Photograph of Bernard Montgomery

Photograph of Bernard Montgomery by Abbie Rowe – Wikimedia Commons

Top 10 Interesting Facts about Bernard Law Montgomery


 

Bernard Law Montgomery was born in London in 1887. After attending the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, he was commissioned into the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. He went to St. Paul’s School in London and entered the army in 1908. He fought in France during World War I and was mentioned in dispatches for gallantry in action.

Early in the First World War between 1914 and 1918, he was shot through the lung by a sniper during the First Battle of Ypres. His wound was so severe that a grave was prepared for him. However, he went on to make a full recovery. He saw out the rest of the war as a staff officer, serving in the Battles of the Somme in 1916 and Passchendaele in 1917. In this capacity, he observed the tactics used by generals like Sir Douglas Haig and became critical of their readiness to accept high casualties during campaigns. 

In this article, we feature the top 10 interesting facts about Bernard Law Montgomery.

1. Bernard was appointed commander of the British Eighth Army in North Africa

In August 1942 Prime Minister Winston Churchill appointed him commander of the British Eighth Army in North Africa, which had recently been defeated and pushed back to Egypt by German General Erwin Rommel. 

There Montgomery restored the troops’ shaken confidence and, combining drive with caution, forced Rommel to retreat from Egypt after the Battle of El-Alamein in November 1942. Montgomery then pursued the German armies across North Africa to their final surrender in Tunisia in May 1943. 

2. Montgomery became Commander-in-Chief of the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) in Germany 

General Bernard L. Montgomery watches his tanks move up

General Bernard L. Montgomery watches his tanks move up – Wikimedia Commons

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 northwest 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).

3. Bernard survived a gunshot through the right lung by a sniper

The First World War began in August 1914 and Montgomery moved to France with his battalion that month, which was at the time part of the 10th Brigade of the 4th Division. He saw action at the Battle of Le Cateau that month and during the retreat from Mons. 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.

His wound was so severe that a grave was prepared for him. However, he went on to make a full recovery. He saw out the rest of the war as a staff officer, serving in the Battles of the Somme in 1916 and Passchendaele in 1917.

4. Montgomery was involved in suppressing an Arab revolt

Gen. Bernard Law Montgomery with other Generals

Gen. Bernard Law Montgomery with other Generals by Lieutenant Brin, Signal Corps Photo – Wikimedia Commons

The 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, was a nationalist uprising by Palestinian Arabs in Mandatory Palestine against the British administration of the Palestine Mandate, demanding Arab independence and the end of the policy of open-ended Jewish immigration and land purchases with the stated goal of establishing a “Jewish National Home.

Montgomery was involved in suppressing an Arab revolt that had broken out over opposition to Jewish emigration. He returned in July 1939 to Britain, suffering a serious illness on the way, to command the 3rd (Iron) Infantry Division. Reporting the suppression of the revolt in April 1939, Montgomery wrote, “I shall be sorry to leave Palestine in many ways, as I have enjoyed the war out here.

5. Montgomery faced trouble from his military superiors for commenting on the sexual health of his soldiers

Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939. The 3rd Division was deployed to Belgium as part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). During this time, Montgomery faced serious trouble from his military superiors and the clergy for his frank attitude regarding the sexual health of his soldiers.

He was defended from dismissal by his superior Alan Brooke, commander of II Corps. Montgomery had issued a circular on the prevention of venereal disease, worded in such obscene language, that both the Church of England and Roman Catholic senior chaplains objected to.

6. Bernard was determined that the army, navy, and air forces should battle in a unified way

General Sir Bernard Montgomery in England,

General Sir Bernard Montgomery in England, by War Office official photographer – Wikimedia Commons

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 a retreat to be destroyed. “I have canceled the plan for withdrawal. If we are attacked, then there will be no retreat. If we cannot stay here alive, then we will stay here dead”, he told his officers at the first meeting he held with them in the desert. In fact, Auchinleck had no plans to withdraw from the strong defensive position he had chosen and established at El Alamein.

7. Montgomery was promoted to full general in 1943

A general is the highest rank achievable by serving officers of the British Army. 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 with the largest concentration of German armor 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. For his role in North Africa, he was awarded the Legion of Merit by the United States government in the rank of Chief Commander.

8. Bernard accepted the surrender of German forces after ​Operation Plunder

Photograph of Bernard Montgomery) at Arlington National Cemetery

Photograph of Bernard Montgomery at Arlington National Cemetery by Abbie Rowe – Wikimedia Commons

In February 1945, Montgomery’s 21st Army Group advanced to the Rhine in operations Veritable and Grenade. It crossed the Rhine on 24 March 1945, in Operation Plunder, which took place two weeks after the First United States Army had crossed the Rhine after capturing the Ludendorff Bridge during the Battle of Remagen.

By the war’s end, the remaining formations of the 21st Army Group, the First Canadian Army and British Second Army, had liberated the northern part of the Netherlands and captured much of north-west Germany, occupied Hamburg and Rostock, and sealed off the Danish peninsula.

9. Montgomery was notorious for his lack of tact and diplomacy

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 from Montgomery.

10. Montgomery was Chief of the Imperial General Staff from 1946 to 1948

As CIGS, Montgomery toured Africa in 1947 and in a secret 1948 report to Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s government proposed a “master plan” to amalgamate British African territories and exploit the raw materials of Africa, thereby counteracting the loss of British influence in Asia.

When Montgomery’s term of office expired, Prime Minister Attlee appointed Sir William Slim from retirement with the rank of field marshal as his successor. 

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