Eisenhower: America's Best General

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watch out there buddy watch out there buddy Welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk with me, Al Murray and James Holland. And in a strange way, it's episode three, but part two, isn't it, Jim?

Yes, because we've got to the Americans now. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it's best in the West, of course. And you probably know by now how this works.
But if you don't, here's a brief summary.

For We Have Ways Fest on the 12th to the 14th of September, what we thought we'd do is finally drive a stake through the heart of this endless arguing about which general's better and come up with a definitive answer on that exact question.

Isn't that right, Jim? Yeah.

Because, you know, so much time that could be spent on other historical aspects of the Second World War is burned off with people having these weird arguments where they disagree about which generals generals are best in the Second World War on different sides.

So, very simply, what we thought we'd do is, first of all, discuss it amongst ourselves, then put it on our Patreon for people to vote, decide, discuss, and finally settle the question.

Because, I mean, you know, if people are arguing about this, how are they going to argue whether Spitfire Mark 1 is better than ME1 and INE?

Yeah, and the bottom line is, you know, this is obviously definitive. Yeah.

And the exciting news is that overnight since we were last recording, Harold Alexander has gone into top place than the British ones. Oh, man.
He's a percentage point ahead.

How many bogus accounts are you using today? Dick McCreary's still got

nilpoi.

I mean, what are you going to do, Jim? Have you actually set up a click farm in Sri Lanka where you've got lots of people clicking on Alexander? Is that what's going on?

But this episode, these next two, are about the Americans, our noble allies in the coalition against evil, against Adolf Hitler. And

you know how this works basically we've got 14 names in the thrown into the into the helmet so we're going to rattle through seven aren't we to start off with in this episode and then another seven and then that's the americans done

and at the end of it we'll have a top three so where do we start and these are in alphabetical order by the way not in order of preference though it was weird how alex was so high in the uh

could have done them from when they were born of course but no we're alphabetical could have done it on first names

in which case, this fellow would be lower down the list because our first American general, this is one of the biggies, actually.

Yet in a strange way, I think someone who's often not overlooked because he's always in the mix, but he sort of really actually gets assessed because he's just sort of part of how things happen.

And that is General Omar Nelson Bradley. He's the man who kind of looks a bit like Marlon Brando in the golf.
He sort of looks like he's got cottonwood stuff down his front lip.

Yes, he does, doesn't he?

Rarely a smile. Rarely, occasionally.
Occasionally. I mean, what's interesting is he is a product of the U.S.

Army as the sort of American, kind of American dream thing, where it lifts people out of their background and gives them an opportunity to shine, which is interesting about the U.S.

Army in this period of history. So he's born in 1893.
Meritocracy. Exactly.
Son of a school teacher. He's from Mobile, Missouri.
Briefly works as a boilermaker. That's right.
Yeah.

Isn't that interesting? He's been there, done it. He's got the oil on his fans.
Yeah. And then gets a place at West Point.
And he's in this, there's the class of 1915. The class of stars fell.
Yeah.

And two graduates reach five-star general, two are four-star, seven three-star lieutenant generals, 24 two-star major generals, and 24 brigadiers. Shut the front door.
Yeah. And it includes Bradley.

Eisenhower. Yeah.
Eisenhower. I think what's interesting about it's on the cusp of America's entry into the First World War.

And it's full of people who are really, really ambitious and really, really, really, really good. Yep.
Doesn't see service in the First World War, does he? I know.

He has a very weird career you know he does very well at west point he goes into the infantry in 1915 and his job is to guard copper mines in montana yeah imagine yeah it's amazing but he stays in the army after the war he sees service in but you know within the us but also hawaii does it he's an instructor at the infantry school for benning where he serves under george c marshall yes that's an important link he's then an instructor at west point and he then graduates from the command and general staff school in 1934 and the army war college in 1938 and that's sort of a bit like being the in the Imperial War College over in the UK.

It's marking you out, you know. So 1941, he's only a colonel, but he's recognised as a highly skilled trainer of troops and as a kind of, you know, deep thinker on tactics and stuff.

So he's all marked out. The American Army in 1941, you know, no one, none of them have been tested really.

This is the thing, you know, someone who makes a good peacetime officer doesn't necessarily make a good combat officer.

No, but what he then does is he, and he's done the Civilian Conservation Corps thing at the end of the 30s, where it's been involved in training civilians to sort of undertake park maintenance and all that sort of stuff.

So he's had contact with the American public rather than necessarily just with soldiers, which is going to serve him well when civilians start coming into the army in large amounts after the Americans bring in the draft.

And I think what's really interesting is he's then commandant of the infantry school at Fort Benning. And then he's given 82nd Infantry Division.

right and he radicalizes how fort bennings done he irons it out he standardizes the training because you've got in the south you've got regiments being raised by colonels in the sort of traditional southern style, where it's the local boss hog type person who puts together his own battalions or whatever.

And he irons this out and he takes on 82nd Infantry Division and trains them up.

Then they're taken away to be made into airborne because that's a mark of how well organized he's got them and how good they are. And he's sort of troubleshooting, really, isn't he?

So because he gets sent over to North Africa, doesn't he? Yeah, that's right. Under Ike

as advisor to George S. Patton.
I mean, God, imagine giving him advice. Yeah.

I'm not sure that's a good idea.

Yeah, yeah exactly where are those goddamn aircraft and so on and then he takes over command of two corps from patton well yes because patton gets brought in after friedendahl is sacked after castering parson in middle of february 1943 so he is then you know reinvigorating two corps throughout march but then gets sidelined because he is going to be overall command american commander for the invasion of sicily and needs to be you know he can't be doing two things at once.

So that's when Bradley is given his chance. And so for April and capturing Berserter and Hill 609 and all the rest of it, it is Bradley who is commanding two cores.
He does a really good job.

And he takes two corps into the Allied invasion of Sicily and works very well under Patton's overall 7th Army command. He's just steady Eddie.
You know, he just does it all perfectly well.

There's obviously this cloud over Patton at the end of the Sicily campaign. So he's kind of airmarked out.

Then there's a whole load of commanders which are sent over to Italy, you know, Clark, Lucas, you know, Keys and so on. And so he's the kind of the spare man, effectively.

And he's done enough to really mark himself out. And he's got the patronage of Marshall.
You know, that reflects in Montgomery has the patronage of Brooke, is brought back to Britain.

And what you need is people who've done a landing, big landing. They've fought the Germans a lot.
And Bradley, relatively speaking, for an American general, has fought the Germans a lot and done well.

And you need those people for Overlord because Overlord has to be too big to fail. And it needs your smartest and most effective people on it.

And Bradley very much falls into that category, doesn't he? Yes.

And there is this sense that here you've got someone who's not going to flap, he's clear thinking, he's a safe pair of hands, just going to be a very kind of solid hand at the tiller.

And so he gets made First Army Commander and he does very well. You know, you can't really argue with it.

I mean, you know, we've talked a lot about First Army in Normandy and how that campaign plays out. And we're broadly pretty impressed, aren't we? I mean, you know.

Well, yeah, and how else do you do it? And how else do you do it?

And, you know, let's not forget that Operation Cobra, when it's launched on the 25th of July, 1944, is the first major breakthrough of German positions in Normandy.

And again, that's Bradley at the helm. And he's already been earmarked to take command of 12th Army Group when Patton's Third Army comes in.

So he r he hands over command of 1st Army to Hodges and Third Army is Patton. So having been subordinate to Patton, he's now superior to Patton because he's now the Army Group commander.

And that's because he hasn't slapped anybody.

He's not the kind of sort of mercurial type that patron is he sort of gets things wrong uh in the arden doesn't he he finds himself a bit isolated he's he's he's kind of stuck in luxembourg and he and he can't get to the northern part you know so that means he's in the southern part of the bulge and he can't get to the northern part of the bulge because there's this big dent in the line yeah the night he starts he's playing cards with ike isn't he yeah but he's you generally get this sense that he's sort of out of sorts yeah he's sort of found a little bit wanting yeah exactly but then so's everybody yeah yeah to be fair that's the truth.

But there is this sense that he refines his, discovers his mojo in March 1945, I think, of the Rhine crossing. You know, he's pretty impressive.

Goes all the way to the Elba and then becomes an incredibly important post-war soldier in Germany.

If what you want as a soldier is a safe pair of hands at the top, he kind of falls squarely into that category, doesn't he? Yeah. Yeah.
And I think he's a good coalition team player. Yeah.

You know, he's not as cut and frustrated as Patton, but good. I think that's sensible.
I'm all in favour of being a bit cautious and saving lives, personally.

And, you know, he was much liked by his men. You know, he was modest, unostentatious.
Yeah. Although, actually, he's not that modest post-war.

I mean, you know, his autobiographies are quite self-serving and definitely got an ego. There's no question about it.
You know, his feathers get ruffled quite easily.

But he doesn't sort of chase the headlines particularly. Well, that might be because there are bigger personalities who've grabbed some of the limelight and he's thinking, well, hold on a minute.

I was Patton's boss. Do you mind? But he's pretty good, isn't he? Yeah, he's pretty good.
He's pretty good.

Our next fellow, though, you in the last couple of years have come to rate extremely highly as a result of researching it and this is mark wayne clark well yeah i mean the interesting thing about him is he you know when you're talking you know who's the best commander he has done such a huge range of roles i mean he has served in the first world war he's been wounded he's he's won a medal for gallantry he stays in it army and between the war attends the infantry school at fort benning he's ambitious he's got energy you know he graduates from the commander general staff school the army war college so you know ticking all those things again um serves in a series of staff positions positions and is spotted by General Marshall, who picks him out.

And he also forges a very close professional friendship with Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ike, which is going to be significant.
And, you know, by 1942, he's one of the youngest U.S.

generals to hold a major Allied operation role.

And when Eisenhower is asked to go over and organize the American troops in Britain in, I think it's May 1942, so only six months after Pearl Harbor, he takes Clark with him.

And when Eisenhower is appointed commander for Operation Torch, which is going to to be the Allied invasion of Northwest Africa, it is Clark who is overseeing the planning of that.

And, you know, you can't get away from the fact that three different invasion forces, one coming 3,000 miles, and two coming 1,000 miles, all land pretty much exactly where they're supposed to it, pretty much on time.

And the invasion is a huge success.

And one of the reasons for that is because he personally has gone in a British submarine, HMS Seraph, been dropped clandestinely on the North African coast near Algiers and had meetings ahead of the invasion, Nearly being caught, the police turn up, they have to hide in the cellar, they then have to take a canoe out, klepper boats, you know, Folberts, these collapsible canoes out to the sub waiting submarine.

The surf is really high. They can't do it.
They have to take all their clothes off and basically paddle in their pants and eventually second attempt they make it.

I mean it is high-risk, high-tension stuff. And he pulls it off.
No one we've talked about in any of these roundups has done anything daring do like that, have they? No.

That shows incredible personal bravery. I'd also say it's pretty stupid sending the bloke who's planned the invasion into enemy territory.

You know, if he'd been picked up and they'd applied the thumb screws, who knows what he'd have given away? You know what I mean? Yeah.

I'm not saying that Mark Clark would have succumbed, but you know what I mean?

That's incredibly hare-brained. But it's tenacious.
You know, he does it and he pulls it off and it's a success.

So, you know, you can only praise people for successes, not for the failures that might have been. No, I guess, but there's a quantum of risk there.
Well, his autobiography is called calculated risk.

Well, there you go. There you go.

Anyway, he then gets some, he pushes Eisenhower to give him the opportunity for field command and he gets given Fifth Army, which he creates from scratch.

It's the first army ever in the US to be formed outside of the United States. And he raises it, forms it, trains it.
And although he sits out the Sicilian campaign, of course, you know, he then lands.

at Salerno, Operation Avalanche, in an incredibly undersupported operation, you know, facing directly. He's the first time ever that a phobia's landing has been made directly against German troops.

Yeah, yeah, and with nothing like the three-to-one leverage that you're supposed to have and all that sort of thing.

No, and the situation is so desperate at this point that every single one of his battalions is used. There's none in reserve.

And he personally oversees the organization of the defences and the artillery against the major armoured counter-thrust.

What I want to do before we end up doing his entire campaign in Italy is say that we have extensive episodes about the entire telecampaign of Mark Clark's. We don't need to spend any more time on him.

So we don't need to do any more. But your thing about him is he's running this campaign that's always resource poor, that's always politically poorly resourced.
In other words, it's a second thought.

He's running a campaign that is in the shadow of tyranny of overlord, where as we, and we just said it, experienced people are being taken back to Britain because overlord has got to be too big to fail.

There's a sense that, you know, for the invasion of Northwest Europe, we've got our best people on it. So what we've got in Italy is what we can spare.

And he runs this incredibly complex and challenging campaign because of the terrain, because of the weather, because of the coalition forces he's got, because of the weight of expectations, weight of expectation, and also because it's one of those campaigns the Allies are running largely through strategic momentum, you could argue.

They've got themselves into this situation, so now they've got to see it through. And he pulls it off.
You know, Rome really is his victory. It's Alexander's victory, too, to a certain extent.

It's less so of 8th Varma because 8th Army are kind of sort of Johnny Cumlay's to that front, to the casino front.

And there's no question that when Rome is captured on the 4th of June, 1944, it is the biggest Allied land victory of the war to date. And, you know, he has played a massive, massive part in that.

There is no American general at any point in the Second World War that has more men under his command as an army commander.

And there is no American general that has such a polyglot force as well of different nationalities as well. Yeah.

You know, I mean, he has, as well as all the North African Algerians and Moroccans and Tunisians, he has French, New Zealanders, et cetera, et cetera, Indian, you know, all under his command.

Yeah, yeah. When Alex is bumped up to Army Supreme Ally Commander at the end of 1944 in the Mediterranean, he has to choose an Army Group Commander.

And the really obvious choice for him would have been Dick McCreary, who was eighth Army Commander at the time, who he's known very well.

He used to be his former chief of staff and he was British in a predominantly British theater. He doesn't do that.
He chooses Mark Clark. Why does he choose Mark Clark?

Because Mark Clark is the best man for the job. So he ends up an army group commander.
You know, so there's only three American Army Group commanders in the European theater.

There's Bradley, Clark, and Deavers.

And I just think he's a better general, more complete general with more challenges which are overcome than Bradley. Great.
Our next candidate, fighting Joe Collins. Yeah, well, I love Lawton Collins.

Lightning Joe as well. Now, Joe Collins, quite interesting, this.
He, again, he's one of these West Point people, graduates in 1917, and he's in a wartime accelerated class. Same class as Clark?

Yeah, exactly. And he's with Norman Cota as well, and Matt Ridgway and Ernest Harmon.
So another one of these star-studded classes full of potential.

He's a first lieutenant in May 1917, temporary captain, but he's not sent overseas before the war's over. So he's into war service.
And let's not forget this.

The Americans do have an imperial commitment. They do.
Even though they don't have an empire. Very much so.

And they're anti-imperialist. They don't have an imperial commitment, but he's in the Philippines in the 1920s.

Again, he goes to the staff, Command and General Staff School, Army Industrial College, Army War College, and then he's at Fort Benning. All these people are swimming in the same water, aren't they?

Because the U.S. Army is relatively small, and it has this cadaver of people who all know each other.
But I think what's interesting is then he's Chief of Staff of Seven Corps in 1941.

So he's gone straight to the heart of where things are important, isn't he? That's the point. Yeah.
The other thing about Collins is Collins sees action across the globe. Yeah.

His first major commanders are... Well, first of all, he has a very important staff job.
So he gets that bit out of the way. Chief of staff at 7 Corps in 1941.

Then, and he's working alongside Admiral Bull Halsey. And I think that kind of tri-service, by service kind of approach, I think is really, really important to how you're shaped as a commander.

I think it's important to understand how air power works, how naval power works, and all the rest of it. He's promoted to major general in May 1942.

And then he takes command of the 25th Infantry Division on Guadalcanal. So he's sent out to Guadalcanal.
You know, he wraps up the island basically, cleared of all Japanese by February 1943.

It's his incredibly dynamic and and aggressive approach to generalship. And this is where he gets his kind of you know his reputation.
Yeah, and also he's seen as a very good combined arms guy.

You know, he understands how to coordinate infantry and artillery and air support. And this is where he gets the nickname Lightning Joe.
Yeah. And he also posed amazing courage.

And I think it is just worth quoting this. So this is, he gets the major gong, I think is Silver Star for this.

And he goes, to visit the command post of an infantry battalion of the division commanded by him, General Collins walked through some 800 yards of recently captured ground infested with enemy snipers.

Upon arriving on Hill 52 to gain better points of observation, he voluntarily exposed himself to intermittent rifle, machine gun, and mortify without regard for his own personal safety.

From here, he located an enemy machine gun nest and personally assisted in placing mortify on it and other areas likely to be occupied by the enemy, while bursts of enemy machine gun are hit many times but three yards away.

Yards! His calmness and fearlessness under fire was an inspiration to the officers and men of the infantry regiment in that sector.

His example and words of praise and encouragement with which he continually encouraged the men and the forward units spurred them on and contributed materially to the success of the offensives of Operation.

I mean, that's amazing, isn't it? Well, there we go. But he really pushes to have a European command.
He knows

that's where the action is. He wants to be part of that and gets his way.
And so he's commanding 7 Corps on Utah Beach, Operation Overlord. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Straight in at the sharp end in the other theater. They do very well.
Again, 7th Corps do very well in Normandy. Capturing Cherbourg, of course, breaking out as part of Cobra.

He's decisive about that. He's sacking the commanders that don't come up to scratch and replacing them.
And 90th Division becomes one of the great infantry divisions of Northwest Europe.

It starts so badly and ends up an absolute machine, yeah. And that's also being filtered down from him.
So I think... That really, really counts.

And I think the thing that really is important is the key part he plays in Operation Cobra, which is the breakout. He's very involved with the planning for that.

And it is his decision to send in his armor earlier than anticipated on the 26th of July when he sniffs a breakthrough. It's also him who has pioneered this idea of taking infantry on the tanks.

So armour and infantry kind of moving together forward to the front. And it is a huge, huge success.
And a huge amount of credit for that goes to him, I think.

And then they're into Belgium by early September. The Siegfried line in autumn and the Hercules Forest, which is a slug fest, isn't it?

The thing is with Collins is he's one of these people who sort of, if it weren't for better-known people, he'd be better known. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.
I mean,

in terms of his drive, tactical nouse, operational awareness, big picture stuff, you know, there's nothing between him and Patton. There's nothing.
But he's not Patton. But he's not Patton.

But he's a good-looking fella. You know, he's got sort of film star good looks and all the rest of it.
And, you know, again, he's liked by his men. And he has a fantastic post-war career.

I mean, he is absolutely tip-top, this guy. He's one of the very best, I think.
Okay. And now we move, and you mentioned his name a moment ago.
We'll do one more before the break.

And this is someone, it's the third army group commander in the northwestern european theater that people will that people stubbornly refuse to have heard of

yeah he's an army group commander he's one of three he's one of three army group commanders exactly but people still haven't heard of him right they've heard of divisional commanders and army commanders and corps commanders but divas general jacob divas tends not to be on people's radar which i think is extraordinary really isn't it yeah it is i mean i i i suppose so i i think the thing is is he's not involved in the early parts and you know he's a staff officer for much of the early - he's older.

You know, he's born in 1887. He's a West Point graduate of 1909, not 1915 or 1917, like the Stellar guys.
So there's almost a sense that he's kind of, you know, almost sort of missed it.

You know, but he's attended, you know, he's done all the usual stuff. He doesn't see, he doesn't, for example, he doesn't see any action in Europe in the First World War.
He's a trainer.

He's an organiser of artillery units. Artillery is his background.
He's at commander, general staff school, army war college, blah, blah, blah. Yes, ticking all those boxes.

But he is the the chief of the armoured force from May 1941 to May 1943. So he's a pioneer of that.
Yeah. You know, and I think that's, you know, he's a big advocate for improved tank designs.

You know, he's one of the pushers for the Sherman. You know, we can all thank him for that.
He was responsible for developing training doctrine at Fort Knox, which is a sort of armor center.

He's a lieutenant general by August 1942. But then he does get sent over to the ETO.
He's a planning guy. He's a staff guy.
He becomes deputy supreme commander in the Mediterranean under Jumbo Wilson.

So this is from early 1944, rather. So Eisenhower stops being Supreme Alleger in the Mediterranean because goes back for overlord.
Jumbo Wilson, who's British, takes over. He's his deputy.

Divas is, he's just a bit older. He's just a bit more of an old man.
You know, he's a great diplomat. He's a good coalition officer.
He's not spiky.

Well, you do get the sense here that what he does is he comes in and takes over once the sort of the high winds have passed, if you see what I mean. A little bit.

Once you don't need a young, energetic man who's going to like burn himself out to get this done, you get him in next, possibly as a deputy, as a safe pair of hands to sort of steady the ship and straighten lines and stuff, right?

Yeah, I mean, you know, like Clark, he's got, he's a multinational, so he's got, you know, he's got the French First Army under De Latre de Tassigny, who is prickly, like all the French, and tricky to deal with.

And he deals with him pretty well, I think. His move up the Rhine, you know, and into southern Germany and Bavaria is extremely competent.
You can't fault him at all, you know, what he does.

He doesn't have the kind of obvious Chutzpur kind of dynamism, and he doesn't have the wealth of frontline experience that some of the other, you know, that Bradley has or Clark has.

You know, he just doesn't. So I think that's what works against him.
I think the fact that he's, you know, just a sort of, just a little, as you say,

you know, coming in after the kind of heavy winds have blown through is the sense. And that's not his fault.
It's just the way it is.

This is the guy who's in charge of Dragoon, which is an overlooked campaign.

so the fact that you've an overlooked general in charge of an overlooked campaign those things sort of sit together don't they it shouldn't be much of a surprise anyway we're going to take a break and we're going to return with three more american candidates for best in the west here on we have ways of make you talk we'll see in a moment

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Welcome back to We Have Ways of Making You Talk. Now, our next general is Ike Eisenhower, General Dwight D.
Eisenhower.

So, I mean, we don't really need to say that much. Humble beginnings, goes up, staff officer, you know, he's done all sorts of interesting things.

He's the guy who's kind of written that, helped write the official history of the First World War. So he knows Northwest Europe, for example, been all over those battlefields.
Marshall, MacArthur.

yep, served in the Philippines, blah, blah, blah. You know, gets picked out by Marshall to take, because we've already talked about him in Torch.
Okay, let's just say it. He's absolutely brilliant.

He is incredible. I mean, he's an incredible political general.
I think he does have a nose. I think for military strategy.

I think the way he grips the final end of the, in 1945, you know, from the bulge onwards is really, really impressive. That decision alone on D-Day and the 4.15 a.m.

on the 5th of June, sitting in the library at Southwark House, looking up and going, okay, let's go. I mean, you know, for that alone, he deserves, you know, a huge amount of praise.

The pressure on his shoulders is just immense. Yeah.
Has he been really tested as a battlefield commander? No. Because he's been in his series of staff jobs.

I mean, no, but has he been tested as the coalition leader of an enormous polyglot, rats in a sack, arguably competing interests?

coalition yes and no one else has this is the thing it's all very well saying oh ike's not a battlefield soldier. Yeah, but you're not a diplomat soldier, Monty, for instance.

You know, if that's the way we're going to do it. What's fascinating about Ike is he's the sixth of seven sons.
What did the other lads do? What did the other Eisenhowers get up to?

And is that a family of incredible feck and potential that was only one son was tapped? Brother of the more famous Dwight. Yeah.

But I mean, his career is sort of they pick him early.

I think what's really interesting about this is that the American Army Marshal, really, decides on him very early on that this is the guy who's going to end up running these things.

Because, as you say, he's picked for torch six months after Pearl Harbor.

They know immediately who they want running their big campaigns and their difficult campaigns that they've not done before, amphibian campaigns, and it's him. And it remains him right to the end.

I think that's really, really interesting in itself. How good they are at finding the right guy and how they stick with him and back him is a mark of his talent, right?

Well, there is this moment where the Tunisia campaign isn't going very well and the sort of, you know, and it's, and it's now January 1943 and it's a Casabanga conference and he gets called in and and and Rusa has a one-on-one with him and he's really nervous about he thinks he's going to be fired and Rusa immediately reassures him says no no no you're doing a great job but he says but just tell me you know how long do you think it's going to take for the Tunisia campaign to be to be over and he says 15th of May

and it's over on the 13th of May from then on he's fine he's fine he's it's golden you know one of the reasons why the allies are so successful Western allies are so successful in the war is because of that singleness of purpose that sense of coalition that sense of coordination cooperation unity um not deviating from the kind of main aim.

And that is really down to him. He's a towering figure.
From a towering figure to a figure who leapt off towers, it's jumping Jim Gavin. Yeehaw.
Yeehaw.

And again, if you're a regular listener to this podcast, you know that we have a very soft spot for Jim Gavin and even soft enough to forgive his great howler at Nijmegen, perhaps.

Now, Gavin is an American dream soldier, isn't he? Let's be honest now. He's orphaned in early life.
He's placed in an orphanage. Born in 1907, so he's young.
Yeah, he's a youngster in Brooklyn.

He grows up in very modest circumstances, lies about his age to join the army and manages to get in the Coast Artillery in Corregidor and Philippines.

He ends up, then gets himself on service merit, gets himself into West Point. Well, and on coaching, you know, teaching himself.

So he gets the academic qualifications by learning in his own free time with no teachers. Yeah.
Very, very, he's athletic. He's strong.
He's very, very pushy. Gung-ho.

And he's done Fort Benning Infantry School, Command General Staff College School.

So, this is a guy who's going far, whatever happens in the American Army, and then he goes to the École Superior de Guerre in France in 1939 as an exchange officer.

But what he does, and we talked about Wendy Gale in this context, he's one of these people who sees a future avenue of warfare in the German airborne successes in 1940.

He immerses himself in studying this stuff. And of course, the Soviets have been showing off that they could throw people out of airplanes in the 1930s.

He's right in at the very start when the americans set up um their airborne program and becomes mr airborne basically carves out a space for himself and because he's so bright and because he's so sort of assured who writes the manual so i mean i think what's what's really you know the airborne manual fm3130 i think what's really amazing about him is this is a guy who is self-taught self-taught then teaches writes manual carries out operations based on manual that he wrote himself that you know it's it's a sort of um if you believe in people being able to master their own destiny, then Jim Gavin is a person who did.

Yes, I mean, I've got a copy of his, of, of his own personal notebook that he kept on inspiring generals throughout history.

And it's just a little notebook, which is handwritten in his own, you know, own hand. And it, and it's sort of notes on Hannibal at canine and stuff like this.
It's just, it is absolutely amazing.

So he's incredibly well read. You know, he just hooves it all up.
He's a real thinking man, like Tuca.

You know, he just doesn't stop thinking about, you know, what possibilities, how can you do things better?

You know, he's constantly jumping into action as well in North Africa, in Sicily,

in Italy, Salerno. He did a daylight jump.
Then he's in Normandy. I mean, you know, he's just amazing.

Well, and he experiences the thing that airborne people may have written a manual about airborne operations. He experiences the thing that's the truth of them.

Once you land, you can be a doeboy or a brigadier, but you're going to have to find other people, fight, probably with your own personal rifle or carbine or whatever, and get into it long before you can make any command decisions.

And Gavin understands that intrinsically, doesn't he? He knows right from the start, because that's what happens to him in Sicily. That's what happens to him in Italy.

It's what happens to him in Normandy. It happens again and again and again.
And he is just immense at Lafayer and

holding that line on the murderer.

That's him. He's doing that for kind of three days, two and a half days or whatever it is.
I mean, it's just

absolutely incredible leadership. And then Market Garden, of course, I mean, he's clipped his back, hasn't he, when he lands? So, yeah, so he's in agony for the whole thing.

And afterwards says, of of course, it was a perfect debon show. We do it again.
Yeah, so you might have got that a little bit wrong.

But what he does get right is he says to Lindvist, he says, when you attack, attack from the eastern side along the river. Oh, dear.
No, of course, Lindquist doesn't do that.

No, so had he done it, then he would have got the bridge on the first day. But Gavin

then goes on to have a fascinating career as ambassador to France under Kennedy and stuff like that. He's a really impressive man.
He's a very, very impressive man.

And he's also, I mean, without being sort of too rosy about the U.S.

Army, he's an example of how it, at that stage in American history, is taking people from any background and giving them the opportunity to turn themselves into sort of gleaming, influential, and important people.

So far, so many of the people we've talked about have been examples of that, which I think is really, really interesting. Yeah.
And finally, best of the West. This is your doppelganger.

When you had

your King Charles moustache and put a helmet on, you look just like Ernest Harmon.

Look at the pictures of him. It's just uncanny.

Let me just pull him up. We'll leave this in.
Am I to be insulted, ladies and gentlemen? No, not at all. He's an absolute legend.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Bang on.
Yeah, absolutely right. Old gravel voice.

Yeah. I mean, look at him.
You know, he's fantastic, isn't he? That is you.

I'm looking at the picture of him of his M43 with his binos around his neck.

See that one? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just

bringing on. Or standing in the tank.
His tank house. He's looking very strong.
He's grava voice. So he's um.
So he is uh okay, man, we gotta get forward. He's one of these guys.

We gotta get through the hurricane. I know it's a shit show, but we gotta do it, lads.

Cavalryman, though, right? That's the thing. And I don't think we've had an American cavalryman yet, actually.
We've had armored people, people who become armored people.

I rate this guy really highly, by the way.

I think he's the absolute mutsnuts. Well, go, tell us who he is.
Well, he's just fantastic. He's just like he's a proper fighting general.
He's tough as old boots.

He's a cavalryman, so he gets the whole kind of mobile warfare picture. He's done a bit of staff stuff as well.
He's in the same West Point graduates as Clark and Ridgway and Co. and Cota.

And he very much calls the spade a spade. There's no getting around that.
But he's absolutely key to kind of development of armour warfare. And by May 1942, he's Brigadier General.

And then he takes command of 2nd Armoured Division's Combat Command A. You know, they're divided into Combat Command A, you know, effectively brigades.

And then he's part of the western task force for operation torch and he's sent in to act as a troubleshooter after setbacks casserole pass he's very good at kind of kicking out crap commanders and putting new guys in and reporting back to eisenhower and you know he's he's an arse kicker you know he then takes over um first armored division in april 1943 for the final stages of of the tunisia campaign does really really well in that then commands first armoured in sicily then is involved in the in the in the war in italy later on and then he's moved over to take second Armoured Division, which, of course, is Hell on Wheels.

It's the best name. It's the best name.
And they have incredible reputation. They're hugely effective.

They're the guys in Operation Cobra and all the rest of it in July 1944. And he plays a key role in the Ardenn counter-offensive.
You know, 2nd Armoured Division then.

They kind of come and rescue everyone. And then he's promoted to take command of 22 Corps in January 1945.
And again, he just does really well. He's fast speed.
Come on, boys, let's go.

Absolutely visible front. You know, he's riding in a tank.
You know, he's, you know, everything you imagine a kind of, you know, from the war movies that an American armored general is.

You know, he's great. I think it is fair to say not someone that everyone might have heard of, right?

And I think, because had he got higher, we'd probably know Haiya sooner, we'd probably know his name, wouldn't we? More readily. Anyway, well, there we go.

There's seven of the best in the West, US generals. We hope you've enjoyed that.
In the next episode, we will be working our way through another dirty half-dozen and a bit.

And then after that, it's the Germans. Thanks very much for listening.

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Cheerio.

Farewell.