page_title: Bernard Montgomery
section_title: Memoirs
hierarchical_section_title: Bernard Montgomery / Later life / Opinions / Memoirs
caption_attribution_description: English: FIELD MARSHAL THE VISCOUNT MONTGOMERY OF ALAMEIN KG GCB DSO 1887-1976. Montgomery as CIGS (Chief of Imperial General Staff) designate in the Viceregal Gardens, New Delhi with the Viceroy, Field Marshal Wavell and Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army, Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck.
context_page_description: Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, KG, GCB, DSO, PC, DL, nicknamed "Monty" and "The Spartan General", was a senior British Army officer who served in both the First World War and the Second World War.
  Montgomery first saw action in the First World War as a junior officer of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. At Méteren, near the Belgian border at Bailleul, he was shot through the right lung by a sniper, during the First Battle of Ypres. On returning to the Western Front as a general staff officer, he took part in the Battle of Arras in April/May 1917. He also took part in the Battle of Passchendaele in late 1917 before finishing the war as chief of staff of the 47th Division.
  In the inter-war years he commanded the 17th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers and, later, the 1st Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment before becoming commander of 9th Infantry Brigade and then General officer commanding 8th Infantry Division.
  During the Western Desert campaign of the Second World War, Montgomery commanded the British Eighth Army from August 1942, through the Second Battle of El Alamein and on to the final Allied victory in Tunisia in May 1943.
context_section_description: Montgomery's memoirs (1958) criticised many of his wartime comrades in harsh terms, including Eisenhower. He was threatened with legal action by Field Marshal Auchinleck for suggesting that Auchinleck had intended to retreat from the Alamein position if attacked again, and had to give a radio broadcast (20 November 1958) expressing his gratitude to Auchinleck for having stabilised the front at the First Battle of Alamein.
  The 1960 paperback edition of Montgomery's memoirs contains a publisher's note drawing attention to that broadcast, and stating that although the reader might assume from Montgomery's text that Auchinleck had been planning to retreat "into the Nile Delta or beyond" in the publisher's view it had been Auchinleck's intention to launch an offensive as soon as the Eighth Army was "rested and regrouped". Montgomery was stripped of his honorary citizenship of Montgomery, Alabama, and was challenged to a duel by an Italian officer.
caption: Lord Montgomery as CIGS with Lord Wavell, Viceroy of India, and Auchinleck, Commander in Chief Indian Army. Delhi 1946
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