Alternate Generals II

Roland J. Green Sicily, 1943

All roads don't lead to Messina, or at least they shouldn't. Ought to be just enough for Seventh Army to get there first. Two roads for us and two for Monty means it's still anybody's fox.

If the British get to Messina first, it will still be as hard as ever to convince them that Americans are worth a damn as fighters. That will mean we go on fighting the war with the British tail trying to wag the American dog.

Divine Destiny [Eisenhower] may like this. It surely gets him a lot of bootlick from the British. I don't.

Just heard that Mussolini has "resigned." Be happier to hear that he's been arrested and shot, or even better turned over to the Krauts. (They don't like losers.) We still have to push the Italians so hard that, running away, they'll block all the roads and keep the Germans from bringing up reinforcements.

The ballroom in the Royal Palace is large enough to maneuver jeeps. My bedroom could hangar a couple of fighters and the bed has four mattresses, all mildooed. What a waste to have a bed that size all to myself.

Slept badly. Even if we have the roads to reach Messina first, do we have the guts? Our veterans are about as good as the Germans. Our reinforcements are about as green as ever. I hear stories about more cases of "combat exhaustion." Somebody needs to knock some guts into men like that, if they can be called men.

Al Stiller [junior aide] says no wonder I couldn't sleep in this palace. He claims he's seen muskitos as big as the ones in Texas, and cockroaches the size of jeeps. He wants to find me a nice clean modern boarding house down by the harbor. I told him that he has no sense of history.

Will try no booze and only one cigar before bedtime, also some Swedish exercises. The best kind of exercise for an old married man can't be had when you're in Sicily and your wife is in Massachusetts.

Slept alone again in the same bed, but a lot better. After breakfast, inspected the salvage and repair work going on down by the harbor. I would feel sorry for the Sicilians living with all that noise if I hadn't seen everything else they live with. They are down at the level of the Arabs, which is pretty damned low.

Seeing the port gave me some ideas. I had a mix of Army and Navy engineers in for a good dinner and decent liquor. Asked them a few questions about how fast the port will be back in shape. Right now we are tied to the roads up from the south for most of what we need, and the ammo expenditures are already going up. 1^stand 45^thDivisions are both coming up against Germans in rugged territory. Will talk to the Air Force tomorrow, but that's probably still going to be like teaching a pig to sing.

Slept fine until the air-raid sirens went off. Turned out to be a German snooper, who was shot down by the antiaircraft. Crashed down by the harbor, and wrecked three apartment buildings. No loss, except to the people living there. Will ask the Cardinal about a joint effort, us and the Church, to find roofs for the people and arrange a funeral for the dead.

The engineers tell me we should be able to stage a fairly big shore-to-shore operation out of Palermo within a few days, if the Navy can provide the ships. The Navy engineers wouldn't promise anything. I told themthey didn't need to promise anything; it was their bosses I wanted. Did promise the engineers Distinguished Unit Citations if we brought it off.

Turns out that a colored supply battalion helped rescue the people from the wrecked buildings, including the one that was on fire. Some of the colored boys were hurt because they wouldn't leave some people to be burned. That took guts.

I visited them and some of the Sicilians in the hospital. One colored boy had gone on moving rubble with a broken arm. He said that after picking sugar beets in Louisiana since he was eight, there wasn't anything the Army or the Krauts could do to make him sweat. I gave him a Bronze Star.

That colored boy should talk to some of the "combat exhaustion" cases.

Tomorrow I talk to the admirals.

Another good night's sleep. Just as well. I talked to the admirals until I nearly lost my voice. Then I kissed their asses until I have a sore lip and will probably get some sort of mouth fungus as well. I think it paid off, though. They're promising enough for a reinforced battalion. I want to make it two battalions, one infantry and one tank, but they think the best they can do is a company of tanks and some towed AT guns.

The Navy isn't what it was in the days of Stephen Decatur. They talked about the sykological effect of having even a small force in the German rear. I told them without using too many rough words that you can't do anything to the Germans with sykology (?). None of the ones I've fought scare easily. You need a physical effect, like shooting the sons-of-bitches in the guts or running over them with tanks.

To top it all off, somebody must have read my mind. They're going to call the landing OPERATION DECATUR!

Maybe his ghost will haunt them.

No chance today to beg and plead with the admirals. Flew to 1^stArmored Division for a quick inspection. They are not much dirtier than I had expected, and they are doing a fine job on vehicle maintenance under very bad conditions.

Back by way of 3^rdInfantry Division. Lucian [Truscott] looks tired, even though I would still call him the best division commander in Seventh Army. I asked him if he was getting enough sleep, and if he lacked confidence in his staff and regimental commanders. He said he had complete confidence in his division-and also in the Germans' ability to require a total effort by everybody in it!

Even if the British say it, "He who has not fought the Germans, does not know war," may be true. What's completely true is that the British screwed up their early campaigns as badly as we did ours, and they got their "greater experience" by killing a lot of their own men. But try to tell Ike that.

We will just have to kick the Germans in the pants so hard that even the British will notice when they see a lot of bare-assed Germans running for their lives, crying for their mothers and their goddamned Fuehrer!

Warned Lucian to get more sleep, since he'll be the senior ground commander for Operation Decatur. No problems likely with Clarence [Huebner, commanding 1^stInfantry Division] tomorrow. He's as tough as Black Jack [Pershing].

I haven't felt so good in months. The planning for Operation Decatur is going forward at a gallop. Lucian may not be getting the extra sleep he needs, though. I hope he won't wear himself down to the point of being cautious.L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace! [boldness, boldness, always boldness!] has to be our motto. Give the Germans five extra minutes and they'll counterattack. Give the Navy ten minutes, and they'll find excuses for not doing something.

Visited 1^stInfantry Division. Clarence is what they need, even though I suspect it will be a while before they know it and a long time before they like it. You could sum up his General Orders in two sentences: you will look like soldiers and you will stop feeling sorry for yourself. I still want to go over my indorsement to Terry's and Ted's [Terry Allen and Theodore Roosevelt Jr., former commander and assistant commander of the 1^stInfantry Division] relief, to make sure there's nothing in it that might prejudice their getting new commands. The Big Red One hit the Torch beaches ready to fight, and it is about the only goddamned division we had that you can say this about.

Went to a field hospital after lunch with Clarence. They had several new admissions, one with a leg just ampotated, another blinded. I pinned Purple Hearts on both of them. I added for the blind boy that he had one consolation-he didn't have to look at my ugly old mug while I was decorating him.

One of those "combat exhaustion" cases was sitting on the last cot. At least that's what he looked like. No wounds and when I asked him what he was here for, he said, "I guess I just can't take it."

I glared at him, and he started crying. I looked at him a second time, and it looked to me like he might be really sick. Malaria or cat fever or the runs can turn almost anybody into somebody who thinks he can't take it which is exactly what I told him. I also asked him if he'd been examined, loud enough so that all the medical people should have heard me.

Then I told Al to bring in the emergency supplies, because if an American soldier crying because he thinks he's a coward isn't an emergency then what the hell is? I apolegized to the nurses for the language and also for prescribing without a license but I told the combat exhausted boy (I never did get his name) that he shouldn't drink any of what I was giving him until he'd seen the doctors and had a good meal and maybe some sleep.

Then I told him that everything looks different after a night's sleep or a few. Even if it was something like seeing your buddy blown to pieces, after you sleep you remember that you have other buddies who might live if you go back and be there. It's not being a coward to be scared sometimes, when you're sick or hurt or you've really been in the shit (another apology) and in fact there aren't any cowards in the American Army. I ordered him to never think of himself as a coward and he stood up at attention and saluted.

Then he looked more like he was going to laugh than cry, and I thought I was going to get carried away and start crying, and that would have been a hell of a thing to happen to a general. I remembered all the boys I'd led in the Argonne, where just me and Joe Di Angelo came out alive. I handed over the whiskey and got out of there.

I felt almost all right by the time we got back to Palermo. I felt completely all right after I heard that the Navy was borrowing back some landing craft from the British for Operation Decatur. If the Germans do bomb Palermo or any of the other assembly ports, we still go on time and with everything we need.

Letter,

Lt. Col. Perrin H. Long, Medical Corps,

to the Surgeon, NATOUSA,

August 4, 1943

subject: Visit to Patients in Receiving Tent of the 15th Evacuation Hospital by Lt. Gen. George S. Patton:

Exhibit #1-Pvt. Joseph L. Shrieber, K Company, 26^thInfantry, 1^stDivision-… concluded visit by saying that there are no cowards in the American Army and that he ordered Pvt. Shrieber never to think of himself as one.

Subj. pvt. stood to attention and saluted Gen. Patton, and so did all other ambulatory patients and medical personnel. Gen. Patton appeared extremely moved by this and became inarticulate. 1^stLt. Gayle Hadley asked if he needed any help, but he smiled and shook his head, then left the tent.

Lt. Hadley immediately asked me if Gen. Patton might require medical attention.

Then she said that she had been trying to find something to say to combat fatigue cases, because very few of them seemed to be happy about getting out of the lines. Subj. pvt. had been ordered back three times with a diagnosis of combat fatigue and each time asked to return to unit. He had been in the Army eight months and with the 1^stDivision since June 1943.

Private Shrieber's diagnosis was acute dysentery, possibly amoebic, with a temperature of 102.5 degrees, frequent headaches and stools, and severe dehydration. His stool test was negative for malarial parasites. Bed rest and fluids were recommended.

I have advised all personnel present during Gen. Patton's visit to treat his words as entirely confidential. I also sincerely hope that it will be possible for Gen. Patton to grant permission for his words to be circulated, if not generally then at least among medical personnel. He may have found a much more effective way of telling combat fatigue cases that they are still soldiers than any the Medical Corps has yet developed.

Interview with Captain Gayle Hadley Jorgensen, U. S. Army Nurse Corps (Ret.), November 25, 1963:

I suppose you'd have to say I was the guilty party in letting what General Patton said get out. Many of us who heard him were almost in tears when he left, and some of us did break down afterwards. I think his aide, Major Stiller, knew that, because he left two bottles of whiskey, not one, even if the second was something from Texas and pretty awful.

But anyway, I wasn't quite myself when I got off duty, or when I got to my boyfriend for our date. He was married, so I won't tell you his name. It was just one of those things that happen in wartime, when you're both alone a long way from home. I was also thinking of how after one Luftwaffe raid it might have been me sitting on a cot shaking and crying, and nobody to tell me that being scared wasn't the same as being a coward.

So I told my friend, and he said he was glad to hear that some high brass understood what it could be like, when you had to fly straight and level on the last ten miles of a bombing run with fighters coming in from all sides except the one that the flak was using, and sometimes even that. He also promised not to tell.

That's why we broke up, incidentally. He really didn't keep the promise. Like a lot of Air Force officers, he knew a reporter. He talked to the reporter, the reporter decided that this was too good a story to sit on, and it wound up embarrassing General Patton, or so I've heard.

It's too late to apologize to Old Georgie. But I hope he'll understand that ever since that day, all of us who heard him are just a little prouder of having worn the same uniform as he did.

From The New York Times,August 6, 1943:

Patton Strikes Blow for Morale

Says "No Cowards" in American Army

Cheered at Press Conference in Palermo

Letter to Beatrice Patton, August 7, 1943:

Don't worry about the old "death wish" coming back, but right now I would rather lead the first wave of Operation Decatur ashore than give another speech or answer another question from a reporter. Anyone would think I was running for office (when I retire after the war I am more likely to run from office) and the reporters say they are on our side but I don't think all of them are telling the truth.

Of course, neither am I, in public. You are the only one I'm going to tell about the whole thing. I was all ready to chew Private Shriver's ass up one side and down the other, and maybe kick him right out of the tent. But I had a tickle in my throat, and I knew that if I started shouting I would cough myself silly.

So I put on my fighting face, which looked as if it was going to scare the poor little SOB right off his cot. I started to raise my riding crop, and I could see people flinching.

Then something grabbed my wrist. It was as solid a grab as I ever felt from you. It pulled my wrist back to my side and then I heard a voice whisper, "Wait." It was the same voice I heard when I was wounded in the Argonne.

I looked over Pvt. Shreever's head, and saw Papa standing there. He was about the age you remember him when we met, but he was wearing his VMI [Virginia Military Institute] cadet's uniform.

"Look at me, son," he said. I hoped nobody else could hear him, and that I could reply without anybody else hearing me. Right then, I didn't want anybody thinking I was crazy.

"I wore this uniform a lot longer than that young man has worn his," Papa went on. "But I never set foot on a battle field. I never smelled powder smoke. I never had a single man die beside me. You honor my name, but let me tell you that Private Shrieber is braver than I ever was."

"But Papa-your own father died because his brigade-" I didn't really care if the living heard me.

"Was running away?" That was another voice, not as familiar. I looked beyond Papa, and saw my grandfather standing there. He was the one who'd wondered out loud if it was time for another Patton to die, at the Meuse-Argonne. The same as the other time, he was wearing his Confederate uniform like in the pictures my grandmother left us.

I didn't know what to say. My grandfather grinned. "Oh, some of them were running. Most of them were trying to find somewhere behind a fence or wall, instead of standing out there to be targits for the Yankee artillery. Even the ones who were running away, they've apologized and asked me to forgive them.

"I did just that. This boy hasn't even run away. Nobody's died because he was sick, and nobody will.If you send him back to his regiment with his pride intact. And if you go back to your post so as to make us prouder still. You've already done honor to the Patton name, grandson. Go and do more."

He saluted. So did Papa. Then they were both gone.

That is exactly what I remember, no more and no less. It must have happened in some way outside of time, because it was only a few seconds according to my watch.

Thank God nobody else heard or saw anything. Or maybe they did, and they are too afraid of everybody thinking their crazy to say anything.

Anyway, that's Grandpa, Papa, and you who all think I'm a pretty good soldier. We shall see what happens with Operation Decatur.

Your George

PS-The British seem to be reading the papers.

All of a sudden, Monty wants a meeting tomorrow, to coordinate Operation Decatur with a landing on the east coast of Sicily. I hope there's enough air cover for two, and that the Limeys move out of the beachhead fast. They will be closer to Messina than we will be, and they might get there first, but that does not bother me as much as a lot of British soldiers getting killed because they squatted long enough for the Germans to bring up artillery or even counterattack. Oh well, if nothing else moves them, the Royal Navy will give them a kick in the ass. They've been trying to get Monty to try an end-run for weeks.

PPS-Don't show this to anybody else.

From The New York Times, August 11, 1943:

A Pincer for the Panzers

Double Allied Landings Cut Off

Germans in Northern Sicily

Ferocious Luftwaffe Counterattacks

So far, so good. Lucian has gone ashore at Brolo to personally supervise the three-ring circus they have there. If the Germans weren't so convinced that we still have a second wave or a whole second landing force in Palermo and weren't trying to bomb the city flat, we might be in trouble.

It did help that the first companies ashore moved right out and up on to the high ground around the beaches. Right away they had good observation for the Navy and the mortars, and good fields of fire for everything else.

Between the AA [antiaircraft] we've landed and the fighter cover the Air Force is actually providing, not just promesing, the boys ashore don't have to look up too often. They have one road blocked and the other under fire, and German prisoners say the 29^thPanzer Grenadiers is redeploying to clear their rear. They think we've landed an armored division.

The Navy hasn't been so lucky. They've lost two transports, the light cruiserSavannah, and a destroyer, plus some landing craft and PT boats.Savannah blew up and went down with most of her crew. I'm endorsing a recommendation for the Medal of Honor for her captain.

The British only went ashore with one battalion, near Taormina north of Mount Etna. They've already lost a monitor,Erebus, and a destroyer escort. Hope they don't have to evacuate. That sort of thing draws the Luftwaffe like shit draws flies, and if Monty is blamed for another Dieppe he may be out on his skinny ass before you can say "Dunkirk."

Department of Utter Goddamned Confusion. Fortunately, both sides have one. Also, I don't think the Italian alliance with the Germans is going to last much longer.

The air raids of the last three days have really hurt Palermo. They've also wrecked the Luftwaffe-nearly a hundred planes lost-and kept it off the backs of our landing forces. The Krauts even tried a parachute drop of commandos against harbor facilities and ammunition dumps.

Didn't work. Our base troops hid behind the rubble and shot back with everything they had. This included some of the first tanks to be unloaded directly at Palermo. They may also be the last for a while. The port is pretty well wrecked all over again. But the Germans lost five hundred crack troops and nearly all the transports they sent in.

Rumors running around that some of the colored supply boys did really good fighting. Did they accidentally ship the 10^thCavalry over here by mistake? If they did, I am damned well going to have them orginize a mounted column for when we cross the Straits into the Italian mainland. The French are already supposed to be sending over some of their mountain guns with a mule train.

And I've recommended the Presidential Unit Citation for the two DECATUR battalions and oak leaves to his DSC and a third star for Lucian Truscott. Damn, but we're getting good!

Remind me not to play poker with Monty. He keeps an ace up his sleeve.

When we met to plan the DECATUR/BROKE landings, I noticed a lot of airfield construction going on near Monty's HQ. They'd even put a couple of new infantry battalions to work lengthening runways.

It turns out that BROKE force (named after aBritish navy captain of the War of 1812, not because it's going to end up that way) faced nothing but Italians around Taormina, and they surrendered faster than the Brits could haul up the rations to feed them. So pretty soon there was lots of elbow room, with the Germans not doing anything except long-range artillery shoots and a few patrols.

Inside their perimeter was a partly finished airfield. They filled in craters, hauled wrecked enemy planes away, and got a bumpy runway long enough to land gliders and fighters. Then last night fifty Wellington bombers flew over, towing gliders with troops and antitank guns. As soon as the runways were clear, the RAF started landing P-40 Kittyhawks.

Meanwhile, the Wellingtons flew back to the just-extended runways, landed, bombed and fueled up, and took off for a maximum-effort raid on Messina. They hit the port facilities so damned hard I doubt if we'll be able to use them to jump the Straits. Just maybe, though, the Germans won't be able to use them to evacuate Sicily!

So now we have stuck our fingers all the way down the Krauts' throat. So they'll have to either choke to death or bite back hard!

Germans definitely trying to evacuate. They've broken contact along at least half of the Allied line, stopped raiding the BROKE and DECATUR beachheads, and aren't trying to give air cover to anything much south of Messina.

Reports coming in, from Italian prisoners, that the Germans have been keeping Italians off German vehicles at gunpoint and even confiscating Italian vehicles. They've also started blowing up heavy equipment.

Rumors going around that some Palermo Communists stole guns from Italian Army depots and helped round up the German paratroops. I am giving orders to squash those rumors. Right now the Germans have to treat Italy as some kind of ally. If they learn that even some Italians have changed sides, they'll retaliate all up and down the penensula, occupy everything they can, and wreck everything they can't.

Not as worried about squashing the Palermo Communists. Right now, anybody who wants to fight Germans is doing more good than harm. We can sort them out after the Germans are down for the count.

Don't know what the politicians are doing. At least the Palermo Communists have the guts to come out shooting. But if the politicians won't give us orders, Ike and Alex [Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander] and Monty and I are all going to have to sit down and make up our own.

Decorated several Air Force pilots today. One of them had been with Eagle Squadron during the Battle of Britain. Said that he felt he'd earned this Distinguished Flying Cross even more than the first one. The air fighting was just as heavy and you couldn't be sure of landing in friendly territory!

Mass surrenders of the Italians. Surviving Germans are going to be lucky if they escape with their clothes and personal weapons. The British aren't ready to send heavy ships into range of the big shore batteries at the Straits of Messina. But they are bombing the ports on both sides every night, and have sunk quite a bunch of the lighters and coastal freighters the Germans will need to evacuate artillery and vehicles.

Already beginning to capture German supply dumps before the rearguards can destroy them. Not so many Italian supplies, but the Italians may not have much left to capture!

Note from Monty-we should meet to suggest modifications in the existing plan for knocking Italy out of the war on August 20. I have asked the engineers if we can mountanything out of Palermo before the middle of September. It would be a good deal easier if the Italians would surrender now. Then we could enlist all the POWs into the Royal Italian Army Engineers and watch the dust fly.

From The New York Times, August 19, 1943:

Sicily Falls to Allies

25,000 German, 150,000 Italian POWs

Rumors of Crisis in Rome

From Field Marshal the Viscount Montgomery's Mediterranean Campaigns:

— triumphal entrance into Messina was simply not on, because there was hardly any Messina left to enter, triumphantly or in any other manner. It is more than a little difficult to maintain a conqueror's pose when one stumbles over rubble at every step and coughs on the smoke of burning buildings at every third breath, if one wishes to do so at all.

None of the Allied commanders wished it. It seemed a vulgar display worthy of the formerDuce, and not of liberators. Had we known at the time the debates among Italian and German leaders (each keeping their debates secret from the other), we might have taken even further measures to adopt a conciliatory position toward the Italians.

If I had known at the time how little diplomatic intelligence Eisenhower was receiving, I would have been less hostile to his apparent obliviousness to political considerations. I now think better of him, and rather less well of those parties responsible for his ignorance. One would almost think they were prepared to sabotage any American support for a joint Mediterranean strategy, lest it threaten the primary emphasis on the cross-channel attack.

Fortunately Eisenhower also seemed willing to find excuses to continue the pressure on Italy, at least until the country surrendered and remaining Germans were expelled or neutralized. Possibly this was the beginning of an awakening sense of field strategy, or perhaps he was as lacking in initiative as ever, but even more willing to listen to Generals Patton, Bradley, and Clark.

I was least surprised at Patton's commitment to forcing Italy out of the war. Since Operation Torch, he had exhibited a singular instinct for seeking and severing the opponent's jugular vein, even if he also wished to adopt methods for doing so that enlarged his own role. We had fewer objections to a larger role for Patton now than a year ago, when Alan Brooke [Chief of the British Imperial General Staff] said that the American could only be useful in a situation requiring boldness, even rashness. From appearing to be fit for no larger command than a regiment of cavalry, he had developed higher military qualities in abundance. He was also noticeably more agreeable in person than he had been previously. The burdens of command over the previous month seemed to sit lightly, even gracefully, on his shoulders, and he was firm and fair in his praises of the British share in the greatest Anglo-American victory of the war to date. I began to see him as one who would return in full measure all the respect shown to him-and to his officers and men, toward whom his loyalty was, then and ever afterward, utterly unswerving.

To be brief about General Clark, on the principle ofnihil nisi bonum: since his recently activated Fifth Army would include all the American and some of the British ground forces assigned to the invasion of the Italian mainland, it was clearly in his interests to execute that invasion. The bitter fighting in Sicily had also put us somewhat behind schedule for the next operation, and used a number of transports, landing craft, and warships intended for that operation, so both suitable weather and suitable sea transport might be lacking. Finally, one can only conjecture at this date, but Clark might well have possessed more information than the rest of us about the political circumstances in Italy.

Last, Omar Bradley, a man who might fail in genius but never in diligence and seldom in diplomacy. Loyalty to his superiors was written on his heart, and he also had no reason to wish to be translated to the remote northern mists of the British Isles to plan a cross-Channel invasion when he could continue fighting in a sunnier Mediterranean clime. Furthermore, sooner or later Patton or Clark would be elevated to the command of an Army Group, and at that point Bradley would sure

Letter from Beatrice Patton, September 2, 1943:

I hope you are too busy planning the invasion of Italy to read the papers. It might not be good for you, to learn just how highly everybody else thinks of you. But of course you are the outstanding American field commander of the war so far, and I think that the same will be said when the war is over.

I also hope that you will continue to let enemy fire seek but fail to find you, rather than "chasing the bubble reputation at the cannon's mouth." These days, I think your reputation is made of cast iron, and as firmly fixed in place as Grant's Tomb. I have also received a letter from General Eisenhower, warning that he will have to pull rank if you do become a casualty, and does not guarantee that he will leave enough of you for me to do anything with or to.

Please do not try to walk across any of the bodies of water that you have to pass over to reach your objectives. There are sharks and minefields in the Mediterranean, and meeting either one would at the very least ruin your boots. Sergeant Meeks has been faithful at repairing your boots all these years, and now that you are no longer putting your foot in your mouth quite so often he deserves a rest.

I hope you feel wonderful, being at last (or again) the happy warrior. I know it feels slightly wonderful to be married to him.

Letter to Beatrice Patton, September 7, 1943:

If you read this letter, it will be the last one you read from me, for the usual reasons that cause the writing of "last letters." However, I don't think this time being "a conqueror or a corpse" are mutaually exclusive. We are conducting parts of this operation on a shoestring, but even if I fall, before I do we should have the shoestring pulled tight around the throats of the Germans in Italy, as well as any Italians stupid enough to get in the way.

I could never embrace the better angels of my nature, because they weren't very damned good. So I embraced you instead. That has worked. Without you, I think I would be known only through the footnotes in biographies of other men.

If I do fall, I want to be buried beside the men I led. There my mortal remains can crumble away without bothering anybody. My immortal part will wait somewhere else, for you to join me so that we can take morning rides together once again.

From The New York Times, September 11, 1943:

Americans Land in Sardinia

Naval Guns, Paratroopers Support Amphibians at Cagliari

Heavy Air Raids Strike Northern Italy

AboardU.S.S. Augusta: It looks like the gamble on using paratroops again so soon has paid off. This time we were careful to have the transports approach and leave well clear of the landing beaches, and we borrowed lead navigators from the bomber boys, one for each flight of transports. The only gamble was on the paratroops' morale and the possibility of the Germans having moved in some extra AA.

But Jim Gavin is the kind of general most men really will follow to Hell. I think the jump boys might have followed Ambrose P. Burnside if the alternative was sitting out the war or going back to what they call «straight-leg» infantry. Rather like cavalry being dismounted, I suppose.

Anyway, the 82^ndboys are keeping the engineers secure while they work on the airfields. We should have two ready for fighters tomorrow, or at least ready to stage through on the way north. After that we need at least one strip good for C-47s and B-25s. Then we start on the roads and bridges out to the edge of our planned peremeter.

We could never have risked Operation MINETAUR if we'd needed to take the whole island from the Germans. But we only have to take enough of Sardinia for the air bases, and that mostly from the Italians who are ready to hand over just about anything and gift-wrap it too!

So far, anyway. The Italians are certainly surrendering rather than retreating, which smells to me as if they want to stay away from the Germans. So far the Germans and the Italians haven't come to open shooting yet. I wouldn't mind if they wait a few days. By then, any German south of Rome will have his goddamned head in a meat grinder, and the Allies will have hold of the handle!

From The New York Times, September 13, 1943:

Italy Surrenders

Italian Fleet Sails to Malta; U-Boats Sink One Cruiser

Allied Fighters from Sardinia Strike Rome

Moved ashore into the old Bishop's Palace in Cagliari. Parts of it go back to the seventeenth century and look as if they haven't been cleaned or painted since then. At least the Italian staff is willing and trying to look eager. I got them all together and talked to them through a translator who I told to not soften anything I said, or he would be the first one shot!

I told them that no doubt some of them were Fascists. I didn't care. Fascism was dead, whatever they thought. The Germans had always treated Italians like dirt, and were now too busy to reward anyone who tried something stupid, like shooting me.

Besides, I added, anybody who tries to shoot me probably won't even live to be hanged. These pistols aren't for show. I think the translator got everything through the way I wanted it.

The first A-20 landed today. Emergency landing-pilot got off course after the flak shot him up and holed a fuel tank, didn't have enough gas to make it back south, so flew out our way and landed safely with no brakes and damned little fuel. I think that proves our runways work. I won't really be happy until we can land a B-17-or even better, launch a raid of B-24s all the way to southern Germany.

I still keep hearing people fuss about the Foggia Plain around Naples. Fogg the Foggia plain! We can run a nice little air force out of Sardinia, another one out of Corsica (if we can keep the Corsicans from stealing everything that isn't nailed down), and then wait for the rest of Italy to get ripe and be ours.

I hope, for their sakes, that all the Germans in southern Italy who want to see the Fatherland again are on their best behavior. For our sakes, they can run wild with thevino and thesignorinas so that they end up with their balls decorating the gates of all the local houses.

I think the Italians really wouldn't mind fighting the Germans, if they could do so without much danger. But there's no way you can fight the Germans without danger. The next best thing for them would be some modern equipment, which I understand, seeing what they were fighting with (or without). But all their factories are still in German hands, and we're still going for the Mediterranean knockout on a tight budget.

Note from Ike says that Marshall is beginning to worry about the expindeture of landing craft that we'll need in the Channel. Have to do up a very careful reply, not telling Marshall or Ike their business, but God knows somebody has to! We're going for a knockout in the Med not to put off the Channel crossing, but because we've got a good grip on a whole lot of Germans and can kill them more conveniently now rather than later.

Every German we kill here in Italy is one less we have to worry about facing somewhere else in Europe. Territory doesn't matter. Burying Germans in it does.

Evening-Beedle [Lt. Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, Eisenhower's Chief of Staff] flew in aboard a B-25. Runway turned out to be just about long enough for a safe landing, if you don't mind having a heart attack. Beedle looked rather shaken when he climbed down. Maybe his ulcer as well as the flight? I wish he would either get better and not snarl at everybody, or get worse and have to go home.

Showed me a MOST SECRET (it was British) map about where everybody is.

The Germans are definitely moving south. But they don't have more than six divisions south of Rome. The air forces are keeping those fairly busy, so they haven't occupied too many key points. Italian units being disarmed where it's safe, but some are supposed to be just hiding their weapons and going home. Germans don't have enough strength to hunt runaways through every village.

Situation north of Rome turning nasty. The Germans are definitely holding on to industrial northern Italy, and being pretty rough about disarming Italians and arresting resistance. The SS has been in action. Total up there is about ten divisions, three of them panzers.

Beedle said he favors a landing at Salerno, in fighter range of Sicily. I said we'd have fighter cover over Civitavecchia all the way south to Naples by the time we needed it. He said we'd damned well better, or we'd lose three divisions and half the Navy.

The Salerno/Civitavecchia landing force is at sea out of Bizerte. The British are ready to cross the Straits of Messina and also land near Taranto tomorrow. I hope they move out fast again, because they'll need Italiansupport. The Italians obviously won't support anything or anybody who doesn't stand between them and the Germans, and I told Beedle as much.

He accused me of "defeatism." I did not say what he was doing, when he moaned about needing to land at Salerno. Going ashore north of Rome might put us up against strong German forces, but the Navy can hold the ring until we get air cover from Sardinia over them.The Luftwaffe has had it and anybody who thinks otherwise hasn't looked up lately.

North of Rome, we are squarely in the rear of more than twice as many more Germans as we bagged in Sicily. We are also north of several mountain ranges where the Germans could hold until winter just by rolling rocks downhill. Then nobody would go anywhere.

Salerno issouth of all these places you don't want to visit and enough Germans to hold on to them until hell froze over.

If Beedle was as good a staff officer as he thinks he is, he'd know this. But he's mostly just Ike's hatchetman rather than a real staff officer. One of many reasons I hope we continue to wipe up the floor in Italy is that if we do that, I will swing as big a hatchet as Beedle.

So to bed-alone, in case anybody who shouldn't reads this diary after a while.

From The New York Times, September 15, 1943:

British Land on Italian Mainland

One Corps in Calabria; Second Near Taranto

A New Allied Pincers Movement?

Will Rome Be An Open City? Pope, Germans Silent.

Al Stiller wants to shoot a few reporters. I told him that any German who can read a map has probably figured out where the nutcracker is going to squeeze. If he can't get his nuts out in time, that's his problem.

Cod [Colonel Charles Codman, Patton's senior aide] arrived this afternoon with the first PT boats to be based at Cagliari. He's looking well. I told him that he doesn't need to worry about us running out of war.

Dinner of C-rations and coffee, while we watched the first Sardinia-based air strikes take off. Heaviest is A-20s, but we're supposed to have a B-25 group as soon as they finish paving Runway Q.

Word is: landing at Civitavecchia. Next word: convoy with French divisional task force for Corsica coming in tonight. Told Navy to be sure swept channels stay swept. Final word: Bradley going ashore with earliest possible wave. Good for him. Fifth Army (or any other) does not need two headquarters operators. Hope he isn't sticking his head into a buzz saw!

From The New York Times, September 17, 1943:

Allies Land North of Rome

Heavy Luftwaffe Raids on Beaches

Will Rome Be Defended?

The Luftwaffe has not shot itself dry. I should have remembered that Kesselring used to be in it, and was damned good. They seem to have pulled back to airfields safe from anything shorter-ranged than a B-17, risking us going ashore unopposed at Salerno. But we went ashore right up by Rome at Civitavecchia, and they are now all over us like what you might expect.

Germans probing hard at Sardinian perimeters and raided two airfields in broad daylight. Only seven planes destroyed, five of them A-36s; we can't afford losing even that many very often. Need to clear the rest of Sardinia sooner rather than later.

Placed FrenchDeuxieme Division Coloniale under Lucian, with their first mission to secure Sardinia. Lucian asked permission to arm released Italian POWs to help. Okay, as long as he keeps them and the French well separated.

French thoroughly pissed at not being allowed to land in Corsica immediately. Understand their frustration, but no hope. We need to keep every spare ton of amphibious lift available, to reinforce Civitavecchia.

Sent Cod over to sweet-talk the Frogs. He knows all the fancy French, plus all the plain French needed to get mules, French generals, and other stubborn types moving. Drafted a message for the French, pointing out that they will have the honor of being the first French North African troops into actionand the honor of liberating the first French soil. (Foreign Legion has a battalion with the British at Taranto, I've heard, but I've also heard that the Germans are hauling ass out of the Italian heel as fast as they can.)

Message from Forward HQ, Fifth Army, Lt. Gen. Omar N. Bradley, Acting CG, to HQ, Seventh Army, Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, CG, September 18, 1943:

HEAVY LUFTWAFFE ATTACKS HAVE SUNK COMMAND SHIPANCON WITH HEAVY CASUALTIES INCLUDING GEN. CLARK, TWO TRANSPORTS, ONE DESTROYER, NUMEROUS LANDING CRAFT. CASUALTIES ON SHORE PRINCIPALLY FROM SNIPERS, BOOBYTRAPS, AND ARTILLERY. WILL ATTACK AS SOON AS POSSIBLE TO EXPAND PERIMETER TO PERMIT LANDING OF FIRST ARMORED DIVISION AS SOON AS AIR SITUATION ALLOWS. ITALIAN CIVILIAN SENTIMENT STRONGLY ANTI-GERMAN.

COPIES TO: CG EIGHTH ARMY

CG FIFTEENTH ARMY

GROUP HQ MTO

From Charles Codman, Audacity (Boston, 1961):

"Not standard form, is it?" General Patton asked.

I had now been with Patton long enough to know a rhetorical question when I heard it. "It conveys all the necessary information to everybody who needs it," seemed a neutral and accurate reply.

"So it does. But I remember a Brad who would rather be court-martialed than send an irregular message." He frowned. "But then, he's in irregular circumstances. At least for him."

I thought that was also neutral and accurate. Bradley's message certainly didn't sound like a cry for help. Of course, he would know that we could reinforce him faster than the Germans could reinforce their Rome garrison, once we regained complete command of the air, and that was a job for somebody else.

"Cod," the general said, "I'm going to hitch a ride over to Civitavecchia and get Brad's shopping list. As far as I'm concerned, supporting him is now Seventh Army's top priority. I'm taking Al Stiller and a couple of enlisted bodyguards."

I must have looked disappointed. "Cod," he said, "if the Luftwaffe starts hitting here, you'll have your hands full. Even if they don't, once the French move out Lucian will need a French-speaking liaison officer. You have just been volunteered for that post. While you're at it, see if you can trade a couple of jeeps for some good brandy. I've never known any French outfit larger than a platoon to go to war without a few bottles in reserve."

I gave him a particularly crisp salute. Neither of us wanted to admit the possibility that he might not come back from this particular excursion.

Getting over to the mainland was along hundred miles.

No way to fly, because nothing fast enough to avoid the German flyboys could land on the one emergency strip they had in the Civitavecchia perimeter. The maps showed a couple of fighter fields, but I guessed they'd be too cratered and too close to German artillery to be safe.

So I rode a PT boat, one of four with a destroyer escort carrying medical personnel. They were going to have to go ashore in DUKWs or even rafts, but that didn't seem to be bothering them.

Don't know if we were escorting the DE or it was escorting us. The skipper said that the Germans were trying to either reinforce or evacuate Corsica by night, while our air is all tied up supporting the landings. They escorted the convoys with E-boats, and sometimes the E-boats swung south to take a crack at our routes to Civitavecchia.

I told him that I was too old to enjoy midnight swims and that I'd already been in one naval battle, off Casablanca, so if the E-boats stayed home I wasn't going to complain to Admiral Doenitz. The skipper said he wasn't going to complain to Doenitz either, but he would have a beef with Marshal Kesselring if the Germans hauled out before his squadron could get in at least one good fight.

He also said that he was a Catholic, but he still wished the Pope would piss or get off the pot as far as Rome being declared an open city. I said that we'd probably confused both Pius and Kesselring, practically landing in their bedrooms, and neither of them had been dropped on their heads as babies, from what I'd heard. Neither of them would want to go down in history as the man who got Rome burned down for the first time since somewhere around 1500, so they'd probably do the right thing.

The skipper agreed, as long as they damned well did it soon!

I asked him if he couldn't move along faster. He said he didn't want to outrun the DE, and anyway, over twenty-five knots the boats gizzled fuel and made a big white wake that the Luftwaffe could pick out even at night. And our own flyboys weren't much better at target recognition…

From Richard Tregaskis, "Campaigning in the Campagna," Baltimore Sun, September 20, 1943:

The tourist guides say that Civitavecchia, the main port of Rome, is on the Tyrrhenian Sea, and is the major ferry port for Sardinia. By the time they allowed reporters into the beachhead, most of the city wasin the Tyrrhenian Sea-or the harbor, or the rivers and canals that fed the port. What our air force and the bombardment supporting the landings hadn't wrecked, the German artillery was finishing off. No ferries were running to Sardinia either, partly because it was in Allied hands and partly because most of them were sitting on the bottom of the harbor.

General Bradley had made his headquarters in the basement of a half-wrecked warehouse. The rubble was just as good a hiding place for our machine guns as it was for the Germans, and we had smoke pots, booby traps, and a few strings of barbed wire laid out. The basement also had several entrances, so that if the Germans decided to come in one, we could leave through one of the others-and, as the general said:

"If there aren't too many of them, we can slip around behind them and-ah, dispose of them, then get back to work. This isn't the Old West. Nobody will complain about us shooting them in the back."

Bradley looked ready to help that project along. He carried an issue.45 and a couple of spare magazines for it, and he had a carbine and another pile of spare magazines on one corner of the Italian worktable he was using for a desk. He also looked more like a company commander than an army commander, and even a little like a militarized and clean-shaven Abraham Lincoln. He didn't have Old Abe's wit, but he certainly had a knack for making everyone around him feel that it would be insubordinate to get excited when the general was so calm.

The only time I saw him upset during those three days was when General Patton visited. I don't know if it was wondering if Patton had come to relieve or at least criticize him, or worrying about keeping Patton alive. The German snipers kept trying to infiltrate, we had lost battalion commanders and hospital personnel, and Patton wore all his ribbons, three stars everyplace they would fit, a polished helmet and boots, and a riding crop and two ivory-handled pistols. It was all a little messy from his PT boat ride, but it still made him a target visible three hundred yards away in the light of the fires and flare bursts.

Patton grinned. "Brad, you owe the Relief Fund about a hundred dollars in fines. Boots dirty, no tie, no helmet, and when did you last shave?"

"When I went down to the evacuation hospital yesterday. My own razor didn't make it ashore. Most of the rest went in a shell burst. If the shell had been five yards closer, you'd be talking to Troy Middleton."

Bradley was smiling, but there was also an edge in his voice. He probably was not in a mood for Patton's jokes. After sleeping maybe five hours in the last three days, my sense of humor wouldn't have been in particularly good shape either.

Patton blinked, then actually apologized. "Sorry, Brad. I didn't come to tell you how to do your job. I came to find out how we could help you do it better."

"Well, we did have a little list," Bradley said. "Let's pull it out and see what we still need."

The bodyguards chased all the reporters and juniors out, to let the two generals talk. I learned afterward that Bradley only asked that a bomb line be drawn far enough forward so that the heavy bombers could strike the German artillery, if necessary. Patton was concerned about civilian casualties, particularly since the Italians were beginning organized assistance to the Allies. Civilian opinion in Rome was sure to influence whether it was declared an open city or not.

It was while we were trying to stay hidden from snipers and in jumping distance of a ditch or foxhole that we heard ragged cheering from down toward the waterfront. Then we heard the squeal and grumble of tanks, growing steadily louder, and the first of a line of Shermans nosed around the corner, knocking loose a shower of bricks from a stub of wall.

A sergeant scrambled down from the turret of the lead tank. "Company C, 3^rdBattalion, 66^thArmored Regiment reporting for-Oh, you're a civilian." He looked around. "Anyone I can report to?"

"You can report to me," came a high-pitched gravelly voice from the shadows. "It's good news to see you gentlemen. We hadn't expected you for another twenty-four hours."

A tank lieutenant stepped forward and saluted. "We decided that we might be safer-" Patton glared "-and more useful ashore, than bobbing around, getting salt in the transmissions and wondering when the Luftwaffe was going to get lucky."

"Get some hot food and a couple of hours' sleep," Patton said. "You'll have a busy day tomorrow, because we want to push out the perimeter far enough to get rid of the German artillery and bring in some air support."

"What about Italian civilians?"

Patton's grin got wider, which I wouldn't have thought was possible. "We just heard. The Italians have risen against the Germans in Naples, Salerno, Ravenna, Cassino, and several towns in Apulia that the operator couldn't spell and I can't pronounce. I don't think we have much to worry about with Italian civilians-except hitting them by accident. They may not be Allies yet, but they damned sure aren't enemies any more!"

There must have been a lot of Italians within earshot, and some of them knowing English. The cheering from all around us sounded like a football crowd just after the home team scored the winning touchdown. Then we heard:

"Vive America! Vive Generale Patton!"

Patton cupped both hands over his mouth, "Vive Generale Bradley!"

We went on cheering the Allies and their generals until the whole tank company had rolled off to their bivouac. We might still have been out there cheering, if a plane hadn't buzzed the warehouse, too fast to let us identify it.

"Could be one of ours, or it could be a German out of bombs," Patton said. "But I'll take a small bet from anyone who cares. In another forty-eight hours, if you hear a plane overhead, it will be ours."

From The New York Times, September 21, 1943:

Rome Declared Open City

Allies Break Out of Civitavecchia Beachhead

Wild Greetings for Italians' Liberators

Excerpts from Patton's Press Conference, Rome, September 28, 1943:

Q: How did the Germans end up leaving a corridor between Rome and the sea that let us attack them in the rear?

A: I think they had it in mind to do the same to us. Remember, if a territory is "open," neither side can conduct military operations in it or against it. The Germans are good soldiers; as long as they have one man and one bullet left they'll be thinking of attacking. But we were doing the same, and we had more tanks, the Allied navies offshore, and air superiority.

So we struck south before they could strike north, and that's how we ended up encircling them at Anzio.

Q: Didn't we take heavy naval losses?

A: We did loseAugusta, two more destroyers, an ammunition ship, and quite a few landing craft. But the British were ready with reinforcements by the time we started south, and let me tell you, battleships make damned good tank destroyers.Warspite 's already drydocked in Malta, and she'll fight again.

Q: Have you found Marshal Kesselring yet?

A: No, and I suspect that when we do the only thing we can offer him is a military funeral. In his situation, I wouldn't be alive by now. We'll mark his grave and hope to be able to return his body to his family after the war.

Q: I don't suppose-

A: That I'd be willing to predict when that would be? That gets into politics, and so many people tell me that I don't know anything about politics that I'm ready to believe them.

All I can say is that we'll have to win several more campaigns bigger and bloodier than this one before the Germans are beaten, and we'll need all the men and weapons we have and all the strength of our allies to win those victories. The war is a long way from over, and anybody who says otherwise is even crazier than I am!

Q: What about the Medal of Honor for General Gavin?

A: I can't comment on awards that haven't been officially recommended. I can say that he certainly did a heroic job completing the Anzio encirclement with his link up to the British. I can also say that if he doesn't receive it for the Anzio jump, he will have other chances. His wounds were serious, but they won't keep him off jump duty. Just as well, for the sake of the doctor who would be stuck with the job of telling him otherwise!

Q: What's next for you, General Patton?

A: That has the ultimate secret classification-nobody knows. There are going to be enough Germans to go around, though, so I'm not worried. (Looks at watch) Our time is just about up, so rather than take any more questions, I'd like to call for a minute of silence, in memory of the dead of the Italian campaign, starting with Lieutenant General Mark Clark.

(Silence)

Letter to Beatrice Patton, October 10, 1943:

… actually assigned me a plane and crew to start my trip home, so it's just possible I may be calling on you only a little while after this letter does. If they send me home by way of England, it may be quite a while, but they won't dare risk my using up all the parades and other goodies that Montgomery will want them to save for him. (Get right down to it-I think the little weasel deserves most of them. I think we puny piffling colonials taught him a few things about war.).

They have told Bradley that he can keep Fifth Army, which smells to me of his having an Army Group for routing the Germans out of the industrial North or doing some other things I can't talk about. That in turn implies something fairly imposing for your old cavalryman. You know what I want, but if the decision is to give me Army Ground Forces, it won't kill me.

One request-consider it an order, if you wish. Reserve a nice comfortable hotel suite, someplace hard for reporters to get to but with good room service. Don't pack a lot of clothes. Do pack some extra money, so we can bribe the staff to silence instead of my having to get out of bed and shoot them.

Your affectionate Georgie

P.S. I expect to be well-armed enough, even without a pistol.