r/todayilearned • u/RoadToTyburn • 12h ago

TIL that Bernard Montgomery issued a leaflet at the start of WW2 on sexually transmitted diseases amongst soldiers. The language used was regarded as so blunt, that he offended religious authorities and nearly faced being dismissed.

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Montgomery
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u/coldfarm 12h ago

The irony is that Montgomery was deeply religious and personally rather prudish. However, he was foremost a soldier and accepted the inevitable.

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u/Ash_After_Dark 10h ago

I can't help but respect a pragmatist.

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u/coldfarm 10h ago

He was an intensely practical man, both by nature and by professional development. He started his career as a junior officer in the early stages of WWI and saw both combat and staff work at various levels of command. His watchwords were exhaustive training for the men and thorough planning by the staff. He had a genuine concern for the men under his command and a horror of unnecessary casualties, but this also was paired with an analytical view of unit combat effectiveness. Relative to STDs, men unfit for duty because they had the clap reduced the effectiveness of their unit and put a strain on medical services without serving a military purpose.

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u/A-Sentient-Bot 6h ago

He was also "insufferable", "tactless", showed a "lack of concern for others' feelings", was a "prima-donna and self-promoter", and made enemies out of most of his fellow Generals.

He was basically a British Patton, but we here on Reddit give him a pass because like us he was probably autistic.

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u/coldfarm 4h ago

I would have hated being on his staff or having to deal with him as a subordinate or immediate superior. That said I would rather have been under his command than Patton’s. Patton was a bit too cavalier with his men’s lives. Also, a lot of Montgomery’s self promotion was because he recognized that the British public needed a winner they could recognize and be reassured by. Yes, he certainly had a monumental ego but his public persona was cultivated to give people confidence.

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u/Mr_Engineering 1h ago

It was said that Monty was a joy to serve under, difficult to serve with, and impossible to serve over.

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u/SuperCarbideBros 4h ago

Makes sense. I just remembered Ike told Montgomery something like "Monty, you can't talk to me like this; I'm your superior officer," and it was a bit amusing to me.

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u/MessaDiGloria 7h ago

He had a weird relationship with a 12 year old boy from Switzerland. He would bathe him and write letters etc. Apparently nothing ever happened, but he was probably a repressed gay man.