From Atkinson’s The Guns at Last Light
Delayed by fog, snowbanks, and further reports of assassins afoot, Eisenhower’s command train on early Thursday afternoon pulled into a rail siding in the Belgium town of Hasselt, five mile south of Zonhoven. Bodyguards bounded through the station, searching for potential malefactors and machine-gun crews crouched on the platform to lay down a suppressive cross fire, as needed. Montgomery hopped aboard at 2:30 p.m. to find Eisenhower in his study, eager to discuss a counteroffensive that would turn the tables in the Ardennes once and for all. While Smith and De Guingand, the two chiefs of staff, waited in an unheated corridor, Montgomery sketched the plan; four corps would squeeze the enemy salient from the north and northwest, complementing the three already attacking from the south under Patton. The two wings plan to meet in Houffalize, halfway down the length of the bulge.
Yet the field marshal was vague about precisely when this cataclysmic counterblow would fall. Building a combat reserve was vital, Montgomery said. His own direct observation and the reports of his “gallopers” - young British liaison officers who reported to him personally from far corners of the battlefield- led him to conclude that First Army still lacked the strength to confront an enemy force that included at least seven panzer divisions, with enough residual power to launch “at least one more full-blooded attack.” Better to let the enemy first impale himself with a final futile lunge toward the Meuse. Then, deflecting Eisenhower’s impatient request for a date certain, Montgomery urged developments of a “master plan for the future conduct of the war,” one in which “all available offensive power must be allocated to the northern front,” preferably with a single commander who “must have powers of operational control.”
With this ancient theme again resurrected, Eisenhower brought the meeting to a close and showed Montgomery to the platform. Machine-gunners folder up their tripods, bodyguards reboarded, and the train chuffed back to Versailles via Brussels. Despite Montgomery’s insistence that the necessary conditions fall in place before an Allied counterblow was launched, the supreme commander believed that he had extracted a commitment for an attack from the north to begin in four days, on Monday, January 1.
That was incorrect. Montgomery returned to his Zonhoven field camp and cabled Brooke that Eisenhower was “definitely in a somewhat humble frame of mind and clearly realizes that the present trouble would not have occurred if he had accepted British advice and not that of American generals.” He further believed, after a recent conference with Bradley, that the latter also finally recognized the limitations of his generalship. “poor chap,” Montgomery had written Brooke, “he is such a decent fellow and the whole thing is a bitter pill for him.” But 21st Army Group had put the cousins back on track. “We have tidied up the mess,” he told the British chief of staff, “and got two American armies properly organized.” Montgomery also wanted the War Office to know that although he cabled London about his operation each night, no such report went to SHAEF. “You are far better informed, and in the picture, than Ike is,” he confided.
.......continued tomorrow
If things had been left up to Montgomery, it probably would have been a Thousand Year Reich.
Montgomery also wanted the War Office to know that although he cabled London about his operation each night, no such report went to SHAEF. “You are far better informed, and in the picture, than Ike is,” he confided.
Monty’s arrogance and continued miscalculations. The guy had to have been a burden to Eisenhower.