Twelve Desperate Miles by Tim Brady Read Free Book Online Page A

redeemed for another dozen years, and the federal government had neither the means nor the inclination to hurry the payments.
    The order to clear the marchers from Washington was passed from the administration to the army, and MacArthur personally oversaw the routing of the vets and their families. Eisenhower, MacArthur’s aide, was at his side, embarrassed by what followed. Patton, who commanded the cavalry, including Lucian Truscott, was in charge of much of the dirty work. Two vets were killed in the mayhem, and the camp erected by the marchers was burned to the ground. It was a moment of which no officer involved was overly proud.
    As the Second World War approached, the U.S. Army began the process of sorting out just what kind of military it needed to be and who might be its most accomplished commanders. One of the chief bones of contention was the use of armored divisions. Despite the obvious success of German blitzkrieg tactics in Europe, there were many in the United States who felt that one of the principal weapons of those attacks, the tank, was still a work in progress, that its most important function, at which it had shown only partial effectiveness in World War I, was in support of infantry. Tanks, which in the First World War had been subject to frequent breakdowns and terrain-induced stalls, were still not ready to lead troops into combat went this line of thinking. Some even assumed the horse would be a continued and important component of the war. In fact, it wasn’t until 1940 that the U.S. Army created its First and Second Armored Divisions.
    In the spring of 1941, newly promoted Major General George Patton was named commanding general of one of those divisions, the Second, and he led this force through a pair of successful war games in Louisiana and South Carolina that year. Again, however, his successes did not come without detractors. While Patton viewed his aggressive use of armored vehicles as an effective display of their capabilities, others in the exercises felt he was skirting the spirit of the games and disrupting important tests of the army’s infantry for showboating purposes. The importanceof these exercises was heightened for the commanders involved because, as Patton himself well knew, they were an opportunity to shine and impress. Making the cover of
Life
magazine didn’t guarantee success in the prewar army, but in the fierce jockeying for consequential command in the coming war, a little national publicity didn’t hurt either.
    While there was no consensus on the character of George Patton within the army, there didn’t need to be for him to have a seat on that August 1942 flight to London. In Eisenhower and Marshall he had the two most powerful supporters he could have within the European Command. And if his impulsiveness, his lack of patience, his inability to step lightly around the abilities and egos of other men in the U.S. Army had created a whole slew of rivals—well, as he would have suggested, war had begun, and the time for the political niceties and privileges of the interwar high command had passed. This battle would be won by blood and guts alone.

    Of course, to the British high command, General George Patton, like all American commanders, was essentially an untested commodity in the sort of war that was being waged in Europe. He and Doolittle, along with Eisenhower, who’d flown to England in June, and George Marshall, who had hitched a ride on this same Stratoliner three weeks earlier, were all novices and had a steep climb up the learning curve to reach the point where they would know as much about the intricacies of World War II as their hosts.And the British were more than a little put off by the fact that the Americans were not inclined to be tutored.
    From a strategic point of view, Marshall’s journey, beginning on July 18, was one of the most momentous of the war. He had flown with Chief of Naval Operations Ernest King; FDR’s eyes and ears, Harry Hopkins;