Twelve Desperate Miles by Tim Brady

two points in the Mediterranean rather than the northwest coast of Africa, the Allies would be that much closer to the Germans in Tunisia. Patton would now lead forces against the city of Oran in northwestern Algeria as part of the Mediterranean attack. His force’s move into Morocco would come from the north rather than from the Atlantic in the west.
    By this time, Patton was simply committed to whatever plan was decided upon. To Bea, he wrote of the changes, “I think this is fortunate for me, so far as a longer life goes, but it is bad for the country—very dangerous in fact. Ike is not as rugged mentally as I thought; he vacillates and is not a realist.”
    A grave sense of the risks and dangers of what the Allies were undertaking began to color sensibilities in both Washington and London. The fact that untried, untested, and barely trained U.S. Army forces would be thrust into the war on the beaches of North Africa was one thing; the fact that they were to be carried and escorted by inadequate naval forces after journeys of thousands of miles for those traveling from American shores and hundreds of miles for those brought by the Royal Navy from England was another. No one knew how French forces would react; no one knew if Hitler would induce Franco to send the Spanish army to Gibraltar or perhaps take it himself, cutting off Allied forces in the region. And finally, by agreement and order of FDR and Winston Churchill, along with the desperate wishes of Soviet Russia and the sentiments of the free world, all of this needed to be done in the fast-dwindling months of 1942.
    To Eisenhower, the French response represented the key to success or failure. There were fourteen French divisions in North Africa. Five hundred French planes. If Vichy forces in North Africa were to offer united opposition to the invasion, Axis forces could have the time to rushreinforcements to the region before major coastal objectives were taken. They might also have time to force an assault on Gibraltar.
    In a gathering of the principal American military leaders of the assault—Eisenhower, Clark, Doolittle, and Patton—on the eve of Patton’s return to the United States, all but Patton agreed that the odds were against a successful invasion. Patton put them at fifty-two to forty-eight in favor. To his diary that night he wrote, “I feel that we should fight, but for success we must have luck.… We must do something now. I feel that I am the only true gambler in the whole outfit.”
    Patton left for the States on August 19 to begin the process of organizing his invasion force. Truscott remained behind in England as Patton’s surrogate in the ongoing planning for Torch. Before he left, “Georgie” paid one final visit to Eisenhower. While there, he pulled from his pocket a document that he’d drafted that morning. It turned out to be a proposed demand of the French for the surrender of Casablanca, intended for that day when he arrived in the city. As much as it hurt him for two former Allies to be engaged in such fighting, the note read in part, unless Casablanca surrendered within the next ten minutes, Patton would order the navy to shoot the hell out of the city.
    “No wonder Ike’s so pleased to have him,” Butcher noted in his diary.

CHAPTER 5

Halifax to Belfast
    T he Standard Fruit Company helped to popularize Caribbean cruise vacations in the 1920s and ’30s. Well-heeled passengers sailing from New York and New Orleans often made their first visits to Havana, Kingston, Veracruz, and Tampico, as well as Haiti, Honduras, and Nicaragua, on banana boats.
    From time to time ships’ captains like William John had an opportunity torub elbows with the famous and near-famous on these cruises. Standard Fruit Company newsletters show photos of John greeting a Chicago opera star on board the
Contessa
, a pair of Hollywood producers, and the year’s Miss New Orleans. Actor William Bendix, who would soon play famed New York Yankee Babe