The Victors: Eisenhower and His Boys : The Men of World War II (4 page)

Howard’s biggest problem was boredom. He racked his brains to find different ways of doing the same things, to put some spontaneity into the training. His young heroes had many virtues, but patience was not one of them. The resulting morale problem extended far beyond D Company, obviously, and in late summer 1942, General Browning sent the whole regiment to Devonshire for two months of cliff climbing. He then decided to march the regiment back to Bulford, some 130 miles. Naturally, it would be a competition between the companies.  The first two days were the hottest of the summer, and the men were marching in serge, wringing wet. After the second day they pleaded for permission to change to lighter gear. It was granted, and over the next two days a cold, hard rain beat down on their inadequately covered bodies.  Howard marched up and down the column, urging his men on. He had a walking stick, an old army one with an inch of brass on the bottom. His company clerk and wireless operator, Cpl. Edward Tappenden, offered the major the use of his bike. “Not likely,” Howard growled. “I’m leading my company.” His hands grew more blisters than Tappenden’s feet, from his grip on the stick, and he wore away all the brass on the end of it. But he kept marching.  On the morning of the fourth day, when Howard roused the men and ordered them to fall in, Wally Parr and his friend Pvt. Jack Bailey waddled out on their knees.  When Howard asked them what they thought they were doing Wally replied that he and Jack had worn away the bottom half of their legs. But they got up and marched. “Mad bastard,” the men whispered among themselves after Howard had moved off. “Mad, ambitious bastard. He’ll get us all killed.” But they marched.  They got back to base on the evening of the fifth day. They marched in at 140 steps to the minute, singing loudly, “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” They came in first in the regiment, by half a day. Only two of Howard’s men out of 120 had dropped out of the march. (His stick, however, was so worn he had to throw it away.)

Howard had radioed ahead, and had hot showers and meals waiting for the men. As the officers began to undress for their showers, Howard told them to button up.  They had to go do a foot inspection of the men, then watch to make sure they all showered properly, check on the quality and quantity of their food, and inspect the barracks to see that the beds were ready. By the time the officers got to shower, the hot water was gone; by the time they got to eat, only cold leftovers remained. But not one of them had let Howard down.  “From then on,” Howard recalled, “we didn’t follow the normal pattern of training.” His colonel gave him even more flexibility, and the transport to make it meaningful. Howard started taking his company to Southampton, or London, or Portsmouth, to conduct street-fighting exercises in the bombed-out areas. There were plenty to choose from, and it did not matter how much damage D Company did, so all the exercises were with live ammunition.  Howard was putting together an outstanding light-infantry company.  Howard also set out, on his own, to make D Company into a first-class night-fighting unit. It was not that he had any inkling that he might be landing at night, but rather he reckoned that once in combat, his troops would be spending a good deal of their time fighting at night. He was also thinking of a favorite expression in the German army that he had heard: “The night is the friend of no man.” In the British army the saying was that “the German does not like to fight at night.”

The trouble was, neither did the British. Howard decided to deal with the problem of fighting in unaccustomed darkness by turning night into day. He would rouse the company at 2000 hours, take the men for their run, get them fed, and then begin twelve hours of field exercises, drill, the regular paperwork-everything that a company in training does in the course of a day.  After a meal at 1000 hours, he would get them going on the athletic fields. At 1300 hours he sent them to the barracks to sleep. At 2000 hours they were up again, running. This would go on for a week at a time at first; by early 1944, as Parr recalled, “We went several weeks, continuous weeks of night into day and every now and then he would have a change-around week.” And Parr described the payoff: “Oh, we were used to it, we got quite used to operating in nighttime, doing everything in the dark.”

D Company was developing a feeling of independence and separateness. All the sports fanaticism had produced, as Howard had hoped it would, an extreme competitiveness. The men wanted D Company to be first in everything, and they had indeed won the regimental prizes in boxing, swimming, cross-country, soccer, and other sports. When Brig. James Kindersley asked to observe a race among the best runners in the brigade, D Company had entered twenty runners, and took fifteen of the first twenty places. According to Howard, Kindersley “was just cock-a-hoop about it.”

That was exactly the response Howard and his company had been working so hard for so long to get. The ultimate competitiveness would come against the Germans, of course, but next best was competing against the other companies. D Company wanted to be first among all the gliderborne companies, not just for the thrill of victory, but because victory in this contest meant a unique opportunity to be a part of history. No one could guess what it might be, but even the lowest private could figure out that the War Office was not going to spend all that money building an elite force and then not use it in the invasion of France-whenever that came. It was equally obvious that airborne troops would be at the van, almost certainly behind enemy lines-this a heroic adventure of unimaginable dimensions. And, finally, it was obvious that the best company would have the leading role at the van. That was the thought that sustained Howard and his company through the long dreary months, now stretching into two years, of training.

That thought sustained them because, whether consciously or subconsciously, to a man they were aware that D-Day would be the greatest day of their lives. Nothing that had happened before could possibly compare to, while nothing that happened afterward could possibly match, D-Day. D Company continued to work at a pace that bordered on fanaticism in order to earn the right to be the first to go.

2 -      Getting Started

THE AMERICANS were eager to get going on defeating the Germans. Eisenhower’s first task as Marshall’s principal advisor had been to save the Philippines, which by January 1942 was already obviously impossible. Meanwhile, Eisenhower was beginning to think on a worldwide scale. On January 22 he scribbled in his diary, “We’ve got to go to Europe and fight, and we’ve got to quit wasting resources all over the world, and still worse, wasting time.” He had concluded that the correct strategy was “Germany first,” on the grounds that the Germans were the main threat, that it was imperative to help keep the Red Army in the war by putting pressure on Germany from the west, and that once Germany was defeated the Americans could go over to the offensive against the Japanese. He recommended to Marshall a program: spend 1942 and the first months of 1943 building an American force in Britain, then invading France. Marshall agreed and told Eisenhower to prepare a draft directive for the American commander in Britain.

Eisenhower came up with a name-the European Theater of Operations (ETO)-and produced the draft. He urged “that absolute unity of command should be exercised by the Theater Commander,” who should organize, train, and command the American ground, naval, and air forces assigned to the theater. As he handed the draft to Marshall, he asked the Chief of Staff to study it carefully because it could be an important document in the further waging of the war. Marshall replied, “I certainly do want to read it. You may be the man who executes it. If that’s the case, when can you leave?” Three days later Marshall appointed Eisenhower to the command of ETO.

That June 24, Eisenhower arrived in England. There were no bands to greet him, no speeches at the airport, no ceremonies. It was almost the last time in his life he would have such a quiet arrival anywhere. That day he was still unknown to the general public, in America as well as in Britain. But the day following his arrival in London he held a press conference. An announcement was passed out identifying him as the commander of the American forces in Britain.  From that moment forth his life was dramatically and unalterably changed. He suddenly became a world figure-in the jargon of World War II, a Very Important Person, or VIP. It hardly mattered that his role was more that of an administrator than a commander, or that the number of men under him was relatively small (55,390 officers and men). Precisely because there were so few American forces in Britain, in fact, and because they were not involved in combat, Eisenhower received more coverage. His appointment was a front-page story. Every reporter in London, whether British or American, who could do so attended Eisenhower’s first-ever press conference.  Eisenhower proved to be outstanding at public relations. There was, first and foremost, the man himself. Helooked like a soldier. He stood erect, with his square, broad shoulders held back, his head high. His face and hands were always active, his face reddening with anger when he spoke of the Nazis, lighting up as he spoke of the immense forces gathering around the world to crush them. To cameramen, he was pure gold-for them a good photo of Eisenhower, whether tight-lipped or grim or laughing heartily, was usually worth at least two columns on the front page. His relaxed, casual manner was appealing, as was the nickname “Ike,” which seemed to fit so perfectly. His good humor and good looks attracted people. Most reporters found it impossible to be in Eisenhower’s presence and not like him.

His mannerisms complemented his good looks. Recording before a newsreel camera for the movie-theater audience back in the States, he spoke with great earnestness directly into the camera, his eyes riveted on the invisible audience. It was a perfect expression of a devotion to duty that he felt deeply, and it electrified viewers. So too did his manner of speaking bluntly about the difficulties ahead, the problems that had to be met and overcome, all followed by that big grin and a verbal expression of Eisenhower’s bouncy enthusiasm.  He habitually used expressions that immediately identified him as just plain folks. He would speak of someone who “knows the score,” someone else as a “big operator,” or he would say, “I told him to go peddle his papers somewhere else.” He called his superiors the “Big Shots.” He made innumerable references to “my old hometown, Abilene,” and described himself as a “simple country boy,” sighing and responding sadly to a question, “That’s just too complicated for a dumb bunny like me.”

Eisenhower, in short, was an extremely likable person who came to the public’s attention at exactly the right moment in the war. Nothing was happening in the European Theater to write about, but London was overrun with reporters looking for copy.

Throughout the war Eisenhower manipulated the press for his own purposes and for the good of the Allied cause. He was more aware of the importance of the press, and better at using it, than any other public figure of his day. This recognition was a result of his instincts and his common sense. In addition, he enjoyed meeting with the press, liked reporters as individuals, knew some of them himself from his long years in Washington, called them by their first names, posed for their photographs, flattered them not only by the attention he paid to them but by telling them that they had a crucial role to play in the war. Eisenhower believed that a democracy could not wage war without popular, widespread support for and understanding of the war effort, which only the press could create. At his first press conference he told the reporters that he considered them “quasi members of my staff,” part of the “team,” a thought that delighted the reporters no end, and he promised to be open and honest with them always. Only the most cynical of reporters could fail to respond to such blandishments.

Eisenhower’s sense of public relations extended far beyond himself. He used the press to sell the idea of Allied unity. He believed that Anglo-American friendship was a sine qua non of final victory, and did all he could to make that friendship genuine and lasting. In the summer of 1942 his major effort was to smooth relations between the British public and the American soldiers, airmen, and sailors who were coming to the British Isles in ever increasing numbers-eventually, more than two million came to the United Kingdom.  Eisenhower, the man at the top, was the most important individual in molding the British attitude toward the U.S. Army. He was aware of it, accepted the responsibility, and met it magnificently. London took him to its heart. He was so big, so generous, so optimistic, so intelligent, so outspoken, so energetic-so American.

Besides being good copy personally, he represented the American military machine that was coming to win the war, so inevitably he was a center of attention. His relations with the London press were as good as with the American. The British appreciated reports that he took them as they were, neither trying to ape their mannerisms nor make fun of their ways. They laughed at an item that related Eisenhower’s practice of levying on the spot a fine of two-pence on any American who used a British expression such as “cheerio.” Another favorite London story concerned Eisenhower’s heavy smoking-he consumed four packs of Camels a day. The American ambassador, deeply embarrassed, had told Eisenhower after a dinner party that it was the custom in England not to smoke at the dinner table before the toast to the King had been drunk.  Eisenhower’s response was that he would attend no more formal dinners.  When Adm. Lord Louis Mountbatten nevertheless invited him to a dinner, Eisenhower said no. When Mountbatten pressed the point and assured Eisenhower he would not have to curtail his smoking, Eisenhower reluctantly agreed to go.  After the sherry the party sat down to soup. As soon as it was consumed Mountbatten jumped to his feet and snapped, “Gentlemen, the King!” After the toast he turned to Eisenhower and said, “Now, General, smoke all you want.” With such stories making the rounds, and with his picture in the papers frequently, Eisenhower became a great favorite in London. Taxi drivers would wave; people on the street would wish him good luck.  Beyond the rapport he established with the British public, he got on well with British leaders, best of all with Prime Minister Winston Churchill himself. He soon became a regular weekend visitor at Churchill’s country home, Chequers.  Eisenhower’s informality appealed to Churchill, and the Prime Minister responded to him in kind. On the evening of July 5, for example, Eisenhower recorded in his diary, “We spent the early part of the evening on the lawn in front of the house, and . . . took a walk . . . into the neighboring woods, discussing matters of general interest in connection with the war.” After dinner they saw a movie, then talked until 2:30A.M. Eisenhower slept that night in a bed Cromwell had slept in.