Slept fine until the air-raid sirens went off. Turned out to be a German snooper, who was shot down by the antiaircraft. Crashed down by the harbor, and wrecked three apartment buildings. No loss, except to the people living there. Will ask the Cardinal about a joint effort, us and the Church, to find roofs for the people and arrange a funeral for the dead.
The engineers tell me we should be able to stage a fairly big shore-to-shore operation out of Palermo within a few days, if the Navy can provide the ships. The Navy engineers wouldn't promise anything. I told themthey didn't need to promise anything; it was their bosses I wanted. Did promise the engineers Distinguished Unit Citations if we brought it off.
Turns out that a colored supply battalion helped rescue the people from the wrecked buildings, including the one that was on fire. Some of the colored boys were hurt because they wouldn't leave some people to be burned. That took guts.
I visited them and some of the Sicilians in the hospital. One colored boy had gone on moving rubble with a broken arm. He said that after picking sugar beets in Louisiana since he was eight, there wasn't anything the Army or the Krauts could do to make him sweat. I gave him a Bronze Star.
That colored boy should talk to some of the "combat exhaustion" cases.
Tomorrow I talk to the admirals.
Another good night's sleep. Just as well. I talked to the admirals until I nearly lost my voice. Then I kissed their asses until I have a sore lip and will probably get some sort of mouth fungus as well. I think it paid off, though. They're promising enough for a reinforced battalion. I want to make it two battalions, one infantry and one tank, but they think the best they can do is a company of tanks and some towed AT guns.
The Navy isn't what it was in the days of Stephen Decatur. They talked about the sykological effect of having even a small force in the German rear. I told them without using too many rough words that you can't do anything to the Germans with sykology (?). None of the ones I've fought scare easily. You need a physical effect, like shooting the sons-of-bitches in the guts or running over them with tanks.
To top it all off, somebody must have read my mind. They're going to call the landing OPERATION DECATUR!
Maybe his ghost will haunt them.
No chance today to beg and plead with the admirals. Flew to 1stArmored Division for a quick inspection. They are not much dirtier than I had expected, and they are doing a fine job on vehicle maintenance under very bad conditions.
Back by way of 3rdInfantry Division. Lucian [Truscott] looks tired, even though I would still call him the best division commander in Seventh Army. I asked him if he was getting enough sleep, and if he lacked confidence in his staff and regimental commanders. He said he had complete confidence in his division-and also in the Germans' ability to require a total effort by everybody in it!
Even if the British say it, "He who has not fought the Germans, does not know war," may be true. What's completely true is that the British screwed up their early campaigns as badly as we did ours, and they got their "greater experience" by killing a lot of their own men. But try to tell Ike that.
We will just have to kick the Germans in the pants so hard that even the British will notice when they see a lot of bare-assed Germans running for their lives, crying for their mothers and their goddamned Fuehrer!
Warned Lucian to get more sleep, since he'll be the senior ground commander for Operation Decatur. No problems likely with Clarence [Huebner, commanding 1stInfantry Division] tomorrow. He's as tough as Black Jack [Pershing].
I haven't felt so good in months. The planning for Operation Decatur is going forward at a gallop. Lucian may not be getting the extra sleep he needs, though. I hope he won't wear himself down to the point of being cautious.L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace! [boldness, boldness, always boldness!] has to be our motto. Give the Germans five extra minutes and they'll counterattack. Give the Navy ten minutes, and they'll find excuses for not doing something.
Visited 1stInfantry Division. Clarence is what they need, even though I suspect it will be a while before they know it and a long time before they like it. You could sum up his General Orders in two sentences: you will look like soldiers and you will stop feeling sorry for yourself. I still want to go over my indorsement to Terry's and Ted's [Terry Allen and Theodore Roosevelt Jr., former commander and assistant commander of the 1stInfantry Division] relief, to make sure there's nothing in it that might prejudice their getting new commands. The Big Red One hit the Torch beaches ready to fight, and it is about the only goddamned division we had that you can say this about.
Went to a field hospital after lunch with Clarence. They had several new admissions, one with a leg just ampotated, another blinded. I pinned Purple Hearts on both of them. I added for the blind boy that he had one consolation-he didn't have to look at my ugly old mug while I was decorating him.
One of those "combat exhaustion" cases was sitting on the last cot. At least that's what he looked like. No wounds and when I asked him what he was here for, he said, "I guess I just can't take it."
I glared at him, and he started crying. I looked at him a second time, and it looked to me like he might be really sick. Malaria or cat fever or the runs can turn almost anybody into somebody who thinks he can't take it which is exactly what I told him. I also asked him if he'd been examined, loud enough so that all the medical people should have heard me.
Then I told Al to bring in the emergency supplies, because if an American soldier crying because he thinks he's a coward isn't an emergency then what the hell is? I apolegized to the nurses for the language and also for prescribing without a license but I told the combat exhausted boy (I never did get his name) that he shouldn't drink any of what I was giving him until he'd seen the doctors and had a good meal and maybe some sleep.
Then I told him that everything looks different after a night's sleep or a few. Even if it was something like seeing your buddy blown to pieces, after you sleep you remember that you have other buddies who might live if you go back and be there. It's not being a coward to be scared sometimes, when you're sick or hurt or you've really been in the shit (another apology) and in fact there aren't any cowards in the American Army. I ordered him to never think of himself as a coward and he stood up at attention and saluted.
Then he looked more like he was going to laugh than cry, and I thought I was going to get carried away and start crying, and that would have been a hell of a thing to happen to a general. I remembered all the boys I'd led in the Argonne, where just me and Joe Di Angelo came out alive. I handed over the whiskey and got out of there.
I felt almost all right by the time we got back to Palermo. I felt completely all right after I heard that the Navy was borrowing back some landing craft from the British for Operation Decatur. If the Germans do bomb Palermo or any of the other assembly ports, we still go on time and with everything we need.
Letter,
Lt. Col. Perrin H. Long, Medical Corps,
to the Surgeon, NATOUSA,
August 4, 1943
subject: Visit to Patients in Receiving Tent of the 15th Evacuation Hospital by Lt. Gen. George S. Patton:
Exhibit #1-Pvt. Joseph L. Shrieber, K Company, 26thInfantry, 1stDivision-… concluded visit by saying that there are no cowards in the American Army and that he ordered Pvt. Shrieber never to think of himself as one.