Posted on 01/05/2010 1:41:08 PM PST by usalady
At a time when there seems to be a lack of heroes, especially in the Presidency during the last decades, the biography of Dwight D. (Ike) Eisenhower is a reminder of the pride Americans felt for the General, the man and the country.
(Excerpt) Read more at examiner.com ...
I think you will enjoy this article.
I will add one of my favorite Eisenhower stories, which I sometimes send to papers.
Eisenhower on D-Day
Popular history often portrays General Dwight Eisenhower as managing a political/military alliance, but reminds us he never lead troops in combat. However, his leadership sustained many unprecedented initiatives for successful Normandy landings. The air assault examples the frightful uncertainties of many critical hazards run on this “Day of Days”.
The night before D-Day, 20,400 American and British paratroopers dropped behind the Normandy beaches from 1,250 C-47 aircraft plus gliders. This massive assault was attempted just 17 years after Charles Lindberg flew the Atlantic solo for the first time.
To the last moment Ike’s air commander, British Air Chief Marshall Leigh-Mallory, saw tragic forebodings reinforced by memories of American problems in North Africa and Sicily, and the German catastrophe on Crete. He anticipated hundreds of planes and gliders destroyed with surviving paratroopers fighting isolated until killed or captured.
The planes would arrive in three streams each 300 miles long, allowing the Germans up to two hours to reposition night fighters and anti-aircraft artillery for maximum slaughter of unarmed transports. Most pilots were flying their first combat mission. Leigh-Mallory had specific intelligence the German 91st Air Landing Division, specialists in fighting paratroopers, and the 6th Parachute Regiment had inexplicably moved into the area around St. Mere-Eglise, where American divisions were to land. Could these movements mean the deception plan directing attention to Pas de Calais was breaking down?
Ike remained strategically committed to airborne assault, but compassionately devoted to the men. The evening before D-Day, Eisenhower left SHAEF headquarters at 6 PM, traveling to Newbury where the 101st Airborne was boarding for its initial combat mission. Ike arrived at 8 PM and did not leave until the last C-47 was airborne over three hours later.
In My Three Years with Eisenhower Captain Harry C. Butcher says, “We saw hundreds of paratroopers with blackened and grotesque faces, packing up for the big hop and jump. Ike wandered through them, stepping over, packs, guns, and a variety of equipment such as only paratroop people can devise, chinning with this and that one. All were put at ease. He was promised a job after the war by a Texan who said he roped, not dallied, his cows, and at least there was enough to eat in the work. Ike has developed or disclosed an informality and friendliness with troopers that almost amazed me”.
In Crusade in Europe Dwight D. Eisenhower says, “I found the men in fine fettle, many of them joshingly admonishing me that I had no cause for worry, since the 101st was on the job, and everything would be taken care of in fine shape. I stayed with them until the last of them were in the air, somewhere about midnight. After a two hour trip back to my own camp, I had only a short time to wait until the first news should come in”.
One of the first D-Day reports was from Leigh-Mallory with news only 29 of 1,250 C-47’s were missing and only four gliders were unaccounted for. That morning Leigh-Mallory sent Ike a message frankly saying it is sometimes difficult to admit that one is wrong, but he had never had a greater pleasure than in doing so on this occasion. He congratulated Ike on the wisdom and courage of his command decision.
The above represents only one of many crushing anxieties Eisenhower persevered through. President Roosevelt understood the enormous risks, and asked the nation to pray for the coming invasion. Resting today in the luxury of historical certainty prevents us from perceiving the dark specters hovering about nearly all invasion planning aspects.
Good article.
I recall reading a story as a child about Eisenhower. At twelve, he almost lost his leg. If it weren’t for the stubbornness of his brother, the doctor would have amputated it.
How history would have turned out differently.
In the 1950s, we could easily gone back to New Deal policies but didn’t. We could have gone to a version of national health care but didn’t. We could have had a big war but didn’t. We could have had extensive racial violence but didn’t.
All things considered, we did alright. We prospered.
And Ike was was perfectly content to stay out of the headlines as much as possible and just quietly do his job. Unlike most since him, he was not to be on some sort of ego trip.
My favorite Eisenhower story: Costly “broad front” blunder
Sixty-five years ago, in November 1944, the war in Europe was at a stalemate. A resurgent Wehrmacht had halted the Allied armies along Germany’s borders after its headlong retreat across northern France following D-Day. From Holland to France, the front was static — yet thousands of Allied soldiers continued to die in futile battles to reach the Rhine River.
One Allied army, however, was still on the move. The Sixth Army Group reached the Rhine at Strasbourg, France, on Nov. 24, and its commander, Lt. Gen. Jacob L. Devers, looked across its muddy waters into Germany. His force, made up of the United States Seventh and French First Armies, 350,000 men, had landed Aug. 15 near Marseille — an invasion largely overlooked by history but regarded at the time as “the second D-Day” — and advanced through southern France to Strasbourg. No other Allied army had yet reached the Rhine, not even hard-charging George Patton’s.
Devers dispatched scouts over the river. “There’s nobody in those pillboxes over there,” a soldier reported. Defenses on the German side of the upper Rhine were unmanned and the enemy was unprepared for a cross-river attack, which could unhinge the Germans’ southern front and possibly lead to the collapse of the entire line from Holland to Switzerland.
The Sixth Army Group had assembled bridging equipment, amphibious trucks and assault boats. Seven crossing sites along the upper Rhine were evaluated and intelligence gathered. The Seventh Army could cross north of Strasbourg at Rastatt, Germany, advance north along the Rhine Valley to Karlsruhe, and swing west to come in behind the German First Army, which was blocking Patton’s Third Army in Lorraine. The enemy would face annihilation, and the Third and Seventh Armies could break loose and drive into Germany. The war might end quickly.
Devers never crossed. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme commander, visited Devers’s headquarters that day and ordered him instead to stay on the Rhine’s west bank and attack enemy positions in northern Alsace. Devers was stunned. “We had a clean breakthrough,” he wrote in his diary. “By driving hard, I feel that we could have accomplished our mission.” Instead the war of attrition continued, giving the Germans a chance to counterattack three weeks later in what became known as the Battle of the Bulge, which cost 80,000 American dead and wounded.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/23/opinion/23colley.html?_r=1
Patton, had he been in charge, woulda asked Devers why the hell he was waiting for permission to rip into Nazi Germany.
He did lead troops to burn out unarmed US veterans who were part of the Bonus Army in 1932.
He was from a humble home. At one point, his mother was asked if she was proud of her son, and she answered with the question,”Which one?”
As much I like and respect Ike, Patton was the superior combat and military leader. Patton believed in getting the job done. Ike had to play politician and maybe even liked it. Patton in Dever’s position would have rolled as far as he could into Germany and then tell Ike he had done it. Patton has been a hero of mine since childhood.
I remember sitting on a blue bus at the gate of Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, April 1960. Some loudmouthed Airman First got on the bus and bellowed, “On Behalf of President Eisenhower and Secretary of Defense Wilson, Welcome to the U.S. Air Force. Now get the hell off this bus!”
It does not diminish what the man accomplished later in life. I was impressed by his performance as Supreme Allied Commander in WWII. A really good read is The Last Battle by Cornelius Ryan, about the final battle to take Berlin.
I’ll speculate the Battle of the Bulge would have been fought a month earlier under another name, but still with a large number of casualties. Hitler would have used his army he was saving for the Ardennes, but could have had huge casualties just getting south if the weather cooperated for tactical air. On both sides the collision would have been progressive, because getting troops across a bridgehead means bottlenecks.
During the aftermath I could see Eisenhower getting hammered for suffering ‘needless” losses again, as at Arnhem, by falling into a Nazi trap. I can imagine there would have been few supporters for analysis a “broad front” strategy would have resulted in even more casualties, given the shock of the losses actually incurred. I agree that he should have fought the political battle and taken the risk.
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