Viscount Montgomery of Alamein (1887 – 1976)
Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, KG, GCB, DSO, PC nicknamed "Monty" and the "Spartan General"
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He saw action in the First World War as a junior officer in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. At Méteren, near the Belgian border at Bailleul, he was shot through the right lung by a sniper. He returned to the Western Front as a general staff officer and took part in the Battle of Arras in April/May 1917. He also took part in the Battle of Passchendaele in Autumn 1917 before finishing the war as chief of staff of the 47th (2nd London) Division.
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In the inter-war years he commanded the 17th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers and, later, the 1st Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment before becoming commander of 9th Infantry Brigade and then General Officer Commanding 8th Infantry Division.
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During the Second World War he commanded the British Eighth Army from August 1942 in the Western Desert until the final Allied victory in Tunisia. This command included the Battle of El Alamein, a turning point in the Western Desert Campaign.
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Montgomery took command after Lieutenant-General William Gott was killed flying back to Cairo. On his appointment Montgomery commented "After having an easy war, things have now got much more difficult." A colleague is supposed to have told him to cheer up – at which point Montgomery said "I'm not talking about me, I'm talking about Rommel!" Montgomery's assumption of command transformed the fighting spirit and abilities of the Eighth Army.
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The next major Allied attack was the Allied invasion of Sicily (Operation Husky). Montgomery considered the initial plans for the Allied invasion, which had been agreed in principle by Eisenhower and Field Marshal Alexander, to be unworkable because of the dispersion of effort. He managed to have the plans recast to concentrate the Allied forces, having Patton's Seventh US Army land in the Gulf of Gela rather than near Palermo in the west and north of Sicily. Inter-Allied tensions grew as the American commanders Patton and Bradley (then commanding II US Corps under Patton), took offence at what they saw as Montgomery's attitudes and boastfulness.
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During the autumn of 1943, Montgomery continued to command the Eighth Army during the landings on the mainland of Italy itself. In conjunction with the Anglo-American landings at Salerno (near Naples) by Mark Clark's U.S. Fifth Army and seaborne landings by British paratroops in the heel of Italy (including the key port of Taranto, where they disembarked without resistance directly into the port), Montgomery led the Eighth Army up the toe of Italy but he abhorred the lack of coordination, the dispersion of effort and the strategic muddle and opportunism he saw in the Allied effort in Italy and was glad to leave the "dog's breakfast" on 23 December 1943.
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Montgomery returned to Britain in January 1944. He was assigned to command the 21st Army Group which consisted of all Allied ground forces that would take part in Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy under overall direction of the Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Forces, American General Dwight D. Eisenhower.
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At St Paul's School on 7 April and 15 May he presented his strategy for the invasion. He envisaged a ninety-day battle, ending when all the forces reached the Seine. During the hard fought two and a half month Battle of Normandy that followed, the impact of a series of unfavourable autumnal weather conditions disrupted the Normandy landing areas.
Montgomery meets General Patton
Video: Rick Ray • Shutterstock
Montgomery with his Miles Messenger aircraft
(location and date unknown).
As the campaign progressed Montgomery altered his initial plan for the invasion and switched to a strategy of attracting and holding German counter attacks in the area north of Caen, which was designed to allow the United States Army in the west to take Cherbourg. Hampered by stormy weather, Montgomery had to ensure Rommel focused on the British in the east rather than the Americans in the west, who had to take the Brittany before the Germans could be trapped by a general swing east. By the middle of July Caen had not been taken, as Rommel continued to prioritise prevention of the break out by British forces rather than the western territories being taken by the Americans. This was broadly as Montgomery had planned, albeit not with the same speed as he outlined at St Paul's.
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General Eisenhower took over Ground Forces Command on 1 September, 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, although it had been agreed before the D-Day invasion. Winston Churchill had Montgomery promoted to field marshal by way of compensation.
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Montgomery was notorious for his lack of tact and diplomacy. Even his "patron" the Chief of the Imperial General Staff Lord Alanbrooke frequently mentions it in his war diaries: "he is liable to commit untold errors in lack of tact" and "I had to haul him over the coals for his usual lack of tact and egotistical outlook which prevented him from appreciating other people's feelings"
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After the war Montgomery became the Commander in Chief of the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR), the name given to the British Occupation Forces, and was the British member of the Allied Control Council. He was created 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein in 1946.
Source: Wikipedia
Images: Believed to be in the Public Domain or used with permission
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