A new biography considers Monty the man, his style of command, and the
influence of his character on the course of the Battle of Normandy.
BERNARD LAW MONTGOMERY, Monty to millions, was, with William Slim, the
most successful British commander of the Second World War. Slim's
efforts were in the most distant theatre, India and Burma, and his
troops often thought of themselves as ''the Forgotten Army'' (the
Fourteenth), but Monty's men were always in the news. He cultivated his
''image'' to boost morale, a technique which suited his personality,
which was egocentric and conceited to a degree which remains
astonishing. He was also sometimes naive and totally unconscious of how
he might impact negatively on others.
Monty was far more complex than that, of course. This book, which
depends in part on the recollections of his son David, shows the complex
personality well enough, but it will have no surprises for those who
have read a little about the great man (there is, for example, a
three-volume biography by Nigel Hamilton).
The contributions of David Montgomery change little, except to
reinforce the point about his father's loneliness and the way in which
the boy must have suffered from neglect (not that there is any
complaint) after his mother died and his father had to be off
soldiering.
Monty's loneliness was not that of a commander only: those who take
important decisions often feel lonely. In his case he found it difficult
to get on with others, especially equals. He surrounded himself with
animals and young officers, his LOs, liaison officers whom he used, much
like Wellington, as his eyes and ears. These men were among the
brightest in the army -- and occasionally the American army -- and Monty
was devoted to them. When they died in war he articulated his love as
well as his grief. They were like sons to him, but his real son was too
young to win more than conventional expressions of affection.
This book considers all this as well as the arguments surrounding an
unconventional personality. Monty's conduct of the battle of Normandy,
the arguments about its aftermath, Arnhem, and the Battle of the Bulge,
as well as the later conquest of Germany itself, generated controversy
at the time and later. There will be no resolution of some of these, but
the difficult relationship with Eisenhower is well dealt with here: on
the personal level Monty does not emerge well from it, but Ike's major
strategic weaknesses are identified.
D-Day witnessed the first of Monty's setbacks in Normandy. His troops
failed to get their first objectives, and that helped determine the
conduct of later operations. Horne explains why Monty could not admit to
setbacks -- admitting them might have undermined the morale of his
troops. It might also have undermined his own self-confidence which was
not only important to himself but to all under him.
He insisted that things went always as he had planned, and he was a
most meticulous planner. The reality was that although things did not go
as he planned, he was always able to respond positively to changed
circumstance, and still win. This book shows him to be a great field
commander, able to adjust the set-piece battle to the famous dynamic of
war -- ''no plan survives contact''.
Monty was really a general of the First World War. There he was badly
wounded, and was lucky to survive, in spite of badly damaged lungs.
Their poor state was the source of his no-smoking rules, which were not
relaxed for the chain-smoking Ike but were, once only, for Churchill.
In effect, he was therefore an infantry general. Though he did the
army much service in recommending a ''universal'' tank in place of the
variety of inadequate vehicles previously in place, and in up-gunning
the Sherman, he never handled tanks well.
In part this was because British tanks were not good enough for the
job. Horne tries to explain why by following Corelli Barnet in blaming
British industry, but he misses the point made now for ever by David
Fletcher in The Great Tank Scandal that British tank design was
determined to a remarkable degree by the transport infrastructure -- the
railway gauge, bridge heights, and capacities. These fundamental forces,
very different from those obtaining in Germany, affected British armour
throughout the war and helped produce inferior designs.
Monty had, as he thought, a flawed weapon in his armour. He also had
weaknesses in the quality of the veteran divisions he deployed at D-Day,
and thereafter. The 3rd division, which he had commanded himself at
Dunkirk, the 51st Highlanders, and 7th Armoured (''the Desert rats'')
had all fought well in the desert and Italy but had lost their
resilience by Normandy, where they performed far less well than he had
hoped.
Even so, he did manage the vital role of pulling nearly all of the
German armour on to his British and Canadian armies, keeping them off
the Americans until their build-up was of such weight that they were
able to occupy the Cotentin peninsula, and then break south -- west into
Brittany and then east in a great swoop towards the Seine, enveloping
the German troops to its west, in a great encirclement which narrowly
failed to bag the lot.
In this strategy, almost certainly not planned originally, Monty
showed his genius. He was helped by German counter-invasion plans,
somewhat confusingly analysed by Horne who, at one point, gets Rommel's
notions totally wrong. Rommel did not want to keep his panzers back from
the beaches and concentrate them for a counter-offensive. He wanted them
placed as far forward as he could and distributed so as to be able to
intervene at once at any landing beach. He did not get his way,
eventually accurately described here, and thought to have been
''correct''.
German armour had three distinct authorities and, in the event, was
committed piecemeal to the fray to be chewed up by the British-Canadian
forces, which suited Monty very well, though the Americans and many
senior British officers did not give him the credit he deserved.
After Normandy, Monty wanted to move the British-American forces in
one huge mass of 40 divisions on a single axis towards the Ruhr.
American military doctrine, going back to Grant, forbade this in favour
of a general advance, favoured by Ike who had almost no battlefield
experience. This, as Monty had predicted, petered out and allowed the
Germans to recover.
Monty did get his way over Arnhem but, though highly imaginative in
conception from a cautious mind, that operation failed. (It might have
succeeded had the air forces not vetoed Monty's original plan.)
The Arnhem episode remains controversial, but Monty's role in the
Battle of the Bulge, when a revived German army gave the Americans a
bloody nose, is less disputed. He helped restore calm and a frontline
which the Germans did not penetrate; however, the Americans felt
humiliated by the German success at their expense, and that Monty had to
help even just a little made them feel even worse. He had not had too
much respect for American military capacities, and for Ike he felt near
contempt, a view shared by Alan Brooke, the Chief of the Imperial
General Staff.
THE advance thereafter into Germany should have been a piece of cake
and eventually turned out to be (though there were still some sad deaths
among the young liaison officers). Ike, however, prevented Monty and the
British forces heading for Berlin. He deliberately let the Russians have
it and, in one of his rare examples of pettiness, did not inform Monty
of his decision before it could not be debated. He was never able to
deal with Monty in argument, and not least because Monty could be
insufferable.
Horne shows how hard it is to lead an army of allies, even in success.
Ike was Monty's ''boss'', as he put it -- and long suffering. He did
well by Monty in many ways, allowing him to command the American and
British forces until the Americans built up massively and their public
opinion insisted on their own commander.
That Monty was difficult is not in dispute, but he had a side of
consideration and a compelling inner calm which could affect others
positively. (Doubters must read Goronway Rees's autobiography, A Bundle
of Sensations, written in 1960, for a view of this side.) He was a great
commander who won battles and saved many of the lives which he sought to
husband. This book confirms his reputation while powdering no warts.
* THE LONELY LEADER: MONTY 1944-45. By Alistair Horne with David
Montgomery. Macmillan #17.50.
* Robert McLaughlan is one of the contributors to a 13-page D-Day
Special in Weekender on Saturday.
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