Ike's Way

(See Cover)

General Dwight David Eisenhower of the U.S. Army went to Messina last week and decorated the commander of one of the U.S., British and French armies serving under him. That commander was General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery. On Sept. 2 Montgomery went to bed at his usual time, 10 p.m., having already written and issued an order to his troops :

". . . The time has now come to carry the battle on to the mainland of Italy. To the Eighth Army has been given the great honor of being the first troops of the Allied armies to land on the mainland of the Continent of Europe.

"We have a good plan, and air support on a greater scale than we have ever had before.

"There can be only one end to this next battle--another success.

"Forward to victory.

"Let us knock Italy out of the war.

"Good luck, and God bless you all." That night Monty's Britons and Canadians moved across the docks and beaches to their landing boats. The boats, group by group, turned toward the near shore of Italy. The night was clear and starry. Across the Straight of Messina, only two to twelve miles wide, the men in the boats could see the rocky outline of the Calabrian peninsula. Dawn was touching the sky and the shore when the first invaders landed on the chosen beachhead, a ten-mile strip of destiny around the port of Reggio Calabria.

It was Sept. 3, 1943, four years to the day since Britain declared war; three years, two months since the last British soldier left Dunkirk; two years, four months, two days since the last British soldier left Greece; 56 days since the first British and American soldiers arrived in Sicily.

There was little resistance. Italian defenders in pillboxes fired several rounds and came out with their hands in the air. Italian civilians came out of their houses announcing that the Germans had left three days before, retiring into the hills. At Allied headquarters in Algiers a press officer read out a brief communique: "Allied forces under the command of General Eisenhower have continued their advance."

It was a step toward destiny, but only the first step. The world waited for the next step. Ike Eisenhower's forces, massed under the belly of Europe, might strike with sudden full force at Sardinia and Corsica; into southern France; at the western Balkans, long softened by guerrillas.* But the most logical next blow would be at the real body of southern Italy, which the Eighth only nicked at its lowest extremity in Calabria.

The Troops. For a massive blow, Eisenhower had the troops. Correspondents in Algiers, London and Washington freely reminded the world, including the enemy, of the forces available to him. There was British Lieut. General Kenneth Anderson's First Army, trained for conquest of Northwest Africa and hardened in victory there. Only one of Anderson's divisions had been used in Sicily, the hill-taking 78th. There was U.S. Lieut. General Mark Wayne Clark's Fifth Army, built and trained behind the lines during the Tunisian and Sicilian campaigns, undoubtedly poised. Possibly included in the Fifth: two infantry divisions, the 9th and the 34th; and the 1st Armored Division, which have not been heard from since they fought Arnim south of Bizerte. There was Lieut. General George Patton's great Seventh Army--three infantry divisions, an airborne division and an armored division thoroughly experienced in overwater invasion. There were also General Henri Honore Giraud's 200,000 Frenchmen, equipped with U.S. weapons, ready and eager to fight for the liberation of France.

There were more than 700,000 men in these forces, and General Eisenhower may have more than the five armies. Any recent reinforcements from the U.S. and Britain have been secret. Correspondents in the Middle East reported last week that practically all U.S. troops except airmen and technical personnel had left Persia, Syria, Palestine and Egypt.

A.F.H.Q. This was the military power which the Axis faced in the south and which the world knew about. Behind that power was Ike Eisenhower, whom the enemy and the world had gradually come to know. Beside him, part of a sensitive, interlocking mechanism of responsibility, were such top commanders in the theater as British General Sir Harold R. L. G. Alexander, chief planner and strategist; Admiral Sir Andrew Brown Cunningham, boss of the Mediterranean fleet; Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, strategist of the air. They made the specific plans, which had to be shared with President Roosevelt, with Prime Minister Churchill, with General Marshall and the Anglo-U.S. staffs in Washington. But the ultimate responsibility was Eisenhower's. And to accomplish his job Eisenhower must lean heavily on his British-American headquarters staff, the unsung heroes who attend to the complex, dull details that are an inevitable and vital part of fighting a war.

Allied Force Headquarters, which operates in Algiers, is, to the field soldier, fantastically enormous. Attached to it are some 1,100 officers and 15,000 enlisted men to work its communications, gard its sprawling area, cook its meals, drive its cars, guard its billets and offices on more than 2,000 pieces of Algiers real estate. Its Signals center handles in 1,000 code messages a day. A newly arrived U.S. officer, previously accustomed to the spaces and complexities of Washington's Pentagon Building, took a preliminary look at A.F.H.Q. and gasped:

"It's a hyperthyroid War Department!"

Literally atop this maze, in the hilltop St. George Hotel, Eisenhower spends most of his working days. In off hours, he lives in a pleasant Algiers villa with three companions: his devoted "dog robber" (orderly), Sergeant "Micky" McKeogh; a Scottish terrier named Telek; his principal aide, Navy Commander Harold Butcher, a friend from Washington days who used to be a broadcasting-company executive. Smooth, fast-talking, fast-thinking Harold Butcher is reputed to have much influence with Eisenhower.

The Unbloodied Workers. To his little-known, unbloodied workers, the Staff Officers, Eisenhower recently said: "The job is a hard and thankless one. You will not go down in the pages of history. But we have shown and will continue to show the world one thing--that the Allies can fight under one command and as one nation."

Boss of A.F.H.Q., under Eisenhower, is U.S. Major General Walter Bedell ("Beedle") Smith, who is a recurrent motif throughout the complexity of Eisenhower's staff organization. Said a British officer: "All this would not be possible without Ike and Beedle." Stocky "Beedle" Smith used to train bird dogs and hunt quail with General Marshall in Virginia; in North Africa he keeps a cocker spaniel and a Virginia orderly, Sergeant Sam Carter, to remind him of happier times. He is the production manager of the Allied war machine. While his chief is on high with the plotters and the planners, Beedle is at his desk hacking through red tape, making mile-a-minute decisions. No one appreciates Smith more than Eisenhower. Late one afternoon the General entered Smith's busy office, gave him a mock salute and said: "Boss, may I go home now?"

Under busy Beedle the staff is built up in layers like a pousse cafe of Yanks and Britons.

Smith's Deputy Chief of Staff is Major General J. F. M. ("Jock") Whitely, generally rated as one of the best staff officers in the British Army.

Coordinating all the complex procedures and problems, especially of G-1 (Personnel) and G-4 (Supply), where U.S. and British methods differ most widely, is Chief Administrative Officer Lieut. General Sir Humfrey Gale. His pet project: a standard ration for British and U.S. Armies which will provide the same basic foods, yet satisfy the more violent national tastes (tea for Tommies, coffee for Yanks).

G-1 is headed by suave U.S. Brigadier General Benjamin M. Sawbridge. His deputy: British Brigadier Victor Westropp. One of their chief headaches now is the problem of disciplining, caring for and feeding 400,000 Axis prisoners who gobble up four shiploads of food a week.

G-2 (Intelligence) must gather, evaluate and disseminate all essential information (notes about the enemy's armor, defenses, equipment, facts about the terrain, everything that needs to be known before the start of a combat). Head of Eisenhower's smooth-working Intelligence is Brigadier Kenneth W. D. Strong, at 43 one of the British Army's bright young men. Strong's receding chin and horn-rimmed glasses make him look like an American caricature of an Englishman. He is a leading authority on the German Army, an able military thinker. At work he religiously wears the tartan trousers of his regiment, the Royal Scots Fusiliers; he has been accused of wearing plaid pajamas. His deputy: U.S. Colonel Thomas E. Roderick, onetime executive officer of the U.S. War Department's G-2 in Washington.

Top man in G-3 is U.S. Brigadier General Lowell Rooks, former head of the U.S. Ground Forces' Training Division. On G-3 (the Operations Section) devolves the job of reviewing all possible future operations, submitting likely battle plans to the commander in chief. During actual combat there is constant liaison between G-3 and the "agents for conducting battle." Explains Rooks's deputy British Brigadier C. S. Sugden: "We continually discuss our problems just to make sure we're fighting the same battle." Sugden is a brilliant, spectacular, fantastically tall, long-nosed Briton who messes with twelve Americans and regularly complains : "I'm picking up all their bloody habits."

Handling the incredibly complicated British-American supply job in A.F.H.Q.'s G-4 are 47-year-old Brigadier General Clarence Adcock and his British deputy, 47-year-old Brigadier R. R. Lewis. Also concerned with U.S. supplies and personnel is Major General Everett Hughes, head of a separate U.S. administrative staff. Drawing supplies 1,900 miles from Britain, 4,100 miles from the U.S., these officers must work at least three months ahead of battle schedules. At least once they vetoed an invasion plan because the supplies could not be promised in time. Says Brigadier Lewis: "Someone just has to sit with a crystal ball and try to contact the future."

Ike. It was this stout staff that helped him on his road to Rome and the ultimate goal, Berlin. For the harmony that prevails throughout, Ike Eisenhower has his own tact and diplomacy to thank. On October 14, General Eisenhower will be 53. Since last February, when he was temporarily commissioned a full general, he has been the youngest of that rank in the U.S. Army. This does not surprise the officers with and under whom Eisenhower has served. Since graduating from West Point in 1915, he has always shown a marked capacity for getting ahead, always worked and studied more than he played.

But he has warm qualities, too, and they, as much as his sterner attributes, have had to do with his eminence and effectiveness today. In the prewar years, when he had the time, he played a notable game of bridge or poker. He liked to cook outdoor meals for his guests. He was, even to his wife, an engaging conversationalist. One woman said that Ike Eisenhower was the handsomest bald man she had ever met.

In London, when he was shaping the genesis of his present command, Eisen hower's greatest achievement was a diplomatic one. As Allied commander of the European theater at a time when the U.S. had not contributed much fighting to the war, he took precedence over the British, and they came to like it.

General Eisenhower accomplished this all-important feat by example, cajolery and compulsion. He told his officers, U.S. and British, that they had to get along. He then saw to it that they did so or left his service. First in Britain and then in North Africa, U.S. and British ground, air and naval men have worked, eaten, drunk and fought together as one service, to an extent and in a fashion never dreamed of in World War I. In the heat of combat, U.S. and British field officers go out of their way to criticize themselves, compliment one another on a job well done.

On the Foot. After he had decorated General Mongomery last week, blue-eyed, bald General Eisenhower returned to his headquarters, to pore over planners' plans, to check over staffmen's work.

There were problems of routes and communications through Italy's foot. The middle of the Calabrian peninsula was a high and rugged hump, with narrow plains running around its coasts. The hump, the end of the Apennines, continued straight up Italy like a backbone. Main trunk lines, perforce, trailed along the two coasts of the Italian boot and were vulnerable to air attack. For days Allied bombers had pounded Italian railways south of Naples, had blasted freightcars in clogged yards as far north as Pisa. This was strategic bombing designed to hamstring Axis troops in the south.

Before the week was out bombers flew all the way to Bolzano and cut the Brenner route there. Through that pass in the top of Italy crawled 85% of the coal, 95% of the oil from Germany to Italy. By week's end, daily raids had disrupted and tangled the whole network of communications in the 700-mile-long peninsula, hampering the movements of reinforcements, blocking the withdrawls of troops.

Against this confused citadel of the Axis troops, the Allies, at week's end, struck another blow. Commando trooops landed and Bagnara on the west side of the toe, joined another force that had landed at Catona. Behind Allied planes that bombed and strafed enemy strong points, Montgomery's men cautiously advanced around the ball of the toe.

So far it had been a step-by-step assault. But Ike and his staff had ready all the plots and plans and reports and records, they had assembled men and materiel and were ready to uncork the next secrets of A.F.H.Q. It would not be long.

*British and Greek staff officers have traveled by secret routes to confer with Greek guerrilla and patriot leaders under the very noses of Axis troops.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.