Supreme Commander (37 page)

The airfield on Pantelleria would now be most helpful in providing fighter cover for HUSKY, but that was only part of the reason for Eisenhower’s gay mood. He took deep personal satisfaction in the results. It had been his plan all along, he was the one who insisted upon it, and despite the numerous and highly placed doubters, some of whom were senior to him in rank and experience, it had worked. It was a command decision which showed that the experts were not always right and it gave
him confidence in his own abilities and judgment. In later years he would talk of Pantelleria with as much pride as OVERLORD.
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Now full-scale planning for HUSKY could proceed. “Everybody is tremendously keyed up,” Eisenhower told Marshall on July 1. “Whenever I have a short conference with a staff section, my whole effort is to get the attending individuals to relax a bit.” The planners had been working on HUSKY since January and they were showing the strain.
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It was natural enough, considering the complexity of the operation and the size of the force involved.

HUSKY was the largest amphibious assault in all history. At dawn on July 10 seven divisions, preceded by airborne operations involving parts of two airborne divisions, would go ashore simultaneously along a front of one hundred miles. Both the frontage and initial assault forces were larger than those at Normandy a year later.
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The amount of detailed planning involved defied belief. Since every step was related, one mistake by one planner or one unit commander would have repercussions that would spread throughout the entire operation. Much depended upon the weather and on the enemy. No one of course could predict the wind force, and this was crucial for the Americans, since they would be making a shore-to-shore invasion, crossing the Mediterranean in their assault boats. How well the Italians would fight was another open question, as was the number of German troops on the island.

Despite the risks, Eisenhower was confident. In the last week of June he had a two-day conference with all the principal commanders and went over the plans with “great thoroughness. I know that everything that careful preparation and hard work can do, has already or is being done.”
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On July 7 Eisenhower arrived at Malta, Cunningham’s command post and the best communications center in the Mediterranean. Eisenhower said he felt “as if my stomach were a clenched fist.” He had done all he could do and for the next two days there was nothing to do but fret.
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Everything was now out of his hands—except for the most important decision of all. He still had to decide whether to go ahead with the operation or call it off.

All continued to go smoothly, however, and confidence grew. Then, on D-Day minus 1—July 9—the weather turned bad. The wind came up from the west and increased in force. It began piling up whitecaps in the Mediterranean, tossing about the boats in which Patton’s men
were crossing and throwing up a heavy surf on the western beaches. The wind would have little or no effect on Montgomery’s landing, since his area was on the lee shore, but if it continued at its present rate of forty knots it would ruin Patton’s landing. Staff officers suggested to Eisenhower that he postpone the invasion before it was too late. Because of the size and complexity of the forces involved, such a postponement would have meant a two- or three-week delay before the invasion could be mounted again.

Eisenhower conferred with Cunningham’s meteorological experts, who had good news for him. They said the velocity of the wind would likely fall around sundown, and that conditions by midnight should be satisfactory. Marshall sent a wire asking if the invasion was on or off. As Eisenhower later put it, “My reaction was that I wish I knew!” He and Cunningham went outside to look at the wind indicators, which showed that the wind force was dropping as predicted, and to catch a glimpse of some of the troop carrier aircraft towing the gliders filled with men of the British 1st Airborne Division. Eisenhower rubbed his ever present seven lucky coins and silently prayed for the safety and success of all the troops under his command.
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Eisenhower then went inside. He had made up his mind. He wired Marshall, “The operation will proceed as scheduled.”
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Hours later someone turned on a little table radio and picked up BBC. The Allied commander in chief and his deputies gathered around it to wait for the latest news—it seemed much the best way of finding out when and if the troops got ashore, since the ships were maintaining radio silence. BBC was playing popular music. Eisenhower, more and more worried, began pacing the floor. Suddenly BBC said, “We interrupt this programme to give you a flash message from General Eisenhower—he reports that the first waves of his landing craft have just landed successfully in Sicily.”

Eisenhower looked at the others, smiled, and said, “Thank God—
he
ought to know!”
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When the Axis generals went to bed on the night of July 9 the wind had been howling and the surf was high. They assumed that no invasion fleet could cross the Mediterranean in such weather. This assumption worked to the great advantage of the Allies, who felt they had to have surprise, since they were invading with 478,000 men and the enemy had almost 350,000—hardly a sufficient margin for a sea-borne invasion. Luckily for the Allies, everything was working. The wind, as predicted, died down during the night and on the morning of July 10 the sea was calm. It was perfect weather for an invasion.

The Axis forces were also caught unawares by the location of the landings. General Alfred Guzzoni, the Italian who was in theory in supreme command, had wanted to concentrate the two German divisions on Sicily on the eastern half of the island, find out where the Allies were landing, and then launch a strong counterattack. Field Marshal Albert von Kesselring, commanding all German forces in the Mediterranean, overruled Guzzoni. Von Kesselring thought the way to defeat an invasion was to meet it on the beaches and had Guzzoni locate most of his divisions along the coast, with the greatest strength on the western tip, where Von Kesselring expected the invasion to come. Von Kesselring did allow Guzzoni to hold the Hermann Goering Panzer Division in reserve south of Mount Etna. The upshot was that all Guzzoni had available to defend the southeastern and southern coasts were two coastal divisions, composed of Sicilian reservists who hated the Germans and thought the war was already lost. They had no intention of putting up even token resistance.

The combination of surprise, low quality opposition, and divided counsels in the Axis high command meant that Eisenhower’s fears were
seemingly unwarranted and that the invasion of Sicily was in fact comparatively easy. The night of July 9–10 two parachute units, an American regiment and a British brigade, made inland landings. The high winds blew the planes off course and the paratroopers were scattered all over the southeastern end of the island. Nevertheless the Americans managed to seize high ground near Vittoria, where they set up road blocks and helped keep the Hermann Goering Division away from the beaches. The British captured a bridge near Syracuse and held it long enough to allow sea-borne troops to take and hold the port itself. The assault divisions hit the beach at dawn, encountered no serious opposition, and by nightfall had secured their D-Day objectives.

Eisenhower knew practically nothing of these developments.
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The generals and admirals leading the assault wave were too busy to send reports back to higher headquarters. At another step up the chain of command the JCS and BCOS were as anxious as Eisenhower to know what was happening, but all he could report was that the troops seemed to be getting ashore without difficulty.
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During the morning, while waiting for news, Eisenhower went for a walk with an aide. He expressed the fear that the Germans would breathe a sigh of relief when they realized the Allies were only going after Sicily, not something bigger. Eisenhower thought the enemy would destroy the airfields and the ports on the island, build up a defensive cordon around Messina, and let the Allies “sweat out” the slow approach to the Continent. The Germans would wear the Allies down, absorb Eisenhower’s forces, and proceed with their offensive in Russia.
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By evening Eisenhower had managed to shake the mood and the night of July 10 he got a good sleep, his first in a week. When he woke the news was encouraging. He learned of Montgomery’s success in taking Syracuse and of Patton’s at Gela and Licata. Naval losses, however, were fairly high. The HUSKY plan had failed to provide for a fighter umbrella over the beaches and Allied planes were going after inland targets. The Luftwaffe had a free hand at the beaches, bombing the incoming ships almost at will. German accuracy was poor, fortunately, and only one U.S. destroyer was sunk. Two others were damaged, along with two combat loaders and an LST. Tedder was seeing to it that more fighters covered the beaches, and a lesson had been learned.
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On the ground, July 11 was the critical day. Guzzoni directed a counterattack against Patton’s force at Gela, and the Hermann Goering Panzers rumbled down the road intent upon throwing the Americans back into the sea. Terry Allen’s 1st Division, the Big Red One, received and
repulsed the attack.
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The Germans made another attempt that evening, but it too failed. Guzzoni, with Von Kesselring’s approval, then ordered most of his remaining mobile elements out of western Sicily and concentrated his strength around the Catania plain. From now on his tactics would be those of delay and attrition, which meant that he had given up any attempt to hold the island.
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The Axis had, in effect, changed the nature of the campaign. It would no longer be a struggle for control of Sicily, but rather one for time and prisoners. The Axis aim was to delay the Allies as long as possible with a minimum sacrifice in casualties and prisoners. The Allies wanted to overrun the island as quickly as possible while preventing the escape of any significant number of Axis troops. For both sides, the key to the campaign was Messina. The direct road to it was on the Catania plain, past Mount Etna, and along the east coast. This was Montgomery’s route, and it was all up to him. Montgomery, however, could attack only on a narrow front over difficult ground. He was unwilling to commit his men to a blood bath and did not get to Messina in time.

But if Montgomery did not push his men, neither did Alexander push him, nor in turn did Eisenhower push Alexander. The reason was that the Allies had not been able to readjust their thinking as quickly as the Germans. AFHQ and Alexander’s Fifteenth Army Group had spent months working intensively on the problem of getting ashore; once there, they congratulated themselves and there was an inevitable letdown. Guzzoni and Von Kesselring, meanwhile, were adjusting to the new situation and making realistic plans. By the time the Allies caught on, it was too late.
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Indicative of the Allied inability to adjust was a trip Eisenhower made to the beaches on July 12. He did not go ashore at the crucial sector near the Catania plain to see what could be done about getting Montgomery moving. Instead, he paid a visit to Patton, whose headquarters were still on a destroyer off Gela. Eisenhower spoke “vigorously” to Patton about the inadequacy of Seventh Army reports to AFHQ. He said that because of his ignorance he could not determine just what assistance, particularly in the air, Patton needed. “Ike stepped on him hard,” an observer reported. “I didn’t hear what he said but he must have given Patton hell because Georgie was upset.”
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Patton was more than upset—he was angry. After visiting more troops on the quiet beaches, Eisenhower returned to his headquarters. He had made no attempt to galvanize any of his subordinates to action. The Allied force, like its commander, remained passive.

On the ground the campaign soon bogged down, even though the Italian divisions in Sicily had virtually ceased to exist. Thousands of Italians were happily sitting in Allied POW cages, while other thousands had simply doffed their uniforms and melted into the civilian population. The Germans had at most 60,000 men in Sicily and were thus outnumbered between six and ten to one. The Allies could not take advantage, however, because Montgomery was still reluctant to launch a costly frontal attack. By the end of the first week of the campaign he had reached the Catania plain and could not drive on.

One reason was malaria. The plain was highly infected and the casualty list was serious. Still, despite malaria, the intense, humid heat, and the dust, the campaign was not too bad for the British soldier. The Eighth Army “enjoyed Sicily after the desert.” There were wine and roses in profusion; as Montgomery described it, it was “high summer; oranges and lemons were on the trees, wine was plentiful; the Sicilian girls were disposed to be friendly.” At the front, as at headquarters, there was no sense of urgency.
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Eisenhower recognized that the Germans intended to abandon the western end of Sicily “and would attempt to take up a line running northwestward from Mount Etna,” a line which “with German troops alone … he could hold for a considerable time.”
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The need was clear—get around Mount Etna and into Messina before the Germans could complete their defensive preparations. If Montgomery could not do it on the coastal road, then it would have to be done by moving around the western side of Mount Etna. Patton’s Seventh Army was in perfect position to carry out such a maneuver, and Patton was the perfect commander to lead such a drive.