While there was no real danger connected with this operation, there were certainly a great many mental hazards, all of which I have not recounted.
VI
Once, when I was an instructor at Fort Riley, I had a bachelor party at my house for the members of the Second Year Class. Naturally, there was considerable hilarity, but no one behaved in a drunken or unseemly manner. The next day the Commanding Officer, who was hag-ridden by his wife, sent for me and stated he had definite information that a certain lieutenant who had been my guest had been disgracefully drunk and he asked me to substantiate this statement. I told him that I declined to do it. He said, “You have only a month and a half to go before your tour of duty here is over, and if you do not answer me, I will relieve you at once and spoil your otherwise excellent record.” I lied, stating that I was too drunk at the party to notice the condition of the other officers. No further action was taken by the Commanding Officer.
VII
In the summer of 1918, a group of soldiers of the 301st Tank Brigade, which I commanded, was having 37 mm. gun practice which I was observing. One defective round exploded in the muzzle, wounding two or three men. The next round exploded in the breech, blowing the head off the gunner. The men were reluctant to fire the next round, so it was incumbent on me, as the senior officer present, to do so—in fact, I fired three rounds without incident. This restored the confidence of the men in the weapon. I must admit that I have never in my life been more reluctant to pull a trigger.
VIII
During the Muese—Argonne Offensive, the tank crews of Captain Matt English’s company of the 301st Brigade were digging a breach through the German trenches when we came under direct machine-gun fire at about three hundred yards. The men took shelter and stopped working, so, in order to restore confidence, Captain English and myself stood on top of the parapet. This persuaded the men to resume their digging. Strange to say, several of the men were hit, but neither of us was touched. After we got five tanks through the gap thus constructed, they advanced rapidly on the German machine guns, which ceased firing. I followed the tanks on foot, passing through about three hundred disorganized infantry on the reverse slope of a hill, which was under extremely heavy long-range machine-gun and artillery fire. It was very necessary that the infantry follow the tanks in order to exploit the break-through. I ordered them forward, without result. I then called for volunteers, and six men, including my orderly, Joseph Angelo, volunteered to accompany me. We started forward, with the result that the remaining troops did not continue their retrograde movement. During the course of this operation, four of the volunteers were killed and I was wounded. When more tanks came up, the infantry followed, and the operation was a success. I received the Distinguished Service Cross for these two efforts.
IX
After I was wounded in the St. Mihiel operation, I had quite a hemorrhage and lay in a shell hole some thirty yards from the German lines for about an hour, during which time we were continually fired on by machine guns and mortars, but without result. Not having been wounded before, I felt I was in a serious condition and, in fact, thought I was going to die. However, I insisted, against the advice of the doctor, on being taken to the Headquarters of the 35th Division, which I was at that time supporting, in order to give an exact statement of the affairs on the front as I then knew them before permitting myself to be taken to the hospital. Actually, my wound was not particularly serious, but again, the mental hazard, which is as great as the physical hazard, played its part.
X
On the morning of November 9, 1942, I went to the beach at Fedhala accompanied by Lieutenant Stiller, my Aide. The situation we found was very bad. Boats were coming in and not being pushed off after unloading. There was shell fire, and French aviators were strafing the beach. Although they missed it by a considerable distance whenever they strafed, our men would take cover and delay unloading operations, and particularly the unloading of ammunition, which was vitally necessary, as we were fighting a major engagement not more than fifteen hundred yards to the south.
By remaining on the beach and personally helping to push off boats and by not taking shelter when the enemy planes flew over, I believe I had considerable influence in quieting the nerves of the troops and on making the initial landing a success. I stayed on that beach for nearly eighteen hours and was wet all over all of that time. People say that army commanders should not indulge in such practices. My theory is that an army commander does what is necessary to accomplish his mission, and that nearly eighty per cent of his mission is to arouse morale in his men.
XI
At 0230 on the morning of November 11, 1942, I was awakened by Colonel Harkins with the statement that a French officer had come down from Rabat with an order for the French at Casablanca to surrender. We gave this officer an escort to get him to Casablanca. Then the question arose as to whether or not I should call off the attack, which was to begin with an air bombardment at seven o’clock the same morning. Many excellent officers advised me to call off the attack. However, I was not content, because I believed that if we kept the pressure up, we would certainly force the French surrender, whereas if we showed a willingness to debate with them, they might not surrender, and since they outnumbered us two to one, time was vital. Therefore, I gave the order to continue the attack. Next morning, when we received at 0645 the surrender offer from Casablanca, we had a very bad eight minutes getting a radio message to the airplanes who were to bomb at 0700, and to the Navy who was to shell at 0716. There was less than a minute and a quarter to go when the airplanes acknowledged our signal.
XII
At 1330 on the afternoon of November 11, 1942, Admiral Michelier, the Supreme French Commander in West Africa, and General Nogues, the Resident General, came with their staffs to the Hotel Miramar at Fedhala to surrender. When I left Washington, I had been provided with two sets of surrender conditions, one more lenient than the other. I had, naturally, read them several times on the trip across, but owing to a lack of historical knowledge, did not realize until the French arrived that the conditions were drawn for Algiers, which is a French Department, whereas Morocco is a protectorate where the prestige of the French Army is the only thing holding the Arabs in check. In view of this fact it was evident to me that neither set of conditions was applicable.
The situation was further complicated by the fact that I was out of all communication with General Eisenhower and had no knowledge as to how the other attacks in Africa were progressing. I had to make a decision, and I had to maintain Morocco as a gateway for the Americans entering the continent of Africa. Morocco could not be used as a gateway if it were in the throes of an Arab uprising. Hence I had to maintain the prestige of the French Army.
I got up and said, in my not too good French, that I was a former student at the French Cavalry School, that I had served with the French for two years in World War I, and that I had great respect for and belief in the word of honor of a French officer, and that if the French officers present would give me their word of honor that they would not fire against American troops or American ships, they could retain their weapons, man their seacoast forts, and carry on in all respects as they had carried on previously—but under my orders.
I have never had reason to regret my decision. Had I done otherwise, I am convinced that at least sixty thousand American troops would have had to occupy Morocco; thereby preventing our using it to the maximum and reducing our already inadequate forces.
XIII
About 1000 o’clock on the night of March 5, 1943, General Walter B. Smith, Chief of Staff for General Eisenhower, phoned me to report by air to Maison Blanche Airfield at Algiers on the morning of the sixth, accompanied by an Acting Chief of Staff and two or three Staff officers prepared for extended field service. I could not take any of my regular General Staff officers because it was necessary for them to continue planning for the Sicilian operation.
I took my two Aides, Captain Jenson and Lieutenant Stiller, my or
derly, Sergeant Meeks, General Gaffey from the 2d Armored Division as Acting Chief of Staff, Colonel Kent Lambert, my G-3 whom I replaced with Maddox, and Colonel Koch, my G-2. We arrived at Maison Blanche shortly after noon on March 6, where I was met by General Eisenhower and General Smith, who told me they were going to relieve General Fredendall and that I was to go to his Headquarters and assume command of the II Corps with a view to attacking on the fourteenth, the plans for said attack having already been made and approved. I asked what authority I had for relieving General Fredendall. General Eisenhower said he had talked to Fredendall on the telephone, and he then wrote in longhand, on a small piece of paper, a note to Fredendall telling him that he was to stay with me until I relieved him.
We flew from there to Constantine, where I spent the night and made the acquaintance of General Alexander, who commanded the Army Group to which the II Corps was attached. General Alexander told me that, after the tenth of March, the II Corps would be relieved from the British Command and treated as a separate Army, although retaining the title of a corps.
I flew to Tebessa in the early morning of the seventh and arrived at Headquarters of the II Corps about 0900 o’clock, and found most of the officers in bed. The situation was evidently very poor. Three of the four divisions had been roughly handled and had an inferiority complex. The other divisions had had very limited battle experience and had nothing but the valor of ignorance. There was no discipline, and every member of the General Staff was issuing direct orders to everyone, to the extent that the G-3 could issue an order to a division telling them to send a reinforced platoon to such and such a place.
Between the morning of the seventh and the late afternoon of the thirteenth, I personally talked to every battalion in the four divisions and restored discipline. This was a very difficult job—I think the most difficult I have ever undertaken. However, we were lucky in securing a complete victory in our first attack on Gafsa on the morning of the fourteenth. This corrected all the evils of lack of confidence, and from then on the II Corps fought in a magnificent manner.
XIV
During our operation in Tunisia, we were under very close tutelage by the British, and I had a British Brigadier General at my Headquarters. Sometime around the beginning of the second week of April, I was making desperate efforts to take the mountain called Djebel Berda. After supper on this particular evening, General Eddy, commanding the 9th Division, which was conducting the attack, came to my quarters, and in the presence of the English Brigadier stated that, while he would carry out my orders of continuing the attack, he felt that it was hopeless, owing to the fact that the infantry regiments engaged in it had already suffered twenty-six per cent casualties. -
I was faced with the necessity of making a decision either to continue a hopeless attack or to lose face in front of the British and violate my own principles of war by agreeing to stop the attack. I felt that, under the circumstances, I was not justified in demanding further sacrifice. I therefore directed General Eddy to discontinue the attack. I think this was one of the most difficult decisions I ever had to make.
Fortunately, on the next day the 1st Division across the valley captured an Observation Post from which we could place a very effective artillery concentration on the part of the mountain we had been trying to storm. We put all the guns in the corps and the two divisions on the target and gave them, just at dawn, twenty-five rounds per gun of rapid fire with white phosphorus, with the idea of persuading the enemy that we were going to launch an attack and hoping he would man his trenches. After a wait of ten minutes, we put on a second twenty-five rounds per gun of high explosive. As a result of this operation, we took the position without casualty, except to the Germans.
XV
In the early morning of July 10, 1943, General Gay, Colonel Odom, Captain Stiller, and myself landed at Gela, Sicily. The landing beach was under fire, but most of the projectiles were hitting about twenty-five feet beyond the beach, in the water, where they did little harm. There was a great deal of confusion on the beach and nobody was working. I walked up and down the beach for some time, accompanied by my Staff, and we restored the confidence of the people there, particularly when we failed to take cover when the Germans flew along, strafing the beach.
Later we entered the town of Gela, and remained there for some time under very intense artillery and mortar fire. We could see, on our left, a brigade of Italian infantry attacking our very thin line consisting of two Ranger companies, and on our right, twelve tanks which had cut in and were not over four hundred yards from the beach.
It was necessary to drive along a road between these tanks and the 1st Division in order to find General Terry Allen. This was a somewhat hazardous operation, as we were driving between two armies engaged in quite a battle because the Germans had launched a counter-attack of some sixty tanks against us. However, we found General Allen and arranged plans for the continuation of the attack the next morning. This meeting was made vivid in my recollection by the fact that shells were hitting in our vicinity during the whole of the conference, which, as a result, was probably one of the shortest staff meetings in history. For this act I was given an Oak Leaf Cluster to my Distinguished Service Cross, which I feel I did not earn, as I was not doing more than my duty and the situation was not too hazardous, although on one occasion a shell lit within a very few feet of General Gay and myself, and on another occasion a bomb fell just across the road from us.
XVI
By the night of the thirteenth of July, 1943, I was of the opinion that the German counter-attack of the eleventh and twelfth was the last major counter-offensive of which they were capable. On this assumption I revised my plans for the remainder of the operation in Sicily. Had I taken counsel of my fears, or believed what the G-2’s reported, the campaign could have been much longer and less successful.
The making of such a decision sounds easy, but is, in my opinion, quite difficult.
XVII
On the fourteenth of July, I received a telegram from General Alexander to the effect that I would take up a defensive position in the vicinity of Caltanissetta to cover the left rear of the British Eighth Army. To have adhered to this order would have been disloyal to the American Army. With the help of General Keyes, General Wedemeyer, and General Gay, I drafted an order for an enveloping attack, via Agrigento and Castelvetrano, on Palermo.
Accompanied by General Wedemeyer, I then flew to Africa and presented this order to General Alexander, stating that I was convinced that this was what he intended, and not that I should remain in a defensive attitude. I asked him to initial the order. He did so, but stated I should not attack Agrigento unless I could do it with a reconnaissance in force. I did it with a reconnaissance in force, using all the troops I had available—namely, the 3d Division, part of the 82d Airborne, two Ranger Battalions, and a task force of the 2d Armored. Had I failed, I would have been relieved. We took Palermo on the twenty-second.
XVII
During the advance on Messina, along the north road in Sicily, we had made one successful amphibious turning operation and were in the act of executing a second one when, shortly after supper, General Keyes, who was with the 3d Division, telephoned me that General Bradley, commanding the II Corps of which the 3d Division was a unit, and General Truscott, commanding the 3d Division, were both convinced that this second amphibious operation was too dangerous and therefore requested authority to postpone it. I told General Keyes to tell them it would not be postponed and that I would be there at once.
I took General Gay with me, dropping him off at the beach where the amphibious troops were then taking off, with orders to see that they took off. I then went to the Headquarters of the 3d Division, which was under limited shell fire, and found General Truscott, a most dashing officer, suffering from such physical fatigue that he was convinced that the operation could not succeed. I directed him to carry it out, stating that if he succeeded he would get the full credit, and that if he failed, I would take the blam
e. I then called General Bradley on the telephone and told him the same thing. I stated to both of them that, having complete confidence in them, I was returning to my Headquarters, because if I stayed around I would fail to show confidence. I spent a very restless night, particularly as the enemy was shooting at us, but they failed to get a hit. Shortly after reveille, Colonel Harkins, who was duty officer, called up to say that the attack had been a complete success.
It is a very difficult thing to order two officers in whom you have great confidence to carry out an operation which neither of them thinks is possible.
War as I Knew It Page 36