The gabled Chateau Henri IV in the Forest of Fontainebleau near Paris, once the summer home of French kings, lay hollow and still over the Easter weekend. Outside, a group of British Tommies in shirtsleeves played soccer. Inside, in the dank, cobwebbed rooms, only one officer could be accounted for; he was sweating over a regimental payroll.
This was the military headquarters of Western Europe. Its head man, Britain's Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery, was the commander in chief of the military forces of the five West European nations who (in the Brussels pact last year) had decided to stand together...
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