Free Bridge Too Far by Cornelius Ryan Page B

Eisenhower “as a very good Supreme Commander, as a
    field commander he was very bad, very bad.”  [Author’s interview with
    Field Marshal Montgomery.] Angrily, Montgomery began promoting the idea
    of an over-all “Land
    Forces Commander,” a post sandwiched between the army groups and Eisenhower.  He knew just the man for the job—himself.  Eisenhower was well aware of the underground campaign.  He remained calm.  The Supreme Commander was, in his way, as obstinate as Montgomery.  His orders from General Marshall were clear and he had no intention of entertaining the idea of any over-all ground commander other than himself.
    Montgomery had no opportunity to discuss his single-thrust plan or his thoughts about a land-forces commander directly with Eisenhower until August 23, when the Supreme Commander came to lunch at 21/ Army Group headquarters.  Then the fractious Montgomery, with extraordinary tactlessness, insisted on a private conversation with the Supreme Commander.  He demanded that Eisenhower’s chief of staff, General Bedell Smith, be excluded from the conference.  Smith left the tent, and for an hour Eisenhower, grimly keeping his temper, was lectured by his subordinate on the need for “a firm and sound plan.”  Montgomery demanded that Eisenhower “decide where the main effort would be” so that “we could be certain of decisive results quickly.”  Again and again he pressed for the “single thrust,” warning that if the Supreme Commander continued the “broad-front strategy with the whole line advancing and everyone fighting all the time, the advance would inevitably peter out.”  If that happened, Montgomery warned, “the Germans would gain time to recover, and the war would go on all through the winter and well into 1945.  If we split the maintenance,” Montgomery said, “and advance on a broad front we shall be so weak everywhere we’ll have no chance of success.”  To his mind there was only one policy: “to halt the right and strike with the left, or halt the left and strike with the right.”  There could only be one thrust and everything should support it.
    Eisenhower saw Montgomery’s proposal as a gigantic gamble.  It might produce speedy and decisive victory.  It might instead result in disaster.  He was not prepared to accept the risks involved.
    Nevertheless he found himself caught between Montgomery on one side and
    Bradley and Patton on the other—each ad-
    vocating “the main thrust,” each wanting to be entrusted with it.
    Up to this point, Montgomery, notorious for his slow-moving, if successful, tactics, had yet to prove that he could exploit a situation with the speed of Patton; and at this moment Patton’s army, far ahead of everyone else, had crossed the Seine and was racing toward Germany.  Diplomatically, Eisenhower explained to Montgomery that, whatever the merits of a single thrust, he could hardly hold back Patton and stop the U.s. Third Army in its tracks.  “The American people,” said the Supreme Commander, “would never stand for it, and public opinion wins wars.”  Montgomery heatedly disagreed.  “Victories win wars,” he announced.  “Give people victory and they won’t care who won it.”
    Eisenhower was not impressed.  Although he did not say so at the time, he thought Montgomery’s view was “much too narrow,” and that the Field Marshal did not “understand the over-all situation.”  Eisenhower explained to Montgomery that he wanted Patton to continue eastward so that a link-up might be effected with the American and French forces advancing from the south.  In short, he made it quite clear that his “broad-front policy” would continue.
    Montgomery turned for the moment to the subject of a land commander.  “Someone must run the land battle for you.”  Eisenhower, Montgomery declared, should “sit on a very lofty perch in order to be able to take a detached view of the whole intricate problem, which