in North Africa. While Morgan was impressed with his new commander, he encountered one significant problem almost at once. His written orders, conveyed to him by the AFHQ staff, were totally incomprehensible. While it had been “compiled according to the best War College standards … the whole document as it stood meant not a thing to any of us.”24 As a result, one of his first steps was to become acquainted not only with “American English” but with that specific subset known as U.S. Army staff language. (COSSAC later took this into consideration with their communication. Memoranda, for example, would employ “combined” terminology for clarity. Thus, reference would be to “L of C/Communications Zone,” “Formations/Units,” or “Stores/Supplies.”)
Morgan set about to train his force for amphibious operations. The two divisions were stationed in the Scottish Lowlands, from where it would be relatively easy to embark from the River Clyde around Glasgow. Among the training areas used were those associated with various COHQ facilities, notably the Combined Training Center in Largs, a small summer resort town near Glasgow.
Morgan also grew to know and respect Eisenhower’s chief of staff, Walter Bedell Smith, who stayed in London while Eisenhower went to Gibraltar for the final planning of the North African invasion. “By the time he [Smith] in turn left for Africa we had established an understanding which stood us in good stead later on.”25 By December of 1942 Morgan was obliged to travel to North Africa, as the hypothetical planning questions of October had become a more complex reality and the details of employing 125 Force could no longer be dealt with at long range. He took the injunction of Marshal Ferdinand Foch seriously: “Don’t phone, go and see.”26 Interestingly, Morgan’s command was joint and combined, with “his sailor” being Commo. W. E. Parry of the Royal Navy and “his airman,” Brig. Gen. Robert Candee of the Eighth U.S. Army Air Force.27
The trip to North Africa connected Morgan with many of those involved in TORCH. He demonstrated little of the standoff reserve so often attributed to British officers, on one occasion enthusiastically entering into a very American debate about the American Civil War that flared up during an evening’s festivities. Seeing that those arguing for the “South” were outnumbered, he entered the fray with such good effect that Adm. John Leslie Hall, USN, made Morgan an honorary Southern Democrat. The same Admiral Hall was to be the commander of Amphibious Force “O” at Omaha Beach, the force that put the U.S. 1st Division ashore on D-Day. More importantly, Morgan saw an allied operational headquarters that worked. He “had been able to talk with old British Army friends who formed part of Ike’s team, to catch from them the spirit of the thing … to appreciate to what an extent … integration of the two forces had already taken place.”28
His flight back to the United Kingdom was not without incident. When the pilots sighted land an hour earlier than planned, Morgan was summoned to the cockpit of his loaned B-17 for a consultation. He was able to confirm that the land in sight were the Isles of Scilly and not the Brest peninsula of occupied France. Successfully landing outside London, one member of his staff “sought confirmation of our good luck by means of the slot machines in the bar, from which he quickly derived a small fortune. It was not all luck. Acquaintance with [this B-17’s crew] taught one a lot.”29 (Had they missed the Isles, they might have missed landfall altogether as they were flying on a northerly heading.)
The potential threat for which 125 Force was formed never appeared, and by early 1943 Morgan was ordered to plan an invasion of Sardinia, for which his force would be reinforced by two American divisions and the Royal Marines division. As planning for that operation developed, he was then told that the next operation would now be Sicily and to start planning for that operation. “It became evident that the conquest of Sicily would be an affair far larger in scope than either of our previous projects, larger in fact than could be contemplated with the use of so small a body as a corps.”30 The responsibility for planning that operation was transferred to AFHQ and to the commanders responsible for the operation. By March 1943 both his divisions had been stripped away and fed into the Mediterranean battle. His 1st Corps, now reduced to just a headquarters, was to be reformed with the assignment of training as part of the spearhead for the eventual cross-Channel attack.
Having given the matter some thought, Morgan began to press higher authorities to be more specific. Where are we to attack, when, and with what? He fully understood and advocated for troops to get used to the idea of fighting “in some country in which they would arrive after a long sea voyage and where they would find strange conditions among a population which might range anywhere from demonstratively friendly to definitely hostile.”31
He noted from his contact with COHQ and in planning for the various deployments of 125 Force that no two beaches are alike. Therefore, it seemed to him, that some correlation between training and operations needed to exist. As he said, “it was essential to narrow down the various possibilities with which one might be confronted on some future D-Day.”32 In a conversation with his old friend from their service together in India, Gen. Lord Hastings “Pug” Ismay, Morgan expressed his strong opinion that someone should be appointed who would do something about this lack of direction and clarity. Ismay was now deputy secretary to the War Cabinet and military advisor to Winston Churchill. He suggested that Morgan write a paper on the subject, which Morgan then did and sent off to his old friend.33
In early March Ismay invited Morgan down to London to discuss the matter further, and, upon reporting to Ismay’s office, Morgan was handed a stack of documents that represented the work done by various people at various times related to a cross-Channel attack. Morgan was asked to review the material and to produce for presentation to the COS his concept of “a plan for what might be done next.” It was due the next day. Morgan submitted a memorandum but admitted that he didn’t think much of his first attempt “nor did the Chiefs of Staff, so I was given a second chance.”34
Not yet having new divisions assigned to 1st Corps and being free from any attachment to any potential project, Morgan, on his second attempt, gave the chiefs a straightforward and honest analysis of what he thought, which was also witnessed by Ismay and Mountbatten. He then left the meeting.
Not long after, on 12 March, standing in an elevator at New Scotland Yard, while heading to a meeting at COHQ, Morgan got an indication of what was to be his fate. Just as the elevator door was starting to close, Mountbatten jumped in and offered his enthusiastic, if premature, congratulations, notwithstanding the fact that the elevator was jammed full of people of all ranks. As far as Mountbatten was concerned, Morgan, with his presentation, had apparently talked himself into a job. One problem for Morgan was that he wasn’t sure he wanted to transition from being a corps commander, albeit one without any troops at the moment, back to a senior staff officer for what sounded like a decidedly dodgy and not yet clearly defined project. “As soon as I could emerge from Combined Operations Headquarters I … made for the nearest open space, the Temple Gardens, where I walked with Bobbie [his aide] to regain composure, a process that was completed shortly afterward at the bar of the Cavalry Club.”35 How he traveled from Richmond Terrace, across from Downing Street, to the Temple Gardens, just beyond King’s College London, and then back to the Cavalry Club in Mayfair is not explained. With his composure regained, at least for the moment, Morgan began to reflect on what needed to be done, if he were to be given this new assignment.
— 3 —
“FOR WHAT ARE WE TO PLAN?”
Fifteen months before General Morgan’s fateful day at New Scotland Yard, the British Joint Planning Staff in December 1941 submitted an analysis to the COS that was a general outline of what a reentry into the Continent might look like. The COS then asked the Commander-in-Chief, Home Forces, the newly appointed Gen. Sir Bernard Paget, to review the paper and to consult with the commanders of Bomber Command, Fighter Command, and the Royal Navy’s Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth, in providing his evaluation.1
In
