The End of War - A Novel of the Race for Berlin - [World War II 02] (10 page)

The greatest difference between Monty and Ike, besides their personalities, is Monty’s desire to press toward Berlin in a concerted strike through northern Germany. His mighty Twenty-first Army Group is assembled north of Aachen. That force includes the American First and Ninth Armies; these were assigned to Monty under duress when they were caught north of the German bulge in December. Churchill, Montgomery, and the British Chiefs of Staff together harangue Eisenhower, General Marshall, and Roosevelt to assign the northern route a priority of men and materiel. They want a quick end to the war, surely, and they want the British to be the ones to bring it about, by a charge into Berlin with Montgomery at the head. They argue that one “full-blooded”—Monty’s words—strike through the northern edge of the West Wall, the fortified Siegfried Line, on a direct salient to Berlin, is the best way to gain a decisive victory. They will skirt the industrial Ruhr pocket, to surround it later in a linkup with southern forces. Along the way, the Twenty-first Army will liberate all of Holland and put a clamp on the NaziV-1 andV-2 rocket bombs, which continue from there to curse London. Monty met twice last year with Eisenhower. During one of the meetings, on board Ike’s plane, Monty launched into such a tirade over Berlin that Ike had to lay his hand on the Field Marshal’s leg and remind him, “Steady, Monty. You can’t talk to me like this. I’m your boss.” Montgomery backed down to Eisenhower, but not over Berlin. He wrote Ike a letter on November thirtieth. In unsparing language, he insisted again on a change in the American direction of the battle for western Europe. In December, Churchill himself arranged a conference with Eisenhower to lobby for the northern route and Montgomery’s command of the operation.

Again, Ike wouldn’t have it.

Eisenhower is caught between two charismatic, adulated, demanding generals: Monty in the north, Patton in the south. Both men want priority for their missions, extol the virtues of their plans, and claim they can steam-roll Germany and finish off Hitler. Eisenhower has more responsibility than fighting battles; he must keep together the Anglo-American military alliance. He tries to appease. He has the flaw of many Americans, the desire to be liked, to keep everyone—even subordinates—happy. In doing so, Ike has allowed his generals a great deal of leeway, even in choosing their own objectives. Monty has chosen Berlin. Patton sometimes sounds like he’s set his sights on Moscow.

Bandy has spent time with both generals. He knows they possess egos that can’t be appeased. And news stories of their victories make them happiest. That’s why they, like Eisenhower, talk to Charley Bandy,
Life
magazine’s top shooter.

The plan for Monty’s “full-blooded” thrust calls for an assault through Hitler’s West Wall, a vast concrete phalanx of tank barriers and pillboxes running the length of the German border with France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and part of Holland. Monty’s Twenty-first will cross the Rhine and press on to the Elbe River, then to Berlin. Eisenhower agrees that a northern thrust would be deadly to Hitler. But he is concerned that such an attack, if mounted too early or independent of southern support from Bradley, will expose Montgomery’s long right flank to counterattacks from the Ruhr plain. If those attacks were strong enough, they could sever Monty’s supply lines and perhaps destroy the leading armies, a risk Ike will not take this late in the war. At present, with the failure to open the Dutch port of Antwerp, all materiel for the troops continues to flow from the Normandy beaches. Every mile beyond the Rhine is a mile added to that problem.

Instead, Ike insists on a broad-front strategy, with the support of Marshall and Roosevelt. As Supreme Commander, it’s his judgment that the most prudent endgame is to engage the Germans on a vast front, closing to the Rhine River all the way from the Swiss border to Arnhem in Holland, reasoning that every German soldier they take care of on the west side of the Rhine is one they won’t face on the other side. By engaging the enemy on so vast a front, something, somewhere, is bound to give. When it does, Ike will respond to the opportunity and commit in force. It might be Monty and his northern front, it could be Bradley up the middle, perhaps Patton breaking through in the south. If Berlin becomes a realistic and necessary military goal through any of these portals into Germany, and if the Reds don’t take the city first, Eisenhower has said he will pursue it.

The war is won. The sole question left is who will claim the kill and hold up the head for history. Bandy doesn’t blame Eisenhower for wanting it to be a Yank any more than he condemns Monty for wanting it to be a Tommy or Joe Stalin for laying the whip to his Red Army to keep them in the race.

Of course, Bandy wants it to be an American force that takes Berlin. He imagines the jeep ride into the enemy’s capital. The pictures he’ll take of the Stars and Stripes flying over the Reichstag. He sees one more cover of
Life
framed for his study in Tennessee.

“Monty,” Bandy repeats, rolling the name on his tongue. It feels cool there, like a lozenge. A good nickname never hurts. “What’d he do this time?”

Eisenhower grins. Bandy can tell this is a mask face. Ike is plenty irked at something.

“Don’t you read the papers, Charley?”

“I’ve been on a boat, General.”

“When’d you get in?”

“London yesterday. Here this morning.”

“What’ve you been doing, son?”

“Sleeping. Sir.”

Eisenhower draws on his Camel. His grin stays there even while he exhales, hung like a curved wedge of moon over a dastardly act. Uh-oh, Bandy thinks. He is pissed.

“The Bulge.” The name comes out with the smoke; Bandy pictures that the word itself is fuming in Eisenhower’s mouth.

Ike stabs two fingers of his right hand at the map, at the Schnee Eiffel forests, near the German-Luxembourg border.

“The Germans attacked to the west here. They split Bradley’s group, with the First and Ninth caught north. So I gave them to Monty. Temporarily. Patton ate me out for it, but that’s George. I did it because it was the only way I could be sure Monty would commit his reserves. George and Brad felt that the German flank was exposed, and an attack by George’s Third Army northward toward Houfifalize and St-Vith could relieve Bastogne and cut the Germans in half.”

Eisenhower’s two fingers dice the air above the map. Bandy does not look at the chart, he studies the everyman face. He wishes he could photograph the General right now, this is one of the more commanding moments he has seen with Ike.

“Monty didn’t think George could launch an offensive from the south, didn’t believe the German flank was vulnerable. And he thought that Hodges’ First would take weeks to organize a counteroffensive out of the north.”

Ike’s pointing hand, clutching the Camel, returns to his mouth. Ike seems to prefer speaking of Montgomery accompanied by smoke.

“He was wrong.”

Eisenhower opens his hand now, palm flat, polishing the map in quick strokes.

“Monty told Hodges to disengage and pull back. Instead, on December twenty-ninth, Hodges launched a counteroffensive out of the north. Bradley and George took the bottom of the pincer, came roaring hell out of the south all the way to Bastogne, and the whole time Brad is yelling at me on the phone to make Monty launch a full and immediate counterattack out of the north. But what’s Monty do?”

Bandy says nothing. Eisenhower doesn’t want an answer, the General doesn’t look up from his map, swelling with anger at the recollection.

“Nothing. He does nothing but submit a plan to wait until January third, more than a week after Hodges’ first counteroffensive in the north. Oh, and let me tell you his plan was neat. Crackerjack. Very clean little battle plan, phase by phase.”

Eisenhower fills his lungs again with the Camel. “Monty.” He says the Field Marshal’s name the way a dragon would say it. Ike is fully angry now.

“Charley, this is off the record?”

“General, I don’t write anything down. I just take pictures.”

“All right. Follow me.”

Eisenhower leads Bandy away from the map table through a maze of rooms filled with desks, all of them occupied. Everyone looks up when the Supreme Commander strides by in his trademark waistcoat and pleats. Passing, Ike glances down at each desk until he finds what he is hunting for. That morning’s London
Times.
He scoops it from the desktop of a female officer, who tries to smile. Ike grins back. “Thank you,” he tells her.

Ike slaps Bandy in the gut with the folded paper, to make the point that this is how it hit him.

Bandy sits in a chair opposite the pretty officer behind the desk. He opens the paper to the front page. Ike furls his arms and waits. The General stands over Bandy, in the center of a hive of desks and junior officers, typists, clerks, messengers. Activity in the room is suppressed, people go on tiptoe or bear down into their desk work.

The lead article in the
Times
hails Montgomery as the savior of the Battle of the Bulge.

Bandy reads. General Bradley held a press conference yesterday to state that the First and Ninth Armies were assigned to Montgomery on a strictly temporary basis, and that these American forces were pivotal in the fighting in the Ardennes. The British press responded with an attack on Bradley and other U.S. generals, claiming that there is afoot a concerted effort in the American camp to deflect credit from Montgomery. The thrust of the articles was all Monty. Monty again to the rescue. Monty must be named ground commander of all Allied forces in western Europe. Monty was brilliant, bold at the Bulge. Monty.

Eisenhower taps Bandy on the shoulder. “Come with me. Not in front of the help.”

The Supreme Commander walks back to the large map room. He takes up his station, hovering in the skies above Europe where he moves millions of men, creates clouds.

“Charley.”

“Yes, General.”

“The son of a bitch.”

“Yes, sir.”

“He called a press conference. Three days ago in Brussels. Brad heard it on the radio and almost had a conniption, called me and then I heard it. Know what Monty said?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, I’m gonna tell you. He said he won the damn battle. Said he directed it. Said, and I’m quoting the son of a bitch here, the battle was one of the most interesting and tricky he has ever handled.
He
has ever handled. Said the situation looked like it might become awkward. That he took certain steps to make sure the Germans were contained, that
he
was thinking ahead the whole time. Charley.”

“Yes, General.”

“You know what the kicker is?”

“No. sir.”

Eisenhower laughs now, sardonic, disbelieving.

“As of two days ago, the Germans started pulling back. They’re going to wind up losing about a hundred thousand men. American casualties are going to be somewhere around seventy or eighty thousand. You know what the British are gonna lose? About two thousand men. Two thousand. And Monty.”

Eisenhower must take another drag; this finishes the cigarette, burnt like a fuse to an explosive. He tosses the butt on the floor and grinds it.

“Monty,” the General breathes, “and I’m quoting here, said he had employed the whole available power of the British group of armies. That he had British troops fighting on both sides of the Americans, who he admitted suffered a hard blow.”

Bandy watches Ike scratch his chin. “A hard blow. Eighty thousand American boys. Monty loses two thousand. What fighting he does do is with two of Brad’s armies. And he calls a press conference to tell the world he was the savior of the Americans. He doesn’t say a thing about Courtney Hodges or the Hundred and first Airborne surrounded at Bastogne. He doesn’t mention Brad or George, who both tell me they’ll resign if I make Monty ground C-in-C. He doesn’t let the cat out of the bag that for every single British soldier fighting at the Bulge we had forty.”

Ike sucks in his cheeks like he wants to spit. “Savior.”