Eisenhower in War and Peace

by Jean Edward Smith

Because of the marginal performance of American troops in Tunisia, primary responsibility was assigned to Montgomery’s Eighth Army. The British would land on the southeast coast of Sicily, press north along the coastal road, capture the port cities of Syracuse, Catania, and Taormina, and take Messina, closing off the escape route for Axis forces on the island. Patton’s troops would land west of Eighth Army on Sicily’s southern coast and cover Montgomery’s left flank as he drove north. D-Day was set for July 10, 1943.

  Allied intelligence estimated the number of enemy troops on the island at three hundred thousand: mostly Italian, but including two top-of-the-line German panzer divisions. Sicily was roughly the size of the state of Vermont, and the mountainous terrain tilted the odds heavily in favor of the defenders. Mount Etna, one of Europe’s four active volcanoes, stood directly in the path of Montgomery’s advance—a ten-thousand-foot obstacle that was twenty miles in diameter.a On the other hand, the Allies would have complete air supremacy, and the Italian Navy—six antiquated battleships and eleven cruisers—would be no match for Cunningham’s combined fleet should it choose to do battle, which was highly unlikely.

  Eisenhower continued to juggle his obligation to Mamie with his affection for Kay. Summersby was now working as Ike’s personal assistant, as well as driving him when the occasion arose.b “I was spending more time than ever with Ike,” she recalled. “Even in London with our seven day weeks, I occasionally visited Mummy, lunched with friends, went to the odd cocktail party. But now I trod a very narrow path. From breakfast to the final nightcap, I went where Ike went. Once when Omar Bradley was coming to dinner, Ike and I were a bit late. When we walked in, Brad said, ‘Here they are, Ike and his shadow.’ ”15

  Omar Bradley, one of the few senior American commanders without a wartime sweetheart, said that Kay’s influence over Ike

  was greater than is generally recognized.… Their close relationship is quite accurately portrayed, so far as my personal knowledge extends, in Kay’s second book, Past Forgetting. Ike’s son John published his father’s personal letters to Mamie, in part to refute Kay’s allegation that she and Ike were deeply in love. Many of these letters are obviously Ike’s replies to probing letters from Mamie about his relationship with Kay. To my mind, Ike protests too much, thus defeating John’s purpose.16 c

  On June 6, 1943, Colonel Richard Arnold, Kay’s fiancé, was killed instantly when a fellow officer set off a trip wire during a mine-clearing operation. Kay was stunned, but her grief passed quickly. “Ours had been a wartime romance,” she wrote in retrospect. “There had been weeks and months when we had not seen each other. Each time we met it had been as exciting as a first date, and probably for that very reason our knowledge of each other had not progressed much beyond the first-date stage. Ike knew more about me and had seen more of my family than Dick ever had.… Now when I tried to mourn him, I discovered that I did not really know the man I was grieving for.”17

  Mamie and Ike had not seen each other for almost a year. Ensconced in a two-bedroom apartment at Washington’s fashionable Wardman Park Hotel, Mamie found herself increasingly alone. She loathed public appearances and the limelight, preferring the company of Army wives, where she now cut a wide swath. She spent her evenings reading pulp fiction, slept late, and either went shopping downtown or played cards and mah-jongg most afternoons with her contemporaries. Always delicate, her weight plummeted to 112 pounds.

  Mamie had little interest in politics. To the extent she followed national and international affairs, it was through the eyes of her ultraconservative parents in Denver. When Eleanor Roosevelt invited her for a private luncheon at the White House, Mamie declined—a social gaffe the Roosevelts never forgot. Mrs. Roosevelt attributed Mamie’s refusal to alcoholism, a rap that followed her for the rest of her life.18 When Ike paid a lightning visit to Washington six months later, FDR invited him for dinner at the White House. Mamie was not invited.d

  The fact is, Mamie missed her husband and was alone for the first time in her life. She fretted about the continued presence of Kay Summersby at Eisenhower’s headquarters. Why did Ike keep her around if he knew it made Mamie uncomfortable? Susan Eisenhower, in her biography of her grandmother, puts the matter in perspective. Mamie understood Ike’s need for female companionship, wrote Susan. “She had firsthand knowledge that when ambition, rankpulling, and rivalry were part and parcel of the daily environment, a sympathetic and trustworthy listener was of inestimable value. From the earliest days of their marriage, Mamie herself had created a stress-free after-work environment for Ike—which included having friends in, playing cards, or ‘just loafing.’ ” Mamie worried that Kay had become her surrogate by providing that atmosphere for Ike in Algiers.19

  Mamie evidently expressed her feelings to Ike in early June. She also included Army gossip about Dick Arnold’s messy stateside divorce. Eisenhower received the letter just after Arnold’s death, and was not amused. On June 11 he replied to Mamie.

  A very strange coincidence occurred this morning. I had two letters from you … and in one of them you mentioned my driver, and a story you’d heard about the former marital difficulties of her fiancé. You said it was a “not pretty” story. Your letter gave me my first intimation that there was any story whatever. In any event, whatever guilt attached to him has been paid in full. At the same moment that your letter arrived I received a report that he was killed.… So what young Arnold did, I do not know. But here we considered him a valuable officer and a fine person. I’m saddened by his death.

  Ike concluded by reassuring Mamie of his love. “You never quite seem to comprehend how deeply I depend upon you and need you. So when you’re lonely, try to remember that I’d rather be by your side than anywhere else in the world.”20

  After Colonel Arnold’s death, Eisenhower became especially solicitous of Kay. When he ordered two new Class A uniforms from the finest French tailor in Algiers, he insisted that Kay be measured for two as well.

  “How can I ever thank you?” asked Kay.

  “Kay, you are someone very special to me,” he replied.

  He laid his hand over mine. And he smiled. This was not the famous Eisenhower grin. This was a tender, almost tremulous smile. And full of love. We just sat there and looked at each other. We were both silent, serious, eyes searching eyes. It was a communion, a pledging, an avowal of love. For over a year, Ike and I had spent more time with each other than with anyone else. We had worked, worried and played together. Love had grown so naturally that it was part of our lives.21

  Later that day, Ike had second thoughts. “I’m sorry about this morning, Kay. That shouldn’t have happened. Please forget it.”22

  And later still, more second thoughts. “Goddamnit, can’t you tell I’m crazy about you.”

  It was like an explosion. We were suddenly in each other’s arms. His kisses absolutely unraveled me. Hungry, strong, demanding. And I responded every bit as passionately. He stopped, took my face between his hands. “Goddamnit, I love you.”

  Ike put his hands on my shoulders. “We have to be very careful,” he said. “I don’t want you to be hurt. I don’t want people to gossip about you. God, I wish things were different.”23

  Summersby later recalled,

  The acknowledgement of our love heightened the pleasure of every moment Ike and I spent together—and heightened the frustrations as well. As long as we were in Algiers, all we could hope for would be a few stolen moments of privacy—to talk. No more mad embraces. That initial passionate encounter could not be repeated. Love made no visible change in our lives; the change was all within. We picked up the threads of routine as if they had never been broken.24

  …The cocktail hour was often a time we could count on for ourselves. In Algiers we would sit on the high-backed sofa in the living room, listen to records, have a few drinks, smoke a few cigarettes and steal a few kisses—always conscious that someone would walk in at any moment. We were more like teen-agers than a woman in her thirties and a man in his f
ifties. We were certainly a curiously innocent couple—or perhaps it was simply the circumstances in which we found ourselves.25

  Eisenhower welcomes King George VI to Algiers. (illustration credit 11.1)

  On June 11, 1943, the Allies captured the tiny island of Pantelleria, thirty miles off the Tunisian coast, and directly in the path of military convoys sailing for Sicily. The operation, code-named CORKSCREW, marks the first occasion in which Eisenhower asserted his authority as supreme commander contrary to the advice of his subordinates.

  The Isola di Pantelleria, sometimes known as the caper capital of the Mediterranean, was a fifty-two-square-mile volcanic outcropping that had been fortified by Mussolini in the mid-1930s as counterpoise to the British base at Malta. Axis propaganda touted it as the Gibraltar of the central Mediterranean, and because of its rocky coastline with no beaches and only one small harbor less than three hundred yards wide, most military authorities considered it unassailable. Eisenhower nevertheless believed that if left in enemy hands, the island would be a serious menace. Its elaborate network of radio direction finders played havoc with Allied aircraft, and its airfield, though heavily bombed, was still capable of launching aerial assaults against nearby ships.

  Eisenhower’s deputies—Alexander, Cunningham, and Tedder—stoutly opposed the operation. Alexander, in particular, with memories of Dunkirk fresh in his mind, resisted landing on the island, which he believed would result in “unthinkable casualties.” Cunningham initially agreed that it was too risky, as did Tedder. But Eisenhower persisted. Taking advantage of Allied air supremacy, he ordered a bombing campaign to pulverize the island’s defenses. In three weeks, Allied planes flew five thousand sorties against Pantelleria, dropped 6,400 tons of bombs, and left the defenders in a state of shock. Tedder and Cunningham now agreed that Italian morale was so low they would not put up much of a fight, but Alexander held firm in his opposition. Eisenhower overruled him and ordered the invasion to proceed. If Bradley, Clark, and Patton believed that Ike was merely a front man for his British deputies (as they did), Pantelleria clearly established who was in command.

  In the face of Alexander’s continued opposition, Eisenhower decided it would be prudent to make a personal reconnaissance of the island. Three days before the scheduled assault, he boarded Admiral Cunningham’s flagship, the HMS Aurora, which was to lead a naval task force of cruisers and destroyers in a final bombardment of the island. This would be Ike’s first exposure to hostile fire, and Aurora moved at flank speed (twenty-eight knots). Cunningham told Eisenhower that the whole area was mined except for a narrow channel that had been swept.

  “Are there no floating mines about?” asked Ike.

  “Oh yes,” Cunningham replied. “But at this speed the bow wave will throw them away from the ship. It would be just bad luck if we should strike one.”26

  The naval bombardment lasted several hours, and Italian shore batteries remained mostly silent. Awed by the destruction, Eisenhower told Cunningham, “Andrew, if you and I got into a small boat, we could capture the place ourselves.”27

  On June 11, 1943, the Italian garrison of eleven thousand men surrendered before the first assault troops went ashore. Pantelleria was in Allied hands, the only casualty a British enlisted man who had been bitten by a mule. “I’m afraid this telegram sounds a bit gloating,” Eisenhower confessed in reporting the success to Marshall. “Today marks the completion of my twenty-eighth year of commissioned service and I believe that I am now legally eligible for promotion to colonel [in the Regular Army].”28 e If Ike were gloating, the gloating was justified. CORKSCREW had been his plan from the beginning. Despite the doubts of his senior commanders, all of whom were more experienced than he, Eisenhower had insisted upon taking the island, and had successfully done so. For Ike, Pantelleria was a watershed. In his mind, it confirmed his strategic judgment and gave him the confidence he needed for the future. The stakes had been trivial, but the outcome could not have been more significant.29

  At the same time the Allies were taking Pantelleria, the political situation in Algeria began to sort itself out. To the consternation of Robert Murphy, the American State Department, Admiral Leahy, and FDR, Charles de Gaulle emerged as undisputed leader of the French war effort. On May 27, the National Council of the Resistance, meeting clandestinely in Paris, recognized de Gaulle as the leader of the Resistance and demanded that he be installed as president of the provisional government of France in Algeria.30 On May 30, de Gaulle arrived in Algiers. On June 3, the French Committee of National Liberation (FCNL) was formed with de Gaulle and Giraud as copresidents. The committee proclaimed itself “the central French power. It directs the French war effort. It exercises French sovereignty.”31 De Gaulle’s presence in Algiers triggered a wave of popular demonstrations by Frenchmen of all classes and political persuasions. Giraud, though not personally tainted by Vichy, stood for the old order. De Gaulle represented the future. Churchill and the British government made it clear they supported de Gaulle. Eisenhower—with HUSKY about to be launched—was most concerned that French North Africa be unified behind whatever leader might emerge. And Roosevelt was determined that de Gaulle be defeated. “I am fed up with de Gaulle,” the president cabled Churchill on June 17. “The time has arrived when we must break him.”32

  FDR’s attitude toward de Gaulle was personal and petulant. He dug in his heels and ignored the plethora of evidence that de Gaulle, and only de Gaulle, spoke for the French nation. The president’s attitude was analogous to the combination of hubris and obstinacy he displayed in 1937 when he sought to pack the Supreme Court, and in 1938 when he attempted to purge four Democratic senators in their state primaries. Eisenhower, who was now more adept at reading the political situation on the ground, stood aside and let the drama unfold.

  In July, Roosevelt invited Giraud to the United States for what he believed would be a ceremonial laying on of hands. Giraud was received politely but unenthusiastically by the North American audience, and by the time he returned to Algiers at the end of the month, de Gaulle had solidified his position as the sole president of the FCNL, which had become the de facto government of France in exile. Giraud retreated to a figurehead position as head of the armed forces, and retired the following year. De Gaulle captured the change as he described his triumphant visit to Casablanca in August 1943. “Six months before, I had had to reside on the city’s outskirts, constrained by secrecy and surrounded with barbed wire and American sentry posts. Today my presence served as a symbol and a center of French authority.”33

  Eisenhower understood de Gaulle better than any other Allied leader did. They were the same age, born within a month of each other in 1890. Both came from large families, both attended their country’s military academy, and both spent their early careers working with tanks. Both read assiduously, wrote well, and possessed a remarkable command of their respective languages. Both identified with their country’s heritage, and in many respects exemplified its virtues and vices. De Gaulle’s war record was exceptional, and Eisenhower respected it. Wounded three times on the western front in World War I, he was left for dead on the field at Verdun, only to be rescued and healed by the Germans.

  De Gaulle, for his part, understood and appreciated the position in which Eisenhower had been placed. “If occasionally he went so far as to support the pretexts which tended to keep us in obscurity, I can affirm that he did so without conviction. I even saw him submit to my intervention in his own strategy whenever national interest led me to do so. At heart this great soldier felt, in his turn, that mysterious sympathy which for almost two centuries had brought his country and mine together in the world’s great dramas.”34

  On July 7, three days before Allied forces were scheduled to land in Sicily, Eisenhower flew from Algiers to Malta, the operational command post for HUSKY, and less than sixty miles from where Patton’s troops would go ashore. Ike said he felt “as if my stomach was a clenched fist.”35 This time, unlike TORCH, Eisenhower did not have direct
operational responsibility. The ground forces were commanded by Alexander, the air by Tedder, and the naval forces by Cunningham. Ike presided over the three, ready to settle any dispute that might arise, but he did not control day-to-day operations. After the battle plan had been agreed to, the only major decision left in his hands was to give the final go-ahead.

  The invasion of Sicily was the largest amphibious assault ever attempted. One hundred and seventy-five thousand troops—seven divisions, two more than would go ashore in Normandy—would land simultaneously on twenty-six beaches along a front that stretched for 105 miles. Within two days, almost five hundred thousand men would be ashore. The invasion armada, which was already at sea, stretched for sixty miles in a mile-wide corridor and comprised more than three thousand vessels, including eight battleships and two carriers. In addition to the landing force, the fleet carried more than two hundred thousand tons of supplies, half of which were munitions. John C. H. Lee, it was said, always doubled whatever his staff thought the Army needed “just in case.”36

  On July 9—D-Day minus one—the weather turned foul. By late afternoon the winds had reached a gale-force thirty knots—Force 7 on the Beaufort scale. “We could barely stand on deck,” wrote war correspondent Ernie Pyle aboard the Biscayne.37 Patton’s men in flat-bottomed landing craft fared even worse. By 6 p.m. the winds had picked up to thirty-seven knots, then forty knots, churning twelve-foot seas. Marshall, who was following the weather reports hourly, cabled to ask if the invasion was on or off. “My reaction was that I wish I knew,” said Ike.38

  Weather forecasters on Malta predicted the storm had peaked and would soon pass. So, too, did Cunningham, who had sailed the Mediterranean for almost half a century. Staff officers calculated that if the invasion were postponed, it would take two to three weeks to remount it, by which time the element of surprise would have been lost. Whatever Ike’s limitations as a strategist, he was never reluctant to make the tough calls. “Let’s go,” he told Cunningham. To Marshall he radioed, “The operation will proceed as scheduled in spite of an unfortunate westerly wind.”39