Bernard Montgomery
Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, KG, GCB, DSO, PC, DL (/məntˈɡʌməri ... ˈæləmeɪn/; 17 November 1887 – 24 March 1976), nicknamed "Monty", was a senior British Army officer who served in the First World War, the Irish War of Independence and the Second World War.
"General Montgomery" redirects here. For other uses, see General Montgomery (disambiguation).
The Viscount Montgomery of Alamein
- "Monty"
- "The Spartan General"
17 November 1887[1]
Kennington, Surrey, England
24 March 1976 (aged 88)
Alton, Hampshire, England
United Kingdom
1908–1958
8742
- Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe (1951–1958)
- Chairman of the Western Union Commanders-in-Chief Committee (1948–1951)
- Chief of the Imperial General Staff (1946–1948)
- British Army of the Rhine (1945–1946)
- 21st Army Group (1944–1945)
- Allied Ground Forces (Normandy) (1944)
- Eighth Army (1942–1943)
- South-Eastern Command (1941–1942)
- XII Corps (1941)
- V Corps (1940–1941)
- II Corps (1940)
- 3rd Infantry Division (1939–1940)
- 8th Infantry Division (1938–1939)
- 9th Infantry Brigade (1937–1938)
- 1st Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment (1931–1934)
- 17th (Service) Battalion, Royal Fusiliers (1919)
- Colonel Commandant, Royal Tank Regiment
- Colonel Commandant, Parachute Regiment (?−1956)[2]
- Representative Colonel Commandant, Royal Armoured Corps (1947–1957)[3][4]
- Colonel Commandant, Army Physical Training Corps (1946–1960)[5][6]
- Colonel Royal Warwickshire Regiment (1947–1963)[7][8]
- Deputy Lieutenant of Southampton (1958–76)[9]
Montgomery first saw action in the First World War as a junior officer of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. At Méteren, near the Belgian border at Bailleul, he was shot through the right lung by a sniper, during the First Battle of Ypres. On returning to the Western Front as a general staff officer, he took part in the Battle of Arras in April–May 1917. He also took part in the Battle of Passchendaele in late 1917 before finishing the war as chief of staff of the 47th (2nd London) Division.
In the inter-war years he commanded the 17th (Service) Battalion, Royal Fusiliers and, later, the 1st Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment before becoming commander of the 9th Infantry Brigade and then general officer commanding (GOC), 8th Infantry Division.
During the Western Desert campaign of the Second World War, Montgomery commanded the British Eighth Army from August 1942, through the Second Battle of El Alamein and on to the final Allied victory in Tunisia in May 1943. He subsequently commanded the British Eighth Army during the Allied invasion of Sicily and the Allied invasion of Italy and was in command of all Allied ground forces during the Battle of Normandy (Operation Overlord), from D-Day on 6 June 1944 until 1 September 1944. He then continued in command of the 21st Army Group for the rest of the North West Europe campaign, including the failed attempt to cross the Rhine during Operation Market Garden.
When German armoured forces broke through the US lines in Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge, Montgomery received command of the northern shoulder of the Bulge. This included temporary command of the US First Army and the US Ninth Army, which held up the German advance to the north of the Bulge while the US Third Army under Lieutenant General George Patton relieved Bastogne from the south.
Montgomery's 21st Army Group, including the US Ninth Army and the First Allied Airborne Army, crossed the Rhine in Operation Plunder in March 1945, two weeks after the US First Army had crossed the Rhine in the Battle of Remagen. By the end of the war, troops under Montgomery's command had taken part in the encirclement of the Ruhr Pocket, liberated the Netherlands, and captured much of north-west Germany. On 4 May 1945, Montgomery accepted the surrender of the German forces in north-western Europe at Lüneburg Heath, south of Hamburg, after the surrender of Berlin to the USSR on 2 May.
After the war he became Commander-in-Chief of the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) in Germany and then Chief of the Imperial General Staff (1946–1948). From 1948 to 1951, he served as Chairman of the Commanders-in-Chief Committee of the Western Union. He then served as NATO's Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe until his retirement in 1958.
Early life[edit]
Montgomery was born in Kennington, Surrey, in 1887, the fourth child of nine, to a Church of Ireland minister, Henry Montgomery, and his wife, Maud (née Farrar).[11] The Montgomerys, an 'Ascendancy' gentry family, were the County Donegal branch of the Clan Montgomery. The Rev. Henry Montgomery, at that time Vicar of St Mark's Church, Kennington, was the second son of Sir Robert Montgomery, a native of Inishowen in County Donegal in the north-west of Ulster,[12] the noted colonial administrator in British India; Sir Robert died a month after his grandson's birth.[13] He was probably a descendant of Colonel Alexander Montgomery (1686–1729). Bernard's mother, Maud, was the daughter of Frederic William Canon Farrar, the famous preacher, and was eighteen years younger than her husband.[14]
After the death of Sir Robert Montgomery, Henry inherited the Montgomery ancestral estate of New Park in Moville, a small town in Inishowen in the north of County Donegal in Ulster, the northern province in Ireland. There was still £13,000 to pay on a mortgage, a large debt in the 1880s (equivalent to £1,537,946 in 2021)[15] and Henry was at the time still only an Anglican vicar. Despite selling off all the farms that were in the townland of Ballynally, on the north-western shores of Lough Foyle,[16] "there was barely enough to keep up New Park and pay for the blasted summer holiday" (i.e., at New Park).[17]
It was a financial relief of some magnitude when, in 1889, Henry was made Bishop of Tasmania, then still a British colony, and Bernard spent his formative years there. Bishop Montgomery considered it his duty to spend as much time as possible in the rural areas of Tasmania and was away for up to six months at a time. While he was away, his wife, still in her mid-twenties, gave her children "constant" beatings,[18] then ignored them most of the time as she performed the public duties of the bishop's wife. Of Bernard's siblings, Sibyl died prematurely in Tasmania, and Harold, Donald and Una all emigrated.[19] Maud Montgomery took little active interest in the education of her young children other than to have them taught by tutors brought from Britain, although he briefly attended the then coeducational St Michael's Collegiate School.[20] The loveless environment made Bernard something of a bully, as he himself recalled, "I was a dreadful little boy. I don't suppose anybody would put up with my sort of behaviour these days."[21] Later in life Montgomery refused to allow his son David to have anything to do with his grandmother, and refused to attend her funeral in 1949.[22]
The family returned to England once for a Lambeth Conference in 1897, and Bernard and his brother Harold were educated at The King's School, Canterbury.[23] In 1901, Bishop Montgomery became secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and the family returned to London. Montgomery attended St Paul's School and then the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, from which he was almost expelled for rowdiness and violence.[24] On graduation in September 1908 he was commissioned into the 1st Battalion the Royal Warwickshire Regiment as a second lieutenant,[25] and first saw overseas service later that year in India.[24] He was promoted to lieutenant in 1910,[26] and in 1912 became adjutant of the 1st Battalion of his regiment at Shorncliffe Army Camp.[24]
Between the world wars[edit]
1920s and Ireland[edit]
After the First World War, Montgomery commanded the 17th (Service) Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers,[35] a battalion in the British Army of the Rhine, before reverting to his substantive rank of captain (brevet major) in November 1919.[36] He had not at first been selected for the Staff College in Camberley, Surrey (his only hope of ever achieving high command). But at a tennis party in Cologne, he was able to persuade the Commander-in-chief (C-in-C) of the British Army of Occupation, Field Marshal Sir William Robertson, to add his name to the list.[37]
After graduating from the Staff College, he was appointed brigade major in the 17th Infantry Brigade in January 1921.[38] The brigade was stationed in County Cork, Ireland, carrying out counter-guerilla operations during the final stages of the Irish War of Independence.[31]
Montgomery came to the conclusion that the conflict could not be won without harsh measures, and that self-government for Ireland was the only feasible solution; in 1923, after the establishment of the Irish Free State and during the Irish Civil War, Montgomery wrote to Colonel Arthur Ernest Percival of the Essex Regiment:
Casualty conservation policy[edit]
The British high command were not only concerned with winning the war and defeating Germany, but also with ensuring that it retained sufficient influence in the post-war world to govern global policy. Suffering heavy losses in Normandy would diminish British leadership and prestige within its empire and on post-war Europe in particular.[216] Many of Montgomery's clashes with Eisenhower were based on his determination to pursue the war "on lines most suitable to Britain".[217]
The fewer the number of combat-experienced divisions the British had left at the end of the war, the smaller Britain's influence in Europe was likely to be, compared to the emerging superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union. Montgomery was thus caught in a dilemma—the British Army needed to be seen to be pulling at least half the weight in the liberation of Europe, but without incurring the heavy casualties that such a role would inevitably produce. 21st Army Group scarcely possessed sufficient forces to achieve such a military prominence, and the remaining divisions had to be expended sparingly.[218]
Britain, in 1944, did not possess the manpower to rebuild shattered divisions and it was imperative for Montgomery to protect the viability of the British army so that Britain could still play an important part in the final victory. It was reported to the War Office that "Montgomery has to be very careful of what he does on his eastern flank because on that flank is the only British Army there is left in this part of the world". The context of British casualties and the shortage of reinforcements, prompted Montgomery to "excessive caution".[219] Dempsey wrote on 13 June, that Caen could only be taken by a "set piece assault and we did not have the men or the ammunition for that at the time".[220]
Montgomery's solution to the dilemma was to attempt to remain Commander of All Land Forces until the end of the war, so that any victory attained on the Western front—although achieved primarily by American formations—would accrue in part to him and thus to Britain. He would also be able to ensure that British units were spared some of the high-attrition actions, but would be most prominent when the final blows were struck.[221] When that strategy failed, he persuaded Eisenhower to occasionally put some American formations under the control of the 21st Army Group, so as to bolster his resources while still maintaining the outward appearance of successful British effort.[222]
Montgomery initially remained prepared to push Second (British) Army hard to capture the vital strategic town of Caen, and consequently incur heavy losses. In the original Overlord plan, Montgomery was determined to push past Caen to Falaise as quickly as possible. However, after the heavy casualties incurred in capturing Caen, he changed his mind.[223]
Personality[edit]
Montgomery was notorious for his lack of tact and diplomacy. Even his "patron", the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Sir Alan Brooke, 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".[224]
One incident that illustrated this occurred during the North African campaign when Montgomery bet Walter Bedell Smith that he could capture Sfax by the middle of April 1943. Smith jokingly replied that if Montgomery could do it he would give him a Flying Fortress complete with crew. Smith promptly forgot all about it, but Montgomery did not, and when Sfax was taken on 10 April he sent a message to Smith "claiming his winnings". Smith tried to laugh it off, but Montgomery was having none of it and insisted on his aircraft. It got as high as Eisenhower who, with his renowned skill in diplomacy, ensured Montgomery did get his Flying Fortress, though at a great cost in ill feeling.[225] Even Brooke thought it crass stupidity.[226]
Antony Beevor, in discussing Montgomery's counterproductive lack of tact in the final months of the war, described him as "insufferable". Beevor says that in January 1945 Montgomery had tried to claim far too much credit for the British (and for himself) in defeating the German counter-attack in the Ardennes in December 1944. This "crass and unpleasant blunder" helped make it impossible for Churchill and Alan Brooke to persuade Eisenhower of the need for an immediate thrust—to be led by Montgomery—through Germany to Berlin. Eisenhower did not accept the viability of the "dagger thrust" approach, it had already been agreed that Berlin would fall into the future Soviet occupation zone, and he was not willing to accept heavy casualties for no gain, so Eisenhower disregarded the British suggestions and continued with his conservative broad front strategy, and the Red Army reached Berlin well ahead of the Western Allies.[227]
In August 1945, while Brooke, Sir Andrew Cunningham and Sir Charles Portal were discussing their possible successors as "Chiefs of Staff", they concluded that Montgomery would be very efficient as CIGS from the Army's point of view but that he was also very unpopular with a large proportion of the Army. Despite this, Cunningham and Portal were strongly in favour of Montgomery succeeding Brooke after his retirement.[228] Churchill, by all accounts a faithful friend, is quoted as saying of Montgomery, "In defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable."[229]
Montgomery suffered from "an overbearing conceit and an uncontrollable urge for self-promotion." General Hastings Ismay, who was at the time Winston Churchill's chief staff officer and trusted military adviser, once stated of Montgomery: "I have come to the conclusion that his love of publicity is a disease, like alcoholism or taking drugs, and that it sends him equally mad."[230][231][232]
Montgomery's grave, Holy Cross churchyard, Binsted
Montgomery died from unspecified causes in 1976 at his home Isington Mill in Isington, Hampshire, aged 88.[256][257][258][259] After a funeral at St George's Chapel, Windsor, his body was buried in Holy Cross churchyard, in Binsted, Hampshire.[98] He was survived by his son and only child David Montgomery, 2nd Viscount Montgomery of Alamein (1928–2020), as well as two grandchildren. His wife Betty Carver died in 1937.[260]
His Garter banner, which had hung in St. George's Chapel in Windsor during his lifetime, is now on display in St Mary's, Warwick.[261]