Field marshal montgomery biography of mahatma

Bernard Montgomery was one of the most renowned Allied generals. He gained great popularity after his victories in North Africa El Alamein. His operational choices and strong personality made him a controversial figure. Montgomery bitterly resented this, although he was promoted to field marshal by way of compensation. His arrogance and reluctance to cooperate with others made him increasingly unpopular, particularly with the Americans.

From to , he was chairman of the permanent defence organisation of the Western European Union. He died on 24 March Search term:. Read more. The Rev. Sir Robert died a month after his grandson's birth. Bernard's mother, Maud, was the daughter of Frederic William Canon Farrar , the famous preacher, and was eighteen years younger than her husband.

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. It was a financial relief of some magnitude when, in , 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. I don't suppose anybody would put up with my sort of behaviour these days.

Montgomery attended St Paul's School and then the Royal Military College, Sandhurst , from which he was almost expelled for rowdiness and violence. The sniper continued to fire and Montgomery was hit once more, in the knee, [ 22 ] but the dead soldier, in Montgomery's words, "received many bullets meant for me. The doctors at the advanced dressing station ADS , too, had no hope for him and ordered a grave to be dug.

Miraculously, however, Montgomery was still alive and, after being placed in an ambulance and then being sent to a hospital, was treated and eventually evacuated to England, where he would remain for well over a year. Conspicuous gallant leading on 13th October, when he turned the enemy out of their trenches with the bayonet. He was severely wounded.

After recovering in early , he was appointed brigade major , [ 31 ] first of the th Infantry Brigade , and then with th Infantry Brigade , then training in Lancashire. It was in this role that Montgomery served at the Battle of Passchendaele which began in late July He was promoted to the temporary rank of major in February , [ 34 ] and brevet major in June.

Montgomery was profoundly influenced by his experiences during the war, in particular by the leadership, or rather the lack of it, being displayed by the senior commanders. He later wrote:. There was little contact between the generals and the soldiers. 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.

There were of course exceptions and I suppose one such was Plumer; I had only once seen him and had never spoken to him. After the First World War, Montgomery commanded the 17th Service Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers , [ 39 ] a battalion in the British Army of the Rhine , before reverting to his substantive rank of captain brevet major in November After graduating from the Staff College, he was appointed brigade major in the 17th Infantry Brigade in January 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 , 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 :.

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. 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 one noteworthy incident on 2 May , Montgomery led a force of 60 soldiers and 4 armoured cars to the town of Macroom to search for four British officers who were missing in the area.

While he had hoped the show of force would assist in finding the men, he was under strict orders not to attack the IRA. At the castle gates Montgomery spoke to Browne explaining what would happen should the officers not be released. Once finished, Browne responded with his own ultimatum to Montgomery to "leave town within 10 minutes". Browne then turned heels and returned to the Castle.

At this point another IRA officer, Pat O'Sullivan, whistled to Montgomery drawing his attention to scores of IRA volunteers who had quietly taken up firing positions all around the square—surrounding Montgomery's forces. Realising his precarious position, Montgomery led his troops out of the town, a decision which raised hostile questions in the House of Commons but was later approved by Montgomery's own superiors.

Unknown to Montgomery at this time, the four missing officers had already been executed. In , in his first known courtship of a woman, Montgomery, then in his late thirties, proposed to a year-old girl, Betty Anderson. His approach included drawing diagrams in the sand of how he would deploy his tanks and infantry in a future war, a contingency which seemed very remote at that time.

She respected his ambition and single-mindedness but declined his proposal. Dick Carver later wrote that it had been "a very brave thing" for Montgomery to take on a widow with two children. While on holiday in Burnham-on-Sea in Somerset in , Betty suffered an insect bite which became infected, and she died in her husband's arms from septicaemia following amputation of her leg.

Much of his correspondence with his wife was destroyed when his quarters at Portsmouth were bombed during the Second World War. Both of Montgomery's stepsons became army officers in the s both were serving in India at the time of their mother's death , and both served in the Second World War, each eventually attaining the rank of colonel. He was taken prisoner at Mersa Matruh on 7 November He eventually reached British lines on 5 December , to the delight of his stepfather, who sent him home to Britain to recuperate.

In January Montgomery was promoted to brevet lieutenant-colonel. On completion of his tour of duty in India, Montgomery returned to Britain in June [ 60 ] where he took command of the 9th Infantry Brigade with the temporary rank of brigadier. He was promoted to major-general on 14 October [ 62 ] and took command of the 8th Infantry Division [ 63 ] in the British mandate of Palestine.

Shortly after the division's arrival overseas, Montgomery faced serious trouble from his military superiors and the clergy for his frank attitude regarding the sexual health of his soldiers, but was defended from dismissal by his superior Alan Brooke , commander of II Corps , of which Montgomery's division formed a part. Although Montgomery's new command was a Regular Army formation, comprising the 7th Guards , and the 8th and 9th Infantry Brigades along with supporting units, he was not impressed with its readiness for battle.

Mostly they revolved around the division advancing towards an objective, often a river line, only to come under attack and forced to withdraw to another position, usually behind another river. By the spring of Montgomery's division had gained a reputation of being a very agile and flexible formation. Brooke, Montgomery's corps commander, was pessimistic about the plan but Montgomery, in contrast, was not concerned, believing that he and his division would perform well regardless of the circumstances, particularly in a war of movement.

Montgomery's training paid off when the Germans began their invasion of the Low Countries on 10 May and the 3rd Division advanced to its planned position, near the Belgian city of Louvain. Soon after arrival, the division was fired on by members of the Belgian 10th Infantry Division who mistook them for German paratroopers ; Montgomery resolved the incident by approaching them and offering to place himself under Belgian command, [ 69 ] although Montgomery himself took control when the Germans arrived.

The 3rd Division saw comparatively little action but, owing to the strict training methods of Montgomery, the division always managed to be in the right place at the right time, especially so during the retreat into France. This was performed with great professionalism and occurred without any incidents and thereby filled a very vulnerable gap in the BEF's defensive line.

The 3rd Division, temporarily commanded by Kenneth Anderson in Montgomery's absence, returned to Britain intact with minimal casualties. Operation Dynamo—codename for the Dunkirk evacuation—saw , Allied military personnel, including most of the BEF, to Britain, although the BEF was forced to leave behind a significant amount of equipment.

On his return Montgomery antagonised the War Office with trenchant criticisms of the command of the BEF [ 22 ] and was briefly relegated to divisional command of 3rd Division, which was the only fully equipped division in Britain. Montgomery was ordered to make ready the 3rd Division to invade the neutral Portuguese Azores. Montgomery was then ordered to prepare plans for the invasion of neutral Ireland and to seize Cork , Cobh and Cork harbour.

He was ruthless in sacking officers he considered unfit for command in action. During this time he further developed and rehearsed his ideas and trained his soldiers, culminating in Exercise Tiger in May , a combined forces exercise involving , troops. 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.

Montgomery's assumption of command transformed the fighting spirit and abilities of the Eighth Army. 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 arrangement differed from the 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. Writing post-war the English historian 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.

He asked Alexander to send him two new British divisions 51st Highland and 44th Home Counties 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 to better coordinate combined operations. 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. If we are attacked, then there will be no retreat. If we cannot stay here alive, then we will stay here dead", [ 85 ] he told his officers at the first meeting he held with them in the desert, though, in fact, Auchinleck had no plans to withdraw from the strong defensive position he had chosen and established at El Alamein.

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 and the British General Officer's cap badge for which he became notable.

The black beret was offered to him by Jim Fraser while the latter was driving him on an inspection tour. Alan Brooke said that Churchill was always impatient for his generals to attack at once, and he wrote that Montgomery was always "my Monty" when Montgomery was out of favour with Churchill. Eden had some late night drinks with Churchill, and Eden said at a meeting of the Chiefs of Staff the next day 29 October that the Middle East offensive was "petering out".

Alanbrooke had told Churchill "fairly plainly" what he thought of Eden's ability to judge the tactical situation from a distance, and was supported at the Chiefs of Staff meeting by Smuts. Rommel's forces had to withdraw urgently lest their retreat through the British minefields be cut off. 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.

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 which began, "We are in your hands and of course a victorious battle makes amends for much delay.

By the time the offensive was ready in late October, Eighth Army had , men on its ration strength. The Second Battle of El Alamein began on 23 October , and ended 12 days later with one of the first large-scale, decisive Allied land victories of the war. Montgomery correctly predicted both the length of the battle and the number of casualties 13, Historian Correlli 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, prisoners of war were taken, [ 97 ] including the German second-in-command, General von Thoma , as well as eight other general officers. Montgomery was advanced to KCB and promoted to full general. Montgomery considered the initial plans for the Allied invasion, which had been agreed in principle by General Dwight D. He managed to have the plans recast to concentrate the Allied forces, having Lieutenant General George Patton 's US Seventh Army land in the Gulf of Gela on the Eighth Army's left flank, which landed around Syracuse in the south-east of Sicily rather than near Palermo in the west and north of Sicily.

Montgomery's Eighth Army was then fully involved in the Allied invasion of Italy in early September , becoming the first of the Allied forces to land in Western Europe. They encountered little enemy resistance. All of these slowed the Army's advance north on the awful Italian roads , although it was Montgomery who was later much criticised for the lack of progress.

Clark which actually contained a large number of British troops landed at Salerno , near Naples , as part of Operation Avalanche but soon found itself fighting for its very existence with the Germans launching several determined counterattacks to try and push the Allies back into the sea, with Montgomery's men being too far away to provide any real assistance.

While some ground was gained, it was often at the expense of heavy casualties and the Germans always managed to retreat to new defensive positions. Montgomery abhorred what he considered to be a lack of coordination, a dispersion of effort, a strategic muddle and a lack of opportunism in the Allied campaign in Italy , describing the whole affair as a "dog's breakfast".

As a result of his dissatisfaction with Italy, he was delighted to receive the news that he was to return to Britain in January He envisaged a ninety-day battle, with all forces reaching the Seine. The campaign would pivot on an Allied-held Caen in the east of the Normandy bridgehead, with relatively static British and Canadian armies forming a shoulder to attract and defeat German counter-attacks, relieving the US armies who would move and seize the Cotentin Peninsula and Brittany , wheeling south and then east on the right forming a pincer.

During the ten weeks of the Battle of Normandy , unfavourable autumnal weather conditions disrupted the Normandy landing areas. The failure to take Caen immediately has been the source of an immense historiographical dispute with bitter nationalist overtones. Later, when this plan had clearly failed, Eisenhower wrote that Montgomery had "evolved" the plan to have the US forces achieve the break-out instead.

As the campaign progressed, Montgomery altered his initial plan for the invasion and continued the strategy of attracting and holding German counter-attacks in the area north of Caen rather than to the south, to allow the U. First Army in the west to take Cherbourg. A memo summarising Montgomery's operations written by Eisenhower's chief of staff, General Walter Bedell Smith who met with Montgomery in late June says nothing about Montgomery conducting a "holding operation" in the Caen sector, and instead speaks of him seeking a "breakout" into the plains south of the Seine.

O'Connor, at the cost of about 4, men, had won a salient 5 miles 8. It was only after several failed attempts to break out in the Caen sector that Montgomery devised what he later called his "master plan" of having the 21st Army Group hold the bulk of the German forces, thus allowing the Americans to break out. Montgomery drew what was the indisputably correct conclusion from these events.

If the British and Canadians could continue to hold the bulk of the German armoured divisions on their front through a series of limited attacks, they could wear down the Germans and create the conditions for an American breakout on the right. This is what Montgomery proposed in his Directive of June 30th and, if he and his admirers had let the record speak for itself, there would be little debate about his conduct of the first stages of the Normandy campaign.

Instead, Montgomery insisted that this Directive was a consistent part of a master plan that he had devised long before the invasion. Curiously, this view does a great disservice to 'Monty' for any rigid planning of operations before the German response was known would have been bad generalship indeed! Hampered by stormy weather and the bocage terrain, Montgomery had to ensure that Rommel focused on the British in the east rather than the Americans in the west, who had to take the Cotentin Peninsula and Brittany before the Germans could be trapped by a general swing east.

Paul's conference, as only one of four goals outlined in May had been achieved by 10 July. On 7 July, Montgomery began Operation Charnwood with a carpet bombing offensive that turned much of the French countryside and the city of Caen into a wasteland. The possibilities are immense; with seven hundred tanks loosed to the South-east of Caen, and the armoured cars operating far ahead, anything can happen.

An American break-out was achieved with Operation Cobra and the encirclement of German forces in the Falaise pocket at the cost of British losses with the diversionary Operation Goodwood.

Field marshal montgomery biography of mahatma

Ahead of them the pathfinders were scattering their flares and before long the first bombs were dropping. Among the thunder of the explosions, we could hear the wounded scream and the insane howling of men who had [been] driven mad. Initially, the three British armoured divisions assigned to lead the offensive, the 7th, 11th and the Guards, made rapid progress and were soon approaching the Borguebus ridge, which dominated the landscape south of Caen, by noon.

If the British could take the Borguebus Ridge, the way to the plains of northern France would be wide open, and potentially Paris could be taken, which explains the ferocity with which the Germans defended the ridge. One German officer, Lieutenant Baron von Rosen, recalled that to motivate a Luftwaffe officer commanding a battery of four 88 mm guns to fight against the British tanks, he had to hold his handgun to the officer's head "and asked him whether he would like to be killed immediately or get a high decoration.

He decided for the latter. I see men climbing out, on fire like torches, rolling on the ground to try and douse the flames. The objectives of Operation Goodwood were all achieved except the complete capture of the Bourgebus Ridge, which was only partially taken. The operation was a strategic Allied success in drawing in the last German reserves in Normandy towards the Caen sector away from the American sector, greatly assisting the American breakout in Operation Cobra.

By the end of Goodwood on 25 July , the Canadians had finally taken Caen while the British tanks had reached the plains south of Caen, giving Montgomery the "hinge" he had been seeking, while forcing the Germans to commit the last of their reserves to stop the Anglo-Canadian offensive. The casualties were 5, with 7 miles 11 km of ground gained.

The British and Canadian armies were to decoy the enemy reserves and draw them to their front on the extreme eastern edge of the Allied beachhead. Thus, while Monty taunted the enemy at Caen, we [the Americans] were to make our break on the long roundabout road to Paris. When reckoned in terms of national pride, this British decoy mission became a sacrificial one, for while we tramped around the outside flank, the British were to sit in place and pin down the Germans.

Yet strategically it fitted into a logical division of labors, for it was towards Caen that the enemy reserves would race once the alarm was sounded. The long-running dispute over what Montgomery's "master plan" in Normandy led historians to differ greatly about the purpose of Goodwood. The British journalist Mark Urban wrote that the purpose of Goodwood was to draw German troops to their left flank to allow the American forces to break out on the right flank, arguing that Montgomery had to lie to his soldiers about the purpose of Goodwood, as the average British soldier would not have understood why they were being asked to create a diversion to allow the Americans to have the glory of staging the breakout with Operation Cobra.

American military writer Drew Middleton wrote that there is no doubt that Montgomery wanted Goodwood to provide a "shield" for Bradley, but at the same time Montgomery was clearly hoping for more than merely diverting German attention away from the American sector. While Collins was hoisting his VII Corps flag over Cherbourg, Montgomery was spending his reputation in a bitter siege against the old university city of Caen.

For three weeks he had rammed his troops against those panzer divisions he had deliberately drawn towards that city as part of our Allied strategy of diversion in the Normandy Campaign. Although Caen contained an important road junction that Montgomery would eventually need, for the moment the capture of that city was only incidental to his mission.

For Monty's primary task was to attract German troops to the British front that we might more easily secure Cherbourg and get into position for the breakout. He later commented:. There were of course exceptions and I suppose one was Plumer; I had only once seen him and I had never spoken to him. At the end of the war, Montgomery continued his career in the military.

In , he also married a widow — Betty Carver, with whom they had one son. The marriage was happy for Monty giving a rare period of emotional closeness. Tragically, his wife died in after an insect bite turned septic. In , Britain had always been on the back foot in the war. About the best the Allies could claim were successful tactical retreats like Dunkirk, or holding the enemy as in the Battle of Britain; but on the land, the army had few real victories.

Our mandate from the Prime Minister is to destroy the Axis forces in North Africa…It can be done, and it will be done! After beating off a German attack in August, Monty was able to deliver a successful counterattack in November. It was a decisive victory for the allies and was celebrated back home. It was said that before El-Alamein — the Allies never had a victory, but after El-Alamein the Allies never had a defeat.

It was not quite as simple as that, but it was a crucial turning point in the balance of power in the Second World War. This famous victory elevated the status of Monty.