Supreme Commander (74 page)

Acting on the assumption that GOODWOOD would be decisive, Eisenhower reported that all the senior airmen were enthusiastic because they felt it would be “a brilliant stroke which will knock loose our present shackles.” Tedder assured Montgomery, “All the Air Forces will be full out to support your far-reaching and decisive plan to the utmost of their ability.” The airmen were awed by the size of the bombardment Montgomery wanted (and got)—a drop of 7700 tons of bombs delivered by 1676 heavy bombers and 343 medium and light bombers, in what was “the heaviest and most concentrated air attack in support of ground troops ever attempted.”
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Eisenhower, expecting great things from GOODWOOD, told Montgomery on July 14 he was “confident that it will reap a harvest from all the sowing you have been doing during the past weeks.” The whole front would act aggressively, Eisenhower said, pinning down the Germans so that the British on the left could “plunge into his [the German’s] vitals” in a “decisive” manner. Bradley, Eisenhower promised, would “keep his troops fighting like the very devil, twenty-four hours a day, to provide the opportunity your armored corps will need, and to make the victory complete.” Eisenhower grew eloquent in his summary: “I would not be at all surprised to see you gaining a victory that will make some of the ‘old classics’ look like a skirmish between patrols.”
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Eisenhower was delighted that without having had to take drastic action he would be getting the offensive he wanted.

Montgomery had misled Eisenhower, but he now had an opportunity to rectify the misunderstanding. He received Eisenhower’s message five days before GOODWOOD began, and there could have been no doubt in his mind that his superior had an entirely erroneous impression. Montgomery could have accepted Eisenhower’s standing offer to come to Twenty-first Army Group headquarters, where he could have explained to the Supreme Commander what he did have in mind, but he did not, probably because he did not want interference with his
battle. It is also possible that by this stage Montgomery was himself beginning to dream of a breakout through GOODWOOD, and of course he was ready to take advantage of it if his limited attack produced it.

On July 14 Montgomery told Brooke, “I have decided that the time has come to have a real ‘show down’ on the Eastern flank, and to loose a corps of three armoured divisions into the open country about the Caen-Falaise road.” He then sent his military assistant to the British War Office to explain his intentions verbally. The military assistant declared, “All the activities on the eastern flank are designed to help the [American] forces in the west while ensuring that a firm bastion is kept in the east.” That certainly was clear enough, but the next statement muddled the picture again: “At the same time all is ready to take advantage of any situation which gives reason to think that the enemy is disintegrating.” To reinforce success was, obviously, sound military policy, and Montgomery would have been remiss had he not been ready to take advantage of a major victory. But he did not really expect one since GOODWOOD was not designed to gain one. He failed however to make this clear to Eisenhower.

Other factors may have influenced Montgomery in his exaggeration of the scope of GOODWOOD and in his refusal to inform Eisenhower of its exact aims. Montgomery knew that Eisenhower had been disappointed over results so far. Gossips at SHAEF were speculating on “who would succeed Monty if sacked,” and this could have reached Montgomery’s ears.
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He knew that Tedder and others were urging Eisenhower to set up an advanced tactical headquarters in France and to take control of the land battle himself, or better yet relieve Montgomery.
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Eisenhower said that removal was out of the question, in view of the adulation Montgomery enjoyed with the troops, Brooke, and the British population (the Supreme Commander seems to have been the only senior officer at SHAEF who recognized this obvious political truth).
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Montgomery was keenly aware that he had to buy time, not so much to protect his position, which was secure, as to keep Eisenhower in England so that he could run the land battle. Even Montgomery, however, did not realize the extent of the impatience at SHAEF. Supreme Headquarters was under constant pressure from the British and American press, which increasingly talked about stalemate and World War I. In France, Twenty-first Army Group did not feel and possibly was not fully aware of this pressure. SHAEF was the raw nerve end, Twenty-first Army Group the muscle. In any case, by exaggerating the scope of GOODWOOD, Montgomery was successful in buying time.

Another factor in Montgomery’s exaggeration of the aims of GOODWOOD involved the airmen. Montgomery knew that they did not like to see their weapons diverted from the strategic bombing operations on which they banked so heavily and may have felt he could get them to make a full effort only by presenting GOODWOOD as a decisive operation.

GOODWOOD began on July 18. In its initial stages, helped by the tremendous air bombardment, the attack went well. The British 8 Corps was on the verge of achieving a clean penetration. The Germans committed their reserves at noon, four tank and four infantry battalions, in a counterattack that stopped the British but did not gain any ground. Hitler gave permission to rush in a Panzer division from Fifteenth Army north of the Seine, but the tanks could hardly arrive in time to save the situation. Nevertheless Montgomery did not press his advantage. He had lost 270 tanks and 1500 men. On the second day, as he tried to extend limited local gains, he lost 131 tanks and suffered 1100 casualties. Finally a heavy thunderstorm on the afternoon of July 20 brought an end to the offensive.
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Montgomery had captured the remainder of Caen and some of the plain to the southeast, gained a few square miles, and used up the bulk of the remaining German reserves. He announced he was satisfied with the results.
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Eisenhower was livid. He thundered that it had taken more than seven thousand tons of bombs to gain seven miles and that the Allies could hardly hope to go through France paying a price of a thousand tons of bombs per mile.
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Tedder discussed “the Army’s failure” with Portal, and they “agreed in regarding Montgomery as the cause.”
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Staff officers wondered whether Montgomery should be made a peer and sent into the House of Lords or given the governorship of Malta.
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When General Dempsey asked what all the fuss was about—there had never been any intention of achieving a breakout, he pointed out—the reaction was even more intense.
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Montgomery had set the stage for one of the great victories of modern military history, but no one knew that at the time. And meanwhile, he had failed to give Eisenhower the kind of operation the Supreme Commander expected, wanted, and thought he was getting. Had a senior British RAF or Navy officer done anything remotely similar, Eisenhower probably would have sacked him via the device of requesting action from the head of the service. In Montgomery’s case this option was not open. The head of the British Army, Brooke, was a strong Montgomery supporter, had no real confidence in Eisenhower, understood the basic idea in GOODWOOD and agreed with it, and would have used his position and powers to prevent any change in leadership in Twenty-first Army Group.
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Eisenhower might have turned to Churchill, but the Prime Minister would have been reluctant to take action because of Montgomery’s prestige. El Alamein was far from being one of the great battles in history, but it was the only major victory the British had had in the first three years of the war. The British public had desperately needed a hero and after El Alamein the government deliberately built up Montgomery so much that no other general in the war, including Rommel, enjoyed such high prestige. Churchill would have found it difficult to face the political repercussions of relieving him.

After the war Eisenhower said he felt the powers of a supreme commander should be greater. He thought the supreme commander of one nationality should be in a position to dismiss an inefficient or recalcitrant subordinate general of another.
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As it was, however, there was nothing Eisenhower could do in 1944, and in any case the factors that prevented Churchill from acting came to bear just as strongly on Eisenhower. Sensitive to the morale factor, Eisenhower was unwilling even to consider asking for Montgomery’s removal. Still, he did have a war to fight and felt he could not allow Montgomery to continue to act so independently. He needed to devise a system that would insure that Montgomery directed his operations toward the objectives SHAEF set for Twenty-first Army Group.

Tedder also felt this need strongly. Early on July 21 SHAEF learned of the attempt on Hitler’s life the previous day by members of the German high command. Tedder told Eisenhower that “Montgomery’s failure to take action earlier had lost us the opportunity offered by the attempt on Hitler’s life” and asked Eisenhower to act at once. Tedder later recorded that he intended, if Eisenhower did not act firmly, “to put my views in writing to the British Chiefs of Staff. I told Eisenhower that his own
people would be thinking that he had sold them to the British if he continued to support Montgomery without protest.” Later, Tedder attended Smith’s regular morning meeting and said it was imperative that the Allies get to Pas de Calais quickly to overrun the enemy’s flying-bomb sites. Smith said the Allies were in fact not going to get there soon. Tedder commented, “Then we must change our leaders for men who will get us there.”
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Eisenhower, meanwhile, had drafted and sent a letter to Montgomery. “I think that so far as we can foresee we are at this moment
relatively
stronger than we can probably hope to be at any time in the near future,” the Supreme Commander said. “
Time is vital.
” The Allies had to hit with all the force they had, and do it quickly. When GOODWOOD began, Eisenhower confessed, “I thought that at last we had him [the enemy] and were going to roll him up. That did not come about.” He thought Montgomery ought to insist that Dempsey keep up the strength of his attack, that he put all his forces into action, since in the long run it would save lives. Eisenhower pointed out that eventually the Americans would have many more troops in Europe than the British, “but while we have equality in size we must go forward shoulder to shoulder, with honors and sacrifices equally shared.”
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Tedder saw a copy of Eisenhower’s letter that afternoon. He was upset because he had not seen it before dispatch, and told a member of his staff that it was “not strong enough. Montgomery can evade it. It contains no order.”
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For the immediate future, Montgomery’s situation was not crucial, however, since, as Eisenhower had noted in his letter, “now we are pinning our … hopes on Bradley.” More important was that the stalemate in Normandy was coloring the Supreme Commander’s thinking about other problems, most particularly the German V-weapons and landings in southern France.

On June 13 four flying bombs (V-1s) landed in southeast England. On June 15 the German attack began in earnest. It had an immediate effect. “Most of the people I know,” Butcher declared four days after the attack started, “are semidazed from loss of sleep and have the jitters, which they show when a door bangs or the sounds of motors, from motorcycles to aircraft, are heard.”
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The Allies had long known of the German experiments with flying bombs and their successors, rockets. In August 1943 COSSAC and Bomber Command had directed an attack on the German research station at Peenemuende on the Baltic Sea, and in December Bomber Command carried out a series of raids against the German launching sites in the Pas de Calais area. The results seemed impressive, and by March 1944 SHAEF felt that the direct effects of enemy V-weapons were among the “smaller hazards of war to which OVERLORD is liable.” In April the air forces reported that of the 96 sites attacked, 65 were so badly damaged as to be unusable. By D-Day the number of neutralized sites was up to 86 (of a total of 97). Seemingly, CROSSBOW, code name for the operation, was a success and the challenge of the V-weapons had apparently been met and overcome.
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