Harry Turtledove (Editor) - Alternate Generals II

From Richard Tregaskis, "Campaigning in the Campagna," Baltimore Sun, September 20, 1943:

The tourist guides say that Civitavecchia, the main port of Rome, is on the Tyrrhenian Sea, and is the major ferry port for Sardinia. By the time they allowed reporters into the beachhead, most of the city was in the Tyrrhenian Sea-or the harbor, or the rivers and canals that fed the port. What our air force and the bombardment supporting the landings hadn't wrecked, the German artillery was finishing off. No ferries were running to Sardinia either, partly because it was in Allied hands and partly because most of them were sitting on the bottom of the harbor.

General Bradley had made his headquarters in the basement of a half-wrecked warehouse. The rubble was just as good a hiding place for our machine guns as it was for the Germans, and we had smoke pots, booby traps, and a few strings of barbed wire laid out. The basement also had several entrances, so that if the Germans decided to come in one, we could leave through one of the others-and, as the general said:

"If there aren't too many of them, we can slip around behind them and-ah, dispose of them, then get back to work. This isn't the Old West. Nobody will complain about us shooting them in the back."

Bradley looked ready to help that project along. He carried an issue.45 and a couple of spare magazines for it, and he had a carbine and another pile of spare magazines on one corner of the Italian worktable he was using for a desk. He also looked more like a company commander than an army commander, and even a little like a militarized and clean-shaven Abraham Lincoln. He didn't have Old Abe's wit, but he certainly had a knack for making everyone around him feel that it would be insubordinate to get excited when the general was so calm.

The only time I saw him upset during those three days was when General Patton visited. I don't know if it was wondering if Patton had come to relieve or at least criticize him, or worrying about keeping Patton alive. The German snipers kept trying to infiltrate, we had lost battalion commanders and hospital personnel, and Patton wore all his ribbons, three stars everyplace they would fit, a polished helmet and boots, and a riding crop and two ivory-handled pistols. It was all a little messy from his PT boat ride, but it still made him a target visible three hundred yards away in the light of the fires and flare bursts.

Patton grinned. "Brad, you owe the Relief Fund about a hundred dollars in fines. Boots dirty, no tie, no helmet, and when did you last shave?"

"When I went down to the evacuation hospital yesterday. My own razor didn't make it ashore. Most of the rest went in a shell burst. If the shell had been five yards closer, you'd be talking to Troy Middleton."

Bradley was smiling, but there was also an edge in his voice. He probably was not in a mood for Patton's jokes. After sleeping maybe five hours in the last three days, my sense of humor wouldn't have been in particularly good shape either.

Patton blinked, then actually apologized. "Sorry, Brad. I didn't come to tell you how to do your job. I came to find out how we could help you do it better."

"Well, we did have a little list," Bradley said. "Let's pull it out and see what we still need."

The bodyguards chased all the reporters and juniors out, to let the two generals talk. I learned afterward that Bradley only asked that a bomb line be drawn far enough forward so that the heavy bombers could strike the German artillery, if necessary. Patton was concerned about civilian casualties, particularly since the Italians were beginning organized assistance to the Allies. Civilian opinion in Rome was sure to influence whether it was declared an open city or not.

It was while we were trying to stay hidden from snipers and in jumping distance of a ditch or foxhole that we heard ragged cheering from down toward the waterfront. Then we heard the squeal and grumble of tanks, growing steadily louder, and the first of a line of Shermans nosed around the corner, knocking loose a shower of bricks from a stub of wall.

A sergeant scrambled down from the turret of the lead tank. "Company C, 3 rdBattalion, 66 thArmored Regiment reporting for-Oh, you're a civilian." He looked around. "Anyone I can report to?"

"You can report to me," came a high-pitched gravelly voice from the shadows. "It's good news to see you gentlemen. We hadn't expected you for another twenty-four hours."

A tank lieutenant stepped forward and saluted. "We decided that we might be safer-" Patton glared "-and more useful ashore, than bobbing around, getting salt in the transmissions and wondering when the Luftwaffe was going to get lucky."

"Get some hot food and a couple of hours' sleep," Patton said. "You'll have a busy day tomorrow, because we want to push out the perimeter far enough to get rid of the German artillery and bring in some air support."

"What about Italian civilians?"

Patton's grin got wider, which I wouldn't have thought was possible. "We just heard. The Italians have risen against the Germans in Naples, Salerno, Ravenna, Cassino, and several towns in Apulia that the operator couldn't spell and I can't pronounce. I don't think we have much to worry about with Italian civilians-except hitting them by accident. They may not be Allies yet, but they damned sure aren't enemies any more!"

There must have been a lot of Italians within earshot, and some of them knowing English. The cheering from all around us sounded like a football crowd just after the home team scored the winning touchdown. Then we heard:

"Vive America! Vive Generale Patton!"

Patton cupped both hands over his mouth, " Vive Generale Bradley!"

We went on cheering the Allies and their generals until the whole tank company had rolled off to their bivouac. We might still have been out there cheering, if a plane hadn't buzzed the warehouse, too fast to let us identify it.

"Could be one of ours, or it could be a German out of bombs," Patton said. "But I'll take a small bet from anyone who cares. In another forty-eight hours, if you hear a plane overhead, it will be ours."

From The New York Times, September 21, 1943:

Rome Declared Open City

Allies Break Out of Civitavecchia Beachhead

Wild Greetings for Italians' Liberators

Excerpts from Patton's Press Conference, Rome, September 28, 1943:

Q: How did the Germans end up leaving a corridor between Rome and the sea that let us attack them in the rear?

A: I think they had it in mind to do the same to us. Remember, if a territory is "open," neither side can conduct military operations in it or against it. The Germans are good soldiers; as long as they have one man and one bullet left they'll be thinking of attacking. But we were doing the same, and we had more tanks, the Allied navies offshore, and air superiority.

So we struck south before they could strike north, and that's how we ended up encircling them at Anzio.

Q: Didn't we take heavy naval losses?

A: We did lose Augusta, two more destroyers, an ammunition ship, and quite a few landing craft. But the British were ready with reinforcements by the time we started south, and let me tell you, battleships make damned good tank destroyers. Warspite 's already drydocked in Malta, and she'll fight again.

Q: Have you found Marshal Kesselring yet?

A: No, and I suspect that when we do the only thing we can offer him is a military funeral. In his situation, I wouldn't be alive by now. We'll mark his grave and hope to be able to return his body to his family after the war.

Q: I don't suppose-

A: That I'd be willing to predict when that would be? That gets into politics, and so many people tell me that I don't know anything about politics that I'm ready to believe them.