and they were overridden. At least for the time being. Back on the table again for Patton were plans to lead the Western Task Force, whose central goal would be the taking of Casablanca, rather than leading his task force into Oran on the Mediterranean.
For the next two weeks, the U.S. and British chiefs of staff, as well as FDR and Winston Churchill, engaged in what Eisenhower’s aide, Captain Harry Butcher, called “the transatlantic essay contest,” trying to decide, once and for all, how exactly to invade North Africa. As the back-and-forth continued in London and Washington, Eisenhower sent a note to Patton saying, “I feel like the lady in the circus that has to ride three horses with no very good idea of exactly where any one of the three is going.”
If London appeared half dead to George Patton, Washington was like Grand Central Station in a constant state of rush hour. Uniformed menand women swarmed through the city. When you could find a cab, it usually overflowed with ride-share companions. The War Department had just announced the hiring ofthree hundred thousand women to civilian positions that ranged from tens of thousands of clerical jobs to driving trucks and riveting airplane wings in factories all over the country. It seemed like half of the new employees had arrived in D.C. over the weekend. There werelines to buy newspapers, lines to get a shave, lines to get breakfast in the morning, lines to get shoes shined.
Parts of the gigantic new pentagonal Department of War building, being constructed between Arlington National Cemetery and Memorial Bridge, were already occupied by some War Department staff, but several months of furious work needed to be done to complete it.
Patton steered clear of both the new construction and offices near his troops’ point of departure in Hampton Roads, Virginia. Upon returning from London, he and his staff reoccupied a third-floor loft in the War Department’s Main Navy and Munitions Buildings—sixteen identical rectangular buildings that stretched like two octaves of piano keys down the Capitol Mall on the site of what is now the Vietnam War Memorial. They were divided by military branch, with the army occupying the Munitions buildings, and the Navy, the remaining structures.
His naval counterpart, Rear Admiral Kent Hewitt, commander of the Western Naval Task Force, which was to transport Patton and his army to Africa, occupied rooms in the Nansemond Hotel in Norfolk, next door to Hampton Roads in Virginia. The two met for the first time in Washington on August 24, a few days after Patton’s return from England. Unfortunately, their immediate feelings toward each other were a far cry from mutual admiration. Patton was brusque and unsympathetic toward the navy’s troubles and, as usual, was loud and profane in expressing his opinion. He complained, as he had in London, about the negativity and the pessimism of the navy officers.
A gentlemanly man of fifty-five with prominent ears, hair going quickly from gray to white, and a slight wattle beneath his chin,Hewitt had served in the navy for almost forty years in a career that stretchedback to the days of Teddy Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet. He’d won a Navy Cross for heroism while serving as captain of a destroyer during World War I and spent much of the time between the wars as head of the Department of Mathematics at the Naval Academy. He had, according to accounts, a low-key manner that was like a placid lake to Patton’s pounding surf. Hewitt was not, however, a man to be bowled over by bluster and rage. Though he stifled his own anger at Patton’s peremptory behavior, it was there in spades and, by the end of the meeting, deep enough to send Hewitt directly to his superior, Admiral King, to say that it was his opinion that unless Patton were removed from command of the Western Task Force, the navy should bow out of the operation. King went immediately to George Marshall to tell him of the contretemps and
For the next two weeks, the U.S. and British chiefs of staff, as well as FDR and Winston Churchill, engaged in what Eisenhower’s aide, Captain Harry Butcher, called “the transatlantic essay contest,” trying to decide, once and for all, how exactly to invade North Africa. As the back-and-forth continued in London and Washington, Eisenhower sent a note to Patton saying, “I feel like the lady in the circus that has to ride three horses with no very good idea of exactly where any one of the three is going.”
If London appeared half dead to George Patton, Washington was like Grand Central Station in a constant state of rush hour. Uniformed menand women swarmed through the city. When you could find a cab, it usually overflowed with ride-share companions. The War Department had just announced the hiring ofthree hundred thousand women to civilian positions that ranged from tens of thousands of clerical jobs to driving trucks and riveting airplane wings in factories all over the country. It seemed like half of the new employees had arrived in D.C. over the weekend. There werelines to buy newspapers, lines to get a shave, lines to get breakfast in the morning, lines to get shoes shined.
Parts of the gigantic new pentagonal Department of War building, being constructed between Arlington National Cemetery and Memorial Bridge, were already occupied by some War Department staff, but several months of furious work needed to be done to complete it.
Patton steered clear of both the new construction and offices near his troops’ point of departure in Hampton Roads, Virginia. Upon returning from London, he and his staff reoccupied a third-floor loft in the War Department’s Main Navy and Munitions Buildings—sixteen identical rectangular buildings that stretched like two octaves of piano keys down the Capitol Mall on the site of what is now the Vietnam War Memorial. They were divided by military branch, with the army occupying the Munitions buildings, and the Navy, the remaining structures.
His naval counterpart, Rear Admiral Kent Hewitt, commander of the Western Naval Task Force, which was to transport Patton and his army to Africa, occupied rooms in the Nansemond Hotel in Norfolk, next door to Hampton Roads in Virginia. The two met for the first time in Washington on August 24, a few days after Patton’s return from England. Unfortunately, their immediate feelings toward each other were a far cry from mutual admiration. Patton was brusque and unsympathetic toward the navy’s troubles and, as usual, was loud and profane in expressing his opinion. He complained, as he had in London, about the negativity and the pessimism of the navy officers.
A gentlemanly man of fifty-five with prominent ears, hair going quickly from gray to white, and a slight wattle beneath his chin,Hewitt had served in the navy for almost forty years in a career that stretchedback to the days of Teddy Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet. He’d won a Navy Cross for heroism while serving as captain of a destroyer during World War I and spent much of the time between the wars as head of the Department of Mathematics at the Naval Academy. He had, according to accounts, a low-key manner that was like a placid lake to Patton’s pounding surf. Hewitt was not, however, a man to be bowled over by bluster and rage. Though he stifled his own anger at Patton’s peremptory behavior, it was there in spades and, by the end of the meeting, deep enough to send Hewitt directly to his superior, Admiral King, to say that it was his opinion that unless Patton were removed from command of the Western Task Force, the navy should bow out of the operation. King went immediately to George Marshall to tell him of the contretemps and
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