     Late on the night of December 19th, Dwight Eisenhower, Commander in Chief of all Allied forces, called Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, commander of the British 21st Army Group. The situation in the Ardennes had become awkward. With telephone lines out, General Bradley, the commander of the American 12th Army Group, was no longer in a position to effectively control the American forces on the northern side of the bulge. There was only one logical solution: put Montgomery in charge of the American forces on that side of the bulge.
     Bradley took it well; he was a professional. Montgomery handled his new power over American troops with graciousness. But the hard-line nationalists on both sides of the Atlantic used Monty's promotion as grist for their own mills. When, after the battle, Monty gave a press conference summarizing the events of the battle, both sides were inflamed. Some in the British press trumpeted the Field Marshal's performance as having saved the day after American bungling nearly lost the war. They renewed their call that Montgomery be given overall command of all Allied forces. American partisans were incensed at the suggestion that the British had bailed them out when in truth total British participation, as measured in casualties, amounted to less than a thousand against total American casualties of nearly 75,000.
     The bickering went on for nearly a month. While it never seriously threatened Allied unity, it was an embarassment to all and a distraction for generals who should have been fighting a war rather than each other.
/Montgomery
     Monty was the most distinguished British commander to emerge from World War Two. This doesn't mean much; Britain was badly served by some of the worst generals of the war.
     He got his first break in Africa after Churchill fired another failed commander. Monty took over the Eighth Army at El Alamein and set to work girding it for Rommel's inevitable attack. Monty's strategy was cautious; although he outnumbered Rommel by 2-1, he waited for Rommel to attack. When Rommel did, Montgomery's response was totally defensive. It worked: Rommel was defeated. But Monty's subsequent pursuit of Rommel's beaten Afrika Korps was timid and lackadaisical. Churchill, desperate for a hero, promoted Montgomery to Field Marshal in recognition of his victory. In all of World War Two, El Alamein was the only unquestionable British victory over German land forces.
     Montgomery went on to command all British forces in northwest Europe. In the Normandy battles, his troops made almost no progress until Patton blasted through the German flank and forced a German withdrawal. Monty's one bold idea of the entire war was a triple airdrop to seize the Arnhem bridge over the Rhine. This scheme, Operation Market-Garden, was a ghastly disaster that resulted in the near-total destruction of the British First Airborne Division. His performance during the Battle of the Bulge was dull. He was more concerned with preventing an already unlikely German breakthrough than taking advantage of the golden opportunities arising from the overextended German lines.
     Montgomery was a cautious and unimaginative commander, always concerned with tidying up his lines. He would have fit in quite well in the trench warfare of World War One; in World War Two, he was a sad anachronism./