The Full Monty – Alan Judd

I have it before me as I write: a wartime photograph (pictured) of two soldiers in battledress, showing an officer pinning the Military Medal to the tunic of a sergeant standing to attention.

It’s signed BL Montgomery Field Marshal. The sergeant was my father. He’d won it for building a Bailey bridge under fire. The ADC, reading from a list, had announced my father as a corporal. Promotion had occurred since the award of the medal. Monty tore a strip off the ADC for not keeping up to date.

That illustrates three major themes of this very good and balanced biography.

First, Montgomery’s identification with and support of the common soldier whose morale and willingness to fight he greatly enhanced.

Secondly, berating one of his officers in front of the press and other ranks was good personal PR.

Thirdly, his pride in his achievements: he was delighted to be made field marshal and wanted everyone to know it.

My father also recalled retreating in confusion during the early stages of the Battle of the Bulge – the last-ditch German breakout – when word came that Montgomery had taken command.

Immediately, he said, morale changed; they believed they would go forward again – and did. Such recollections accord with Mead’s concluding judgement: ‘Montgomery’s lasting achievement was not the winning of battles but becoming the living embodiment of a leader.’

What of those battles? Does this judgement imply that he didn’t deserve credit for them? Most famous was, of course, the Battle of El Alamein.

It was in fact the second battle of that name.

The first was fought by Auchinleck, a general Monty saw as a rival. Auchinleck fought Rommel to a standstill and held the line. Montgomery, appointed later, was given time and massive reinforcements before launching his attack against Rommel’s overstretched forces.

The fact that it succeeded as comprehensively – though by no means easily – as it did is without doubt to Montgomery’s credit. Acclaimed by Churchill as a turning point in the war, it made Montgomery’s reputation, giving his soldiers and the public at home a poster boy to rival the admired Rommel. His slowness in following up the German retreat was criticised at the time but was of no consequence in terms of the political spin and military self-belief the victory generated.

Auchinleck, Alexander, Wavell – any of them might have done as well given Monty’s resources, but he was the man who reinvigorated the 8th Army – and he won the battle. And he made sure everyone knew it.

His strategy in this and almost all his battles was characterised by thorough training and preparation, attrition through overwhelming firepower, attacking from a position of strength, a centralised command structure and a desire to minimise casualties. Lessons learned during the latter stages of the First World War, in which he was wounded, doubtless accounted for much of this.

He proved an adroit and successful divisional commander during the retreat to Dunkirk and to his credit was doubtful about the disastrous Dieppe Raid. His most egregious mistake, argues Mead, was Operation Market Garden (Arnhem) – ‘inventive, bold and completely unlike Montgomery’s usual tactics’. His dilatory liberation of the port of Antwerp was, Mead reckons, ‘his biggest strategic misstep’.

Mead does not hold back on his subject’s character flaws. ‘In defeat indomitable, in victory insufferable, in NATO, thank God, invisible,’ Churchill said later.

His ambition, relentless self-promotion, unwillingness to admit mistakes, inability to co-operate with peers, rudeness to allies – especially Americans – and sheer bolshiness are unflinchingly described (though his removal of an interfering de Gaulle by the threat of close arrest must be to his credit).

He seems to have respected only two of his colleagues, fellow field marshals Slim and Alanbrooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff. Alanbrooke, described by his own biographer as the soldier whom every soldier knew he should have been, was not only Monty’s patron but also the only man who could bawl him out into red-faced silence.

He was no peacetime soldier and in the postwar world became a diplomatic embarrassment. His well-known cultivation of young boys during his retirement is aptly described by Mead as ‘emotional pederasty’.

Mead also rightly reminds us that Monty had a personal life like everyone else – he had a difficult relationship with his domineering mother, was a grieving widower, was fond of animals (campaigning with two terriers, Hitler and Rommel) and liked to bet (winning an aeroplane from Eisenhower). His breakfasts gave rise to the term ‘the full Monty’.

Publicly adored and privately horrid, says Mead, he nevertheless delivered the goods when they were most needed and deserves his Whitehall plinth alongside Slim and Alanbrooke.

Alan Judd served in the Army and the Foreign Office