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Mr Richard Lamb in his book suggests, that the fame he won at Alamein, the decisive battle of the desert war, and the adulation the British people showered on him when he returned to England gave him an exaggerated view of his own abilities.
The tardy Italian Campaign is a case in point of Montgomery's ability or lack of ability to get a move on and instead move in a tedious manner.
The Eighth Army's slow progress to the relief of the embattled Americans and British troops in the Salerno beachhead, in Lamb's view, ''was due entirely to Montgomery failing to give orders to push on as far and as fast as possible'' to relieve the beachhead.
In Mr Lamb's opinion Montgomery's most serious ''fundamental'' mistake was his failure to attack and defeat the German 15th Army which dominated the channel leading from Antwerp to the sea. Instead he turned his attention to the airborne landing at Arnheim almost obsessed by the idea that, if this was successful, he would lead a massive Allied army into northern Germany. So great was his optimism that he wrote a friend in London that he expected to be in Berlin in two weeks.
There is also a view that Churchill promoted Montgomery and gave him all he wanted because Churchill wanted the British to also be in the limelight of success!
Everything is contestable depending upon which side one is rooting for!
There is nothing black or white. It's all shades of grey!
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"Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."
I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.
HAKUNA MATATA
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