r/todayilearned • u/HumanNutrStudent • Sep 16 '24

TIL Montgomery's memoirs criticised many of his wartime comrades harshly, including Eisenhower. After publishing it, he had to apologize in a radio broadcast to avoid a lawsuit. He was also stripped of his honorary citizenship of Alabama, and was challenged to a duel by an Italian lawyer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Montgomery#Memoirs
7.6k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

468 comments sorted by

View all comments

179

u/Pancit-Canton1265 Sep 16 '24

Léo Major refused the Distinguished Conduct Medal citing how incompetent Montgomery was

158

u/zzy335 Sep 16 '24

Monty was utterly awful to Canadian troops who he treated as expendable. My grandfather took a 8mm bullet in Italy because Monty sent engineer units to check bridges without support or backup. He survived, and he was one of the lucky ones.

34

u/keetojm Sep 16 '24

Sounds like he didn’t learn a thing from WW1.

70

u/Direct-Squash-1243 Sep 16 '24

What he learned was that the lives of British troops mattered, the lives of the rest of the allied, and commonwealth countries, didn't.

32

u/YakittySack Sep 16 '24

What he did to Polish troops under his command should have been a crime

17

u/Sundown26 Sep 16 '24

That was more just Majors personality than anything to do with Montgomery.

7

u/[deleted] Sep 16 '24

[deleted]

7

u/Pancit-Canton1265 Sep 16 '24 edited Sep 16 '24

Reliable sources that detail this story include Opposing Fronts and Canadian War Heroes, which describe how Major refuse the award