“We’ll do our best to help out, and I believe we can establish air superiority over the landing sites.”
“General,” said Marshall, “I must tell you that we’ve looked this over, as your own people have as well, and many of our analysts give these landings a 40% chance of succeeding—at best.”
“Yes, between the French Navy, the German army, and the high surf conditions, our own people agree. But where else can we go, general Marshall?”
“How about the Pas de Calais.” Marshall tried one more time, but he ended with a wry grin. “Very well, I’ll discuss this with President Roosevelt, and I expect he’ll make the final decision. But I must tell you, I can’t give it much of an endorsement. That said, I’ll support the plan if the President directs me to do so, and in that you can count on us doing anything possible to make it work.”
“General, that is all we could possibly hope for. It’s all risky business. That’s the nature of war, but we have to start the road back somewhere, and these are objectives worth fighting for. We simply can’t sit idle throughout the remainder of this year. We’ve promised Sergei Kirov we would do everything possible to open a Second Front, and so we need to look at this whole affair with that in mind.”
“Very well,” Marshall conceded, but he did have one further bone to chew. “The president is concerned about command control in a joint operation like this. Even though our forces will be widely separated at the outset, eventually they’ll need to be well coordinated. Now I know you people have carried the ball for three years while we sat on the sidelines, but he’s asking for an American General in overall command.”
“Will that be a sticking point?”
“Very likely.”
“Alright then. This issue has been under consideration for some time, and we’ve agreed to that—even suggested it. I’ve heard several names bandied about. Perhaps you ought to take charge.”
Marshall smiled. “Another bone, General Brooke? No thank you. I’m well aware of what the Prime thinks of me, and what you may think of me as well. I’ve been told you suggested General MacArthur should be in command of our Joint Chiefs, so spare me the flattery. We have another man in mind, General Eisenhower.”
Whether Marshall could see it or not, the Americans were going to land somewhere in 1942, and it would not be France. The man charged with deciding the how and when of it all was one Dwight D. Eisenhower, and the cadre of officers that he would soon command would all cut their teeth in the campaign that would follow, rising to become the captains of battle whose names would ring through the history from that day forward, Eisenhower, George Patton, Omar Bradley, Mark Clark. They would rise, like cream, to the top of the churning vat that America’s war effort would soon become, and on their shoulders would fall the weight of a war that would grow heavier and heavier the longer they carried it.
In spite of all optimism at the outset, the future they could see ahead of them was but dimply perceived now. Anton Fedorov might have laid out the broad strokes, the slow probing engagements that lay ahead in North Africa as the American Army sputtered and learned and improvised its way into a force worthy of battle. Ahead lay Casablanca, and the drive north to Tangier, only the first in a long series of battles that might eventually lead them to Tunisia. Where Kasserene Pass had become a proving ground for American will and fighting skill, and a test of morale, those tests would likely be given at some other place now.
That was the consequence of Fedorov’s own intervention. The history was now so twisted that it was beginning to take on a new life of its own, and to write into the record of war a whole new series of battles and engagements where there was no longer any clear connection of reference point to the old events he once knew. In North Africa, instead of chasing the British 8th Army all the way to its stubborn last stand at el Alamein, Rommel was the one to retreat from Gazala, and it was he who would settle into a deeply entrenched defensive position at Mersa Brega. Whether he could ever do what Montgomery did, build up and then launch yet another bold offensive into Cyrenaica, remained to be seen.
The truth of the matter was that Rommel’s chances for any such renewed offensive were now a quickly diminishing prospect. The Americans were coming, a breed of ordinary citizen soldiers, green as they came stumbling off the transports for the most part, glassy eyed with sleep, missing sweethearts back home, looking like disheveled tourists in uniform, always eager to trade a candy bar or cigarette for something they had taken a fancy too in the local settings where they would soon find themselves. They would appear as a motley, unshaven, naive band of marauders to some, a legion of saviors to others. Yet soon, in the harsh dry and deeply weathered land of North Africa, they would begin to learn the craft of killing, the art of war, the heartless cold soul of it all that was nowhere apparent as they first boarded the transports in New York and other Atlantic ports.
Their worries then were whether they had enough socks and underwear in their swollen duffel bags. Memories of the waving crowds seeing them off at the wharves and quays were still dancing in their minds as they slept those first nights at sea, along with the faces and limbs of their sweethearts back home. Soon they would stand on decks of their ships, looking for sun in the sallow grey sky, and their thoughts would turn to darker things as they stared out as the slow procession of the convoys. Were there German U-boats waiting for them out there? The news of what had happened to that convoy to Murmansk cast a dark shadow.
Yes, the Americans were finally coming, going “over there” again, just as the Doughboys had in the first war. But this fight would be different. It had already burned through Europe once like a fast moving fire, and now the flames of that war would be rekindled and driven on by a heartless wind to Germany. This was all that lay ahead, city after city sleeping quietly, for the bombers had not yet come. Their buildings and streets still stood in a reasonable semblance of order. The tanks had not ground up the cobblestone byways. The artillery had not shattered the classic old storefronts and dormered hotels. The fire had not yet rained down from the sky, consuming, consuming, and extinguishing ten thousand human souls in a hour’s time. And it would get worse that that—far worse.
As Fedorov flipped through the pages of his old history books, he could glimpse an outline of what was to come. Casablanca, Oran, Algiers, Tunis, Bizerte, all cities that would eventually have to be taken by the Allies in time. Where the fires or war would go next remained uncertain. Would the Allies then leap to Sicily and into Italy to dethrone Mussolini, or might they aim their swords at the proverbial “soft underbelly of Europe?”
If they ever did muster the force and will to return to France, would it be from the south, or follow George Marshall’s hope for a hard landing on the coasts of Brittany, Normandy, or the Pas de Calais. And if they did come, would they prevail as they once did with a massive operation like Overlord, a grinding breakout like Cobra, a daring leap towards the Rhine like Market-Garden? Would the Germans mount again that last desperate counteroffensive that was once to be called the Battle of the Bulge? All that remained to be seen, battles waiting like sheathed swords in fate’s armory.
Now, in July of 1942, the man who might lead this new Allied effort forward was only just beginning to take on that mantle of command. Dwight D. Eisenhower took up residence in Norfolk House in London at the outset to continue on with what he called the ‘thrashing about in the dark’ where all these war plans were concerned. The Operation that had once been called “Super-Gymnast” was now getting a new code name. It would simply be called TORCH.