On June 25, 1942, the War Department in Washington formally announced the establishment of a European Theater of Operations for the armed forces of the United States. It announced further that Dwight Eisenhower, the fifty-two-year-old major general who was in charge of its Operations Division, had been named commanding officer in the European Theater, with his headquarters in London. Some newspapers still got his name wrong.
Eisenhower had flown the previous day to the British capital, where he issued a statement declaring that the United States and Britain were moving swiftly to merge their ''military and economic strength" to defeat the enemy. Few people in London, or in the United States for that matter, had ever heard of the man who would soon undertake one of the most difficult tasks in military history—forging and leading an operational wartime military alliance based on mutual consent between two nations that had important differing interests as well as notably different national characteristics.
Word spread quickly through the British military establishment and in the London press that Eisenhower was held in
100 sufficiently high esteem at the War Department to be given his prestigious assignment over more than 300 other generals who outranked him. The New York Times reported that he was "considered generally to be one of the most brilliant among the younger crop of distinguished Army officers." Eisenhower himself thought his appointment was temporary. He believed General Marshall would arrive in Britain before long to assume command of American forces in the European Theater. He thought that would be appropriate in view of the enormity of the task of laying the groundwork for the destruction of the Third Reich.
The day after Eisenhower's arrival in London, he met with the staff he had inherited from his predecessor in London. It consisted of the same officers whose performance had failed to impress him on his visit the month before and among whom he still found, upon his arrival, a "lack of confidence and some indecision." He didn't single out anyone for blame and was "quite certain that this staff and all commanders now realize we have a unique problem to solve." He expected them to bring enthusiasm, optimism, and diligence to their jobs. What was more, they were to abandon their practice of bucking everything back to the War Department in Washington. He made clear that "no alibis or excuses will be acceptable."
What concerned the Commanding General most [his official diarist wrote] was the cultivation of determined enthusiasm and optimism in every member of his staff and every subordinate commander. He refused to tolerate pessimism or defeatism and urged anyone who could not rise above the recognized obstacles to ask for instant release from this theater.
Eisenhower's first home in London was a suite at Claridge's on Brook Street, the British capital's finest hotel. It was within a few minutes' walking distance of his office in Grosvenor Square, which American correspondents would later come to call "Eisenhowerplatz." Colonel Ernest "Tex" Lee, a former salesman from Texas, ran his office for him. Sergeant Mickey
McKeogh, a former New York City hotel bellhop, was his personal orderly. He arranged for Kay Summersby, the British Motor Transport Corps volunteer who had chauffered for him when he had visited London the previous month, to be assigned as his driver again. She would play a more significant role in his life during the following three years.
Closely in attendance was the recently commissioned U. S. Navy Commander Harry Butcher, a close Lxend whom he'd had assigned to him as his naval attache and who shared his hotel suite. Butcher knew little about warships or the navy, but Eisenhower found him useful and comforting to have around as confidant, sounding board, personal assistant, public relations agent, and keeper of his diary.
A former journalist and CBS executive. Butcher persuaded Eisenhower to nurture agreeable, informal relations with the press and to remain accessible to correspondents. Naturally affable, Eisenhower, suddenly a figure of great public interest, readily accepted that advice. Butcher was permitted to feed the press wholesome human-interest stories about Eisenhower's family and modest origins. Newspapers dug up and published photographs that helped fill in the background of this suddenly prominent general—of the Texas railway hovel in which he had been born, of Abilene, where his youthful adventures had been played out, of him and his brothers as youngsters, of him and Mamie as a young couple.
Eisenhower accepted that it was important to have the press on his side and agreed to meet often with correspondents. At the first of the many press conferences he held in London, he had no trouble charming the attending journalists with his easy manner and intelligence, and they remained charmed throughout the war. He was always good copy. He provided what would later come to be called sound bites about Allied unity and inevitable victory to lend spice to the stories the correspondents filed, though Edward R. Murrow of CBS at first confessed in a broadcast, "I don't know whether Eisenhower is a good general or not." The New York Times reported at his first London press conference that he "talked informally with British reporters and American correspondents, giving an excellent demonstration
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Of the art of being jovially outspoken without saying much of anything." '
While blaming security requirements for his not offering much of significance, he took to answering the questions of correspondents with an apparent fulsomeness and folksiness not common among senior military men. There was nothing pompous or affected about him. He didn't pretend to know more than he did. He didn't pretend to say more than he could. Guided by Butcher, he got to know several of the correspondents well and called them by their first names during press conferences, a flattering, unprecedented intimacy among the British at the time. He was, in short, a regular guy. The image established was of a decent, modest, but authoritative figure who, through intelligence and application, had risen from a humble background to high rank and important military assignment.
In today's more sophisticated public-relations climate, it would be said that Eisenhower was manipulating the press by his chumminess and accessibility. That charge would not be far from the mark. Butcher made him even more popular with correspondents by treating the problems they encountered— censorship, for example—with great seriousness, having Eisenhower take steps to help them out when circumstances permitted. It was thus judged that the general did not hide any more than necessary behind a blanket of secrecy. The Chicago Daily News declared, "Correspondents with experience in Paris, London, and Washington from the outset of the war claim they have never seen such an absence of red tape."
There would later be times when they would find him considerably less than forthcoming. While he believed the American public had a right to be told what was happening, and the British public had to have confidence in their American ally, this was war and he considered the press a weapon to be used in it.
Eisenhower did not stay long at Claridge's. The hotel sometimes served as the London base for royalty and other visiting dignitaries from around the world, and it proved too rich for
His blood. Not till after the war did this man from the wrong side of the tracks in Abilene come to feel comfortable in the kind of luxurious surroundings the millionaire friends he came to acquire helped provide for him.
He was much flattered when invited to enjoy the subdued comfort of Churchill's country residence at Chequers in Buckinghamshire or the elegance of Mountbatten's Broadlands estate in Hampshire, despite the snootiness of some of the servants he encountered in the latter establishment. But he found his suite at Claridge's, where the walls of his sitting room were painted gold, too much like "a goddamned fancy funeral parlor," and where the bedroom color scheme struck him as "Whorehouse pink." In addition, he was told that the hotel was less likely to withstand the effects of bombing than the somewhat less plush Dorchester Hotel overlooking Hyde Park, to which he moved.
But the Dorchester was not much to his liking either. Butcher soon found a small home in a rural setting not too far away from London that could serve Eisenhower as a retreat. Telegraph Cottage, situated on a ten-acre wooded tract, with two golf courses nearby, was outside the town of Kingston, less than an hour west of Grosvenor Square. Butcher went there with him and, in addition to Mickey McKeogh, he took on two black soldiers—John Moaney and John Hunt—to be servants, to clean, cook, serve, and generally keep the cottage functioning tidily and efficiently.
Eisenhower was able to flee there on some nights and most weekends to escape the artificial atmosphere of hotel life and the social demands to which he was exposed during the week by virtue of being the most important American in London. At the cottage, he would play bridge with members of his staff and visitors. He would sometimes toss a football around with Butcher, Lee, and General Mark Clark, who had been appointed commander of U. S. ground forces in England. A badminton net was erected and put to use. Tin cans were saved for pistol-shooting practice. And there were excursions to the nearby golf courses.
As he had in Washington, Eisenhower put in long hours at
His offices in Grosvenor Square. He needed relaxation when he could get away. Aside f'rom the pressure of work, his shoulder was bothering him. He received novocaine injections for neuritis at the London Clinic and was treated by an osteopath. He declined to have army doctors examine him for fear they would make him go through a full checkup that would consume more time than he was willing to spare. He had trouble sleeping and Butcher would sometimes find him looking out of the window of his Dorchester Hotel suite in the middle of the night.
His eating habits did nothing to contribute to his well-being. Considering a lunch break an unnecessary luxury, he often made a meal of candy bars at his desk. He did what he could to shun boiled cabbage and brussels sprouts, the fragrance of which seeped through his Grosvenor Square headquarters from its kitchens, where the cooks relied heavily on limited British food supplies. He believed this was going to be "the fartingest war in history."
Soon after his arrival in England, Eisenhower was promoted to lieutenant general, a rank sufficiently high for the British military to take him seriously, though General Brooke did not consider him important enough to schedule an early meeting with him. Comparatively limited forces were as yet at his disposal. Despite the War Department's ambitious strategy, hardly more than 50,000 American troops had so far arrived in the United Kingdom. Soon after he had established his presence in London, he set about making arrangements to speed up the cross-Atlantic flow. That presented problems of a special kind.
The potential for friction between the newly arrived American soldiers and their British hosts was great. The people of Britain were enduring food and fuel shortages. Practically everything else was in short supply as well. Their cities were pockmarked with the effects of German air raids. Many people had lost kin or friends in the fighting or at sea. Many others feared for the safety of sons, husbands, and fathers in far-off combat zones.
American servicemen had difficulty appreciating what the British had gone through and were still experiencing. For most of them, being in Britain was an adventure. By British standards, they were exorbitantly paid, often offensively self-
Assured, and snappily attired. Young British women were greatly attracted to them. In addition to the glamour of these cocky Yanks, they were loaded with cigarettes, chocolate, coffee, and other desirable goods that were otherwise hard to come by in Britain. They had those things in such profusion that, without a second thought, even the lowliest among them could give or even throw away items that were greatly desired by their British hosts.
Reeling from defeat in battle and fearful because of Soviet setbacks, most Britons were relieved by the presence of the Americans. However, resentment at their comparative wealth and privileges was widespread. Nor was it much appreciated when Americans boasted of how they had come to save Britain from losing the war.
Not happy to be away from home, the Americans found much to ridicule or criticize in the British environment, including driving on the left side of the road, a generally disagreeable climate, and how incomprehensible the language they shared with their hosts often seemed to be. Their blunt comments on such things often aroused hard feelings among their hosts. It was not the way guests were expected to behave. Entertaining the troops, singer A1 Jolson drew a huge laugh with his suggestion about unchilled British beer: "Why don't they put it back in the horse?"
English-language radio propaganda broadcasts transmitted by the Germans attempted to intensify the resentments among the British about this supposedly friendly invasion from across the Atlantic. They claimed that American soldiers were raping British women, murdering British men, and generally lording it over the British. Eisenhower was aware of the dangers.
World History
