She stopped when she saw the door was ajar. She walked slowly, wondering if burglars were inside and she should start running down the stairs, when Monique popped her head out. “Your turn,” she said, tears streaming down her face. “Tell them the truth. Tell them everything you know.” With that, she turned and began walking down the stairs, sobbing loudly and dramatically.
Jessica entered her apartment. Two army majors stood and introduced themselves as members of the OPMG, the Office of the Provost Marshal General. In short, they were cops. The taller introduced himself as Major Harmon and the shorter officer with dark curly hair was Major Pierce. The OPMG had checked her background before letting her join the Red Cross, which she’d thought was a ridiculous waste of time and effort.
Jessica sat down. After all, it was her apartment. “I assume you’re here about Monique’s friend.”
Harmon answered. He appeared to be the leader. “Sergeant Doyle, yes.”
She smiled. “It’s Boyle, major.”
Annoyed, the taller officer corrected something on his notes. “What do you know about Boyle, Miss Granville?”
“Very little. Monique met him when we were all stationed at Rennes. He works in supply and that’s about all I know about him. I did not socialize with him. He is, was, Monique’s friend.”
“Did he ever bring around any presents?” Pierce asked.
She shrugged. “Flowers, food, chocolates, some wine, and some cognac are all I can remember.”
Pierce persisted. “I mean anything truly expensive?”
Jessica laughed. “Look around. Do you see anything remotely expensive?”
Harmon smiled. “Good point. By the way, is Boyle paying for this place?”
“No, I am. I’m also quite sure you’re aware that my father is a lawyer, and that my uncle is on Ike’s staff.”
“Actually, he’s on Beetle Smith’s staff,” Harmon said, “which may be a distinction without a difference, and yes, we do know about your family. Our asking you these questions is just a formality. But we do have to cover all our bases.”
“Gentlemen, what concerns me is the level of interest you’re showing. Boyle told Monique that he was under suspicion of stealing something, but we both thought it was relatively petty. I’m beginning to think we were mistaken.”
Harmon took a deep breath. “Look, just about everyone in supply takes something and it’s generally used to make their lives more comfortable, rather than trying to make a huge profit.”
“Yeah,” Pierce said, “for instance, you’d be shocked, simply shocked, at how many bottles of liquor destined for officers’ clubs go missing, or how many sides of beef run off like they still had hooves, but, you’re right, this is different. Ever hear of penicillin?”
“A little. It’s supposed to be a wonder drug that kills almost all infections. It’s supposed to be saving a lot of lives of wounded soldiers.” Realization dawned. “Oh God.”
“That’s right,” Harmon said. “It’s extremely valuable and extremely expensive. Significant quantities of it have disappeared and Boyle’s involved. And a suitcase full of it could be worth many thousands of dollars, unlike a case of whisky or a side of beef.”
“Even worse,” Pierce added, “every little bit missing means some wounded GI isn’t the getting help he needs to recover from his wounds.”
Jessica shook her head sadly. Boyle had seemed like a nice guy. “What’s Monique’s involvement?”
Pierce answered. “We can’t prove she knew anything and, like you, she doesn’t appear to have profited. In short, she’s in the clear until proven otherwise. So are you for that matter, although I sincerely doubted you were ever involved.”
“Thank you, I guess. And Boyle?”
“He’s disappeared,” said Major Harmon, standing to go. “He’s joined a growing number of deserters who feel they can hide out in the chaos surrounding the war.”
Pierce glared. “And God have mercy on them when we find them, because we’ll hang them.”
General George Catlett Marshall fumed quietly. Had the late General Leslie McNair been the problem or the solution? They’d had heated arguments over the proper use of armor on the battlefield and what type of tanks should be built. There would be no more arguments. McNair was dead, the victim of friendly fire on the beaches of Normandy just a couple of months earlier. That Leslie McNair had been a good an honorable man was without question. But had he convinced the army to make a bad decision? Hindsight always provided a hell of a view and Marshall decided to leave it at that.
Pre-war army doctrine had said that tanks did not fight other tanks. That job was left to the so-called tank destroyers, which were light and quick and designed to wait for enemy armor to attack them. Tanks supported infantry, or smashed like cavalry into the rear of an opponent’s army and destroyed their supplies and communications. That, of course, was dogma before the Germans and their blitzkrieg attacks and their rapidly moving and well-armored tank columns.
With significant influence from the late General McNair, the decision had been made to go with the M4 Sherman as America’s main battle tank, and let M10 tank destroyers fight the Nazi armor. It hadn’t worked out that way, and now U.S. armor was being cut to pieces by German tanks, while the open topped and lightly armored tank destroyers accomplished relatively little. The men were brave, but their weapons were inadequate, and that was intolerable to Marshall.
Marshall looked across the table at Eisenhower. He had flown into Paris from Washington that morning. Marshall was tired and looked it.
“Bradley feels the answer is the M26, the Pershing,” Ike said and Bradley nodded. “Patton agrees to a point but says it doesn’t matter since we’ll never get the Pershing in sufficient numbers to make a difference. Therefore, Patton wants more and more Shermans and plans to overwhelm the Nazis with numbers and speed.”
The decision to go with the Sherman had come because it could be built relatively cheaply and transported across the ocean both economically and in great numbers. It also was better than anything either the Germans, or the Russians for that matter, had at the time. Now, the Sherman was outclassed by the main battle tanks of either Germany or Russia. The Pershing, with its 90mm gun would solve a lot of those problems.
Bradley continued. “Patton discounts the fact that we are taking large casualties with the Sherman. He says that’s a cost of war and, to a point, he’s right. If the Sherman is the best we have and the best we’re going to have, then there’s little else we can do except follow Patton’s plans to overwhelm the Germans.”
Patton wasn’t present. His massive Third Army was to the south and Marshall would visit him in person. By the end of this year, forty-thousand Shermans would have been built, with the vast majority of them coming to Europe, and France in particular. With the war in Italy at the stalemate stage, and armor unsuited to the mountains, additional tanks were being shipped from that country to France.
However, the Germans appeared to be doing the same thing. According to Ultra estimates, only about five thousand Panthers had been built to date and most had been sent east to fight the Russians. But now, if the Russians were indeed pulling out of the war for however long, the German tanks would be moving west to aid German armies as they slowly retreated towards the Rhine. The same held true for the even larger German Tiger and King Tiger tanks, which dwarfed and outgunned the best the U.S. had or would have, even if the Pershing came into action. Thankfully, there were relatively few Tigers and even fewer King Tigers. Even the Russians, first with their T34 and then with their KV and Stalin tanks, had larger and better weapons systems than the U.S.
“Ike, I take it you don’t agree with Patton.”
“I don’t like the idea of wasting lives. We have to have something better. The Sherman is now a second tier weapon,” Ike answered. “We need the Pershings. They can stand up to just about anything the Germans have, or the Russians for that matter.”
Marshall shook his head. “I agree with you, but I can’t flip a switch and change over from one tank to another. We’re already making some Pershings, just not a large number of them. I’ve been told there’ll be a dozen or so by the end of the year.”
Ike laughed harshly. “A dozen? Good God, that’s not even a drop in the bucket. We’ll need hundreds, thousands, if we’re to take on the Germans.” Ike lit another cigarette and grinned. “Kick some butt, General. Push
