T he men had chosen their seats, one man hanging a large map on the hooks fastened to the wide, empty wall. The map showed western Russia, red lines, circles, symbols that were all too familiar. The briefings on the fighting in Russia came not from information gleaned from Soviet sources, but from British intelligence, and such innocuous sources as reporters who wrote for Stars and Stripes. It was one ongoing mystery, that as much as Russia was committed to the defeat of Hitler’s army, as much as Stalin begged and browbeat the Allied leaders to draw German forces away from his battle lines, the Soviets simply wouldn’t provide any substantial information about what was happening there. Eisenhower had to wonder at that, as much as he wondered at the amazing behavior of the French. No matter that we’re all on the same side. No one trusts anyone else.
The man at the map raised a pointer, and in front of Eisenhower a man spoke.
“As you can see, sir, we’re projecting a setback for the Germans along this line—”
“Sir!”
Eisenhower looked past the assembled officers, saw Beetle Smith at the door.
“Sir! Sorry to interrupt. Something very important has arrived.”
Eisenhower saw the envelope now, the heavy wax seal, the bold black letters, already knew what was written.
Supreme Allied Commander—Eyes Only
Eisenhower stood. “I’m sorry, gentlemen, but this will have to wait. You are dismissed.”
The officers were quickly gone, and Smith stood in the doorway, said, “There’ll be no visitors, sir. Call when it’s all clear.”
“Fine, Beetle. Thanks.”
The door closed and Eisenhower stared at the envelope, slid a finger under the wax. There were several reports, typewritten pages, one signature at the bottom of each page: Alan Brooke, the British chief of staff, Churchill’s closest adviser, and one of the few men who had authority over Eisenhower himself. He read slowly, carefully, absorbed the details, felt a chill, sweat on his forehead. Good God. This could be…well, a bloody damned disaster.
He put the papers back into the envelope, looked toward the small fireplace. The papers would be destroyed, no chance that anyone outside his own office would ever seen them. No, not yet, he thought. He ran the names through his mind, the only men in the entire theater who could know what the reports contained. Air Marshal Tedder was on Malta, and he knew that Admiral Cunningham was at sea. That leaves only one, he thought. And dammit, he needs to know this right now.
He opened a drawer beside him, dropped the envelope inside, looked toward the closed door.
“Beetle!”
He waited for the footsteps, the door pushing open.
“Call Alexander. I need him here now!”
I t was called Enigma, the encoding machine the Germans had relied on to scramble their vital communications since before the war. Throughout every major campaign, Hitler’s generals and intelligence officers had transmitted their messages using the Enigma codes. From Russia to France to the U-boats in the Atlantic, from Norway to North Africa, German orders and messages of the highest priority were sent by the encoding device that German intelligence believed was simply unbreakable. They were wrong.
The work had been done primarily by Polish mathematicians, aided by French intelligence agents, and in early 1940, the astonishing results had been conveyed to the British. One by one, the Enigma codes were being broken. As the Germans revised their codes, an enormous number of cipher experts were monitoring the German transmissions, revising their own decoding of the German communications. The work was being done now at Bletchley Park, a compound of offices surrounding a stately mansion, some fifty miles northwest of London. The actual work performed in the compound was one of the most closely guarded secrets of the entire war and had been given the name Ultra, shorthand for “ultrasecret.” Ultra was so well guarded that only a handful of senior commanders knew of its existence, and fewer still knew that the German codes had been laid wide-open for the Allied command to read.
A lexander read the reports, Eisenhower watching him, waiting for the change of expression.
“Good God, man. Is this certain?”
“Seems pretty clear to me.”
Alexander scanned the papers again. “It’s gratifying that the Germans have swallowed our deceptions. This mentions the buildup of defenses in Sardinia and Crete. Cunningham’s flotilla is doing all they can to be noticed, showing every sign they’re heading for the eastern Mediterranean. Looks like the Nazis have noticed that. Good work, there. Could pull some Luftwaffe people off in that direction, take some of the pressure off.”
“Dammit, Alex, I’m not concerned about Sardinia and Greece. The Germans have moved two panzer divisions across the Strait of Messina, including the Hermann Göring Division. That’s a hell of a lot of armor. Read it again. Kesselring’s report to Berlin spells out the disposition of the German defenses throughout this whole theater.”
Alexander stared at the papers. “I don’t understand that. Why would he do that? And why now? Obviously, by the way he’s moving his troops around, he’s convinced Sicily is our target. But why in blazes would he send so much detail to Hitler? He’s listed every unit he’s placed on Sicily, every reserve unit on Sardinia, all of it, spelled out with perfect clarity.”
Eisenhower thought a moment. “He’s covering his ass. Hitler hasn’t ever given the Mediterranean the attention he should have. Now, he’s probably not giving Sicily a second thought. Berlin knows we’re coming, but they don’t know exactly where, and I bet there’s a hell of an argument about it. We’d have good reasons to hit them at Sardinia or Greece, and somebody’s probably convinced we’re going into southern France. Hitler doesn’t want to hear all that; he’s still looking at Russia.”
“But why would Kesselring—”
“He thinks we’re coming to Sicily, and he wants everyone to know about it. If he’s wrong, no one will really care. If he’s right, he’s a hero. Especially if he puts two panzer divisions up our ass.”
Alexander stared at the papers, handed them slowly to Eisenhower. “What do we do about it?”
“Not a damned thing. You know that. We can’t suddenly change our troop deployments because of this report. We can’t tell Patton or Monty they’re marching into two panzer divisions. Any hint gets out that we’ve been reading their mail, any hint, and the Germans will scrap Enigma altogether. We get one staff officer captured with some scrap of paper that mentions Ultra, any hint that we know about those panzers, and Bletchley Park might as well shut down.”
Alexander was silent, both men understanding the gravity of what Eisenhower was saying.
“You’re right, Ike. All of it. I suppose we could try to add to the infantry’s antitank capabilities.”
“With what? We’ve got bazookas that have never been tested in battle, handed to men who’ve never fired one. Heavy artillery can’t be brought ashore until the infantry has secured the beachheads. If two hundred Tiger tanks suddenly pop up on those sand hills, no infantry’s going anywhere. Damn this!”
“What of the paratroopers, Ike?”
The word punched him in the gut. “Dammit. We can’t say anything to the Airborne. Nothing. Not a damned word.”
“Could be a bloody mess.”
Eisenhower sat back in the chair, looked past Alexander, felt the hard twist in his stomach, too many times now. “Nothing we can do about it, Alex. Right now, we’re still a go on the tenth, and that’s all there is to it.”
“Not necessarily, Ike. We’re a go only if you say so. We might be sending our people into something they can’t get out of. How do you explain that later on?”
Eisenhower was growing annoyed now, didn’t want these kinds of questions from a subordinate. Every senior commander who knew this extraordinary secret had already faced his own moral dilemma, none any more than Churchill himself. Churchill had known in advance of at least one bombing raid against a specific British city during the Luftwaffe’s brutal campaign against British civilians
. But no warning had been issued, no one prepared to expect the attack. Eisenhower had never discussed this sort of thing with Churchill, but now he was facing the same kind of awful dilemma. And, like Churchill, Eisenhower could say nothing at all, could give no warning to his troops, could offer no hint that would betray the vital secret.
“There is nothing we can do, Alex. I’m under the same orders you are. Roosevelt, Churchill, Marshall, Brooke, every one of them is holding this secret inside him, and every one of us knows that people have died because we couldn’t mention it. But I have to believe that breaking those codes will eventually win us the war.”
“No matter how many men we lose in the process?”
Eisenhower rubbed his hands together, fought to keep his temper. “I’m not going to debate morality with you, dammit. This is a war, not a cricket match. We didn’t start this, and if we lose this thing, we’ll be worrying about a lot more than our moral compass. You have your orders. Right now, Operation Husky is a go for July tenth. Do you understand that?”
“I quite understand, Ike. However, I will allow myself a brief prayer for those paratroopers.”
MALTA—JULY 9, 1943
It was close to midnight, the moon lighting the land around him, rolling grasslands, and out to the southwest, the vast open sea. Far out in the darkness lay the coast of Tunisia, the massive airfield at Kairouan, the starting point for 264 C-47 transport planes. He stared at the black sea, the dancing flickers of light, the moonlight broken by the boiling rage of the water, whipped high by the hard wind. He looked up now, no sound but the wind. He had hoped to hear the motors, that the sounds might guide his eye to one or more of the formations as they passed overhead, Malta serving as one of their navigation points. The air people had told him to look for flickers of white light, the reflection of moonlight off the planes, the only visible sign of the first great wave of the assault.
He thought of the message from Marshall, the unmistakable urgency of a man too nervous to wait for Eisenhower’s own cable.
Is the attack on or off?
The message had come several hours before the deadline, and Eisenhower had not yet been prepared to respond, could only wait in raw agony at Cunningham’s headquarters, staring at wind machines, the British sailors making their estimates, predicting the unpredictable. Eisenhower had simply stayed out of the way, letting the weather specialists do their job, reports called out to Cunningham, their jargon, force four, and then, force five. He didn’t know the precise meaning, how that translated to miles per hour, but outside, after hours watching the rapidly spinning wind machines, standing upright against the hard gale, Eisenhower knew they could be in serious trouble.
He kept Marshall’s cable in his pocket, would wait until the last possible minute, knew that once the order was given, there would be no turning back. There had been some encouraging reports from the navy southeast of Sicily, that since Montgomery’s landing zones were mostly on the leeward side of the island, the landing craft there could push ashore without difficulty. But along the southern coast, the waves were pounding the rocks, deep swells rolling the ships and the landing craft, Patton’s troops huddled in what Eisenhower could only guess was a growing plague of seasickness.
After long hours with Cunningham, Eisenhower was running out of time. There was some encouragement at least, the weather specialists predicting that by midnight the wind would die down considerably. It was the one piece of news on which everything turned. With one hour to go before the planes left Kairouan, Eisenhower radioed Marshall. The attack was on.
H e tried to see his watch, too dark, stared up again, ignored the men behind him, staff officers, watching as he was, searching for some glimpse of the planes. He had stopped thinking about the ships at all, knew that Patton would do what had to be done. Even if there was a delay along the south coast, Montgomery could get his people ashore, which would draw enemy resistance that way, taking considerable pressure off the American landing zones. It will work, he thought. One hundred sixty thousand men. I don’t care how many tanks they have, we have good people and, dammit, we’re simply better than they are. There is no other way to look at it. What the hell are the Germans fighting for? What cause is so damned important? When it comes down to guts, you have to believe that you’re dying for something worthwhile. Dying for a man like Hitler is not worthwhile.
It was a futile pep talk, and the words drained from his mind, replaced by the one image he had fought against, unavoidable. Weeks earlier, he had spent long hours discussing and analyzing this operation with the Eighty-second Airborne’s commander, Matthew Ridgway, and Ridgway’s subordinate Jim Gavin, the man who would lead the paratroopers in their jump. Eisenhower had learned a great deal more about paratroop operations than he had ever known before, and Ridgway’s words were digging at him now. Fifteen miles per hour. That was the limit, the maximum wind speed that Ridgway insisted would allow a safe jump. He closed his eyes now, felt the buffeting wind on his back, thought, it’s a hell of a lot more than that now. It shouldn’t be. It’s midnight, for God’s sakes, and this hasn’t let up. Force five. Does Ridgway know that? Gavin? They have to, it’s their job. They have to know what they’re being asked to do.
There was a voice behind him, arms in the air, pointing. He looked up, saw it now, the glimmer, more reflections, a string of planes. He forced himself to watch them, tried to say a prayer, ask something, what? Protect them? He pushed it away, no, you cannot do that. You cannot think of the men, what might happen. They are one part of the whole, and the whole is what matters. It is all that matters.
He stared up, the wind rocking him again, harder still.
32. ADAMS
OVER THE MEDITERRANEAN
JULY 9, 1943, MIDNIGHT
T hirty-five miles per hour.
Adams had been close to the cluster of officers, heard the grim reports, Gavin’s simple response: “What the hell do you expect me to do about it now?”
As they gathered at the planes, the men had been fully loaded, pockets and pouches bulging and heavy. More equipment was hanging from the C-47s themselves, mortars and heavy machine guns wrapped in canvas bundles, hooked beneath the wings. Adams had struggled to keep the dust out of his eyes, trying not to think what the strong winds could mean to the paratroopers. After checking his own equipment, he had moved to each man in the stick, silent coaching, every man stuffed and wrapped with every conceivable tool and weapon he had been trained to carry. A few men had tried to talk, spending their nervousness in chatter, mostly to themselves. But there had been none of the joking, the teases, no one had been playful. For so many months they had tormented their bodies and tested their courage, and Adams felt the strength of that, knew they all felt it, that there was a kind of power in them that made them better soldiers than anyone they would face, maybe anyone else in the world. As the time grew closer, the sounds had been few, the men around him buckling up and cinching the straps, hoisting the chutes onto their backs, counting their grenades and their ammunition clips, checking every piece of gear in every pocket, and then, checking it again.
They had climbed aboard the C-47 after dark, close to eight thirty, the briefings from the officers locked in their minds. It was a three-and-a-half-hour flight, nearly all of it over water, and so each man had his Mae West strapped on as well, one more encumbrance. No one had complained.
The C-47 would carry a stick of eighteen paratroopers plus the two pilots up front, whose job it was to negotiate the route laid out on the maps. They would fly at a low altitude, keeping close to the water until they reached the coastline. The C-47s were to follow a circuitous route around the massive invasion fleet, avoiding friendly fire from overanxious antiaircraft gunners on the Allied ships. But the briefings had dealt more with the paratroopers themselves, the location of the drop zones, what they would find there, and what they were supposed to do about it. The drop zones were several miles inland, east and north of the coastal town of Gela, directly north of the Acate River. Th
ere were specific targets, one crucial intersection of roads that led away from the coast, designated Objective Y, which was guarded by a heavy concentration of pillboxes and gun emplacements. To the northwest of the drop zones was a hill named Piano Lupo, which commanded a view of the Gela airfield. If all went according to plan, the vital routes the enemy could use to confront the amphibious landings would be closed off, and once captured, the Gela airfield could be used immediately to ferry in supplies and reinforcements. Once the Y was cleared, the routes inland would be open for the two infantry divisions, the First and the Forty-fifth, the men who would make their landings on the beaches closest to the 505th’s drop zones. The first part of the mission might be the most difficult, finding the drop zones in moonlight, in the teeth of what continued to be gale-force winds.
Adams didn’t know how many planes had taken off from the various fields around Kairouan, but he knew the men, knew that thirty-four hundred paratroopers had gone aloft in the skies around him, every one with the same job, the same information, and every one carried the same piece of paper, the final message passed out to them from Colonel Gavin.
Soldiers of the 505th Combat Team
Tonight you embark upon a combat mission for which our people and the free people of the world have been waiting for two years.
You will spearhead the landing of an American force upon the island of Sicily. Every preparation has been made to eliminate the element of chance. You have been given the means to do the job and you are backed by the largest assemblage of air power in the world’s history.
The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of every American go with you….
A dams sat up front, closest to the pilots, would be the last man out of the plane. At the rear sat Ed Scofield, the captain wrapped and buried under his own bundle of equipment and tools, squeezed into place against the man beside him. Scofield sat closest to the open jump door and, when the time came, when the green light flashed, would be the first man to jump.