5831469 Pte W H GIRLING, 2/5 Queens : Monty signature

My Dad, Pte W H Girling 5831469 has a leave pass to go to Baghdad for four hours on 4.11.42 signed by Monty. Monty would have been at Al Alamein then. Any ideas?

 

Pre-signed?

It does seem unlikely that Monty would be signing leave passes for a private. Unless, just conceivably, he was on his personal staff?

His signature is distinctive enough to be recognisable, if you have an image of it you can upload.

 

Check the M in particular.

 

Thank you for your interest in this. We have been looking into it for a while now and there are compelling reasons that it is signed by Monty and compelling reasons that it isn't. Cons, 1. Why would Monty sign something as mundane as a leave pass for a pte? 2. Monty and my Dad were miles apart at the time. 3. The signature isn't quite the same as ones I've seen on the net, those are all like the one that you show. Pros, 1. Despite not being part of Monty's staff, my Dad did, according to several family members, know Monty very well and spent time with him. 2. My Dad was also often doing something different from the rest of his battalion. 3. He would have had loads of passes during his wartime service but he kept that particular pass his whole life and was very proud of it but would never say why. 4. A professor and war historian suggested he might have been involved in something undercover possibly to do with his facility for language. He very quickly became fluent in both Arabic and Italian simply by being there. He had no lessons in either language and no prior knowledge of them. He also very quickly picked up Morse code with out having been taught it. This next one is another con - if he was doing something undercover why was he not promoted or given a medal [other than the standard war time medals]? The same Prof has seen a pic of the leave pass and he says it was signed by Monty, albeit in a great hurry and while leaning on a rough surface. The signature definitely has the initials B. L. and that distinctive M. Attached copy of the pass.

 

Plausible!

At least a lot more so now that you've posted the logic, but if I were going to (more substantially!) substantiate it, personally, I'd want sight of his service records along with the names of the other officers in his orbit to rule out their own signatures.

 

Another alternative is that it’s a simple autograph on a blank sheet of paper and the leave permission note was added to it afterwards?

Steve

 

What would be the point of doing that? If it was Monty's signature and the leave pass bit had been added to it later any officer looking at that pass would surely query it when the pass was shown and wouldn't there be hell to pay because it would essentially be a forgery of sorts if Monty had signed a blank piece of paper and then it was passed off as a signed leave pass?

 

Attached his records. They have been written on by another family member who made some fanciful guesses as to what some of it meant though.

 

How about a squaddies sense of humour….or a colleague writing the “leave” pass as a wind up?

IMHO equally as plausible Monty at his HQ in Egypt during the Battle of Alamein signing a chit for a man to have a few hours in Baghdad.

Steve

 

It possibly depends on what he was doing in Baghdad. He was in Iraq on that date and had been there for a while but the rest of his battalion didn't land in Iraq until the date of the leave pass. My Dad would never tell us what the pass was for.

 

Further to my last with my Dad's records. My Dad was in Iraq, and had been there for sometime, by 4th November '42 the leave pass date. The rest of his battalion didn't land in Iraq until until 4th Nov '42. It seems my Dad had been in Egypt immediately prior to going on to Iraq and not on the boat with the rest of his outfit. At least that is the case as far as I can tell. If he was in Egypt he could have got the pass from Monty then perhaps? It would fit with the vague idea passed down in our family that he was working undercover in some way.

 

Some interesting puzzlers here.

In my experience, (entitled?) C/A would normally be a Clothing Allowance, but it could be Civil Affairs, or - at the time - Coastal Artillery. The CIA per se was not established till 1947.

A four hour leave of absence chitty is of rather short duration.

Good hunting.

 

The signature on the pass does not look like Montgomery to me. Surely he would have added his rank? He was obviously somewhere in Iraq as he had a pass to get to Baghdad in 4 hours as part of Paiforce. Alamein area is a 1000 miles plus to Baghdad.

 

Monty's Signature

 

Bernard Law was not the only Montgomery to serve in World War Two.

Another perhaps?

List is by no means comprehensive.

British Army Officers 1939-1945  -- M

Kind regards, always,

Jim.

 

That signature on the pass does not look like Montgomery to me, B.L. or any other Monty. Whoever it was seems to struggle with how to spell Baghdad.

 

The pass was written by my Dad. I understand that the men usually wrote that bit out and then got it signed. It is only the signature that I'm enquiring about.

 

My Dad was in Egypt [Alamein] immediately before he arrived in Iraq. The rest of his battalion were travelling to Iraq by boat and landed in Iraq on the 4th Nov, several days after my Dad arrived there.

 

Sorry, but that doesn’t look like General Montgomery’s signature. Leaving that aside, did your dad ever talk about Salerno? It looks like he was there with his Bn (2/5 Queens) and was admitted to hospital towards the end of the battle.

Regards

Tom