Supreme Commander (46 page)

It was a poor prediction. Even though German divisions in central Italy were fully engaged in disarming the Italian forces there and though those in southern Italy had long distances to march, over poor roads, Von Kesselring’s reaction was swift and strong. After building up his forces to the north of the beachhead to protect his communications with Naples, he concentrated on the center of Clark’s line to prevent the British and Americans from meeting. By nightfall of the tenth, although both the British and Americans had made some progress inland, they had not achieved a firm link-up. The ground just to the left of the Sele River was disputed, with the situation highly fluid. The next day Von Kesselring got five additional divisions into the area and prepared to destroy the Salerno beachhead.

Von Kesselring attacked all through the day of September 12, driving the Allies back. The fighting continued throughout the night and into the
next day. The American commander decided to strengthen his left flank in order to close the gap between his corps and X Corps. He began shifting troops northward. While this sliding maneuver was going on the Germans attacked the exposed troops along the north bank of the Sele River. They overran an American battalion, forded the river, and drove southeast for a ford on the Calore River. In the process the Germans inflicted heavy losses on the Americans, scattering many units. If they got across the Calore they would be loose in the American rear areas along the beaches.

Eisenhower did what he could to rush reinforcements to Clark. Since there were no landing craft available, he had a part of the 82d Airborne dropped into the beachhead. He urged Montgomery to speed up his movement, which would have the effect of putting pressure on Von Kesselring’s left flank. Constant prodding had some effect on Montgomery, but real improvement came when Eighth Army got to better terrain. Initially it had only one mountain road to move on, and every bridge was blown, every defile blocked. It had traveled only forty-five miles in the first seven days in Italy; it covered twice that distance during the next week. Clark had constructed a small airfield in VI Corps beachhead, capable of handfing fighters, but German artillery on the high ground inland dominated the area and the airfield took a constant shelling. Eisenhower nevertheless rushed planes in, willing to take the losses in order to get some air protection. He prepared another infantry division to go into the beachhead as soon as landing craft were available.
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As a result of some fervent pleas to the CCS and after many refusals from them, Eisenhower finally secured eighteen additional LSTs, but they were of no immediate help. They had been transiting through the Mediterranean on their way to India, and were loaded with steel rails. Eisenhower cursed every minute it took to unload them. “If we could have had the use of these for the past two weeks,” he complained to Wedemeyer, “we would be sitting rather well in Salerno Bay.” By the same token if he had had the three B-24 groups he had begged for, there would have been no crisis. “I would give my next year’s pay for two or three extra heavy groups right this minute,” Eisenhower said on the afternoon of September 13.
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It was the most dangerous moment of the entire war for the Allied armies in Europe. An army of two corps, with four divisions, was on the verge of annihilation. AFHQ received a message from Clark that indicated that he was making plans to put his headquarters on board ship in order to control both sectors and to continue the battle in whichever
one offered the greatest chance for success. The message made Eisenhower almost frantic. He told Butcher and Smith that the headquarters should leave last, that Clark ought to show the spirit of a naval captain and if necessary go down with his ship. The Fifth Army should emulate the spirit of Stalingrad, Eisenhower said, and stand and fight. He wondered if it had not been a mistake to give Clark the command—perhaps he should have selected Patton. The message from Clark, it turned out, had been garbled in transmission, and Clark had no intention of withdrawing.
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Still, it left everyone a little shaken.

Eisenhower managed to keep up a front, no matter how bad the news. “My optimism never deserts me,” he declared on September 13th. He thought the efficiency of the air forces, the fact of the Germans unsureness about the possibility of another attack still farther north, and the fighting quality of the allied troops would eventually turn the trick.
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Eisenhower’s confidence stemmed in part from the command structure, which was geared to quick decisions and rapid action and could concentrate enormous fire power on one spot in a hurry. Eisenhower’s deputies were with him at his advanced command post at Amilcar. He had insisted on this after the HUSKY experience, when they had been divided, and the new arrangements worked well. “We meet daily and it is astonishing how much we can get done to keep our staffs operating at full tilt to execute needed projects,” Eisenhower told Marshall on September 13. Everyone was currently working on saving the beachhead at Salerno. Tedder had his air forces “flat out” in support, while Alexander was prodding Montgomery. Cunningham was rushing capital ships into Salerno Bay, where they could fire in direct support of the ground forces. Eisenhower and the staff completely juggled the scheduled movements from the Mediterranean to OVERLORD, put into Salerno men who had been loaded to go to England, built up the 82d Airborne on the beachhead to full strength, and sent the 8th Indian Division into Brindisi.
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The situation was still uncertain, but Eisenhower thought Clark could hold on. If he did not, Eisenhower told Marshall, “I would … merely announce that one of our landings had been repulsed—due to my error in misjudging the strength of the enemy at that place.” But he had “great faith that even in spite of currently grim reports, we’ll pull out all right.”
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Even as Eisenhower was dictating, the American G.I.s were proving him correct. At the critical point, along the Calore River, American artillerymen stood to their guns and prevented a German breakthrough. The situation was still critical but not desperate.

All the next day, September 14, the Germans attacked. Eisenhower sent a note of encouragement to Clark, told Tedder to put “every plane that could fly” over Salerno, including all the Strategic Air Forces, and supported Cunningham in his decision to bring the ships up close to shore so that they could pound the Germans.
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While the battle raged, Eisenhower dictated a memorandum for the diary. He admitted that, when the CCS withdrew his B-24s, Alexander and others had wanted to call off AVALANCHE. The decision to go ahead “was solely my own, and if things go wrong there is no one to blame except myself.” Eisenhower did point out that in the end all three deputies supported AVALANCHE, but he was not building up an excuse for the record. His deputies, as well as the staff at AFHQ and at Fifth Army, had “striven in every possible way” to make AVALANCHE work, and “I have no word of complaint concerning any officer or man in the execution of our plans.” Eisenhower thought the position could be held because “I think that our air force will finally disorganize the attacks against the Fifth Army.…”
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Shortly after he dictated the memorandum, word came in that the German attacks had failed and the situation was stabilizing. The combined Allied air and naval bombardment had stopped the enemy. Eisenhower, like most soldiers, tended to give the credit to the air forces. In speaking of the battle later, he would usually praise the fliers in the highest terms, then add almost as an afterthought that the Navy had done well too. In fact, although the air attacks were more spectacular, with planes sweeping out of the skies and swarming over German positions, or dropping bombs from on high which the G.I.s could watch coming down, it was the naval fire that was decisive in the victory. While the air forces were dropping 3020 tons of bombs, the naval forces—mostly Royal Navy—delivered more than 11,000 tons of shell in direct support of the ground forces on the beachhead, and the naval fire was immeasurably more accurate.
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By the fifteenth the crisis was over. The next day lead elements of the Eighth Army made contact with a Fifth Army patrol forty miles southeast of Salerno. Von Kesselring recognized that his attempt to push the Allies into the sea had failed. On September 18 he began a deliberate disengagement and withdrawal.

Just as the AFHQ officers were beginning to breathe sighs of relief, offers of support began to pour in on them. The CCS declared that “we are most anxious to give all the help possible at the earliest moment,” and told Eisenhower to “state clearly” what he wanted.
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Churchill, meanwhile, wired Alexander: “Ask for anything you want and I will make allocation of necessary supplies with highest priority irrespective of every other consideration.” Alexander passed the offer along to Eisenhower.
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Considering his superiors’ earlier refusals to give him the equipment that would have made AVALANCHE a sure thing, Eisenhower may have been more inclined to cry than to laugh. Still, he tempered his response, resisting the temptation to say, “I told you so.” In replying to Churchill, he pointed out that the crisis was over, so there was really nothing that could be done from London.
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But he did not let the CCS off completely by any means. He said he wanted some bombing raids by Eighth Air Force against German communications in northern Italy, and that he wanted the three B-24 groups that had been in the Mediterranean returned, even if only for a period of two weeks. “I would appreciate an early reply,” Eisenhower said in conclusion. “I have complete faith that we are going to solve this problem but I feel it my duty to let you know that any possible temporary assistance of the kind indicated would mean a great deal to us.”
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The CCS responded handsomely. That night, within twenty-four hours of Eisenhower’s request, some 340 RAF heavies and five B-17s bombed the railroad yards at Modane in southwestern France in an effort to close the northern end of the Mont Cenis tunnel. The CCS also told Devers to get some B-24s down to AFHQ, and Devers had them there within the week.
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Eisenhower decided to press his advantage, and on September 18 pointed out to Marshall the benefits available to the Allies if they used Italy as a major base for the strategic air offensive against Germany.
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Once the fields at Foggia were available, Eisenhower said, the advantages would be considerable. The Allies could reach targets beyond the reach of bombers operating from the U.K.; there were better weather conditions with less German fighter and anti-aircraft opposition; they would force the Germans to spread their defenses, and the air forces could have some flexibility in meeting cyclic weather changes.
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By this time, however, it was as clear in Washington as in Algiers that the crisis was over and Marshall would not accept this argument. After the B-24s from Eighth Air Force made some raids in Italy, Marshall told Eisenhower to return them to Devers.
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Smith remarked
that AFHQ ought to set up a special section whose sole job would be to keep the home front frightened, since that was the only way AFHQ seemed to be able to get material from the CCS.
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On the front, by September 22, the situation showed marked improvement. After two weeks of battle, the British X Corps was on the high ground surrounding its beachhead, ground which the German artillery had used before with great effectiveness. The American VI Corps had a firm link-up with X Corps and with Eighth Army, which in turn had joined with the British V Corps coming from Taranto. The Allies had a continuous line across Italy. Losses had been high but unevenly distributed—Clark had suffered 14,000 casualties to Montgomery’s 600. The drive for Naples and the airfields at Foggia, on the east coast, was under way.

At this juncture Marshall sent Eisenhower a criticism of his recent tactics and a suggestion for the future. On September 23 Marshall told Eisenhower that he had been talking with Field Marshal Dill, and they agreed that if AVALANCHE had been started before the operations in the toe of Italy the Germans would have been caught unprepared and probably would have fallen back beyond Naples. More to the point, Marshall said he and Dill feared Eisenhower was about to repeat the mistake. If Eisenhower took the time to develop a secure position around Naples, Marshall said, the Germans would have time to prepare their defenses and thus make the road to Rome long and difficult. He wondered if Eisenhower had considered the possibility of halting Fifth and Eighth Army efforts in Naples once it was “under the guns” and making a dash for Rome, perhaps by amphibious means.
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These thoughts coincided with Eisenhower’s wishes; as he told Handy, “I would give my last shirt to be able to push a strong division landing into the Gulf of Gaeta,” which was north of Naples.
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Eisenhower took any criticism from Marshall seriously and went through a “great deal of mental anguish” while dictating his reply. His usual practice was to pace the room, talking rapidly, or else to shift from chair to chair. This time he became so engrossed in getting the answer just right that he walked right out the open door into the hallway and kept on dictating. His secretary scurried after him, taking shorthand all the while.
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Eisenhower began his reply by saying that the subject of Marshall’s message had been the chief topic of discussion at the Commanders’ Conference the previous day. Eisenhower and his deputies had searched
for the means to make a landing behind the German flanks because they knew it would offer great results, but that they had been unable to come up with anything that promised even a fair chance of success. He reminded Marshall that the Germans had a Panzer division in the Gulf of Gaeta area, another in Rome, and a reserve division that could reinforce either one. Eisenhower felt that if he landed a small force it would be quickly eliminated, while a force large enough to sustain itself could not be mounted “for a very considerable period.”