NOW HE WAS A MAN TO FOLLOW

[Gil Boyd]

Note The Parachute Regiment badge and beret on Monty's head, he opened Montgomery Lines in Aldershot when the Brigade was stationed there as 16 Para Brigade in the late 60's.....enjoy

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.

[mrclark303]

Great picture of a great man Gil...

[Gil Boyd]

You give him a beer and a dark corner, and he'd wear anybodies cap badge, he was renowned for it. I suppose WW2 allowed him at his rank to do what he liked. Had a Bridge to Far come off he would have been a national hero

[Surpmil]

Montgomery was a teetotaller IIRC.

[Paul S.]

It's easy to remember him as the motivator behind a plan that went 't*ts up' for a lot of reasons and forget what he did (and what personal cost) during both wars, his successes in the desert campaign and his contribution to winning the war. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/histori..._bernard.shtml

[mrclark303]

Monty was a very cleaver man, he took risks, but didn't they all, you only have to look at bloody Omaha to see how close disaster can be snatched from the jaws of victory, that was a very close won victory...

Market Garden could have worked, unfortunately sometimes fortune dosen't favour the brave...

Monty should be righty remembered as a great allied Military leader and a truly great British hero...

[Brit plumber]

I can see why he chose to ware a certain cap badge. In the desert he would ware a tank corp cap badge, it was a good way to show the troops he was with them. He was also one of the first to go to the front line to inspire his men. Something I think most of his men appreciated.

[Surpmil]

We perhaps have to remember that after the catastrophic losses of WWI the pool of potential senior officers was very much depleted, one could say it was three quarters empty in fact. What was left was those who had survived by good luck or good planning. Of the former, the proportion who could be expected to show real brilliance was probably about the same as it had been in 1914, except now there were far, far fewer of those men. Then the question was of those who had real brilliance such as Fuller or Ironside or Hobart, how would they "get on" in the Army between the wars, if they even stayed in the Army at all, to enjoy miserable pay and often miserable postings? Those who had somewhere better to go often went, those who did not, or had an agenda they believed had to be pushed, remained. The reality was that the upper reaches of the Army were very clannish and and those who were not "good club men" either pretended that they were or paid the price. Why did Churchill say to certain upset senior officers after he made Percy Hobart a Major General (again) instead of a Corporal in the Home Guard: "The Army is not a club!"? In other words, membership and office is not by popular consent! The fact that he needed to say it at all tells us nothing good about their mentality. If Churchill had court-martialed and cashiered a few of the incompetent failures a greater sense of urgency might have taken hold. The Club Men then went to work to make sure that Hobart was not allowed to command in North Africa the armoured divisions he had trained. The fortunes of the country and the empire be damned: the Club Men were not going to have Percy Hobart win laurels in the field that their incompetent friends had failed to win! Not really much different from dock workers going on strike in 1942 is it?

[browningautorifle]

Why did Churchill say to certain upset senior officers after he made Percy Hobart a Major General (again) instead of a Corporal in the Home Guard: "The Army is not a club!"?

You recall of course the majority of the officers in WW1 were still of the aristocracy. It's been stated that no commission was purchased after 1914, but I can tell you for a fact it's still going on. It's just done differently. That creates the "Club" atmosphere you describe. Thus the incompetence of many senior officers during the first great unpleasantness... They weren't actual soldiers, they were rich guys that wanted to be in charge. Self entitlement...

[Paul S.]

You recall of course the majority of the officers in WW1 were still of the aristocracy. It's been stated that no commission was purchased after 1914, but I can tell you for a fact it's still going on. It's just done differently. That creates the "Club" atmosphere you describe. Thus the incompetence of many senior officers during the first great unpleasantness... They weren't actual soldiers, they were rich guys that wanted to be in charge. Self entitlement...

That, and that the majority of British Army officers at the beginning of both world wars had attended the same public schools (US readers: very expensive, exclusive, private boarding schools). That alone created a club or clique atmosphere with an attitude of disdain for those who weren't from the same 'class of people'. Churchill, in fact, had attended one of the elite public schools (Harrow) in his day before going to Sandhurst and the Army. He knew of which he spoke.

The RAF and RN was equally bad, if not worse. Oxford and Cambridge universities were much the same way back then as well. It was as it was, and change a bit during the interwar years and much more so from the early 1950s onward.

Familiarity with social history offers contextual depth to military history. Reading Chesterton's writings about pre-WWI and WWI Germany and Europe offers some insights into their social mentalities and subsequent events during the interwar period.