pass and notified the War Office that Morgan “would do.”
In his room at the Mount Royal Hotel one evening during this period, Morgan gave thought to his new situation as he took his bath. His new title was unwieldy; those with whom he was to work and to lead needed to be motivated and to sense that there was real change. This group would clearly need the creation of some esprit de corps. One element that would help would be a name that would unify the small band that was to be formed. It needed to have a martial sound yet needed to be vague enough that no one would be able to figure out what the job was by the name alone. His mid-bath inspiration was to title himself and his group COSSAC (Chief of Staff, Supreme Allied Commander). And so COSSAC he became.
— 4 —
TO PLAN THE RECONQUEST OF EUROPE
As Morgan surveyed his office in Norfolk House on the first day of his new assignment as COSSAC, he noted that he had taken possession of “a couple of desks and chairs … a few sheets of paper and a pencil that someone had dropped on the floor.”1 He was starting from zero, which, under the circumstances, at least meant a fresh start.
Morgan was an enthusiastic “Westerner” who believed that an early reentry into the Continent starting in northwest France was the proper strategic direction. He did not agree with the more opportunistic approach of senior British leaders. While he believed the principle of “flexibility” can have many advantages, “especially when one’s resources are slender … [,] it is well to be flexible only if, [in the end] there is the firm intention to do something definite.” He went on to say that he and some of his colleagues suspected that the “British authorities had at this time no real plan for the day when they would have to stop being flexible.”2 His approach made it easier to work with his American allies and to recruit like-minded officers from both the British Empire and the United States.
While he was temporarily reliant on the kindness of strangers for his clerical needs, he moved quickly to recruit the highest level of planners for the jobs at hand, trusting that they, in turn, would attract others with whom they had successfully served. Morgan had been in the Staff Duties Directorate in the War Office in 1936–37, so he knew or knew of most of the officers who might be both available and desirable for these positions. His long service in India would also be useful as fellow veterans of Indian service would make their mark. As he said, “When it came to creating the British Army portion of the COSSAC staff the War Office … [gave] me practically carte blanche, with the result that the British Army component was able to hit its stride in amazingly quick time.”3
He did have a fight with Brooke to get Maj. Gen. Charles West for operations (whom Morgan knew well from their long service together in India), and it took some time to get Maj. Gen. Nevil Brownjohn, who took over supply and came over from Paget at Home Forces. Brig. Kenneth McLean, the senior British Army planner, was another old friend of Morgan’s from India—he married the woman who had looked after Morgan’s children there. All three played important roles in creating OVERLORD. West and McLean were both engineers and combat veterans. According to Ray Barker, West had a “keen analytical, engineering mind that could analyze a problem and get to the roots of it … [,] an ability to reduce it to fundamental terms at first…. McLean was a hard, pragmatic Scot,” while West had a calmer temperament.4 McLean was described by Morgan as someone who knew all the tricks of the trade and was a “weaver of plots beyond compare and, moreover, an expounder of same, who appeared in the next few months before crowned heads and chiefs of state, justifiably earning universal applause.”5 He had previously spent time on the Planning Staff in Whitehall and at Combined Operations Headquarters (COHQ).
Representatives from the other services of both nations, particularly the U.S. contingent, arrived more slowly and suffered from higher turnover rates for a variety of reasons. McLean noted that in the spring and summer, “the American Air Force and Navy came very little into the planning picture. They changed quite frequently and had little continuity in their work.”6 Barker agreed with this assessment, noting that the U.S. Army Air Forces sent over good men who didn’t stay for very long. Of the U.S. Navy’s representatives, Barker’s evaluation was that they didn’t send their best men.7
Morgan observed that while senior British officers were noticeably less enthusiastic about the project than their American counterparts, it was just the opposite among the more junior officers. The British officers signed on at once while some Americans didn’t see the point in associating with what looked like a predominantly British staff for a possible operation that could become a dead end. Still, most of those who joined soon shared the enthusiasm and sense of common purpose that comes from being part of a group that must produce something of importance and is given not quite enough time or resources to produce it.
General Brooke had discussed the organization of what was evolving into the COSSAC staff with Gen. Frank M. Andrews, commanding general of ETOUSA, on 26 March.8 This in turn led to soon-to-be major general Barker being designated as deputy chief of staff for COSSAC (or Deputy COSSAC, as he was called), although for a while he also continued as the operations officer at ETOUSA.
Barker and Morgan met for the first time at Norfolk House in early April. As Barker explained, “As a natural thing the small group that I had been working with on the planning for ROUNDUP—the ‘ROUNDUP Planners’ they called us—we just re-designated ourselves and were absorbed into COSSAC. And a group of Britishers moved in, and so the thing just flowed together without any formal thing.”9
The staff’s initial formation clearly had a certain air of informality to it. There were, of course, requests to British, British Empire, and American authorities for staffing, but there was also a tone that suggested the unconventional approach that Morgan enjoyed. Perhaps it helped that COSSAC took over Norfolk House, which is where many of the planners already worked. Still, because so many plans conceived there were stillborn, all it took was a mention that one worked at Norfolk House to evoke both pity and disregard from one’s audience. This was so noticeable that Morgan asked, unsuccessfully, if they could rename the building Suffolk House. This was not possible because of the history attached to the site. The old Norfolk House, a most palatial structure of the dukes of Norfolk and the birthplace of George III, dated back to the mid-1700s. The original building had been demolished in 1939 and replaced by the modern office building.10 Morgan took consolation in the fact that it made security easier—no one would expect something as dramatic as a cross-Channel assault to emanate from such a place. Security was a particular concern as COSSAC was explicitly forbidden to have contact with the many allied governments-in-exile located in London, and the French headquarters was also on St. James’s Square just a long block away from Norfolk House.11
Thanks to Morgan’s friendship with Canadian general Andrew McNaughton, with whom he had served in World War I, COSSAC was able to gain meaningful support from a cadre of highly trained Canadian staff officers. South Africa was also well represented, as was Australia.
Morgan wanted his staff to be as small as possible—mirroring what he believed was the approach taken by Marshal Foch at the end of World War I—and to function more as a coordinating body, not duplicating efforts but taking advantage of the knowledge base that already existed. In this he was partially successful. Because COSSAC considered all aspects of a cross-Channel assault and the campaign that was to follow, the range and scope of issues to be addressed required that expertise be added to the staff, both formally and informally. There was no useful precedent for a multinational planning staff that was also intended to be the foundation of a coalition’s operational headquarters for the major campaign being planned. As Barker noted, “We didn’t start out with any table of organization…. There was no one to prescribe it for us. We had to develop it as we went along…. There was a certain amount of trial and error.”12
Morgan was well aware of the
