[colorado tanker]

It's the contrast. Patton put together a river crossing on the fly and got across with almost no casualties and before Monty. Monty, on the other hand, treated crossing the Rhine almost like another Normandy invasion. The airborne component that Monty insisted on was unnecessary in my opinion and led to heavy casualties in the 17th Airborne due to anti-aircraft fire.

Monty also had a habit of assigning nasty jobs to non-UK forces under his command, such as clearing the Scheldt to the Canadians and as we are just now seeing, the Ruhr to the U.S. Ninth Army.

[henkster]

Using the Dominion forces to do the nasty jobs was an Imperial tradition dating back to the First World War. And the Dominions were keenly aware of it. I suspect it was one of the reasons for the recent Canadian draft riots.