The Allen and Roosevelt Firing. Eisenhower's Most Political Decision in Sicily.
They won the bloodiest battle of the Sicily campaign. The next day, the Army fired them both. Terry Allen and Ted Roosevelt Jr. commanded the 1st Infantry Division — the Big Red One — through Oran, El Guettar, Gela, and Troina, compiling a combat record unmatched by any American division in the Mediterranean. British General Harold Alexander called Allen the best division leader he had seen in either world war. Patton fought to keep them for Sicily. Ernie Pyle lionized them. Their men would have followed them anywhere. And on August 7, 1943, one day after the 1st Division took Troina in six days of savage fighting, Omar Bradley relieved both generals — not for losing a battle, but for winning in a way the institutional Army couldn't tolerate. The order arrived in a mail bag while Allen was briefing his staff for the next attack. No warning. No meeting. No courtesy. Bradley later lied about how the firing happened in his own memoirs. What happened next proved the decision wrong. Allen built the 104th Timberwolves into one of the finest assault divisions in Europe, and Roosevelt earned the Medal of Honor at Utah Beach — the oldest man in the D-Day invasion, wading ashore with a cane and a pistol. This is the story of the most political firing in the American Army during World War II, and what it reveals about a system that punished its best fighters for the crime of being difficult to manage. SOURCES: Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 (Henry Holt, 2002) Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (Henry Holt, 2007) Omar Bradley and Clay Blair, A General's Life: An Autobiography (Simon & Schuster, 1983) Omar Bradley, A Soldier's Story (Henry Holt, 1951) Gerald Astor, Terrible Terry Allen: Combat General of World War II — The Life of an American Soldier (Presidio Press, 2003) Thomas E. Ricks, The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today (Penguin Press, 2012) Carlo D'Este, Patton: A Genius for War (HarperCollins, 1995) Cole C. Kingseed, "Protégé of General Marshall: Terry Allen," ARMY Magazine (November 2013) H. Paul Jeffers, In the Rough Rider's Shadow: The Story of a War Hero — Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (Presidio Press, 2002) U.S. Army Center of Military History, Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West (United States Army in World War II, 1957) U.S. Army Center of Military History, Sicily and the Surrender of Italy (United States Army in World War II, 1965) Martin Blumenson, The Patton Papers, 1940-1945 (Houghton Mifflin, 1974) Russell F. Weigley, Eisenhower's Lieutenants: The Campaign of France and Germany, 1944-1945 (Indiana University Press, 1981) #WW2History #TerryAllen #1stInfantryDivision
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