The Steel Wave (67 page)

“Five days ago they agreed to do it! I wanted to punch that smug self-righteous bastard right in the teeth. No one called me before the attack, Ike. No one called to tell me they had decided to ignore my instructions! The Thirtieth took
a hundred fifty casualties!
They know they’ll be some hell to pay and they’re covering their own behinds.”

Bradley was as angry as Eisenhower had ever seen him.

“Don’t you think I’d have pulled our people back, if I thought there was even a
chance
we would get blasted to hell by our own planes? That’s what I told Leigh-Mallory. Didn’t faze him a bit. Arrogant sons of bitches!”

Eisenhower let Bradley finish without scolding him for his temper. It was one more problem, one more mistake, and he knew Bradley was right: There would be hell to pay. But not right now.

“I’ll talk to Leigh-Mallory, find out what I can,” Eisenhower said. “Get more details from the Thirtieth about their casualties. We’ll have to figure out some good way to handle that, before the press blows it up.”

Bradley seemed to calm, sat on a bench to one side, his hands propped on his knees. “Dammit, Ike. How much more has to go wrong?”

“Tell me about your ground attack. You’ve changed the plan for Cobra.”

Bradley looked at him through tired eyes, and shook his head. “Not really. I’ve been hearing from Monty, indirectly, that he’s not a fan of my tactics. I’m not aware that
his
tactics have put us any closer to Berlin, but that’s not a comment for me to make. We have to do something different to work through the kind of geography we’re in here; so far, our best progress has been too slow and too costly. I always thought that if you smacked the enemy across his whole body, you’d find his weak spot. But it hasn’t worked here. The countryside is just too tough, too many places to hide. Hell, one eighty-eight can hold up an entire tank column, just by clogging up the road. One damned German soldier can stop a whole battalion, if he’s got his machine gun in the right place. Monty thinks we should try to punch a tighter hole through the enemy lines. Okay, we’ll try it his way.”

Bradley stood, moved close to the map, and picked up a long pointer.

“We’re hitting them on a more compact front this time. I’m pushing armor and infantry into a drive only four miles wide. Let’s just say I’m going to try my own brand of blitzkrieg.”

Bradley’s fury had changed to enthusiasm. Eisenhower got up from the couch he had been sitting on and focused on the details of the map. He wasn’t accustomed to seeing this kind of raw energy from his general. Bradley moved the pointer to the red circle drawn around the town of Saint-Lô and tapped the map.

“We’ll go at them right here, and if we can push them back we’ll lean toward the coast. That way, we can pinch out any German divisions coming up from that direction or, better, drive some away. That should also pull some enemy strength away from Monty’s front. Call it returning the favor. The more we lengthen the front to the west and stretch the enemy’s lines, the more strength they’ll need to move over this way. And if the other fellow moves enough people this way, Monty’s front will open up.”

Eisenhower studied the map. “That’s assuming Monty can be persuaded to move at all.”

Bradley didn’t respond. Eisenhower watched him lean closer to the map, pretending to study some finer point.

“You have that map memorized, Brad. You want to speak up about Monty, you go ahead. Hell, everybody else does.”

Bradley turned, shook his head. “Got nothing to say, Ike. He’s mostly kept his nose out of this headquarters, let me run this operation the way I see fit. Can’t complain.”

Eisenhower had hoped for more, some kind of moral support for his own agonizing. He moved back to the couch.

“There’s a strong current flowing through SHAEF that wants me to recommend his dismissal.”

Bradley turned away from the map.

“I’ve heard a lot about that. I won’t get involved. There’s plenty to do right here. Oh, I forgot to mention. We had a GI come up with an idea to bust up the hedgerows. A sergeant in the Second Division, Culin, I think. Came up with the idea of fastening a big steel claw to the front of a tank, like a fork, to punch in and scoop up the brush from underneath. Damn if it didn’t work like a charm. The tank rams the embankment and knocks a hole clean through the hedge.”

“Sounds like something we should have come up with a month ago.”

“Genius is where you find it. Listen, Ike, I thought I’d head over to Collins’s command post, get reports on the progress of the ground assault from right there. Joe is expecting us. This is his moment in the sun. The Seventh Corps has seven divisions under its cap this time. If Collins can push his boys far enough, Middleton’s Eighth is ready to come in right beside him to drive down the coast. If we can just open up some lanes, do something to make the Germans back away…. Dammit, Ike, I know about our screwups. But I still don’t see why this has been so tough. The other fellow is better than I thought he was.”

“The Germans?”

“Yep. Never thought they’d fight this hard. They had the good ground, and no matter how superior our numbers are, they’ve held the line. Didn’t expect this.”

“Neither did Monty.”

Bradley seemed antsy, tossed the pointer on the narrow table beneath the map.

“We need to get going. The boys have stepped off by now. The bombers dropped their loads at nine-thirty. After the ass-chewing I gave Leigh-Mallory, I would guess the bombardiers were a little more careful this time. But I want to hear that from the ground commanders. I want some
good
news for a change.” Bradley picked up his jacket, seemed to delay putting it on his shoulders. Eisenhower caught the hint. “You do what you have to do, Brad. I’m not trying to be in the way here.”

“You’re always in the way, Ike. That’s your job.”

W
hen the B-17 put him on the ground near Portsmouth, Butcher was waiting for him. Eisenhower knew the look on his aide’s face, the same look he had seen the day before. The staff car was waiting for them, Butcher obviously anxious.

Eisenhower stepped down from the bomber. “What is it, Harry?”

“They did it again, Chief. The bombers hit our own people…again.”

“
What?
Who?”

“The Thirtieth took it the worst, sir, and some units of the Ninth. No word yet on the number of casualties…except for one.”

Eisenhower saw Bradley in his mind, imagined his fury, the utter frustration, My God, I should have stayed there, he thought. I should have waited to hear the reports. Brad is going to rip someone apart.

Butcher seemed to be waiting, and Eisenhower realized what the man had said.

“One what?”

“Sir, General McNair had gone to the front, to observe the operation at first hand. He was…killed in the attack.”

Eisenhower felt a punch of cold. “Lesley McNair? He’s dead? We lost a lieutenant general to”—he paused, hating the term—
“friendly fire?”

“Yes, sir. He was killed instantly, as far as we can tell.”

Eisenhower looked past Butcher, at the aides waiting at the car, no one close enough to hear. “We have to keep this quiet, Harry. Not a word, you hear? Not a damned word.”

“Yes, sir. I understand. It’ll be tough, though.”

“Everything’s tough, Harry!”

Eisenhower’s mind filled with details, the deception, McNair’s new place at the top of Patton’s fictitious First Army Group. We’ll need someone else. Just like that, someone else. Good God. He moved numbly to the car and sat down in the back, the door closing. Butcher came in on the other side, sat quietly.

“We have to wire General Marshall,” Eisenhower said. “I’ll recommend that McNair be buried right here, quietly, no ceremony. I know he’d have preferred that, to be closer to his men. We sure it was our own bombs? Could it possibly have been enemy shelling?”

“It’s…unlikely, sir.”

The car began to move, and he glanced at Butcher, who stared ahead, wrapped in his own gloom.

“What’s it going to take, Harry?” Eisenhower said. “What else do we have to do?”

“Don’t know, Chief.”

Eisenhower sat back and tried to rest his head on the seat, but there was no rest. His brain was boiling over with details: the hopes; the planning, problems, and controversies; and the death of men because of someone’s pure stupidity. He thought of Bradley: his map, his enthusiasm, his red circle around Saint-Lô. God help us, he thought. Can’t
something
go right for a change?

F
or the first two days of Operation Cobra, the going was as slow and difficult as it had been since early June, a heavy-handed slugging match between two blind boxers. The reports flowed back to Bradley and Eisenhower, meager gains, minor breakthroughs, setbacks, losses, the bocage country still as formidable a foe as the Germans. Then the reports began to change. Even though there had been no great collapse, no surrender, nothing that would tell Eisenhower there had been a victory at all, Bradley’s optimism was ignited with each passing day by word of solid gains. The Americans had finally pushed southward far enough to draw clear of the hedgerows. In front of them, the haggard Germans seemed to realize that their best efforts were not enough, and their stout resistance had begun to give way.

Bradley’s forces now totaled twenty-one divisions, and any war of attrition had shifted even more strongly in favor of the Americans. As Joe Collins’s Seventh Corps fought their way through the rugged ground south of Saint-Lô, closer to the coast, Troy Middleton’s Eighth Corps pushed hard to break the far left flank of the German defense. On July 30, Middleton captured the town of Avranches. The Americans had driven thirty-five miles from their starting point at Saint-Lô.

As the Americans paused to catch their breath, a call was made to Adolf Hitler from the headquarters of Army Group West. Field Marshal Hans von Kluge notified his Führer that the German left flank had completely collapsed. What von Kluge did not know was that behind the exhausted Americans, who were only beginning to realize the scope of what they had accomplished, another massive fist was ready, fully prepared to resume the push. On August 1, the American Third Army officially began its existence. After so many months of infuriating inactivity, George Patton was finally returning to the war.

41. PATTON

T
he image was still fresh in his mind, his deliberate tour of the enormous parking lots inland from Omaha Beach, wooden crates and canvas-covered mountains. The ships were unloading every day the weather would allow, so the mammoth stockpiles of supplies and hardware continued to increase. He had met the soldiers as well, his new army, men who greeted him with cameras and hearty cheers. Patton had obliged them with a brief speech, off the record, nothing of course for the reporters. He didn’t need Eisenhower telling him to shut up. That was a lesson he had learned. But the soldiers would hear what he wanted them to hear, and so the words had come.

“I’m proud to be here to fight beside you. Now let’s cut the guts out of those Krauts and get the hell on to Berlin. And when we get to Berlin, I am going to personally shoot that paper-hanging goddamned son of a bitch just like I would a snake.”

The scattered cheering had burst into an eruption of pure affection, the soldiers seeming to realize that this man was one of their own. With all the talk of delay and indecision, the griping that filled the ranks, someone had finally come to France who knew how to win the war.

Patton did not share their joy or their unbridled optimism. As he left Omaha Beach, the inspections began, his daily visits to the various division commanders and the men who served them. There were the veteran units and those newly arrived, and it was the veterans who concerned him most. As he marched through their camps, he carried the reports on what they had failed to do, the sluggishness and lackadaisical advances toward an enemy that seemed far more prepared. Too often, the new men seem underprepared and the veterans worn out. Patton understood why there had been so many failures. No matter how much they cheered their generals, it was the soldiers themselves who had to do the work, who had to show the enemy who the better man was. It was the army’s dirty little secret that too often the infantry had bogged down or, worse, had been driven back when they confronted an enemy they had been told they would simply sweep away.

Patton studied those men and began to realize that many of the same soldiers who so raucously welcomed his words had not been sufficiently trained and, worse, were not being led by the kind of officers Patton believed the army needed. He did not share his views openly, would not open up a messy controversy when his command was only hours old. Though he groused to his diary about Eisenhower’s leadership, he appreciated that privately Eisenhower shared his views about the inadequacy of the training. Both men were aware that propaganda was not confined to the Germans. In the training centers throughout the United States, the American troops had been surrounded by colorful posters, drenched in speeches from their officers, drilled to believe they were unstoppable, the best equipped and the most feared fighting men in the world. But the training itself had not met that promise. Patton knew he faced a challenge. The sting of failure had infected several of the infantry divisions, particularly the Ninetieth. The army clearly needed something or someone to inspire them to become better soldiers. In Patton’s mind, no one was more suited for the job than George Patton.

Patton’s Third Army was now one of two such commands under the overall leadership of Omar Bradley, who, in North Africa and Sicily, had been Patton’s subordinate. Bradley’s original command during Overlord, the American First Army, was now commanded by Courtney H. Hodges, a man Patton had known well, even before World War One. Like Patton, Hodges had once fought under Black Jack Pershing in Mexico, in futile pursuit of the bandit Pancho Villa. Patton’s Third Army was the second half of Bradley’s new command, which was designated the Twelfth Army Group. The change in command structure put Bradley on equal footing with Bernard Montgomery, who still commanded his Twenty-first Army Group. Montgomery’s command now consisted of Henry Crerar’s First Canadian Army, and Miles Dempsey’s Second British Army. The changes meant a significant promotion for Bradley and, in the eyes of many Brits, a demotion for Montgomery. Patton paid little attention to anyone’s complaints about whether or not Montgomery had received justice.