Supreme Commander (24 page)

He set to work to get his organization functioning. He crystallized the staff and the widely separated commanders into co-ordinated action, a job that had been beyond Clark. He also began to force his services into shape, concentrating at first on the air forces. He asked the British Chiefs to send him more fighters and replacement parts, explaining that his needs were excessive because “in rushing forward into Tunisia with every bit of available tactical strength that could be moved, we have been forced to do so without the methodical preparation and prior defense of bases and lines of communication that are normally the first concern of a commander.”
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The Chiefs sent the material Eisenhower wanted; equally important, they sent him for consultation an expert on the employment of air forces.

Air Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder headed the Middle East Command of the RAF. A suave, handsome man, Tedder had strong prejudices and concepts which he never hesitated to express. He usually had a pipe stuck in his mouth and the amount of smoke it gave forth was a good indication of the amount of emotion he was feeling. He was an intensely loyal man who stuck with a friend or a superior without question or fail. His dedication to Anglo-American solidarity was as strong as Eisenhower’s. His World War I experiences had been in the Army (he joined the RAF in 1919), and perhaps as a result he had a wider view of the proper use of air forces than many of his colleagues in the RAF. He was by no means convinced that strategic bombing could win the war and felt that, at least in certain instances, the most efficient way to employ air power was in close tactical support of the infantry. He was also an organizational genius.

Tedder, in short, had a great deal to offer Eisenhower. The Allied commander in chief had never met him but they quickly hit it off and became close friends. When they were introduced, Eisenhower gave his big grin and thrust out his hand. “Well, another Yank,” Tedder thought to himself. Once Eisenhower started to talk, however, Tedder decided “he made a great deal of sense.”
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Tedder eventually became
Eisenhower’s deputy and the Englishman who had the most influence on his thinking. After their first meeting Eisenhower asked the British Chiefs to lend Tedder to AFHQ for an indefinite period, a request that the authorities in London soon granted. Following a general reorganization early in 1943, Tedder became Commander in Chief, Mediterranean Allied Air Forces, under Eisenhower.

In the Middle East Tedder had learned to arrange for close cooperation between air, ground, and naval units, to deploy air forces to make the best use of meager facilities, and to select air targets in a non-industrialized region. All this experience was valuable on the Tunisian front. After listening to Tedder, Eisenhower made some changes in his own procedures to apply the lessons learned in Egypt. For example, he had Air Marshal Sir William L. Welsh of the Eastern Air Command send a liaison officer to General Anderson’s headquarters and told Welsh that Anderson’s needs and desires would take precedence over everything else in determining missions. Eisenhower also placed all American air units in the area under Welsh’s command—they had been operating under Doolittle’s. Tedder insisted that all air units stationed on forward fields had to be subject to direct call from Anderson and Eisenhower saw that it was done.
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After dealing with the air force problem, Eisenhower turned his attention to the ground forces. Anderson needed more of everything, but especially armor. Eisenhower’s staff in Algiers had denied Anderson’s request that half-tracks (personnel carriers with light armor and machine guns) be sent eastward under their own power on the grounds that the half-tracks would use up one third of the life of their treads in the march. When Eisenhower discovered this he boiled. “What are we saving them for?” he thundered. “To hell with the life of the half-tracks!” While the staff piddled around waiting for trains to carry the vehicles forward, Anderson’s men were stuck. Eisenhower told the staff to have the half-tracks move under their own power, reminding them that wars were won by marching and had been throughout history.
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After two days in Algiers, Eisenhower grew itchy. He convinced himself that he could do no more in Algiers until he had seen the conditions at the front for himself. On November 27 he and Clark set out for the front in a semi-armored Cadillac, with a jeep and a scout car leading the way. At Anderson’s headquarters they learned that the Germans were falling back into their bridgehead covering Tunis and Bizerte, but the Allied advance was slow. One reason was German air control and the terrifying effect German planes had as they roared out of
the skies on strafing missions. The fighters did not do that much actual damage, but by forcing the troops to dash off the road and seek shelter they slowed up the advance. In addition the Germans were experts in leaving booby traps and road mines behind them.

Anderson was in the middle of an attack, but his forces were so stretched out and so small that he felt it had little chance of success. He had only three brigades of infantry and one brigade of tanks, known somewhat hopefully as the British First Army. American forces were coming forward to reinforce Anderson but so far only insignificant numbers had arrived. Still, some progress was being made. The main reason was that General Walther Nehring, the German commander of the Axis forces, was defense-minded and was excessively concerned with strengthening his bridgehead. Instead of ordering his men to push westward over the high ground beyond Bizerte and Tunis, he had indicated to them that they should fall back when they encountered the enemy. German defenses would toughen when they got closer to base.
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Eisenhower spent two days at the front, talking to Anderson, junior officers, and men. When he returned to Algiers he was fairly well satisfied. Anderson had pushed forward and almost secured the line Mateur-Tébourba. On his right, the French who had fled Tunis had finally decided to throw in with the Allies and were protecting Anderson’s flank. Anderson, Eisenhower told Marshall, “is apparently imbued with the will to win, but blows hot and cold.…”

Eisenhower’s major worry was the weakness of his forces driving on Tunis and his inability to get more help to Anderson. He could run only nine trains a day eastward from Algiers and two of those had to haul coal to operate the railroad. One had to carry food to keep the civilian population from starving. That left six for military purposes, and most of those were taking troops forward. The result was that reserves of munitions and rations were almost “at the vanishing point.” The logistical situation, Eisenhower confessed to Marshall, was so bad it would “make a ritualist in warfare go just a bit hysterical.” Eisenhower had no motor transport to speak of, “in spite of impressing every kind of scrawny vehicle that can run,” and shipping by sea was impractical because of the German control of the air over the Mediterranean. The danger was that some of Anderson’s small columns might get chewed up by the Germans, who had a much more secure base and shorter line of communications, but Eisenhower had realized the risks involved when he made the decision to move into Tunisia as rapidly as possible. Whatever happened now, Anderson was well into Tunisia and although the
Germans might hold onto Tunis and Bizerte, it was unlikely that they would throw the Allies out of western Tunisia.
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The Axis were going to try, however. Pushed by his superiors, Nehring decided to launch local counterattacks. They met with limited success. On December 2 Anderson radioed Eisenhower that if he did not take Tunis or Bizerte within the next few days he would have to withdraw. The primary reasons were the enemy’s air superiority and his rate of reinforcement, added to the poor administrative situation of the Allied forces (systematic command structures had been deliberately disregarded during the dash for Tunis). The next day Nehring attacked: the results, Anderson reported, were “a nasty setback for us.” German dive bombing had been especially effective and there was little the Allies could do to stop it.
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On the morning of December 3, Eisenhower met with Cunningham and members of the AFHQ staff to discuss the situation. They agreed that the time had come to pay the bill on the pell-mell race for Tunisia. British First Army did not appear to be strong enough, at present, to drive the Germans into the sea. Anderson needed more of everything, especially air. The best chance for an early success, a sea-borne assault against the east coast of Tunisia, in Nehring’s rear, had been abandoned because Eisenhower and the BCOS agreed it was too risky.

The reports of staff officers who had been at the front lines, plus Anderson’s messages, indicated that the present scale of air support was not sufficient to keep down the hostile strafing and dive bombing that were breaking up every attempted ground advance. The Allies needed advanced operating airfields, air maintenance troops well forward, stocks of spare parts, and more anti-aircraft. To get them, there had to be a breathing space. Eisenhower agreed to cut down on all air operations for the next few days and tell Anderson to “consolidate” his position.

To prevent the enemy from taking advantage of the pause, Eisenhower decided to order bombers from Eighth Air Force in England to North Africa, where they could operate against German-held ports and airfields. He also pulled some of his fighter planes back from the front, hoping thereby to cut down plane losses on the ground and to build up reserve supplies of gasoline and ammunition for a sustained effort later. Eisenhower set the target date for the renewal of the offensive at December 9. In reporting these decisions to the CCS, Eisenhower said he felt he “still retained a fair chance of getting the big prize,” and concluded, “It is noticeable that it is the Hun and not the Wop that is defending this particular spot.”
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A few days later Eisenhower had a few spare moments and decided to dictate a letter to Handy. “I think the best way to describe our operations to date,” he began, “is that they have violated every recognized principle of war, are in conflict with all operational and logistic methods laid down in textbooks, and will be condemned, in their entirety, by all Leavenworth and War College classes for the next twenty-five years.”
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The CCS had told Eisenhower that “large initial losses in a determined assault were much preferable to the wastage inherent in a war of attrition,” which was tantamount to accusing him of being too cautious in ordering a pause in the offensive. Eisenhower bristled at the implication. He had pushed as hard as possible, he felt, but a continuing offensive was impossible.

On December 9 Eisenhower again had to postpone the offensive “for a week or ten days,” as Anderson said he did not have enough strength to move forward. Eisenhower accepted the delay but it made him irritable. When Doolittle came to lunch and recounted his problems with the German air force, Eisenhower snapped, “Those are your troubles—go and cure them. Don’t you think I’ve a lot of troubles, too?” Butcher reported that Eisenhower was “like a caged tiger, snarling and clawing to get things done.”
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Continuing political problems did not help Eisenhower’s mood. Darlan was taking on all the appearance of a genuine head of government. During the first week in December he asked Marcel Peyrouton, former Minister of the Interior in the Vichy government and a man closely connected with Vichy’s anti-Semitic laws, to serve as his “accredited political representative” to the Argentine government. Darlan also asked other chiefs of French missions for their support.
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All this upset Roosevelt and the State Department and they told Marshall to tell Eisenhower to have Darlan stop it. Marshall did so and Eisenhower replied that he would see what could be done, but added, “I feel it is a mistake to demand cooperation and a friendly attitude on the one hand and on the other to act like we have here a conquering army which enforces its will by threat and views with intense suspicion every proposal of these people.”
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The next day, December 4, Eisenhower learned that Darlan intended to announce that since Pétain was a “prisoner” he, Darlan, was assuming the prerogatives of a head of state as the “repository of French Sovereignty” and setting up an Imperial Council. This went directly against Roosevelt’s policy of non-recognition of any Frenchman until after liberation
and was the very thing Churchill had feared, since it froze De Gaulle out of the French picture. Eisenhower put a censorship stop on the announcement, called Darlan in, and forced the admiral to change it so that it indicated that Darlan’s authority was only local and that he was “in no sense” head of the French state. Eisenhower emphasized that the Allies were dealing with Darlan only as a de facto head of a local administration, but did allow Darlan to set up an Imperial Council with the admiral as its head.
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In the middle of his political activities, Eisenhower took time to write an old friend. “I think sometimes that I am a cross between a one-time soldier, a pseudo-statesman, a jack-legged politician and a crooked diplomat,” Eisenhower began. “I walk a soapy tight-rope in a rain storm with a blazing furnace on one side and a pack of ravenous tigers on the other.” If he got safely across, Eisenhower said, his greatest possible reward would be a quiet little cottage “on the side of a slow-moving stream where I can sit and fish for catfish with a bobber.” Still, he confessed, the job had certain compensations, chief of which was that it was always interesting.
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Press and radio criticism of Darlan, meanwhile, continued. He had done nothing to liberalize the administration of North Africa and American and British presence had made no practical difference in day-to-day life in Algiers. Eisenhower had Murphy talk to Darlan about the situation. Darlan promised, informally, to alleviate the condition of the Jews by restoring them their property and returning to them the right to practice the professions. Darlan did ask for time, as he claimed that if “sensational steps to improve the lot of the Jews” were taken there would be a violent Moslem reaction which the French could not control. Eisenhower had made the deal with Darlan in large part because the French could “control” the Arabs, so it was consistent for him to grant the delay.