Stephen Lewis talks to Charles Whiting about our 'special relationship' with the USA.

THE 'special relationship' which saw Britain dragged kicking and screaming into an American war against Iraq had its origins in a much bigger conflict.

It was forged by Churchill at the beginning of the Second World War, when a beleaguered Britain was desperate for America to throw its weight into the fight with Hitler.

Until then, says York military historian Charles Whiting, there was nothing special at all about the relationship between the two countries.

They may have been allies in the First World War: but American suspicions of Britain and Empire ran deep. In the 1920s, Mr Whiting recounts in his latest book The Field Marshal's Revenge, the US was actually on the verge of declaring war on Britain. In Congress, the British Empire was described as a "red pox spreading across the Pacific" and there were calls for the US to "seize maritime control of the world".

"We were Britain's colony once," a best-selling American book of the time declared. "She will be our colony before she is done."

By the 1930s, Englishmen were invariably being portrayed in American films as "twats in spats", Mr Whiting says, and when the war in Europe began, America had at first no intention of getting involved.

Pearl Harbor changed all that. But even by 1942, 60 per cent of Americans said they would not trust the British, Mr Whiting says.

The feelings were mutual. Britain, used to being top dog, was unhappy at having to hand control of the war to America. Field Marshal Montgomery - a man Mr Whiting describes as "vain, opinionated and revengeful" - regarded the US troops as lazy and inexperienced and refused to take second billing.

That mutual distrust and antagonism made for a war in which egos clashed and top generals were constantly at each other's throats, Mr Whiting says. Having served in an armoured reconnaissance regiment attached to both the US and British armies during the war, he should know.

It is his first-hand experience of the conflict that makes this account of the uneasy relationship between the wartime British and US troops so vivid.

It was a relationship, he relates, that was stretched almost to breaking point in 1945 after the Battle of the Bulge. Montgomery, who had secretly been given command of many of the US troops during the battle, believed he was responsible for snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. Afterwards, he gave a press conference. It was a PR disaster.

"Everyone was praising him," Mr Whiting says. "Then he decides to give a press conference. He dresses himself up in a paratrooper's uniform (which he was not entitled to do) and then he gives such faint praise to the American troops it was like criticism."

He referred to the GIs as being "jolly brave", and said they had fought a "very interesting little battle". He then described how, once the Germans had driven a wedge into the centre of the US 1st Army, he himself had taken steps to ensure that "if the Germans got to the Meuse, they certainly would not get over that river".

His comments went down like a lead balloon - with one US correspondent describing the cocky general as sounding like "St George come to slay the dragon".

The result was predictable. "For the rest of the war, Monty and the British army were sidelined," Mr Whiting says. "All Churchill's efforts to create a special relationship came basically to nought."

Not quite. That relationship exists to this day: but it is a very different one to that of the early 1940s. Then, Britain was still a major power. "But we lost the Empire a long time ago," Mr Whiting says. "We still have desires to be a bigger power than just an island - Blair likes to hold the world stage. But now it is Bush who says 'we will do this' and Blair says 'yes sir.'"

The Field Marshal's Revenge: The Breakdown Of A Special Relationship by Charles Whiting is published by Spellmount, priced £20.

Updated: 08:44 Saturday, March 12, 2005