Supreme Commander (8 page)

The President was not the only source of frustration. As early as February, Eisenhower had complained about the relative lack of urgency in the landing craft program. In May the problem was still there. The Navy had given top priority to building escorting vessels for convoys, a decision with which Eisenhower had no quarrel—there could be no BOLERO if the Americans could not get their convoys to England. Many of the nation’s shipyards concentrated on building merchant ships; again, Eisenhower obviously approved. The trouble was that the Navy also wanted to rebuild its capital ship fleet and as a result the landing craft program, despite verbal agreement as to its necessity, was stuck in a rut. From Eisenhower’s point of view there was no point to bringing men and equipment to England unless the landing craft were available to carry them the last few miles across the Channel. Even had he forgotten it, the British had not and would make sure the question remained at the fore, since their arguments against SLEDGEHAMMER and even ROUNDUP would center around the lack of landing craft.

Eisenhower, along with Hull and Wedemeyer of OPD, was a member of a subcommittee of the Washington BOLERO committee, called the “Special Committee on Landing Craft for the Continent.” On May 6, the day Roosevelt reiterated his support for BOLERO, Eisenhower attended a meeting of the subcommittee. The results were disappointing and at noon Eisenhower returned to his desk to ask, on his pad, some questions: “Who is responsible for bldg. landing craft? What types are they bldg? Are they suitable for cross channel work? Will the number of each type
be sufficient? etc?” And finally, “How in hell can we win this war unless we can crack some heads?”
¹⁴

On May 11 Eisenhower was able to turn his attention away from details and concentrate on the question of command structure in England. Major General Joseph T. McNarney, Marshall’s deputy chief of staff, had just submitted a proposed organizational chart under the heading “U.S. Set-up for Administrative Purposes.” McNarney’s chart showed, for the United States, the commanding general, and under him the commanders of U.S. ground forces, air forces, SOS, and naval forces. McNarney put the entire BOLERO operation under the BOLERO Task Force commander, presumably British, who would report to the CCS. Marshall asked Eisenhower to study McNarney’s chart and comment on it.
¹⁵

Eisenhower began by questioning the advisability of McNarney’s use of the word “administrative,” since it implied definite limitations upon the authority of the officer. Eisenhower insisted that he should be “a Theater Commander in every sense of the word” with full responsibility. In the American Army the tradition was to delegate almost complete authority to the field commander, but this was not the British practice. He felt it was important to emphasize to the British the powers of the chief Army officer in England, so that the British would not be turning to Washington whenever an important question arose. This could be accomplished most easily by calling the top-ranking officer what he was, “Commander.”

In the bulk of his paper, Eisenhower commented on the type of officer needed to command the U.S. forces in England. The first requirement was that he have the full confidence of the Chief of Staff and be in full agreement with Marshall’s basic ideas. He had to be able to exercise command, for all activities of U.S. forces in the British Isles “
must
be cleared through him; otherwise his position will be intolerable.” Next, he had to be flexible, capable of playing any one of several roles, and able to “fit perfectly into the final organization—no matter what that may be.” BOLERO could take many forms, and Europe might become a secondary theater. In that case, the commanding general would unquestionably continue to serve as theater commander. If BOLERO developed as planned, and Europe became the critical theater, it was possible that the President would send Marshall himself to assume command, so the officer who had been serving as commanding general should be able to act as Marshall’s deputy or chief of staff. The officer should be selected immediately, and “the whole task of
preparation in the United Kingdom should be turned over to him as rapidly as possible, and he should be allowed to carry out his task
with a minimum interference from this end
.”
¹⁶

Marshall did not make an immediate selection; he evidently wanted to see how Chaney would work out. By May 21 he was concerned at the lack of progress, which he felt might be due to an absence of communication between Chaney and OPD. Marshall decided to send Eisenhower to London to bring Chaney up to date and to come back with recommendations on future organization. Eisenhower left on May 2, noting that he had “an uneasy feeling that either we do not understand our own C.G. and Staff in England or they don’t understand us. Our planning for Bolero is
not
progressing!”
¹⁷

On Saturday, May 23, Eisenhower left Washington for Montreal. At 11:30
A.M
. he flew on to Goose Bay, Labrador, leaving there in the late afternoon for England. Three hours out the weather forced his pilot to turn back, and he spent the night at Gander, Newfoundland. There was no break in the weather the next day, so he killed the time shooting skeet, his first day off in half a year. On May 25 he made it to Prestwick, Scotland, where he watched landing craft in operation, talked with some British officers, and visited the birthplace of Robert Burns.
¹⁸
That evening he took the train to London, arriving early Tuesday morning, May 26.

He spent the next day in conference with Chaney and his staff, going in the evening to a dinner given by Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles F. Portal. The next day he observed a field exercise in the Kent-Sussex area, under the direction of the Army Commander in the Southeast, Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery. Later he attended a lecture at which Montgomery explained the exercise. While the British general talked, Eisenhower lit a cigarette. He had taken about two puffs when Montgomery broke off in the middle of a sentence, sniffed the air without looking around, and in a loud voice demanded, “Who’s smoking?”

“I am,” Eisenhower replied.

“I don’t permit smoking in my office,” Montgomery said sternly. Eisenhower put out the cigarette. When he returned to the United States, Eisenhower reported that Montgomery was “a decisive type who appears to be extremely energetic and professionally able.”
¹⁹

On the morning of May 28 Eisenhower met with the BCOS to discuss over-all command organization for ROUNDUP. The British submitted two proposals, one of which called for a supreme commander, while the other called for a committee system. Eisenhower explained that the Americans believed “that single command was essential and that committee
command could not conduct a major battle.” There was no need to hurry the selection of a supreme commander, however, since ROUNDUP was nearly a year away, and if SLEDGEHAMMER went off, it would be under a British officer. The British then asked with whom they should deal in the meantime. Eisenhower, astonished, replied that Chaney was the theater commander, Marshall’s representative and the operational and administrative commander of all U.S. forces in the United Kingdom. “This idea had apparently never occurred to the British,” Eisenhower noted.

None of Eisenhower’s answers satisfied the British. They wanted a command organization agreed to at once, and they were not impressed with Chaney (neither was Eisenhower, who found Chaney and his staff still wearing civilian clothes, working an eight-hour day, and taking weekends off). On the main point, Eisenhower noted, “It is quite apparent that the question of high command is the one that is bothering the British very much and some agreement, in principle, will have to be reached at an early date in order that they will go ahead wholeheartedly to succeeding steps.”

That afternoon Eisenhower met with Vice-Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, Chief of Combined Operations. At this first meeting with the admiral, Eisenhower was so impressed with the way in which he had created a joint staff and made it work that he asked permission to send some American officers over to join Combined Operations. Eisenhower also discussed landing craft with Mountbatten and found that the admiral was as concerned about the subject as he was. Eisenhower had not thought in any detail about types of landing craft and was a willing listener when Mountbatten explained that he wanted the largest ones he could get since he believed that strong ground formations had to hit the beaches suddenly and simultaneously. This could not be accomplished in small boats because the required density was not possible in them. At the conclusion of the meeting Eisenhower may have felt as if he had been at school. Within a year he would be assuming the teacher’s role, with Mountbatten as student. But neither man felt anything stiff or formal about their relationship, and they were well on the way to becoming close friends.

That was not the case with Eisenhower’s relationship with General Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), with whom Eisenhower had a session on May 29. Brooke, a fiery Irishman with impressive battle credentials, carried throughout the war the handicap of a prejudice against the Americans. After his first meeting with Marshall,
Brooke had commented that the American Chief of Staff was “rather overfilled with his own importance,” a unique judgment. Brooke admitted that Marshall was “a pleasant and easy man to get on with” (a conclusion he would later change), “but I should not put him down as a great man.”
²⁰
Brooke’s comments on Eisenhower, from beginning to end, were similar but more scathing. He put Eisenhower down as an affable type with no strategic sense or practical ability.

Eisenhower’s practice was either to say something nice about an associate or not mention him, and he seldom mentioned Brooke.

At their first meeting the contemptuous British officer lectured to the diffident American. In view of the difference in their ranks and positions, Eisenhower had to listen and, occasionally, raise an objection, but he could not speak for himself—his responsibility was to relay Marshall’s opinions. The results of the meeting, in which high command and the organization of American forces in England were discussed, were inconclusive.

On June 3 Eisenhower returned to America filled with dissatisfaction. The British seemed to know what they were about and where they were going, but their idea, shared by everyone except Mountbatten, that the attack would be risky and it would take at least three months to build up a beachhead and launch a major offensive, seemed to Eisenhower to be unnecessarily timid. He was even more disturbed by what he had seen of the American contingent in London, which seemed hardly to know that the United States was in the war. The low opinion the British held of Chaney and his staff and the British desire to go over Chaney’s head directly to Marshall emphasized the point. The day after his return to his desk in OPD, Eisenhower noted, “It is necessary to get a punch behind the job or we’ll never be ready by spring, 1943, to attack. We must get going!”
²¹

Upon his return to Washington, Eisenhower sent a memorandum to Marshall saying it was “immediately necessary” to send to England the officer who would command the American ground forces in ROUNDUP. He recommended for that position Major General Mark Clark. Marshall agreed, but he rejected Eisenhower’s next recommendation. Eisenhower said he had given “a great deal of study” to the problem of who should be the commanding general of all American forces in England, and suggested McNarney. “I believe that General McNarney has the strength of character, the independence of thought, and the ability to fulfill satisfactorily the requirements of this difficult task.” Marshall, however, wanted McNarney to stay on as his deputy chief of staff.
²²

Three days later Eisenhower added another thought on the subject of command in England. He felt that whether Marshall decided to retain Chaney or replace him, the officer in command should be promoted to lieutenant general, so that the British would pay him a little more respect than they were currently giving Chaney. Eisenhower realized that the question of promotion might appear trivial, but in this case he thought it imperative. Then he tried again to get Marshall to appoint McNarney, pointing out that McNarney was familiar with British organization and methods and had the outstanding characteristic of patience, “which he possesses to a noticeable degree at no sacrifice of energy and force.” In a prophetic statement, Eisenhower concluded, “Patience is highly necessary because of the complications in British procedure.”
²³

On June 8 Eisenhower took to Marshall a draft directive he had prepared in early May for the commander of the European Theater of Operations. It was essential, Eisenhower argued, in view of the distance between the European Theater and the United States, “that absolute unity of command should be exercised by the Theater Commander.” The officer himself should be able to organize, train, and command the combined forces of all arms and services set up in the BOLERO plan, and should also be qualified to assume the duties of chief of staff to the eventual ROUNDUP commander (it was widely assumed by now that this would be Marshall).

The draft called for a European Theater of Operations (ETO), with a commanding general who would “command all U. S. Army forces and personnel” in the theater and would “exercise planning and operational control, under the principle of unity of command, over all U. S. Navy forces assigned to that theater for participation with U. S. Army operations against Western Europe.” Remembering Pershing’s fight in World War I to keep the British and French from absorbing American units into their corps, Eisenhower said that, although the commanding general was required to co-operate with the British, “the forces of the United States are to be maintained as a separate and distinct component of the combined forces.”
²⁴

When Eisenhower handed the draft to Marshall he asked the Chief to read it carefully because it could be an important document in the further waging of the war. Marshall replied, “I certainly do want to read it. You may be the man who executes it. If that’s the case, when can you leave?”
²⁵