The Rising Tide: A Novel of World War II (55 page)

“Sorry, Ike. I’ve got it all written down.”

Smith reached into a pocket, pulled out a small roll of paper. “General Strong has the larger copy. I jotted it down for myself in case we got split up, or something…bad happened.”

Eisenhower took the paper, unrolled it, sat back in the chair, felt the heat in his stomach again. “Is this accurate? Well, hell, how would you know?”

Beetle seemed to ignore the insult. “Castellano was pretty exact, Ike. He wanted to give us something to show us how sincere they were, and how high up the ladder he really was. He knew we had doubts about him, whether his word amounted to anything.”

Eisenhower pulled himself out of the chair, scanned the paper again.
Fifteen German divisions
. He moved toward the telephone, picked up the receiver, held the phone in his hand, his mind growing blank, the weariness overtaking him. No, not now. They need sleep too. Nothing will change by morning. Clark has to know about this, though. All of them.

He turned toward Smith. “You realize what this means?”

“Sorry, Ike. Not really.”

“It means that there are a hell of lot more Germans in Italy than we figured. It means that our little victory in Sicily didn’t accomplish nearly what it could have. We let them go, Beetle. We let the enemy escape. Patton and Montgomery got so caught up in their damned race, so damned concerned with who had the biggest bulge in his pants…they lost sight of their real objective. We spent so much energy capturing a
place,
like it was some game of capture the flag. Tunisia was a victory, an honest, crushing victory. But Sicily…dammit, Beetle, we didn’t win a damned thing there. We let the enemy get away. We let them haul away their guns and their tanks and most of their people, and now, those people have been reinforced. I didn’t really think Hitler would spend so much energy on Italy. But we’ve heard that Rommel has taken command there, and sure as hell, Hitler wouldn’t have put him there if he didn’t expect a fight. But
this
…unless Castellano is handing us phony information, the Krauts are holding tight. Hitler’s playing wait and see. This says Kesselring is still in Rome. He wouldn’t be there if he didn’t have an army to command, if he didn’t expect something to happen. Dammit!”

Eisenhower slid the paper into his pocket, moved toward the door. “Avalanche…everything’s in place, Beetle. We’re set to begin this thing in two weeks. Unless we delay the whole operation, it’s just too late to make any serious changes.” He paused. “I really hoped they would be gone. I just thought that maybe we could march into Naples and then Rome, grab the whole country without a serious fight.”

CARTHAGE, NEAR TUNIS, TUNISIA—AUGUST 23, 1943

Eisenhower had created an advanced headquarters at Carthage, to be nearer the Italian operations, but also to draw closer to the various headquarters of the heads of each branch of the service. It had become obvious throughout the Sicilian campaign that having the senior commanders spread all over the Mediterranean only added to the spiderweb of complications that already infected every large-scale operation.

Montgomery had never wavered from his own plan, to launch his invasion force from Sicily directly across the Strait of Messina, driving up the toe of Italy. Every dispatch, every piece of intelligence, had seemed to show that the Germans had pulled away, that Montgomery would likely face only local opposition, most of that from Italian units who would easily be encouraged to surrender. Once established on the mainland, Montgomery could broaden his attacks to drive a wedge toward the ports of Taranto and then Bari, on Italy’s east coast. With support from Cunningham’s warships, it was unlikely the Germans could hold Montgomery back, especially from any place that was attacked from both land and sea. But the second prong of the plan troubled Eisenhower and drew concern from most of the others. It was realistic to describe Montgomery’s attack as a strong diversion, whether Montgomery cared for that description or not. Clark’s Fifth Army was to be the stronger attack, would land the larger force at the Gulf of Salerno. Clark’s first goal would be to establish a secure beachhead, and then, the primarily American force would drive north and east to capture the port of Naples. Though intelligence showed no major concentrations of enemy troops close to Clark’s landing zones, there were a great many shore batteries, defensive works spread along any place that the Allies could use for their landings. What caused concern were reports that the troops who manned those batteries had recently been changed, from Italian to German. With so much maneuvering in the Allied bases, so much preparation that enemy intelligence agents might certainly observe, Eisenhower had to assume that such a change in personnel was not simply a product of chance. If the Allied planners considered the Gulf of Salerno to be the most logical place for the Americans to go ashore, it seemed apparent now that Kesselring agreed.

T
he lunch had been boisterous, Montgomery in usual form, the others staking claim to their own interests. The men were mostly gone now, Alexander and Tedder boarding the planes that would take them to their headquarters, Cunningham traveling by car to the nearby port of Tunis. Most of the staff officers were gone as well, Eisenhower’s intelligence and planning officers retreating to their offices, every man feeling the weight of what lay in front of him.

With the luncheon drawing to a close, Eisenhower had seen the unspoken question on Clark’s face, had welcomed the chance to speak to Clark alone.

“I’ve missed having you in my office, Wayne. There have been a few times when I needed a bomb of honesty dropped on someone’s bellyaching.”

Clark stretched his long frame, settled into a chair. “A lot has happened since Gibraltar, Ike. It’s only been nine months, and I feel like the whole world has changed. I wish I had been more a part of it.”

“All things in time, Wayne. You were exactly where we needed you. Nobody’s better at putting an army together, cutting through all the administrative bull. I needed you to get your people organized and get them trained. We got our asses kicked in Tunisia because we weren’t ready. It’s different now. We’re ready, and that’s because of you.”

“Thanks. Hell of a thing.”

“What?”

“I feel like I’m standing in a beehive. It’s one thing to run these meetings when you’re in charge, when you can tell some jackass to shut the hell up. But here…so much of the heat is directed right at me. Everybody’s got his idea how I should handle this, everybody’s got some reason why their plan is better than everyone else’s.”

Eisenhower saw something on Clark’s face he had never seen before.
Uncertainty
. “You’ll do fine, Wayne. We’re a hell of an army now. Nobody’s a recruit anymore. We’re all veterans.”

“You. Not me. Not Walker and Dawley.”

“Jesus, Wayne. Knock it off. You’ve got good men under you, and plenty of veterans right beside them. You think I’d have put you in this spot if I thought you weren’t the right man to handle it?”

Clark looked down, nodded. “Just nervous as hell, Ike. It’s one thing to draw it up on paper…”

“Everybody’s behind you, Wayne: Marshall, everybody in London. Hell, Churchill’s doing a jig that we picked you for this job. This is his baby, this whole damned campaign. When he heard I wanted you, he was like a kid at Christmas. From the time we landed in North Africa, every good man in this command has gotten his chance to do something big. This is yours. This operation will shorten the war and give us options we don’t have now. We take Italy out of the war, then we can finally…
finally
put our attention on the cross-Channel operation. Even Churchill concedes that. We’ve gone along with most everything they wanted us to do here, every damned operation since we’ve been here has been pushed by the British. They’re actually starting to talk about France again, and this time it’s not an argument. Churchill and Brooke both insist we begin moving people to England, start a buildup there, start training people for operations next spring. Marshall’s beside himself, Wayne. He’s been pushing for us to hit France for two years, but until now, he was shouting at a brick wall. But no more. With Italy right in our hands, the British are opening the door. It’s exciting as hell, Wayne!”

Clark nodded. “Good news, Ike. Great news. We know who’s going to be in charge?”

“Not yet. Time will tell. Maybe a Brit. Doesn’t matter now. What matters is that you give the enemy a bloody nose in Italy and keep punching him until he gives up. You hit the Germans hard, take Naples, and the Italians will line up right alongside you. The Krauts will know they can’t stand up to that much pressure, and in a few months…hell a few weeks, you’ll be the biggest damned hero in this army!”

Eisenhower stopped, felt uneasy now, didn’t enjoy cheerleading, had never been one to spout out predictions. It nagged at him, the strange gloom from Clark. Not even the Ultra intercepts could tell him what Kesselring might have up his sleeve, what the Germans really intended to do, how they would react to the Allied landings. And Rommel, sitting up north in the Italian Alps, waiting…for what? But I don’t need to see this, he thought. I don’t need Clark to be wavering.

Clark seemed to read him, the strong link between them still unbroken. “We’ll do it, Ike.
I’ll
do it. You’re right. We’ve got good people.”

“Damned right.”

Clark tilted his head, looked at Eisenhower, a change in his mood. “How’s George? I haven’t talked to him in a while, not since…the problem.”

Eisenhower sat back in the chair. “So far, it’s not a problem. He accepts that what he did was stupid and knows damned well that it could have cost him his career. He sent the appropriate letter to Marshall, owning up to it all, and I made damned sure he apologized to the kid he slapped. That had to be tough as hell.
Humble
isn’t something he excels at. So far, we’ve kept it quiet. The press boys could make a hell of a stink with this, but they haven’t. They know how important George is to this army. I never thought I’d be thanking a bunch of reporters for having good sense.” Eisenhower paused. “If I know George, he’s going nuts waiting for something else to do. Not much I can do about that, not right now. Bob Hope was here, and I made damned sure he took his show to Palermo. He had Frances Langford with him, that gorgeous singer. I’m pretty sure that took George’s mind off anything else.”

Eisenhower stopped, saw no change in Clark’s expression. He realized now, Clark’s interest in Patton was simply good manners. Or maybe just curiosity. He knew that Clark and Patton had little affection for each other, the difference being that Clark did a better job of hiding it. Clark’s command of Avalanche would have been a sharp stick in Patton’s side, an attitude Eisenhower was used to now. He wants every damned command on every battlefield. Not now, George, not with your own self-made mess hanging over your head. It’s time to just sit still for a while.

CARTHAGE—AUGUST 29, 1943

Eisenhower watched the plane, a wide circle, the pilot bringing it down smoothly, none of the gut-punching drops that had been so necessary on the short airstrips, or anywhere the enemy might be close enough to position antiaircraft fire. It was the same throughout all of North Africa and Sicily now, the entire region a secure Allied base, troops and equipment continuing to roll in from transport ships and cargo planes. Every port held by the Allies had become a hive of activity, freshly trained recruits adding to the strength of the veterans, new, more modern tanks, better artillery pieces, much of it destined for Italy, for the beachheads that Clark and Montgomery were certain to secure. In the wide Atlantic, the deadly cat-and-mouse games with the U-boats had become increasingly one-sided, British and American destroyers, dive-bombers, and torpedo planes taking an enormous toll on the German submarines. As the quantity and effectiveness of the U-boats dropped dramatically, massive convoys from America were passing through once-dangerous waters virtually unmolested. Though many of those ships continued to funnel through the Strait of Gibraltar, adding to the power at Eisenhower’s command, many more were reaching ports in the British Isles, a buildup geared toward an entirely new operation.

While Eisenhower welcomed the British enthusiasm for the cross-Channel invasion of France, he had begun to feel concern that the British were too confident that the fight in Italy would be brief, the outcome a foregone conclusion. That energy was driven primarily by Churchill, his boisterous pronouncements inspiring the same enthusiasm from Cunningham, Alexander, and Montgomery. From Gibraltar to Cairo, British officers and their civilian ministers were drinking celebratory toasts, certain that the final thrust into Italy would rip the underbelly away from Hitler’s Fortress Europa.

Eisenhower was grateful for the enthusiasm he was receiving from Marshall, enthusiasm of a different sort. The Americans who had so loudly pressed for the invasion of France were finally going to get their way. The British had opened the door wide to the American desire to drive a hard blow into northwestern France. Eisenhower’s attentions were still squarely focused on Clark’s efforts at Salerno, but already, orders were coming to him to begin the transfer of American units to England, to begin serious training for the invasion of the French coast, expected to take place the following spring.

The operation was now called Overlord, and British and American planners were deep into the details, fashioning a plan that would obliterate any memory of the failure of the Dieppe raid. The invasion had to be designed to drive a powerful force across the beaches of France, to secure beachheads and strongholds with enough power that Hitler would have no choice but to respond by weakening his forces in Russia, and anywhere else the Nazi war machine had secured footholds.

Eisenhower’s authority only included the Mediterranean theater, and he knew that with planning for the new campaign already under way, he would be asked to make hard choices, to send some of his best people away, the men who would assume new responsibilities with Overlord.