Montgomery Before Caen

Of course the blackening of Monties name continues. The drip drip poison of the armchair generals back home in Whitehall.
Monty with his squeaky voice and eccentric ways never fitted the establishment idea of a leader. The WW1 military blimps that still carried weight ....After all these years, the poison is still there. Don't look too far...... you see it on these pages!

 

Of course the blackening of Monties name continues. The drip drip poison of the armchair generals back home in Whitehall.
Monty with his squeaky voice and eccentric ways never fitted the establishment idea of a leader. The WW1 military blimps that still carried weight ....After all these years, the poison is still there. Don't look too far...... you see it on these pages!


Monty was many things .. he was also his own worst enemy ! arrogant boastful insensitive patronising conceited .. and they are some of his good attributes !

Monty made enemies everywhere he went .. when your as professional in the art of war as hes going to find incompetence and amateurishness insufferable and he wasnt afraid to say so and sadly many in the british military establishment were incompetent amateurs ..

Its one thing berating british peers quite another to berate your american allies .. dare i say it .. if monty was american i know i l know but humour me if monty was american and spoke as if he was from the bronx and beat rommel decisively in egypt and tunisia and rewrote the overlord invasion plan and was field commander in normandy where he supervised the anhiliation of the west heer by masterfully holding him by the nose (caen) while kicking him in the pants (st lo) and creating a kessel that made stalingrad seem like a training exercise he would be rightly lauded as a military titan of the second world war ..

 

It appears to be difficult to make points without the undoubted bravery of the army fighting the battles being brought into the argument. Criticism of Montgomery was NOT restricted to 'armchair' generals. Was it not pointed out that a static battle would cause the army great problems as static warfare brings with it an increase in casualties - did this lead to units being merged due to this? The quartermaster general pointed this out prior to D Day - did the QMG not think that he had agreement on this? Of course events overtook plans they always do - was he right then to insist in the face of the lack of manpower that this was his plan.The mistakes made by American generals are seized on as incompetence - Montgomery' list of errors the mark of a flawed genius! He was good - but he made mistakes they all did.