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

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[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?

[Kev G]

Full of his own sense of self importance ,Bill Slim was a far better man and one of the most under rated.

KG

[Gil Boyd]

A difficult one to overcome really, assessing leadership in Generals!!

I suppose with hindsight, Operation Market Garden could have been so successful in ending WW2 by many months had it succeeded, saving countless lives, civilian and Military.

However, there was, dare I say it, many ego's to please at General level from all sides, all of whom wanted a piece of their respective cake..........until it started going wrong, with the Armoured Corps not reaching their objectives as planned and scheduled at the briefings, and drop zones not being accurately hit, and overweight gliders etc etc.

As I say, it is easy to criticise, but ego's did play a part in its failure, and reading Surpmil's account, clearly we all have some patching up to do on exceptance of GOC levels and who is actually calling the shots at times!!