“LITTLE MONTY”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 April 1943, Page 4

“LITTLE MONTY”

EIGHTH ARMY COMMANDER OWN BATTLE PLAN. HUNDRED PER CENT PROFESSIONAL SOLDIER. It is 34 years since Bernard Law Montgomery, who is “little Monty” to his friends, left Sandhurst to join as a subaltern the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, of which, from 1931 to 1934, he was to command a battalion, writes “A.F.” in the “Observer.” Ten years of his youth had been spent in Tasmania, where his father was Bishop. He says that the strictness of his religious upbringing left him fed up with “too much of that sort of thing,” and the rigid personal asceticism which is such a feature of his character today does not arise from purely spiritual causes. His keenness for athletics is of long standing; he played “Rugger” for Sandhurst and hockey for the Army. He is remembered as an exceedingly hard-working young officer, rot much interested in the more social activities of the mess. . . .

Montgomery had more than three years on the Western Front during the last war, being mentioned six times in dispatches and winning the D.S.O. and the French Military Cross. Some say that he was one of those men who had to see too much of warfare, and that it was from his experiences during that time that his eyes got that curious, misty-grey “tired” look which so often deceives people into thinking him older than his 54 years. Certainly his eyes have seen much. When he lay wounded in No Man’s Land another man went out to bring him in. He was hit and’ fell dead over Montgomery’s body. For seven hours the Germans pumped lead into both of them, most of the bullets striking the corpse. As a result, Montgomerdy lost one lung and owes his life only to the presence of a famous surgeon, who ordered that he should not be touched at the dressing station, but should be sent back to England for special treatment. His physical fitness since is all the more extraordinary. It was during the years between the’ wars, at the Staff Colleges at Quetta and Camberley, that Montgomery started working out the system of command which he has retained and improved upon ever since. At that time he called it the fixed battle scheme. In essence it was to ensure that a commander should have the fullest knowledge of what was going on all along the line, and to reduce to a minmum what Clausewitz called the “friction of war.” Montgomery’s system enables him to impose his own battle plan on the enemy. This he has done in both his recent encounters with Rommel. While recently in command of a corps and later an army, Montgomery, by constant training and manoeuvres, gathered the lessons which have made him the equal of Rommel in experience. Mistakes were often made, but he never allowed them to be made twice. In manoeuvres he would be followed by two of his staff officers on motor-cycles, whom he would order to take down the name of an officer who had distinguished himself either by success or failure. He struck the fear of God into many. He was often brusque and rude, but never sarcastic. “You’re good, Mr So-and-so, but you’re not good enough,” he would say to an officer he was going to sack. Like Joffre, Montgomery retires to bed by 10 and rises at five. But there the resemblance ends. He is a hard thinker and a quick thinker. He can retain enormously intricate staff problems in his head. In fact, he boasted that in France in 1940 he never had to write an order. He believes in making himself absolutely clear to his officers. It is said that immediately on arrival in the desert he addressed all his officers, ignoring protests that some must not be taken from the front line in order to attend. “N.C.O’s. should be perfectly competent to take over, after two years in the field,” he is reported to have replied.

Monty is a 100 per cent professional soldier. His only ambition is to do the job as well as possible. To him this just means hard work. As well as stupendous mental alertness he has that infinite capacity for taking pains in all matters, big or small. He has, too, the great quality essential in a good general, of robustness of temperament. Because of his hard thinking, he is not easily surprised.