Free Twelve Desperate Miles by Tim Brady Page B

forces coming and going from this theater. There were simply not enough transports, not enough landing craft, not enough warships on the ocean to provide for all of the needs of an invasion force.
    Steam was pouring from Patton’s ears by the time the captain had finished offering the navy’s reservations about the plans. Whether the animosity he would exhibit for the next couple of months toward this branch of the service was born in this meeting hardly matters; Patton was a soldier who, once committed to an assignment, found ways of doing it, and he could not abide those who hemmed and hawed about the matter. He was getting ready to fight in North Africa come hell or high water, and it seemed to him that the navy “was certainly not on their toes.” In the meeting Patton challenged some of Thomas’s assertions, and voices were raised.
    Eisenhower steered them all toward a bottom line when he reminded everyone present that Torch was an order from the president of the United States and, whether it was liked or not, would be carried out. And pointedly, Eisenhower told the assembled naval officers that whether or not there was a single warship to guard the invasion, he was going to be a part of it “if I have to go alone in a rowboat.”
    Aside from his pique at the navy, Patton left the gathering with a distinct sense that too deep a bow was being made to British sensibility andguidance. He noted in his diary that evening, “It is very noticeable that most of the American officers here are pro-British, even Ike.… I am not, repeat not, pro-British.”
    Perhaps to open Patton’s mind to his host country’s charms, Truscott arranged for a dinner at Claridge’s to which Truscott invited the man whose work he’d been studying since arriving in England, Lord Mountbatten. Several other British officers were present, and Patton was indeed impressed with them, telling Truscott the next day that they were “damn fine fighting men.” He even accepted an invitation from one of them to another dinner the next evening, at which he was guaranteed to meet a “typical member of the English aristocracy.” Patton had expressed skepticism that such a cliché still existed in Britain.
    Patton arrived at the appointed hour the next evening decked out in his finest, a pose that he could pull off like few others in the U.S. Army. “With gleaming boots and spurs, riding breeches, shining buttons, rows of ribbons on his well cut blouse,” he was, in Truscott’s estimation, “a magnificent figure of a soldier.”
    Soon he was met by his counterpart. “A dowager of sixty-five or thereabouts with several chins seeking rest upon a more than ample bosom.” She entered the room with her hair stacked in a “towering coiffure [that] quivered with her every movement.” She wore furs, trailing skirts, and “strings and strings of pearls,” and her hands sparkled with rings. “A picture from a page in history,” said Truscott.
    Seated next to her at the table, Patton charmed the guests with tales of army life, including his escapades with Pershing in Mexico and the notches on his gun from his days chasing Pancho Villa and his minions. His hostess registered just the right degree of “horror, astonishment, and doubt” at Patton’s stories, and Truscott felt the evening had been a genuine success. A colorful mixing of two disparate worlds.
    Less successful for Patton were efforts to boost resources for his western assault. In fact, by the middle of August, U.S. Navy and British arguments in favor of an emphasis on the Mediterranean invasion had swayed planners to the extent that Patton’s assault on the Moroccancoast had been canceled. The combined U.S. and British navies continued to claim that they didn’t have the resources to invade in three separate forces (two in the Mediterranean and one in Morocco); besides, the Moroccan surf was too pounding, too unpredictable to plan for an amphibious assault; and finally, by focusing on