Montgomery - Part I

"In defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable."

Few World War II generals are subject to as much controversy as Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery (1887-1976), the best-known British commander of the war. The victor of El-Alamein, the ground forces commander of Operation Overlord and the planner of ill-fated Operation Market Garden has vocal fans and just as vocal detractors – the latter mostly Americans. There's no debate that he was a very difficult person to get along with, but his ability as a combat commander generates a surprising amount of disagreement. We will try to present an unbiased view of Montgomery, mentioning both his strengths and weaknesses and placing them in a historical context, in our biography of the "Spartan general."

Bernard was born in South London as the fourth of nine children to Henry Montgomery, a minister in the Church of Ireland, and a member of the so-called Protestant Ascendancy, the small Protestant sociopolitical and economic ruling elite in Catholic-majority Ireland. The Reverent Montgomery's own father, Sir Robert, was a noted colonial administrator in British India. Bernard's mother, Maud, was 18 years younger than her husband and was the daughter of Dean Frederic William Farrar, a famous preacher and author of both theological books and fiction. It should be noted that both sides of Bernard's family had members who were described by their contemporaries as particularly shy or having difficulties dealing with other people. This trait would manifest in young Montgomery in spades, and was one reason why some doctors speculate that he might have been on the autism spectrum.

While not living in abject property, the family was still financially troubled, with an outstanding mortgage on the ancestral family estate (£13,000, roughly $2.34 million today) forcing them to sell most of their other properties. Henry Montgomery was appointed Bishop of Tasmania in 1889, and the family moved to Australia. He spent much of his time in the rural parts of the country and away from his family, leaving his still young wife in charge. Maud almost completely neglected the needs and education of the children and used to beat them regularly. It is no surprise that the environment turned young Bernard into a troublesome bully. Later in life, prevented his own son from having contact with Maud, and refused to attend his mother's funeral.

The family moved back to England in 1901. Bernard first attended a boys' school, then enrolled at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, a decision that caused a tremendous argument with his mother. The beginnings of his military career were not very bright, as he was nearly expelled for rowdiness and violence.   He set a fellow cadet on fire once, and another cadet was once punished for some misdeed by being forced to sit next to Montgomery at breakfast for a whole week. The college magazine once published a lighthearted set of We would like to know questions, one being “If and where does Monty observe two minutes silence on Armistice day?” 

Nevertheless, Montgomery graduated in 1908 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant. He served in India and Britain before World War I broke out in 1914. Montgomery first saw combat in the Battle of Le Cateau in August that year. During the battle, his unit found itself in a town they believed was being surrounded by the Germans; the commanding officer decided to surrender without a fight and disarmed his own men. The situation was saved by a lower-ranking officer who assumed command and marched the unit out of the town. Caught between a rock and a hard place, the men marched behind the advancing German cavalry screen and ahead of the German infantry until they could get to safety.

In October the same year, Montgomery was caught in the open during a British counterattack and shot through the right lung by a German sniper. One of his men tried to pick him up but was shot dead and collapsed over him. Montgomery played possum while the Germans were taking potshots at him, with one bullet hitting him in the knee and many others only stopped by the dead body on top of him. Assumed to be dead, Montgomery was left out in the open until nightfall, when men were sent out to collect the corpses. He was so close to death by the time he was taken to a dressing station that the doctors ordered a grave to be dug for him, but he miraculously pulled through. He was eventually sent back to England where he spent over a year in recovery.

He was promoted to brigade major in early 1915 and sent back to the Western Front as a staff officer. He fought at the Battle of Arras and the Battle of Passchendaele, and ended the war with the temporary rank of lieutenant-colonel. His experiences in World War I drew his attention to the importance of good officers. He later wrote:

"The higher staffs were out of touch with the regimental officers and with the troops. The former lived in comfort, which became greater as the distance of their headquarters behind the lines increased. There was no harm in this provided there was touch and sympathy between the staff and the troops. This was often lacking. At most large headquarters in back areas the doctrine seemed to me to be that the troops existed for the benefit of the staff. My war experience led me to believe that the staff must be the servant of the troops, and that a good staff officer must serve his commander and the troops but himself be anonymous.

The frightful casualties appalled me. The so-called "good fighting generals" of the war appeared to me to be those who had a complete disregard for human life."

Later in his career, Montgomery always went to great effort to regularly visit his front-line troops and meet their needs, an approach that, in turn, made him popular with the fighting men under his command.

Montgomery stayed with the occupation forces in Germany after the war and reverted to his substantive rank of captain (brevet major). (A brevet rank is a sort of "honorary" promotion as a reward but without the responsibilities, privileges and authority of the new rank.) In this case, Montgomery was still a captain in practical terms. He wanted to attend the Staff College in Camberley to be able to rise to a high rank, but didn't make the list – at least until he managed to convince the Commander-in-chief of the occupation army to add his name during a tennis match.

After graduating from Staff College, he was sent to County Cork in Southern Ireland in early 1921. This was in the last half year of the Irish War of Independence, and the 17th Infantry Brigade was charged with counter-guerilla duties. Monty's opinion about the situation was complex. On one hand, he believed Britain could only suppress Irish independence with harsh methods, and he was willing to carry them out. On the other hand, he also believed that any victory would be temporary, and only granting Ireland self-governance would bring about permanent peace:

"Personally, my whole attention was given to defeating the rebels but it never bothered me a bit how many houses were burnt. [...] 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 [British Prime Minister] 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. The only way therefore was to give them some form of self government, and let them squash the rebellion themselves, they are the only people who could really stamp it out."

In May 1922, Montgomery led 4 armored cars and 60 men into a town in search of four British officers who went missing (and, unknown to him, had already been executed by the IRA). He summoned the local IRA commander to the town square and demanded that the officers be released, threatening with violence. The commander, in return, gave Montgomery 10 minutes to leave then walked away, while another IRA officer drew the Montgomery's attention to the scores of gunmen who quietly took up positions around the town square. Montgomery wisely decided to withdraw; the decision was criticized by some members of the British parliament, but approved by his own superiors.

Montgomery's first attempt at marriage aptly highlighted the difficulties he had in dealing with others. His proposal to a much younger woman somehow ended up with him drawing diagrams in the sand and explaining how he would deploy infantry and armor in a future war, and was unsurprisingly rejected.

He tried again with a different woman two years later, and succeeded. That woman was Elizabeth Carver (born Hobart), the daughter of Sir Percy Hobart, who would go on to develop the combat engineering vehicles known as Hobart's Funnies (Read our earlier article) in World War II. Elizabeth was a widow with two teenage children, and went on to have one child with Montgomery. The couple had ten extremely happy years which were cut short by tragedy in 1937. Betty was bitten by an insect while on holiday; the insect bite became infected and forced an amputation of her leg, complications from which ended up killing her.

Montgomery was promoted to brevet lieutenant-colonel in early 1929, and spent some time in the War Office writing the new edition of the Infantry Training Manual. He personally knew and corresponded with Basil Henry Liddell Hart, the officer and military theorist who wrote the previous edition. In a decision that seems to fit within Montgomery's history of pissing people off, the two had a falling-out when Montgomery removed one of Hart's ideas from the new edition.

Montgomery was steadily climbing the ranks during the 30s, reaching major general in late 1938 after he organized an impressive amphibious combined operations training exercise that foreshadowed his role in developing the plan for D-Day. He spent most of the decade posted to India and Palestine, where he participated in quelling an Arab revolt against Jewish immigration.

In 1934, when his wife was still alive, they took a cruise in the far east, and met German General Hans von Seeckt, who was a fellow passenger. Von Seeckt was one of the architects of the German Imperial Army during World War I, and was instrumental in planning some of Germany's major successes against Russia in the east. Acting on his typical single-minded obsession with military matters, Montgomery interrogated the German officer at some length with the help of an interpreter.

Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, and Britain declared war on Germany two days later. Montgomery was sent to France as commander of the 3rd Infantry Division. He got in almost career-ending trouble shortly after, although it was a case in which he would be hard to blame from a present-day perspective. He knew that British soldiers would initiate sexual relations with French women, and was concerned about the spread of venereal diseases. "My view is that if a man wants to have a woman let him do so by all means, but he must use commonsense and take all precautions" – he wrote. He ordered his subordinate commander to make condoms available to soldiers for purchase and to promote sexual hygiene, and he also issued a pamphlet on the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases. This might all sound rather reasonable by modern standards, but caused a scandal in the mid-20th century. Army chaplains, both Church of England and Catholic, were outraged by what they considered obscene language in the pamphlet, and the idea of involving the officer corps rather than leaving it to the medical services added to the flames. Lord Gort, the commander of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), demanded the Monty withdraw the order. Montgomery's immediate superior, Corps commander Alan Brooke, thought that doing so would cause such a loss of face for Montgomery that his career as a general officer would be over; he convinced Lord Gort to allow the order to stand and let Montgomery preserve a vestige of respect.

The BEF at large expected to fight a defensive war once Germany turned its attention to the west, and started preparing defenses. Not so Montgomery, who started training the 3rd Infantry Division in offensive maneuvers. He organized several multi-day exercises where the division had to advance toward an objective, often a river, then react to an enemy attack by retreating to another river for defense, often at night. By the spring of 1940, the division earned a reputation for agility and flexibility thanks to Monty's exercises.

We will continue Field Marshal Montgomery's biography next week with his actions and command during World War II.

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