by Jeff Shaara
Patton cleared his thoughts. “Well, then, I should talk to Bradley right away, fill him in. May I assume that my men are free to attack the enemy as we find them?”
Alexander seemed relieved at Patton’s question. “Oh, why certainly. As Monty pushes north to Enna, your people should move with him, lockstep as it were. The Hun is showing every intention of withdrawing toward Messina, but there are still stout pockets of resistance. Some of those hills west of Enna are a bit rough, could offer the enemy some good defensive positions.”
“I’ve studied the topography.”
“Oh, well, yes, of course you have.”
Patton saw the entire operation in his mind, the ego of one man, a lusty fantasy. Yep, that’s exactly what Monty has in mind. Drive the main body of the enemy back toward Messina, capture the glorious trophy of the city and destroy the enemy. And we will sit on the sidelines and be his audience. He thought of Eisenhower. Did you approve this? Do you even know about it? And if you don’t, it makes little difference. This is Monty’s war, after all.
He studied the map again, his eyes clearing, focusing on details, the western part of the island, his mind sifting through plans, the alternatives. He pointed now to the southern coastline.
“There. Would you permit us to advance westward to that port, Agrigento? Since we’re going to move out on that flank, it makes sense to eliminate any threat behind us.”
Alexander seemed to welcome the suggestion. “Oh, by all means. Good thought, that one. It is important that we clean things up as we go, secure the countryside, pacify the citizens.”
Patton looked at Alexander, the man’s sunburned skin, the mustache, the genteel bearing, the perfect British commander. Ike can only wish for that, he thought, all that breeding.
“Very good. I must ask if I may be dismissed from this meeting, sir. I should see General Bradley immediately, give him the details of Monty’s plan. We can’t have our people getting in Monty’s way.”
“G eorge! Are they serious?”
“The directive comes straight from Army Group, Brad, from Alexander’s mouth. You have to shift the Forty-fifth Division from the Enna road. Monty is going to use that to flank Mount Etna and drive the enemy into Messina.”
Bradley stared at him, mouth open. “George…what the hell is going on? We’re within artillery range of the road now. We could probably take Enna in two days.”
Patton turned, glanced at the aides. “Leave us for a while, gentlemen.”
Patton waited for the door to close, chewed on the cigar in his mouth, a cloud of smoke drifting up around him. The tobacco tasted bitter, harsh, and he set the cigar down on the edge of the table, said nothing.
Bradley spoke again. “George! This will play hell with both the Forty-fifth and the First! The entire advance will stop! Both Allen and Middleton will scream bloody hell! What the hell—”
Patton held his hands up, had expected the explosion from Bradley. “Orders, Brad.”
“Does Ike know about this…well, hell, of course he does.”
“I’m not sure of that at all. This is Monty’s decision.”
“Monty’s decision?”
“Alexander is going along with it, rubber-stamping everything Monty wants to do.”
Bradley seemed stunned, and Patton couldn’t hold it back any longer, had struggled with the heat in his brain long enough.
“Orders, Brad! We follow orders!”
“Whose orders, George? Monty’s?”
“Seems so. The commander of Army Group himself is willing to concede authority to Monty. Seems like Ike is too. Guess we don’t have any choice.”
Bradley moved to a chair, sat, stared at the darkness outside, his hands hanging between his legs. “It doesn’t make sense, George. We’re pushing like hell, the enemy is falling away all along our front. We’re hauling in prisoners by the thousand.”
“Yep. All along our front. But not Monty’s. He’s run into a brick wall on the coast, and that’s a pill he’s not about to swallow. Won’t make him look too good in London either.”
Bradley looked at him now, tilted his head, seemed puzzled. “Why aren’t you bouncing off the walls about this, George? This is blatant stupidity, and I’ve never seen you so damned calm.”
“We’ve been given permission by Army Group to push out to the west, to take Agrigento, and to push your people north, alongside Monty’s west flank. That’s what we’re going to do.”
Bradley stood, moved to the map on the wall. “All right. But the enemy shows every sign of retreating back toward Messina. The Germans know they have to protect the straits. We’re killing their air transports, and the straits are their best hope for supply, and even escape, should it come to that.”
“Yep.”
Bradley studied the map. “You want me to push north, guarding Monty’s flank, against…what?”
“I don’t give a beaver’s balls about Monty’s flank. I want a few prizes of our own. Right now, most of our supplies are coming through the port at Syracuse. We have to haul everything right through the British positions. Ridiculous waste of energy. I want Palermo. The port there will allow us to supply our people without having to tie up so many trucks. We need our trucks moving men, not army cots. Mobility. It’s our strength, Brad. The British take weeks to get a single soldier on his feet. We need to get somewhere, we damned well get there. Monty hasn’t changed. Every move he makes is calculated, planned down to the last detail. Alex is concerned Monty will get bogged down. Hell, he already is! If we advance like I know we can, Army Group won’t have any choice but to let us go forward. There is no way Alex can order us to hold up our advance and stop kicking the enemy’s ass just because Monty is taking his time. Even Ike won’t stand for that.”
“What are you figuring, George? You have a plan?”
“I want Palermo, and I want to cut that coast road up north.”
“Do we have orders to go that far?”
“You do your job, and I’ll get the orders. We move faster than Monty, make better progress, then Alex will have to agree to turning us loose. I want Palermo, I want the ports on the west coast, and I want you to push north with all the muscle you’ve got. Let Monty bust his nose against those damned mountains. Every time he gets punched in the teeth, he takes a step back, makes a new plan, talks about it, examines it, and when he’s in the mood, he takes another step forward.”
“I don’t understand, George. You want Monty to fail?”
“Hell, no. We’re allies. I just want him to do what he always does, what they all do. It’s just their way, Brad.”
Bradley looked at him, a long silent pause.
Patton picked up a paper, held it out. “I intend to create an additional corps, under Geoff Keyes, as a temporary command. The Third Division, the Second Armored, the Eighty-second Airborne, and maybe one regiment of the Ninth. He’ll move along the west coast, take the smaller ports, Agrigento, Marsala, Trapani, then drive toward Palermo from the south. With the First and the Forty-fifth, you should push north and kick the enemy the hell out of your way.”
Bradley studied the map. “So, I’ll be protecting Monty’s flank.”
Patton ignored the map, picked up the cigar again, moved to the window. He felt a rush of energy, thought of Alexander, the vague orders, the weakness, British generals running away with their own plans. Fine, we can all go to that party.
He turned back toward Bradley, took a short draw from the cigar, fought the sharp bitterness. “Oh, by all means, you will protect Monty’s flank. You will protect his flank until you reach the north coast. And then, you will protect it all the way to Messina.”
B y July 16, Bradley had successfully maneuvered and redeployed his divisions westward, to allow Montgomery to take control of the roadway that would give the British Eighth Army a route of advance toward the western approaches to Mount Etna. Once the Americans were in their new position, Bradley wasted no time and drove his Second Corps northward, through the gut of Sicily�
�s central mountains. Though Middleton’s Forty-fifth Division could only make use of one primary roadway, Bradley’s men did not hesitate, and the enemy could not stand up to the power of the American advance. On July 18, Bradley captured a key intersection, the town of Caltanissetta.
To Bradley’s east, the Canadian Division, part of Montgomery’s forces, confronted a strong German resistance south of the city of Enna, the town that stood in the way of the British left-hook move toward Mount Etna. Instead of feeding good troops into a slaughter, the Canadian commander shifted his troops to the right, attempting to bypass the town altogether. The move exposed the right flank of Bradley’s First Division, which could have caused serious consequences had the Germans recognized the opportunity and had they been inclined to advance out of their defenses to attack Bradley. Instead of pulling troops away to protect the vulnerable flank, the First Division, under Terry Allen, simply drove into Enna itself, attacking the Germans from both the south and west. The surprised Germans hastily gave way. Though the Canadians responded with embarrassed gratitude for Bradley’s assistance, in Montgomery’s headquarters the victory at Enna was fed to the British news media in a way that surprised no one in the American camp. With the Americans already planning their next move, to continue their push north of the town, the BBC trumpeted the conquest, claiming that Enna had of course been captured by Montgomery’s British troops.
Patton had long ago tried to ignore that kind of absurdity and issued his own congratulations to Bradley and the men in his command. But Patton did not dwell on the details of Bradley’s successes. He had confidence that, in the drive northward, Bradley had matters well in hand. Patton himself was more interested in the western arm of his advance, the ports along the coast that would give him far more efficient supply depots for his army. On July 22, with the Second Armored leading the charge, the vanguard of Patton’s army rolled into Palermo.
In the east, Montgomery continued to struggle, facing the bulk of the German forces that continued to back toward Messina. While Montgomery bumped methodically into heavy German defenses, Patton’s rapid sweep had eliminated the enemy from all of western Sicily and put every coastal town on that half of the island in American hands. The same day that Patton’s tanks rolled into Palermo, Bradley’s troops completed their northward push, weary American infantry surprised to be staring north into the blue waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Unless Alexander could be convinced that the British needed more than just a guard on their flank, the Americans had gone as far as they could go.
36. PATTON
PALERMO, SICILY
JULY 23, 1943
P alermo was a large city, larger than Patton had expected, and showed a surprising amount of destruction, buildings bombed and shattered by Allied raids from weeks earlier. The port itself was clogged with wreckage, and American engineers were quickly at work clearing the vital waterways. The shattered city was one cost of the war, but Patton saw past that, saw that even though Palermo was said to have been a thriving port, it was one more place blanketed by filth. Though Patton had been surprised by the amount of rubble, the wretched condition of the ragged and underfed civilians was no surprise to him at all.
He had first come into the city late at night, so late that Keyes and the other senior officers were asleep in their newly captured beds. By the next morning, his presence in the city was made known, Patton enjoying the high visibility, knowing that it would magnify the impact of what the Americans had accomplished. He responded as he always responded, took the opportunity to move among the men, to congratulate them merely by his appearance in their ranks.
His jeep had rolled alongside a caravan of trucks, traffic drawing to a stop frequently, the roadways packed with vehicles that worked to avoid the rubble and the clusters of Sicilians who rolled their carts once more into the city that had finally been rescued from the war. Patton waited patiently behind a canvas-covered deuce-and-a-half, the two-and-a-half-ton truck that had become the workhouse of the army. The truck pulled aside now, tilting precariously above a steep drop-off, the driver suddenly aware of the jeep behind him, a glimpse in the mirror of the three stars displayed prominently on the front grill, a three-starred flag as well fluttering beside the hood.
The aide drove the jeep past the truck, and Patton saw the truck driver saluting him, a wide, beaming smile, Patton acknowledging with a quick nod.
In one respect, the city of Palermo was no different from many of the smaller towns the Americans had occupied. In each village and small port, Patton rode through his men with the kind of pomp they expected of him, standing tall in the well-marked jeep, the steel helmet polished, the legendary pistols at his belt. They saluted and cheered him, as they did now, and he saluted back, the cheers growing louder still. These were his most glorious moments, so far away from the stuffiness of the conference rooms, all those careful conversations, the delicate toes of men you dare not step on, men who had never known what it was like to feel this, the ride among the tank crews and truck drivers and artillerymen.
The jeep rolled into an intersection, the grand palace to one side, his new headquarters, one more piece of extraordinary grandeur coated in centuries of grime and disrepair. Soldiers were everywhere, gathering as the jeep rolled to a stop, and he stood upright, stared at them, no smile, the stern face of the man who controlled the power they carried inside them. The streets were a trampled mess of color, flowers, crushed by the boots of these conquerors. The civilians had reacted to the soldiers with an amazing outpouring of affection, tearful cheers. And so many flowers. There were civilians now as well, the people who gathered wherever the soldiers gathered. They emerged from small, shattered homes, makeshift shelters, anxious, ragged people gathering along the side streets. He looked beyond the helmets of the men who cheered him, saw old Sicilian men easing forward, holding boxes of…what? Anything they could trade for cigarettes, he thought, fruit maybe, trinkets, junk of one kind or another.
It surprised many of the commanders that the Sicilians would so rapidly transform themselves from unbridled hostility to unfettered affection, a newfound loyalty to the cause of these American troops who marched through their towns. Even the snipers had disappeared, Patton wondering if their rifles were still lodged in secret nooks on a hundred rooftops, while they tested the staying power of these newly arrived warriors, the men who had vanquished the evil Germans. He scanned the civilians, thought, no young men here of course. They’re either in our POW compounds, or they were pulled out of here a while ago. Surely the Krauts knew that these people would be far more eager to return to their homes than to fight and die for the damned Nazis. They probably scattered the Sicilians all over Italy, or put them on Sardinia, and right now every damned one of those Eyeties is hoping we’ll drop a few thousand paratroopers on them too. Give it time.
SYRACUSE AIRPORT, SICILY—JULY 25, 1943
He made the trip in a C-47, two British Spitfires guarding against any potential intrusion from German fighters. But the Luftwaffe had seemed to virtually disappear, Patton curious about that, wondering if Kesselring was already moving men and equipment off the shrinking battlegrounds of Sicily. With no Germans to fear, he had passed the time by staring out the small windows, ignoring the rolling, desolate ground beneath him, focusing instead on the imposing cone of Mount Etna, always visible, glimmers of snow on the peak that stood two miles above the surrounding plains. It was one unique piece of beauty in a land that Patton already despised, his mood not helped by the journey he was taking now. He wanted it to end quickly, wanted to return to Palermo, but it was the formality of command, and if he expected anything positive for his army, he had to play by the rules.
He didn’t have time to become impatient, the flight barely an hour, the C-47 dropping down quickly to the airfield. The plane bounced once, rolled to a stop, and Patton saw officers, a small crowd, and behind them, rows of British fighters on the tarmac, crews in motion around them. He stepped from the plane, the officers moving toward him, British
and unsmiling. There was one American uniform, Beetle Smith, a surprise.
Smith held out a hand. “Good to see you, General! Ike wanted me to participate, if you don’t mind. We’re trying to coordinate the navy transports still, figure out what your command might need. I thought this was a good opportunity to meet with Monty’s naval coordinator, and the G-4, General Miller.”
Patton forced a smile, didn’t care for Smith, the short, round man Patton’s perfect image of a deskbound soldier. “Glad you’re here, Beetle. You can tell Ike about the fireworks.”
Smith stopped smiling, said in a low voice, “Something I should know? Another problem with Monty?”
Patton held up his hand, saw the British officers watching him. One man came closer, pointed to a wide hangar. “General, I’m Colonel Grayling. Welcome to Syracuse. The meeting will take place over there, inside. A table has been set up, maps posted. We’ve kept it well protected of course.”
Patton moved that way, following the man’s directions, thought, protected from what? Me?
He had never enjoyed the official meetings with Alexander, but this one had weight, the focus on what lay ahead, no time to jawbone about which army had made the greatest gains. It was a moot point to him anyhow. Patton knew that he had made good mileage with Alexander by his army’s extraordinary drive across western Sicily. The Americans were already making use of the western ports, especially Palermo, relieving congestion at the British bases on this end of the island. Alexander would certainly have no criticisms, and Patton expected to hear a good bit of congratulations. It would be entirely appropriate. But Alexander wasn’t to be the only senior officer at the meeting.
Patton saw it now, a long, black car, the windows up, stopping just outside the hangar. An aide emerged from the passenger seat, moved quickly to the rear door, pulled it open, stepped back with perfect stiffness. There was a pause, and Patton walked briskly, left Smith and the British officers to catch up. He did not want to seem late, would not be the last man on the scene. The car door remained open, no movement, and Patton was there now, stopped, gathered himself, realized Montgomery was simply watching him, waiting for the perfect moment to emerge from the car.