He stopped again. There could be hell to pay for this. If I don’t make some kind of stink publicly, I could be accused of covering up the charges. George’s head won’t be the only one going on the block. Dammit! What do I do with you now, George? Where can I put you where you can still do some good? Slapping men in a hospital. Someone else would court-martial you. Someone else might be right. But I need you, George. This army…every army needs someone who spits in the enemy’s eye, who kicks a few asses. But it can’t be like this. A man can’t lose control of himself.
He looked at the sergeant, moved toward the chair, eased down slowly. There were sharp pains in his back, spreading out from the incurable pain in his shoulder. The sergeant was watching him and Eisenhower said, “Hell of a thing, isn’t it?”
The man nodded slowly. “Yes, sir.”
“Toughest letter I’ve ever had to write. You better be damned good about keeping your mouth shut.”
He regretted the words, had no reason to doubt the man’s ability to keep a secret.
“Yes, sir, I understand. I’d have a tough time with this too. Is it all true, sir? Did General Patton really do this?”
Eisenhower leaned back in the chair, wiped a warm hand across his forehead. “Afraid so. The doctor’s report is pretty explicit. He claims a dozen or more witnesses. The press people came to me as well. George really put his foot in it.”
The sergeant still watched him, questions on the man’s face.
“You’re wondering if I’ll relieve him, right?”
“It’s not my place to ask, sir.”
“I need to hear George’s side of this. Hopefully, I can convince him to issue a personal apology, to the specific soldiers, and to his command. If it was up to me, that would be it. We’d file this away and never think about it again. Problem is, it might not be up to me.” He searched the man’s face, the sergeant looking down, a tight frown, the man shaking his head. “What is it?”
“Just wondering, sir, how his men will take this. His soldiers, I mean. I can’t speak for anyone else, but if my commanding general did such a thing to one of my buddies, I wouldn’t feel too friendly toward him, if you know what I mean, sir.”
“I know what you mean. But, dammit, sergeant, he wins. He doesn’t make excuses, he doesn’t find reasons why he should sit still, he’s not cautious. He knows what his men can do, and he puts them in the place they need to be. There are very few people in this theater of the war who can think like he does, who can get the results he does. That means something, Sergeant, and no matter if this blows up in my face, and no matter if the damned newspapers get this on their front page, we have to have men like Patton on the front lines. I just wish…” He stopped, had said too much already, thought, you don’t need to bury this man in your bellyaching. “I just wish I could do my job, and everyone else could do theirs.”
T he intrigue in Rome was increasing daily. With the fall of Mussolini, the Italian government was in shambles. Eisenhower had expected there to be infighting, that surely there would be a number of Italian officials still loyal to Hitler, men who would do all they could to maintain some kind of control, to convince Hitler that Italy was still an ally. He scanned the reports, the Ultra intercepts, London quickly passing to him any dispatches offering some word on how the Germans were responding to the chaos.
He sat at the desk, read the latest dispatch, thought, if the Germans believe the Italians are going to quit this war, there could be blood everywhere. They might start bombing Italian cities, a show of strength, just to intimidate whoever’s calling the shots there. Will the king allow his people to be massacred? Would Hitler kill civilians just to punish them? Stupid question. He already has. At the very least, the Germans will be testing loyalties, finding out which Italians can still be trusted. How many will that be? How many of them will be more interested in preserving their palaces than in getting the Krauts out of their country? How many of them are willing to fight a bloody battle to make their point? Any civil war would be a one-sided affair, surely. If the Germans had help from a good percentage of the Italian army, they could crush anyone who spoke against them. Unless we were there to help them. Will they ask us? Tricky situation there, certainly. With Mussolini out of the way, is there anyone in the Italian government with guts enough to risk turning on the Germans? They’d have to be damned discreet about it. How much effort will Hitler make to hold on? Would he risk killing the king?
The planners of Avalanche had speculated that the Germans might simply pull away, shift their troops north of Rome, allowing the Allied landings to move in unopposed. Wishful thinking, he thought. The Germans can’t simply hand us those airfields, can’t offer us a perfect launching ground for our bombers. We can already reach German cities from bases in England. This would give us so many more options. The long-range bombers might even be able to reach the Russian positions, or come close enough to raise hell with the Kraut supply lines there. That would sure as hell make Stalin happy. No, Hitler won’t make it that easy. He may have an Italian mess on his hands, but he won’t just hand us the country. So how long will it take until someone in Rome contacts us, asking for help? Someone in the Italian hierarchy must surely see the opportunity here, that the smart move would be to pull Italy out of the alliance with Hitler.
He thought of Palermo, his visit to Patton. The city had been utterly destroyed by Allied bombing, too many military targets to ignore, targets whose destruction brought down far more of the city than anyone would have wanted. Dammit, it’s war. The Vatican begs us not to bomb Rome, and so, the Germans use it as a staging area. How long can we put up with that? Or will the Germans fight us for every inch of every street, use the Colosseum as a tank park, the Roman Forum as an ammo dump? What happens then? Just like Palermo, do we obliterate the city? Surely that’s incentive enough for the Italians to want out of this war. But they will need our help.
W ord had come first by way of Lisbon, Portugal, brought by the hand of General Giuseppe Castellano, who claimed to be a representative of Marshal Badoglio himself. Castellano carried documents of introduction from the British minister to the Vatican, documents that seemed to verify the man was authorized to speak for the Italian government. Castellano’s proposal was simple and direct. If the Allies were to land troops onto the Italian mainland, the Italian government would respond by issuing an order of surrender and would immediately join with the Allied cause by taking up arms against the Germans.
It was excellent news. But Eisenhower had no power to respond officially, could only forward the inquiry to the Allied governments. After a long day of tense anticipation, Eisenhower received permission to respond to Castellano in definite terms. The Allies would only accept unconditional surrender. It would also be expected that the senior officers in the Italian army would influence their men to do whatever they could to cooperate with Allied operations. Though Eisenhower didn’t expect the Italians to suddenly start firefights with the Germans camped alongside them, the Allies insisted that the Italians make strenuous efforts to sabotage their infrastructure, including bridges, roadways, and airfields, as well as attacking or capturing any sources of local supply that the Germans used to sustain their men in the field.
As Castellano waited in Lisbon for some official response, Eisenhower received authorization to send two of his own people to deal with him. Logically enough, he chose his chief intelligence officer, Brigadier General Ken Strong, as well as his own chief of staff, Beetle Smith.
ALGIERS—AUGUST 20, 1943
“You look pretty whipped, Beetle.”
Smith had sunk low in the chair, his round body sagging into the dark leather.
“I don’t know about all this spy business, Ike. There’s something about looking over your shoulder for Gestapo agents that doesn’t have appeal. I’d liked to have spent more time in Lisbon. Seems like a nice place.”
Eisenhower was already impatient. “This wasn’t a vacation. Tell me what happened.”
Smith took a
deep breath. “Castellano hates the Krauts, no confusion about that. The Italians are insisting they be allowed to stand side by side with us as a fully recognized ally. He claims the Italian army is ready to change sides at a moment’s notice and start shooting Germans.”
“I’m not authorized to offer him anything like that. London and Washington have made their position clear. We don’t even know who’s behind this offer in the first place, who Castellano speaks for, how many of their people will actually go along with it. It takes guts to do something like this with a hundred thousand Germans in your backyard. They can’t just call themselves our allies until we know what that means. My orders authorize me to secure their promise that they will serve us as collaborators. Did you say that?”
“My exact words. I emphasized that to him. Not sure he recognized the difference between a collaborator and an ally. Not sure I do either. I think he expects that if he promises they won’t shoot at us, we’re supposed to do the same thing. I explained to him it wasn’t that simple, that the precise definition of surrender is one of those things that ministers and diplomats deal with. It seems that he’s a soldier first and doesn’t care about nuances, specific terms of treaties. But one thing’s clear. He’s sure as hell an Italian. He spoke long and hard about Italian honor, how important it was, how they had to preserve it for their grandchildren. In the next breath, he’s talking about how eager they are to change their loyalties, and how perfectly cunning they were in arranging Mussolini’s removal. Honor seems to be defined as whatever works at the time. Reminds me of the French.”
“He tell you where Mussolini is now, where they’re holding him?”
Smith laughed. “Nope, not a hint. I think he knows too. He says Hitler would love to know that as well, Gestapo agents all over the place, trying to find clues where the king squirreled him away. Castellano’s scared of the Germans, for sure, figures they’ll shoot him on the spot if they find out he’s involved in this.”
Eisenhower sipped from his coffee cup, felt a low burn in his stomach. He glanced at his watch, after midnight. “You have to be pretty exhausted. I’ve been spending every damned minute with the staff and the planners, going over all the logistics of Avalanche. Wayne will be here in a day or so, getting his final instructions. Monty and Alexander are ready to go, but it’s not likely that Monty’s part of the operation will be as tough. If we’re lucky…” He paused, hated the word. “If all goes according to plan, we’ll have Naples in the bag pretty quick. Ought to make Churchill happy as hell. Monty’s chewing at his reins waiting to cross the straits. You know how he gets. Keeps telling me he’ll just roll right up the toe. That’s the kind of talk Churchill will expect to hear. Monty might be right. From everything we’ve seen, the Germans have already pulled a good ways away from the Strait of Messina.”
Eisenhower finished the coffee, saw a deep yawn spreading across Smith’s face.
“Excuse me, Ike. Long damned day. Oh, one more thing. I guess this is pretty important. Castellano was eager to show off everything he knew about the German positions, troops strengths, all of that. Laid it out in pretty good detail.”
Eisenhower sat up straight. “Yes, that would be considered important. Jesus, Beetle, you just think of that?”
“Sorry, Ike. I’ve got it all written down.”
Smith reached into a pocket, pulled out a small roll of paper. “General Strong has the larger copy. I jotted it down for myself in case we got split up, or something…bad happened.”
Eisenhower took the paper, unrolled it, sat back in the chair, felt the heat in his stomach again. “Is this accurate? Well, hell, how would you know?”
Beetle seemed to ignore the insult. “Castellano was pretty exact, Ike. He wanted to give us something to show us how sincere they were, and how high up the ladder he really was. He knew we had doubts about him, whether his word amounted to anything.”
Eisenhower pulled himself out of the chair, scanned the paper again. Fifteen German divisions. He moved toward the telephone, picked up the receiver, held the phone in his hand, his mind growing blank, the weariness overtaking him. No, not now. They need sleep too. Nothing will change by morning. Clark has to know about this, though. All of them.
He turned toward Smith. “You realize what this means?”
“Sorry, Ike. Not really.”
“It means that there are a hell of lot more Germans in Italy than we figured. It means that our little victory in Sicily didn’t accomplish nearly what it could have. We let them go, Beetle. We let the enemy escape. Patton and Montgomery got so caught up in their damned race, so damned concerned with who had the biggest bulge in his pants…they lost sight of their real objective. We spent so much energy capturing a place, like it was some game of capture the flag. Tunisia was a victory, an honest, crushing victory. But Sicily…dammit, Beetle, we didn’t win a damned thing there. We let the enemy get away. We let them haul away their guns and their tanks and most of their people, and now, those people have been reinforced. I didn’t really think Hitler would spend so much energy on Italy. But we’ve heard that Rommel has taken command there, and sure as hell, Hitler wouldn’t have put him there if he didn’t expect a fight. But this…unless Castellano is handing us phony information, the Krauts are holding tight. Hitler’s playing wait and see. This says Kesselring is still in Rome. He wouldn’t be there if he didn’t have an army to command, if he didn’t expect something to happen. Dammit!”
Eisenhower slid the paper into his pocket, moved toward the door. “Avalanche…everything’s in place, Beetle. We’re set to begin this thing in two weeks. Unless we delay the whole operation, it’s just too late to make any serious changes.” He paused. “I really hoped they would be gone. I just thought that maybe we could march into Naples and then Rome, grab the whole country without a serious fight.”
CARTHAGE, NEAR TUNIS, TUNISIA—AUGUST 23, 1943
Eisenhower had created an advanced headquarters at Carthage, to be nearer the Italian operations, but also to draw closer to the various headquarters of the heads of each branch of the service. It had become obvious throughout the Sicilian campaign that having the senior commanders spread all over the Mediterranean only added to the spiderweb of complications that already infected every large-scale operation.
Montgomery had never wavered from his own plan, to launch his invasion force from Sicily directly across the Strait of Messina, driving up the toe of Italy. Every dispatch, every piece of intelligence, had seemed to show that the Germans had pulled away, that Montgomery would likely face only local opposition, most of that from Italian units who would easily be encouraged to surrender. Once established on the mainland, Montgomery could broaden his attacks to drive a wedge toward the ports of Taranto and then Bari, on Italy’s east coast. With support from Cunningham’s warships, it was unlikely the Germans could hold Montgomery back, especially from any place that was attacked from both land and sea. But the second prong of the plan troubled Eisenhower and drew concern from most of the others. It was realistic to describe Montgomery’s attack as a strong diversion, whether Montgomery cared for that description or not. Clark’s Fifth Army was to be the stronger attack, would land the larger force at the Gulf of Salerno. Clark’s first goal would be to establish a secure beachhead, and then, the primarily American force would drive north and east to capture the port of Naples. Though intelligence showed no major concentrations of enemy troops close to Clark’s landing zones, there were a great many shore batteries, defensive works spread along any place that the Allies could use for their landings. What caused concern were reports that the troops who manned those batteries had recently been changed, from Italian to German. With so much maneuvering in the Allied bases, so much preparation that enemy intelligence agents might certainly observe, Eisenhower had to assume that such a change in personnel was not simply a product of chance. If the Allied planners considered the Gulf of Salerno to be the most logical place for the Americans to go ashore, it seemed apparent now that Kesselring ag
reed.
T he lunch had been boisterous, Montgomery in usual form, the others staking claim to their own interests. The men were mostly gone now, Alexander and Tedder boarding the planes that would take them to their headquarters, Cunningham traveling by car to the nearby port of Tunis. Most of the staff officers were gone as well, Eisenhower’s intelligence and planning officers retreating to their offices, every man feeling the weight of what lay in front of him.
With the luncheon drawing to a close, Eisenhower had seen the unspoken question on Clark’s face, had welcomed the chance to speak to Clark alone.
“I’ve missed having you in my office, Wayne. There have been a few times when I needed a bomb of honesty dropped on someone’s bellyaching.”
Clark stretched his long frame, settled into a chair. “A lot has happened since Gibraltar, Ike. It’s only been nine months, and I feel like the whole world has changed. I wish I had been more a part of it.”
“All things in time, Wayne. You were exactly where we needed you. Nobody’s better at putting an army together, cutting through all the administrative bull. I needed you to get your people organized and get them trained. We got our asses kicked in Tunisia because we weren’t ready. It’s different now. We’re ready, and that’s because of you.”
“Thanks. Hell of a thing.”
“What?”
“I feel like I’m standing in a beehive. It’s one thing to run these meetings when you’re in charge, when you can tell some jackass to shut the hell up. But here…so much of the heat is directed right at me. Everybody’s got his idea how I should handle this, everybody’s got some reason why their plan is better than everyone else’s.”
Eisenhower saw something on Clark’s face he had never seen before. Uncertainty. “You’ll do fine, Wayne. We’re a hell of an army now. Nobody’s a recruit anymore. We’re all veterans.”