The Day of Battle (105 page)

They had much in common
: Larrabee, 13 (“
loved the military side
”); Maurice Matloff, “Mr. Roosevelt’s Three Wars: FDR as War Leader,” Harmon Lecture, No. 6, U.S. Air Force Academy, 1964, 6 (“
diversionist tendencies
”); Pogue, 316 (
combat casualty figures
); Meacham, 228 (“
a wonderful old Tory
”).

Churchill could draw near:
Larrabee, 644; OH, Stephen T. Early, June 9, 1947, MHI, OCMH, WWII, General Miscl (“
wished to have things done
”); Richard Overy,
Why the Allies Won,
261 (“
Not a tidy mind
”); Larrabee, 644 (“
He
decides”).

He reduced his own political philosophy:
Overy, 260; Larrabee, 626 (
Four Freedoms
); Kimball, ed., vol. I, 337 (“
same decade
”); Elliott Roosevelt,
As He Saw It,
130 (“
on the decline
”).

America was ascendant
: memo, Robert Sherwood to Harry Hopkins, May 13, 1943, H.L. Hopkins Papers, Sherwood Collection, book 7, TRIDENT, box 329, FDR Lib.

But if Britain was on the decline:
Harold Macmillan,
War Diaries,
316 (“
great
torso”); Roosevelt, 126 (
sinus condition
); Matloff, “Mr. Roosevelt’s Three Wars,” 4–5.

Negotiations resumed: GS
IV, 419 (“
spirit of the chase
”); Garland, 21 (
refused to concede
);
FRUS
, 114 (“
extremely difficult
”).

It was a curious compromise:
msg, WD to DDE, #278, May 26, 1943, CCS cables, OCMH, NARA RG 319, 270/19/6/3, box 243;
GS
IV, 432.

The baby had been cut:
Danchev, 407.

TRIDENT
had another week:
diary, Henry A. Wallace, May 24, 1943, micro, FDR Lib (“
We Anglo-Saxons
”); Danchev (
fourteen stone steps
); Fraser, 346–47 (
two rare bird books
).

Rarely content: FRUS,
May 23, 1943; Doris Kearns Goodwin,
No Ordinary Time,
439 (
exhausted president
); Leahy, 162; Moran, 103–4 (“
a very tired man
”).

Harry Hopkins warned:
Goodwin, 439 (“
spoiled boy
”);
FRUS,
198 (“
piece of baggage
”); Moran, 111 (“
too much for us
”).

Still, the sweep of his rhetoric:
Gerald Pawle,
The War and Colonel Warden,
234; Gilbert,
Winston S. Churchill,
vol. VII, 409 (“
War is full of mysteries
”);
Times
(London), May 20, 1943, 4 (“
By singleness of purpose
”); Grace Tully,
F.D.R., My Boss,
329 (“
catch phrases
”).

For the first time:
Harriman and Abel, 211; Leahy, 165 (“
mellow light
”);
FRUS,
377 (“
complete meeting of minds
”).

“
over-egged the pudding
”: Brian Holden Reid, “The Italian Campaign, 1943–1945: A Reappraisal of Allied Generalship,”
Journal of Strategic Studies,
vol. 13, no. 1 (March 1990), 128+.

“
the best I could get
”: Leahy, 163.

The dispatch of Allied armies:
Matloff, 76, 244.

Perhaps the greatest achievement:
André Malraux (“Let victory belong to those who made war without liking it”), quoted by Jean-Paul Sartre,
Modern Times,
cited in Danchev, xxvi.

At four
P.M.
on Tuesday:
PREM 4/72/3, UK NA.

Roosevelt sat in the armless wheelchair:
Seale, 947, 976–77 (
bulletproof glass
);
FRUS,
211–20 (
899th press conference
);
Times
(London), May 27, 1943, 1 (“
shaking the life
”).

C
HAPTER
1: A
CROSS THE
M
IDDLE
S
EA

Forcing the World Back to Reason

The sun beat down:
corr, Heinz Seltmann to author, June 9, 2005 (
neckties
); memo, GSP, No. 57, June 17, 1943, NARA RG 338, II Corps, plans & policy file, box 146 (
$25 fine
).

Algiers seethed:
Eric Sevareid,
Not So Wild a Dream,
362 (
merchant mariners
); Paul W. Brown,
The Whorehouse of the World,
134–35 (“
El Alamein
”); Benjamin A. Dickson, “G-2 Journal: Algiers to the Elbe,” MHI, 76 (“
Sand in your shoes
”); Peter Schrijvers,
The Crash of Ruin,
120 (
index fingers
).

Electric streetcars:
memo, DDE to E. Hughes, July 23, 1943, PP-pres, DDE Lib, box 58 (
amnesty
); Malcolm S. McLean, “Adventures in Occupied Areas,” ts, 1975, MHI, 31–32 (“
every conceivable
”); Sevareid, 361 (
young Frenchmen
and
Hotel Aletti
); F. Eugene Liggett, “No, Not Yet: Military Memoirs,” ts, n.d., ASEQ, 158th FA, 45th Div., MHI (
pantaloons
); “History, Mediterranean Base Section, Sept. 1942–May 1944,” CMH, 9-4 CA, 1944 (
ban on prostitution
).

Above it all
: “History of Allied Forces Headquarters,” CMH, 8-4 AD, vol. 2, Sept. 1945, sketch.

Hewitt lowered his salute:
“U.S. Naval Operations in the Northwestern African-Mediterranean Theater,” ts, n.d., HKH papers, box 3, NHC, 18.

With the ceremony at an end:
“History of Allied Forces Headquarters,” 243–46 (
approached four thousand
); “The Administrative History of the Eighth Fleet,” ts, n.d., U.S. Naval History Division, #139, folder 3, 9–10 (
twelve thousand
); “Notes for Meeting with Colonel Warden,” Jan. 14, 1944, NARA RG 331, AFHQ micro, R-225-B (
seven undersea cables
); S. W. Roskill,
The War at Sea, 1939
–
1945,
vol. III, part 1, 127 (“
Carry out
”).

He was a fighting admiral:
OH, Floride Hewitt Taylor to author, Apr. 12, 2005, Newport, R.I.; L.S.B. Shapiro,
They Left the Back Door Open,
118 (“
well-upholstered
”); OH, HKH, John T. Mason, 1961, Col U OHRO, 5–6 (“
Softly Now
”); “Keuffel & Esser correspondence,” HKH, NHC, box 2; George Sessions Perry, “Why Don’t They Write About Hewitt?,”
Saturday Evening Post,
Dec. 16, 1944, 22+ (“
does his barking
”); OH, HKH, n.d., Julian Boit and James Riley, NHC, box 6, 1–2, 9 (
soup kitchen
).

He called for his staff car:
Walter Karig,
Battle Report: The Atlantic War,
233; David Williams,
Liners in Battledress,
151–53 (
false bow wave
); Ivan H. “Cy” Peterman, “U.S.S.
Savannah,
”
Philadelphia Inquirer,
Sept. 1943, SEM, box 55, NHC; Pyle, 6–7 (
Precautions against fire
).

Hewitt’s flagship:
war log, U.S.S.
Monrovia,
NARA RG 38, OCNO, WWII war diaries, box 1233; Karig, 233 (
ten to twenty officers
); A. J. Redway, “Admiral Jerauld Wright: The Life and Recollections of the Supreme Allied Commander,” ts, 1995, NHC, 295 (
fourteen hundred men
); action report, U.S.S.
Monrovia,
July 17, 1943, NARA RG 38, OCNO, WWII Action & Operational Reports, box 1231 (
200,000 rounds
).

Twenty typists:
Alexander S. Cochran, “Chicken or Eggs? Operations
TORCH
and
HUSKY
and U.S. Army Amphibious Doctrine,” paper, 14th Naval History Symposium, USNA, Sept. 1999.

Hewitt could remember:
Perry, “Why Don’t They Write About Hewitt?”; OH, Floride Hewitt Taylor to author, Apr. 12, 2005.

More than three thousand:
No two lists agree on the total number of vessels in
HUSKY;
estimates generally range from 2,500 to 3,200. Roskill, 127;
SSA,
28; HKH, AAR, “The Sicilian Campaign,” n.d., 1; “The Administrative History of the Eighth Fleet,” 20 (“
the most gigantic fleet
”).

tiny fortified island of Pantelleria:
Edith C. Rodgers, “The Reduction of Pantelleria and Adjacent Islands,” May 1947, AAF Historical Studies, No. 52, Air Historical Office, 40–45; “Allied Commander-in-Chief’s Report, Pantelleria Operations, June 1943,” 59–60; MEB, “The Fall of Pantelleria and the Pelagian Islands,” Feb. 1959, NARA RG 319, E 145, OCMH, R-Series Manuscripts, 270/19/30-31/6-2, R-115, 24–32a; memo, “Lessons from Operations Against Pantelleria,” July 12, 1943, AFHQ, “Survey and Analysis,” Pantelleria, CMH, Geog Italy, 384.3; Solly Zuckerman,
From Apes to Warlords,
185–95.

A map of the Mediterranean:
Robert A. Hewitt, SOOHP, Earl D. Bevan, 1982, MHI, 126; Thaddeus V. Tuleja, “H. Kent Hewitt,” in Stephen Howarth, ed.,
Men of War,
315 (
two variables
).

nine new variations of landing craft:
S.W.C. Pack,
Operation Husky,
44; Evelyn M. Cherpak, ed.,
The Memoirs of Admiral H. Kent Hewitt,
181 (
never been to sea
); “Notes on the Planning and Assault Phases of the Sicilian Campaign,” Combined Operations HQ Bulletin No. Y/1, Oct. 1943, 4 (
little was known
).

Much had been learned:
Harold Larson, “Handling Army Cargo in the Second World War,” ts, 1945, CMH, 4-13.1 AA 19, 242, 250 (
Schenectady Plan
); H. H. Dunham, “U.S. Army Transportation and the Conquest of Sicily,” Mongraph No. 13, March 1945, NARA RG 336, Chief of Transportation, ASF, Historical Program Files, box 141, 29 (
no plans for loading
); Walter B. Smith, “Mediterranean Operations,” Oct. 13, 1943, ANSCOL, L-2-43, SM-67, NARA RG 334, NWC Lib, 4 (
neglected to make room
); HKH, AAR, “The Sicilian Campaign,” n.d., 47 (
Every unit pleaded
).

Despite the risk:
AAR, Amphibious Force Transport QM, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, Aug. 6, 1943, in Army Observers, Amphibious Forces, MHI, 1–2; William Reginald Wheeler, ed.,
The Road to Victory: A History of Hampton Roads Port of Embarkation in World War II,
99; “The Administrative History of the Eighth Fleet,” 35 (
no bread pans
).

gas shells:
Eventually the mustard would turn up in several Sicilian ammo dumps, including a stockpile fifty miles inland at Nicosia, three weeks into the campaign. “History of Ordnance Service in the Mediterranean Theater, Nov. 1942–Nov. 1945,” CMH, 8-4 JA, 54.

“
I was frequently partisan
”: “The Reminiscences of George W. Bauernschmidt,” 1969–70, USNI OHD, 160.

A satire of censorship regulations
: John Mason Brown,
To All Hands,
193–94.

One airman tried to comply
: Fred Howard,
Whistle While You Wait
, 160; Steve Kluger,
Yank,
101 (“
headed for trouble
”).

More than half a million
: “Summary of Activities,” analysis and control div., NATOUSA, June 1, 1944, CMH, 3; Brown,
To All Hands,
7 (
civilian occupations
).

“
fierce world of death
”: Pyle, 2.

In the seven weeks
: E. N. Harmon to GCM, Aug. 13, 1943, GCM Lib, corr, box 70 (“
question of discipline
”); JPL, 13–14 (“
felt very sorry
”); Bernard Stambler, “Campaign in Sicily,” ts, n.d., vol. 2, CMH, 2-3.7 AA.L, 3 (“
self-maiming
”); corr, Joseph T. Dawson to family, May 22, 1943, 16th Inf, MRC-FDM (“
self-commiseration
”).

“
sense of the soldiering self
”: Samuel Hynes,
The Soldiers’ Tale,
151;
They were young:
“Age of Soldiers in Civil War, World War I and World War II,” Legislative and Policy Precedent File, 183/122, NARA RG 407, 270/49/17/7, box 34; John Muirhead,
Those Who Fall,
9 (“
our youth
”).

“
our most democratic war”:
Samuel Hynes, introduction,
Reporting World War II,
one-vol. abridgment, xx;
The Princeton Class of 1942 During World War II
; Lynn H. Nicholas,
The Rape of Europa,
223 (“
men of a new profession
”).

And what did they believe:
“Extract from Monthly Sanitary Report,” Aug. 31, 1943, MWC, corr, Citadel, box 3; Eric Larrabee,
Commander in Chief,
626 (
Four Freedoms
); Chandler, vol. II, 1276 (“
less than half
”); Margaret Bourke-White,
Purple Heart Valley,
73 (“
I was drafted
”).

Their pervasive
“
civilianness
”: Brown,
To All Hands,
224; Donald McB. Curtis,
The Song of the Fighting First,
132; Lawrence D. Collins,
The 56th Evac Hospital,
90; Paul Dickson,
War Slang,
113–23;
Three Years,
389 (
A single crude acronym
).

Yet they held:
Brown,
To All Hands,
224; George Biddle,
Artist at War,
123; John Sloan Brown,
Draftee Division,
103 (“
lick those bastards
”).

The same surveys:
Larrabee, 626.