In this still new situation of coalition warfare, a deft touch was needed to ensure the Anglo-US partnership worked on the battlefield. Alexander was ideally placed to provide this steer and soon won over his new American subordinate commanders, including Major-General Omar Bradley, who at the end of March 1943 was soon to take over command of US II Corps. Initially put out that his corps were not to be used in the final drive on Tunis, Bradley had braced himself for a confrontation, only to be swiftly disarmed. Alex had listened and assured him II Corps would be part of his plans. ‘We were impressed with Alexander,’ noted Bradley’s aide, Captain Chester B. Hansen.11 ‘He was a striking and possessed individual who simply exuded an air of confidence.’ Later in the campaign, once II Corps had been sent to northern Tunisia and Bradley had taken over, Alexander had visited his headquarters. Bradley had shown him the current map and his dispositions and planned movements, of which Alex did not entirely approve. ‘By a brilliant piece of diplomacy,’ noted Harold Macmillan, then the British political advisor to General Eisenhower as Supreme Allied Commander in North Africa, ‘he suggested to his subordinate commander some moves which he might well make.12 He did not issue an order. He sold the American general the idea, and made him think that he had thought of it all himself.’ It was a command style particularly suited to coalition operations.
Alex was far too polite ever to have looked down upon his new peers and comrades in arms; and moreover, a sense of unity of purpose, of working together, side-by-side, hand-in-hand, was stressed over and over by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and was personally championed with religious zeal by Eisenhower. It was a firm policy that stood in stark contrast against the naked contempt with which Nazi Germany regarded its allies.
Certainly, it would have been a crime had the chiefs of staff allowed Eisenhower to resign back in January 1943. While not all had run smoothly on the battlefield, there was no doubt he had handled the extremely difficult political situation, with the Vichy French leadership coming in from the cold, as well as the myriad different personalities under his command, with admirable deftness and diplomacy.
Eisenhower – or Ike, as he was widely known – understood that given the cultural differences, and given that Britain had been fighting the war for far longer than the Americans and had a more entrenched military tradition, it would be all too easy for their new British colleagues to appear superior and to look down their noses at their new Johnny-come-lately comrades in arms. Equally, it was every bit as important the Americans did not develop unhealthy chips on their shoulders about British snootiness or perceived standoffishness. National pride and competitiveness – tribal instinct – were one thing; Anglophobia and Americaphobia, quite another. ‘I do not allow, ever,’ Eisenhower made clear, ‘an expression to be used in this Headquarters in my presence that even insinuates a British versus American problem exists.13 So far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t.’
‘In his current efforts to improve British and American relationships,’ noted Eisenhower’s good friend and naval aide, Harry C. Butcher, in March 1943, ‘I see in Ike something akin to a fireman atop an observation tower watching a forest for smoke or flame.14 He has to put out some fires by logical argument that to win the war the Allies must stick together.’
Eisenhower warned all his US senior commanders that any American preaching anti-British sentiment would be sent home. Alexander was similarly impressed upon to do the same with British commanders, as were the other British top brass. Publicly, Alex certainly made sure the Americans got their due deserts following victory in North Africa. The 34th ‘Red Bull’ Division were a case in point. They had arrived in North Africa having never even seen a tank, let alone trained with one, and their first engagement at Fondouk in Tunisia in February had been a disaster. Sent to battle school, they had then returned and in April had captured from the Germans and held a vital high point, Hill 609, despite repeated enemy counter-attacks. In recognition of this, Alex had insisted the Red Bulls lead the subsequent victory parade in Tunis.
And while a host of varied factors had contributed to that huge Allied success, there was no question that Alex, as the overall Allied battlefield commander, had gripped the situation swiftly, acted with tact, charm and sound judgement, and played a key role in making sure the fighting in Tunisia was brought to a rapid and successful conclusion. Equally, it was Eisenhower who had led from the front in terms of forging the coalition. There were disagreements, naturally, but there were many new – and lasting – friendships being developed too, and these relationships were ensuring that the Allies were indeed working together towards one united goal: the eventual unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany, as had been agreed at the Casablanca Conference back in January; and with it, victory.
Sicily, however, would be very different from Tunisia, for both men. For Eisenhower, the challenges of preparing for Operation HUSKY were gargantuan, especially since planning had been taking place concurrently with the campaign in Tunisia. The responsibility, too, for overseeing the Allied re-entry into Axis-controlled Europe was on an entirely different level from the campaign in North Africa, carrying a hugely increased weight of importance. Alexander, for his part, also found himself in uncharted territory. Up to this point, he had repeatedly been brought in to salvage a situation that had gone badly awry. Now, for the first time, he was commanding a multinational force that was in the ascendancy, and at this stage in the war it was essential that Allied fortunes remained that way. Under him were two army-sized forces: the brand new and comparatively inexperienced US Force 343, which would become Seventh Army, and the battle-hardened and experienced British Eighth Army, still code-named Force 545, both with commanders whose experiences mirrored those of the men they commanded. Yet those two men – Patton and Montgomery – were also strong-willed and highly divisive characters and would need careful handling. In fact, the entire operation would need careful handling, to put it mildly, for the pressures now were even greater. Failure was not to be countenanced. It was simply unthinkable, and yet the risks remained huge. No one could say for sure how the enemy would react. Would the Italians fight as they had in Tunisia? Would the Germans throw more men and materiel into the island as Hitler had so dramatically reinforced Tunisia? No amphibious operation on this scale had ever before been attempted. There was, unquestionably, much that could still go wrong.
CHAPTER 3
The Problem of Planning
PLANNING FOR HUSKY WAS an extremely daunting challenge for the Allies, for a whole host of reasons. Winning in North Africa, where the Axis forces had had very difficult lines of communication, was one thing. Breaking into Festung Europa was quite another. Operation TORCH the previous November had been an astonishingly successful undertaking, but it had been an amphibious landing against poorly trained and equipped Vichy French troops – and in any case, political machinations beforehand had paved the way and ensured the ‘enemy’ forces opposing them came to heel in quick order and barely put up a fight.
Operation HUSKY, by contrast, was an altogether much bigger undertaking, and the Allies’ first attempt at re-entering Europe since the withdrawal of 1940. The last time the Allies had undertaken a major European amphibious assault had been at Gallipoli in the First World War, and no one needed reminding how badly that had gone. Alexander, who had studied the campaign at staff college and had walked the ground back in 1922, was all too aware that only by very close cooperation between the Allies, and between their collective air, land and naval forces, could the risks of such a massive undertaking be kept to reasonable proportions. What’s more, now that they had a great victory behind them, it was absolutely inconceivable that HUSKY should fail. Militating against failure trumped all other considerations. All.
The decision to invade Sicily had been made during the Casablanca Conference in January 1943. It had been back in December 1942, at a time when they had been expecting a swift end to the campaign in Tunisia, that Roosevelt and Churchill had agreed to meet with their chiefs of staff to plan future strategy; but then bad weather and unexpected heavy reinforcements by the Germans had put paid to any such rapid outcome, so that long weeks – months even – of fighting were still to come before the Allies would finally win the North African battle for good.
None the less, the meeting had been planned and organized for January, the Allies still needed to thrash out the next moves, and there were fundamental differences of opinion