Martha Gellhorn: The Love Affair with Major General James Gavin of The 82nd Airborne – Europe 1944

One day toward the end of January, 1945, Martha was heading for the front line deep into Germany, when she unexpectedly came across Gavin and his 82nd dug in much further east than when she had last been with them. She was thrilled, and happily moved into Gavin’s HQ (inevitably an old farm house) for the night. The general explained to Martha that the 82nd had been ordered to act as decoys to draw away the main German opposition and allow the inexperienced American infantry to get behind the German lines and push forward, leaving the 82nd to clean up. He explained that it was a dangerous, and deadly, assignment – as all the recent assignments had been – and that many deaths could be expected if the German’s thought the 82nd where the main American force, which was the idea of course.

And the German’s did bump into the 82nd early the following morning resulting in a deadly fire fight that lasted for several hours. But with Gavin’s men calling in heavy artillery fire, and fighter bomber support, the two German divisions attacking them were effectively destroyed. But it came at the cost of many hundreds of casualties within the ranks of the 82nd. When Martha heard that many of the men she had come to know and admire had been killed she turned on Gavin and accused him of needlessly putting his men’s lives at risk. They argued fiercely until Gavin – who was himself deeply affected by the losses – stopped the argument by ordering Martha taken to her room where she was to be held under arrest until she calmed down.

Martha soon realised what a fool she had been and asked to be taken to Gavin to apologise, realising that her experiences – intimate, and wide as they were – of the madness, the miracle, and the realities of real warfare were, compared to Gavin’s, still extremely limited, especially when it meant deliberately putting the lives of your own men at risk for the greater strategic good. Gavin asked her never to speak of the episode again.

For Martha there were even more horrors ahead.