Supreme Commander (32 page)

On April 30 the attack went forward. The troops slogged up the hill, falling before the cross fire but advancing relentlessly. “I sincerely hope the 34th takes Hill 609 today,” Eisenhower told Alexander. “It would do worlds for the division and for the campaign.”
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By the next morning, the Americans had the hill. The Germans counterattacked furiously all through the day but the division, its self-respect restored and its confidence high, repulsed the enemy. Eisenhower’s patience and insistence paid huge dividends, not only in the campaign but for the future. The 34th Division went on to compile one of the best combat
records in the American Army, making the assault at Salerno, holding the beachhead at Anzio, and leading the drive through Italy.

The fall of Hill 609 broke the shell of the German defense in front of the Americans. To the north the 9th Division got into the hills behind Jefna and on May 1 the Germans pulled out, retreating to Mateur. The 1st Division, meanwhile, moved eastward along the southern slopes of Hill 609, while the 1st Armored drove along the Tine River valley to Eddekhila, then turned north toward Mateur. On the afternoon of May 3 it pushed the Germans out of Mateur and was in position for the final drive on Bizerte. Most important of all, the American attack had eliminated the bulk of Von Arnim’s mobile reinforcements. Montgomery had meanwhile launched another flanking attack, which was successful.

On May 4 Anderson joined in the general offensive. Within two days the Germans in front of Anderson were in full retreat, and on May 7 the British moved into Tunis. The same day Bradley sent Eisenhower a two-word message—“Mission accomplished.” His II Corps had captured Bizerte.
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Only mopping-up operations remained to clear the Axis completely out of Tunisia and North Africa.

Eisenhower spent the last week of the campaign at the front, and it made a deep impression on him. He spoke of it in a letter he dictated to his brother Arthur on May 18. He had just learned that a reporter had done a story on their mother, who was a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. The story stressed the pacifism of the religious group and the irony of Mrs. Eisenhower’s son being a general. After telling Arthur that their mother’s “happiness in her religion means more to me than any damn wisecrack that a newspaperman can get publicized,” Eisenhower said of pacifists generally, “I doubt whether any of these people, with their academic or dogmatic hatred of war, detest it as much as I do.” He then spoke of his experiences on the Tunisian front and said the pacifists “probably have not seen bodies rotting on the ground and smelled the stench of decaying human flesh. They have not visited a field hospital crowded with the desperately wounded.” Eisenhower said that what separated him from the pacifists was that he hated the Nazis more than he did war. There was something else. “My hatred of war will never equal my conviction that it is the duty of every one of us, civilian and soldier alike, to carry out the orders of our government when a war emergency arises,” Eisenhower told his brother. “As far as I am concerned, Stephen Decatur told the whole story when he said: ‘Right or wrong, my country.’ ” Or, as he put it to his son, “The only unforgivable sin in war is not doing your duty.”
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Immediately after the fall of Bizerte, Eisenhower recommended Bradley for promotion to lieutenant general (it was approved the following month) and told Marshall that he had been at the front nearly all week, “tremendously busy.” When the last Axis forces had surrendered, he declared, “I am going to take a 24-hour leave where no one in this world will be able to reach me.”
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The work, however, drove him on. After the Tunisian campaign, Eisenhower wrote a memorandum to himself with a paragraph on each of his leading commanders, “for reference when I may need them at a later date.” He put Cunningham at the top of the list, ranking him first “in absolute selflessness, energy, devotion to duty, knowledge of his task, and in understanding of the requirements of Allied operations.”

Tedder was a close second in every respect, although Eisenhower did wonder if Tedder was not a bit too much the airman, “not quite as broad-gauged as he might be,” a little too inclined to see problems only from the air point of view. Alexander had “a winning personality,” energy, and sound tactical conceptions. “The only possible doubt that could be raised with respect to his qualifications is a suspected unsureness in dealing with certain of his subordinates,” which was a polite way of saying that Alexander could not control Montgomery. Eisenhower thought Montgomery himself was “a very able, dynamic type” who “loves the limelight.” This was not necessarily a weakness, although Eisenhower usually frowned upon publicity seekers. Still, he found Montgomery to be intelligent, a good talker with “a flare for showmanship,” and said, “I personally think that the only thing he needs is a strong immediate commander.”

Eisenhower had worked most closely in the campaign with Anderson, a soldier who had the virtues of being “an earnest fighter completely devoted to duty.” His trouble was that he instinctively thought in smaller terms, of battalions and brigades rather than divisions and corps, and thus was not really qualified to run an entire army.

Turning to the Americans in North Africa, Eisenhower began with Mark Clark, “the best organizer, planner and trainer of troops I have yet met in the American Army.” Clark was orderly and logical. Eisenhower had once thought that “he was becoming a bit consumed with a desire to push himself,” but “all that has disappeared.…” Clark’s only drawback was his lack of combat experience. In the early days in Tunisia, Eisenhower had offered him command of II Corps, but Clark “rather resented taking any title except that of Army Commander” and declined.
“This was a bad mistake on Clark’s part,” Eisenhower concluded, “but I still think that he could successfully command an army in operations.”

Patton, as Eisenhower knew better than most, “believes in showmanship to such an extent that he is almost flamboyant.” He talked too much and too quickly and often “creates a very bad impression.” He was not a good example to subordinates. But he was the best fighting general America had, and Eisenhower intended to keep him, whatever the cost. Bradley, on the other hand, never gave Eisenhower any worry. He “is about the best rounded, well balanced, senior officer that we have in the service.” Bradley’s judgments were always sound and he was respected by British and Americans alike. “I feel that there is no position in the Army that he could not fill with success,” Eisenhower declared.
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Eisenhower’s considered judgment on his subordinates revealed, among other things, his abilities to see a man’s strengths and weaknesses quickly. He had known Cunningham for less than a year, Tedder, Montgomery, and Alexander for only a few months. He had known Patton and Bradley for years but had seen each in action only briefly. He did not know how Clark would react to combat. Yet all his judgments remained valid and he never had cause, in the campaigns that followed, to change any of them.

Eisenhower’s memorandum was as revealing about himself as it was about the men he discussed. There was, first of all, the obvious prejudice of the ground officer toward the airmen, especially those airmen who wanted a separate air force. More important was what the memorandum showed about Eisenhower’s value structure. The key words were selflessness, energy, duty, and the allegiance to alliance. The thing he abhorred most was publicity seeking.

He never sought publicity for himself. On May 13 the last Axis forces in Tunisia surrendered and the continent of Africa was in Allied hands. Eisenhower’s forces had captured 275,000 enemy troops, a bag of prisoners even larger than the Russians had gotten at Stalingrad. Eisenhower saw to it that the men responsible got their full share of credit, but failed in a final press conference to mention his own role. As a result the British and American press hardly mentioned his name. This upset Marshall, who ordered the director of public relations, Major General Alexander Surles, to see to it that Eisenhower be given his proper credit for the “magnificent job” he had done. “You can tell some of these newsmen from me,” Marshall told Surles, “that I think it is a damned outrage that because [Eisenhower] is self-effacing and not self-advertising
that they ignore him completely when, as a matter of fact, he is responsible for the coordination of forces and events.…”
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If the press ignored Eisenhower, others did not. Congratulations poured in on him from all sides—from the President, the Prime Minister, Anderson and the rest of the British, the Russians, and soldiers, sailors, and private citizens throughout the world. Eisenhower claimed not to be impressed. He told Marshall he wished he had a disposition that would allow him to relax and enjoy a feeling of self-satisfaction, but he did not. “I always anticipate and discount, in my own mind, accomplishment,” he said, “and am, therefore, mentally racing ahead into the next campaign” before the current one was complete. “The consequence is that all the shouting about the Tunisian campaign leaves me utterly cold.”

He said that he was so impatient and irritated because of the slowness with which HUSKY
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was being developed that “I make myself quite unhappy.” He suffered physically for every additional day that the Axis had to perfect and strengthen the Sicily defenses, so much so that his “chief ambition in this war” was to get to a place where the next operation would not be amphibious, “with all the inflexibility and delay that are characteristic of such operations.”
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Despite his protests, Eisenhower was not “utterly cold” to his own accomplishments or the praise they brought forth. He was proudest of the progress he had made in welding the Allied team together, not only at AFHQ but among the field units. He was most pleased by the way II Corps had fought in the final phases of the campaign, with the proof it offered that American troops, once blooded, would be able to take on the best Germany had to offer and win.

His deepest personal satisfaction came from having won Marshall’s praise. The Chief sent his congratulations to Eisenhower. In reply, Eisenhower said that, since he had been given the mission of clearing North Africa almost ten months earlier, “my greatest source of inspiration and strength has been my confidence in your understanding of the intricate problems involved and the generosity of your support.

“Praise from no other individual could mean so much to me as yours,” Eisenhower told his Chief, who hardly ever praised anyone. “I thank you from the bottom of my heart.…”
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Conceived in the disaster of the fall of France, born out of wedlock in London, with no national state to support it and thus an orphan as a child, it was inevitable that Free France would be a juvenile delinquent. The forms that the delinquency took, however, would depend in large part on the actions of others, especially the United States and the United Kingdom.

Roosevelt’s attempt at Casablanca to bring De Gaulle and Giraud together had failed. Something simply had to be done to bring De Gaulle to Algiers and into an alliance with Giraud.
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In February, in furtherance of his aims, Roosevelt sent Jean Monnet to Algiers to be Giraud’s adviser and to work for unity. Monnet had been the first deputy secretary-general of the League of Nations and was an internationally known banker. He had been in London when France surrendered but had not rallied to De Gaulle’s Free French cause; thus Roosevelt felt he was safe. But Monnet’s only interest was in France, not personalities, and he refused to be the President’s tool. He quickly assessed Giraud and found him wanting. “When the general looks at you with those eyes of a porcelain cat,” Monnet said of Giraud, “he comprehends nothing!”
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Since this was also the view of most of the leading British and Americans in Algiers, the only thing supporting Giraud was the influence and power of the President of the United States.

Monnet, Eisenhower, Murphy, and Macmillan set to work to draft a formula that would allow De Gaulle to come to Algiers and join with Giraud. Everyone was for this, for different reasons. Monnet was sure that De Gaulle would quickly overshadow Giraud, which would be good for France. Macmillan agreed, for he too wanted a strong France in postwar Europe and felt that only De Gaulle could provide one. Churchill,
at least at times, seemed interested only in getting De Gaulle out of London. Murphy on the other hand thought that Giraud and Monnet could control De Gaulle and, like Eisenhower and Smith, felt that bringing De Gaulle into Algiers would ease political problems there. Roosevelt evidently thought that in Algiers, surrounded by visible evidence of America’s military might, De Gaulle would be more tractable.

The basis of the formula was the creation in Algiers of a provisional government based on cabinet responsibility rather than personal rule. Monnet insisted upon this, and together with Macmillan and Murphy worked out a formula that called for a committee of seven leading Frenchmen, with De Gaulle and Giraud as co-presidents, to assume office as “the central French power.” In May, Macmillan flew to London to present the proposal to De Gaulle. After much discussion, De Gaulle agreed to come to Algiers.
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The only difficulty in bringing De Gaulle and Giraud together, so it seemed on the surface, was their individual, monumental egos. But, as Macmillan also later admitted, “many of us did not altogether realize the fundamental difference between the position of [De Gaulle] and that of Giraud and his friends.”
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De Gaulle represented a new France, while Giraud stood for the old. De Gaulle believed that France had to be reconstituted from top to bottom. All the Vichy scum—the police chiefs and their brutality, the clerks and their petty graft, the generals and their lust for glory and position—had to be flushed out. “It is not our fault,” he declared, “if France is undergoing a virtual revolution at the same time as being at war.”
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Thus when Macmillan proposed to De Gaulle that he join with Giraud, De Gaulle said one of his conditions would be that Giraud dismiss from office all Vichy “capitulators and collaborators” and announce that the armistice was null and void. Giraud bristled at this. For him, the armistice was fact. He had his duty to perform. The danger was Communism, and he would not yield to it. This point had not been settled when De Gaulle came to Algiers.
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