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On a night of pea-soup fog in January 1944, Eisenhower arrived in London as Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force that would invade the Continent. Roosevelt had decided he simply could not spare Chief of Staff Marshall, the man everyone assumed would command D-day. Instead the order signed by Britain and the U.S. went to Eisenhower: "You will enter the continent of Europe and, in conjunction with the other United Nations, undertake operations aimed at the heart of Germany and the destruction of her armed forces."
Almost immediately, Eisenhower picked up the sounds of criticism. He noted in his diary that British columnists were sniping at him and talking up their own generals, especially the star of North Africa: Montgomery, victor over Germany's General Rommel, the Desert Fox. "They don't use the words initiative or boldness in talking of me," Eisenhower wrote. "It wearies me to be thought of as timid, when I've had to do things that were so risky as to be almost crazy. Oh hum."
Under Eisenhower's direction, southern England turned into a massive arsenal and a jumping-off point. The Allies built 163 airfields -- from which 12,000 warplanes flew in support of Operation Overlord. They stockpiled 2 million tons of weapons and supplies, mountains of food and fuel. The Channel ports became sprawling tent cities housing tens of thousands of soldiers.
Three weeks before D-day, King George VI, Churchill and the British chiefs of staff gave the plan a last review. Eisenhower's deputy for ground forces in the invasion was to be British, and Churchill had picked Montgomery for the post. As he briefed the distinguished gathering, Montgomery tramped across a huge relief map of Normandy spread across the floor. He said he intended to capture the city of Caen, eight miles from the beaches, on the first day. He might even get to Falaise, 32 miles inland. He would "crack about and force the battle to swing our way."
That was Montgomery's style: colorful and quotable but imprecise. His penchant for old sweaters and big berets helped foster a folksy image that made him popular with his troops and the public. Behind the image, however, he was a thoroughly professional soldier who paid attention to almost nothing but his profession, living and eating alone in a trailer in the midst of his army. With an ego nearly as large as General Douglas MacArthur's, he was good at public relations but bad at human relations.
On D-day Montgomery did not get his troops well inland; in most places they advanced only four to six miles along the 60-mile beachhead. He did not seize Caen the first day; in fact, he did not occupy the whole city until July 20, after it had been pounded to rubble by Allied bombing. As men and supplies poured across the Channel, Montgomery could not seem to push through the German armored divisions blocking the road to Paris. American troops farther west were fighting their way very slowly through farming country lined with dense hedgerows -- tall earth embankments complete with trees, shrubs and Germans.