An Army at Dawn (97 page)

N Af
North Africa

NARA
National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Md.

NATOUSA
North African Theater of Operations, United States Army

n.d.
no date

NHC
Naval Historical Center, Washington, D.C.

NSA
National Security Agency

NWAf
George F. Howe,
Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West

NWC Lib
National War College Library

OCMH
Office of the Chief of Military History

OCNO
Office of the Chief of Naval Operations

OCS
Office of the Chief of Staff

OH
oral history

OSS
Office of Strategic Services

OW
Orlando Ward Papers

Para
parachute

PMR
Paul McD. Robinett papers

PP-pres
Papers, Pre-presidential

PRO
Public Record Office, Kew, England

qm
quartermaster

Regt
regiment

RG
record group

RN
Royal Navy

ROHA
Rutgers University Oral History Archives of World War II

SEM
Samuel Eliot Morison Office Files

SM
Sidney T. Matthews Papers

SOOHP
Senior Officer Oral History Program

S.P.
self-published

td
tank destroyer

TdA
Terry de la Mesa Allen Papers

Three Years
Harry C. Butcher,
My Three Years with Eisenhower

TR
Theodore Roosevelt III Papers

ts
typescript

USAF
U.S. Air Force

USAF HRC
U.S. Air Force Historical Research Center

USMA Arch
U.S. Military Academy Archives, West Point

USAWWII
United States Army in World War II

USN
U.S. Navy

USNAd
“U.S. Naval Administration in World War II”

USNI OHD
U.S. Naval Institute, Oral History Department, Annapolis, Md.

UTEP
University of Texas at El Paso

UT-K
University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Center for the Study of War and Society

WD
War Department

WTF
Western Task Force

WWII
World War II

YU
Yale University Library, Manuscripts and Archives

PROLOGUE

Twenty-seven acres
: Author visits, Sept. 1996, Apr. 2000; “North Africa American Cemetery,” n.d., American Battle Monuments Commission.

No large operation
:
AAFinWWII,
41 (
“the degree of strategic surprise”
); Siegfried Westphal,
The German Army in the West
, 131 (
“to the last man”
).

“There is a soul”
: William T. Sherman,
Memoirs,
387.

North Africa is where
: Mina Curtiss, ed.,
Letters Home,
65 (
“It is a very, very horrible war”
); James Tobin,
Ernie Pyle’s War,
89 (
“killing is a craft”
); A. B. Austin,
Birth of an Army,
133 (
“The last war”
).

September 1, 1939
: Gerhard L. Weinberg,
A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II,
894, 57; Martin Gilbert,
The Second World War,
14–19 (
“Take a good look”
). Weinberg estimates total war-related deaths at 60 million.

“The small countries”
: Winston S. Churchill,
Their Finest Hour,
24.
France was not small
:
Destruction,
116; Gilbert, 90 (
“First they were too cowardly”
); Mark M. Boatner III,
The Biographical Dictionary of World War II,
421 (
“They call me only”
);
NWAf,
16–17.

Pétain so pledged
: Gilbert, 100 (
“Whatever happens”
), 130 (
“The war is won”
), 137 (
RAF pilots shot down
), 151 (
“Whither thou goest”
); Marvin A. Kreidberg and Merton G. Henry,
History of Military Mobilization in the United States Army, 1775–1945,
674–75; Norman Gelb,
Desperate Venture,
72 (
“our eyelids”
).

Hitler faced
: Gilbert, 135 (
“we are on the march”
), 194–99, 246–47, 272, 277 (
“the single most decisive act”
), 304; Weinberg, 260, 264–72; Churchill,
The Grand Alliance,
606, 608 (
“the sleep of the saved”
).

Two years, three months
: Gelb, 25 (
“more unready for war”
); Christopher R. Gabel,
The U.S. Army GHQ Maneuvers of 1941,
8; James A. Huston,
The Sinews of War:
Army Logistics, 1775–1953,
411; Richard M. Ketchum,
The Borrowed Years, 1938–1941,
544 (
“reconstruction of a dinosaur”
).
That task had started
: Ketchum, 645; Lee B. Kennett,
G.I.: The American Soldier in World War II,
19–22, 29; Ralph Stein and Harry Brown,
It’s a Cinch, Private Finch!
(
“Do you like girls?”
and
“at least below the rank of major”
); Roy R. Grinker and John P. Siegel,
War Neuroses in North Africa.

Jeremiads derided
: Roger Barry Fosdick, “A Call to Arms,” diss, 1985;
Time,
Aug. 18, 1941, 36.

Equipment and weaponry
: Marvin Jensen,
Strike Swiftly: The 70th Tank Battalion,
6 (
“tanks are dear”
); Doris Kearns Goodwin,
No Ordinary Time,
51 (
“The idea of huge armies”
); David Brinkley,
Washington Goes to War,
57; Alexander M. Bielakowski, “Calmer Heads Will Prevail,” paper, Society for Military History, Apr. 2000; Alexander M. Bielakowski, “The Role of the Horse in Modern Warfare as Viewed in the Interwar U.S. Army’s
Cavalry Journal,” Army History,
summer–fall 2000, 20.

To lead the eventual host
: Mark A. Stoler,
George C. Marshall: Soldier-Statesman of the American Century,
93; Gabel, 116; Charles E. Kirkpatrick, “Orthodox Soldiers: Army Formal Schools Between the Two World Wars,” paper, March 1990; Richard W. Stewart, “The Red Bull Division,”
Army History,
winter 1993, 1; letter, L. J. McNair to C. Brewer, Nov. 15, 1943, NARA RG 165, Director of Plans and Ops, corr, box 1229; E. J. Kahn, Jr., “Education of an Army,”
New Yorker,
Oct. 14, 1944, 28; Joseph W. A. Whitehorne,
The Inspectors General of the United States Army, 1903–1939,
440 (
stained with scandal
).

Yet slowly the giant stirred
: Geoffrey Perret,
There’s a War to Be Won: The United States Army in World War II,
29 (
$9 billion
), 31; Gilbert, 240 (
amputation saws
).

But where?
: Louis Morton, “Germany First: The Basic Concept of Allied Strategy in World War II,” in Kent Roberts Greenfield, ed.,
Command Decisions,
3–38 (
“the problem confronting us”
); Maurice Matloff and Edwin M. Snell,
Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1941–1942, USAWWII,
27, 44, 113; Ray S. Cline,
Washington Command Post: The Operations Division, USAWWII,
56; Gilbert, 286 (
“life, liberty, independence”
).

The American idea
: Gelb,
Desperate Venture,
70 (
“Through France”
); Cline, 156; John Slessor,
The Central Blue,
434 (
“go for him bald-headed”
); Arthur Bryant,
The Turn of the Tide,
353 (
“wanted revenge”
).

Direct, concentrated attack
: Russell F. Weigley,
The American Way of War,
313 (for an enlightening critique of the U.S. strategic tradition see Brian M. Linn,
“The American Way of War
Revisited,”
Journal of Military History,
April 2002, 501); Maurice Matloff,
Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1943–1944, USAWWII,
11; Matloff and Snell, 156; memo, DDE, Chandler, vol. I, 66 (
“We’ve got to go”
).

As the new chief
: Matloff, 12; Leo J. Meyer, “The Decision to Invade North Africa,” in Greenfield, ed.,
Command Decisions,
134; Samuel Eliot Morison,
The Two-Ocean War,
222; Field Marshal Viscount Alanbrooke, OH, FCP, Jan. 28, 1947, MHI (
“We shall be pushed out”
); Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman, eds.,
War Diaries, 1939–1945, Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke,
281–82; Richard W. Steele,
The First Offensive,
171, 231; Benjamin A. Dickson, “G-2 Journal: Algiers to the Elbe,” ts, n.d., MHI, 9 (
some skeptics
); Dwight D. Eisenhower,
Crusade in Europe,
43; Gilbert, 283; Frederick E. Morgan, ts, n.d., cited in FCP, MHI (
“He recoiled in horror”
); Robert E. Sherwood,
Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate Biography,
591; GCM, OH, Forrest C. Pogue, Oct. 5, 1956, GCM Lib (
“Bodies floating in the Channel”
); GCM, OH, July 25, 1949, SM, MHI (
“sacrifice play”
).

Whereas the dominant American strategic impulse
: Morton, “Germany First,” 34; Meyer, “The Decision to Invade North Africa,” 132; Weigley, 328; Michael Howard,
The Mediterranean Strategy in the Second World War,
14–17; Matloff and Snell, 55; Gelb, 96 (
“This has all along”
).

The American military disagreed
: Matloff and Snell, 104 (
“indirect contribution”
); Gelb, 89 (
“will not result in removing”
).

To many American officers
: William C. Frierson, “Preparations for TORCH,” Dec. 1945, vol. I, Historical Division, WD Special Staff, CMH 2–3.7 AD, 22; Eric Larrabee,
Commander in Chief,
436 (
“After England Failed”
).

Following another visit
: Stoler,
The Politics of the Second Front,
55–56; Matloff and Snell, 214, 231, 268–72, 276; Albert C. Wedemeyer,
Wedemeyer Reports!,
158 (
“Scotch bagpipe band”
); msg, WD to AFHQ, Nov. 4, 1942, NARA RG 492, MTOUSA, box 1388; Walter Bedell Smith, OH, May 8, 1947, FCP, MHI (
often had to rely on the British
); Morison,
History of the United States Naval Operations in World War II,
vol. IX,
Sicily-Salerno-Anzio,
4 (
war could last a decade
); GCM, OH, July 25, 1949, SM, MHI (
would have to field at least 200 divisions
).

Other factors also influenced
: Walter Scott Dunn, Jr.,
Second Front Now 1943
; Gilbert, 322, 350 (
Operation WATCHTOWER
), 335 (
“I am going on to Suez”
).

By chance, the bad news
: Danchev and Todman, eds., 268–69, 286 (
Cromwell’s death mask
); Gilbert, 335 (
“What can we do”
); Arthur Layton Funk,
The Politics of Torch,
86; Meyer, 143; Matloff and Snell, 283;
NWAf,
14.

The president had made
: Howard,
Grand Strategy,
vol. IV, xxi (
“defeat of Germany”
); Danchev and Todman, eds., 250 (
“The prospects of success”
), 275 (
“to play baccarat”
); Charles Bolte, OH, Oct. 17, 1973, Maclyn Burg, DDE Lib, OH 395, 51–52 (
Army logisticians
); Eisenhower,
Crusade in Europe,
41; Meyer, 135–39 (
7,000 landing craft
); Matloff and Snell, 104 (
“persuasive rather than rational”
), 241 (
only 20,000
); Cline, 150 (
at least 600,000
), 157 (“
Who is responsible”
).

Roosevelt had saved
: Forrest C. Pogue,
George C. Marshall: Ordeal and Hope, 1939–1942,
330 (
“We failed to see”
);
Three Years,
29 (
“blackest day”
); Matloff and Snell, 190 (
“thrashing around”
), 298 (
“a blessing in disguise”
), 310–11; Cline, 160; Funk, 86–92; minutes, CCS, July 25, 1942, 10:30
A.M.
, NARA RG 218, JCS records, box 325; Churchill,
The Hinge of Fate,
449–51;
NWAf,
15.