1944 by Jay Winik

Author:Jay Winik
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

The movements of the Allied and Axis troops during the North Africa campaign

The plan called for landing the army under the cover of darkness, and he was well aware that never before had a night landing on a hostile coast been undertaken so far from a home base. On the eve of the campaign, he lay on a cot in a command post deep in the tunnels under the Rock of Gibraltar. He wrote hesitantly: “We are standing . . . on the brink and must take the jump.” For his part, General George Patton was more confident. He bellowed to his men: “I’m under no illusion that the God-damn Navy will get us within 100 miles of the beach. . . . It doesn’t matter. Put us in Africa. We’ll walk!”

Meanwhile, four thousand miles away, in the rustic hills of the Catoctin Mountains, Roosevelt was trying in vain to relax at the presidential retreat, Shangri-La—today’s Camp David. The president fiddled with his stamp collection, shuffled cards for solitaire, read light novels, and parked himself comfortably on his screened porch. Yet gone were his usual wisecracks and jokes; gone was his typical ebullience. Had he been able to walk, he surely would have been pacing back and forth. He couldn’t shake his nervousness about the invasion.

Saturday night at Shangri-La was zero hour: sunrise on the North African coast.

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