Supreme Commander (54 page)

Everyone in the Mediterranean thought the President’s peremptory order went much too far. Eisenhower told Smith to see to it that it was softened. Smith talked with Churchill, who was in Algeria, then with Macmillan, and on his own decided to withhold delivery of the President’s message. As Smith cabled Marshall, the President’s directive would be regarded by the FCNL as an ultimatum. De Gaulle would certainly reject it, which would be “a direct slap at the President, which the United States could not accept.” The only alternative then would be to withdraw recognition of the FCNL and stop French rearmament. That would be disastrous, since Eisenhower was counting on French manpower for ANVIL and for future operations in Italy, not to mention help from the Resistance in France itself.
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Roosevelt calmed down, took the advice, and on December 26 told Eisenhower to make a milder protest, saying merely that the United States “views with alarm” the reports of the arrests.
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On the President’s message Eisenhower penciled a heartfelt “good.” On December 30 he called on De Gaulle, who wanted to discuss the liberation of Paris. The Frenchman wanted a guarantee from Eisenhower that the first troops into the capital would be French, and made it clear that if Eisenhower satisfied him on that point he would take good care of Boisson and the others. Eisenhower acquiesced, and De Gaulle then promised to delay the trial of the three Vichy administrators until after the FCNL had given way to a properly constituted national assembly in France. Eisenhower asked Marshall to “convey to the President my earnest recommendation that this assurance be accepted as satisfactory.”
Marshall did so, Roosevelt agreed, and Eisenhower was able to leave the Mediterranean with the satisfaction of knowing that his policies toward the French had helped surmount another crisis.
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Through the second half of December Eisenhower and his staff were anxious to get to London and go to work on OVERLORD. They were losing interest in Mediterranean problems. They had to hang on, however, until the new year, when the shift would take place. (There had been some talk about waiting until Rome fell, as that would be a fitting climax to Eisenhower’s career in the Mediterranean, but the Allied armies failed to make any progress and the proposal was quietly dropped). Eisenhower decided to spend the last few days of the old year in Italy, not only to say his good-bys but to have the satisfaction of having established an advance command post on the continent of Europe.
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The new headquarters were in the Caserta Palace north of Naples. Butcher found a palatial hunting lodge for Eisenhower’s personal use and he was proud of his discovery. Eisenhower arrived on Sunday afternoon, December 19. Butcher had filled him with stories about the attractive features of the place. Eisenhower had hardly entered when an aide came running downstairs—there was a rat in the general’s bathroom. Eisenhower took personal command. Pulling a revolver, he marched into the bathroom and fired four shots. All missed. Butcher finally killed the rat with a stick. They then got onto the elevator, where they became stuck and stood around for half an hour waiting to be freed. The fireplace in Eisenhower’s bedroom did not work and there were lice in the beds. Butcher’s laconic comment was, “It’s a tough war.”
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Two days later Eisenhower made an extended trip to the front. It rained most of the time and he was thoroughly miserable when he started back for Naples. A seven-hour drive through the rain and fog did not help his mood. Smith was with him, and Eisenhower asked Smith to join him for dinner. The chief of staff was just as disgruntled as his boss and he grumbled that he would rather not. Eisenhower had a violent reaction. He said Smith was discourteous. No subordinate, he shouted, not even the chief of staff, could abruptly decline his commanding officer’s invitation to dinner. Smith threatened to quit. Eisenhower said that would be just fine. He added that he felt like telling Churchill that he had reconsidered the Prime Minister’s request to leave Smith with AFHQ and that Smith could stay in the Mediterranean.
Both men were sullen for a while, but Smith finally calmed down and apologized. Eisenhower did also and said the incident would be forgotten.
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That Eisenhower could so completely lose his temper with Smith only illustrated how tired he was and how badly he needed a rest. Marshall had recognized this early in the month, and after he got back to Washington began urging Eisenhower to come to the States and take a furlough. Eisenhower begged off, saying there was too much work to be done. Marshall finally made it a direct order. “You will be under terrific strain from now on,” he pointed out. “I am interested that you are fully prepared to bear the strain and I am not interested in the usual rejoinder that you can take it. It is of vast importance that you be fresh mentally and you certainly will not be if you go straight from one great problem to another. Now come on home and see your wife and trust somebody else for 20 minutes in England.”
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Eisenhower capitulated. He decided to fly to the United States and take two weeks off. He left at noon on the last day of 1943. Just before departing the Mediterranean for the last time he told a friend, “I have put in a hard year here and I guess it is time to go.”
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Eisenhower was occasionally given to reflecting on his good fortune. As he left Algiers for his furlough he may well have thought about his rapid rise in the Army. An obscure colonel two years earlier, his name was so little known that it appeared in the newspapers as “Lt. Col. D. D. Ersenbeing.” Now he was preparing to command one of the greatest military operations in history. Luck had clearly played a large role in his success, but there were other factors, including his appearance, his personality, and most of all his abilities.

Physically, he gave the impression of being a big man. Although he was only a little over the average in height and weight, he dominated any gathering of which he was a member. People naturally looked at him. His hands and his facial muscles were always active. Through a gesture or a glance, as much as through the tone of his voice or what he was saying, he created a mood that imposed itself on others. A bald, shiny pate, with a prominent forehead and a broad, grinning mouth, made his head seem larger than it was. He had a wonderfully expressive face and it was impossible for him to conceal his feelings. His smiles, his grimaces, his anger, were all easily noticed. The whole face was always involved. It reddened when he was upset, lit up when he was happy. He could no more hide his emotions than he could his natural generosity and kindness.

His hands were large and knotty but well formed. They flashed through the air or jabbed at a listener. He would fold and unfold them, or thrust one into a coat pocket, then pull it out again. When he was making a series of points he would unconsciously hold up one hand, spread it, and then with the index finger of his other hand enumerate
his points one by one, usually starting with the little finger and ending up with the climax on the index finger.

He was a man of extraordinary energy. He went to bed late, got up early, worked seven days a week, and had to be forced to relax. For four years he averaged five hours’ sleep a night, but it never seemed to reduce his efficiency. He smoked incessantly. His fierce temper frightened him and he struggled to keep it under control, revealing it only to Butcher, Smith, and a few other intimates.

His language reflected his three decades in the Army. It was of the barracks room, filled with Anglo-Saxon phrases which he used as exclamation points and which he pronounced clearly and without embarrassment (although he was prudish about certain four-letter words). He talked rapidly and often was not a good listener, but he was not a nervous man, for he directed his energy toward obtainable objectives. He was a man of deep involvements, whether the issue at hand concerned strategic planning or the personal problem of an obscure member of his staff.

The overriding impression he gave was one of vitality. Dwight Eisenhower was an intensely alive human being.

At the end of the Mediterranean campaign he was fifty-three years old. He had a strong constitution, an absolute essential for a man about to embark on a long and arduous campaign, one which would make innumerable demands on his energy and his body. In his youth he had been an athlete and during his early career in the Army a football coach, and he had kept himself in good physical condition in middle age. Over the past two years, however, he had been so busy working in his office or traveling that he had neglected exercise. At Marshall’s insistence he went horseback riding occasionally, or played a game of golf, but that was all. Still, his muscle tone remained firm and his health good. In the past two years he had lived in Texas, Washington, London, Gibraltar, and Algiers, with frequent trips to Tunisia, Sicily, and Italy. Despite all the changes in climate, water, food, and local diseases, he had lost only a few days to the flu or to colds.

It was not that he did not pay a price for all his activity, but rather that he did not let it show. In September 1943 a relative told him that he was pleased to see from some snapshots taken in Sicily that Eisenhower looked so healthy. In reply, Eisenhower said, “I must admit that sometimes I feel a thousand years old when I struggle to my bed at night.”
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He had a sharp, orderly mind. No one ever thought to describe
him as an intellectual giant, and outside of his professional field he was not well read. He was not liable to come up with brilliant insights. But he had the ability to look at a situation or a problem and analyze it, see what alternatives were available, and choose from among them. He might miss some nuances, but he seldom overlooked major points. When his superiors gave him a problem they could count on his taking all relevant factors into consideration.

Eisenhower had firm ideas on justice and fair play. He readily accepted the privileges of command but would not take more than he thought he had coming to him. On a cruise around the Isle of Capri on Christmas Eve, Eisenhower spotted a large villa. “Whose is that?” he asked. “Yours, sir,” someone replied—Butcher had arranged it. Nodding at another, even larger villa, Eisenhower asked, “And that?” “That one belongs to General Spaatz.” Eisenhower exploded. “Damn it, that’s
not
my villa! And that’s not General Spaatz’ villa! None of those will belong to any general as long as I’m Boss around here. This is supposed to be a rest center—for combat men—not a playground for the Brass!”
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He was not just performing for the benefit of his aides. When he got back to shore he investigated, found that Spaatz had reserved Capri as a recreation facility for AAF officers, and exploded again. “This is directly contrary to my policies and must cease at once,” he told Spaatz, and ordered him to see to it immediately that “all British and American personnel in this area, particularly from combat units, may be assured of proportionate opportunity in taking advantage of these facilities.”
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The Capri story, and others similar to it, quickly got out to the troops and delighted them. Nothing pleased the foot slogger struggling in the mud of Italy more than hearing that Eisenhower had put Spaatz or some other general in his place. The fact that Eisenhower often referred to Churchill, Roosevelt, and the CCS as the “big shots,” or that he swore like a sergeant, was much appreciated by the men. So were his frequent visits to the front lines, especially because he listened to the troops’ complaints and, when he could, did something about them. His popularity with the men rested on his genuine concern for their welfare and on his common touch—they regarded him as one of them.

Eisenhower enjoyed his popularity but he did not always court it. He was a strict disciplinarian and constantly harped on the subject. As a result of his experiences in the Mediterranean, however, he was beginning
to recognize that discipline alone was not enough to make men fight, or at least to fight well. Discipline and training “lie at the foundation of every success in war,” he explained to a friend, but morale was just as important. In the prewar Army it was axiomatic that morale came from
esprit de corps
. Eisenhower still believed this, but he now realized that something more was needed. The battlefields of Tunisia and Sicily and Italy had made a deep impression upon him. So had talking with the men at the front and seeing the conditions under which they lived and fought. Eisenhower had decided that for an army to have morale “there must be a deep-seated conviction in every individual’s mind that he is fighting for a cause worthy of any sacrifice he may make.”

He seldom spoke about his deepest beliefs (“Professional soldiers do not like to get too sentimental about such things as the flag and love of country”) but he felt, strongly, that the Allied cause was an inspiring one, and he thought that every commander had a responsibility to make the issues clear to the troops. The G.I. and the Tommy had to be made to realize that “the privileged life he has led … is under direct threat. His right to speak his own mind, to engage in any profession of his own choosing, to belong to any religious denomination, to live in any locality where he can support himself and his family, and to be sure of fair treatment when he might be accused of any crime—all these would disappear if the forces opposed to us should, through carelessness or overconfidence on our part, succeed in winning this war.” The Allied cause was “completely bound up with the rights and welfare of the common man.”
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Eisenhower’s patriotism was simple and direct. As in his approach to many other things, it had few nuances or qualifications. In October his brother Milton sent him a recording of his inaugural speech as president of Kansas State College. He told Milton it was a masterpiece, but he wished his brother had referred to one other responsibility of the educator. “It is the necessity of teaching and inculcating good, old-fashioned patriotism—just that sense of loyalty and obligation to the community that is necessary to the preservation of all the privileges and rights that the community guarantees.”
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Two days later Eisenhower urged a boyhood friend, Swede Hazlett, who was on the staff at the Naval Academy, to teach the obligations as well as the privileges of American citizenship, the need for a clean, honest approach to life, and the necessity for “earnest devotion to duty.” All these things were necessary “if we are to survive as a sturdy nation.”
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