Returning from Cairo to Algiers, I began digging away at the minor mountain of paper accumulated on my desk. Memories of Egypt and Palestine faded completely as I worked late each night to reduce those piles of the General’s fan mail. Like everyone else at headquarters, however, I was still busier on unofficial duties… working overtime on the old rumor that Gen Marshall, not Gen Ike, would head the new American Expeditionary Force building in Britain, and that Ike would go to Washington to become Chief of Staff.
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Mar
06
2009
Within a fortnight I was driving a new general, Carl (Tooey) Spaatz. The now-famous and retired Tooey Spaatz was, in early 1942, a grimly silent major general. As chief of the new Eighth Air Force, he had a gigantic job. And he spent every waking moment pondering over problems involved in the daring principle of daylight bombing. A rather unspectacular, balding man who would hardly stand out in a crowd, he called to mind that pensive statue : The Thinker. He concentrated so intensively that I often thought he was asleep. Naturally, he had no time for the ordinary little details of everyday life. He was, in fact, coldly impatient with them. That’s how I came to drive for General Spaatz. His temper had finally boiled over because his sergeant was late again in arriving at a conference. The Yank chauffeur was naturally bewildered like many other Americans by the maze of tangled little streets which history had forced upon London. When the General heard of my MTC experience, he requested that I be loaned out to his headquarters immediately.
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