MONTGOMERY

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 91, 17 April 1943, Page 4

MONTGOMERY

FAME IN SIX MONTHS

CROMWELLIAN LEADER

The 1943 edition of a popular English reference book contains a list of notable persons in all walks of life. The name of General Bernard Law Montgomery does not appear in it!

The man whom we are told is row being idolised in Britain, whose name is known throughout the world (Axis countries not excluded) was but little known a year ago. Few, even to-day, know anything of his military record. He served in the 1914-18 war. was awarded the D.5.0., was mentioned in dispatches and reached the rank of major. It was 13 years after the war ended that he was promoted lieutenantcolonel, with command of a battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. ■ From 1934 to 1937 he was a general staff officer at the Staff College, Quetta. Then, in quick succession, he commanded a brigade (1937-38), a division (1939-40), and a corps (1940-41).

Late last year, when - the Fighting Eighth Army, driven out of Libya and across tne Western Desert, was grimly holding a narrow front between the Qattara Depression and the sea, General Montgomery arrived to command it. It had been commanded successively by Generals Auchinleck, Cunningham and Ritchie, and, according to report, its next commander was to have been General W. H. E. "Strafer" Gott, but Gott was killed in an air accident. Order to Eighth Army The story of how Montgomery took charge of the Eighth Army and trained it has yet to be told. What is known is that on October 23 of last year the Eighth attacked, with his order to "destroy Rommel and his army." Rommel's force is now in Tunisia, and the Eighth Army is close behind it.

General Montgomery is 55 years of age and was born in County Donegal. His father, an Anglican bishop, was once in Tasmania. His son was intended for the Church, but preferred to become a soldier. His character, around which legend is rapidly gathering, is austere, almost ascetic. He has been compared with General "Stonewall" Jackson, and also with Cromwell. He is reputed to read the Bible every night and to carry with him a copy of the "Pilgrim's Progress." As a military commander he is noted for his determination, without apparent regard of risk or difficulty, to see for himself. A correspondent has described the "familiar and spectacular sight" of General Montgomery, "touring the front line in a tank, his hawk's head in a beret protruding from the turret. Sometimes he Wore an Anzac's broadbrimmed field hat, on which he pinned the insignia of all the units fighting under him." His headquarters is a caravan, captured from the Italians. There, seldom breaking his habit of going to bed at 9 p.m. and rising at 6 a.m., he meets his staff. When General Montgomery called upon the Eighth Army to drive the German forces into the sea, to "make >them endure a Dunkirk on the beaches of Tunis," he knew exactly what that implied. He commanded the Third Division at Dunkirk.

General Sir Harold Alexander, now in charge of the land forces in Tunisia under General Eisenhower, also knows. He was the last to leave the beach at Dunkirk.