Free The Victors: Eisenhower and His Boys : The Men of World War II by Stephen Ambrose Page A

British Air Marshal Arthur Tedder, his deputy supreme commander.  “Now, listen, Arthur,” Eisenhower was saying, “I am tired of dealing with a lot of prima donnas. By God, you tell that bunch that if they can’t get together and stop quarreling like children, I will tell the Prime Minister to get someone else to run this damn war. I’ll quit.” Patton took careful note of the tone of command in his voice; Eisenhower was obviously taking charge, and Patton could not help being impressed.
    Marshall supported Eisenhower in the dispute; Churchill supported Air Vice Marshal Arthur Harris and Gen. Tooey Spaatz, who wanted to bomb industrial targets inside Germany, not bridges and railroads in France. Eisenhower then told Churchill that if his bosses refused to make anything less than a full commitment to Overlord by holding back the bombers, he would “simply have to go home.”
    This extreme threat brought Churchill around. Tedder then prepared a list of more than seventy railroad targets in France and Belgium. The bombers went to work on the French railway system. By D-Day the Allies had dropped seventy-six thousand tons of bombs on rail centers, bridges, and open lines. The Seine River bridges west of Paris were virtually destroyed. Based on an index of 100 for January and February 1944, railway traffic dropped from 69 in mid-May to 38 by D-Day.
    Eisenhower had dozens of major and hundreds of minor disagreements with Churchill and the CCS during the war, but the only occasion on which he threatened to resign was over the issue of command of the strategic air forces.  He was certain at the time that he was right, and he never saw any reason to question that belief. In 1968, in one of his last interviews, he told this author that he felt the greatest single contribution he personally made to the success of Overlord was his insistence on the Transportation Plan.  There were many aspects to Overlord in which Eisenhower’s role was more supervisory than direct, including such items as the artificial harbors, the specially designed tanks, assault techniques, the deception plan, the logistical problems involved in getting the men and equipment to the southern English ports, transporting them across the Channel, and supplying them in Normandy.  Overlord was the greatest amphibious assault in history, with the largest air and sea armadas ever assembled. It required, and got, painstakingly detailed planning, with thousands of men involved. SHAEF alone had a total strength of 16,312, of whom 2,829 were officers (1,600 Americans, 1,229 British). There were in addition the staffs of the U.S. and British armies, corps, and divisions, all devoting their entire energy to Overlord.
    These vast bureaucracies did very well what they were created to do, but their limitations were obvious. They could suggest, plan, advise, investigate, but they could not act. Nor could any single member of the bureaucracies see the problem whole. Every individual involved had a specific given role to play and could concentrate on one set of problems; each staff officer was an expert struggling with his specialty. The officers could study and analyze a problem and make recommendations, but they could not decide and order.  Someone had to give the bureaucracies direction; someone had to be able to take all the information they gathered, make sense out of it, and impose order on it; someone had to make certain that each part meshed into the whole; someone had to decide; someone had to take the responsibility and act.  It all came down to Eisenhower. He was the funnel through which everything passed. Only his worries were infinite, only he carried the awesome burden of command. This position put enormous pressure on him, pressure that increased geometrically with each day that passed.
    “Ike looks worn and tired,” Eisenhower aide Capt. Harry Butcher, USN, noted on May 12. “The strain is telling on him. He looks older now than at any time since I have