| When some of Pattons units came up against determined German resistance they were stopped as effectively as Montgomery. For some, including Bradley at first, Patton was charging around France gaining mostly empty territory. The name of the game was the defeat of the Germans. They were the professionals.
The battle of the build-up was for me the next most important thing to the securing of the beaches, the move inland and the creation of the bridgehead in Normandy. And it was the Americans who showed how this could be done across the beaches.
We needed the Americans.
They needed us.
The British had long realised that they would produce no army that would re-enter Europe on it's own. There was no American army that would do the same in this year.
It was an allied effort. American, British, Canadian. And the Poles and the French. |