The Day of Battle (104 page)

To mislead potential spies:
Duncan, 117–18 (
Wilhelmina
); Winston S. Churchill,
The Hinge of Fate,
783; Alexander S. Cochran, Jr., “Spectre of Defeat: Anglo-American Planning for the Invasion of Italy in 1943,” Ph.D. diss, U of Kansas, 296 (
wheelchair ramps
); John Kennedy,
The Business of War,
293 (“
well and fat and pink
”).

Like the
Queen Mary: Harold Evans, “Roy Jenkins’ ‘Churchill: His Finest Hour,’”
NYT Book Review,
Nov. 11, 2001, 1 (“
largest human being
”); Charles Richardson,
From Churchill’s Secret Circle to the BBC,
189 (
trombone
); Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms, Whitehall, London (
one of the eight
); Arthur Bryant,
The Turn of the Tide,
587 (
scented handkerchief
); admin memo, War Cabinet, May 3, 1943 (
ten-pound tip
and
Mumm’s Cordon Rouge
); Paul Fussell,
Wartime,
183 (“
gangster clergyman
”).

“
We are all worms
”: Churchill Museum; Martin Gilbert,
Winston Churchill’s War Leadership,
14 (
to be awakened
), 74 (“
pester, nag
”); Danchev, 451 (“
temperamental like a film star
”); Merle Miller,
Ike the Soldier,
512 (“
He shouts me down
”).

“In great things
”: Kennedy, 315; Winston S. Churchill,
Closing the Ring,
658, 685, 660, 662 (
small things
); Martin Gilbert,
Winston Churchill’s War Leadership,
19 (“
There is no defeat
”).

Sea voyages always reinvigorated:
Richardson, 187 (“
Master
”); Gilbert, 10 (
silent Remington
); Churchill Museum (
Johnnie Walker
); W. Averell Harriman and Elie Abel,
Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin,
204–5 (“
I won’t be captured
”), 207 (“
splitting infinitives
”); Lord Moran,
Churchill: Taken from the Diaries of Lord Moran,
101 (“
all hunched up
”); W. H. Thompson,
I Was Churchill’s Shadow,
114–15 (
discussing seamanship
); admin memo, War Cabinet, May 3, 1943 (
watching films
);
NYT,
May 12, 1943, 24 (
Radio Berlin
); Churchill,
Closing the Ring,
91 (“
Who in war
”).

Churchill had proposed:
Harriman and Abel, 202 (“
One can always
”); “Notes for Mr. Aubrey Morgan” (
entire company stood
).

Packed into the
Magellan: Churchill Museum (
colored yarn
); Arthur Bryant,
The Turn of the Tide,
595, 652 (
six thousand miles
).

Victory in North Africa
: Ralph Bennett, “Ultra and Some Command Decisions,” in Walter Laqueur, ed.,
The Second World War,
218 (“
cryptologists had cracked
”);
GS
IV, 450 (
forty-seven U-boats
); David M. Kennedy,
Freedom from Fear,
590 (
more than 3,500
and
submariner casualty rate
); C.B.A. Behrens,
Merchant Shipping and the Demands of War,
368 (
every eight hours
).

Elsewhere in this global war:
Gerhard L. Weinberg,
A War at Arms,
590, 632–33, 637.

On the Eastern Front: GS
V, 2; Matthew Cooper,
The German Army,
451–52 (
lost thirty divisions
), 448 (“
absolutely sick
”); Ray S. Cline,
Washington Command Post: The Operations Division,
220 (
Soviet counteroffensive
).

And yet: the Red Army remained: GS
V, 2; Martin Gilbert,
The Second World War,
421 (
1.3 million forced laborers
).

The next Anglo-American blow: SSA,
10; David Hunt,
A Don at War,
184 (
a postscript
); Maurice Matloff,
Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1943
–
1944,
25–26.

Beyond Sicily:
Anthony Eden,
The Reckoning: The Memoirs of Anthony Eden, Earl of Avon,
390, 403; Warren F. Kimball, ed.,
Churchill and Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence,
vol. II, 184 (“
Great possibilities
”); Coakley, 63 (“
a chill of loneliness
”); Churchill to H. Hopkins, May 2, 1943, UK NA, PREM 3/443/2 (“
serious divergences
”); Churchill to George VI, Apr. 30, 1943, UK NA, PREM 3/443/2.

“
We did not come here
”: UK NA, PREM 3/44/2.

Beneath his brass:
Douglas Porch,
The Path to Victory,
454; G.A. Shepperd,
The Italian Campaign, 1943
–
45
, 82; John Ellis,
World War II: A Statistical Survey,
254 (
More than 12 percent
); Gilbert,
The Second World War,
426 (
British battle deaths
); Martin Gilbert,
Winston S. Churchill,
vol. VII.

Salvation lay here:
“Monthly Strength of the Army,” May 31, 1943, CMH (
a thousand generals
); Forrest C. Pogue,
George C. Marshall: Organizer of Victory,
280 (
aircraft carriers
); Alan Gropman, ed.,
The Big L: American Logistics in World War II,
1n, 73 (
just fifty days
), 89–93; Behrens, 366 (
British merchant fleet
);
NYT,
May 12, 1943, 1 (“
production of airplanes
”).

“
the greatest American problem
”:
NYT,
May 11, 1943, 1.

Yet at home:
Gropman, ed., 35, 54–55, 89–93, 367 (
full mobilization); NYT,
May 10, 1943 (
Wurlitzer
);
The Big Change-Over,
film, Office of Emergency Management, NARA, 208.211 (
lipstick
).

So, too, had the war:
James Ward Lee et al., eds.,
1941: Texas Goes to War,
76–78 (“
Use it up
”); Fussell, 197–98 (
plastic buttons
); John Morton Blum,
V Was for Victory,
95; Kennedy,
Freedom from Fear,
645 (
the bikini
); Smithsonian Institution Museum of American History, exhibit, “The Price of Freedom: Americans at War” (
Regulation L-85
).

German prisoners:
Lee et al., eds., 82–83 (
paint-on hosiery
); Fussell, 197 (“
victory speed
”); Dennis B. Worthen, “Pharmacists in World War II,”
Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association,
vol. 41, no. 3 (May–June 2001), 479+ (
toothpaste tubes
);
Salvage,
film, Office of War Information, 1942, NARA, 208.118 (
10 old pails
).

No place in America:
Scott Hart,
Washington at War: 1941
–
1945,
40 (“
frenzied capital
”).

To this panoply:
memo, May 11, 1943, Secret Service records, file 103-1: President Roosevelt, 1943, box 5, FDR Lib. (
at 6:45
P.M.
); William D. Leahy,
I Was There,
158 (
gray pallor
).

But first the visitors:
David Brinkley,
Washington Goes to War,
epigraph (“
bust right out
”), 188, 232, 238; William H. Cartwright, Jr., “The Military District of Washington, 1942–1945,” 1946, CMH, 8-2.4 AA, 190 (
twelve thousand hotel rooms
); “Notes for Mr. Aubrey Morgan” (
sixteen Royal Marines
); Hart, 108 (“
tropical post pay
”).

Churchill could sense:
Cartwright, “The Military District of Washington, 1942–1945,” 116–18 (“
largest feeding operation
”); Hart, 92, 135 (“
Madhouse
”);
NYT,
May 2, 1943, 3 (
twelve thousand men
);
Washington Evening Star,
May 15, 1943, 1 (
draft dodgers
).

Among other signs: NYT,
May 2, 1943 (“
rumor clinics
”);
NYT,
May 9, 1943, 26 (“
White or Colored
”); Brinkley, 185 (
forty-six errors
);
NYT,
May 12, 1943 (
blond hair
).

Amid the mania:
Hart, 178.

They got to work:
William Seale,
The President’s House,
vol. II, 918, 937–76; Danchev, 403 (
massive desk
).

Five months earlier:
Matloff, 123; Cline, 219; Garland, 17 (“
grand design
”).

The president’s brain trust: FRUS,
19 (“
The man from London
”); Coakley, 62 (“
No closed minds
”).

“
What should come next?”: FRUS
, 25–26.

The prime minister had used the phrase:
Cline, 218;
GS
IV, 145 (“
underbelly
”);
FRUS,
25–26; Churchill,
The Hinge of Fate,
794 (“
occupation of Italy
”). Churchill, in a conversation with Joseph Stalin in August 1942, also used the phrase “soft belly” while sketching a crocodile intended to represented Axis-occupied Europe. Churchill,
The Hinge of Fate,
481.

There it was, the British strategy: FRUS,
30; Churchill,
The Hinge of Fate,
794; John S. D. Eisenhower,
Allies: Pearl Harbor to D-Day,
63 (“
cigarette-holder gesture
”).

This impasse persisted:
Kenneth S. Davis,
Experience of War,
393;
FRUS,
223 (“
Global Strategy of the War
”).

A tall, austere man:
Eric Larrabee,
Commander in Chief,
102–3 (
a clean-desk man
), 99, 112; OH, Gen. Lord Ismay, Oct. 18, 1960, FCP, transcript, tape 40, GCM Lib (“
a little aloof
”); OH, Andrew J. Goodpaster to author, Washington, D.C., Aug. 17, 2004 (“
Are you confident
”); author visit, Dodona Manor (Marshall home), Leesburg, Va., Apr. 1998. Churchill’s “greatest Roman” accolade came in 1945.

Invading Italy: FRUS,
44–45.

Arguments spilled:
Stephen E. Ambrose,
Eisenhower,
vol. I, 242; Garland, 17 (
twelve million tons
); Albert C. Wedemeyer,
Wedemeyer Reports!,
134 (
lacked sufficient ports
);
GS
V, 115 (“
side-shows
”); Maurice Matloff,
Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1943
–
1944,
74 (“
unremunerative scatterization
”).

“
Mediterranean operations
”: Wedemeyer, 218.

Listening attentively:
Danchev, 247 (“
great gentleman
”), 448, xvi, xiv (“
Froggie
”), 400; Moran, 121 (“
a year off my life
”); Bryant, 685 (“
the night work
”); David Fraser,
Alanbrooke,
341 (
Southeran’s shop
); Kennedy, 290 (Birds of the Ocean).

Now he quarreled: FRUS,
225.

Brooke pressed the point: FRUS,
41–45, 269; Coakley, 64–65.

A stack of studies:
Cochran, “Spectre of Defeat,” 297 (“
If Italy collapses
”); Coakley, 64 (“
breaking the Axis
”).

But, Brooke warned: FRUS,
43, 45.

Momentary silence fell:
Wedemeyer, 211 (“
no intention
”); Coakley, 65 (“
divert our forces
”).

At Marshall’s suggestion:
Danchev, 403.

Washington lacked: GS
IV, 410 (
endless meetings
); “Notes for Mr. Aubrey Morgan” (
black-tie affairs
).

Fans at a Washington Nationals:
“Memoirs of Sir John Dill, 1942–1944,” Reginald Winn Collection, GCM Lib, 36;
FRUS,
39 (
Helen with Paris
); corr, Anna Roosevelt Boettiger to John Boettiger, May 15, 1943, Boettiger Papers, box 5, FDR Lib (
Churchill sat transfixed
).

To escape both official Washington:
Pogue, 202–3.

If Washington had been atwitter:
Gerald Horton Bath, “A Report on the Visit of the British High Command to Colonial Williamsburg, May 15th and 16th, 1943,” ts, n.d., Frank McCarthy Collection, box 27, folder 29, GCM Lib.

Sunday morning:
ibid.; Danchev, 423 (Gould’s Birds).

While the chiefs went south:
memo, May 11, 1943, Secret Service records, file 103-1: President Roosevelt, 1943, box 5, FDR Lib; Robert Sherwood,
Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History,
729 (
Whittier’s ballad
); Moran, 101 (“
gabbled the whole poem
”).

For three days they unbent:
letter, Anna Roosevelt Boettiger to John Boettiger, May 14, 1943, Boettiger Papers, box 5, FDR Lib (“
picks his teeth
”); Jon Meacham,
Franklin and Winston,
225, 234 (“
Isn’t this a beauty
”).