The First Big Push

It was 7 o’clock Saturday night—1a.m. Sunday in Algiers. The newsmen who cover the White House were at ease, having dinner at home, drinking cocktails at the Press Club. The United Press was throwing a party for a departing desk man.

Suddenly the White House switchboard went into action. Out to the scattered newsmen went a warning: stand by at the pressroom for news. Back to the White House, from home and bar and party, the newsmen scurried. They gathered outside Secretary Stephen Early’s office, to whisper, wait and wonder.

They did not have to wait long. At 9 o’clock—3 a.m. on the coast of Africa where history was in the making—the news was out. The U.S. had undertaken a vast offensive aimed to control the Mediterranean (see p. 22), had started a train of events that would go far, and perhaps fast.

Up & down the land came hours of great but sober rejoicing. The news crowded everything else out of the papers; poured forth from the radio; in all the land there was hardly another topic of conversation. The nation’s urge for action and attack was fulfilled; to many an American it seemed that this moment marked the turning point of the war.

Over the White House hung the confident calm that comes of effective planning. This was no hectic, fevered day of Pearl Harbor: this time the surprises and the initiative were in American hands. The plans had been made long in advance. The troops had been ready, and the ships. Even as the action began, Franklin Roosevelt’s voice went by short-wave transcription to the people of France and French Africa. In slow, schoolboy French (starting with the inevitable Mes Amis) he said: “We come among you to repulse the cruel invaders. . . . Have faith in our words. . . . Help us where you are able. . . . Vive la France éternelle!”

News bulletins poured into the White House; the High Command came again & again to confer. There was no improvising: the rush of events was merely checked off against a timetable which the United Nations had drawn—and could enforce.