| Field Marshal The Right Honourable The Viscount Montgomery of Alamein KG GCB DSO PC |
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Montgomery wearing his beret with two cap badges. |
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| Born | 17 November 1887 Kennington, London |
| Died | 24 March 1976 (aged 88) Alton, Hampshire |
| Place of burial | Holy Cross Churchyard, Binsted |
| Allegiance | United Kingdom |
| Service/branch | British Army |
| Years of service | 1908–1958 |
| Rank | Field Marshal |
| Commands held | Eighth Army 1942–1943 Allied 21st Army Group 1943–1945 Chief of the Imperial General Staff 1946–1948 Deputy Supreme Commander Europe of NATO 1951–1958 |
| Battles/wars | First World War Anglo-Irish War Arab revolt in Palestine Second World War |
| Awards | KG (1946) GCB (1945) DSO (1914) MID (9 times) Other foreign awards (listed in main text) |
| Other work | Colonel Commandant, Royal Tank Regiment Colonel Commandant, Parachute Regiment ( -1956[1]) Representative Colonel Commandant, Royal Armoured Corps (1947[2]-1957[3]) Colonel Commandant, Army Physical Training Corps (1946[4]-1960[5]) Colonel Royal Warwickshire Regiment(1947[6]-1963[7]) Deputy Lieutenant of Southampton (1958–)[8] |
Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, KG, GCB, DSO, PC ( /məntˈɡʌmərɪ əv ˈæləmeɪn/; 17 November 1887 – 24 March 1976), nicknamed "Monty" and the "Spartan General"[9] was a British Army officer. He saw action in the First World War, when he was seriously wounded, and during the Second World War he commanded the 8th Army from August 1942 in the Western Desert until the final Allied victory in Tunisia. This command included the Battle of El Alamein, a major turning point in the Western Desert Campaign. He subsequently commanded Eighth Army in Sicily and Italy before being given responsibility for planning the D-Day invasion in Normandy. He was in command of all Allied ground forces during Operation Overlord from the initial landings until after the Battle of Normandy. He then continued in command of the 21st Army Group for the rest of the campaign in North West Europe. As such he was the principal field commander for the failed airborne attempt to bridge the Rhine at Arnhem and the Allied Rhine crossing. On 4 May 1945 he took the German surrender at Luneburg Heath in northern Germany. 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.
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Montgomery was born in Kennington, London, in 1887, the fourth child of nine, to an Anglo-Irish Anglican priest, the Revd Henry Montgomery, and Maud Montgomery (née Farrar). Henry Montgomery, at the time the Vicar of St Mark's, Kennington, was the second son of the noted Indian administrator, Sir Robert Montgomery, who died a month after Bernard's birth.[10] Bernard's mother Maud was the daughter of the well-known preacher Frederic William Farrar, and was 18 years younger than her husband.[11] After the death of Sir Robert Montgomery, Henry inherited the Montgomery ancestral estate of New Park at Moville, a town on the Inishowen Peninsula of north County Donegal in the west of Ulster.
However, there was still £13,000 to pay on the mortgage, a fairly large amount of money in the 1880s, and Henry was at the time still only a mere parish priest. Despite selling off all of those farms that were at Ballynally, "there was barely enough to keep up New Park and pay for the blasted summer holiday" (i.e., at New Park).[12] It was a financial relief of some magnitude that, in 1889, Henry was made Bishop of Tasmania, then still a colony. He considered it his duty to spend as much time as possible in the outlying country of Tasmania and was away six months at a time. While he was away his wife, still in her mid-twenties, gave her children "constant" beatings,[13] then ignored them most of the time as she performed the public duties of the bishop's wife. Of his siblings, Sibyl would die prematurely in Tasmania, and Harold, Donald and Una would all emigrate.[14] In the absence of her husband, Maud Montgomery took little active interest in the education of her young children other than to have them taught by tutors brought across from England. The loveless environment made Bernard something of a bully, as he himself later recalled "I was a dreadful little boy. I don't suppose anybody would put up with my sort of behaviour these days."[15] Later in life Montgomery refused to allow his son David to have anything to do with his grandmother and he refused to attend her funeral in 1949.[16]
The family returned home once for the Lambeth Conference in 1897, and Bernard and his brother Harold were educated for a term at The King's School, Canterbury.[17] In 1901, Bishop Montgomery became secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and the family returned to London. Montgomery 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. On graduation he joined the 1st Battalion, The Royal Warwickshire Regiment in September 1908 as a second lieutenant,[18] first seeing service in India until 1913. He was promoted to lieutenant in 1910.[19]
The First World War began in August 1914 and Montgomery moved to France with his regiment that month. He saw service during the retreat from Mons, during which half his battalion was destroyed. At Méteren, 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. A platoon sergeant came to assist him but was killed. He fell on Montgomery. The German sniper fired at him until sunset. The body of the sergeant protected Montgomery and took most of the enemy fire. Montgomery was hit once more though, in the knee.[20] He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for gallant leadership. The citation for this award, published in the London Gazette in December 1914 reads:
Conspicuous gallant leading on 13th October, when he turned the enemy out of their trenches with the bayonet. He was severely wounded.[21]
After recovering in early 1915, he was appointed to be brigade major[22] 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 IX Corps, part of General Sir Herbert Plumer's Second Army. Through his training, rehearsal, and integration of the infantry with artillery and engineers, the troops of Plumer's Second Army were able to achieve their objectives efficiently and without unnecessary casualties.
Montgomery served at the battles of the Lys and Chemin-des-Dames before finishing the war as General Staff Officer 1 and effectively chief of staff of the 47th (2nd London) Division, with the temporary rank of lieutenant-colonel.[23] A photograph from October 1918 shows the then unknown Lt.-Col. Montgomery standing in front of Winston Churchill (Minister of Munitions) at the victory parade at Lille.
After the First World War Montgomery commanded 17th Battalion Royal Fusiliers,[24] a battalion in the British Army of the Rhine, before reverting to his substantive rank of captain (brevet major) in November 1919.[25] He wrote up his experiences in a series of training pamphlets and manuals. He then attended the army's Staff College, Camberley, before being appointed Brigade Major in the 17th Infantry Brigade in January 1921.[26] The brigade was stationed in County Cork during the Irish War of Independence. A cousin of Montgomery's, Lt Col. Hugh Montgomery, had been assassinated by the IRA in 1920 (see the Cairo Gang). IRA officer Tom Barry said that he "behaved with great correctness". Montgomery came to the conclusion that the conflict could not be won without harsh measures, and that self-government 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 Percival of the Essex Regiment:
"Personally, my whole attention was given to defeating the rebels but it never bothered me a bit how many houses were burnt. I think I regarded all civilians as 'Shinners' and I never had any dealings with any of them. My own view is that to win a war of this sort, you must be ruthless. Oliver Cromwell, or the Germans, would have settled it in a very short time. Nowadays public opinion precludes such methods, the nation would never allow it, and the politicians would lose their jobs if they sanctioned it. That being so, I consider that Lloyd George was right in what he did, if we had gone on we could probably have squashed the rebellion as a temporary measure, but it would have broken out again like an ulcer the moment we removed the troops. I think the rebels would probably [have] refused battles, and hidden their arms etc. until we had gone."[27]
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 and captain. In January 1926 having been promoted to major in 1925,[28] he was appointed D.A.A.G. at the Staff College, Camberley in the temporary rank of lieutenant-colonel,[29] a position he held until January 1929 by which time he had been made a (brevet lieutenant-colonel).[30]
In 1927, he met and married Elizabeth Carver, widow of Oswald Carver, Olympic rowing medalist who was killed in the First World War.[31] Their son, David, was born in August 1928. Elizabeth Carver was the sister of the Second World War commander Percy Hobart.
In 1931 Montgomery became lieutenant-colonel[32] commanding the 1st Battalion of The Royal Warwickshire Regiment and saw service in Palestine, Egypt, and India. He was promoted to full colonel in 1934[33] and became an instructor at the Indian Army Staff College in Quetta, India.[34] As was usual, Montgomery maintained links with the Royal Warwickshires and was later to take up the honorary position of Colonel-of-the-Regiment in 1947. 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 in Tripoli, Libya during the Second World War, regularly inspected by the medical officer, for the 'horizontal refreshment' of his soldiers rather than forcing them to take chances in unregulated establishments. He was quoted as saying that his men "deserved it".[35]
On completion of his tour of duty in India, Montgomery returned to Britain in June 1937[36] where he became commanding officer of the 9th Infantry Brigade with the temporary rank of brigadier,[37] but that year also saw tragedy for him; 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.[38] 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 in October 1938[39] and took command of the 8th Infantry Division[40] in Palestine. There he quashed an Arab revolt before returning in July 1939 to Britain, suffering a serious illness on the way, to command the 3rd (Iron) Infantry Division. On hearing of the rebel defeat in April 1939, Montgomery said, "I shall be sorry to leave Palestine in many ways, as I have enjoyed the war out here".[41]
Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939. The 3rd Division was deployed to Belgium as part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). Montgomery predicted a disaster similar to that in 1914, and so spent the Phoney War training his troops for tactical retreat rather than offensive operations. During this time, Montgomery faced serious trouble from his superiors for his attitude regarding the sexual health of his soldiers. However, he was defended from dismissal by his superior Alan Brooke, commander of II Corps. Montgomery's training paid off when the Germans began their invasion of the Low Countries on 10 May 1940 and the 3rd Division advanced to the River Dijle and then withdrew to Dunkirk with great professionalism, entering the Dunkirk perimeter in a famous night-time march which placed his forces on the left flank which had been left exposed by the Belgian surrender.[42] The 3rd Division returning to Britain intact with minimal casualties. During Operation Dynamo — the evacuation of 330,000 BEF and French troops to Britain — Montgomery assumed command of the II Corps after Brooke had taken acting command of the whole BEF.[43]
On his return Montgomery antagonised the War Office with trenchant criticisms of the command of the BEF[44] and was briefly relegated to divisional command. He was however made a Companion of the Order of the Bath. In July 1940, he was appointed acting lieutenant-general,[45] placed in command of V Corps, responsible for the defence of Hampshire and Dorset, and started a long-running feud[46] with the new commander-in-chief, Southern Command, Claude Auchinleck. In April 1941, he became commander of XII Corps responsible for the defence of Kent. During this period he instituted a regime of continuous training and insisted on high levels of physical fitness for both officers and other ranks. He was ruthless in sacking officers he considered would be unfit for command in action.[47] In December 1941 Montgomery was given command of South-Eastern Command[48] overseeing the defence of Kent, Sussex and Surrey.[47] He renamed his command the South-Eastern Army to promote offensive spirit. During this time he further developed and rehearsed his ideas and trained his soldiers, culminating in Exercise Tiger in May 1942, a combined forces exercise involving 100,000 troops.
In 1942, a new field commander was required in the Middle East, where Auchinleck was fulfilling both the role of commander-in-chief Middle East Command and commander Eighth Army. He had stabilised the Allied position at the First Battle of El Alamein, but after a visit in August 1942, the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, replaced him as C-in-C with Alexander and William Gott as commander of the Eighth Army in the Western Desert. After Gott was killed flying back to Cairo Churchill was persuaded by Brooke, who by this time was Chief of the Imperial General Staff to appoint Montgomery, who had only just been nominated to replace Alexander as commander of the British ground forces for Operation Torch.[49]
A story, probably apocryphal but popular at the time, is that the appointment caused Montgomery to remark that "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 is supposed to have said "I'm not talking about me, I'm talking about Rommel!"[50]
Montgomery's assumption of command transformed the fighting spirit and abilities of the Eighth Army.[51] Taking command on 13 August 1942, he immediately became a whirlwind of activity. He ordered the creation of the X Corps, which contained all armoured divisions to fight alongside his XXX Corps which was all infantry divisions. This was in no way similar to a German Panzer Corps. One of Rommel's Panzer Corps combined infantry, armour and artillery units under one corps commander. The only common commander for Montgomery's all infantry and all armour corps was the Eighth Army Commander himself. Correlli Barnett commented that Montgomery's solution "...was in every way opposite to Auchinleck's and in every way wrong, for it carried the existing dangerous separatism still further."[52] Montgomery reinforced the 30 miles (48 km) long front line at El Alamein, something that would take two months to accomplish. He asked Alexander to send him two new British divisions (51st Highland and 44th) that were then arriving in Egypt and were scheduled to be deployed in defence of the Nile Delta. He moved his field HQ to Burg al Arab, close to the Air Force command post in order better to coordinate combined operations.[51] Montgomery was determined that the Army, Navy and Air Forces should fight their battles in a unified, focused manner according to a detailed plan. He ordered immediate reinforcement of the vital heights of Alam Halfa, just behind his own lines, expecting the German commander, Erwin Rommel, to attack with the heights as his objective, something that Rommel soon did. Montgomery ordered all contingency plans for retreat to be destroyed. "I have cancelled the plan for withdrawal", he told his officers at the first meeting he held with them in the desert. "If we are attacked, then there will be no retreat. If we cannot stay here alive, then we will stay here dead."[53]
Montgomery made a great effort to appear before troops as often as possible, frequently visiting various units and making himself known to the men, often arranging for cigarettes to be distributed. Although he still wore a standard British officer's cap on arrival in the desert, he briefly wore an Australian broad-brimmed hat before switching to wearing the black beret (with the badge of the Royal Tank Regiment next to the British General Officer's badge) for which he became notable. The black beret had been offered to him by a soldier upon climbing into a tank to get a closer look at the front lines. Both Brooke and Alexander were astonished by the transformation in atmosphere when they visited on 19 August, less than a week after Montgomery had taken command.[53]
Rommel attempted to turn the left flank of the Eighth Army at the Battle of Alam Halfa from 31 August 1942. The German/Italian armoured Corps infantry attack was stopped in very heavy fighting. Rommel's forces had to withdraw urgently lest their retreat through the British minefields be cut off.[54] Montgomery was criticised for not counter-attacking the retreating forces immediately, but he felt strongly that his methodical build-up of British forces was not yet ready. A hasty counter-attack risked ruining his strategy for an offensive on his own terms in late October, planning for which had begun soon after he took command.[55] He was confirmed in the permanent rank of lieutenant-general in mid October.[56]
The conquest of Libya was essential for airfields to support Malta and to threaten the rear of Axis forces opposing Operation Torch. Montgomery prepared meticulously for the new offensive after convincing Churchill that the time was not being wasted. (Churchill sent a telegram to Alexander on 23 September 1942 which began, "We are in your hands and of course a victorious battle makes amends for much delay.[57]) He was determined not to fight until he thought there had been sufficient preparation for a decisive victory, and put into action his beliefs with the gathering of resources, detailed planning, the training of troops—especially in clearing minefields and fighting at night[58]—and in the use of 252[59] of the latest American-built Sherman tanks, 90 M7 Priest self-propelled howitzers, and making a personal visit to every unit involved in the offensive. By the time the offensive was ready in late October, Eighth Army had 231,000 men on its ration strength[60] including British, Australian, South African, Indian, New Zealand, Greek and Free French units.
The Second Battle of El Alamein began on 23 October 1942, 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[61]). However, soon after Allied armoured units and infantry broke through the German and Italian lines and were pursuing the enemy forces at speed along the coast road, a violent rainstorm burst over the region, bogging down the tanks and support trucks in the desert mud. Montgomery, standing before his officers at headquarters and close to tears, announced that he was forced to call off the pursuit. Corelli Barnett has pointed out that the rain also fell on the Germans, and that the weather is therefore an inadequate explanation for the failure to exploit the breakthrough, but nevertheless the Battle of El Alamein had been a great success. Over 30,000[62] prisoners were taken including the German second in command, General von Thoma, as well as eight other general officers.[63] Rommel, having been in a hospital in Germany at the start of the battle, was forced to return on 25 October 1942 after General Stumme – his replacement as German commander – died of a heart attack in the early hours of the battle.[64]
Montgomery was knighted and promoted to full general.[65] The Eighth Army's subsequent advance as the Germans retreated hundreds of miles towards their bases in Tunisia used the logistical as well as the firepower advantages of the British Army while avoiding unnecessary risks. 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 Eighth Army at Medenine (Operation Capri) with the largest concentration of German armour in North Africa was successfully repulsed. At the Mareth Line, 20 to 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 were virtually eliminated in the Eighth Army), co-operation of all arms including the air forces, first-class logistical back-up and clear-cut orders. For his role in North Africa he was awarded the Legion of Merit by the United States government in the rank of Chief Commander.[66]
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 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 (on the left flank of Eighth Army, which landed around Syracuse in the south-east of Sicily) rather than near Palermo in the west and north of Sicily.[67] Inter-Allied tensions grew as the American commanders Patton and Bradley (then commanding II US Corps under Patton), took umbrage at what they perceived as Montgomery's attitudes and boastfulness.
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 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. Some criticism was made of the slowness of Montgomery's advance. The Eighth Army, responsible for the eastern side of the Allied front, from the central Apennine mountain spine to the Adriatic coast, fought a succession of engagements alternating between opposed crossings of the rivers running across their line of advance and attacks against the cleverly constructed defensive positions the Germans had fashioned on the ridges in between. The Eighth Army crossed the Sangro river in mid-November and penetrated the German's strongest position at the Gustav Line but as the winter weather deteriorated the advance ground to a halt as transport bogged down and air support operations became impossible. Montgomery abhorred the lack of coordination, the dispersion of effort, and the strategic muddle and opportunism he perceived in the Allied effort in Italy and was glad to leave the "dog's breakfast" on 23 December.
Montgomery returned to Britain in January 1944[68] 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 Eighth Army, Montgomery travelled frequently to his units, raising morale and ensuring training was progressing. 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, pivoting on an Allied-held Caen, with British and Canadian armies forming a shoulder and the US armies wheeling on the right.
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 and seriously hampered the tactical delivery of planned transportation of personnel and supplies which were being carried across the English Channel. Consequently, Montgomery argues in his literary account that he was unable to follow his pre-battle plan precisely to the timescales planned outside of battle. It should be noted that the extension of the battle plan by one month was the cause of significant retrospective criticisms of Montgomery by some of his American peers, including the much respected Bradley and equally controversial Patton.
Montgomery's initial plan was, most likely, for an immediate break-out toward Caen. Unable to do so, as the British did not get enough forces ashore to exploit the successful landing, Montgomery's advance was checked. When it appeared unlikely that the British Second Army would break out, Montgomery's contingency was designed to attract German forces to the British sector to ease the passing of United States Army through German defences to the west, during Operation Cobra. This series of battle plans by the British, Canadian and American armies trapped and defeated the German forces in Normandy in the Falaise pocket. The campaign that Montgomery fought was essentially attritional until the middle of July with the occupation of the Cotentin Peninsula and a series of offensives in the east, which secured Caen and attracted the bulk of German armour there. An American break-out was achieved with Operation Cobra and the encirclement of German forces in the Falaise pocket at the cost of British sacrifice with the diversionary Operation Goodwood.[69]
The increasing preponderance of American troops in the European theatre (from five out of ten divisions at D-Day to 72 out of 85 in 1945) made it a political impossibility for the Ground Forces Commander to be British. After the end of the Normandy campaign, 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, although it had been agreed before the D-Day invasion. Winston Churchill had Montgomery promoted to field marshal[70] by way of compensation.
Montgomery was able to persuade Eisenhower to adopt his strategy of a single thrust to the Ruhr with Operation Market Garden in September 1944. It was uncharacteristic of Montgomery's battles: the offensive was strategically bold, but poorly planned. Montgomery either didn't receive or ignored ULTRA intelligence which warned of the presence of German armoured units near the site of the attack.[71] As a result, the operation failed with the destruction of the British 1st Airborne Division at the Battle of Arnhem and the loss of any hopes of invading Germany by the end of 1944.
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 Antwerp; and so, after Arnhem, Montgomery's group was 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 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 being on the northern shoulder of the German 'bulge'. The Army Group commander, General Omar 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 William Simpson's U.S. Ninth Army to his 21st Army Group, despite Bradley's vehement objections on national grounds.[nb 1] 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 behind the Meuse and reorganised the US defence of the northern shoulder, shortening and strengthening the line and ordering the evacuation of St Vith. The German commander of the 5th Panzer Army, Hasso 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.[72]
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 and in doing so, trap the Germans. 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, by which point the German forces had been able to escape. A large part of American military opinion thought that he should not have held back, though it was characteristic of him to use drawn-out preparations for his attack. 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's 21st Army Group advanced to the Rhine with operations Veritable and Grenade in February 1945. A meticulously planned Rhine crossing occurred on 24 March. While successful it was weeks after the Americans had unexpectedly captured the Ludendorff Bridge and crossed the river. Montgomery's river crossing was followed by the encirclement of the German Army Group B in the Ruhr. Initially Montgomery's role was to guard the flank of the American advance. This was altered, however, to forestall any chance of a Red Army advance into Denmark, and the 21st Army Group occupied Hamburg and Rostock and sealed off the Danish peninsula.
On 4 May 1945, on Lüneburg Heath, Montgomery accepted the surrender of German forces in northern Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands. This was done plainly in a tent without any ceremony. In the same year he was awarded the Order of the Elephant, the highest order in Denmark.
After the war Montgomery became the C-in-C of the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR), the name given to the British Occupation Forces and the British member of the Allied Control Council.[73] He was created 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein in 1946.[74] He was Chief of the Imperial General Staff from 1946 until 1948, succeeding Alanbrooke, but was largely a failure as it required strategic and political skills he did not possess. He was barely on speaking terms with his fellow chiefs, sending his VCIGS to attend their meetings[73] and he clashed particularly with Arthur Tedder, who as Deputy Supreme Commander had intrigued for Montgomery's dismissal during the Battle of Normandy, and who was by now Chief of the Air Staff. When Montgomery's term of office expired, Prime Minister Clement Attlee appointed General (later Field-Marshal) William Slim as his successor; when Montgomery protested that he had told his protegé General Crocker, a former corps commander from the 1944-5 campaign, that the job was to be his, Attlee is said to have given the memorable retort "Untell him".[75]
Montgomery was then appointed Chairman of the Western European Union's commanders-in-chief committee.[73] Volume 3 of Nigel Hamilton's Life of Montgomery of Alamein gives a good account of the bickering between Montgomery and his land forces chief, a French general, which created splits through the Union headquarters. He was thus pleased to become Eisenhower's deputy in creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's European forces in 1951.[76] He was an effective inspector-general and mounted good exercises, but out of his depth politically, and his exacting manner and emphasis on efficiency created ill-feeling. He continued to serve under Eisenhower's successors, Matthew Ridgway and Al Gruenther, until his retirement, aged nearly 71, in 1958.[77] His mother died in 1949; Montgomery did not attend the funeral, claiming he was "too busy". He was chairman of the governing body of St John's School, Leatherhead, Surrey from 1951 to 1966 and a generous supporter. Montgomery was an Honorary Member of the Winkle Club, a noted charity in Hastings, East Sussex, and introduced Winston Churchill to the club in 1955.[78]
In 1953, the Hamilton Board of Education in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, wrote to Montgomery and asked permission to name a new school in the city's east end after him. Viscount Montgomery Elementary was billed as "the most modern school in North America" and the largest single-storey school in Hamilton, when the sod was turned on 14 March 1951.[79] The school officially opened on 18 April 1953, with Montgomery in attendance among almost 10,000 well-wishers. At the opening, he gave the motto "Gardez Bien" from his own family's coat of arms.
Montgomery referred to the school as his "beloved school" and visited on five separate occasions, the last being in 1960. On his last visit, he said to "his" students:
Let's make Viscount Montgomery School the best in Hamilton, the best in Ontario, the best in Canada. I don't associate myself with anything that is not good. It is up to you to see that everything about this school is good. It is up to the students to not only be their best in school but in their behaviour outside of Viscount. Education is not just something that will help you pass your exams and get you a job, it is to develop your brain to teach you to marshal facts and do things.
Before retirement, Montgomery's outspoken views on some subjects, such as race, were often officially suppressed. After retirement these outspoken views became public and his reputation suffered. He supported apartheid and Chinese communism under Mao Zedong, and spoke against the legalisation of homosexuality in the United Kingdom, arguing that the Sexual Offences Act 1967 was a "charter for buggery"[80] and that "this sort of thing may be tolerated by the French, but we're British – thank God."[81] However, several of Montgomery's biographers, including Chalfont (who found something "disturbingly equivocal" in "his relations with boys and young men" ) and Nigel Hamilton (2002)[82] have suggested that he may himself have been a repressed homosexual; in the late 1940s he conducted an affectionate friendship with a 12-year-old Swiss boy.[83] One biographer called the friendship "bizarre" although not "improper" and a sign of "pitiful loneliness"[84]
Montgomery's memoirs (1958) criticised many of his wartime comrades in harsh terms, including Eisenhower, whom he accused, among other things, of prolonging the war by a year through poor leadership—allegations which ended their friendship, not least as Eisenhower was still US President at the time. He was stripped of his honorary citizenship of Montgomery, Alabama, and was challenged to a duel by an Italian officer.[85] He was threatened with legal action by Field-Marshal Auchinleck for suggesting that Auchinleck had intended to retreat from the Alamein position if attacked again, and had to give a radio broadcast (20 November 1958) expressing his gratitude to Auchinleck for having stabilised the front at the First Battle of Alamein. The 1960 edition of his memoirs contains a publisher's note (opposite page 15) drawing attention to that broadcast, and stating that in the publisher's view the reader might assume from Montgomery's text that Auchinleck had been planning to retreat and pointing out that this was in fact not the case.
Montgomery was never raised to an earldom like his wartime contemporaries Harold Alexander, Louis Mountbatten and even Archibald Wavell, but unlike them he had never been a Theatre Supreme Commander or held high political office. An official task he insisted on performing in his later years was bearing the Sword of State during the State Opening of Parliament. His increasing frailty, however, raised concerns about his ability to stand for long periods while carrying the heavy weapon. Ultimately, those fears were borne out when he collapsed in mid-ceremony in 1968 and did not perform this function again. A favourite pastime of the British press during these years was to photograph Montgomery cashing his old age pension cheque at the local social security office. Due to his eminence, the British public assumed Montgomery was wealthy and did not need the money. In fact, he had always been a man of modest means and it caused him great anguish that many believed he was taking taxpayer money he did not need. Another blow was a break-in at his home. Despite his making a televised appeal for the return of his possessions, the items were never recovered.
Montgomery died from unspecified causes in 1976 at his home Isington Mill, Isington near Alton, Hampshire, aged 88. After a funeral ceremony at St George's Chapel, Windsor, he was interred in the Holy Cross Churchyard, Binsted. [86][87]
His portrait (by Frank O. Salisbury, 1945) hangs in the National Portrait Gallery.[88]
A statue of Montgomery can be found outside the Ministry of Defence (the M.o.D.) in Whitehall, alongside those of Field Marshal Lord Slim and Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke. Another statue of Viscount Montgomery can be found in Brussels, Belgium, watching a Montgomery Square. Another statue of Montgomery is in Southsea, Hampshire, opposite the 'D' Day Museum.
Montgomery gave his name to the French commune Colleville-Montgomery, Normandy.[89]
The Imperial War Museum holds a variety of material relating to Montgomery in its collections. These include Montgomery's Grant command tank (on display in the atrium at the Museum's London branch), his command caravans as used in North West Europe (on display at IWM Duxford), and his papers are held by the Museum's Department of Documents. The Museum maintains a permanent exhibition about Montgomery, entitled Monty: Master of the Battlefield.[90]
His Rolls Royce staff car is on display at the Royal Logistic Corps Museum, Deepcut, Surrey.[91]
The Montgomery cocktail is a martini mixed at a ratio of 15:1, facetiously named that because Montgomery supposedly refused to go into battle unless his numerical advantage was at least that high.[92] Following severe internal injuries received in the First World War, Montgomery himself could neither smoke nor drink.[71]
Viscount Montgomery's ribbons as they would appear today, not including campaign or other awards.
| Military offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Geoffrey Raikes |
Commander, 9th Infantry Brigade 5 August 1937 – 28 October 1938 |
Succeeded by William Robb |
| New title Division reformed
|
Commander, 8th Infantry Division 28 October 1938 – 23 August 1939 |
Succeeded by Reade Godwin-Austen |
| Preceded by Denis Bernard |
GOC, 3rd (Iron) Division 28 August 1939 – 21 July 1940 |
Succeeded by James Gammell |
| Preceded by Sir Alan Brooke |
GOC, II Corps, British Expeditionary Force 30 May 1940 – 1 June 1940 |
Succeeded by Edmund Osborne |
| Preceded by Sir Claude Auchinleck |
GOC, V Corps 22 July 1940 – 1 April 1941 |
Succeeded by Sir Edmond Schreiber |
| Preceded by Andrew Thorne |
GOC, XII Corps 1 April 1941 – 17 November 1941 |
Succeeded by James Gammell |
| Preceded by Bernard Paget |
GOC-in-C, South-Eastern Command 17 November 1941 – 7 August 1942 |
Succeeded by John Swayne |
| Preceded by Sir Claude Auchinleck |
GOC-in-C, Eighth Army 13 August 1942 – 31 December 1943 |
Succeeded by Sir Oliver Leese |
| Preceded by Sir Bernard Paget |
GOC-in-C, 21st Army Group January 1944 – August 1945 |
Succeeded by Post Disbanded |
| New title New command
|
Commander-in-Chief of the British Army of the Rhine 1945–1946 |
Succeeded by Sir Richard McCreery |
| Preceded by The Lord Alanbrooke |
Chief of the Imperial General Staff 1946–1948 |
Succeeded by Sir William Slim |
| Peerage of the United Kingdom | ||
| New title | Viscount Montgomery of Alamein 1946–1976 |
Succeeded by David Montgomery |
|
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