Delivered from Evil - The Saga of World War 2 by Robert Leckie

Author:Robert Leckie [Leckie, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub

61. November 1942: Landing in North Africa

Winston Churchill was not the only wartime leader who thought of military victory as a political harvest of headlines. When General Marshall informed President Roosevelt that the date for Torch was up to General Eisenhower, FDR held up his hands in an attitude of prayer and said: “Please make it before Election Day.” He meant the midterm Congressional elections set for November 3, 1942.

Roosevelt, however, did not fancy himself as a military strategist like

Churchill and seldom interfered with his generals. He said nothing when Eisenhower fixed the date at November 8. On November 2 Eisenhower prepared to fly to Gibraltar, but bad weather prevented the flight, and again on the 3rd. It was still risky on the 4th but an impatient Eisenhower ordered Maj. Paul Tibbets, believed to be the Air Corps’s finest pilot, to take off anyway. They flew in the Red Gremlin, the same plane that had taken Clark to Gibraltar. Eisenhower was delighted to take command of the Rock, symbol of the British Empire. “I simply must have a grandchild,” he wrote in his diary, “or I’ll never have the fun of telling this when I’m fishing gray-bearded, on the banks of a quiet bayou in the deep South.”

At Gibraltar, he might as well have gone fishing—for there was absolutely nothing for him to do. The fleets were already at sea and the ships were maintaining radio silence. On the afternoon of November 7, fourteen hours short of D-Day (the date set for the landing) Gen. Henri Giraud arrived at Gibraltar in the submarine that had spirited him out of southern France. He came immediately to Eisenhower, demanding to be flown to Algiers to take command of Torch. Eisenhower was astonished by the temerity and hauteur of this tall, austere, one-legged Frenchman: commander of nothing. He asked Giraud to make a broadcast to Morocco and Algeria, urging the French army to cooperate with the invaders. Giraud flatly refused, unless he was given command. Like a man casually changing vacation sites, he calmly proposed to change the target from North Africa to southern France. Eisenhower repeated his request for a broadcast, assuring Giraud that once the Allies moved on to Tunisia, Giraud could have command of the French rear areas. He virtually promised to make him king of North Africa, with all possible American aid. Giraud kept saying, “Non. ” He wanted command. They argued for eight hours, with no results. Giraud excused himself at bedtime with the remark, “Giraud will be a spectator in this affair.”

By then the invasions had begun. Eisenhower stayed glued to his radio listening with relief to messages reporting that at Casablanca the surf was down and Patton was going in and that at Oran the landings were going well. There was no news from Algiers. At 4:30 a.m., exhausted, Eisenhower unfolded a cot and went to sleep in his office. He arose at seven o’clock, reading reports and musing aloud about what to do with Giraud.

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