(Classified)

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00001R000400410012-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: November 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 27, 2000
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: June 22, 1954
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

TI-S REPORTER JUNE 22, 1954 STATINTL
Approved For Release 2000/05/05: CIA-RDP75-0000
General Truscott,
Seagoing Cavalryman
CPYRGHT
Coitr,IAND EMISSIONS: A PERSONAL .STORY, by
Lieutenant General L. K. Truscott, Jr.
Dutton.. 7.50.
THE MARINLS will clo some head-
shaking when they read this story
of a horse cavalryman who was the
senior American "observer" (an in-
adequate word) during the Dieppe
raid, a key commander and a suc-
cessful one in the seaborne assaults
in North Africa, Sicily, Anzio, and
Southern France.
In April, 1942, Colonel Truscott
was commanding a cavalry regiment
on the Mexican border when he was
ordered to report to Washington.
There he discovered that he was to
go to Lord Mountbatten's Combined
Operations Headquarters, which was
responsible for amphibious training
in Britain, as the head of a group of
American officers. When Truscott re-
ported to Eisenhower, then a major
general and head of the Army's Oper-
ations Division, he raised the ques-
tion of his inexperience-he had been
in a small boat on salt water only
wice in his life-and received the
cirmy's traditional answer: "You can
learn, can't you?"
Truscott, as he went up the ladder,
commanding in turn the 3rd Infan-
try Division, the VI Corps, and the
Fifth -Army, often found himself over
officers ,.who had long been his sen-
iors. He pays tribute to their com-
plete loyalty. In our peculiar U.S.
Army tradition, Truscott was never
-iven the four stars of an army com-
rnander's normal rank.
K)f Patton and Clark
his book, as the subtitle indicates, is
"a personal story," told with honesty
uncl with more frankness than might
)e expected. As the author says in a
orevvord, it was done "without pro-
essional assistance." Some paragraphs
ire extraordinarily illuminating. In
-lie case of General Patton, for ex-
rmple, there is a brief description of
one incident that shows Patton fitting
perfectly into General Eisenhower's
description: "His emotional range
was very great and lie lived at either
one end or the other of it." Faced
with a delay in the controversial am-
phibious outflanking movement at
Brolo, on the north coast of Sicily,
Patton stormed into Truscott's 3rd
Division command post. "'God-
dammit, Lucian, what's the matter
with you? Are you afraid to fight?'
I bristled right back: 'General, you
know that's ridiculous and insulting.
You have ordered the operation and
it is now loading. If you don't think
I can carry out orders, you can give
the Division to anyone you please.
But I will tell you one thing, you
will not find anyone who can carry
out orders which they do not ap-
prove as well as I can.' General Pat-
ton changed instantly, the anger all
gone. Throwing his arm about my
shoulder lie said: 'Dammit, Lucian,
I know that. Come on, let's have a
drink-of your liquor.' "
General Mark Clark, who was
often Truscott's immediate com-
mander, gets credit for making every
effort to support subordinates in
their tasks, and for being an unusu-
ally able executive and administra-
tor, but he comes off rather poorly
on other counts. "His concern for
personal publicity was his greatest
weakness," says Truscott. When
Rome fell, Truscott "received orders
to report to General Clark on Capi-
toline Hill . . ." He complied, but
the meeting turned out to be nothing
but a speechmaking ceremony. "I
was anxious to get oul of this postur-
ing and on with the war," he writes.
Months later, when Bologna fell,
another of Clark's liberation celebra-
tions fell flat. "Clark led a procession
of jeeps . . . on a tour of downtown
streets. What we were to accomplish,
I do not know. There were few
Bolognese around and these did not
seem overly enthusiastic ... ," Trus-
cOtt reports with evident satisfaction.
The differences of opinion between
the two commanders is even more
marked in tactical matters than in
personal appraisals, particularly in
regard to the Anzio and Rapido
River operations. Of one of General
Clark's plans for an attack out of
the Anzio beachhead, Truscott says
flatly: "A worse plan would be dif-
ficult to conceive." Truscott and
other senior officers reacted so un-
favorably to this particular plan
that "Our pessimism was not without
effect," and it was abandoned. Of
the controversial attempt of the 36th
Infantry Division to cross the Rapido
River a few weeks later, Truscott
says he told Clark under what condi-
tions he believed a crossing would
be possible and that these condi-
tions had not been fulfilled. The
attempt was a costly failure.
The Muffed Opportunity
More emphatically, lie charges that
Clark's turning of the main effort of
the attack out of the Anzio beach-
head away from the Valmontone Gap
prevented the destruction of the Ger-
man Tenth Army: "There has never
been any doubt in my mind that had
General Clark held loyally to Gen-
eral Alexander's instructions, had he
not changed the direction of my at-
tack to the northwest on May 26th,
the strategic objective of Anzio
would have been accomplished in
full. To be first in Rome was poor
compensation for this lost opportu-
nity." Anzio, says Truscott, was
nevertheless worth the cost.
Strangely, out of the book there
emerges a sense of similarity between
Patton and Truscott. Very different
in appearance, manner, and ap-
proach, they had one common char-
acteristic to which everything else
had to give way. Each, as far as his
part of it was concerned, was going
to win the war.
tune 22, 1954 Approved For Release 2000/05/05: CIA-RDP75-00001 R000400410012-6
 Approved For Release 2000/05/05: CIA-RDP7!C.R?lR3M10040041 nn12-6
Field Marshal Kesselring,
Flying Artilleryman
AL NEWMAN
KESSELRING-A SOLDIER'S RECORD, by Field
Marshal Albert Kesselring. William. Mor-
row. $5.
had come close to being pushed I
nto
kly
ON MARCH 7, 1945, advance ele-
ments of the 9th Armored Divi-
sion of First U.S. Army crossed the
Rhine on a partially destroyed
bridge at Remagen. The last great
barrier to victory on the Western
Front was breached. Although it
took three weeks of heavy fighting
for First Army to establish a bridge-
head from which the climactic of-
fensive could be mounted and for
the other Allied armies to close up
to the Rhine in, strength and push
their first elements across, the out-
come was never in doubt.
On March 8, Adolf Hitler sum-
moned Field Marshal Albert Kessel-
ring from his post in charge of the
Italian Front to make him Com-
mander in Chief West in place of
the aged Gerd von Rundstedt.
On the Allied side in North Eu-
rope many asked: "Who is this Kes-
selring? How good is he? And what
possessed him to take over this hope-
less mess?"
Even in North Europe a few peo-
ple knew the answers to the first two.
Colonel Benjamin A. ("Monk") Dick-
son, First Army G-2, who had been
General Omar Bradley's G-2 at II
Corps in Sicily twenty-one months
earlier, remembered Kesselring's ma-
neuvers well: the extraordinary de-
fense by inferior numbers anchored
on both sides of Mount Etna and the
north and east coasts of the island;
the skillful bridge and cliff-road dem-
olitions; the step-by-step fighting
withdrawal to Messina; the evacua-
tion of surviving German forces
across the Strait of Messina to the
Italian mainland with the loss of
hardly a man.
On the U.S. Seventh Army's Palat-
inate Front there were entire divi-
sions that had good cause to recall
Kesselring. The 36th, whose Texans
had gone ashore at Paestum on the
Gulf of Salerno September 9, 1943,
the sea by forces mustered qui
from nowhere by a German
mander already harassed by the
ud-
>
den defection of his Italian a1
one day earlier. The 45th and 3rd
Divisions, rushed to the assistance
of the 36th at Salerno, had even
sharper memories of Anzio early the
following year. The 3rd, landing in
the rear of an unsuspecting enemy,
soon found itself in contact with
German forces which, as General
Lucian Truscot.t, then commanding
the 3rd, puts it in his excellent Com-
mand Missions, just couldn't have
been where they were: "I suppose
that arm chair strategists will al-
ways labor under the delusion that
there was a 'fleeting opportunity' at
Anzio during which some Napo-
leonic figure would have . . . gal-
loped on into Rome.... On January
24 [two days after the landing] ...
We were in contact with German
detachments with tanks and self-
propelled artillery everywhere along
the [beachhead] front."
What's Wrong with Fascism?
The German commander was Kes-
selring. The whole flawless defense
of the Italian Peninsula was his plan
-the location of line after line of
fortifications and switch positions
anchored firmly on terrain features
and the exaction of the last drop of
Allied blood for each defense line.
It was adroit. It was witty. There
could be no question of Kesselring's
talent. He was probably the ablest
of Hitler's high commanders-abler
even than Rommel, whose tempera-
ment hampered his relations with
both superiors and subordinates.
The answer to the third question-
why Kesselring consented to take
command of the tatters of the Ger-
man Western Front two months to
the day before the final surrender-
has remained unanswered until pub-
lication of his extraordinary book.
For it shows Kesselring as one of
the rarest men who ever lived-a
man who never asked a question,
even of himself. Temperamentally
at least, Kesselring must be rated
forces of a dictatorship.
Joining a Bavarian artillery regi-
ment in 1903, young Kesselring
served with various South German
units as a junior officer during the
First World War. After defeat, lie
set quietly to work, along with other
promising survivors, to get ready for
the next war. In 1933, he was trans-
ferred to the air branch. Kesselring
records his conversation with Lieu-
tenant General Freiherr von Ham-
merstein on that occasion as follows:
"'Has Stumpfl told you about
your future employment?'
'Yes.'
" 'Well, are you satisfied with it?'
"When I said no and proceeded to
summarize my reasons he cut me
short with: 'You are a soldier and
have to obey orders.' "
And that was that, but the trans-
fer was the making of Kesselring,
for he became one of the first gen-
erals to see war in three dimensions.;
As an air commander and then a
commander of combined forces be
saw the war on more fronts than
any other high-ranking officer.
In the same year Kcsseliing jailed
the Luftfahrt, Hitler cane to ppwer.
"Until 1933," writes the Field Mar-
shal, "I avoided all personal contact
with the [Nazis].... It was not until
the end of October 1933, when as an
executive in the Li&tEab,rt_Min.istry
I was able to appreciate theme 'iod-
ical qualities of the re im t I
gained more favoura e 'S_
TO THIS DAY, Kesselring he
whatever that he served
ster. As a Luftwaffe brass hat`
all over Germany in his pe.
aircraft year after year and
saw a concentration camp. Or
did, he fails to mention it.
38 Approved For Release 2000/05/05: CIA-RDP75-00001 R00040041TOP1 &,ORTER
CPYRGHT