Books: The General and the Admiral

WAR As I KNEW IT (425 pp.)—General George S. Patton Jr.—Houghton Mifflin ($3.75).

ADMIRAL HALSEY’S STORY (310 pp.)—Fleet Admiral William F. Halsey and Lieut. Commander J. Bryan III—Whittlesey ($4).

Admiral Halsey was a kind of seagoing General Patton. Both Halsey and Patton took long, unorthodox chances and won brilliant victories. Both were profane and histrionic commanders. Each stubbed his well-polished boot when he stepped outside his own field of fire. Their books have only this in common: each contains a fairly detailed operations report that historians and experts, armchair and professional, will find required reading. Beyond that, Admiral Halsey’s Story is a routine, ghost-spun autobiography of a forthright, successful, but essentially uninteresting naval man. War As I Knew It is the sometimes irritating but always readable book of a soldier with curiosity and imagination.

Halsey’s explanation of the Pearl Harbor fiasco will strike most readers as being naive or evasive. He ignores the evidence of Annapolis Classmate Kimmel’s laxness (borne out by one of the photographs in Halsey’s book, TIME, Oct. 27), writes: “Who, then, is to blame? . . . The attack succeeded because Admiral Kimmel and General Short could not give Pearl Harbor adequate protection. They could not give it because they did not have it to give. . . . The blame for Pearl Harbor rests squarely on the American people and nowhere else.”

Furious as he was with Japanese duplicity, Halsey was quite prepared to adopt Pearl Harbor tactics himself. Even before he knew of the Japanese attack, he had given orders to “sink any shipping sighted, shoot down any plane encountered.” Protested his operations officer: “Goddammit, Admiral, you can’t start a private war of your own! Who’s going to take the responsibility?” Said Halsey: “I’ll take it! If anything gets in my way, we’ll shoot first and argue afterwards.”

“I Was Stunned.” Once he started shooting, Halsey won most of his arguments. But many an expert will continue to differ with certain Halsey tactics defended in his Story. Example: the famous Battle for Leyte Gulf in October 1944, where some critics claim that the Japanese decoyed Halsey out of position. On that occasion Admiral Nimitz bluntly radioed to ask where Halsey’s battleships were. Says Halsey: “I was as stunned as if I had been struck in the face. The paper rattled in my hands. I snatched off my cap, threw it on the deck, and shouted something that I am ashamed to remember. Mick Carney rushed over and grabbed my arm: ‘Stop it! What the hell’s the matter with you? Pull yourself together!”

Halsey and Collaborator Bryan play one game throughout the Story which will annoy all but the Admiral’s most devout fans. Halsey is made to strike a modest pose but permits the “editor” to enter his citations and whatever flash compliments piled up during a period of wartime hysteria.

Proud of His Slap. General Patton’s boasting is more straightforward. In a final chapter called Earning My Pay, he cites 34 instances during his career when “my personal intervention had some value.” Among them he includes the notorious slapping incident in Sicily. Writes Patton: “. . . Had other officers had the courage to do likewise, the shameful use of ‘battle fatigue’ as an excuse for cowardice would have been infinitely reduced.”

War As I Knew It is not Patton’s diary (kept from July 1942 to Dec. 5, 1945), but a separate book about the ETO campaigns which draws on his diary and what are referred to as “open” letters from the General to Mrs. Patton. An introductory section of letters from North Africa and Sicily will be an eye-opener for many a reader fattened on the journalists’ “blood and guts” legend: “Just finished reading the Koran—a good book and interesting.” Patton had a keen eye for native customs and methods, wrote knowingly of local architecture, even rated the progress of word-of-mouth rumor in Arab country at 40-60 miles a day. In spite of his regard for the Koran he concluded: “To me it seems certain that the fatalistic teachings of Mohammed and the utter degradation of women is the outstanding cause for the arrested development of the Arab. . . . Here, I think, is a text for some eloquent sermon on the virtues of Christianity” (both Patton and Halsey were Episcopalians).

Patton’s awareness of military history crops up constantly. Before the Normandy invasion he read Freeman’s Norman Conquest to check on the roads used by William the Conqueror in Normandy and Brittany. He was the only one of his staff who knew that captured Regensburg was the Ratisbon of Napoleonic fame. The Melun crossing of the Seine, he noted, was the same used by Labienus with his Tenth Legion about 55 B.C.

Patton’s well-known contempt for Montgomery seeps into these pages, but with less virulence than his supporters have indulged in. “The 31st was the last day on which Montgomery was to command United States troops, so all of us had a keen appetite for dinner. At 0800 [the next morning] we heard that Montgomery had been made a Field Marshal and proclaimed the greatest living soldier. Our appetite for breakfast was not so good.” He quotes with approval Bradley’s comment that Monty’s promise of a “dagger thrust” at Germany would be more like a “butter-knife thrust.”

Patton admits that he did not at first realize the seriousness of the Nazis’ breakthrough in the Battle of the Bulge. As late as Dec. 25, 1944, he wrote optimistically: “Christmas dawned clear and cold; lovely weather for killing Germans. . . .” By Jan. 4, he confided to his diary: “We can still lose this war . . . the only time I ever made such a statement.” The plan for the Third Army’s subsequent breakthrough, Patton claims, was in his head complete as he awoke one morning: “Whether these tactical thoughts of mine are the result of inspiration or insomnia, I have never been able to determine, but nearly every tactical idea I have had has come into my head full-born, much after the manner of Minerva from the head of Jupiter.”

Like many a U.S. soldier, Patton approvingly noted the energy of the then well-fed German civilians. “. . . I saw five Germans, three women and two men, re-roofing a house. They were not even waiting for Lend-Lease, as would be the case in several other countries I could mention.” Later Patton’s regard for Nazi efficiency resulted in his loss of the Third Army command in Bavaria. He persisted to the end that he was right. In his last entry, three months before his death, he wrote: “The one thing which I could not say then, and cannot yet say, is that my chief interest in establishing order in Germany was to prevent Germany from going communistic. I am afraid that our foolish and utterly stupid policy in regard to Germany will certainly cause them to join the Russians and thereby insure a communistic state throughout Western Europe.” He believed that “all very successful commanders are prima donnas, and must be so treated. Some officers require urging, others require suggestions, very few have to be restrained.”