Sublime

No other general officer, British or American, could have dealt as effectively with Washington and London, kept headstrong subordinates working in harmony, and (with the help of John C. H. Lee) amassed the matériel that ensured ultimate victory. In a sense, Ike was like a giant umbrella. He absorbed what was coming down from above, shielded his

Colin Gray’s article, “Handful of Heroes on Desperate Ventures: When Do Special Operations Succeed?” (Gray 1999).

On 24 May 1941 the battlecruiser HMS Hood and the battleship HMS Prince of Wales confronted the German battleship Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen

Wavell had a gift for picking good people. One was Major Ralph Bagnold, an officer in the Royal Signals, one of a select band who knew and respected the great desert that lay behind the cultivated coasts of North Africa. Bagnold had been exploring the Sahara since 1926. He had improved the sun compass for desert navigation, discovered the best way

soldiered with the Communist leadership that would ultimately wrest control of the country from the Nationalists. While there, he became interested in Chinese guerilla operations against the Japanese, specifically the small-unit, “democratic” leadership model that pushed authority and responsibility down to the most junior levels in small combat

In addition to the landing force, the fleet carried more than two hundred thousand tons of supplies, half of which were munitions. John C. H. Lee, it was said, always doubled whatever his staff thought the Army needed “just in case.”

Ike set to work with a small team of dedicated believers—Thomas Handy, Robert Crawford, John Hull, and Albert Wedemeyer—to flesh out plans for the invasion.