The Washington War by James Lacey

Author:James Lacey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2019-05-27T16:00:00+00:00

The official Army historians declared that Marshall was unimpressed by his friend’s note, but this clearly was not the case. Marshall lived by a code, and a big part of the code, drummed into him since he was a cadet at VMI, was that once a decision is made you do your best to make it a reality. The time for argument had passed, and the commander in chief had decided. Thus, the code Marshall lived by left him only two options: make the decision his own and see it through to the end, or resign. For several weeks, Marshall, with all the right intentions, had forgotten that code, and as a result endangered the success of TORCH. It took Dill’s gentle reminder to snap him back to his duty. Stimson remained worried, and thought Marshall was taking his eye off the prize, but he bowed to his chief’s desires.

Debates continued as to the scope of TORCH: how many beaches, would Algiers be included, would British troops participate in the landing? All of these concerns prompted what Eisenhower called a transatlantic essay-writing contest. But by September 5, all of the major moving pieces were agreed on, allowing Roosevelt to cable Churchill: “Hurrah.” To which Churchill replied the following day: “Okay, full blast.” Interestingly, as late as September 28 (just six weeks before the TORCH landings), Stimson recorded the following after a long discussion with Eisenhower’s deputy, General Mark Clark: “I found that he fully agreed with me about the hazards and unwisdom of the whole movement. It is a superb tribute to our leaders to see the vigor and enthusiasm they are putting into a job of which they really disapprove.”

All that remained was the delicate task of informing Stalin that the promised second front was no longer in the cards. That chore went to Churchill, who personally went to Moscow to deliver the news. En route, he made a quick stop in Cairo to place General Harold Alexander in charge of the Middle East and General Bernard Law Montgomery in charge of the Eighth Army in North Africa. It had taken several attempts, but Churchill had finally found a winning combination of commanders.

In Moscow, things initially did not go so well. Stalin, who was losing ten thousand men a day in combat, could not or would not understand the Anglo-Americans’ apparent timidity. After hours of lambasting, Churchill erupted into what those with him (General Brooke and Averell Harriman) thought was one of his most brilliant statements ever. It was always difficult to get an interpreter who could translate Churchillian English into Russian. But it was all the more difficult that night, as Churchill continually punched his interpreter in the arm, demanding to know if Stalin had gotten his exact point. Stalin eventually took pity on the interpreter, intervening and with a broad smile declaring: “Your words are of no importance. What is important is your spirit.” From that point things were better, allowing Churchill to cable Roosevelt from

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