Supreme Commander (35 page)

Churchill’s government gave the FCNL a much broader and less circumscribed recognition. Both governments insisted that, “in view of the paramount importance of the common war effort, the relationship with the French Committee of National Liberation must continue to be subject to the military requirements of the Allied Commanders,” although the British couched their statement in more polite language.
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For Eisenhower, what mattered was that there had finally been a settlement of French affairs, and, it must be added, generally along the lines he had recommended. He could, he believed, expect political tranquillity in Algiers. With Giraud and De Gaulle functioning as loyal members of a committee that was beginning to take its position as a provisional government seriously, Eisenhower could look forward to a relationship with the French free from personal animosity or difficulty. Or so he at least fondly hoped. If trouble did come, however, he could cope with it, for he had learned much since Murphy first introduced him to French political affairs. He had indeed become an expert in the field.

As the end of the campaign approached in Tunisia, planners began the detailed work on HUSKY, the invasion of Sicily. As had been the case with TORCH, the attempt to reach agreement on a date and landing sites led to confusion and disagreement. “The HUSKY thing has gotten planners really in a turmoil,” Eisenhower told Somervell as early as March 19.
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The next day he confessed to Handy that HUSKY was bringing on “terrific headaches.” Unlike the TORCH argument, however, the HUSKY dispute did not follow national lines. “I do not allow, ever, an expression to be used in this Headquarters in my presence that even insinuates a British vs. American problem exists,” Eisenhower told Handy. “So far as I am concerned, it doesn’t.”
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There were differences of opinion on when and where to land, but at the center of the argument were three British officers, with Montgomery on one side and Tedder and Cunningham on the other.

About some things there could be no argument, since availability of equipment was the determining factor. The possible dates for the invasion were limited by the phases of the moon. The army men wanted darkness for their trip to the landing sites, while the paratroopers who would land inland to seal off the beaches wanted some light for their drop. This meant the assault had to come when the moon was in its second quarter, either between June 10 and June 14 or during a similar period in July. The CCS wanted the attack to come in June, but on March 13, following a meeting with his three deputies, Eisenhower decided that he could not mount it until July. The main reason was that landing craft would not arrive before May. In addition, Eisenhower needed time to train the HUSKY contingent in assault tactics.
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A brief glance at a map of the Mediterranean indicated that the best
landing site would be at or just south of Messina. Possession of that area would cut off Sicily from the Italian mainland. The Allies could then throw up a defensive line and force the Axis troops to attack them. Messina, however, received no serious consideration because all the commanders thought it too risky. The Axis could bring too much strength to bear, the approach was narrow, and the sea rough. Most of all, it was out of range of fighter cover. Next best was anywhere north of Mount Etna, followed by a northward move to Messina, but again the risks seemed too great. The truth was that, both at AFHQ and at Alexander’s headquarters, planners were cautious to a fault. Their major—sometimes, it seemed, sole—concern was getting ashore. Montgomery and his staff shared this concern.

The easiest place to get ashore was on the southeastern portion of Sicily. It was closest to Allied ports in North Africa and had the softest beach. The trouble here was that the supply people insisted that without port facilities they could not support the nine divisions that would participate, and even if Syracuse was captured early there would not be enough port capacity. The operation would thus fail, they felt, because of lack of reinforcements, ammunition, and other supplies.

The alternative was to make the major attack in the southeast with smaller attacks elsewhere to gain the needed ports. As long as only Italians were on the island, the relative weakness of the minor attacks did not matter much, for the planners did not expect the Italians to put up a serious fight. But if German troops came onto the island in any number, each assault force would have to be large enough to maintain itself or face annihilation.

At a March 13 meeting of the commander in chief and his deputies, the Allies decided to make three separate landings. The first and largest would be in the southeast, the second in the southwest, and the third in the northwest, near the excellent port of Palermo. One of the major concerns was air cover and the need to eliminate the Axis striking force; under the echelon plan, captured airfields from the first landing would be used to provide air support for the second, and so on. Meanwhile ports would be opened, and an inland parachute drop would take place opposite the southeastern landing site.

The risks seemed great. The plan was complicated, involved a serious diversion of strength, and called for successive rather than simultaneous assaults. If the Germans got onto the island in a strength of two divisions or more, the Allies felt the Axis could defeat any one of their landing forces in detail, thus throwing the whole program out of kilter. But the
commanders felt they had to trust their experts. The supply people said they had to have the ports, especially Palermo, so the final decision was made.
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The assault forces would consist of the Eastern Task Force, composed of five divisions of Montgomery’s Eighth Army, and the Western Task Force, the U. S. Seventh Army, under Patton.
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All would come under Alexander’s Fifteenth Army Group. Eisenhower personally selected Patton, while the British insisted on Montgomery, even though during the main planning stage he was busy in Tunisia.

When Montgomery studied the first plan, he immediately declared that his force was not strong enough to take all its objectives, which included Syracuse and the airfields at Catania and Gela. To achieve this, he declared, he had to have at least one more division. Alexander and Eisenhower went over the problem and decided they would have to eliminate the southwestern landings, since there was no possibility that the CCS would give them more men or landing craft. This would bring an American division to the east and place it under Montgomery, with Gela as its objective.
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Neither Cunningham nor Tedder liked this alternative plan. They wanted as many landings as widely scattered as possible in order to capture Axis airfields. To Tedder this was the cheapest and quickest way to gain control of the air; to Cunningham, worried about his ships in the area, it represented insurance against enemy air strikes on his naval forces. Both were inclined to feel that Alexander gave in to Montgomery too easily.
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At the beginning of April Eisenhower paid a visit to Montgomery. He wanted to inspect the Eighth Army, visit the Mareth battlefield, and talk about HUSKY. It was his first long meeting with the British general and his impression was unfavorable. Eisenhower told Marshall that although Montgomery had ability he was conceited. Eisenhower thought Montgomery was so proud of his achievements that he would never attack until victory was certain. He thought Montgomery intended to preserve the reputation he had won at El Alamein.
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Caution was widespread that spring. As Eisenhower prepared for the first Allied assault against an Axis position in Europe, his major thought continued to be getting ashore safely. On April 7 he told the CCS that if more than two German divisions were present in Sicily “the operation offers scant promise of success.” The assault was a frontal one devoid of strategical or tactical surprise, with nine Allied divisions hitting eight Axis divisions. It could succeed against the poorly-equipped
Italians, but not against a garrison with a high proportion of German troops.
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The next day an agitated Churchill discussed Eisenhower’s message with the BCOS. He pointed out, with some heat, that Eisenhower’s caution contrasted oddly with the confidence the Americans had shown the previous summer about invading France across the Channel, where they would have to meet a great many more than two German divisions. If two German divisions were to be decisive against the operations of the million men now in North Africa, the Prime Minister felt, he could not see how the war could be carried on. “Months of preparation, sea power and air power in abundance and yet two German divisions are sufficient to knock it all on the head,” he growled.

To Churchill it was “perfectly clear that the operations must either be entrusted to someone who believes in them, or abandoned. I trust the Chiefs of Staff will not accept these pusillanimous and defeatist doctrines from whoever they come.” He reminded the BCOS that the Allies had told the Russians that lend-lease convoys could not be run for the sake of HUSKY. Now HUSKY was to be abandoned if there were a mere two German divisions in the neighborhood. “What Stalin would think of this when he has 185 German divisons on his front, I cannot imagine.”
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Churchill’s chiefs agreed with him and immediately sent a telegram to the JCS in Washington. The JCS accepted the view of the BCOS, and a telegram in the same sense as Churchill’s remarks, but in less vehement language, came to Eisenhower on April 10. His reply, in full, read: “Operation HUSKY will be prosecuted with all the means at our disposal. While we believe it our duty to give our considered and agreed opinion of relative changes under conditions as stated in our previous messages, there is no thought here except to carry out our orders to the ultimate limit of our ability.”
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Eisenhower’s British deputies, meanwhile, continued to argue about HUSKY (which ultimately went through eight separate plans). Eisenhower did not officially participate in the argument, since under the command structure created at Casablanca he was supposed merely to approve or disapprove of the plan his deputies sent up to him. Unofficially, however, he was deeply involved, primarily by paying visits to the various headquarters and talking things over with the commanders.

The situation began to come to a head in late April. Montgomery went to Cairo, where his own planning headquarters was working on HUSKY, and came away convinced that everything should be concentrated
on the southeastern corner of Sicily. He flew to Algiers to present his plan. Eisenhower refused to discuss it with him unless Alexander was present, and Alexander was busy conducting the Tunisian battle. Montgomery then proposed to Smith that AFHQ give up the Palermo landing and put Patton’s force ashore on Eighth Army’s left flank, near Gela. Smith agreed and called a staff conference, at which Montgomery presented his case.

“I know well that I am regarded by many people as being a tiresome person,” Montgomery began. “I think this is very probably true. I try hard not to be tiresome; but I have seen so many mistakes made in this war, and so many disasters happen, that I am desperately anxious to try and see that we have no more; and this often means being very tiresome. If we have a disaster in Sicily it would be dreadful.” The way to avoid disaster, he continued, was to be strong at the point of landing, which meant putting Seventh and Eighth Armies ashore side by side.
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Montgomery felt he convinced Eisenhower, to whom Smith related the plan, but Eisenhower refused to come to a decision until the plan was recommended to him by the three deputies. When they came to Algiers the next day, agreement was finally reached. Tedder felt that Montgomery would take “no risks” and was “shaken at the thought of the risks inevitable in an operation of this sort,” but since the plan would give the air forces the fields at Gela and Catania, Tedder agreed to go along with it. Cunningham was agreeable, too, since at least his naval forces would have concentrated air cover. Alexander, according to Tedder, did whatever Montgomery wanted him to do. When Eisenhower gave his approval, the plan was set.
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The final plan was based on anticipation of strong Italian and German resistance. As the official American historians note, “The whole approach toward Sicily was cautious and conservative,” with the emphasis on ensuring success and avoiding calculated risk. The plan reflected the planner—Montgomery—and like him it was cautious. “No one except Montgomery was particularly happy with it.”
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With the concentrated assault, the Allies were avoiding the risk of dispersion and accepting another. Montgomery’s plan had long been discussed and always rejected on the grounds that the Allies could not supply the Western Task Force over the beaches. Montgomery insisted that the technicians would have to find a way. What convinced Eisenhower was the presence of additional LSTs that the CCS brought in, and the quantity production of the DUKW, or “duck,” an amphibious vehicle that could bring in supplies over the beach. With the DUKW,
Eisenhower’s supply people told him, they could maintain Patton. This assurance made up Eisenhower’s mind.
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In May the CCS were scheduled to meet again (at Washington, code name TRIDENT) to review strategy for the remainder of 1943 and 1944. Before the meeting Eisenhower took up with Marshall the future of AFHQ. He wanted Marshall’s views on future operations in the Mediterranean under various assumptions: HUSKY proving to be a difficult operation; HUSKY going according to plan; or the defenses in Sicily collapsing suddenly and completely.