patton that he hoped he would carry with him to North Africa the same pistol with which he had killed the Mexicans and use it to kill Germans.
“I can always pick a fighting man and God knows there are few of them,” Pershing declared. “I am happy they are sending you to the front at once. I like generals so bold that they are dangerous. I hope they give you a free hand.”
When he left, Patton kissed the old man’s hand and asked for his blessing and at the door turned and gave a salute, which Pershing returned, crisply as ever. Pershing had been the same age as Patton when he led the American army into France. Later Patton told his diary, “He looks very old but his mind seems quite clear. It is probably the last time I shall see him, but he may outlive me.”
Much was expected of Torch, and of the army Patton would command. The tide of war had turned in the Pacific but this was not yet apparent to the Allies. U.S. Marines had landed on Guadalcanal and were in the final stages of wiping out the Japanese army there, though at a terrible cost. In June 1942 an American task force had ambushed and sunk the Japanese carrier fleet, permanently blunting Japanese expansion in the Far East. But no one could see the end of things yet, only the enormous amount of bloodshed that lay ahead.
In Europe the situation was worse. The Nazis, whose armies had penetrated deep into the Soviet Union, were solidifying their “impregnable Atlantic Wall” against the possibility of an Allied invasion. In the Egyptian desert, the British Eighth Army had battled to a bloody stalemate with German forces under Field Marshal Erwin Rommel at a railhead named El Alamein and were preparing for a second attack. If it was unsuccessful Rommel’s army might well turn westward and fall on the American and British forces of Torch.
On October 23, before boarding the heavy cruiser USS Augusta that would serve as his command troop transport, Patton told his diary, “This is my last night in America. It may be for years and it may be forever. God grant that I do my full duty to my men and to myself.” To Beatrice he wrote, “It will probably be some time before you get a letter from me but I will be thinking of you and loving you.”4
Little did Patton know that on that same day the British Eighth Army attacked and defeated Rommel’s German-Italo army in the Second Battle of El Alamein and were pushing them into Libya. If Torch was successful and the Anglo-Americans took Tunisia, Rommel would be caught in a trap between two Allied armies.
PATTON’S COMMAND CONSISTED of 35,000 troops including the U.S. Second Armored Division and the Third and Ninth U.S. Infantry Divisions, aboard a hundred-ship convoy. Like so many Allied operations at the beginning of the war, Torch got off to a rocky start. This had much to do with the lack of time given to properly train the army troops in an amphibious landing. The army and navy tried a number of rehearsals, but because of the German U-boat menace along the Atlantic Coast they were confined to practicing in the Chesapeake Bay, which presented none of the large surf and strong weather associated with landings in Morocco.
A great fear of George Marshall and other planners had been that the Germans would learn of the invasion plans. The historian Thaddeus Holt points out in his book The Deceivers that by sailing time as many as five thousand American troops knew at least some of the plan, and the U.S. military worried it had been compromised by the Axis. If it is not a miracle that they never found out, it ought to be.
AT SEA, TWO DAYS BEFORE the landings, Patton told his journal, “In forty hours I shall be in battle, with little information and on the spur of the moment will have to make momentous decisions. It seems that my whole life has been pointed to this moment. If I do my full duty the rest will take care of itself.”5
The morning of the landings broke hazy and relatively calm and “almost too good to be true,” according to Patton. “Thank God. I hope He stays on our side.” Optimism that the French would not oppose the landings was quickly disabused, however. Just before 5 a.m. huge shore-bound searchlights went on and began playing across the sea looking for Torch ships. Heavy firing from French shore batteries and naval vessels followed immediately, splashing great gouts of water all around the ships. A French warship, likely a corvette patrol boat, came roaring out of the harbor and U.S. destroyers “opened fire and shot off the mast and killed her captain. I think she sank,” Patton said.
On November 8, just before a soggy, gray dawn broke amid intense blasts from ship and shore, six thousand American soldiers—the first wave of the invasion—scrambled down cargo nets into waiting Higgins boats and navy launches. They were headed toward the lights of Casablanca that twinkled in the distance. The surf rolling onto the beach masked the sound of the boats’ engines but soon enough the searchlights caught them. It could have been disastrous but gunfire from American destroyers shot the lights out almost immediately with “quad-fifty”-caliber machine guns and the boats continued to shore where they were met by intense small arms fire.
A naval battle continued for several hours, while landing craft took more American soldiers to the beach. Patton’s boat, containing all his belongings including the ivory-handled pistols, swung on davits on the gun deck. “The first blast from the rear turret blew [it] to hell and we lost all our things except my pistols,” Patton said.‡,6
The battle continued to rage chaotic on land and sea with the American forces slowly gaining the upper hand. A wind came, raising waves. By noon five French destroyers had been wrecked and just as many French submarines sunk.
Patton was several times soaked by seawater from enemy shells that hit near the Augusta, but in due time he secured another landing craft. At half past noon, he went over the side to rapturous cheering by a crew of sailors who were leaning over the rail. The fighting was still going on when Patton hit the beach, soaked again in the surf, “but I had no bullets,” he complained. There he learned from the two colonels he had sent ashore that the French had declined to surrender, which was patently obvious. Disorder reigned along the landing beaches, which Patton personally began patrolling, kicking soldiers “in the arse” whenever he found them wanting. French aircraft regularly strafed the beaches, while in the harbor a transport carrying ammunition and “400,000 pounds of frozen beef” was torpedoed by a French sub and exploded, sending chunks of beef all over the beach to further the confusion.
Back in Washington, news of the landings broke over the radio at 9 a.m. A Paramount News crew showed up at Beatrice’s door wanting to film her. With a microphone in her face Beatrice said, “This is America’s hour of triumph. Safely our men have crossed the sea to fight our battle. The spirit of victory is in their hearts. They will not fail.” When the cameraman moved from behind his camera, Beatrice could see he had tears in his eyes.
The Allied invasion was successful all along the North African coast but hundreds of Allied troops were killed before the French at last gave up on November 11, which coincidentally was not only World War I’s Armistice Day, but also Patton’s birthday. He had arranged with the U.S. Navy to bombard Casablanca with gunfire from the battleships, and at 5:30 a.m. he sent an officer to tell the French commander there that if he did not surrender, the city would be destroyed. An hour later the officer returned with news that the French had quit. To make sure, Patton ordered his Third Infantry Division into the city with orders not to shoot unless attacked. They were not, but Patton told his diary that “the hours from 7:30 to 11 were the longest of my life, so far.”
At 2 p.m. the French admiral and French general who were commanding the Vichy forces in Morocco came to American headquarters to treat for terms. Patton opened the conference “by congratulating the French on
their gallantry and closed it with champagne and toasts.” He then gave the Frenchmen an American guard of honor back to their quarters. “No use kicking a man when he’s down,” Patton said.
The task now turned to getting American forces eastward, across the Atlas Mountains and into Tunisia, which had been defended by the French. But when Hitler got word of Torch he immediately began airlifting strong German army forces into the country. Mussolini began sending troops too. Following Rommel’s defeat at El Alamein, he also had his Afrika Korps hightail it for Tunisia fifteen hundred miles to the west, where he hoped to make a stand or be rescued by Italian ships to fight another day. So swift was his flight that the British couldn’t catch up with him.
THE SITUATION IN MOROCCO settled after the French capitulation but remained tense. Patton had gone to great lengths not to humiliate the French in front of the Moroccans, lest it inspire an Arab revolt. He was also concerned that the chaos of the invasion might arouse one or more of the Arab tribes to try and overthrow the sultan, Mohammed V, who ruled from Rabat. Then there was always the possibility that the Germans, Italians, or even Franco’s Spanish, who ruled Spanish Morocco next door, might decide to invade. This last, regarding the Spanish, Patton privately told his diary he would welcome, “as it would give our soldiers some practice.”