DELAYED BY FOG, snowbanks, and further reports of assassins afoot, Eisenhower’s command train pulled into a rail siding in the Belgian town of Hasselt, five miles south of Zonhoven, early Thursday afternoon, December 28. Bodyguards bounded through the station, searching for potential assassins, and machine-gun crews crouched on the platform to lay down a suppressive cross fire if needed. Montgomery hopped aboard at 2:30 P.M. to find Eisenhower in his study, eager to discuss a counteroffensive that would turn the tables in the Ardennes once and for all. While Beetle Smith and Francis “Freddie” de Guingand, the two chiefs of staff, waited in an unheated corridor, Montgomery sketched the plan: four corps would squeeze the enemy salient from the north and northwest, complementing the three already attacking from the south under Patton. The two wings would plan to meet in Houffalize, halfway down the length of the bulge.
Field Marshal Montgomery (center) was put in temporary command of the armies of (left to right) British Lieutenant General Dempsey, U.S. Lieutenant General Hodges, U.S. Lieutenant General Simpson, and Canadian General Crerar.
Yet the field marshal was vague about precisely when this cataclysmic counterblow would fall. Building a combat reserve was vital, Montgomery said. His own direct observation and the intelligence gathered by his “gallopers”—young British liaison officers who reported to him personally from far corners of the battlefield—led him to conclude that the First Army still lacked the strength to confront an enemy force that included at least seven panzer divisions with enough residual power to launch “at least one more full-blooded attack.” Better to let the enemy first impale himself with a final, futile lunge toward the Meuse. Then, deflecting Eisenhower’s impatient request for a firm date, Montgomery urged development of a “master plan for the future conduct of war,” one in which “all available offensive power must be allotted to the northern front,” preferably with a single commander who “must have powers of operational control.”
With this ancient theme again resurrected, Eisenhower brought the meeting to a close and showed Montgomery to the platform. Machine-gunners folded their tripods, bodyguards reboarded, and the train returned to Versailles by way of Brussels. Despite Montgomery’s insistence that the necessary conditions fall into place before an Allied counterblow was launched, the supreme commander believed that he had extracted a commitment for an attack from the north to begin in four days, on Monday, January 1.
That was incorrect. Montgomery returned to his field camp in Zonhoven and cabled Alan Brooke that Eisenhower was “definitely in a somewhat humble frame of mind and clearly realizes that the present trouble would not have occurred if he had accepted British advice and not that of American generals.” He further believed, after a recent conference with Bradley, that the latter had also finally recognized the limitations of his generalship. “Poor chap,” Montgomery had written Brooke, “he is such a decent fellow and the whole thing is a bitter pill for him.” But the 21st Army Group had put the Allies back on track. “We have tidied up the mess,” he told the British chief, “and got two American armies properly organized.” Montgomery also wanted the War Office to know that although he cabled London about his operations each night, no such report went to SHAEF. “You are far better informed, and in the picture, than is Ike,” he confided.
And then he overplayed his hand. In a note to Eisenhower on Friday, December 29, Montgomery wrote,
We have had one very definite failure.… One commander must have powers to direct and control the operation; you cannot possibly do it yourself, and so you would have to nominate someone else.
He enclosed a proposed order for Eisenhower to issue to both 12th and 21st Army Groups, decreeing that “from now onwards full operational direction, control, and coordination of these operations is vested in the [commander in chief of] 21 Army Group.” In summation, he told the supreme commander, “I put this matter up to you again only because I am so anxious not to have another failure.” However, he added, without “one man directing and controlling … we will fail again.”
By chance, Montgomery’s note arrived just before a personal message to Eisenhower from Chief of Staff George Marshall, who noted that “certain London papers” were calling for the field marshal to command “all your ground forces.” The chief added,
Under no circumstances make any concessions of any kind whatsoever. You not only have our complete confidence but there would be a terrific resentment in this country following such action.… Give them hell.
The supreme commander’s patience finally snapped when the agreeable Major General de Guingand arrived in Versailles on Saturday, December 30, with the disagreeable news that no offensive would be launched from the north until at least January 3, leaving Patton to fight alone in the south against a ferociously reinforced enemy. Convinced that he had been deceived, Eisenhower stormed about his office, ordering staff officers to find the message confirming Montgomery’s commitment to a January 1 attack—a futile search, de Guingand assured him, because “knowing Monty, the last thing he would do is commit himself on paper.”
“All right, Beetle,” Eisenhower said, turning to his chief of staff. “I’m going to send a telegram … to the Joint Chiefs of Staff that I’ve had trouble with this man and it’s either they can relieve me if they’d like to—that would be perfectly all right—but one of the two of us has to go.”
Now fully aware of Montgomery’s peril, and of Marshall’s stern note and the thinly concealed American yen to have British Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander command the 21st Army Group, de Guingand proposed driving immediately to Zonhoven. “Won’t you please hold up that telegram till I get back?” he asked Eisenhower.
“All right, Freddie, I’ll hold this up until tomorrow morning. But I don’t think you ought to try and get up there, not tonight, because the weather is so bad.”
After de Guingand hurried out to begin the treacherous two-hundred-mile drive to Montgomery’s headquarters, Eisenhower dictated a frosty cable to the field marshal:
I do not agree that one army group commander should fight his own battle and give orders to another army group commander.… You disturb me by predictions of “failure” unless your exact opinions in the matter of giving you command over Bradley are met in detail. I assure you that in this matter I can go no further.… We would have to present our differences to the CC/S [Combined Chiefs of Staff].
Already in fragile health, de Guingand arrived in Zonhoven at midnight, as Alan Moorehead later told Forrest Pogue, “nearly exhausted, a little hysterical, full of whisky.… He said to Monty, ‘I must see you at once.’” As the chief of staff described the surly mood in Versailles, Montgomery paced around his caravan.
“If you keep on, one of you will have to go,” de Guingand said, “and it won’t be Ike.”
A German tank passes American prisoners of war, December 17, 1944.
Montgomery scoffed. “Who would replace me?”
“That’s already been worked out,” de Guingand said. “They want Alex.”
Montgomery’s bluster abruptly dissolved. “What shall I do, Freddie?” he asked. “What shall I do?”
De Guingand had already drafted an apology to Eisenhower, which he now pulled from his battle dress. “Sign this,” he said. Montgomery scratched his signature and arranged to have the message delivered, marked “eyes only”:
Dear Ike … Whatever your decision may be you can rely on me one hundred percent to make it work and I know Brad will do the same. Very distressed that my letter may have upset you and I would ask you to tear it up. Your very devoted subordinate, Monty.
The crisis passed, but the scars would linger. Soon after sending his apologetic note to Eisenhower, Montgomery privately cabled Brooke, “The general tendency at SHAEF and among the American command is one of considerable optimism.… I cannot share this optimism.” Eisenhower thanked Montgomery for “your very fine telegram,” but the incessant friction with the field marshal kept him awake at night. “He’s just a little man,” he would say after the war. “He’s just as little inside as he is outside.”