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Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, KG , GCB , DSO , PC ( 17 November 1887 – 24 March 1976 ) was a British Army officer, often referred to as "Monty". He successfully commanded Allied forces at the Battle Of El Alamein , a major turning point in World War II , and troops under his command were largely responsible for the expulsion of the Axis forces from North Africa. He was later a prominent commander in Italy and North-West Europe, where he was in command of all Allied ground forces during Operation Overlord and then until after the Battle Of Normandy . EARLY LIFE Montgomery was born in Kennington, London in 1887, the fourth child of nine to an Anglo-Irish Anglican Priest , Revd. Henry Montgomery. The Montgomery family came from the Moville , County Donegal , near Londonderry , and maintained their home, New Park, there. Montgomery considered himself Irish and a County Donegal man. In 1889, the family moved with his father when he was made Bishop of Tasmania . His father was kind, but ineffectual in the house, and often away on missionary work. His mother was a martinet, who allowed her husband 10 shillings a week from his salary and gave out beatings to her children. Montgomery said that he had an unhappy childhood, often clashing with his mother and becoming the black sheep of the family. In 1901, Bishop Montgomery became secretary of the Society For The Propagation Of The Gospel , and the family returned to London. Bernard went to St Paul's School and then the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst , from which he was almost expelled for setting fire to a fellow cadet during a fight with pokers. He joined the 1st Battalion, The Royal Warwickshire Regiment in 1908, first seeing service in India until 1913. FIRST WORLD WAR The First World War began in August 1914 and he moved to France with his regiment that month. He saw service during the retreat from Mons during which half the men in his battalion became casualties or prisoners. At Meteren , near the Belgian border at Bailleul on 13 October 1914, during an allied counter-offensive, he was shot through the right lung by a sniper and was seriously enough injured for his grave to be dug. He was awarded the DSO for gallant leadership. After recovering in early 1915, he was promoted to a brigade-major training Kitchener's New Army and returned to the Western Front in early 1916 as an operations staff officer during the battles of The Somme , Arras , and Passchendaele . During this time he came under the command of General Sir Herbert Plumer , in charge of training for the 9th Corps. Through his training, rehearsal, and integration of the infantry with artillery and engineers, Plumer's troops were able to achieve their objectives with a minimum of casualties. Haig persisted in attritional battles, leading Montgomery to write to his brother Donald, on seeing Canadians sent to assault Passchendaele ridge that they were 'magnificent', but 'they forget that the whole art of war is to gain your objective with as little loss as possible', which was a doctrine that Montgomery subsequently lived by. Montgomery served at the battles of The Lys and Chemin-des-Dames before finishing the war as General Staff Officer 1 and a temporary Lieutenant-colonel , in the 47th (2nd London) Division . BETWEEN THE WARS After the war, Montgomery served in the British Army Of The Rhine and wrote up his experiences in a series of training pamphlets and manuals. He then attended the army's Staff College at Camberley , before being appointed as a brigade-major of the 17th infantry brigade at the end of 1920. The brigade was stationed in County Cork during the Anglo-Irish War . A cousin of Montgomery's had been assassinated by the IRA in 1920 and he was a half-Irish protestant. However, though he was effective, he did not employ methods as brutal as those of his contemporary in Cork , Arthur Percival . On his arrival he urged units of his brigade that their "behaviour must be beyond reproach" although later he stated that it "never bothered me a bit how many houses were burnt" (a reference to the government policy of burning the homes of suspected Republicans and sympathisers). IRA officer Tom Barry said that he "behaved with great correctness". Montgomery increasingly came to see the conflict as one that could not be won, and withdrawal of British forces as the only feasible solution. In 1923, after the establishment of the Irish Free State and during the Irish Civil War , Montgomery wrote to Percival that (in order) "to win a war of that sort you must be ruthless" and 20th century democratic Britain would not do that, and so "the only way therefore was to give them Irish some form of self-government and let them squash the rebellion themselves". In 1923 Montgomery was posted to the Territorial 49th division, eschewing the usual amounts of drill for tactical training. He returned to the 1st Royal Warwickshires in 1925 as a company commander as a Captain , before becoming an instructor at the Camberley Staff College and a major (brevet Lieutenant-Colonel). He met and married a widow, Elizabeth Carver in 1927 and a son was born in August 1928. He became Lieutenant-Colonel of the 1st battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment in 1931, and saw service in Palestine , Egypt , and India. He was promoted to Colonel and became an instructor at the Indian Army Staff College in Quetta , India. Montgomery did, as was usual, maintain links with the Royal Warwickshires, taking up the honorary position of Colonel-of-the-Regiment in 1947. As throughout his career, Montgomery stirred up the resentment of his superiors for his arrogance and dictatorial ways, and also for his disregard of convention when it obstructed military effectiveness. For example, he set up a battalion brothel, regularly inspected by the medical officer, for the 'horizontal refreshment' of his soldiers rather than forcing them to take chances in unregulated establishments. His father died at Molville in 1932. He became commanding officer of the 9th Infantry Brigade in 1937, but the year also saw tragedy for him. His marriage had been a very happy and loving one, but his wife was bitten by an insect while on holiday in Burnham-on-Sea . The bite became infected, and his wife died in his arms from septicaemia following an amputation. The loss devastated Montgomery, but he insisted on throwing himself back into his work immediately after the funeral. In 1938, he organised an amphibious combined operations landing exercise that impressed the new commander-in-chief, southern command, General Wavell . He was promoted to Major-General and took command of the 8th Division in Palestine. There he quashed an Arab revolt before returning in July 1939 to Britain, suffering a serious illness on the way, to command of the 3rd (Iron) Infantry Division . SECOND WORLD WAR Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939. The 3rd division was deployed to Belgium as part of the British Expeditionary Force . Montgomery predicted a disaster similar to that in 1914, and so spent the Phony War training his troops for tactical retreat rather than offensive operations. During this time, Montgomery faced serious trouble from his superiors after again taking a very pragmatic attitude towards the sexual health of his soldiers. His training paid off when the Germans began their invasion of the Low Countries on 10 May 1940 and the 3rd division advanced to the Dyle and then withdrew to Dunkirk with great professionalism, returning to Britain intact with only nominal casualties. During Operation Dynamo -- the evacuation of 330 000 BEF and French troops to Britain -- Montgomery assumed command of the II Corps On his return Montgomery antagonised the War Office with trenchant criticisms of the command of the BEF and was briefly relegated to divisional command and only made CB . In July 1940 he was promoted to Lieutenant-General and was placed in command of the 5th Corps and started a long-running feud with the new commander-in-chief, southern command, Claude Auchinleck . In April 1941 he became commander of the 12th Corps and in December 1941 renamed the South-Eastern Command the South-Eastern Army to promote offensive spirit. During this time he developed and rehearsed his ideas and trained his soldiers, culminating in Exercise Tiger in May 1942, a combined forces operation involving 100,000 troops. Montgomery had a deep technical understanding of how the Army operated, at all levels from the infantry company to the Army Group. He helped to shape the Canadian army through assisting the formation of the fledgling First Canadian Army while they were under his command in South-Eastern Army. Montgomery personally visited the most Canadian units, down to the battalion level, and assisted Canadian Army commander Harry Crerar in weeding out poor officers, giving direct criticism of battalion commanders, company commanders, and even regimental sergeants majorSome of his notes are reproduced in Terry Copp's book ''The Brigade.''. Montgomery was a keen advocate of physical fitness and hard training: in the desert he had all ranks from Brigadier down doing daily physical training; any man, no matter what rank, was expected to be fit to fight, and if any officer could not keep up on daily runs, he was sent homeFor a humorous account of the effect of Montgomery on the soldiers of the south-east army, see Spike Milligan , Adolf Hitler- my part in his downfall, Penguin (1972). Montgomery was also a critic of Battle Drill Training, which he felt was a crutch used by unit commanders. His personal view, put into action during the Phony War and afterwards, was that company and battalion training in the phases of war - relief in place, passage of obstacles, hasty attack, etc. - was ignored in favour of simple drilling at the section and platoon level. North Africa and Italy In 1942 a new field commander was required in the Middle East, where Auchinleck was commander-in-chief. He had stabilised the allied position at Alamein, but after a visit in August 1942, the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill replaced him with Alexander , and was persuaded by Alan Brooke to appoint Montgomery commander of the British Eighth Army in the North African campaign after Churchill's own preferred candidate, William Gott , was killed flying back to Cairo . Montgomery's peremptory assumption of command of Eighth Army was deeply resented by Auchinleck and his departing staff, but transformed the 8th Army. Taking command two days earlier than authorised on 13 August 1942, Montgomery ordered immediate reinforcement of the vital heights of Alam Halfa, joined the army and air headquarters together in a single operating unit, and ordered all contingency plans for retreat to be destroyed. Both Brooke and Alexander were astonished by the transformation in atmosphere when they visited on the 19 August. Montgomery also managed to transform the morale of the 8th Army quickly, though at the expense of denigrating Auchinleck. Montgomery made a concerted effort to appear before troops as often as possible, frequently visiting various units and making himself known to the men. A criticism of the 8th Army up until this point had been that the constituent units tended to fight their own separate battles. Montgomery was determined that the Army should fight its battles in a unified, focused manner according to a detailed plan. German commander Erwin Rommel attempted to encircle the Eight Army at the Battle Of Alam Halfa from 31 August 1942. ULTRA decryption had confirmed Montgomery's initial decision to defend the area, and Rommel was halted with very little gain. After this engagement, Montgomery was criticized for not attacking the retreating German forces; however, in Montgomery's judgement, the 8th Army could not defeat the Germans in mobile, fluid mechanized battles and choosing to engage in such a battle, therefore, would play to German strength. The reconquest of North Africa was essential for airfields to support , and visiting every single unit involved in the offensive. The Battle Of El Alamein began on the 23 October, and ended 12 days later with the first large-scale, decisive allied land victory of the war. Montgomery correctly predicted both the length of the battle and the number of casualties (13,500). Montgomery was Knighted and promoted to full General . The 8th Army's subsequent slow and steady advance as the Germans retreated hundreds of miles towards their bases in Tunisia used the logistical and firepower advantages of the British Army while avoiding manoeuvre battles. It also gave the Allies an indication that the tide of war had genuinely turned in North Africa. Montgomery kept the initiative, applying superior strength when it suited him, forcing Rommel out of each successive defensive position. On 6 March 1943 Rommel's attack on the over-extended 8th Army at Medenine with the largest concentration of German armour in north Africa was successfully repulsed. At the Mareth Line , 20-27 March, when Montgomery encountered fiercer frontal opposition than he had anticipated, he switched his major effort into an outflanking inland pincer, backed by low-flying RAF fighter-bomber support. This campaign demonstrated the battle-winning ingredients of morale (sickness and absenteeism was virtually eliminated in the 8th Army), co-operation of all arms including the air forces, first-class logistical back-up and clear-cut orders. The next major Allied attack was Operation Husky , the invasion of Sicily . It was in Sicily that Montgomery's famous tensions with US commanders really began. Montgomery managed to recast plans for the Allied invasion, in general making the plan more cautious. Inter-allied tensions grew as the American commanders Patton and Bradley , took umbrage at what they perceived as Montgomery's attitudes and boastfulness. They resented him, while accepting his skills as a general. Montgomery continued to command Eighth Army during the landings on the mainland of Italy itself. Montgomery abhorred the lack of coordination, the dispersion of effort, and the strategic muddle and opportunism and was glad to leave the "''dog's breakfast''" on 23rd December. Normandy Montgomery returned to Britain to take command of the 21st Army Group which consisted of all Allied ground forces that would take part in Operation Overlord , the invasion of Normandy . Preliminary planning for the invasion had been taking place for two years, most recently by COSSAC staff (Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander). Montgomery quickly concluded that the COSSAC plan was too limited, and strongly advocated expanding the plan from a three-division to a five-division assault. As with his takeover of the 8th Army, Montgomery travelled frequently to his units, raising morale and ensuring training was progressing. On the 7 April and 15 May he presented his strategy for the invasion at St Paul's School. He envisaged a ninety day battle, ending when all the forces reached the Seine , pivoting on an Allied-held Caen, with British and Canadian armies forming a shoulder and the U.S. armies wheeling on the right. The success of the D-Day landings owed a great debt to Montgomery's planning. After the war, Eisenhower and his chief of staff, Lieutenant-General Bedell Smith told the American military correspondent, Drew Middleton that "''No one else could have got us across the Channel and into Normandy... Whatever they say about him, he got us there''". During the hard fought two and a half month Battle Of Normandy that followed, Montgomery was not able to follow the original campaign plan, but in a series of improvised offensives the Allied armies under his command inflicted one of the biggest defeats of the war on the German army in the west. Advance to the Rhine The increasing preponderance of American troops in the European theatre (from 2 out of 5 divisions at D-day to 72 out of 85 in 1945) made it a political impossibility for the Ground Forces Commander to be British. General Eisenhower himself took over Ground Forces Command while continuing as Supreme Commander, with Montgomery continuing to command the 21st Army Group, now consisting mainly of British and Canadian units. Montgomery bitterly resented this change, even though it had been agreed before the D-Day invasion. Winston Churchill had Montgomery promoted to Field Marshal by way of compensation. Montgomery was able to persuade Eisenhower to adopt his strategy of a single thrust to the at Arnhem . Montgomery's preoccupation with the push to the Ruhr had also distracted him from the essential task of clearing the Scheldt during the capture of AntwerpMontgomery later noted that this was "a bad mistake - I underestimated the difficulty of opening up the approaches to Antwerp ... I reckoned that the Canadian Army could do it while we were going for the Ruhr. I was wrong.", and so after Arnhem, Montgomery's group were instructed to concentrate on Doing This so that the port of Antwerp could be opened. When the surprise attack on the Ardennes took place on the 16 December 1944, starting the Battle Of The Bulge , the front of the U.S. 12th Army Group was split, with the bulk of the U.S. First Army on the northern shoulder of the German 'bulge'. The Army Group commander, Bradley , was located south of the penetration at Luxembourg and command of the U.S. First Army became problematic. Montgomery was the nearest commander on the ground and on 20 December , Eisenhower (who was in Versailles ) transferred Courtney Hodges ' U.S. First Army and the U.S. Ninth Army to his 21st Army Group, despite Bradley's vehement objections. Montgomery grasped the situation quickly, visiting all divisional, corps, and army field commanders himself and instituting his 'Phantom' network of liaison officers. He grouped the British XXX Corps as a strategic reserve and reorganized the U.S. defence of the northern shoulder, ordering the evacuation of St Vith . The German commander of the 5th Panzer Army, Von Manteuffel said "''The operations of the American 1st Army had developed into a series of individual holding actions. Montgomery's contribution to restoring the situation was that he turned a series of isolated actions into a coherent battle fought according to a clear and definite plan. It was his refusal to engage in premature and piecemeal counter-attacks which enabled the Americans to gather their reserves and frustrate the German attempts to extend their breakthrough.''"Patrick Delaforce, The Battle of the Bulge - Hitler's Final Gamble (2004) Eisenhower had then wanted Montgomery to go on the offensive on 1 January to meet Patton's army that had started advancing from the south on 19 December . However, Montgomery refused to commit infantry he considered underprepared into a snowstorm and for a strategically unimportant piece of land. He did not launch the attack until 3 January . A large part of American military opinion thought that he should not have held back, though it was characteristic of him not to want to throw troops away owing to inadequate preparation. After the battle the U.S. First Army was restored to the 12th Army Group; the U.S. Ninth Army remained under 21st Army Group until it crossed the Rhine. Montgomery advanced to the Rhine with operations Veritable and Grenade in February 1945. After a meticulously-planned Rhine Crossing on March 24 , Montgomery sealed off the Danish peninsula and on the 4 May 1945 on Lüneburg Heath he accepted the surrender of German forces in northern Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands . LATER LIFE After the war, Montgomery was created 1st Viscount Montgomery Of Alamein in 1946. He was Chief Of The Imperial General Staff from 1946 until 1948, but was largely a failure as it required the strategic and political skills he did not possess. He was then supreme commander or chairman of the western union's commanders-in-chief committee. He was an effective inspector-general and mounted good exercises, but out of his depth politically, and was pleased to become Eisenhower's deputy in creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ( NATO ) forces from 1951 until his retirement in 1958. His mother died in 1949; Montgomery did not attend the funeral, claiming he was "''too busy''". Montgomery was chairman of the governing body of St John's School , Leatherhead , Surrey from 1951 to 1966 and a generous supporter. |
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