On the morning of 14 August, as the Germans were being pushed back on three fronts into the Falaise Pocket, Tac HQ left the Forest of Cerisy. The site, which was naturally camouflaged, had been an excellent one for making the necessary preparations to go on to a fully mobile basis. This proved to have been time well spent, as over the next 25 days Tac moved nine times covering a distance of over 300 miles.
The new site was at Campeaux, a few miles east of Le-Bény-Bocage, where Dempsey had his Tac HQ, and still close to the boundary between the two army groups. Bradley’s main command post, with his two armies spreading out over a much greater area than the British and Canadians, was located at Coutances, well behind his front, but he had decided to form his own advanced command post, named Eagle Tac, which would perform much the same function as Monty’s. It already numbered some 65 officers and twice as many enlisted men and would grow considerably as the campaign developed.
On 19 August Tac moved again, this time only a short distance to Proussy, north-east of Condé-sur-Noireau, where it was at last out of the bocage and into open country. The Falaise Gap was about to be closed and, for the first time, those at Tac were able to see the carnage wrought by the Second Tactical Air Force and Quesada’s Ninth US Tactical Air Force. Broadhurst flew Freddie low over the Pocket and the latter was physically sick. Although an immediate survey showed that the claims of the airmen regarding the destruction of tanks had been greatly exaggerated, there was no doubt about the impact on soft-skinned vehicles and on the enemy troops. The techniques of ground/air support had reached their zenith at Falaise, using the same ‘cab rank’ principle conceived by Broadhurst and his RAF and Army colleagues at Mareth.
At a staff meeting at ‘Shellburst’ on 20 August, Eisenhower confirmed that he would assume control of the two army groups on 1 September and decided that 12th Army Group should be directed towards Metz and the Saar. Freddie, who was present, recommended consulting Monty before any orders were issued and was despatched to Tac to do so. Monty had already given considerable thought to the future prosecution of the campaign. The fact that the advance had not been steady since D-Day, but had been sudden and explosive more than two months later, if anything added strength to the proposals he now put forward to Eisenhower. These came in the form of notes, delivered by Freddie to the Supreme Commander on 22 August, which read as follows:
These notes, and Eisenhower’s response, became the basis for major differences in opinion between the two men which were to bedevil most of the rest of the campaign and in due course to come close to rupturing their relationship.
There were two fundamental points of disagreement. The first lay with strategy. Monty was strongly advocating what became known as the ‘Northern Thrust’, which would involve the whole of 21st Army Group and at least one, if not two, of the armies in 12th US Army Group. Patton’s Third US Army, together with 6th US Army Group, which had been formed following the landings in the South of France (Operation DRAGOON) exactly a week earlier, would threaten Germany from North-East France, but would not be supplied or reinforced in such a way as to permit a major offensive. Eisenhower, on the other hand, envisaged a ‘Broad Front’ along which all the Allied armies would advance steadily side by side on a front stretching from the Channel to Switzerland.
The second point of disagreement was on leadership. Monty was quite clear that the campaign would only succeed if there was a single ground forces commander. By implication this would not be Eisenhower, who in Monty’s opinion lacked the necessary experience and, moreover, had other responsibilities, both military and political, which were inconsistent with command in the field. Because the preponderance of troops in the Northern Thrust would initially be British and Canadian, it was clear that Monty had this role in mind for himself. He was also advocating his own philosophy, namely that the commander should be in direct and constant touch with his subordinates and should not attempt to control operations from the rear, where he would be unduly influenced by the staff.
Montgomery had seen Bradley at Eagle Tac near Fougères on 17 August and obtained his agreement to the notes sent to Eisenhower. He flew to see him again, this time at Laval, on 23 August and was astounded to hear that he had changed his mind and was now backing Eisenhower. Eisenhower himself appeared at Tac later on the same day, accompanied by Gale and Bedell Smith, whom Monty had not seen since D-Day. Monty insisted on meeting the Supreme Commander alone and tried to convince him of the merit of his proposals, even agreeing to serve under Bradley if the American contribution to the Northern Thrust merited such a decision to satisfy public opinion in the USA. The result was compromise. The advance of 21st Army Group was accorded some sort of priority, but the Broad Front would remain the official policy.
Monty’s refusal to relinquish his position on either strategy or command meant that the debate would rumble on for months. Whilst far from alone in his view – he was strongly supported by Brooke and by Sir James Grigg, the Secretary of State for War – there were those among his advisers who disagreed with his stance, the most prominent of whom was Freddie. ‘It is only fair to say’, he wrote later, ‘that throughout the war, this was the only major issue over which I did not agree with my Chief.’2 Freddie’s reasoning was more objective than Eisenhower’s, the latter swayed to a considerable extent by Marshall, Bradley, Patton and American public opinion. Freddie doubted that the administrative situation would permit sustaining such an immense effort on a narrow front whilst the ports remained closed, saw the problems involved with crossing the Rhine, considered that the flanks of the salient which would have to be created would be especially vulnerable to counter-attack and recognized that Eisenhower would have to utilize the forces now being built up to the east. In public, however, he remained entirely loyal to Monty and did his bidding, even if he disagreed with him.
Williams, as always, took a balanced view, agreeing with Monty on the importance of the Ruhr, but accepting immediately that he would lose the command argument. Freddie, who was unable to press the point himself, sent him to see Monty, knowing that the C-in-C respected Williams’s judgement and that, as a ‘hostilities only’ soldier with a career to return to, he could say plainly what would be very difficult for a regular like himself. Williams told Monty that even if the Americans considered him to be the best possible commander in the world, which they did not, it would be quite unacceptable for him to command a force which would in due course be dominated by the Americans. He said subsequently3 that he was not even sure that Monty had understood the argument. Instead, the C-in-C was baffled that Eisenhower was unable to see the right way to win the war and astonished that American public opinion had anything to do with a purely military matter.
Two days after Monty’s meeting with Eisenhower, Tac moved again, this time to Avernes-sous-Exmes, between Argentan and Gacé, close to the most direct road to the Seine. Whilst it was there Monty was visited by Brooke. The weather was too bad to use the small landing strip, so Brooke was driven there and back from Main HQ by Freddie, experiencing the shambles of the Falaise Gap at first hand on the way. Brooke had been in Italy when the debate had taken place with Eisenhower, but although he was strongly in Monty’s camp, believing that Eisenhower’s strategy would add three to six months to the war, it is highly improbable that he would have been able to counter what was effectively an American-inspired fait accompli.
On the previous day another visitor had arrived at Tac, one who was to remain there for the next two and a half weeks. This was the artist James Gunn, who had been commissioned to paint a portrait of Monty. Gunn was a highly fashionable portraitist, numbering members of the Royal Family and senior politicians such as Chamberlain among his subjects, and it flattered Monty’s ego that he should now paint him as well. They had met in February when Gunn visited Augustus John’s studio on the same day as Bernard Shaw and sketched a ‘conversation piece’ of the three men which he presented to Monty. Although others were not so impressed by the new arrival, notably Trumbull Warren, who thought him very conceited, he was made an honorary member of Monty’s mess for the duration of his stay and was well looked after by the personal staff. He also kept a diary, which provides a detailed impression of Tac during its most mobile period. Like many others, he was particularly taken with the relaxed atmosphere in the mess and the constant banter between the C-in-C and his aides.
On 26 August XXX Corps crossed the Seine at Vernon, and XII Corps followed near Louviers two days later. Dempsey grounded VIII Corps and used its transport to reinforce his double thrust towards the Belgian border. There was a strong sense of exhilaration within Second Army as it now raced forward, meeting very little opposition. On the left, First Canadian Army had a more difficult task. I Corps was ordered to swing west to take Le Havre, whilst II Canadian Corps advanced up the coast to capture the other Channel ports of Dieppe, Boulogne and Calais.
The pace of the advance was astonishing and Tac, trying to keep in touch with Dempsey, spent no more than two nights on any site from 30 August, when it left Avernes-sous-Exmes en route for Fontaines-sous-Jouy, until 8 September. At Fontaines, on the escarpment overlooking the Eure Valley, the reconnaissance party made one of its few errors, becoming bogged down in the chosen site after two days of heavy rain. The main body was diverted to a local chateau, which had until recently been the local Luftwaffe HQ and which yielded a number of trophies, notably skull-and-crossbone flags which rapidly adorned Tac’s 3-ton lorries, but little in the cellar. On 1 September Tac was off again, crossing the Seine by the large Class 40 Bailey bridge at Vernon, and arriving that evening at the Chateau de Dangu, south-west of Gisors. Monty had at least one reason to be very pleased as he crossed the river, standing up in the front foot-well of his Humber. Shortly before midnight some completely unexpected news had arrived. He had been promoted to field marshal on the recommendation of Churchill, who, in Brooke’s words, ‘felt that such a move would mark the approval of the British people for the British effort that had led to the defeat of the Germans in France through the medium of Montgomery’s leadership.’4 It was, indeed, some recompense for having lost the overall command of the Allied ground forces on the same day. Chavasse was sent off to London to pick up the new badges of rank.
The Rolls-Royce probably did not look martial enough for the photo opportunity presented by the Seine crossing, which was just as well, as it had been commandeered by Dawnay, BonDurant and Gunn for a trip to Paris. Monty had turned down Eisenhower’s invitation to attend the liberation ceremonies in the city, on the grounds that he was far too busy, but he was happy to extend its pleasures to his staff. The three men did some sightseeing, looked up friends and tried to avoid the members of the Resistance, who were taking their revenge on known collaborators, especially women who had slept with the Germans.
Dangu, the seat of a curious aristocrat of Corsican origin, the Duc de Pozzo di Borgo, whose relations with the Germans had been far from unfriendly, at least provided somewhere other than a tent for Gunn to paint the new field marshal. He had decided to start on two portraits, the first a relatively informal one of Monty seated in a chair, wearing the grey sweater which had become his everyday apparel, with one single medal ribbon, that of the American Legion of Merit.5 The second was of Monty standing up and wearing battledress with a full set of medal ribbons. Whilst at Dangu, Gunn also started work on a third painting, this one described, like the drawing in Augustus John’s studio, as a ‘conversation piece’, which became the only depiction of Monty at table in his mess with his five personal staff officers. Gunn’s attempt to paint Henderson alone, however, was quashed by Monty, who made it clear that he had been invited for a single purpose, which did not include portraits of others.
On 3 September Tac moved again, this time to a location which served only as an overnight harbour, at Conty, just short of Amiens. The recce party had already gone on ahead to Saulty, near Arras, where once again Tac was found a site in the grounds of the local chateau, which Odgers thought had something of the ‘damp melancholy’ of Creullet and was similarly cramped.
It was en route to Conty that the news arrived that XXX Corps had entered Brussels to the accompaniment of wild celebrations by the populace. Right up with the advanced units of the Guards Armoured Division was Harry Llewellyn, who had once again been despatched with Colonel Jones and Wing Commander Spencer to find suitable accommodation for Main HQ. The small party had only just established itself in the best hotel in Amiens when a signal arrived from Belchem, ordering it on to Brussels. There Llewellyn claimed the Residence Palace,6 a complex of buildings which had been hurriedly vacated by the German Military Government. Llewellyn had to forestall a move by the Belgian authorities to take it over, successfully invoking the names of both Eisenhower and Montgomery and immediately putting a stop to looting by the locals. He also commandeered a nearby house for himself and his LOs, which he renamed the ‘Maison Liaison’. This was staffed by three efficient Russians who had been working for the German Todt Organization and were nicknamed Omsk, Tomsk and Minsk!
Monty was strongly opposed to any of his HQs being housed in buildings and this had been the rule in Eighth Army, with the modest exception of Taormina, and in Normandy. However, this caused significant problems for ‘Slap’ White, who as SO-in-C was responsible not only for the general direction of the Royal Signals arm in 21st Army Group, but also more practically for the communication systems of the army group’s HQs. Although these had not been a problem at Southwick Park, they were not very efficient in Normandy, where fixed lines were limited and where wireless, with delays inevitably imposed by the coding and decoding of messages, was relatively slow. Thereafter the advance had been so rapid that the signallers had not been able to lay the usual lines. In buildings in a big city, however, good communications could be established via telephone and telegraph with the War Office and other key establishments in the UK and with SHAEF in France, whilst internal telephones facilitated contact between all the staff branches. The arguments were put to Monty, who reluctantly agreed that this was the only way to operate efficiently.
Both Llewellyn’s ‘Freddie Boys’ and the ‘Monty Boys’ were finding their jobs extremely demanding as the armies surged forward. For the former, the instructions to call in at Tac became impossible for those visiting First Canadian Army, although visitors to Second Army usually found it nearby. The roles of Majors Fife and Batchelor as Resident LOs at the two armies became even more important as their HQs moved, whilst Bigland continued to submit daily reports from Eagle Tac, now vanishing into the distance in a north-easterly direction. The use of aeroplanes became a daily occurrence for most of the LOs. The army group’s HQs now enjoyed the use of the Tactical Air Force Communications Squadron, which by the autumn of 1944 would deploy two Dakotas, fifteen Avro Ansons, which were commonly used for visits to the UK, twenty-nine Austers and fifteen sundry other aircraft, including Monty’s Messenger and three Spitfires for close protection.
The allocation of responsibilities at the beginning of September took Sanderson to I Corps, Mather to II Canadian Corps, Bourhill to XII Corps and Harden to XXX Corps, whilst Frary handled XIX US Corps and Prisk V US Corps, Second Army’s closest neighbours on its right. For Sanderson and Mather this posed serious problems, as they had to travel both across and against the axis of Second Army’s advance, which was taking place on two well defined routes from the Seine to Brussels and Antwerp.7 This meant leaving Tac at between 03.00 and 04.00 each day. The use of an Auster might have been thought desirable and it did indeed remain the conveyance of choice, but in practice, with all Divisional HQs on the move so frequently, it was often impossible to locate their new sites from the air, whilst at least on the ground the Military Police were providing excellent signposting. Over the few weeks from the break-out towards and across the Seine until the armies came to a halt, this sometimes meant up to 14 hours driving in a day. Furthermore, the LOs could never be quite sure that the country they were crossing was in Allied hands, as the swift advance had left isolated German units to be rounded up, not all of which were disposed to surrender without a fight. Moreover, mines had not been cleared on the side roads and Sanderson experienced a nerve-racking situation when he was forced to lift four anti-tank mines obstructing his route by himself.
In spite of these difficulties and the fact that wireless communication was often difficult and the use of fixed line telephones usually impossible, the LOs invariably appeared back at Tac, by then often a long way from where they had set out that morning, on time and carrying all the information required by Monty. At Tac itself both Phantom and the signals unit were working at full stretch to keep in touch with the two armies.
The stay at Saulty was as brief as the others, only distinguished by the replacement of the commandos who had reinforced the defence platoon in the early days with another platoon from 21st Army Group Defence Company. Encouraged by the enthusiastic reports of Brussels from those LOs who had been there, Tac set off for Belgium on 6 September, making a two-night stop in the grounds of the Chateau de Houtaing, near Ath, south-west of Brussels. The chateau itself was full of evacuee children, who lined up and sang It’s a Long Way to Tipperary in French and Flemish by way of a welcome. On 8 September Tac moved again, coming to a halt at a location east of the Belgian capital, the Chateau of Everberg, seat of the Prince de Merode, who had been imprisoned for three years in Germany and was accordingly most welcoming. Odgers was impressed by the way in which every branch of Tac had proceeded smoothly to its location on its arrival, which he ascribed to good Provost work, but which was just as much the result of his training exercises on the South Downs ahead of D-Day.
Monty had in one way come full circle. The chateau was only a few miles from Louvain, where he had sited the HQ of 3 Division following the advance into Belgium by the BEF in May 1940.8 Tac was to stay there for nearly two weeks, giving it much needed time for reorganization. With Germany now not far away, the two defence platoons were enlarged to a full company and the Field Security/Counter Intelligence detachment strengthened, whilst a Light Aid Detachment was added in order to cope with the repair and servicing requirements of the growing number of vehicles.
The unexpectedly rapid movement into Belgium took everyone, including the Q Branch, by surprise. The main problem for 21st Army Group until early August had been the constricted nature of the beachhead, with the necessity to fit all the functions into a very small space. Now the opposite became true and plans to support the advance had to be hastily rewritten. The Rear Maintenance Area had built up fourteen days of working margins plus fourteen days reserves, but supplies now had to be transported over much longer distances than expected. The answer was to use every available vehicle bar the bare minimum required for clearing ports and beaches. All L of C units were temporarily grounded, with their transport diverted to support the advance in addition to that of VIII Corps.
The priority became POL, as enormous amounts were consumed by both armoured and transport vehicles. The rule that the consumption of ammunition was always in inverse proportion to that of fuel held firm, releasing some capacity, but by the end of August no pipe heads were available nearer than Billy, south-east of Caen, whence all supplies had to be carried forward in road tankers or in containers loaded on to lorries. The engineers worked tirelessly to extend the pipeline to beyond Rouen by mid-September, by which time Second Army was 200 miles away on the Netherlands frontier, although First Canadian Army was much closer. It would be late October before the PLUTO line from Dungeness to Boulogne was opened, which, with a new network of pipelines across Belgium and the Netherlands, allowed POL to be brought significantly closer to the consumers. In the meantime, the supply situation remained critical.
As far as general supplies were concerned, at the end of August the whole tonnage was still being unloaded through MULBERRY B or over open beaches. The rapid advance and the use of transport for other purposes led to a big dip in imports in early September, whilst the army group lived off its reserves. It was vital, however, to build up again as quickly as possible, for which ports were needed much closer to the armies. Some progress was made. The clearing of the country as far as the Seine allowed the small port of Ouistreham, which had hitherto been subject to artillery fire from German batteries along the coast, to be opened, along with the inland port at Caen itself, to which it was connected by canal. To the surprise of all, Dieppe, which was captured on 1 September, was found to be substantially undamaged and was opened to shipping within a week. Ostend was taken on 9 September and opened by the end of that month, but Boulogne and Calais required far more work and Dunkirk was held by the Germans until the end of the war. Le Havre, stormed at great cost by 1 Corps and captured on 12 September, was handed over to the Americans.
The great prize, however, was Antwerp, unquestionably the most important port between Cherbourg and Rotterdam and vital to any further large-scale movement forward. The city was liberated by 11 Armoured Division on 4 September and the port installations were captured almost intact, thanks in great measure to the actions of the Belgian resistance movement. Miles Graham, visiting Tac on the same day, told James Gunn that his last excuse for problems with the supply chain was gone. He was wrong: the port was inaccessible to shipping. Lying more than 50 miles from the sea up the Scheldt estuary, whose waters were heavily mined and both sides of which were strongly held by the Germans, it remained tantalisingly unavailable.