The Steel Wave (62 page)

Churchill lit a cigar and stared at Eisenhower through the smoke. “Monty paying your salary?”

Eisenhower knew the meaning, lowered his head, and stared at the dark wool of the rug beneath him. “It’s working. It’s just taking longer than we would have liked.”

“Rubbish. What Monty said would happen in a single day has taken more than a month. That’s the rub. You may call that adaptation if you wish, but there is more at stake here. I have pushed him myself, made it very clear that I will tolerate little of his absurd need to plan every move as though he’s some kind of grand chess master. That’s the image he wants us to have. It’s pure rubbish. I’ve heard all about how he’s the only man who could do that job. Brooke yells at me that I’m just gunning for Monty because I don’t like his beret or something, that I should be giving him more credit. That’s what you’re saying too, isn’t it?”

Eisenhower absorbed Churchill words, thought, Have you been in contact with Monty directly? He was growing angry now. No. I can’t tell him he shouldn’t be talking to my generals. They’re not really
my
generals after all, never have been. But dammit, they’re not his either.

He watched as Churchill continued to pad around the room, the round man’s nervous energy infectious, cutting into the fog from Eisenhower’s cognac.

“Regardless of what you may think of Monty,” Eisenhower said, “he’s the only alternative we have for this operation. It would be a serious mistake to think otherwise. This thing is far from decided, but I know damned well we’re winning. The people who thought Monty ought to be making the big breakthrough simply didn’t know the whole story. What he accomplished by holding so many German tanks at Caen—”

“You can give that a rest, Ike. I know you’re spouting what you have to spout. I’ve never faulted you for staying on the fence. You’ve busted your blooming arse to keep politics out of your headquarters, and every damned one of your senior people love you for it. You won’t come out and say what you really think about any of these generals, will you? You won’t even say what you think about me. You think I’m a bloody pest, sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong. Yes, I’m a pest. I
like
to be a pest. I like people to shut the hell up when I walk into a room. I like raising the blood pressure of stodgy old farts, causing them to rise up off their soft cushions just a bit. No one should be
comfortable
in a war, Ike. No one. Not you, not me, and not Monty. I know you have a bit of a temper, heard about the dressing-downs you’ve given some of the misfits. Has to be done, of course, from time to time. But you’re not prone to spout off just because someone’s stuck a thorn in your arse. That’s not you at all, is it? Can’t say I’ve ever seen you really bitch out loud about Monty or anyone else.”

“Opinions aren’t what this job is about.”

“Oh, very noble of you, Ike, but you’re wrong. Every damned day starts with an
opinion
about what’s going to happen and what your next move should be. You’re right, this thing is far from decided, but in my
opinion,
we need more bite from the bulldog. We’re getting too much out of the other end. I’m tired of cleaning it off my shoes.” Churchill paused, seeming to enjoy his choice of words. “All I’ll say to you is this. General Marshall sent you here with the absolute authority to transfer or remove from this theater any American who doesn’t measure up. I’m telling you that if you feel there is any
British
soldier in your command who fails those standards, you report your dissatisfaction to me or to General Brooke,
no matter his rank.
You understand me?”

“I appreciate your confidence, but I don’t see any sort of report forthcoming.”

Churchill stuffed the cigar into the corner of his mouth, put his hands on his hips, and stared at him for a long moment. “You had any V-1s come down in your backyard?”

Eisenhower was surprised at the question. “Yes, a few. Broke a window at SHAEF, rattled us a few times.”

“You’re bombing hell out of the launching sites, right?”

“When we find them. It will cause more problems with the French, since the enemy has placed most of the launch sites in civilian zones. There are surely French casualties from our raids.”

“I’m not concerned right now with French casualties. There have been more than two thousand civilian deaths around London. Did you know that?”

“Yes.”

“
Time,
Ike. As much as anything else, the enemy here is
time.
Every day, more graves are filled. Every day, another family suffers a disaster. I don’t know how many more disasters we can take. If you’ve got the right people in place to do the job, fine. Do the job. But do it soon. You get that?”

Eisenhower had heard those concerns before. How do I tell him to have patience? Every senior British general carried the burden that the British had given all they had to this fight. In Normandy, the Americans now outnumbered them by three to one, and every day, that disparity was growing. Eisenhower finished the cognac and let the burn drift downward.

“Very soon, General Bradley will launch a major assault against the enemy in his sector. I cannot give you any more details than that, because the plans are not finalized. Monty supports the idea, because he knows that we—that Bradley is in the best position to make that attack. What else can I say?”

Churchill moved to his bed, sat, refilled his glass from a fat black bottle. He put the cigar on the edge of the small table and downed the entire glass in one short gulp, the cigar quickly back in his mouth.

“You’ve said all you can. Except one thing. If Bradley breaks a hole in Rommel’s lines, how will you exploit that?”

It was an odd question, and Eisenhower felt caution again. Why would he ask?

“We’ll exploit it any way we can. Drive as much armor through the gap as we can, follow it with infantry, make every effort to widen the hole. The enemy will either retreat or we will work to cut him off.”

Churchill rolled the cigar with one hand, looked at it, a shortening stub, jabbed it down into an ashtray, and said, “Bradley’s a good man.”

“One of the best, I think.”

“See? That’s one of those pesky
opinions,
Ike. All I’m telling you is, just get the job done.”

A
ll across the base of the Cotentin Peninsula, Bradley’s army was continuing to grow, fresh troops landing on the beaches, a total of fourteen divisions coming into line. The plan, now labeled Operation Cobra, was aimed at punching around and through the French town of Saint-Lô, a key intersection that would allow American forces to drive out of the confines of the bocage. As Bradley’s plan evolved, Montgomery offered a plan of his own, Operation Goodwood, that would send British troops around Caen on their own surge southward, pushing well past the city into precious open country that would allow British tanks to maneuver more freely. The plan Montgomery proposed was enthusiastically supported by Eisenhower and Bradley, both men realizing that a breakthrough on the British front could force the Germans to make a general withdrawal. If the Germans chose instead to obey Hitler’s orders and hold their ground, it was possible that Rommel’s entire Seventh Army could be swallowed up and destroyed.

As both plans came into focus, there was one more ingredient to the Allied effort that had yet to make its appearance on the battlefront. On July 6, George Patton made a noisy arrival into France at an airstrip near Omaha Beach, to begin preliminary work on organizing his command, the new Third Army. That command wouldn’t become official until August 1, but Patton had suffered through his own inactivity long enough. He did not yet have an army in the field, but when the time finally came he would be ready from day one. While the Allies prepared their next best effort to break through the Germans who were holding them in place, Patton seethed at what he saw to be the woeful inefficiency of those men who were supposed to be his superiors. But, until Bradley could push open some sort of doorway through the enemy’s stranglehold on the bocage country, there was nothing for Patton to do but wait.

In England, Patton’s phantom command, the First Army Group, was still in place, and the extraordinary deception that had so baffled the Germans was still providing fodder for German intelligence. In the event that anyone noticed Patton’s sudden absence from England, stories were planted throughout the spy networks, hints that Patton had been dismissed, that his clumsy indiscretions had finally overwhelmed Eisenhower’s patience. Through every clandestine channel controlled by British intelligence, word was passed not so discreetly that Patton had been replaced by Lieutenant General Lesley McNair. McNair was one of the American army’s most respected commanders and had run the entire system of training and organization of all army ground forces in the States. To the receptive ears of German intelligence, there was perfect logic for a man as capable as McNair to replace a loose cannon as seemingly unreliable as George Patton. To Eisenhower’s astonishment, reports continued to filter through Ultra intercepts that the Germans had bought the ruse and still believed the fictitious First Army Group was a force to be feared. Even more gratifying were reports that the German High Command was vacillating again toward a belief that there could still be a second Allied invasion. Despite all visible signs to Rommel’s front, despite the mammoth buildup of Allied divisions that poured across the Normandy beaches, von Kluge and Rommel had been ordered to maintain a sizable force of Rommel’s Fifteenth Army at Calais, its sole purpose to confront another massive invasion.

SHAEF FORWARD COMMAND POST, PORTSMOUTH
JULY 11, 1944

Tedder read the report, one hand holding his pipe, the tent filling with the sweet fragrance of something Eisenhower thought to be cherries. Eisenhower lay back on the cot. “Patton’s already driving me batty. He’s scared to death the war will end before he gets his shot at sticking a knife in someone’s belly.”

Tedder chuckled. “Hitler’s, I presume.”

“George would say so. Did say so, actually, a while back. Algeria, I think. He’s caused his share of headaches since then. Damn shame. But if he hadn’t, he might be in Bradley’s shoes, and I don’t want to think about that. He would have probably knocked Monty’s teeth out by now. I hate that cowboy crap.”

“Let’s assume, dear boy, they would have fought a duel instead. Far more civilized.”

Tedder returned to his reading, the pipe rolling out more of the sweet smoke.

“Leigh-Mallory’s mad as a hornet, you know,” Eisenhower said. “Says the bomber problem at Caen was all Monty’s fault.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Ike. Leigh-Mallory has a problem with every sunrise. He bitches because no one will give his air chaps a job to do; then, when he’s needed, he bitches because he wasn’t given any time for preparation. The bombers aren’t his responsibility anyway. That’s Harris’s problem. Those air boys are every bit as much nuisance as your man Patton.”

Eisenhower smiled. “You should know. You’re one of them.”

Tedder ignored the joke. “I knew Monty was asking for trouble. We can’t expect the heavy bomber people to rush into action every time a ground commander shouts out for air support. I’ve heard talk it was the prime minister who pressed Harris to give Monty the bombers he wanted. Now Harris’s boys are catching bloody hell for their inaccuracy. Can’t have that sort of thing, Ike. Can’t have the civilian government trying to tell us what we should be doing out here.”

“You have a plan to stop Churchill?”

Tedder sucked on the pipe. “Can’t say one’s occurred to me.”

“The best way to keep Churchill’s nose out of things is to win. He’s just doing what the rest of the civilians and politicians wish they could do; he’s putting in his two cents. The newspapers in the States are raising more hell than you can imagine. When word went out that we made it ashore on those beaches, the whole damned country thought, Well, that’s it, we’ve won. I’ve seen a hundred columns written by dyspeptic know-it-alls who think we’re dragging our feet on purpose. Someone suggested this is a conspiracy, that we’re taking our time on purpose, so Hitler will have a chance to bleed the Russians first. Where the hell do these people come up with this stuff?”

Tedder held the pipe in his hand now. “At least FDR is on your side. His point of view carries a lot of punch in your papers.”

Eisenhower thought a moment. “The president is in pretty bad shape, Arthur. It’s being kept under wraps, but he’s not doing well at all. Marshall won’t say much about it, but you can bet everyone at the War Department is watching that one pretty closely.” He sat up, slapping his hands on his thighs. “Damn it all, anyway! I don’t want to talk about politics. I’ve got enough gum up my shorts just worrying about Monty. I had to dance a jig around Churchill, wouldn’t dare let him know how pissed off I am.”

“Churchill knows jigs when he sees them, Ike. You can bet he knows what’s going on. Churchill feels just like I do, and that’s not something I can say often enough. Monty doesn’t attach enough importance to
time.
Summer isn’t going to last forever, and when autumn hits, the weather’s likely to be worse than it’s already been. Every British commander remembers Flanders; no one wants to march through two feet of mud. It didn’t work thirty years ago, and it won’t work now. We have to get across the Seine, and if Monty can’t be convinced of that, you need to find someone who can.”

Eisenhower put a hand on his jaw, rubbed a day’s growth of beard, looked at Tedder’s pipe.

“That thing stinks, you know. Can’t you come up with something a little more like tobacco?”

Tedder nodded, tapped the pipe into an ashtray. “Gift from Rosalinde. Carry it around even now, trying to use it up. Can’t just toss it in the bin, you know.”

Eisenhower was suddenly embarrassed, annoyed with himself. Tedder’s wife had been killed in an air crash in Egypt a year before, a horrifying event Tedder had actually witnessed. It had been one more tragedy for a man who had already lost a son to the war.

“Very sorry, Arthur.”

“Thank you, but no matter. It is pretty ghastly stuff. I’ll leave the pouch behind next time.”