Brian Montgomery - A Field Marshal in the Family

A FIELD
MARSHAL IN
THE FAMILY

BRIAN MONTGOMERY

First published in Great Britain in 1973 by
Constable and Company Limited

Republished in this format in 2010 by
Pen & Sword Military
An imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street
Barnsley
South Yorkshire
S70 2AS

Copyright Brian Montgomery 1973, 2010

ISBN 978 1 84884 425 4

The right of Brian Montgomery to be identified as Author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without permission from the
Publisher in writing.

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By CPI

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TO
MY WIFE

In my Introduction I have described how the project for this book arose and my reasons for writing it, but that does not reveal how grateful I am to many people for their assistance and advice.

My first and foremost debt is to my wife, who read each passage in draft as it was finished and provided much stimulating comment. I shall always be particularly grateful to my stepson Tom Mac-Neece now a journalist, who, one Sunday morning at our cottage in Saltwood, skilfully outlined a structure and sequence for a story of this kind. My grateful thanks are due to my sister-in-law, Margaret Montgomery, for the useful material she provided, and to my nephew James Montgomery in Vancouver who sent me fresh details of the family in Canada.

I was most fortunate in having the wise counsel and guidance of Field-Marshal Sir Gerald Templer, Major-General Sir Francis de Guingand, Major-General Sir Miles Graham, Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Constantine and the late Lieutenant-General Sir George Cole. The help of these officers was invaluable, especially the time I spent in company with Sir Francis at a vital point in the preparation of the book. I was also fortunate in having the advice of Lieutenant-Colonel C. P. (Kit) Dawnay who was my brothers Military Assistant during the 193945 war from overlord onwards. I am equally grateful to the Warden of Rhodes Trust, Mr. E. T. (Bill) Williams, for the time and trouble he took to advise me on the more controversial issues which arose during my brothers desert campaign, and afterwards during the fighting in Italy and in North-West Europe. I have also to thank Major-General W. D. E. Brown for the useful information he gave me, as well as Mr. John Henderson, who was my brothers ADC for so long. My grateful thanks are due to Mr. T. E. B. Howarth, High Master of St. Pauls, for all his assistance, including the help given me by his library staff during my search in the schools archives, and to Dr. J, M, Rae, Headmaster of Westminster, for kindly allowing me access to 17 Deans Yard. I have also to thank Lord Dulverton for information on the OVERLORD Embroidery. Last year it was my good fortune to meet Mrs. Tommy Macdonald, ne Betty Anderson, who at one stage played so important a part in my brothers life. I am most grateful for what she told me.

I could not have completed the research which a project of this kind entails without access to, and assistance in searching for, particular papers stored in the Public Record Office. I am therefore very grateful to Mr. E. K. Timings and his staff, notably his Research Assistants, Mr. N. E. Evans, Mr. J. L. Walford and Mr. A. R. Ford, for kindly guiding my footsteps in that maze of historic documaentation. Equally I could not have done without the resources of the London Library where the Deputy Librarian, Mr. Douglas Mathews, kindly gave me much useful information. My thanks are also due to the Librarians and Staff of the old War Office Library in the Ministry of Defence for helping me with my inquiries. I should add that this book could certainly never have appeared without the skill and expertise of Sheena Barber and Julia Hanbury, who spent long hours unravelling my handwriting to produce the typescript on time. Finally I have to thank my publishers, and particularly Mr. John Jolliffe, for their expert guidance and advice during all stages in the preparation of the book.

I am grateful to the following authors and publishers for permission to quote from the books shown below:

Frederick W. Farrar, St Winifreds or The World of School, A. and C. Black, Edinburgh.

Frederick W. Farrar, Julian Home, A. and C. Black, Edinburgh.

Reginald Farrar, F. W. Farrar, Dean of Canterbury, James Nisbet & Co. Ltd. 1904.

Professor L. E. Henry, ba, mrcp. Napoleons War Maxims, Gale & Polden Ltd.

Field-Marshal Montgomery, The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Montgomery, Wm. Collins.

Robert Jackson, Thirty Seconds at Quetta, Evans Bros. Ltd.

Field-Marshal Montgomery, A History of Warfare, Wm. Collins.

Sir Arthur Bryant, The Turn of the Tide, Wm. Collins.

Sir Arthur Bryant, Triumph in the West, Wm. Collins.

Sir F. de Guingand, Operation Victory, Hodder and Stoughton.

Sir F. de Guingand, Generals at War, Hodder and Stoughton.

Correlli Barnett, The Desert Generals, William Kimber.

Sir Basil Liddell Hart, History of the Second World War, Cassell & Co. Ltd.

Alan Moorehead, Montgomery, Hamish Hamilton Ltd.

Lord Tedder, With Prejudice, Cassell & Co. Ltd.

Bosworth Smith, The Life of Lord Lawrence, Thomas Nelson & Sons.

Maud Montgomery, Bishop Montgomery, A Memoir, Society for Propagation of the Gospel.

Charles Lethbridge Kingsford (published 1921), The Story of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, Country Life Ltd also by George Newnes Ltd.

Kay Summersby (1948), Eisenhower was my Boss, Prentice-Hall, Inc., New York.

Ronald Lewin, Montgomery, as a Military Commander, B. T. Batsford Ltd.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, W. H. Heinemann Ltd.

Major-General R. J. Collins, Lord Wavell, Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd.

It was a late summer evening in 1933. My father, formerly Bishop of Tasmania, had died the previous winter, so as many as possible of the family had arranged to come home that year. Quite a number of us therefore had been able to join our mother in the family home at Moville in Co. Donegal. My eldest sister was there with her husband on leave from Cairo; he was in the Egyptian Civil Service and they lived in a house-boat moored to the bank of the Nile opposite the Gezira Sporting Club. One other sister married to an army officer was present, and also one of my sisters-in-law, whose husband, my brother Colin, was a clergyman. These two were later to spend long years in Canada, amongst the Eskimo community, when Colin was appointed Canon in the Arctic. My brother Bernard, with his wife Betty and their young son David, then aged five, completed the party. Bernard was on leave from Alexandria where he was commanding his regiment, and they were both shortly due to return there as the battalion was under orders to move to India.