Montgomery would have been staggered had he listened in at Lutes' final interview with Bedell Smith, who told him: `No one can say supply has failed. At the front it is OK.'

Wrote Graham Dominick and Shelford Bidwell in their book Coalitions, Politicians and Generals. The Americans were concealing from the British what their true situation was, and that was not nothing because it was those same American Allies that were then on the receiving end of the incredibly powerful German Ardennes surprise offensive with problems that Montgomery could only guess at from what he or his liaison officers observed in the 1st and 9th US Armies that had been temporarily placed under his command.

Tag words: Field Marshall Montgomery; Bedell Smith; Graham Dominick; Shelford Bidwell; Coalitions, Politicians and Generals; Ardennes offensive; ComZ; ammunition; Hank H Cox; The General Who Wore Six Stars; General JCH Lee; Bradley; Hodges; Patton; LeRoy Lutes; Henry Aurand; Lieutenant-General Robert Littlejohn; General Eisenhower; Somervell; Marshall; President Roosevelt; ETOUSA; General Sir Harold Alexander; OVERLORD; Brigadier-General Moses; ETO; SHAEF; John Kennedy Ohl; Supplying the Troops; Major General Harold R. Bull; Russell Weigley; Eisenhower’s Lieutenants;