Bridge Too Far (10 page)

With the slackening of the pursuit, Montgomery’s worst fears were being

realized.  German opposition was stiffening.  In his message, focusing

in particular on the shortage of supplies, Montgomery claimed that he

was getting only half his requirements, and “I cannot go on for long

like this.”  He refused to be diverted from his plan to drive to

Berlin.  The obvious necessity of immediately opening up the vital port

of Antwerp was not even mentioned in his dispatch, yet he stressed that

“as soon as I have a Pas de Calais port working, I would then require

about 2,500 additional three-ton lorries, plus an assured airlift

averaging about 1,000 tons a day to enable me to get to the Ruhr and

finally Berlin.”  Because it was all “very difficult to explain,” the

Field

Marshal “wondered if it was possible” for Eisenhower to come and see him.  Unshaken in his conviction that the Supreme Commander’s decision was a grave error and confident that his own plan would work, Montgomery refused to accept Eisenhower’s rejection as final.  Yet he had no intention of flying to Jullouville in an attempt to change Eisenhower’s mind.  Such diplomacy was not part of his makeup, although he was fully aware that the only hope of selling his proposal was via a face-to-face meeting with the Supreme Commander.  Outraged and seething, Montgomery awaited a reply from Eisenhower.  The British Field Marshal was in near-seclusion, impatient and irritable, at the moment when Prince Bernhard arrived at the headquarters to pay his respects.

Bernhard had arrived in France on the evening of the sixth.  With a small staff, three jeeps, his Sealyham terrier Martin and a bulging briefcase containing Dutch underground reports, he and his party flew to the Continent, guarded by two fighter planes, in three Dakotas with Bernhard at the controls of one.  From the airfield at Amiens they drove to Douai, fifty miles north, and early on the seventh set out for Belgium and Brussels.  At the Laeken headquarters the Prince was met by General Horrocks, introduced to Montgomery’s staff and ushered into the presence of the Field Marshal.  “He was in a bad humor and obviously not happy to see me,” Bernhard recalled.  “He had a lot on his mind, and the presence of royalty in his area was understandably a responsibility that he could easily do without.”

The Field Marshal’s renown as the greatest British soldier of the war

had made him, in Bernhard’s words, “the idol of millions of

Britishers.”  And the thirty-three-year-old Prince was in awe of

Montgomery.  Unlike Eisenhower’s relaxed, almost casual manner,

Montgomery’s demeanor made it difficult for Bernhard to converse easily

with him.  Sharp and blunt from the outset, Montgomery made it clear

that Bernhard’s presence in his area “worried” him.  With justification

untempered by tact or explanation, Montgomery told the Prince that it

would be unwise for Bernhard to visit the headquarters of the Dutch

unit—the Princess Irene Brigade—attached to the British Second Army,

quartered in

the area around Diest, barely ten miles from the front line.  Bernhard, who, as Commander in Chief of the Netherlands Forces, had every intention of visiting Diest, for the moment did not respond.  Instead, he began to discuss the Dutch resistance reports.  Montgomery overrode him.  Returning to the matter, he told the Prince, “You must not live in Diest.  I cannot allow it.”  Irked, Bernhard felt compelled to point out that he was “serving directly under Eisenhower and did not come under the Field Marshal’s command.”  Thus, from the start, as Bernhard remembers the meeting, “rightly or wrongly, we got off on the wrong foot.”  (later, in fact, Eisenhower backed Montgomery regarding Diest, but he did say that Bernhard could stay in Brussels “close to 21/ Army Group headquarters, where your presence may be needed.”)

Bernhard went on to review the situation in Holland as reflected in the underground reports.  Montgomery was told of the retreat and disorganization of the Germans, which had been going on since September 2, and of the makeup of the resistance groups.  To the best of his knowledge, Bernhard said, the reports were accurate.  Montgomery, according to the Prince, retorted, “I don’t think your resistance people can be of much use to us.  Therefore, I believe all this is quite unnecessary.”  Startled by the Field Marshal’s bluntness, Bernhard “began to realize that Montgomery apparently did not believe any of the messages coming from my agents in Holland.  In a way, I could hardly blame him.  I gathered he was a bit fed up with misleading information that he had received from the French and Belgian resistance during his advance.  But, in this instance, I knew the Dutch groups involved, the people who were running them and I knew the information was, indeed, correct.”  He persisted.  Showing the Field Marshal the message file and quoting from report after report, Bernhard posed a question: “In view of this, why can’t you attack right away?”

“We can’t depend on these reports,” Montgomery told him.  “Just because

the Dutch resistance claim the Germans have been retreating from

September 2 doesn’t necessarily mean they are

still retreating.”  Bernhard had to admit the retreat “was slowing down,” and there were “signs of reorganization.”  Still, in his opinion, there was valid reason for an immediate attack.

Montgomery remained adamant.  “Anyway,” he said, “much as I would like to attack and liberate Holland, I can’t do it because of supplies.  We are short of ammunition.  We are short of petrol for the tanks and if we did attack, in all probability they would become stranded.” Bernhard was astounded.  The information he received in England from both SHAEF and his own advisers had convinced him that the liberation of Holland would be accomplished in a matter of days.  “Naturally I automatically assumed that Montgomery, commander on the spot, knew the situation better than anyone else,” Bernhard later said.  “Yet we had absolutely every detail on the Germans—troop strength, the number of tanks and armored vehicles, the position of antiaircraft guns—and I knew, apart from immediate front-line opposition, that there was little strength behind it.  I was sick at heart, because I knew that German strength would grow with each passing day.  I was unable to persuade Montgomery.  In fact, nothing I said seemed to matter.”

Then Montgomery made an extraordinary disclosure.  “I am just as eager

to liberate the Netherlands as you are,” he said, “but we intend to do

it in another, even better way.”  He paused, thought a moment and then,

almost reluctantly, said, “I am planning an airborne operation ahead of

my troops.”  Bernhard was startled.  Instantly a number of questions

came to his mind.  In what area were the drops planned?  When would the

operation take place?  How was it being developed?  Yet he refrained

from asking.  Montgomery’s manner indicated he would say no more.  The

operation was obviously still in the planning stage and the Prince’s

impression was that only the Field Marshal and a few of his staff

officers knew of the plan.  Although he was given no more details,

Bernhard was now hopeful that the liberation of Holland, despite

Montgomery’s earlier talk of lack of supplies, was imminent.  He must

be patient and wait.  The Field Marshal’s reputa-

n was awesome.  Bernhard believed in it and in the man himself.  The Prince felt a renewal of hope, for “anything Montgomery did, he would do well.”

Eisenhower, acceding to Montgomery’s request, set Sunday, September 10, as the date for a meeting.  He was not particularly looking forward to his meeting with Montgomery and the usual temperamental arguments he had come to expect from the Field Marshal.  He was, however, interested in learning what progress had been made in one aspect of the Montgomery operation.  Although the Supreme Commander must approve all airborne plans, he had given Montgomery tactical use of the First Allied Airborne Army and permission to work out a possible plan involving that force.  He knew that Montgomery, at least since the fourth, had been quietly exploring the possibility of an airborne operation to seize a bridgehead across the Rhine.

Ever since the formation of the First Allied Airborne Army under its American commander, Lieutenant General Lewis Hyde Brereton, six weeks earlier, Eisenhower had been searching for both a target and a suitable opportunity to employ the force.  To that end he had been pressing Brereton and the various army commanders to develop bold and imaginative airborne plans calling for large-scale mass attacks deep behind the enemy’s lines.  Various missions had been proposed and accepted, but all had been canceled.  In nearly every case the speeding land armies had already arrived at the objectives planned for the paratroops.

Montgomery’s original proposal had called for units of Brereton’s airborne force to grab a crossing west of the town of Wesel, just over the Dutch-German border.  However, heavy antiaircraft defenses in that area had forced the Field Marshal to make a change.  The site he then chose was farther west in Holland: the Lower Rhine bridge at Arnhem—at this juncture more than seventy-five miles behind the German front lines.

By September 7, Operation Comet, as the plan was called, was

in readiness; then bad weather, coupled with Montgomery’s concern about the ever-increasing German opposition his troops were encountering, forced a postponement.  What might have succeeded on the sixth or seventh seemed risky by the tenth.  Eisenhower too was concerned; for one thing he felt that the launching of an airborne attack at this juncture would mean a delay in opening the port of Antwerp.  Yet the Supreme Commander remained fascinated by the possibilities of an airborne attack.

The abortive operations, some of them canceled almost at the last minute, had created a major problem for Eisenhower.  Each time a mission reached the jump-off stage, troop-carrier planes, hauling gasoline to the front, had to be grounded and made ready.  This loss of precious air-supply tonnage brought cries of protest from Bradley and Patton.  At this moment of relentless pursuit, the airlift of gasoline, they declared, was far more vital than airborne missions.  Eisenhower, anxious to use the paratroopers and urged by Washington to do so—both General Marshall and General Henry H. Arnold, commander of the U.s.  Army air forces, wanted to see what Brereton’s new Allied Airborne Army could accomplish—was not prepared to ground his highly trained airborne divisions.  On the contrary, he was insisting that they be used at the earliest opportunity.  [Pogue, The Supreme Command, p.  280.] In fact, it might be a way to catapult his troops across the Rhine at the very moment when the pursuit was slowing down.  But on this morning of September 10, as he flew to Brussels, all other considerations were secondary in his mind to the opening of the vital port of Antwerp.

Not so Montgomery.  Anxious and determined, he was waiting at Brussels

airport as Eisenhower’s plane touched down.  With characteristic

preciseness, he had honed and refined his arguments preparatory to the

meeting.  He had talked with General Miles C. Dempsey of the British

Second Army, and Lieutenant General Frederick Browning, commander of

the British I Airborne Corps, who was also deputy chief of the First

Allied Airborne Army.  Browning was waiting in the wings for the

outcome of the conference.  Dempsey, concerned at the ever-stiffening

enemy resist-

every before him and aware from the intelligence reports that new units were moving in, asked Montgomery to abandon the plan for an airborne attack on the bridge at Arnhem.  Instead, he suggested concentrating on seizing the Rhine crossing at Wesel.  Even in conjunction with an airborne mission, Dempsey contended, the British Second Army probably was not strong enough to drive due north to Arnhem by itself.  It would be better, he believed, to advance in conjunction with the U.s. First Army northeast toward Wesel.

A drive into Holland was, in any case, now imperative.  The British War Office had informed Montgomery that V-2’s—the first German rockets—had landed in London on September 8. Their launch sites were believed to be somewhere in western Holland.  Whether before or after receiving this information, Montgomery altered his plans.  Operation Comet, as originally devised, called for only a division and a half—the British 1/ Airborne and the Polish 1/ Parachute Brigade; that force was too weak to be effective, he believed.  As a result, he canceled Comet.  In its place, Montgomery came up with an even more ambitious airborne proposal.  As yet, only a few of the Field Marshal’s upper-echelon officers knew about it and, apprehensive of General Bradley’s influence with Eisenhower, they had taken great pains to see that no hint of the plan reached American liaison officers at the British headquarters.  Like Eisenhower, Lieutenant General Browning and the headquarters of the First Allied Airborne Army in England were, at this moment, unaware of Montgomery’s new airborne scheme.

Because of his injured knee, Eisenhower was unable to leave his plane,

and the conference was held on board.  Montgomery, as he had done on

August 23, determined who should be present at the meeting.  The

Supreme Commander had brought his deputy, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur

Tedder, and an assistant chief of staff, Lieutenant General Sir

Humphrey Gale, in charge of administration.  Curtly, Montgomery asked

that Eisenhower exclude Gale from the conference while insisting that

his own administrative and supply chief, Lieutenant General Miles

Graham, remain.  Another, less acquiescent superior might well have

taken issue

with Montgomery’s attitude.  Eisenhower patiently granted the Field Marshal’s demand.  General Gale left.

Almost immediately Montgomery denounced the Supreme Commander’s broad-front policy.  Constantly referring to a sheaf of Eisenhower’s communications that had arrived during the previous week, he called attention to the Supreme Commander’s inconsistencies in not clearly defining what was meant by “priority.”  He argued that his 21/ Army Group was not getting the “priority” in supplies promised by Eisenhower; that Patton’s drive to the Saar was being allowed to proceed at the expense of Montgomery’s forces.  Calmly Eisenhower answered that he had never meant to give Montgomery “absolute priority” to the exclusion of everyone else.  Eisenhower’s strategy, Montgomery reiterated, was wrong and would have “dire consequences.”  So long as these two “jerky and disjointed thrusts were continued,” with supplies split between himself and Patton, “neither could succeed.”  It was essential, Montgomery said, that Eisenhower decide between him and Patton.  So fierce and unrestrained was Montgomery’s language that Eisenhower suddenly reached out, patted Montgomery’s knee and told him, “Steady, Monty!  You can’t speak to me like that.  I’m your boss.” Montgomery’s anger vanished.  “I’m sorry, Ike,” he said quietly.  * * In his memoirs, Montgomery, in discussing the meeting, says that “we had a good talk.”  But he does state that, during these days of strategy arguments, “Possibly I went a bit far in urging on him my own plan, and did not give sufficient weight to the heavy political burden he bore.  … Looking back on it all I often wonder if I paid sufficient heed to Eisenhower’s notions before refuting them.  I think I did.  Anyhow … I never cease to marvel at his patience and forbearance.  …”