From Atkinson’s The Guns at Last Light
This spans a few days, but it is so short that to post individual days would lose the meaning.
SAHEF on January 5 confirmed an American press report that the U.S. First and Ninth Armies now fought under British command. The statement from Versailles claimed that the arrangement had been made “by instant agreement of all concerned,“ but failed to explain that the reconfiguration was only temporary. Smug accounts in London newspapers began describing GIs as ‘Monty’s troops”; privately encouraged by the field marshal, the press clamored for a “proper” chain of command in the northwestern Europe, under a single battle captain.
“We have nothing to apologize for,” Bradley told his staff. “We have nothing to explain.” Major Hansen wrote in his diary, “Many of us who were avowed Anglophiles in Great Britain have now been irritated, hurt, and infuriated by the British radio and press. All this good feeling has vanished.”
On Saturday, January 6, Montgomery cabled Churchill that he planned to summon reporters to explain “how [the] Germans were first ‘headed off,’ then ‘seen off,’ and now are being ‘written off.’” He also intended to rebut any suggestion of American failure in the Ardennes. “I shall show how the whole Allied team rallied to the call and how national considerations were thrown overboard…. I shall stress the great friendship between myself and Ike.”
On the same day, he wrote a confidant in London, “The real trouble with the Yanks is that they are completely ignorant as to the rules of the game we are playing with the Germans.” When Brigadier Williams, the intelligence chief, asked why he intended to hold a press conference, Montgomery explained that Eisenhower’s generalship had been impugned and “I want to put it right.” Williams offered two words of counsel: “please don’t.” Other in his headquarters, smelling condescension, also sought to dissuade him. Alan Moorehead pleaded with De Guingand to muzzle Montgomery, lest he “make some bloody awful mistake.”
“That’s a funny position for a newsman to take,” De Guingand said.
“I want to win the war,” Moorehead replied.
In a double-badged maroon beret and a parachute harness – “dressed like a clown,” in Moorehead’s description – the field marshal appeared before a gaggle of correspondents in Zonhoven on January 7. No doubt he meant well. Praising the GI as a “brave fighting man, steady under fire, and with that tenacity in battle which stamps the first-class soldier,” he also saluted Eisenhower as ‘the captain of our team,” declaring, “I am absolutely devoted to Ike. We are the greatest of friends.” No mention was made of Bradley, and an assertion the British troops were “fighting hard” exaggerated their role as reserves very much on the fringe of the battlefield.
Much of the recitation, however, was devoted to describing the field marshal’s own brilliance upon taking command almost three weeks earlier. “The first thing I did,” Montgomery said, “was busy myself in getting the battle area tidy-getting it sorted out”:
As soon as I saw what was happening I took certain steps myself to ensure that if the Germans got to the Meuse they would certainly not get over that river. And I carried out certain movements so as to provide balanced dispositions…. I was thinking ahead…. The battle has been most interesting. I think possibly one of the most interesting and tricky battles I have ever handled.
Montgomery likened “seeing off” the enemy to his repulse of Rommel in Egypt in 1942. He closed by declaring, without a scintilla of irony, “Let us have done with the destructive criticism that aims blows at Allied solidarity.”
“Oh, God, why didn’t you stop him?” Morrehead asked Williams as reporters scattered to file their stories. “It was so awful.” Many British officers agreed. The field marshal had been “indecently exulted,” as one put it, displaying “what a good boy am I” self-regard, in De Guingand’s phrase, and conveying what another general called his “cock on a dunghill mood.” A headline in the Daily Mail – “Montgomery Foresaw Attack, Acted ‘On Own’ to Save Day” – captured the prevailing Fleet Street sentiment, although Churchill’s private secretary told his diary, “Monty’s triumphant, jingoistic, and exceedingly self-satisfied talk to the press on Sunday has given wide offense,” A mischievous German radio broadcast mimicked the BBC with a phony news flash that quoted Montgomery as describing the Americans as “’somewhat bewildered.’ … The battle of the Ardennes can now be written off, thanks to Field Marshal Montgomery.”
“He sees fit to assume all the glory and scarcely permits the mention of an army commander’s name,” the Ninth Army war diary complained. “Bitterness and real resentment is [sic] creeping in.” No one was more bitter or resentful than Bradley, whose “contempt had grown into active hatred” for Montgomery, reported on British general at SHAEF. Air Marshal Tedder informed his diary that cooperation between Bradley and the field marshal was now “out of the question.”
Bradley called twice Versailles on Tuesday January 9, “very much upset over the big play Monty is getting in the British press,” Kay Summersby noted. He, too, summoned reporters, using a map and a pointer to render his own version of events, which included the dubious assertion that American commanders had consciously taken “a calculated risk” in thinning out defenses in the Ardennes. Privately he denounced Montgomery’s “attempt to discredit me so he could get control of the whole operation.” The field marshal, he asserted wanted to “be in on the kill, and no one else.”
In another call to Eisenhower, Bradley warned, I cannot serve under Montgomery. If he is to be put in command of all ground forces, you must send me home.”
Eisenhower assured him that he had no plans to expand the field marshal’s authority, then added, “I thought you were the one person I could count one for doing anything I asked you to do.”
“This is one thing I cannot take,” Bradley replied.
Once again Eisenhower sought to mollify, to mediate, and to keep his temperamental subordinates concentrated on the task at hand: evicting Rundstedt from the Bulge and resuming the march on Germany. But in a note to Brooke he admitted, “No single incident that I have encountered throughout my experience as an Allied commander has been so difficult.”
