Free Bridge Too Far by Cornelius Ryan Page A

flank on the Ardennes, would head for Aachen and Cologne.  The basic objective of Montgomery’s proposed drive was to “secure bridgeheads over the Rhine before the winter began and to seize the Ruhr quickly.”  In all probability, he theorized, it would also end the war.  Montgomery’s plan called for three of Eisenhower’s four armies—the British Second, the U.s. First and the Canadian First.  The fourth, Patton’s U.s. Third Army, at this moment making headlines around the world for its spectacular advances, Montgomery dismissed.  He calmly suggested it should be brought to a halt.
    Some forty-eight hours later Montgomery learned that Bradley, who he had believed was responsive to his own idea, actually favored an American thrust, a Patton drive toward the Rhine and Frankfurt.  Eisenhower rejected both plans; he was not prepared to change his strategic concept.  The Supreme Commander wanted to remain flexible enough to thrust both to the Ruhr and the Saar as the occasion permitted.  To Montgomery, this was no longer the “broad-front policy” but a double-thrust plan.  Everybody now, he felt, was “going his own way”—especially Patton, who seemed to be allowed enormous latitude.  Eisenhower’s determination to persist in his original concept revealed quite clearly, in Montgomery’s opinion, that the Supreme Commander was “in fact, completely out of touch with the land battle.”
    Montgomery’s view was based on a recent development which angered him and, he felt, demeaned his own role.  He was no longer the over-all coordinator of the land battle.  On September 1 Eisenhower had personally taken over command.  Because the Supreme Commander believed Montgomery “a master of the set battle piece,” he had given the British general operational control of the D-Day assault and the initial period of fighting thereafter.
    Thus, General Omar N. Bradley’s 12th Army Group was under Montgomery.  Press stories appearing in the United States at the end of August revealing that Bradley’s army group still operated under Montgomery created such a public furor that Eisenhower was promptly ordered by General George C. Marshall, U.s. Chief of Staff, to “immediately assume direct command” of all ground forces.  American armies reverted back to their own command.  The move caught Montgomery off base.  As his chief of staff, General Francis de Guingand, later put it: “Montgomery never, I believe, thought that the day would come so soon.  Possibly he hoped that the initial command set up was there to stay for a long time.  He was, I think, apt to give insufficient weight to the dictates of prestige and national feelings, or to the increasing contribution of America, in both men and arms … it was obvious, however, to most of us that it would have been an impossible situation for a British general and a British headquarters to retain command of these more numerous American formations indefinitely.”  *1 It may have been obvious to his staff but not to Montgomery.  He felt publicly humiliated.  *2 *1 Major General Francis de Guingand, Generals at War, pp.  100-101.  *2 Montgomery and the British public, as outraged as he, were somewhat mollified when George VI, at Churchill’s strong urging, made Montgomery a field marshal on September 1.
    It was hardly a secret that Monty and his superior, Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, were highly critical of Eisenhower.  Both men considered him ambivalent and indecisive.  In a letter to Montgomery on July 28, Brooke commented that Eisenhower had only “the very vaguest conception of war!”  On another occasion he summarized the Supreme Commander as “a most attractive personality,” but with “a very, very limited brain from a strategic point of view.”
    Montgomery, never a man to mince words, saw “right from the beginning
    that Ike had simply no experience for the job,” and while history, he
    felt, would record