The Steel Wave

by Jeff Shaara

  “And every general. Monty’s still a damned fine field commander, and despite what a jerk he can be, he knows how to win. Sometimes—hell, most of the time—his problem is that he’s too damned careful, has to pull his tail up behind him, get everything organized before he makes his next move. Sometimes that’s a mistake, and it’s my job to keep him from doing it again. I’ve spoken to him a half dozen times, and I even put it in writing: some pretty strong stuff, pushing him hard. I went through the roof when I heard he changed the scope of Goodwood without telling me. I still had a big red circle around Falaise on the map in the truck out there. But, dammit, he’s still holding a hell of a lot of Germans in place, which will help Bradley enormously. I promise you, the Germans aren’t as dismissive of Monty as our own people. They won’t just let him be and shift everybody out of position so they can confront Bradley.”

  “How many more mistakes will he be allowed to make?”

  Eisenhower stood—needing to walk, to stretch out the frustrations—but stopped at the opening of the tent. “I’ll know that when he makes them.”

  He stepped outside, still annoyed, a hot weight he was too tired of carrying around, and saw Butcher coming down the path, more papers and none of the usual smile.

  “Chief! I have word from General Bradley.”

  “It’s awfully quick for that. What’s wrong?”

  Tedder emerged from the tent behind him, and Butcher moved close, saying in a low voice, “We might want to step back inside, sir.”

  Eisenhower felt the weight increasing, slipped back into the tent. Butcher followed, Tedder staying just behind them, standing at the opening. Eisenhower turned to Butcher and saw hesitation, even dread, unusual.

  “What the hell happened?”

  “Sir, General Bradley reports that he has scrubbed his attack for one more day. The weather in his sector was just too lousy for the advance air assaults. But the bombers didn’t get the word until they were airborne. The recall order was given, but some of the planes reached what they thought was their target zones and dropped their loads. It seems a good many of the bombs fell short and hit our people. The Thirtieth Division took some heavy casualties.”

  Behind Butcher, Tedder whispered, “Good God!”

  Eisenhower felt a hard twist inside him. “How bad?”

  “Not sure yet, sir.”

  “All right. Let’s go. I’ve sat here long enough. Bradley’s about to get some company. Find me a plane that can fly or a destroyer that’s ready to go. If you can’t, I’ll swim the damned channel.”

  The B-17 swooped low, seeking a small opening in the heavy clouds. Eisenhower felt his stomach pulling up, fighting the dive of the plane. The trip across the channel was brief, made shorter by Eisenhower’s own thoughts, his brain spilling over with rambling tirades to Montgomery, rebukes to Leigh-Mallory and Churchill and Bradley, furious words he knew he could never actually deliver. There is only so much a man can take, he thought. I never dreamed I would be more agitated by my own command than by the enemy. Dammit, I have no patience for this, not anymore.

  He looked out the small window—a glimpse of water, the coastline, the plane still dropping—France. He searched through the overcast for the beaches, some sign of the enormous buildup of matériel, all that power creating an enormous traffic jam, held in place by the inability of his army to break open a hole. Eisenhower had seen the bocage from the air many times and short glimpses of it on the ground, in fast-moving staff cars and nervous guards. Not enough, he thought. I need to get out there and see more. Drive Butcher nuts, and Beetle Smith. My two nannies. Marshall won’t be too happy either. But damn it all, I’m sick of sitting back in my own headquarters, listening to bellyaching from generals who should be above all that. God, I’d love to see the real war, one damned firefight. What would that be like? Hedgerows and machine-gun nests. Hell, do I even remember how to toss a grenade?

  For weeks now he had felt a nagging emptiness, an aching hole inside, no matter his exalted position atop the command ladder of SHAEF, all the attention from politicians and generals, so many plans and maps and reports. With so much happening in the field, so many battles, and so many casualties, the feeling was growing that he had missed the most important part, the part that mattered.

  I know why Patton’s going nuts, he thought. He already knows what it’s like to ride a damned tank into battle, and he’s punching the walls because he wants to do it again. My job is to stay the hell out of the way of those people and stick with the papers and maps, the bitching and the egos. My job is to administrate the fight. Ridiculous. There’s no such thing. This is a GIs’ war. Those damned hedgerows, every man fighting his own battle against the guy on the other side of the bushes. Generals have damn little to do with that. And I’ll never know what it feels like: death…a buddy going down. Well, no, I know what it feels like to lose someone close. Sometimes it doesn’t take a bullet to do that job.

  In all the shuffling of new commands, several names had risen to the top, men who were being moved along the chain of command, replacing those who weren’t up to the task. Teddy Roosevelt, Jr., was one of the good ones, a close friend to both Eisenhower and George Marshall. During his first major command, Roosevelt had served as assistant division commander of the Big Red One. He had been popular with his troops, but he hadn’t brought himself many accolades from the top. In North Africa, the First Division had seemed to fall apart after their successes in Algeria; there were violent lapses in discipline and, as always, the top brass had to accept the responsibility: Roosevelt had been relieved, along with the division’s commander, Terry Allen.

  But with so many new divisions coming across the Atlantic, the need for experience overshadowed the need for perfection, and, of course, Roosevelt had powerful friends. For Overlord, he was assigned the position of assistant commander of the Fourth Infantry Division, and Eisenhower was gratified to learn that the old shadows had been swept away. Roosevelt gained the respect of his men and every senior officer around him and had been the only general to go ashore with the first wave at Utah Beach. It was the sort of act that always endears a commander to his men, and ultimately his name climbed high on the list of those chosen to fill the gaps left by generals who had fallen flat. One of those gaps was at the top of the Ninetieth Division and so, in early July, Roosevelt was given that command. The day before he was to report to that duty, he suffered a fatal heart attack.

  Eisenhower kept his stare out the window, mulled over Lincoln’s words, fitting and proper, that one small piece of the Gettysburg Address. Yep, it’s fitting and proper that Teddy be buried right here, alongside his men. That’s what he deserves. Dammit, I’ll miss him. Miss him now. We need every good man, every man who can get those damned reporters to tell a different story rather than constantly bellyaching about Monty.

  The plane banked sharply and he pushed back in the seat, one hand on his stomach. Okay, I’m ready for this one to be over with. What the hell did I eat today? It’s swimming around, that’s for sure. His hand touched a piece of paper in his shirt pocket, the Ultra report that revealed the stunning details of the assassination attempt on Hitler. What the hell was that like? He had often thought of Hitler, his day-to-day routine, the strangeness of the man, wondered if Hitler even had a routine at all. Eisenhower felt the plane lurch, slowing. Do you fly much? he thought. They ever take you up in some big damned Heinkel, so you can watch the bombs drop? What kind of things keep you awake at night? Or do you sleep like a damned baby? You can’t possibly have a conscience. But there’s weight on you, no matter who you are or how nuts you might be. Even a damned dictator has to answer sooner or later, and you have to know your time is coming. Your own people tried to kill you, for God’s sake. They’ve probably tried a dozen times. Don’t think that’s happened to me yet. Churchill, maybe. FDR, yep.

  There had been raucous cheering at the news of the attempt on Hitler’s life, Churchill echoing what many were saying: “They missed the old bastard. But t
here’s time yet.” But Eisenhower hadn’t shared anyone’s elation, had stiffened the mood of his own staff, a sharp reminder that on the front lines across from Montgomery were the SS panzer divisions, the most fanatical units in the western theater. How do you expect they will react? he had asked them. Their boss almost got assassinated. Don’t you think that might just invigorate them to fight with a little more…gusto?

  He looked out the window again, fog and open fields, trucks and supply depots. But the assassination attempt was still in his mind. That took some serious guts. Heaven help you folks who had something to do with the plot. Not only will the Gestapo hunt you down, there are whole divisions in your army who would do the same thing. The only plot I want to hear about is the one they bury him in, when someone actually kills the son of a bitch. We’ll make sure we put his whole High Command in there with him, every damn one of them. Wish I could be a part of that, but that’s not my job either. Damn shame. I’d volunteer for it, though. Hell, it might end up being the Russians. The way things are going, looks like they’ll get there first. And, of course, I have to deal with stupidity like Monty and his big mouth. And bombardiers who can’t hit the side of a damned barn, unless it belongs to their own people.

  BRADLEY’S HEADQUARTERS, NEAR ISIGNY

  JULY 25, 1944

  Bradley was fuming, pacing, one fist pressed into his other hand.

  “Dammit, I told them. I made it very, very clear. Bring the bombers in parallel to the road, and drop your bombs on the south side of it. Very damn simple. The road was the boundary, our boys on the north, the enemy on the south. Then I find out from my own people that, no, they flew in perpendicular to the road, came in right over our heads. Exactly wrong, exactly what I knew could cause problems. So, with the weather bad, they made blind drops, could only guess where the enemy was. And they guessed wrong! Leigh-Mallory says, Well, it would have been inconvenient to make the change in their flight path, would have taken a couple hours to rebrief the pilots. This has been on paper for five days. For five days the air command had their instructions! They made their own change and didn’t say a word to me or anyone else. Leigh-Mallory tells me that the air commanders are scrambling around, telling each other, Well, of course General Bradley was informed of the change. We could never agree to fly in parallel to the road, that’s just not how we would do it.” Bradley pounded the fist into his hand.

  “Five days ago they agreed to do it! I wanted to punch that smug self-righteous bastard right in the teeth. No one called me before the attack, Ike. No one called to tell me they had decided to ignore my instructions! The Thirtieth took a hundred fifty casualties! They know they’ll be some hell to pay and they’re covering their own behinds.”

  Bradley was as angry as Eisenhower had ever seen him.

  “Don’t you think I’d have pulled our people back, if I thought there was even a chance we would get blasted to hell by our own planes? That’s what I told Leigh-Mallory. Didn’t faze him a bit. Arrogant sons of bitches!”

  Eisenhower let Bradley finish without scolding him for his temper. It was one more problem, one more mistake, and he knew Bradley was right: There would be hell to pay. But not right now.

  “I’ll talk to Leigh-Mallory, find out what I can,” Eisenhower said. “Get more details from the Thirtieth about their casualties. We’ll have to figure out some good way to handle that, before the press blows it up.”

  Bradley seemed to calm, sat on a bench to one side, his hands propped on his knees. “Dammit, Ike. How much more has to go wrong?”

  “Tell me about your ground attack. You’ve changed the plan for Cobra.”

  Bradley looked at him through tired eyes, and shook his head. “Not really. I’ve been hearing from Monty, indirectly, that he’s not a fan of my tactics. I’m not aware that his tactics have put us any closer to Berlin, but that’s not a comment for me to make. We have to do something different to work through the kind of geography we’re in here; so far, our best progress has been too slow and too costly. I always thought that if you smacked the enemy across his whole body, you’d find his weak spot. But it hasn’t worked here. The countryside is just too tough, too many places to hide. Hell, one eighty-eight can hold up an entire tank column, just by clogging up the road. One damned German soldier can stop a whole battalion, if he’s got his machine gun in the right place. Monty thinks we should try to punch a tighter hole through the enemy lines. Okay, we’ll try it his way.”

  Bradley stood, moved close to the map, and picked up a long pointer.

  “We’re hitting them on a more compact front this time. I’m pushing armor and infantry into a drive only four miles wide. Let’s just say I’m going to try my own brand of blitzkrieg.”

  Bradley’s fury had changed to enthusiasm. Eisenhower got up from the couch he had been sitting on and focused on the details of the map. He wasn’t accustomed to seeing this kind of raw energy from his general. Bradley moved the pointer to the red circle drawn around the town of Saint-Lô and tapped the map.

  “We’ll go at them right here, and if we can push them back we’ll lean toward the coast. That way, we can pinch out any German divisions coming up from that direction or, better, drive some away. That should also pull some enemy strength away from Monty’s front. Call it returning the favor. The more we lengthen the front to the west and stretch the enemy’s lines, the more strength they’ll need to move over this way. And if the other fellow moves enough people this way, Monty’s front will open up.”

  Eisenhower studied the map. “That’s assuming Monty can be persuaded to move at all.”

  Bradley didn’t respond. Eisenhower watched him lean closer to the map, pretending to study some finer point.

  “You have that map memorized, Brad. You want to speak up about Monty, you go ahead. Hell, everybody else does.”

  Bradley turned, shook his head. “Got nothing to say, Ike. He’s mostly kept his nose out of this headquarters, let me run this operation the way I see fit. Can’t complain.”

  Eisenhower had hoped for more, some kind of moral support for his own agonizing. He moved back to the couch.

  “There’s a strong current flowing through SHAEF that wants me to recommend his dismissal.”

  Bradley turned away from the map.

  “I’ve heard a lot about that. I won’t get involved. There’s plenty to do right here. Oh, I forgot to mention. We had a GI come up with an idea to bust up the hedgerows. A sergeant in the Second Division, Culin, I think. Came up with the idea of fastening a big steel claw to the front of a tank, like a fork, to punch in and scoop up the brush from underneath. Damn if it didn’t work like a charm. The tank rams the embankment and knocks a hole clean through the hedge.”

  “Sounds like something we should have come up with a month ago.”

  “Genius is where you find it. Listen, Ike, I thought I’d head over to Collins’s command post, get reports on the progress of the ground assault from right there. Joe is expecting us. This is his moment in the sun. The Seventh Corps has seven divisions under its cap this time. If Collins can push his boys far enough, Middleton’s Eighth is ready to come in right beside him to drive down the coast. If we can just open up some lanes, do something to make the Germans back away…. Dammit, Ike, I know about our screwups. But I still don’t see why this has been so tough. The other fellow is better than I thought he was.”

  “The Germans?”

  “Yep. Never thought they’d fight this hard. They had the good ground, and no matter how superior our numbers are, they’ve held the line. Didn’t expect this.”

  “Neither did Monty.”

  Bradley seemed antsy, tossed the pointer on the narrow table beneath the map.

  “We need to get going. The boys have stepped off by now. The bombers dropped their loads at nine-thirty. After the ass-chewing I gave Leigh-Mallory, I would guess the bombardiers were a little more careful this time. But I want to hear that from the ground commanders. I want some good news for a change.” Bradley picked
up his jacket, seemed to delay putting it on his shoulders. Eisenhower caught the hint. “You do what you have to do, Brad. I’m not trying to be in the way here.”

  “You’re always in the way, Ike. That’s your job.”

  When the B-17 put him on the ground near Portsmouth, Butcher was waiting for him. Eisenhower knew the look on his aide’s face, the same look he had seen the day before. The staff car was waiting for them, Butcher obviously anxious.

  Eisenhower stepped down from the bomber. “What is it, Harry?”

  “They did it again, Chief. The bombers hit our own people…again.”

  “What? Who?”

  “The Thirtieth took it the worst, sir, and some units of the Ninth. No word yet on the number of casualties…except for one.”

  Eisenhower saw Bradley in his mind, imagined his fury, the utter frustration, My God, I should have stayed there, he thought. I should have waited to hear the reports. Brad is going to rip someone apart.

  Butcher seemed to be waiting, and Eisenhower realized what the man had said.

  “One what?”

  “Sir, General McNair had gone to the front, to observe the operation at first hand. He was…killed in the attack.”

  Eisenhower felt a punch of cold. “Lesley McNair? He’s dead? We lost a lieutenant general to”—he paused, hating the term—“friendly fire?”

  “Yes, sir. He was killed instantly, as far as we can tell.”

  Eisenhower looked past Butcher, at the aides waiting at the car, no one close enough to hear. “We have to keep this quiet, Harry. Not a word, you hear? Not a damned word.”

  “Yes, sir. I understand. It’ll be tough, though.”