Free The Day of Battle by Rick Atkinson Page B

been sent to North Africa, of which five now sailed toward Sicily. Was that enough? Six hundred miles of African coastline and the sea approaches to Malta had been swept for mines. Were they completely clean? What about enemy submarines? Hewitt had lost several ships and 140 men to U-boats after the landings in Morocco the previous November, and the memory still pained him.
    As for the eighty thousand soldiers now in his custody, Hewitt could only take comfort in his favorite maxim: You do everything you can, then you hope for the best. Disagreements with the Army, which had begun a year earlier during the preparations for TORCH , had continued during the HUSKY planning. Some frictions were petty: Army and Navy supply officers had jacked up Algerian warehouse prices by bidding against each other, and the Army insisted on calling Monrovia a headquarters ship when any fool knew it was a flagship. Hewitt had been astonished, a few days earlier, to find sentries posted on Patton’s orders outside Monrovia ’s operations room, barring access to the admiral’s own staff— that indignity had soon been corrected. More troubling had been Patton’s months-long refusal to move his headquarters from Mostaganem, nearly two hundred miles from Algiers; the distance had made joint planning more difficult.
    Still, Hewitt and Patton had found common ground and even mutual affection. The formality of TORCH , when they addressed each other as “Admiral” and “General,” had yielded to a more intimate “Kent” and “Georgie.” Patton was ecumenical enough to occasionally side with the Navy, as in onerecent dispute when Army planners—contrary to Hewitt’s advice—proposed to slip troops onto the Sicilian beaches in rubber boats. “Sit down!” Patton had finally snapped at his officers. “The Navy is responsible for getting you ashore and they can put you ashore in any damned thing they want.” To celebrate their final evening on land, Hewitt on Monday night had invited Patton and several other generals to dinner at the admiral’s quarters, a villa requisitioned from a Danish vintner. After several hours of convivial drinking Hewitt helped the generals to the staff cars that would take them to their ships; more sober than most, Patton on his way out the door studied the risqué wall frescoes of half-nude women and muttered, “Thank God I live in a camp.”
    At five P.M . Monrovia signaled anchors aweigh and moved into the swept channel, surrounded by warships and landing craft of every description. Panic briefly seized the fleet when radar showed an apparent swarm of hostile planes; the blips proved to be the ships’ own barrage balloons, hoisted on tethers to discourage dive-bombers and strafing fighters. Semaphores blinked out Morse messages and the convoy began zigzagging, as previously agreed, at ten knots under sailing pattern number 35.
    The white vision of Algiers fell behind. Hewitt studied the African mountains to starboard. Iron oxide in the scree was fired bloodred by the setting sun as it plunged into the purple sea. He had done everything he could, and now he would hope for the best.
     
    Behind the bridge, in Monrovia ’s spacious flag cabin, George Patton felt the ship’s screws gnaw the sea as she picked up speed. The Navy had tried to make him feel like a wanted guest, greeting him with incessant piping when he came aboard and assigning two mess boys as his personal attendants. The cabin, opulent by warship standards, measured eighteen by fifteen feet, with a desk, bunk, table, and shower. Still, Patton harbored private reservations about both the sister service—“The Navy is our weak spot,” he told his diary—and Kent Hewitt: “very affable and in his usual mental fog.”
    He was ready for battle and looked the part, immaculate in his whipcord breeches and tailored blouse, the famous pistols holstered and near at hand. He had lost weight in the last few months by running and swimming, and improved