how tall was bernard montgomery

The German/Italian armoured corps infantry attack was stopped in very heavy fighting. 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. [159] The successful conclusion of the Normandy campaign saw the beginning of the debate between the "American school" and "British school" as both American and British generals started to advance claims about who was most responsible for this victory. [214], On 4 May 1945, on Lneburg Heath, Montgomery accepted the surrender of German forces in north-west Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands. [103] The Germans had made the decision to fall back and did what they could to stall the Eighth Army's advance, including blowing up bridges, laying mines, and setting up booby-traps, all of which made the Army's ability to work its way up through Italy, where the roads were in an awful condition, was very slow, for which Montgomery later received much criticism. [212], 21st Army Group's river crossing was followed by the encirclement of the Ruhr Pocket. He would also be able to ensure that British units were spared some of the high-attrition actions, but would be most prominent when the final blows were struck. [252], Montgomery was a teetotaller, a vegetarian,[253] and a Christian. [182] On 9 October 1944, at Ramsay's urging, Eisenhower sent Montgomery a cable that emphasised the "supreme importance of Antwerp", that "the Canadian Army will not, repeat not, be able to attack until November unless immediately supplied with adequate ammunition", and warned that the Allied advance into Germany would totally stop by mid-November unless Antwerp was opened by October. [112] On 12 June, Montgomery ordered the 7th Armoured Division into an attack against the Panzer Lehr Division that made good progress at first but ended when the Panzer Lehr was joined by the 2nd Panzer Division. The Battle of Medenine, "Bernard Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein", "The German Counteroffensive in the Ardennes", "Chapter V: The Sixth Panzer Army Attack", http://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/30779/, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/096834459800500304, "HyperWar: The Last Offensive [Chapter 11]", "The U.S. Ninth Army's Breakout: Crossing the Roer and the Rhine", "Second World War Military Situation Maps 19441945", "Sir Winston Churchill Gets The Winkle In Ceremony at Hastings", "Pompey mentioned in Monty's despatches The News", "Moshe Dayan Sounds the Alarm in Vietnam", "Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery | British military commander | Britannica", "Bernard Law Montgomery: Unbeatable and unbearable | National Army Museum", "Bernard, Viscount Montgomery of Alamein", "Obituary: Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, son of 'Monty', who befriended the son of Edwin Rommel", "Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein", "Field Marshal Montgomery and Oscar Nemon", "Field Marshal Montgomery Pipe Band history", "The Military Medal | La grande chancellerie", Montgomery and Anglo Polish relations during WWII, contributions in Parliament by the Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, Newspaper clippings about Bernard Montgomery, Colonel of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bernard_Montgomery&oldid=1162745337, Colonel Commandant, Parachute Regiment (?1956), Representative Colonel Commandant, Royal Armoured Corps (19471957), Colonel Commandant, Army Physical Training Corps (19461960), Colonel Royal Warwickshire Regiment (19471963), Deputy Lieutenant of Southampton (1958? Henry Montgomery, at that time Vicar of St Mark's Church, Kennington, was the second son of Sir Robert Montgomery, a native of Inishowen in County Donegal in the north-west of Ulster,[12] the noted colonial administrator in British India; Sir Robert died a month after his grandson's birth. They would then turn north to recapture the port of Antwerp. He was 88 years old. [152] On 20 July, Montgomery met Eisenhower and on 21 July, Churchill, at the TAC in France. After the war he became Commander-in-Chief of the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) in Germany and then Chief of the Imperial General Staff. [98], Montgomery was an Honorary Member of the Winkle Club, a charity in Hastings, East Sussex, and introduced Winston Churchill to the club in 1955. [196], The attack initially advanced rapidly, splitting U.S. 12th Army Group in two, with all of U.S. Ninth Army and the bulk of U.S. First Army on the northern shoulder of the German 'bulge'. Both men would not give away to the press the true intentions of their strategy. [31] The loss devastated Montgomery, who was then serving as a brigadier, but he insisted on throwing himself back into his work immediately after the funeral. By the end of the war, troops under Montgomery's command had taken part in the encirclement of the Ruhr Pocket, liberated the Netherlands, and captured much of north-west Germany. Alan Brooke, chief of the British Imperial General Staff, wrote: "Ike knows nothing about strategy and is quite unsuited to the post of Supreme Commander. Tom Holland (Spider-Man) Height: 5'6" In the comics, Spider-Man and his alter ego Peter Parker are 5'10" -- 4 inches taller than the man who plays him in the MCU, Tom Holland.The difference . [50] Like many British POWs, the most famous being General Richard O'Connor, Dick Carver escaped in September 1943 during the brief hiatus between Italy's departure from the war and the German seizure of the country. "[122] The Germans had deployed twelve divisions, of which six were Panzer divisions, against the British while deploying eight divisions, of which three were Panzer divisions, against the Americans. "[80] Montgomery reinforced the 30 miles (48km) long front line at El Alamein, something that would take two months to accomplish. [24] He was promoted to lieutenant in 1910,[26] and in 1912 became adjutant of the 1st Battalion of his regiment at Shorncliffe Army Camp.[24]. Bernard Montgomery (November 17, 1887-March 24, 1976) was a British soldier who rose through the ranks to become one of the most important military leaders of World War II. [139] During Operation Goodwood, the British had 400 tanks knocked out, with many recovered returning to service. [117] Epsom had forced further German forces into Caen but all through June and the first half of July Rommel, Rundstedt, and Hitler were engaged in planning for a great offensive to drive the British into the sea; it was never launched and would have required the commitment of a large number of German forces to the Caen sector.[118]. Lord. [116] General Friedrich Dollmann of Seventh Army had to commit the newly arrived II SS Corps to stop the British offensive. 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. In myprejudicedview, if the operation had been properly backed from its inception, and given the aircraft, ground forcesive resources necessary for the job, it would have succeeded in spite of my mistakes, or the adverse weather, or thpresence of the 2nd SS Panzer Corps in the Arnhem area. [172] To take Le Havre, two infantry divisions, two tank brigades, most of the artillery of the Second British Army, the specialised armoured "gadgets" of Percy Hobart's 79th Armoured Division, the battleship HMSWarspite and the monitor HMSErebus were all committed. 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 then served as NATO's Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe until his retirement in 1958. [165], On 3 September 1944 Hitler ordered Fifteenth Army, which had been stationed in the Pas de Calais region and was withdrawing north into the Low Countries, to hold the mouth of the river Scheldt to deprive the Allies of the use of Antwerp. His massive . [85] Montgomery was criticised for not counter-attacking the retreating forces immediately, but he felt strongly that his methodical build-up of British forces was not yet ready. [183] Simonds, now reinforced with British troops and Royal Marines, cleared the Scheldt by taking Walcheren island, the last of the German "fortresses" on the Scheldt, on 8 November 1944. Dick Carver later wrote that it had been "a very brave thing" for Montgomery to take on a widow with two children. [54] He attended and was then recommended to become an instructor at the Indian Army Staff College (now the Pakistan Command and Staff College) in Quetta, British India. [81], Alanbrooke 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! American generals came to detest him (as did RAF air marshals and, quietly, not a few British army officers). Montgomery was harshly critical of US strategy in Vietnam, which involved deploying large numbers of combat troops, aggressive bombing attacks, and uprooting entire village populations and forcing them into strategic hamlets. 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. [153] Brooke wrote in defence of his protg Montgomery: "Ike knows nothing about strategy and is 'quite' unsuited to the post of Supreme Commander. [39], In one noteworthy incident on 2 May 1922, 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. [101], Montgomery's Eighth Army was then majorly involved in the Allied invasion of Italy in early September 1943, becoming the first of the Allied forces to land in Western Europe. "[136] The well dug-in 88mm guns around the Borguebus Ridge began taking a toll on the British Sherman tanks, and the countryside was soon dotted with dozens of burning Shermans. Oliver Cromwell, or the Germans, would have settled it in a very short time. [86] He was confirmed in the permanent rank of lieutenant-general in mid-October. [179] However, Simonds seems to have regarded the Scheldt campaign as a test of his ability, and he felt he could clear the Scheldt with only three Canadian divisions, namely the 2nd, the 3rd, and the 4th, despite having to take on the entire Fifteenth Army, which held strongly fortified positions in a landscape that favoured the defence. [148] Montgomery expressed his satisfaction at the results of Goodwood when calling the operation 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. [110] Letters written by Eisenhower at the time of the battle make it clear that Eisenhower was expecting from Montgomery "the early capture of the important focal point of Caen". [180] Simonds never complained about the lack of air support (made worse by the cloudy October weather), shortages of ammunition or having insufficient troops, regarding these problems as challenges for him to overcome, rather than a cause for complaint. After the war he became Commander-in-Chief of the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) in Germany and then Chief of the Imperial General Staff (19461948). 1897 The family returned to England once for a Lambeth Conference in 1897, and Bernard and his brother Harold were educated for a term at The King's School, Canterbury. "[21] Later in life Montgomery refused to allow his son David to have anything to do with his grandmother, and refused to attend her funeral in 1949. Gunther remarked that it would surely be an essential source for historians. He envisaged a ninety-day battle, with all forces reaching the Seine. The risky plan required three Airborne Divisions to capture numerous intact bridges along a single-lane road, on which an entire Corps had to attack and use as its main supply route. i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z Bernard Montgomery Montgomery was the most well-known British general of World War Two, famous for his victory at the Battle of El Alamein in November. [24] On graduation in September 1908 he was commissioned into the 1st Battalion the Royal Warwickshire Regiment as a second lieutenant,[25] and first saw overseas service later that year in India. [119] The Canadian historians Terry Copp and Robert Vogel wrote about the dispute between the "American school" and "British school" after having suffered several setbacks in June 1944: Montgomery drew what was the indisputably correct conclusion from these events. [215], The British high command were not only concerned with winning the war and defeating Germany, but also with ensuring that it retained sufficient influence in the post-war world to govern global policy. [31] He returned to the 1st Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment in 1925 as a company commander[31] and was promoted to major in July 1925. Ahead of them the pathfinders were scattering their flares and before long the first bombs were dropping. [188] Eisenhower's decision to launch Market Garden was influenced by his desire to keep the retreating Germans under pressure, and by the pressure from the United States to use the First Allied Airborne Army as soon as possible. During the Battle of the Bulge, command of Bradley's First and Ninth armies was temporarily given to British Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery. [115] The first V-1 flying bomb attacks on London, which started on 13 June, further increased the pressure on Montgomery from Whitehall to speed up his advance. [182] Ramsay in very strong language argued to Eisenhower that the Allies could only invade Germany if Antwerp was opened, and that as long as the three Canadian divisions fighting in the Scheldt had shortages of ammunition and artillery shells because Montgomery made the Arnhem salient his first priority, then Antwerp would not be opened anytime soon. [234], Montgomery was then appointed Chairman of the Western Union Defence Organization's C-in-C committee. [67][66] On 29/30 May, as the 3rd Division moved into the Dunkirk bridgehead, Montgomery temporarily took over from Brooke, who received orders to return to the United Kingdom, as GOC of II Corps for the final stages of the Dunkirk evacuation. "[78], Montgomery's assumption of command transformed the fighting spirit and abilities of the Eighth Army. [31] Betty Carver had two sons in their early teens, John and Dick, from her first marriage to Oswald Carver. His wife Betty Carver died in 1937. [66] By 27 May, when the Belgian Army on the left flank of the BEF began to disintegrate, the 3rd Division achieved something very difficult, the movement at night from the right to the left of another division and only 2,000 yards behind it. This included temporary command of the US First Army and the US Ninth Army, which held up the German advance to the north of the Bulge while the US Third Army under Lieutenant General George Patton relieved Bastogne from the south. He decided for the latter. 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. 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. [239], He was chairman of the governing body of St. John's School in Leatherhead, Surrey, from 1951 to 1966, and a generous supporter. Graduating from West Point in 1915, he served stateside during World War I before advancing through the ranks during the interwar years. [244] Montgomery was stripped of his honorary citizenship of Montgomery, Alabama, and was challenged to a duel by an Italian lawyer. "[230][231][232], After the war, Montgomery became the Commander-in-chief (C-in-C) of the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR), the name given to the British Occupation Forces, and was the British member of the Allied Control Council. How tall are they? [185], Montgomery was able to persuade Eisenhower to allow him to test his strategy of a single thrust to the Ruhr with Operation Market Garden in September 1944. [152] No notes were taken at the EisenhowerMontgomery and ChurchillMontgomery meetings, but Montgomery was able to persuade both men not to sack him. Unknown to Montgomery at this time, the four missing officers had already been executed. [153] About 10,000 Germans had been killed in the Battle of the Falaise Gap, which led a stunned Eisenhower, who viewed the battlefield on 24 August, to comment with horror that it was impossible to walk without stepping on corpses. Either there was a miscommunication between the two men or Eisenhower did not understand the strategy. Eisenhower did not accept the viability of the "dagger thrust" approach, it had already been agreed that Berlin would fall into the future Soviet occupation zone, and he was not willing to accept heavy casualties for no gain, so Eisenhower disregarded the British suggestions and continued with his conservative broad front strategy, and the Red Army reached Berlin well ahead of the Western Allies. [195] If the attack were to succeed in capturing Antwerp, the whole of 21st Army Group, along with U.S. Ninth Army and most of U.S. First Army would be trapped without supplies behind German lines. angles Montgomery. By the time the offensive was ready in late October, Eighth Army had 231,000 men on its ration strength. [211], In February 1945, Montgomery's 21st Army Group advanced to the Rhine in Operation Veritable and Operation Grenade. He later wrote: There was little contact between the generals and the soldiers. He was severely wounded. lmen /; 17 November 1887 - 24 March 1976), nicknamed " Monty ", was a senior British Army officer who served in the First World War, the Irish War of Independence and the Second World War . JackassJames 1 yr. ago Erwin Rommel was 5'6. [63] These exercises usually occurred at night with only very minimal lighting being allowed. [76], In 1942, a new field commander was required in the Middle East, where Auchinleck was fulfilling both the role of Commander-in-chief (C-in-C) of Middle East Command and commander Eighth Army. [102], Clark's Fifth Army then began to advance to the west of the Apennine Mountains while Montgomery, with Lieutenant General Charles Allfrey's V Corps having arrived to reinforce Dempsey's XIII Corps, advanced to the east. 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. There was still 13,000 to pay on a mortgage, a large debt in the 1880s (equivalent to 1,537,946 in 2021)[15] and Henry was at the time still only an Anglican vicar. It is no wonder that Monty's real high ability is not always realised. He was taken prisoner at Mersa Matruh on 7 November 1942. Montgomery bitterly resented this change, although it had been agreed before the D-Day invasion. The offensive failed to achieve its objectives.[190]. [138] Bradley recognised Montgomery's plan to pin down German armour and allow U.S. forces to break out: 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. 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.e., at New Park). Bernard Law "Monty" Montgomery was born in 1887 in London, England to a particularly strict and zealous family. [103] Both Churchill and Eisenhower had found Montgomery difficult to work with in the past and wanted the position to go to the more affable General Sir Harold Alexander. 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. Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, KG, GCB, DSO, PC (pronounced /mntmr v lmen/; 17 November 1887 - 24 March 1976) was a British Army officer. On March 24, 1976, Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, 1 st Viscount of Alamein, hero of World War II, died at home in England. [220], Montgomery's solution to the dilemma was to attempt to remain Commander of All Land Forces until the end of the war, so that any victory attained on the Western frontalthough achieved primarily by American formationswould accrue in part to him and thus to Britain. [22], In April 1941, he became commander of XII Corps responsible for the defence of Kent. [102] On 9 September the British 1st Airborne Division landed at the key port of Taranto in the heel of Italy as part of Operation Slapstick, capturing the port and, like with Operation Baytown, encountering no resistance. [100] Inter-Allied tensions grew as the American commanders, Patton and Omar Bradley (then commanding US II Corps under Patton), took umbrage at what they saw as Montgomery's attitudes and boastfulness. [45] After Montgomery's death, John Carver wrote that his mother had arguably done the country a favour by keeping his personal odditieshis extreme single-mindedness, and his intolerance of and suspicion of the motives of otherswithin reasonable bounds long enough for him to have a chance of attaining high command. If we cannot stay here alive, then we will stay here dead",[81] 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. "[246], Montgomery twice met Israeli general Moshe Dayan. I'm down to fight Nazis any day. [237], Montgomery was created 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein in 1946. Bernard's mother, Maud, was the daughter of Frederic William Canon Farrar, the famous preacher, and was eighteen years younger than her husband. [31] She was the sister of the future Second World War commander Major-General Sir Percy Hobart. [96] He kept the initiative, applying superior strength when it suited him, forcing Rommel out of each successive defensive position. [32] A photograph from October 1918, reproduced in many biographies, shows the then unknown Lieutenant-Colonel Montgomery standing in front of Winston Churchill (then the Minister of Munitions) at the parade following the liberation of Lille.[33]. [249][250] He spoke out against the legalisation of homosexuality in the United Kingdom, arguing that the Sexual Offences Act 1967 was a "charter for buggery"[251] and that "this sort of thing may be tolerated by the French, but we're Britishthank God". [84], Rommel attempted to turn the left flank of the Eighth Army at the Battle of Alam el Halfa from 31 August 1942. According to J. Toland. You can easily fact check it by examining the linked well-known sources. A memo summarising Montgomery's operations written by Eisenhower's chief of staff, General Walter Bedell Smith who met with Montgomery in late June 1944 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. [191], In the aftermath of Market Garden, Montgomery made holding the Arnhem salient his first priority, arguing that the Second British Army might still be able to break through and reach the wide open plains of northern Germany, and that he might be able to take the Ruhr by the end of October. [182] Montgomery further issued a memo entitled "Notes on Command in Western Europe" demanding that he once again be made Land Forces Commander. [255][256][257][258] After a funeral at St George's Chapel, Windsor, his body was buried in Holy Cross churchyard, in Binsted, Hampshire. [82], 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. [20] The loveless environment made Bernard something of a bully, as he himself recalled, "I was a dreadful little boy. Montgomery died in 1976, at the age of 88, at his residence at Islington Mill in Islington, Hampshire, of unclear causes. #bernardmontgomery #worldwar2 #history Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, KG, GCB, DSO, PC, DL (17 November 1887 - 24 . [174] Montgomery refused Crerar's request to have British XII Corps under Neil Ritchie assigned to help clear the Scheldt as Montgomery stated he needed XII Corps for Operation Market Garden.
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